by Kent Haruf
Did you ever think of doing anything else?
Like what, honey?
I don’t know. Like getting married, maybe. Or living apart.
Well. There was this one time Harold had him kind of a interest in a woman, but then she got interested in somebody else. That was a long time ago. She still lives here in town, with two grown-up kids. He always figured he was too slow, I guess. It might not of ever got anywhere anyway. Harold was pretty set in his ways.
They were good ways though, Victoria said. Weren’t they.
I think they were, Raymond said. He was a awful good brother to me.
He was good to me too, Victoria said. I keep expecting him to come walking in that door any minute now, saying something funny, and wearing that old dirty hat of his, like he always did.
That was him, wasn’t it, Raymond said. My brother always did have his own way of wearing a hat. You could tell Harold from a distance anywhere. You could tell him two blocks away. Oh hell, I miss him already.
I do too, she said.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever get over missing him, Raymond said. Some things you don’t get over. I believe this’ll be one of them.
16
WHEN HE GOT HOME FROM PLAYING IN THE SHED WITH Dena, his grandfather had already gone to bed in his little room at the back of the house, and when he switched on the light the old man raised up on his elbows in his long underwear, with his white hair disheveled and a wild look in his eyes.
Turn that off, he said.
What’s wrong, Grandpa?
I don’t feel very good.
Do you want supper?
I want you to turn that goddamn light off is what I want.
DJ cut off the light and went out to the kitchen. He made toast and coffee and carried these on a dinner plate back to the bedroom but now the old man was asleep.
In the night he heard him get out of bed. His grandfather stayed in the bathroom a long while before shuffling back to his room. Through the thin wall he could hear the bedsprings creaking under his weight, and then he began to cough. After a while there was the sound of his spitting.
In the morning when he went in to see him the old man was awake. He looked small under the heavy quilt, his white hair sticking out sideways, his thick red hands beyond the cuffs of his underwear lying slack and empty over the blanket.
Are you going to get up, Grandpa?
No. I don’t feel like it.
I made fresh coffee.
All right. Bring that.
He brought the coffee and the old man sat up and drank a little, then set the cup on a chair next to the bed and lay back again. He started coughing as soon as he was stretched out. He twisted around to reach under the pillow and pulled out a filthy handkerchief and spat into it and then used it to wipe his mouth.
You must be sick, Grandpa.
I don’t know. You better get on to school.
I don’t want to.
Go on. I’ll be all right.
I should stay home with you.
No. It ain’t nothing to worry about. I been sicker than this before and always come out of it. I took a fever of a hundred and six one time before you was ever born. Now go on like I told you.
He went unhappily to school and sat all morning at his desk at the rear of the room while his mind wandered back to the house. Through the tedious hours of the morning he paid little attention to his schoolwork. The teacher noticed his lack of attention and came to his desk and stood beside him. DJ, is something wrong? You’ve done nothing all morning. It’s not like you.
He shrugged and stared ahead at the blackboard.
What’s bothering you?
Nothing’s bothering me.
Something must be.
He looked up at her. Then he lowered his head and took up the pencil on his desktop and started to work at the math problems she’d assigned them to do. The teacher watched for a moment and returned to her desk at the front of the room. When she looked at him again a few minutes later, he’d already stopped working.
At noon when they were released from school for the lunch hour he began immediately to run. He raced home through the town park and across the shining railroad tracks and didn’t stop until he got to the house. He paused in the kitchen to catch his breath, then walked down the hall to his grandfather’s room. The old man was still in bed, coughing steadily now and spitting into the dirty handkerchief. He hadn’t drunk any more of the coffee. He looked up when DJ entered the room, his face very red and his eyes wet and glassy.
You look worse, Grandpa. You better go to the doctor.
The old man had lowered the window blind during the morning and the room was dark now. He looked like someone who had been put away in a dim back room and left there to his own devices.
I ain’t seeing no doctor. You can just forget about that.
You have to.
No, you head on back to school and mind your own business.
I don’t want to leave you.
I’m going to get out of this bed. Is that what you want?
DJ left the room and went out in front of the house, looking up and down the empty street. Then he ran across to Mary Wells’s house and knocked on the door. After some time she opened the door wearing an old blue bathrobe, and the pretty grown-up woman’s face he was used to seeing, always made up with pink rouge and red lipstick, was now plain and bare. She looked haggard, as though she hadn’t slept in days.
What are you doing here? she said. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?
Grandpa’s sick. I just came home to check on him. Something’s wrong with him.
What is it?
I don’t know. Could you come over and look at him?
Yes, she said. Come in while I get dressed.
He waited for her near the door but didn’t sit down. He was surprised to see the newspapers on the floor and the various magazines and pieces of mail scattered around. Two half-filled coffee cups were set on the side table next to the couch, and milky coffee from one of the cups had spilled out in a gray pool on the polished wood. In the dining room last night’s dishes were still on the table. It was clear she had troubles of her own. Dena had said so when they were out in the shed, but she wouldn’t talk more about it.
