The Alcoholics

by Jim Thompson

  “You’re just mean,” Susan Kenfield declared. “You won’t give me an abortion yourself, and—”

  “You bet your sweet stupid life I won’t!”

  “—and you’re trying to frighten me out of having someone else do it! Well, don’t think I won’t! Everyone’s not as mean and beastly as you are.”

  “Why haven’t you,” said Doc, “found someone already?”

  “I—none of your business,” said Miss Kenfield. “I told you why, Murph, darling. I wouldn’t trust any doctor but you.”

  “Why, Suzy?”

  “Murph, you’re getting tiresome, pet. Now be a sweet doctor and let me have a drink, mmm?”

  “Why?” Doctor Murphy repeated.

  She looked away from him nervously. After a moment, she moved her shoulders in a shrug of indifference. “Well,” she said, still averting her gaze from his, “I just haven’t, that’s all.”

  “You did try another doctor, didn’t you, Suzy? And he turned you down.”

  “We-ell…” Miss Kenfield shrugged again. “He was such a stupid man, Murph. He tried to tell me—”

  “I’ve got a damned good idea what he told you,” said Doctor Murphy. “When did you go to him? No, wait a minute. When did you first go to a doctor with this deal? How long ago?”

  “Just—well, it was just before I started drinking this time.”

  “That was the last one you went to. I’m talking about the first one. And don’t tell me you—only went to one. Don’t tell me you haven’t been to every goddam abortionist in town!”

  “Why, Murph!” Miss Kenfield widened her eyes in surprised innocence. “What in the world makes you think I—?”

  “I don’t know why in hell I didn’t see it before,” snapped Doc. “You came to me because the guys in the racket wouldn’t touch the job with a ten-foot pole. They were afraid to. All right, Suzy, let’s have it. And you’d better give it to me straight if you value that stupid life of yours. When—how many months ago—did you first try to get this abortion performed?”

  “About—uh—about—” The actress bit her lip tremulously. “You won’t be cross with me, darling? They were such sillies, Murph! Why, anyone could see I’m not—”

  “Suzy!”

  “I…about four months ago…”

  “Four months!” Doctor Murphy literally howled. “You were too far along for an abortion four months ago, and yet you—you—!”

  Offered sufficient inducement, any abortionist would have operated on Susan Kenfield up to the third month of pregnancy, and there were an incautious few who would have risked her life with an abortion at four months. But there were none so money-hungry as to abort a woman more than four months pregnant. So, Suzy must have been more than four months along—four months ago!

  “Suzy,” said Doc wearily. “I don’t know why the hell I don’t murder you.”

  “But, Murph! How could I possibly—?”

  “You aren’t the first woman not to show it. There was a college girl down in one of the coastal towns a few years ago. She had two babies without ever missing a class, and without even her parents getting wise. Killed ’em and buried ’em on a vacant lot.”

  Miss Kenfield shivered delicately. Doctor Murphy gave her a scornful glance.

  “You wouldn’t do that, would you? You’re too damned good—like hell! Well, the hell with it. The hell with you. You’re eating lunch, and then you’re getting out of here. I mean it, by God. Right this afternoon.”

  “Murph,” wailed Miss Kenfield, “w-what will I do? I’ll be ruined! Those filthy gossip columnists will find out, and I’ll be kicked out of pictures, and—”

  “If they were going to kick you out, they’d have done it long ago. This baby may be the very thing that’ll keep you in. It’ll take your mind off yourself, give you something to live for besides getting drunk.”

  “I’m s-so sick, Murph. So terribly sick.”

  “Yes,” said Doctor Murphy, “and you’re going—”

  He broke off the sentence and stood up, stricken suddenly with the old, the inescapable feeling of self-guilt. She was an alcoholic. She’d come to him for help. And what had she got? Nothing. Nothing at all from the man whose specialty was treating alcoholics. Because he was an ignoramus, a failure.

  “I’m sorry, Suzy,” he said, quietly. “Just sit tight here until I can step down the hall and get my bag. I’ll give you something to make you feel better.”

  “C-can I—could I have a drink, d-darling?”

  “Not now.”

  “W-when?”

