by Pete Dexter
He was staring at her again. "Canned food," he said, and then he smiled.
. "There's nothing wrong with the canned food," she said.
"That's right," he said. "There isn't."
This time he reached all the way into the refrigerator and swept out everything on the top shelf. Part of it landed on the floor, part was thrown into the wall. She took a step backwards, and the doorbell rang.
He straightened himself and ran his fingers through his hair. He washed off his hands in the sink, dried them with a dish towel. The bell rang again, and she moved to answer it.
"Leave it alone," he said, and she stopped. "It's just my attorney, it don't have a thing to do with you."
He walked straight through the kitchen toward the front of the house. Then he seemed to think of something, though, and stopped.
"We'll have rats, you don't clean that up," he said.
She waited until she heard voices in the front room and then left the kitchen. The second step she took, she was cut. A piece of the bottle went into the first three toes of her left foot so deep it stuck. She cried out, lifting the foot to protect it, and slipped in something Paris had tracked out of the kitchen.
She fell, and for a moment she could not move. She heard them in the front room. "What now?" the attorney said. '
"Housework," her husband said.
"It sounded like somebody fell."
She sat up on the floor and crossed her foot over her knee. The glass had cut through her Christmas sock and was buried so tightly into the fleshy parts of her toes that there was almost no blood.
She pulled at the glass, testing it, and felt a nerve connection all the way up her leg. She heard them coming now. She shut her eyes and pulled at the glass again, a slowly increasing pressure until the toes began to let go, one at a time, and then it was loose. She held the glass up to the light and saw it was the shape of a smile.
There was a throbbing in her toes, a deep ache somewhere in her leg. Harry Seagraves came around the corner, holding papers in one hand, and stopped in his tracks. She realized suddenly that her foot was bleeding — she could feel it coming out of her toes — and she realized at the same time how she must look to the attorney, sitting in the floor in Christmas socks, holding her foot.
"I'm afraid I've cut myself," she said.
The attorney put his papers on a daybed near the door and crossed the room. She saw her husband behind him. Seagraves knelt beside her, and she pulled her robe together at the neck while he inspected her foot.
"I'm sure it's all right," she said.
"I believe it's cut to the bone," he said. "Have you got a towel?"
He stood up, removing his suit coat, and checked around the room for towels. He stepped into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a cloth napkin. He pressed the napkin into her toes and the ball of her foot, watching her face as he worked.
His own face had changed during the visit to the kitchen. "Can you feel that?" he said.
"Certainly," she said.
Her husband was standing over them now, looking down as the attorney applied first aid.
"We're going to need some tape," the attorney said, "something to stem the bleeding enough we can get you to the clinic."
She began to argue that there was no reason to bother the doctor over a cut foot, but she was suddenly aware of the blood. It had soaked through the napkin and was all over the attorney's hands and shirt. It was on her own hands — she did not know how — and had soaked the length of her Christmas sock.
She closed her eyes. "You don't have tape," Seagraves said to her husband, "get me some towels. Something to tie it with."
And then Paris had moved, gone somewhere for towels, and the attorney was helping her up, his hands under her arms and touching her bottom, telling her things were all right. "It doesn't mean a thing, Mrs. Trout," he said. "You're under a strain. Everybody in the world does things when they're under a strain."
She opened her eyes and saw that he meant the kitchen. "No," she said, "nobody would do that."
The attorney led her to the daybed and laid her down, pressing the towel into her foot. There was a line of blood on the floor leading to the spot she had fallen. She felt light-headed and panicky. The attorney patted her knee and said, "It's no consequence at all. In six months this will of all passed and things will be back how they were."
"How they were when, Mr. Seagraves?"
He looked at her, with his hand still on her knee, and said, "Before this happened."
"It didn't just happen," she said. "The day was a long time in the making."
Paris was on the stairs then, coming back down, but the attorney left his hand where it was.
"What he did is one thing," he said softly, just before Paris came back into the room, "what he is, is another."
' "Do you know what he is?" she said.
And finally she heard him tell her the truth. "No," he said.
There was no tape in the house, so Trout brought towels. He handed them to the attorney and stood at the door. Seagraves removed the dish towel and got a fresh look at the toes. He whistled, and in a moment she felt her blood on the underside of her foot and then spilling over the ankle.
"I don't think we ought try moving her," Seagraves said. Trout did not answer but stared at the blood. Seagraves pressed one of the towels into the ball of her foot again, then wrapped another towel around it, as tightly as it would go. The foot began to throb.
"Let me give Dr. Hatfield a call," he said, "and see if we can't interrupt his supper."
Dr. Hatfield lived on Park Street but was doctor to most of the families on Draft. He had a more cordial manner than Dr. Braver, whose house was on Draft, and kept track of patients' names. Hanna Trout had never seen him as a patient, she had not been to a physician since the physical examination which was a condition of employment for the state.
Seagraves went into the front room and dialed the doctor's house.
Trout stayed where he was, staring at her foot. "I heard you talking," he said.
Suddenly she could not remember what she'd said.
