Mrs. Bailey said, “How can you two—? When—” Sarah said, “Is she pretty? And what’s her name?”
“Dinah,” said Jimmie. “She’s black. An Abyssinian spy—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” said his father.
“Anyhow,” his sister observed, “you feel pretty good.”
Jimmie suddenly realized that he did feel pretty well. He could not, for the life of him, figure out why. Certainly he was not taking any excessive pleasure out of Biff’s revenge on himself. Certainly he had not grown so cold toward his family in two days that he enjoyed seeing them suffer. But he felt an unmistakable rise of his spirits.
He let them rise while his parents and his sister sank into a fresh morass of silence. Presently his mother whispered, “Right now, he might be—!”
“Steady!” said her husband.
Jimmie said, half reassuringly, half in protest of the morbid anticipations of his mother, “Oh, he’ll be all right. You could see that, by his face. That intern said so too.
He’s the kind who know their onions.”
“I suppose you”—his mother said hotly—“are a bit of a surgeon yourself! Along with all your other intellectual accomplishments! I suppose you could tell, from a glance, that Biff was perfectly all right!”
“Some,” Jimmie said quietly. “I’ve seen a lot of people hurt, you know.”
Nobody answered that. Sarah kept glancing at her brother with intentness. She was thinking. Her face slowly showed conclusion—illuminating conclusion; when it did, Jimmie said, “All right. What is it?”
“You think,” Sarah said, “that Biff brought on that accident on purpose, to skip being drafted! It amuses you—in a nice, fiendish way!”
Jimmie was startled. Her conclusion was accurate. Evidently, she had been wondering about his behavior at the hospital; and the selfsame theory had skipped through her own mind, and she had instantly fitted it upon him. The Baileys, he thought, were equipped with subtle minds—when they wanted to use them subtly. He wondered what he should say to Sarah—and he was staring at her lazily while he tried to make up his mind—when his father spoke for him.
“Sarah! I don’t want you to say anything like that again—ever! Jimmie was darned fine with Biff just now!”
Sarah said, “You’ve considered the possibility, too, Dad!”
“Sarah!!!” That was Mrs. Bailey.
Mr. Bailey, meanwhile, was facing his daughter and growing red. “What kind of a contemptible piece of perverted nonsense is this, daughter! Biff did no such thing.
Jimmie thought no such thing. No such foul idea ever touched my own mind! I’ve noticed several times recently that you have a taint of evil-thinking, though—like your mother’s mother. You watch that, Sarah!”
A fraction of Sarah’s black hair was immaculately made up in a flattened pompadour that stood out over her forehead like a segment of a fat, flat snake. The remainder billowed down her back in a Nubian cascade. When she swung her head about quickly, which she did often, her back hair flared like a dancer’s skirt, and her pompadour wobbled. It was alluring—under the proper hat. Au naturel, it was grotesque.
The rest of Sarah was handsome enough. An inexperienced young woman. A highly untamed young woman. That combination meant—she would get the experience, someday. Just as her mother had. And, like her mother, she would probably have an experience which was mostly confining and arbitrary, so her taming would consist of a shift of her libido to clubs, civic improvement, national affairs, and, no doubt, the rabid avoidance of international entanglements.
Jimmie smiled. “Withdraw the subject, Sarah. It’s out of bounds, anyhow. Biff’s hurt worse now than he’d ever have been in any training camp!”
That statement was not an argument. Nevertheless Mr. Bailey accepted it as conclusive. “Exactly!” he said, with a warm look at his son. It was the first warm look Jimmie had received from his father since the one that had been bent upon him at the station. Mr. Bailey was well disposed to people who helped him rationalize his way out of difficult situations.
The family drove down to the hospital promptly at nine. Jimmie walked. His insistence on walking was becoming a sort of insult to his family. But he went on insisting. “Only eight blocks or so,” he said. “I’ll make it—never fear.”
The family had gone in by the main entrance. But Jimmie, when he reached the hospital, went around to the emergency entrance, where the ambulances were unloaded.
He heard laughter down a corridor and he walked toward it. The intern who had been in the receiving room was kidding a nurse. On Jimmie’s appearance, the nurse smiled once, prettily, and hurried away.
“My name’s Bailey,” Jimmie said.
“Yes. I know. Mine’s Heiffler. Your brother’s fine.”
“I thought he would be. Were you there for the operation?”
Heiffler nodded. “I assisted the assistant. Cather’s good, you know. Damned good.
Too, good, for this burg. He likes it here. Why—I can’t imagine. I’m from Chicago.
Siddown.”
Jimmie sat. “Tell me the details.”
Heiffler reached for one of Jimmie’s cigarettes. “Compound fracture of both femurs. Set, now. Take traction. Three ribs busted. Both ankles more or less sprained.
Internal organs present and accounted for. No damage. Shaken up, bruised, contused, cut on knees. Shock—well, you can’t be sure. Some, anyway. Took ether perfectly. Asleep now. No lasting harm at all—to his body.” The intern’s brown eyes burned at Jimmie.
“Oh?”
“I rode the bus. Answered the call. Picked him off the street.”
“Was he conscious?”
“Semi.”
“Say anything?”
“He was laughing.”
“Laughing, eh.”
“Has your family talked to the cops?”
“No,” Jimmie said.
“I did. They left here a while ago. Kind of hard accident to explain. Clear road, good visibility, no traffic except your brother waiting on the stop street, and this dinge whizzing through on the boulevard.”
“Colored man, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“He hurt?”
“Killed. Deader’n hell. His car looked like an accordion.”
“Have his lights on?”
“You can’t ask him,” the intern answered petulantly. He regarded Jimmie a moment. “The sarge says the reflectors were warm, though. What he could find of ’em.”
He hesitated again. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I noticed how you questioned him—”
Jimmie said, “Yeah.”
“Nice kids, this generation! Brave, dependable, responsible, calm, sane, intelligent—wonderful!”
“You belong to it. You ought to know.”
“I’m a poor kike who worked my way through medical school after working it through college! I like people—decent ones—and I like medicine! I don’t like people that murder other people just because somebody is going to take away their candy!”
Jimmie smiled a little. “Maybe I can chivvy that lad into the army, someday, yet.
Maybe—maybe— he’ll payoff.”
“He won’t get in the army!”
“He will if I make him,” Jimmie answered fiercely.
“No. There’ll be a report of all this. You know. Nothing that your family, or the draft board, will ever see. Something only the army will see. A couple of army doctors, anyhow. They’re trying hard to weed out the screwballs, this time, before they demand any hard work from ’em. Your brother’ll be sent to camp, maybe, by the local board. He’ll come back—without knowing why.”
Jimmie thought for a while. He smiled again. “That might do him a lot of good.”