  Doc shook his head. “That’ll be a problem for your doctor. Do whatever he tells you to do.”

  “But”—Miss Kenfield looked up, her tear-stained face startled and hurt—“But, Murph. You’re my—”

  “Not anymore, Suzy. After you leave here today, I’m not seeing you again.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, closing the door on her protests. Down the hall a few steps he unlocked the laboratory, and snapped open his worn leather medicine kit. He looked down into its contents, absently, wondering what was best to give Suzy. Wondering…

  Wondering.

  He heard Josephine’s heavy shuffling tread in the hallway. It ceased, and he heard the scrape of a tray as it was braced against wood, and the turn of a doorknob. And then—

  When he recalled it afterwards, it was as a nightmare, a hideous hag-ridden dream, enduring for years yet somehow packed into seconds. The terror struck so quickly, and yet lasted an eternity.

  First there was a muffled whoop, then another, less muffled, and a third not muffled at all—completely unrestrained, gargantuan in its hysteria. They rolled out like shapeless off-key notes in some unearthly scale, each louder and higher than the other, mounting to their awful crescendo. They held there a moment; then they started down the scale again. And with them, minor notes in the unheavenly discord, were other sounds.

  The wild clatter of dishes, silverware.

  The metallic, reverberating thud of a tray.

  And a scream—a scream that was part curse, part prayer, part frantic cry for help—from Susan Kenfield.

  That’s it, Doc thought. That did it. But the knowledge of what had happened, and its certain aftermath, was in its nightmarish way lacking intrinsic impact. It was the black norm in a black world. It had happened. It had had to happen. There was no escape from it. There was nothing to be done about it.

  He saw that his hands were trembling, and that seemed not to matter either. Because there was nothing he could do or was going to do. He snapped the leather bag shut, closing each snap separately. He looked at the drop-end examination table, and it seemed only right and wise that he should raise the end of the table and stretch out. To let everything go—as it would go, anyway.

  He didn’t do it, of course; habit was too strong. But it was not sufficiently strong to dispel completely the nightmare’s dead lethargic hand. It gripped his arms, slowing their motions. It clutched and dragged at his feet. Instinctively—instinctively since there seemed no reason to do so—he fought to shake it off. And the struggle angered him, and the anger helped.

  He left the laboratory and went down the hall again. He pushed open Susan Kenfield’s door and went in.

  Josephine was bent over the bed, and her great body obscured all of Suzy’s except her two widespread, convulsively twitching ankles. He spoke to Josephine—laid a hand on her shoulder; and the hand was impatiently shrugged off.

  Casually, he moved around to the other side of the bed.

  Susan’s eyes were wide open, but fixed in a trance-like somnolent gaze. A deep, gasping and throaty snore emerged from her gaping mouth.

  Her hands were thrown back, locked tight around the bed rail.

  Absently, Doctor Murphy watched the heaving and undulant torso. He watched the slow, steady dilation of the labia. Water, yellow and red streaked, was seeping through them. Very definitely, it wouldn’t be long, now.

  “Well”—Josephine was glar
ing at him—“you jus’ goin’ to stand there? Get some more sheets under her!”

  “It’s—it’s all right about the bed,” said Doc. “We mustn’t do anything to disturb her.”

  Josephine grunted. The grunt tapered into a soothing croon, as she laid a hand on Susan’s forehead.

  “Don’ you mind now, honey. Everything goin’ to be all right. Ol’ Josephine takin’ care o’ you, and she done mid-wived more babies’n you can shake a stick at. She…Doctuh, ain’t you know nothin’ to do a-tall?”

  The exasperation of her voice was like the prick of a needle.

  He nodded curtly and strode into the bathroom. He stoppered the sink and tub and turned on the hot water. He snatched a white metal tray from the bag, and emptied a flask of alcohol into it.

  Scissors, a knife, forceps, clamps—no, no clamps; he’d never had any use for them. He dumped scissors, knife and forceps into the tray, then dug a quarter from his pocket and tossed it in also.

  He scrubbed his hands, shook them dry and closed the water taps with his elbow.

  He carried the tray into the bedroom, and received a grunt of approval from Josephine.

