Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  It was dark down there and all these sounds came out to meet her a long time before she got to the door like some kind of Hell she was hearing from a long way away—a little moan strained out through old dry lips and the grating of each private snore as it tore its way up the throats of the ones who were already asleep. Rosacoke stopped in the open door. The nurses were not there. Nobody seemed to be walking in the dark anyhow. All she could really see was, close to the door, an old woman set up in bed, bent all over on herself and scratching at her hair real slow. But she knew the others were there, and she knew there ought to be something you could do for such people, something you could say even in the dark that would make them know why you were standing there looking—not because you were well yourself and just trying to walk yourself to sleep but because you felt for them, because you hadn’t ever been that sick or that old or that alone before in all your life and because you wished they hadn’t been either. You couldn’t stand there and say to the whole room out loud, “Could I bring you all some ice water or something?” because they probably wouldn’t want that anyhow, and even if they did the first ones would be thirsty again and pitching in their hot sheets before you could make it around the room. You would be there all night, and it would be like trying to fill up No-Bottom Pond if it was ever to get empty. So she turned in the open door and saw one nurse back at the desk and walked in that direction, stopping to look at the flowers waiting outside the room of an old man who said they breathed up too much good air at night. She was some way off when she saw the man’s boy. There was no doubt about it being him this time and she was not surprised. The boy walked fast towards the desk, his shirt open down the front, the white tails sweeping behind him in the light of the one lamp and his chest deep brown almost as if he had worked in the field but you knew he hadn’t. When he got to the nurse he shut his eyes and said, “My father’s nurse says please call Dr. Davis and tell him to come now. It’s serious.” His voice was low and fast but Rosacoke heard him. The nurse took her time staring at a list of numbers under the glass on her desk before she called. She told whoever she talked to that Mr. Ledwell had taken a turn for the worse. Then she stood and walked to his room. The boy went close behind her so she stopped at the door and said “Wait out here.” When she shut the door it stirred enough breeze to lift his shirttail again. He was that close and without stepping back he stood awhile looking. Then he sat by the door where Rosacoke had seen him that first awful time.

  She looked on at it from the dark end of the hall (she was not walking by him in her robe even if it had won honorable mention), but she saw him plain because a table was by his chair and he had switched on a small study lamp that lighted his tired face. His chin hung on his hand like dead weight on delicate scales and his eyes were shut. Rosacoke knew if he looked towards the dark he might see her—at least her face-and she pressed to the blackest wall and watched from there. For a long time he was still. No noise came through his father’s door. Then clear as day a woman’s voice spoke in the open ward, “I have asked and asked for salt on my dinner”—spoke it twice, not changing a word. Some other voice said “Hush” and the boy faced right and looked. Rosacoke didn’t know if he saw her or not (maybe he was just seeing dark) but she saw him’his eyes, far off as she was, and they were the saddest eyes in the world to Rosacoke, that pulled hard at her and called on her or just on the dark to do something soon. But she didn’t. She couldn’t after the mistake of that first time. She shuddered in the hard waves that flushed over her whole body and locked her there in the shadow. Once she put out her hand and her foot and took one small step towards the boy whose head had dropped onto his folded arms, but the bleached light struck her robe, and she dropped back the way one of those rain snails does that is feeling its path, damp and tender, across the long grass till you touch its gentle horns, and it draws itself back, hurt and afraid, into a tight piece you would never guess could think or move or feel, even.

  She couldn’t have said how long she stood there, getting so tired she knew how it felt to be dead, before the doctor they called came in. He didn’t have a tie on, and sleep was in his eyes. He saw the boy and touched him and said something, and they both walked into the room. Before they shut the door a sound like a mad child catching at his breath after crying ran out behind them to where Rosacoke was. She didn’t know what was happening, but the boy’s father might be dying. She knew that much. She felt almost sure that if the man died they would make some kind of public announcement. But he didn’t die and she had waited so long she was nearly asleep. The hall she had to walk through back to Papa’s was as quiet now as a winter night in an attic room when you could look out the window and see a sky, cold and hard as a worn plow point shining with the moon. All those people in the ward were asleep or maybe they had given up trying and waited. It seemed as if when you waited at night for something—maybe you didn’t know what—the only thing happened was, time made noise in a clock somewhere way off.