"It must embarrassed him to be caught in the middle of personal matters."
"I expect he's used to it," she said.
"I expect I'm not."
She closed her eyes and dropped her head into the pillow behind her. She heard the attorney describing the nature of her injury. "It looks to be cut straight to the bone," he was saying, "all three toes. . . . Well, I did that, but I didn't have much luck yet. It's soaked through the towels .... Right, that's what it looked like to me. . . . All right, we'll be here."
Seagraves came back into the room and said, °°Dr. Hatfield will be by directly."
Trout put his hands in his pockets and began to pace the length of the floor. He went from the door which led to the hallway entrance to the kitchen door, stopping at each end of the room to stare.
Seagraves sat quietly on the bed with his hand resting on her ankle. Every now and then he checked his watch or the bottom of her foot and told her not to worry, that the doctor would be there directly. Once he called her "honey."
And once he spoke to her husband. He said, "Paris, it wouldn't hurt none if you were to clean some of that up in the kitchen before Dr. Hatfield arrives."
Paris took a long look into the kitchen and shut the door. He resumed his pacing. "Some things don't clean up on the spot," he said.
"That's what doors are for."
Dr. Hatfield was there in twenty minutes. He had a head as big as a bear's. He sat down on the foot of the bed and set his bag down next to him. Her foot had turned sensitive, and it hurt when he removed the towels and sock. He apologized for her discomfort.
He dropped the towels and the sock on the floor. They fell heavy and wet, she could hear them land. Paris and Harry Seagraves stood together off to the side. Dr. Hatheld held her foot in his hands, which were warm and soft, and bent his head for a closer look.
"We got to take some stitch
es," he said.
She did not answer, but at the word "stitches" she felt a renewed panic. It was no accident that Hanna Trout had not been to a doctor since she started work for the state. He set her foot back on the bed, so gently she could hardly tell when it left his hands. Then he opened his bag and found a short, hooked needle and his thread.
"I'm going to need some light," he said.
Seagraves took the shade off the lamp at the window and moved it to the foot of the bed. The doctor did not thank him or in any way move his attention from her foot. "You had stitches before, haven't you?"
She shook her head.
He said, "Well, the idea of it's gruesome — I see that's already occurred to you — but the operation itself isn't so bad."
She held on to the bedcovers and closed her eyes, and he began to work on her toes. He cleaned them with something cold and sharpsmelling, and then she felt the tugging as he began to sew. It took him a long time, and once, near the end, she opened her eyes and saw Paris near the window. The uneven surfaces of his face cast shadows in the light from the bare bulb and darkened his eyes and his mouth and one of his cheeks until she could barely see them. It was like trying to place someone from the distance of time, someone she knew but could no longer see clearly in her mind.
When the doctor finished sewing, he pressed gauze into her toes, and between her toes, and then taped her foot all the way to the ankle. "We'll need to change that dressing day after tomorrow," he said.
"I'm not sure I know how," she said.
"I'll change the dressing," he said, "you hold on to the sheets." He looked around the room then. "You need to stay off that awhile. Is this the room where you want to be?"
"Upstairs," she said.
He picked her up, without seeming to notice the weight, and carried her up the stairs. At the top he stopped, looking directly into her husband's room. Then her husband was in front of him, shutting the door and leading him down the hall. "It's over here," he said.
Dr. Hatfield followed him to her room and then carried her to the bed. She was not as embarrassed as she would have expected. He laid her down and then checked the bandages. He pushed the hair off her face. "That's going to bother you later," he said. "I'll leave some codeine .... "
She had never taken codeine and had no intention of starting now. He leaned closer and spoke in a hard voice. "If it infects, I have to put you in the clinic."
She sat up a few inches until she could see the foot.
"You understand what I said?"
"Thank you for coming," she said.
* * *
AFTER THE DOCTOR LEFT, she heard them talking again in the front room. It occurred to her that the construction of the place was peculiar, that conversations in certain rooms downstairs carried into all the other rooms in the house, but that the sounds from the other rooms could not be heard downstairs. It occurred to her that it was somehow intentional.
They were talking about Judge Taylor. Paris said he'd heard the judge secretly loved niggers.
The attorney said, "It's no consequence to you, one way or the other. You want to help, keep yourself low."
"I pay my bills. I do my work."
The men moved, and she could not make out the words. When she heard them again, her husband was saying, "She gets a temper sometimes, messes up the kitchen .... "
"It isn't the kitchen I'm worried about."
"Doctors can't say nothing about it anyway. It's their oath."
"What about the trial?" Seagraves said. "What if she gets a temper there?"
"She don't do it in public," her husband said.
It was quiet a moment, and then she heard her husband again. "What if we kept her away?"
"From court? Your own wife? Think how it would look."
"Maybe her foot got infected. Or she hurt herself in the fall."
She sensed his thinking then, saw it for one long, clear moment.
"No," the attorney said. "It's a bad time to be claiming accidents happen."