  “All right,” he said, shortly. “I’ll take over.”

  “Says who?” inquired Josephine, but she chuckled. “This my line, doctuh. This all my family’s line. Any takin’ over to be done, reckon I better do it.”

  Doc hesitated, uncomfortably. Josephine chuckled again. “Don’ you worry about me. I’m all washed good, an’ I know ‘zackly what else to do. You jus’ get me all them towels out of the bathroom an’—now. Get ’em now!”

  Susan Kenfield’s body had risen from the bed in a sudden contortive thrust. The snoring sound changed to a low, moaning scream; and a flood of water, a pink tide gushed from her loins. And Doctor Murphy was into the bathroom and out again, seemingly without moving from his tracks. He was reaching under the thrusting thighs, wiping away the mess, mopping the vulva clean of its obscuring slime.

  And Josephine laughed with gentle, chiding humor. “Got your han’s all dirty again, ain’t you? You reckon maybe I better cotch the baby?”

  “Well—I—”

  “Sho, now,” Josephine grinned sympathetically. “This’n ain’t goin’ to be no trouble, a-tall. Mama like this’n it slide right out like a eel f’m a slippery elm. You want to do somethin’ you rinse them towels out. We goin’ to need ’em again.”

  Doc wasn’t sure, but he had the impression later that he had argued with her. He had wanted to call Rufus; he had wondered profanely where Rufus was. He had wanted to call Miss Baker, another doctor, an ambulance. Or so, at least, was his later impression. But argument or no, he lost little time in following Josephine’s suggestion.

  He rinsed the towels out in the tub, pulled the stopper, and turned on the tap again. He hurried back into the bedroom.

  Susan’s moans formed a kind of rhythm now, a rhythm timed to the undulant heavings of her body. The distended and dilated labia formed an almost perfect circle, several inches in diameter. And a moist, round object was pressing its way slowly through the pink-rimmed periphery of the circle.

  “Ain’t I tol’ you so?” breathed Josephine. “Jus’ like a eel from a slippery elm.”

  Susan gave the greatest heave of all. She screamed, sobbed and was silent. And Josephine’s hands dipped expertly—catching and lifting the baby away from the propelling outrush of afterbirth.

  She shifted the baby onto one of her great work-worn palms. With the other, she swiftly fingered away the mucous from its mouth and nostrils. Then, she shifted it again, turned it on its stomach, and smacked it smartly on its red wizened bottom. And its red, wizened face puckered, and the tiny mouth opened and there was a kitten-like wail.

  “Now, ain’t he a dandy li’l man,” said Josephine. “We just do him one I’il job, an’!…”

  Doctor Murphy snipped the umbilical cord, placed the disinfected coin over the child’s umbilicus and taped it into place. He didn’t know that it was necessary; certainly, there seemed to be no indication of an incipient navel rupture. But it would do no harm, and it seemed imperative to do something. He had had practically nothing to do with the delivery. Susan, deep in the exhausted post-birth sleep, required nothing.

  “You know,” he confessed shakily. “It’s a hell of a thing to admit, but that’s about all I remembered. The coin on the navel, I mean.”

  “Suah,” Josephine nodded seriously, “ain’t never no harm in it. Mammy allus use a coin when she had one.”

  “Well”—Doc wiped his face with his sleeve—“I’ll get an obstet—a baby nurse out here just as quickly as I can. I’m sorry to put you through all this, but if you can take care of—”

  “No one put me through nothin’,” said Josephine. “I jus’ do it on my own. Now you skedaddle on out o’ here—better lay down from the looks of you—an’ I take care of everything.”

  The baby wailed again, and jerked in her palms. Josephine swayed it gently, nodding to the doctor. “I take care o’ him,” she said. “I take care o’ her. You take care o’ yo’self and everything be fine an’ dandy.”

  15

  His long legs dangling from the end of the laboratory examination table, Doctor Murphy shifted his position for perhaps the thousandth time in less than an hour, and at last abandoned the idea of resting. He wasn’t tired—why the hell should he be tired? There was too much on his mind.