  It was the next morning that Rosacoke made up her mind. If Mr. Ledwell had lived through the night, she was going to call on him and his family. It was the only thing to do, the only Christian thing to do—to go over there and introduce yourself and ask if there was anything you could do to help such as setting up at night. The way she felt she might have gone over that morning if the room hadn’t been so quiet. She hadn’t seen a soul come or go since she woke up. She didn’t know how Mr. Ledwell was getting along after everything that happened the night before. She didn’t know if he had lived out the night. All she could do was wait for Snowball to tell her. She wasn’t going to ask Rato to do any more looking for her after the last time.

  Snowball was late coming by that morning, but he got there finally and called her out in the hall to talk. He said Mr. Ledwell had a relapse the night before, and they thought he was passing away, but he pulled through unexpectedly. “He not going to last though, Miss Rosacoke. The day nurse tell me he full of the cancer. It’s a matter of days, they say, and he know that hisself so all of us try to keep his spirits up. He ain’t a old man. I old enough to be his Daddy. He resting right easy this morning, but he was bad sick last night. In fact he was dead for a few minutes before the doctor come and brought him around. They does that right often now you know. “

  That made Rosacoke think of the day the Phelps boy fell off the dam at Fleming’s Mill backwards into twenty feet of water, and three men who were fishing dived in in all their clothes and found his body facedown on the bottom and dragged it out, the mouth hanging open in one corner as if a finger was pulling it down. He had stayed under water four or five minutes, and his chest and wrists were still. They said he was dead as a hammer for half an hour till one man pumped air in him and he belched black mud and began to moan through his teeth. But what Rosacoke always wondered was, where did they go if they died for a while—Mr. Ledwell and the drowned Phelps boy—and if you were to ask them, could they tell you where they had been and what it was like there or had they just been to sleep? She had heard that somebody asked the Phelps boy when he got well enough to go back to school what dying was like, and he said he couldn’t tell because it was a secret between him and his Jesus. Mama had said that was all you could expect out of a Phelps anyhow—that she wouldn’t ask him if you paid her cash money and that you couldn’t just suppose he had gone to Heaven and if he hadn’t, you could be sure he wouldn’t admit going elsewhere. (She had smiled but she meant it. She had never had a kind word for that branch of Phelpses since they bootlegged their way to big money some years before.) But not everybody felt the way Mama did. A church of Foot-Washing Baptists up towards South Hill heard about it and invited the boy up to testify but he wouldn’t go. And from then on Rosacoke had watched him as if he was something not quite natural that had maybe seen Hell with his own eyes and had lived to tell the tale—or not tell it—and she had followed after him at little recess, hiding where he couldn’t notice her so she could watch his face close up and see if his wonderful experience h
ad made him any different. As it turned out it had. He was the quietest thing you could imagine, and his eyes danced all the time as if he was remembering and you couldn’t ever know what, not ever.

  By the time Rosacoke thought that, Snowball had to leave, but before he went she asked what he thought about her going over to see Mr. Ledwell and his family.

  “It couldn’t do no harm I can think of, Miss Rosacoke, if you don’t stay but a little while. He can’t talk much with his one lung, but he be happy to have a visitor. You wait though till he get a little of his strength back from last night.”

  She nodded Yes but she hadn’t planned to pay her visit that morning anyhow. She had made up her mind not to go over there till she could take something with her. She might be from Afton, N.C., but she knew better than to go butting into some man’s sickroom, to a man on his deathbed, without an expression of her sympathy. And it had to be flowers. There was that much she could do for Mr. Ledwell because he didn’t have friends. He and his family had moved to Raleigh less than six months ago. Snowball had found out the Ledwells were from Baltimore. But of course there wasn’t a flower for sale anywhere in the hospital, and anyhow it wasn’t cut flowers Rosacoke had in mind. She got a dime from Papa by saying it was time she sent Mama word as to how they were getting along. Then she hunted down one of the Volunteers and bought two cards with the Capitol on them. She wrote one to Mama.

  Dear Mama,

  We like it here alot. I hope you and Baby Sister, MiLo and Sissie are all O.K. Papa and I are getting plenty rest. Rato is the one taking exercise. When you come down here would you bring some of your altheas if they have bloomed yet?

