To his relief, Sutter left the Colt in his chair and had, apparently, forgotten about it
“I’ll be in by nine.”
“Yes sir.”
“Barrett, I think you’d better call the family.”
“But I just—”
“Tell them they’d better get out here.”
“Yes sir.”
‘Tell them I said so.”
“All right.”
“Somebody will have to be here to take care of things after Jamie’s death.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Some member of the family.”
“You’ll be here.”
“No, Barrett, I’ll not be here.”
“Why not?” asked the other angrily — he had had enough of Sutter’s defections.
“Barrett,” said Sutter as cheerfully as ever, craning his neck to keep track of the new guest, “if you know anything at all— and, what with your peculiar gifts, you know a good deal more than that — you ought to know why not.”
“I don’t,” said the engineer, at a total loss. He had lost his intuition!
“If I do outlive Jamie,” said Sutter, putting on his Curlee jacket (double breasted!), “it will not be by more than two hours. What in Christ’s name do you think I’m doing out here? Do you think I’m staying? Do you think I’m going back?”
The engineer opened his mouth but said nothing. For the first time in his life he was astonished.
“You won’t join me, Barrett?”
“What? No. No, thanks.”
Sutter nodded cheerfully, dropped the pistol in the side pocket of the jacket, and hurried down the path after the last of the dudes.
Perhaps this moment more than any other, the moment of his first astonishment, marked the beginning for the engineer of what is called a normal life. From that time forward it was possible to meet him and after a few minutes form a clear notion of what sort of fellow he was and how he would spend the rest of his life.
The pleasant little brunette was coming out of Jamie’s room when he turned the corner. He smiled at her and experienced a pang of pleasure when she veered and he saw she meant to stop him. But she was not smiling, and instead of speaking she held out a thermometer. He couldn’t see for looking, save only that the red line came dizzyingly near the top.
“Is he conscious?” he asked her.
“If you want to call it that. He’s delirious.”
“Do you think you should—”
“I’ve already notified Dr. Bice.”
“How is his pulse?”
“One-thirty, but regular.”
“He’s not, ah, fibrillating?”
“No.”
“Would you come back later, that is, from time to time when you can — as often as you can, in fact, to take his pulse.”
Now she did smile. “Why, yes.”
One look at Jamie and he went for the phone. The youth’s face was turned to the window. His dusty dead friable hair lay on the pillow as if it had been discarded, a hank.
As he got change from the cashier — he wouldn’t dare reverse the charges to Val — he began to grieve. It was the shame of it, the bare-faced embarrassment of getting worse and dying which took him by surprise and caught his breath in his throat. How is this matter to be set right? Were there no officials to deal with, the shame of dying, to make suitable recompense? It was like getting badly beat in a fight. To lose. Oh, to lose so badly. Oh, you bastards living and well and me dying, and where is the right of that? Oh, for the bitter shame of it.
At last the circuits clicked open into the frying frazzling silence of Alabama. He fancied he could hear the creak of the cancerous pines.
“Hello,” he cried after a wait. “Hello!”
“Hello,” came a voice as faint and faraway as 1901.
“Who is this?”
“This here Axel.” It sounded like a child standing a good two feet below a wall phone.
“Axel, let me speak to Sister Johnette Mary Vianney.”
“Who?”
He repeated it.
“Who dat?”
“Sister—”
“Sister Viney?”
“Yes, Sister Viney.”
“Yes suh, she here.”
“Well, go get her, Axel.”
“Yes suh.”
The ancient Alabama silence fried away in his ear. His foot went to sleep. Twice he had to stoke the box with quarters. That black cretin Axel—
“Hello.”
He gave a start. He had almost forgotten where he was. “Hello, is this Val? That is, Sister—”
“This is Val.”
“Val, this is—” Christ, who? “—Will Barrett.”
“Yes?” The same calculated buzzing non-surprise — he felt a familiar spasm of irritation.
“I, ah — Jamie asked me to call you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about a book. A book about entropy. Actually, that is not the real reason I’m—”
“Entropy,” she repeated.
“Jamie said you promised to send him a book.”
“How is Jamie?”
“He asked me—”
“Never mind about the book. How is he?”
“He is very sick.”
“Is he dying?”
“I think so.”
“I’m leaving now. I’ll get a plane in New Orleans.”
“Good.”
He slumped with the relief of it. She’d do, nutty as she was. It came over him suddenly: there is another use for women after all, especially Southern women. They knew how to minister to the dying! It was they all along who had set at nought the shame of it and had done it so well that he had not even known that it took doing. He’d rather have a proper Southern woman (even one of his aunts!) but he’d settle for this one. “Very good. And would you call the rest of the family. My change is gone and I have to get back to Jamie.” All women come. The more women, the less shame.
“If anything happens before I get there, you’ll have to attend to it.”
“Yes, ma’am. Attend to what?”
“His baptism.”
“Ma’am? Eh?”
“I said you’ll have to see to his baptism if I don’t get there in time.”
“Excuse me,” said the courteous but terrified engineer. “Much as I’d like to oblige you, I don’t believe I can take the responsibility.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, I’m not a member of the family.”
“You’re his friend, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you deny him penicillin if it would save his life?”
“No,” he said, stiffening. None of your Catholic tricks, Sister, the little tricky triumphs of analogy. You learned more in Paterson, New Jersey, than you realize. But he said only: “Why don’t you get Sutter?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“As a matter of fact, he asked me to call you too.”
“Good. Then you hold the fort till I get there.”
“I don’t believe in baptizing anybody against their will,” said the sweating engineer, for lack of anything better to say.
“Then ask him if it’s against his will.”
“Ask him?”
“Barrett, I charge you to ask him.” She sounded serious enough but he couldn’t swear she wasn’t laughing at him.
“It’s really none of my business, Sister.”
“It’s my responsibility but I am giving it to you until I get there. You can call a priest, can’t you?”
“I am not of your faith, Sister.” Where did he get these solemn religious expressions?
“Then call a minister for God’s sake. Or do it yourself. I charge you. All you have to do is—”
“But—”
“If you don’t call someone, then you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Then God knows I’ll call someone, thought the prudent engineer. But he was becoming angry. To the devil with this exotic pair, Sutter and Val, the absentee experts who would deputize him, one to practice medicine, the other to practice priestcraft. Charge him indeed. Who were they to charge anybody?