Chapter 15
Boone, Ill.
Saturday, A.M.
Dear Louise:
My second day in the hospital. I tried to get out of here last night with very little luck.
About midnight I had crawled out of bed, found my clothes in the closet, and put them on. I tiptoed downstairs with the intention of leaving by the doctor’s entrance. But I reckoned without the night-owlish tendencies of a headnurse.
“May I ask where you’re going?” She stood between me and the door.
“Out to catch a streetcar,” I snapped at her. “My wife has decided not to have the baby tonight. So I may as well go home.”
“I think not, Mr. Horne. There is no Mrs. Horne in the maternity ward at the present time, nor are there any unwed mothers. Are you returning to your room now?”
“Yes, mam,” I said. The price of fame, I suppose.
I’m a wiser man this morning. I know a safe and sure way to get out, tonight.
Eleanor had hit me with that gun butt, damn her soul. And then there had been nothing.
For a long time there was nothing. Nothing, like the stark, empty blackness of night skies on a barren planet; nothing, like the confining hollowness of a covered grave.
The first thing that came out of the empty nothingness was a painful buzzing. A buzzing by a solitary fly trapped in that coffin in a covered grave. The fly wanted out and couldn’t get out — ever.
The buzzing changed; it didn’t stop, but it changed pitch with a suddenly cold and refreshing wetness. I pushed myself up on one weak arm and looked down at the white light playing on the snow I was lying in. I realized only that it was a light, and it was snow, and fell face forward again. It was wet and cold and good on my face.
Above the buzzing a woman’s voice spoke to someone.
“Get up.”
She wasn’t talking to me, she couldn’t be talking to me. I didn’t want to get up; couldn’t she see that? I wanted to lie there and push my face deeper and deeper into the good, cold snow. It was wet and came up between my lips.
The voice spoke again.
“Please — get up!”
Who was she talking to?
“Please, Chuck! Get up from there.”
I don’t want to get up I said to the woman’s voice, I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to get up.
The woman picked up my arm and twisted it. The pain shot to my finger-tips and the buzzing changed pitch again. Damn you Eleanor, I don’t want to get up. Let me alone.
My arm was warm against the cold snow; the buzzing stopped, the pain stopped.
They were replaced by a smell. The smell was good and it was bad. It smelled like something I knew. A jail. It smelled like a jail — no, not quite. It was a different smell from a jail, a different kind of lysol. It didn’t smell like lysol at all now, now that I had thought of lysol. It smelled like ether. Ether and flowers.
The flowers were roses, a big bunch of them, and they were very pink roses placed in a very white vase. Beyond them was a window with snow on the sill and on either side of the window was a very pale green wall. All of the colors seemed rich and smooth and quiet as if they had been put there for me to look at when I opened my eyes. The very pink roses contrasted with the very pale green wall.
And on the left side of the bed was a small white table, a dresser, two chairs and a door. The door was standing open a few inches and through the opening came the clack-clack of fast heels on the marble floor of the corridor. Clacking heels accompanied by flashing glimpses of white. And everything smelled like ether and roses.
I looked back to the little table standing beside the bed. There was a water glass on it, upside down, a pitcher, a folded towel, and a small white card propped against the glass. The card was too far away to reveal the printing on it, but it seemed familiar. I reached for it but my left arm wouldn’t move.
I looked down to see why and saw the plaster cast. It began just below the elbow and ended just past the wrist, leaving a part of my palm and the fingers free. I wiggled them. Fractured or broken wrist, I guessed. So I reached for the card with my other hand.
It was a duplicate of the card I had found propped up between the typewriter keys. On the back Elizabeth Saari had written in brown ink:
“Send for me immediately, Chuck.”
I put the card back where I had found it and lay down to think.
Mother Hubbard came to mind first. Mother Hubbard would have worried about me when I didn’t get home last night. You know how she fusses around, Louise. An old hen with one chick. I’m the chick. She’d like for you to give up your job and come back to town so there’d be two chicks. I wondered which would worry her the less: to call her and tell her where I was, or not to do anything and let her think I was out chasing around somewhere.
There and then is when I tried to scratch my head. It was wrapped up. My friend, Eleanor.
Eleanor’s name brought other things to mind. There had been a fuzzy something about wet snow, and a buzzing fly, and Eleanor telling me to get up.
The buzzing fly must have been my buzzing skull and my imagination. Wet snow, and a stinging arm. The plaster cast explained the arm. I suppose I fell on it, or twisted it when I fell. In wet snow. I must have stumbled out of the farm house and fallen in the snow. Or was pushed.
But the dog? He would have been on me if I had gotten out of the house. He wouldn’t have just bitten my wrist and walked away; the dog would have gone for my throat.
So I was pushed, and not from the farmhouse porch. I was pushed from a car after I had been carried away from the farm. Packed in the Cadillac, hauled off a long distance down the road, and dumped out. Why? Why was I still around to think about it?
Because Eleanor had received a telephone call and the message hadn’t been the one for which she and Paul were waiting. That was only too apparent. Instead of being killed outright — as they were expecting — the message had ordered a “once over lightly.” Afterwards, I was dumped in a ditch.
And then Eleanor had said—
But Eleanor couldn’t have said anything. Eleanor couldn’t be there, in the ditch. She had either remained at the farmhouse or gone on with the car. She wouldn’t have gotten out to stay there with me, begging me to get up.
I turned to look at the card propped against the water glass. Dr. Saari’s card.
There was a flash of starched white at my door. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the heels. The flash of white came in and gave me the conventional hospital smile from an attractive face. The starch in the white camouflaged the probably attractive figure that belonged to the face.
“Good morning,” she said cheerily. “How do you feel?”
“With my fingers. What’s your name?”
“Bartlett. Do you feel better now?”
“Bartlett what? I’m doing all right. When do I get out of here?”
“Hazel Bartlett. I’m glad to hear it. We’ll have to ask the doctor.” She puttered around with the bedclothes, doing nothing constructive. Then she asked me, “Do you want anything from the closet?”
“No. Unless there’s a drink hidden there.”
She hadn’t of course but she pretended it was a very funny thing for me to say. And she zipped away. I followed her heels down the corridor until they stopped. I heard her give a number and call Dr. Saari by name. Her voice dropped. Then she hung up and the heels faded away altogether.
Pretty soon she was back with a large shot glass of colored liquid. She smiled a genuine smile and held it out to me.
“The doctor says you may have this.”
“What is it?”
“Taste it and see.”
I sniffed it first. It was bourbon. I drank it. It was fine bourbon.