  Yours truly

  Rosacoke Mustian

  She wrote the other one to Wesley Beavers.

  Dear Wesley,

  How are you getting along? I am fine but miss you alot. Do you miss me? When you go to see the Florida Electric Chair think of how much I would like to be there. If you see Willie Duke Aycock tell her I said hello. I hope to see you Monday early.

  Your friend,

  Rosacoke

  Then she mailed them and waited and hoped the altheas had bloomed. Mama had got an idea out of Life magazine that you could force things to flower in winter, and she had dug up an althea bush and set it in a tub and put it in the kitchen by the stove and dared it not to bloom. If it had she would gladly pick a handful of oily purple flowers that bruised if you touched them and hold them in her big lap the whole way to Raleigh on Sunday.

  And Sunday came before Rosacoke was ready. She woke up early enough (Rato saw to that—he could wake the dead just tying his shoes), but she took her time getting washed and dressed, straightening the room and hiding things away. She didn’t expect the family till after dinner so it was nearly noon before she set Papa up and lathered his face and started to shave him. She had finished one side without a nick, singing as she worked—the radio was on to the final hymn at Tabernacle Baptist Church—when the door burst open, and there was Baby Sister and Mama close behind her with flowers. Baby Sister said “Here I am.” Rosacoke got her breath and said, “Blow me down. We sure didn’t look for you early as this. Mama, I thought you had Children’s Day to get behind you before you could leave.”

  Mama kissed her and touched Papa’s wrist. “I did. I did. But once I pulled the Sunbeams through ‘Come and Sing Some Happy Happy Song,’ I felt like I could leave so we didn’t stay to hear Bracey Overby end it with Taps. I know he did all right though. I hope he did—he practiced till he was pale anyhow. Then after leaving church like Indians in the middle of everything to get here early of course some Negroes drove up at the house just as we was starting—some of those curious Marmaduke Negroes with red hair. Well, they had heard about Baby Sister, and they had this skinny baby and wanted her to blow down his throat.” (Negroes were always doing that. A child who had never seen its father could cure sore throat by breathing on it. ) “It’s a awful thing but Baby Sister enjoys it—don’t you?—and I can’t deny her any powers she may have, especially on Sunday.” (Nobody had denied Baby Sister—six years old and big for the name—anything she wanted since she was born six months to the day after her father died. Even the nurses didn’t try. Mama marched her in past a dozen signs that plainly said No Children Under 12 and Baby Sister in Sweetheart Pink and nobody uttered a sound.) All through her story Mama looked around, and when she was done she said “Where is Rato?”

  Rosacoke said, “Patrolling, I guess. He’ll show up for dinner,” and before she could wonder where were Milo and Sissie, they strolled in from parking the car. Milo kissed Rosacoke and said, “Wesley sent you that.” Mama said, “No he didn’t. We haven’t seen Wesley.” Then he laughed and kissed Papa—“Miss Betty Upchurch sent you that, but I don’t tickle as good as her.” (Miss Betty was a crazy old widow with whiskers that he teased Papa about.) Everybody laughed except Sissie. When they quieted down Sissie said “Good morning” and showed her teeth and settled back to looking as if a Mack truck had hit her headon so Milo explained it to Papa. “Sissie will be off the air today. She’s mad—woke up mad but didn’t find reasons till we were leaving home. Then she found two good ones. One was she had to shell butter beans all the way up here because Mama didn’t read the directions and froze her damn beans in the shell. The other thing was she had to sit on the back seat to do it because Mama and Baby Sister had spoke to sit up front with me and the heater. Well, she sat back there shelling, and when she finished—it took her a hour and we were on the outskirts of Raleigh—she lowered the glass on her side, intending to empty out the hulls, but Baby Sister said, ‘Shut that pneumonia hole,’ and Sissie got flustered and threw out the beans instead. Mama capped the climax by laughing, and Sissie ain’t spoke a word since except just now.” He turned to Sissie who was already staring out the window—“Say something, Doll Baby. Turn over a new leaf.” She wouldn’t even look so Milo laughed and that did seal her. It was a good thing. Nobody could make Papa madder than Sissie when she started running her mouth.