Mary Wells came out of the bedroom in jeans and a sweatshirt, and she had brushed her hair and had put on some lipstick, but that was all. She didn’t say anything and they went outside. They started across to his grandfather’s house.
How long has he been sick? she said.
I don’t know if he is sick for sure. But he seems like it.
How long has he seemed sick?
Since yesterday. He keeps coughing and he won’t get out of bed.
They crossed the vacant lot and went into the little house. She had never been beyond the front door, and he felt embarrassed for her to see the inside, to see how they lived. She looked around. Where is he?
Back here.
He led her through the hall to the dark bedroom that smelled of sweat and stale coffee and his grandfather’s sour bedding. He could smell it now in her presence. The old man lay in the bed, his hands outside the blanket. He heard them come in the room and opened his eyes.
Are you sick, Mr. Kephart?
Who’s that coming in here?
Mary Wells from up the street. You remember me.
The old man started to sit up.
No. Don’t move. She crossed to his bed. DJ says you seem like you’re getting sick.
Well, I don’t feel too good. But I ain’t sick.
You look like you are. She felt his forehead and he looked up at her out of his watery eyes. You’re hot. You feel feverish, Mr. Kephart.
It ain’t nothing to talk about. I’ll get over it.
No, you’re sick.
He began to cough. She stood over him, watching his face. He coughed for a good while. When he was done he cleared his throat and spat into the handkerchief.
I want to take you to the doctor, M
r. Kephart. Let’s see what he says.
No, I ain’t going to no doctor.
Well, you can just stop that now. I’m going home to get the car. And while I’m gone you can get dressed. I’ll be back in five minutes.
She left the room and they could hear the screen door slap shut. The old man stared at the boy. How come you ain’t in school where you belong? Look here what you done. Now you got the neighbors all worked up.
You’ve got to get dressed, Grandpa. She’s going to be here.
I know that, goddamn it. Meddling is what you been doing. Sticking your nose in.
Do you want me to help you get out of bed?
I can still do that myself. Goddamn it, give me a minute.
The old man came slowly out of the bed. The long underwear he wore was yellowed and dirty, the bottoms sagged in the seat and were considerably soiled in the front where he’d fumbled at the fly. He stood while the boy helped him into his blue workshirt and his overalls, pulling them on over the underwear, then he sat down on the bed and the boy brought him his high-topped black shoes and knelt and laced them. The old man stood again and went into the bathroom and swiped a wet comb across his white hair and rinsed his whiskered face and came out.
Mary Wells was honking at the curb. They went out and the old man climbed into the front seat and the boy got in back, and they drove out of the neighborhood over the tracks, going up Main Street. There were half a dozen cars parked at this noon hour at the curb along the three blocks of stores and a few more cars and pickups parked in front of the tavern at the corner of Third. The old man seemed lifted in spirit to be riding in the car on a bright day, heading up Main Street in the fall of the year with a young woman driving him. He seemed almost cheerful now that they were going.
Inside the clinic next door to the hospital they waited for an hour and Mary Wells decided to go home so she’d be in the house when the girls returned from school. She told DJ to call her if they needed a ride home. After she left, he and his grandfather sat without talking to any of the other patients who were waiting, and didn’t talk to each other. They sat without reading or even shifting from their chairs. People came in and left. A little girl was whimpering across the room on her mother’s lap. Another hour went by. Finally a nurse came out to the waiting room and called his grandfather’s name. The boy stood up with him.
What are you doing? his grandfather said.
I’m going with you.
Well, come on then. But keep your mouth shut. I’ll do the talking.
They walked back along the hall behind the nurse and were led into an examination room. They sat down. Across the room a diagram of the human heart was taped to the wall. All its valves and tubes and dark chambers were precisely labeled. Next to it hung a calendar with a picture of a mountain in winter, with snow on the trees and a cabin bearing up under the deep snow on its pitched roof. After a while another nurse came in and took the old man’s pulse and his blood pressure and temperature and wrote the information in a chart, then left and closed the door. A few minutes later Dr. Martin opened the door and came in. He was an old man dressed in a blue suit and starched white shirt with a maroon bow tie and clear rimless spectacles, and he had blue eyes that were paler than his suit. He washed his hands at the little sink in the corner and sat down and looked at the chart the nurse had left. So what seems to be the trouble? he said. Who’s this boy with you?
This here’s my daughter’s boy. He had to come along too.
How do you do, Dr. Martin said. I haven’t seen you before, have I? He shook the boy’s hand formally.
That boy’s the cause of all this, the old man said.
How’s that?
He decided I was sick. Then he goes over and gets the neighbor woman to drive me in here.
Well, let’s see if he’s right. Will you sit up here, please? The old man moved to the examining table and the doctor looked into his eyes and mouth, examined his hair-filled ears, and gently squeezed various spots along his stringy neck. Let me listen to your chest now, he said. Can you undo the tops of your pants there?
The old man unhooked the buttons on the shoulder straps of his overalls and let the bib fall. He sat forward.
Now your shirt, please.
