He sat on the broken chair near the foot of the bed and admired her. She went on and on and on, in a light sweet breathless voice, her expressions changing often. She was by far the prettiest thing he had ever seen.
“And you sure are a talker, Missy. You sure do go on and on.”
He could not understand much of it. Sometimes the words didn’t fit together in any way that would make sense. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was there or not if she felt talky. She talked to a lot of different people. Sometimes she’d seem to be talking right to him, but when he moved off to the side she’d keep talking to the place where he’d been. She’d doze off. Sometimes it would be a good heavy sleep. Other times she’d toss and twitch and whine. She’d get all sweaty, and he’d wipe her face off.
He liked it when she’d laugh. It would make him smile and sometimes laugh with her. She had a lot of different kinds of laughing. Sometimes like a tea party, and sometimes teasing, and sometimes a real belly-buster, deep and hearty for such a little mite of a thing.
It began to seem to him as if he was getting to know the folks she was talking to. She’d wait and listen to them answer, and she’d nod, and he’d find himself straining to hear what they were saying to Missy. There was Stel and Roger and Mister Bix and Carrie. Then there was Captain Stan and Captain Staniker which could be the same one. There was a Mary Jane, and Jonathan and Sam, and other people she didn’t say often enough for him to remember.
Sometimes when she was talking real clear and straight, he would put his hands on her shoulders and give her a little shake and say, “What’s your name, Missy. What do these folks call you?”
But she would keep carrying on as if she hadn’t understood a word. She talked about fish and reefs, and whether she ought to go back to the Island Shop and buy that blue sweater. A couple of times she just sat there and cried, not making much noise about it, but he just couldn’t stand it and he had to get out of there because it like to broke his heart hearing it. He went down to clean some fish and in a little bit he heard her tea party laugh a couple of times. He shook his head in wonder, and decided he’d boil her up a nice thick fish chowder for her supper.
Once he got angry enough to try to join in. Missy was talking in a whispery little voice to the one called Stel, trying to get Stel to stop crying. He figured it out from what she said that Stel had a game leg, and the one named Carrie was being mean to her. Missy didn’t seem to care much for Carrie either. So he said it was a pretty sorry person that’d pick on a little gimpy gal, but Missy went right on without hearing a word, and it all turned into nonsense words and she fell asleep all at once, leaving him with the idea that it was a good thing Captain Stan was being especially nice to that Stel, because she sounded like somebody who could use friends.
It tired his head trying to sort out all those people. And he was beginning to feel impatient with her for not getting better faster. Those heavy sweats and the moaning in the sleep made him nervous.
He had the uneasy idea he ought to go right on over to town and get the Lieutenant. But then they’d put her into the hospital. But hospitals had that funny thing about what to do when your head was hurt. They might never let Missy go. There was another thing too. The Lieutenant might get upset about the girl being there on the island with him all this time. And the people in those candy houses over there would get real puckered about it, and get dirty ideas. No use trying to explain to them there’d been just that one little slip, and he was sorry it happened, his hand just reaching out that way for a little feel of that pretty, dainty, little titty. If that hand got away from him again, he was going to go down and lay it on the fish cleaning block and whack a couple fingers off it with the axe.
They wouldn’t even try to understand he was busier right now than he’d been when he was building the place all by himself. It was so hard to keep track of all the things he had to do, he kept falling behind on one thing or another and racing around trying to catch up.
What with washing out the bedding, scrubbing the place, burning the trash that piled up on him, patching up the place where the night bugs could get in to pester her, he still had to keep track of the nurse chores.
He’d boiled the boat sponge clean, and when she made a mess, after he’d put the bedding to soak, before he’d slip her into the fresh sheets, he had to swab her off clean and nice again, using the sponge and soap and warm water, keeping his head turned and going by touch so as not to look at her, then drying her nice with the soft toweling. Good thing the brief rains had been heavy or he’d be short on water.
Food was a real problem too, getting something down her that would give her some strength back. A can of chili looked just too dark and heavy for a sick missy, so you thin it down with powdered milk. Put the spoon to her little mouth and she’d open up like a baby bird, and that was the way to get the pills into her too, stuff them into those first few spoonfuls. When she got all she could handle, you couldn’t get the spoon past her teeth and she’d make a tired whiney sound and roll her head back and forth to get away from the spoon.
Had to watch her back to see how it was coming, and the last time he greased her it looked fine, except for two little bad spots left on that sunk-in little white butt, to be pinched open and scrubbed clean and covered with the medicine.
Then he had a name for her. She was talking to that Jonathan and said, “Leila Dye. Leila Dye. That will be funny after all the years of being Leila Boylston, huh?” Celebrate, he thought, with a good chowder for her so thick you could stand a spoon in it, plenty of chili powder and that spic sauce to give it some life. Stir a whole damn tin of that Aussy butter into it to start her fattening up. Count every little rib she had. Fever melts it right off them every time. Never thought she’d be as much as nineteen. Boylston girl, with a teacher fellow to get married to. Teacher, don’t you sweat too much. Ol’ Corpo’s fixing her up fine, and she’ll live right here with him until she’s dancing and laughing and singing the whole day through, and then she’ll let you know how it’s time to come get her, and you can let on to that brother Sam she’s in good hands.
While fishing he was taken far off, and came slowly back into himself to find that he was drifting through the Inlet, out toward the breakers, holding a rod with an empty hook. He started the motor on the skiff and came home, and coming around the last turn, saw the strange boat under his place, couldn’t fit his mind around what he was supposed to know, because it had been there before and he couldn’t remember why. Then he remembered the girl all of a sudden, and why he’d gone out. He yanked open the bait well lid and saw four good fish, enough, thank God, and couldn’t remember catching them. He squeezed in beside her fancy boat, moored the skiff, ran up to take a look at her. She was out of the bed and on her side on the floor sound asleep, her head in a corner. He clucked and went over and felt of her, and was pleased to find out she felt almost cool to the touch for the first time. He lifted her easily, put her back on top of the rumpled bed, tugged the tails of the shirt down to cover her decently. He went down with the cook pot, cleaned the fish and cut them into chunks and dropped them into the pot. When he carried it up, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he said, “You feeling a lot better, Missy?”
“But you can’t expect me to be absolutely useless, darling! It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve done some of Sam’s work at home for ages, and I’m a whiz typist, and pretty dang good at speedwriting too, and certainly somebody in Montevideo needs typing in English. So all I’m asking, darling, is for you not to get all proud and stuffy, and write to them and just ask them to fix up the permissions and things I’ll need to earn any money down there... What difference does that make? When we have babies I’ll stay home. Darling, it’s a tiny, tiny apartment, and you’ll have long hours and I’ll go slowly mad. Do you want me wandering the streets or something?... Certainly I like to be alone with you, Jonathan, but I also like to be with people too.”