  Mama frowned at Milo and said, “Everybody calm down. We got half a day to get through in this matchbox.” She meant Papa’s room that was ten by twelve. Then she went to the bureau and while Rosacoke scraped chairs around, she took off her hat and her white ear bobs and combed her hair and put on a hair net and slipped off her shoes. She went to the chair where Rato slept—in her stocking feet—and said, “Rosacoke, get me my bed shoes out of my grip.” Rosacoke got them. Then Mama settled back and blew one time with relief. She had come to stay and she had brought three things with her—dinner for seven in a cardboard suit box, her grip, and enough altheas to fill a zinc tub. She made it plain right away that Rosacoke would go on home with MiIo and Sissie and Baby Sister but Rato would stay on to help her with Papa. Milo said he planned on leaving between eight and nine o’clock. (What he had in mind was to pacify Sissie by taking her to supper at the Chinese cafá she liked so much and then going on to a Sunday picture. But he didn’t tell Mama that.) And Rosacoke couldn’t object to leaving. In some ways she would be glad to get home, and Milo’s plans would give her time to pay her visit to Mr. Ledwell, time to do all she wanted to do, all she thought she could do—to step over when she had seen her family and pay her respects and give them the flowers that would say better than she could how much she felt for Mr. Ledwell, dying in this strange place away from his friends and his home, and for his people who were waiting.

  So she had that day with her family (Rato appeared long enough for dinner), and the day went fine except for three things. One thing was Sissie but nobody ever looked for Sissie to act decent. Another thing was, after they had eaten the dinner Mama packed, Papa reached over to his bedside table and pulled out the playing cards. Rosacoke had taken pains to hide them way back in the drawer, but Papa pulled them out in full view and set up a game of Solitaire and looked at Mama and grinned. She made a short remark about it appeared to her Papa was learning fancy tricks in his old age. Papa said couldn’t he teach her a few games, a
nd she drew up in her chair and said she had gone nearly fifty years—seven of them as a deaconess in Delight Baptist Church—without knowing one playing card from the other, and she guessed she could live on in ignorance the rest of the time. But she didn’t stop Papa. He just stopped offering to teach her and lay there the rest of the afternoon, dealing out hands of Solitaire till he was blue in the face. He played right on through the nap everybody took after dinner. You couldn’t have stopped him with dynamite. The third thing was after their naps. When they all woke up it was nearly three-thirty and the natural light was dim. Rosacoke stood up to switch on the bulb, but Milo said “No don’t,” and even closed the blinds. Then he went to Papa and pointed at his necktie and said, “Watch this. Pretty soon it’ll start lighting up.” It was something he had got that week by mail, and he claimed it would say “Kiss Me In The Dark!” when the room got dim enough, but they waited and the only thing the tie did was shine pale green all over. Rosacoke was glad he didn’t get it working but Papa was disappointed. He asked Milo to leave the tie with him so he could test it in total darkness and show it around to the nurses, but Milo said he was intending to wear it to some crop-dusting movies at the high school that coming Thursday.

  In a few more minutes it was five o’clock, and Milo started his plans by saying he and Sissie were going for a little ride and for Rosacoke to be packed for home by nine. Then he got Sissie up and into her coat and they left. Whenever Milo left a place things always quieted down. Papa went back to his Solitaire, and Mama crocheted on a tablecloth that she said would be Rosacoke’s wedding present if the thread didn’t rot beforehand. Even Baby Sister, who had pestered all afternoon to make up for Sissie being on strike, was worn out and sat still, sucking her thumb, so in the quiet room Rosacoke took down her grip and packed in almost everything. But she kept out her only clean dress and took it down to the nurses’ utility closet and pressed it and put it on. She had washed it in the hall bathtub the night before. When she came back to the room, nobody paid her any mind. They thought she was just getting ready to go home. She washed her hands and face and stood in front of the mirror, combing her hair and working up her nerve. She turned her back to Mama and put on a little lipstick and rouge to keep from looking so pale. Then she took the altheas up out of the water Mama set them in and dried the stems with a clean towel and wrapped tissue paper around them. Mama said, “You are dressing too soon,” and Rosacoke said, “I reckon I am,” but before anybody had seen her good, she slipped out the door in her yellow dress, holding the flowers. She had tied a white card to them. Snowball had got it for her the day before. It said “From a Friend Across the Hall.”