He unbuttoned the blue workshirt and shucked it off, revealing the dirty long underwear top, with the white hairs of his chest showing at the open neck.
Could you pull up your top there? Yes. That’ll do. That’s far enough. Now I’ll just listen for a moment. He pressed the cup end of the stethoscope against the old man’s chest. Take a deep breath. That’s right. And again. He moved to the back and listened there.
The old man sat and breathed with his eyes shut and puffed out his feverish cheeks. The boy stood beside him watching everything.
Well, Mr. Kephart, said Dr. Martin, it’s a good thing your grandson brought you in here today.
Oh?
Yes, sir. You’ve got yourself a good case of pneumonia. I’ll call the hospital and they’ll admit you this afternoon.
The old man peered at him. What if I don’t want to go to the hospital?
Well, you can die, I suppose. You don’t have to do what’s sensible. It’s up to you.
How long would they have to keep me?
Not long. Three or four days. Maybe a week. It depends. You can go ahead and get dressed now. Dr. Martin stood back and gathered up the chart on the counter. He started to walk out, then stopped and looked at the boy. You did well to insist that your grandfather come in, he said. What was your name?
DJ Kephart.
And you’re how old?
Eleven.
Yes. Well, you did fine. You did very well. You have reason to be satisfied that you made him come in to see me. I don’t suppose that was very easy, was it.
It wasn’t too hard, the boy said.
The old doctor went out of the room and shut the door.
The old man began to get dressed, but managed to put one of the buttons of his workshirt in the wrong hole so the front was looped forward. Here, he said. Fix this goddamn thing. I can’t do nothing with it. The boy unbuttoned his grandfather’s shirt and buttoned it again while the old man raised his chin and stared at the diagram of the heart that was taped to the wall.
You better not be getting a swelled head over what he told you, he said.
I’m not.
Well, see that you don’t. You’re a good boy. That’s enough. Now help me get these overalls hooked up and we’ll get out of here. We’ll have to see what they’re saying up front.
The boy fastened the shoulder straps of his grandfather’s pants and the old man rose from the chair.
What’d I do with that handkerchief I was using?
It’s in your back pocket.
Is it?
Yes. That’s where you put it.
The old man took out the dirty handkerchief and cleared his throat and spat, then wiped the handkerchief across his mouth and put it back in his pocket, and then together he and the boy went out of the room down the hall to the front desk, to learn what next would be required of them.
17
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN THE NURSE BROUGHT THE old man into the hospital room occupied by Raymond McPheron. She rolled his wheelchair in next to the vacant bed near the door and set the hand brakes and told the old man to get undressed and to put on the hospital gown that was laid out for him at the foot of the bed. It opens in the back, she said. Then I’ll come back and get you settled in. She yanked the curtain partway closed around his bed and left. The boy had followed them into the room and stood now beside his grandfather, accompanying him as he had all the long afternoon.
Across the room Raymond lay in bed under the window, his leg in the cast and raised onto two pillows on top of the thin hospital blankets. Beside him sat Victoria Roubideaux with the little girl in her lap. They could see the old white-haired man and the boy beyond the end of the curtain, but they hadn’t yet said anything to them. The old man had begun to c
omplain in a high whining voice.
I can’t change out of my clothes right here, he said. Do they expect me to take my pants off behind this goddamn curtain like I was in some kind of circus sideshow?
You have to, Grandpa. The nurse will be coming back any minute.
I ain’t about to.
Raymond leaned up in his bed and spoke across the room: Mister, they put a bathroom in yonder through that door there. You can step in there if you’d care to. I don’t guess they put it there just for me.
The old man pulled the curtain back. In there, you say?
That’s right.
I guess I could do that. But look here, don’t I know you? Aren’t you one of the McPheron brothers?
What’s left of them.
I read about you in the paper. I’m sorry to hear about your brother.
The woman that wrote that didn’t even know the half of what she was saying, Raymond said.
My name’s Kephart, the old man said. Walter Kephart. They tell me I got pneumonia.
Is that right.
That’s what they’re telling me.
You look like you got some good help there with you anyway.
Too good, the old man said. This boy here keeps telling me what to do all the time.
Well, it’s nice having a young person around, Raymond said. I got awful fine help myself. This here is Victoria Roubideaux. And her little girl, Katie.
Hello, Mr. Kephart, Victoria said.
How do you do, young lady.
Grandpa, the boy said, you have to get changed.
You see there? the old man said. Right there’s what I’m talking about.
You go ahead and use that bathroom, Raymond said.
The old man stood out of the wheelchair and shuffled slowly around the bed into the bathroom and shut the door. He was inside for ten minutes and beyond the door they could hear him coughing and spitting. When he came out he was wearing the striped hospital gown and carrying his clothes over one arm. The skirts of the cotton gown flapped about his old flanks. He had left the strings at the rear untied and all of his scrawny gray backside was exposed to view. He handed the clothes to the boy and sat down at the edge of the bed and settled the skirts of the hospital gown over his legs like an old lady. Go get that goddamn nurse that was in here, he said. Tell that woman I’m waiting on her.