  Josephine…She must have known all along that Suzy was on the point of giving birth. She must have to have moved as quickly as she had when Suzy’s time came. She’d known exactly what to do. Probably—hell, there was no probably about it—she would have handled everything by herself if he hadn’t shown up. Capably, without fuss or flurry. She’d known that the birth was going to be normal, that Suzy and the baby would be all right. She’d known everything that he was supposed to know, and hadn’t.

  Doc grinned wryly, watching the smoke squirm against the white walls of the laboratory.

  Josephine, illiterate, superstitious, yet with more real knowledge of obstetrics than a top-flight practitioner. Josephine, reared in ignorance by the same civilization which would punish her so severely if she tried to practice her skill.

  Josephine would never preside in a hospital delivery room. She would never be admitted to one even as a nurse. And it was too bad, a tragedy—but, well, life, God knew, was full of tragedies.

  The General, with nothing to live for but drink and his impossible book.

  Susan Kenfield, a great talent slowly drowning in booze.

  The Holcombs, with so much of everything that they had nothing.

  Humphrey Van Twyne, Bernie Edmonds, Lucretia Baker…all tragedies. All of them. Not to mention a certain doctor named Murphy who, being too stupid and stubborn to submit to the unchangeable, was the biggest tragedy of the lot.

  The facts were before him, weren’t they? He couldn’t sacrifice Van Twyne without sacrificing the integrity which had got him into this spot. He couldn’t simultaneously be a snide and a samaritan. You were either a quack—or you weren’t. You had certain inviolable standards—or you didn’t have. It couldn’t be both ways. If you permitted yourself to condemn a man to almost certain idiocy, then you lacked the character to fight the battle of alcoholism.

  Something inside you would be changed. No matter how you might rationalize and try to justify your actions, you’d lose something that you had to have.

  Those were the facts. That was the situation, and it wasn’t debatable. He had to do something that couldn’t be done. If he intended to keep this place operating.

  Doc slid from the table and walked to the sink, began dousing cold water over his face. Those were the facts, and yet, ridiculously, he couldn’t bring himself to the only possible decision. He hadn’t been able to this morning, and now with his success with Jeff Sloan—his seeming success, rather, since you could never be sure of anything when it came to alcoholics—he was further than ever from the decision. He almost wished t
hat Jeff had…oh, hell, he didn’t really wish it, but it would have made things a lot simpler.

  It was strange how, the less you had to fight and hope for, the harder you fought and hoped.

  He heard Josephine approaching, and he stepped back from the door, drying his face. She tapped on the panel and he called for her to come in.

  “Well, Doc,” he smiled, “how are our patients?”

  “They doin’ just fine,” Josephine beamed. “Miz’ Kenfield wake up an’ get one look at ’at funny li’l ol’ chile, an’ take him right into bed with her. Nurse can’t get him away from her.”

  “Why—why that won’t do.” Doc frowned. “She ought to be resting, and the baby—”

  “Baby ought to be with its mammy,” said Josephine, “an’ ’at’s right where he is. An’ don’t you worry none about Miz’ Kenfield. ’At’s one mighty strengthy woman, doctuh. She be alive an’ kickin’ long time after you an’ me’s dead an’ gone.”

  “But it’s unheard of for—”

  “Who unheard of it? You know where I was bo’n, doctuh? Right out in the cotton patch. An’ mammy went right on pickin’ afterwards. Picked more’n three hunnerd pounds ’at day an’ then she carried me back to the house, an’ fix suppah for the fambly.”

  “That’s a little different. Your mother was used to hard work, and—”

  “Wasn’t used to half o’ what Miz’ Kenfield is,” said Josephine. “No, suh, mammy never be able to take what she taken. You shoot ’at li’l ol’ Miz’ Kenfield out o’ a cannon, doctuh, I bet it don’t even make a dent in her.”

  Doc laughed unwillingly. Suzy’s activity, so soon after giving birth, seemed dangerously phenomenal.

  “She want to see you, doctuh.”

  “Oh,” said Doctor Murphy. “You said she was getting along all right. What does she want—something to drink?”

  “Didn’t ask for nothin’. Jus’ wants to see you. She say you ain’t goin’ to have nothin’ more to do with her, and it kinda make her feel bad.”