by Pete Dexter
“No sir, you doesn’t has to do that.”
“You already told him, did you?”
“No sir, I don’t tell Mr. Mims nothing.”
“And that right there,” Paris said, “is how you stayed out of trouble.”
She heard the door open and looked out her window in time to see the Negro walking to the truck. His gloves were in his back pocket. He got in without as much as a glance backwards and drove away.
Of course, all he’d lost to Paris Trout was two hours.
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER THE Negro left, Paris began the hammering. It was more of a tapping when she got used to it, and she realized he was not driving the nails all the way in. Still, it shook the floor and rattled the bottles on the dresser where she kept her perfume and jewelry.
The tapping went on late into the night, and she lay in her bed, listening, trying to imagine what he was doing.
Nothing came to mind.
She woke in the morning to the sound of the front door slamming shut and moved to her window. She saw Paris had slept in his clothes—if he’d slept at all—and hadn’t changed them before he left. He walked in a stiff way to the gate and then down the sidewalk in the direction of town.
She stayed at the window a few minutes longer, making sure he was gone, and then went to the end of the hall and tried the door to his room. It was not locked—not even completely shut—and it cracked open at the first touch of her hand. She paused, suddenly afraid he was somehow inside, waiting for her. Then she pushed the rest of the way in and was momentarily blind.
The floor was covered with glass. The sun came in through the east window, gathered itself in a spot about halfway across the floor, and met her at the doorway. She squinted and moved a few steps inside. The spot seemed to move with her, keeping between her and the window.
She crossed the room carefully, testing each step, feeling the warm glass on the soles of her feet. At the window she turned back and surveyed the floor. The sheets of glass were fitted flush against the walls. Lines of tenpenny nails, spaced two to an inch, had been driven into the floor at the edges, keeping the glass in place.
The glass covered the perimeter of the floor. He had moved his bed away from the wall, and it sat in the middle of the room now, in the only space that was not covered. The legs of the bed each sat in a rubber overshoe. The hammer and a can of nails lay in the corner near the closet, beside an open, half-eaten can of cling peaches.
She looked back toward the doorway and saw her footprints on the glass.
She left the room as carefully as she had entered it and hurried downstairs into the kitchen. She found ammonia under the sink and put that and some dish powder into a small pail and filled it with water. She picked up a sponge and a dish towel and went back.
She left the pail outside his door and went to her own room for a pair of socks. The ones she found first were Christmas socks, a present from a time so far removed it could have been something she’d read about. Dark green socks with little red Santas tumbling up and down the sides.
The tops came all the way to her knees.
She returned to the room, in her nightgown and her socks, and began working on the far corner of the floor. The ammonia made her eyes water, the glare of the sun caught her from unexpected angles as she backed herself and the pail toward the door.
When she had come about halfway, she turned around, and with the sun behind her, she saw it was not ordinary glass. It was thicker than windowpanes, and it did not wipe clean. It had seemed to, but as the glass dried, the footprints reappeared.
She began again, scrubbing harder, checking her work from different sides as she moved back toward the hall.
It took most of an hour, and when she had finished, she stood in the doorway and saw that all the signs that she had been in the room were erased.
PARIS RETURNED LATE IN the afternoon and went directly upstairs. She heard him open the door and stop. She did not breathe until she heard him move again, farther into the room.
He went in. Then he came out, stopping at the doorway to look down the hall. She knew he was looking in her direction. The urine smell came back to her as fresh as if he were standing in her bedroom.
He went back down the stairs, taking them slowly, and then into the kitchen. She heard the first breaking noise two minutes later. A deep pop, perhaps a jar of mayonnaise on the floor.
Which, in fact, it was.
He dropped the mayonnaise, and then all the preserves, and then the eggs, and then two bottles of milk. The little explosions seemed to come at minute intervals, and finally, when she understood that he meant to break everything in the kitchen, she put a robe over her nightgown and went downstairs to stop him.
She found her husband bent into the open refrigerator, as if he were looking for something to eat. There were pieces of broken bottles and jars all over the floor, most of them still holding part of what had been inside. His shoes were splattered with the same things.
He stood up, holding a jar of pickles, looking carefully at the specks floating in the liquid. Then he seemed to find what he was looking for, and he dropped it from eye level and watched it all the way to the floor.
She watched it too—it broke near his feet and the juice sprayed the wall. A pickle landed on the toe of his shoe, hung there a moment, and then rolled off. When she looked up, his eyes were fastened on her, and she held herself in the entrance. An act of will.
“This is a sin,” she said. If there had ever been an agreement between them, it was that waste was a sin.
“Then I expect you’ll be eating it yourself.”
“What has got into your mind?” she said, and as soon as she had asked the question, she knew the answer.
He said, “An ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure,” and turned back into the refrigerator, coming out with the catsup. This bottle did not break when it hit the floor, and it didn’t break when he stomped it with the heel of his shoe. He picked a hammer up off the cupboard and hit it three times, finally catching it square, and sprayed red all over himself and the closest wall.
When he looked at her again, he was holding the dripping hammer. “I sleep with my eyes open,” he said, “and I know everything that happens in my house.”
He turned back to his work, selecting the bottle of ice water. It turned the mess runnier than it had been, and little pieces of relish floated a few inches on the tide and then were set back down on the floor.
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 f
leshy 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. Hatfield held her foot in his hands, which were warm and soft, and bent his head for a closer look.
“We got to take some stitches,” 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 sharp-smelling, 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 wa
y 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.”