Hanna sat up in bed and carefully put her feet down, one at a time. She used a straight-back chair as a crutch and limped into the bathroom and began to refill the tub. She slid herself back into it, resting her injured foot on the lip. With the noise of the running water, she couldn't hear them talking anymore and could no longer picture her husband's thoughts.
He came to her door later, carrying a tray. He knocked and walked without waiting for her to answer. He set the tray on the table next her bed, wax beans, candied potatoes, some kind of pork, iced tea. Everything he brought was canned except the tea.
He had cleaned himself up, shaved and changed clothes and parted his hair, and after he'd set the tray down, he turned the chair she had used for a crutch and sat down backwards, resting his chin on his arms.
He began to speak, then stopped himself and smiled. It was his nicest smile, the one that hid his teeth. She didn't move, not an inch.
"Have you ate?"
She looked at the tray and felt a sweet nausea balance itself in her oat. She looked away, and it moved away from the edge.
"Have you?"
"You got to eat. Doctor said so."
"He said no such thing."
He picked the fork up off the tray and cut a piece off one of the orange potatoes. A small piece. He moved it across the bed until it sat under her nose. She stared at him, seeing the fork and his hand in double vision. She moved away. "No."
He put the fork on the plate, still holding the piece of food, and closed his eyes. For a moment she could see his thoughts again, and then he spoke, and she knew she was right.
"I got to feed you then?" he said.
She shook her head and moved to the far edge of the bed.
"You think it's tainted?"
"I can't eat."
"You ain't tried."
"I took medication,'", she said. Which wasn't true.
"It don't matter," he said. He brought the fork back to her mouth and waited for her to accept it. She turned away, pressing herself against the wall. The chair moved. Then the bed dipped under his weight, and she felt his hand on her shoulder.
A moment passed, and the grip tightened. He turned her by the shoulder, flattened it against the bed, bringing her back toward him. Then he let go and found another hold, just under the ear that was pressed into her pillow, and brought her face around to meet him. She opened her eyes and saw he was still holding the fork. Saw that there was something in the forcing he wanted.
"Nothing is changed," he said. "I'm still here."
"Everything is changed," she said. He had tightened down on her jaw, and it affected her speech. A line of spit hung from the comer of her mouth. He shook his head, and the smile came back. His nice one, without the teeth.
"Whatever you think changed wasn't never me."
She began to speak, but his fingers pressed into her jaw on both sides, opening her mouth, and then he Put the fork inside — so far inside it gagged her — and pulled it out against her upper lip. She felt the cold candied potato drop onto her tongue. She tried to spit it out, but he had her jaws.
"Swallow it," he said. He forced her mouth closed. "Swallow."
He watched her throat, and when she had swallowed he said, "See? It ain't tainted. It's good food."
He turned back to the tray, sticking the fork into the pile of wax beans, and she tried to run. He caught her by the hair and pulled her head backwards until it rested on his fist against the bed. He had dropped the fork, and with his fingers he reached into the plate and picked up a piece of the canned pork. He held it over her face. She clenched her teeth.
He laid the pork across her lips. Then he pushed it inside. His fingers were thick and hard and slid with the piece of meat into her cheek. She had not opened her teeth. He pulled his finger out and looked at her. "Swallow," he said.
She did not move.
He studied her a moment. He said, "Does it need salt?" and she spit the meat out of her mouth. It rested on her own chest. She
felt it there but could not see it. His purchase did not offer her head an inch of movement in any direction.
"Stop it," she said. "My hair . . ."
"Hair?" he said.
He reached down, out of her line of sight, and then she felt his hand up underneath her nightgown. It followed her legs, which were tight together, to her underpants. He went in through one of the legs, his whole hand, and then, for a moment, she thought he had torn her open.
His hand came out, holding a little patch of her pubic hair between his thumb and first finger. Tiny pieces of flesh were still attached where they had been uprooted. He held it over her face, in the same way he had held the pork. "Did you want hair?"
He dropped the hair in her face and picked the pork up off her chest and put it in her mouth. She chewed it and swallowed it. He filled her mouth with a whole candied potato, choking her, and then the beans, and then the rest of the meat. She lay with her head pinned to his fist and swallowed.
"Nothing is different," he said. "You just misunderstood the way things was."
She swallowed until there was nothing left to eat. He let go of her hair, watching her, and then, gently, he leaned closer and whispered, "You understood it now, don't you?"
A numbing sensation spread across the back of her head, her injured toes pounded against the wrapping. It seemed to her he was asking if she knew he would kill her.
"I'm different now," she said.
She saw that puzzled him, and in the moment before he got off the bed, she glimpsed his apprehension.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING EVENING he arrived home from work and stood at the gate for nearly an hour. She watched from the bedroom window. She had planned to leave that morning, take the train to Savannah, but as she packed her things into suitcases, hobbling from her bed to the dresser, she lost her resolve.
She imagined Paris intercepting her on the way to the depot, she imagined herself in Savannah, in her sister's house. The questions. She imagined herself without a house of her own. She sat on the bed and realized that Paris had somehow stolen her direction too.