I clamped my mouth shut, aware for the first time that the shrill sound was coming from my own throat. I saw the man's face relax as he gave me a wry smile.
"That's better," he shouted into my ear. "He's only a man. Remember that. He's only a man!"
I wanted to tell him that Mr. Norton was much more than that, that he was a rich white man and in my charge; but the very idea that I was responsible for him was too much for me to put into words.
"Let us take him to the balcony," the man said, pushing me toward Mr. Norton's feet. I moved automatically, grasping the thin ankles as he raised the white man by the armpits and backed from beneath the stairs. Mr. Norton's head lolled upon his chest as though he were drunk or dead.
The vet started up the steps still smiling, climbing backwards a step at a time. I had begun to worry about him, whether he was drunk like the rest, when I saw three of the girls who had been leaning over the balustrade watching the brawl come down to help us carry Mr. Norton up.
"Looks like pops couldn't take it," one of them shouted.
"He's high as a Georgia pine."
"Yeah, I tell you this stuff Halley got out here is too strong for white folks to drink."
"Not drunk, ill!" the fat man said. "Go find a bed that's not being used so he can stretch out awhile."
"Sho, daddy. Is there any other little favors I can do for you?"
"That'll be enough," he said.
One of the girls ran up ahead. "Mine's just been changed. Bring him down here," she said.
In a few minutes Mr. Norton was lying upon a three-quarter bed, faintly breathing. I watched the fat man bend over him very professionally and feel for his pulse.
"You a doctor?" a girl asked.
"Not now, I'm a patient. But I have a certain knowledge."
Another one, I thought, pushing him quickly aside. "He'll be all right. Let him come to so I can get him out of here."
"You needn't worry, I'm not like those down there, young fellow," he said. "I really was a doctor. I won't hurt him. He's had a mild shock of some kind."
We watched him bend over Mr. Norton again, feeling his pulse, pulling back his eyelid.
"It's a mild shock," he repeated.
"This here Golden Day is enough to shock anybody," a girl said, smoothing her apron over the smooth sensuous roll of her stomach.
Another brushed Mr. Norton's white hair away from his forehead and stroked it, smiling vacantly. "He's kinda cute," she said. "Just like a little white baby."
"What kinda ole baby?" the small skinny girl asked.
"That's the kind, an ole baby."
"You just like white men, Edna. That's all," the skinny one said.
Edna shook her head and smiled as though amused at herself. "I sho do. I just love 'em. Now this one, old as he is, he could put his shoes under my bed any night."
"Shucks, me I'd kill an old man like that."
"Kill him nothing," Edna said. "Girl, don't you know that all these rich ole white men got monkey glands and billy goat balls? These ole bastards don't never git enough. They want to have the whole world."
The doctor looked at me and smiled. "See, now you're learning all about endocrinology," he said. "I was wrong when I told you that he was only a man; it seems now that he's either part goat or part ape. Maybe he's both."
"It's the truth," Edna said. "I used to have me one in Chicago --"
"Now you ain't never been to no Chicago, gal," the other one interrupted.
"How you know I ain't? Two years ago ... Shucks, you don't know nothing. That ole white man right there might have him a coupla jackass balls!"
The fat man raised up with a quick grin. "As a scientist and a physician I'm forced to discount that," he said. "That is one operation that has yet to be performed." Then he managed to get the girls out of the room.
"If he should come around and hear that conversation," the vet said, "it would be enough to send him off again. Besides, their scientific curiosity might lead them to investigate whether he really does have a monkey gland. And that, I'm afraid, would be a bit obscene."
"I've got to get him back to the school," I said.
"All right," he said, "I'll do what I can to help you. Go see if you can find some ice. And don't worry."
I went out on the balcony, seeing the tops of their heads. They were still milling around, the juke box baying, the piano thumping, and over at the end of the room, drenched with beer, Supercargo lay like a spent horse upon the bar.
Starting down, I noticed a large piece of ice glinting in the remains of an abandoned drink and seized its coldness in my hot hand and hurried back to the room.
The vet sat staring at Mr. Norton, who now breathed with a slightly irregular sound.
"You were quick," the man said, as he stood and reached for the ice. "Swift with the speed of anxiety," he added, as if to himself. "Hand me that clean towel -- there, from beside the basin."
I handed him one, seeing him fold the ice inside it and apply it to Mr. Norton's face.
"Is he all right?" I said.
"He will be in a few minutes. What happened to him?"
"I took him for a drive," I said.
"Did you have an accident or something?"
"No," I said. "He just talked to a farmer and the heat knocked him out ... Then we got caught in the mob downstairs."
"How old is he?"
"I don't know, but he's one of the trustees ..."
"One of the very first, no doubt," he said, dabbing at the blue-veined eyes. "A trustee of consciousness."
"What was that?" I asked.
"Nothing ... There now, he's coming out of it."
I had an impulse to run out of the room. I feared what Mr. Norton would say to me, the expression that might come into his eyes. And yet, I was afraid to leave. My eyes could not leave the face with its flickering lids. The head moved from side to side in the pale glow of the light bulb, as though denying some insistent voice which I could not hear. Then the lids opened, revealing pale pools of blue vagueness that finally solidified into points that froze upon the vet, who looked down unsmilingly.
Men like us did not look at a man like Mr. Norton in that manner, and I stepped hurriedly forward.
"He's a real doctor, sir," I said.
"I'll explain," the vet said. "Get a glass of water."
I hesitated. He looked at me firmly. "Get the water," he said, turning to help Mr. Norton to sit up.
Outside I asked Edna for a glass of water and she led me down the hall to a small kitchen, drawing it for me from a green old-fashioned cooler.
"I got some good liquor, baby, if you want to give him a drink," she said.
"This will do," I said. My hands trembled so that the water spilled. When I returned, Mr. Norton was sitting up unaided, carrying on a conversation with the vet.
"Here's some water, sir," I said, extending the glass.
He took it. "Thank you," he said.
"Not too much," the vet cautioned.
"Your diagnosis is exactly that of my specialist," Mr. Norton said, "and I went to several fine physicians before one could diagnose it. How did you know?"
"I too was a specialist," the vet said.
"But how? Only a few men in the whole country possess the knowledge --"
"Then one of them is an inmate of a semi-madhouse," the vet said. "But there's nothing mysterious about it. I escaped for a while -- I went to France with the Army Medical Corps and remained there after the Armistice to study and practice."
"Oh yes, and how long were you in France?" Mr. Norton asked.
"Long enough," he said. "Long enough to forget some fundamentals which I should never have forgotten."
"What fundamentals?" Mr. Norton said. "What do you mean?"
The vet smiled and cocked his head. "Things about life. Such things as most peasants and folk peoples almost always know through experience, though seldom through conscious thought ..."