A Death In The Family (30 page)

Now I’ll know when he
is
coming home, Catherine thought.

All through breakfast, Rufus had wanted to ask questions, but now he felt so shy and uneasy that he could hardly speak. “Who hurt him?” he finally asked.

“Why nobody hurt him, Rufus,” she said, and she looked shocked. “What on earth made you think so?”

Mama said so, Catherine thought.

“Mama said he got hurt so bad God put him to sleep,” Rufus said.

Like the kitties, Catherine thought; she saw a dim, gigantic old man in white take her tiny father by the skin of the neck and put him in a huge slop jar full of water and sit on the lid, and she heard the tiny scratching and the stifled mewing.

“That’s true he was hurt, but nobody hurt him,” her Aunt Hannah was saying. How could that be, Catherine wondered. “He was driving home by himself. That’s all, all by himself, in the auto last night, and he had an accident.”

Rufus felt his face get warm and he looked warningly at his sister. He knew it could not be that, not with his father, a grown man, besides, God wouldn’t put you to sleep for that, and it didn’t hurt, anyhow. But Catherine might think so. Sure enough, she was looking at her aunt with astonishment and disbelief that she could say such a thing about her father. Not in his
pants
, you dern fool, Rufus wanted to tell her, but his Aunt Hannah continued “A
fatal
accident”; and by her voice, as she spoke the strange word, “fatal,” they knew she meant something very bad. “That means that, just as your mother told you, that he was hurt so badly that God put him to sleep right away.”

Like the rabbits, Rufus remembered, all torn white bloody fur and red insides. He could not imagine his father like that. Poor little things, he remembered his mother’s voice comforting his crying, hurt so terribly that God just let them go to sleep.

If it was in the auto, Catherine thought, then he wouldn’t be in the slop jar.

They couldn’t be happy any more if He hadn’t, his mother had said. They could never get well.

Hannah wondered whether they could comprehend it at all and whether she should try to tell them. She doubted it. Deeply uncertain, she tried again.

“He was driving home last night,” she said, “about nine, and apparently something was already wrong with the steering mech—with the wheel you guide the machine with. But your father didn’t know it. Because there wasn’t any way he could know until something went wrong and then it was too late. But one of the wheels struck a loose stone in the road and the wheel turned aside very suddenly, and when ...” She paused and went on more quietly and slowly: “You see, when your father tried to make the auto go where it should, stay on the road, he found he couldn’t, he didn’t have any control. Because something was wrong with the steering gear. So, instead of doing as he tried to make it, the auto twisted aside because of the loose stone and ran off the road into a deep ditch.” She paused again. “Do you understand?”

They kept looking at her.

“Your father was thrown from the auto,” she said. “Then the auto went on without him up the other side of the ditch. It went up an eight-foot embankment and then it fell down backward, turned over and landed just beside him.

“They’re pretty sure he was dead even before he was thrown out. Because the only mark on his whole body,” and now they began to hear in her voice a troubling intensity and resentment, “was right—here!” She pressed the front of her forefinger to the point of her chin, and looked at them almost as if she were accusing them.

They said nothing.

I suppose I’ve got to finish, Hannah thought; I’ve gone this far.

“They’re pretty sure how it happened,” she said. “The auto gave such a sudden terrible
jerk
”—she jerked so violently that both children jumped, and startled her; she demonstrated what she saw next more gently: “that your father was thrown forward and struck his chin, very hard, against the wheel, the steering wheel, and from that instant he never knew anything more.”

She looked at Rufus, at Catherine, and again at Rufus. “Do you understand?” They looked at her.

After a while Catherine said, “He hurt his chin.”

“Yes, Catherine. He did,” she replied. “They believe he was
instantly killed
, with that one single blow, because it happened to strike just exactly where it did. Because if you’re struck very hard in just that place, it jars your whole head, your brain so hard that—sometimes people die in that very instant.” She drew a deep breath and let it out long and shaky. “Concussion of the brain, that is called,” she said with most careful distinctness, and bowed her head for a moment; they saw her thumb make a small cross on her chest.

She looked up. “Now do you understand, children?” she asked earnestly. “I know it’s very hard to understand. You please tell me if there’s anything you want to know and I’ll do my best to expl—tell you better.”

Rufus and Catherine looked at each other and looked away. After a while Rufus said, “Did it hurt him bad?”

“He could never have felt it. That’s the one great mercy” (or
is
it, she wondered); “the doctor is sure of that.” Catherine wondered whether she could ask one question. She thought she’d better not.

“What’s an eightfoot embackmut?” asked Rufus.

“Em-bank-ment,” she replied. “Just a bank. A steep little hill, eight feet high. Bout’s high’s the ceiling.”

He and Catherine saw the auto climb it and fall backward rolling and come to rest beside their father. Umbackmut, Catherine thought; em-
bank
-ment, Rufus said to himself. “What’s instintly?”

“Instantly is—quick’s that”; she snapped her fingers, more loudly than she had expected to; Catherine flinched and kept her eyes on the fingers. “Like snapping off an electric light,” Rufus nodded. “So you can be very sure, both of you, he never felt a moment’s pain. Not one moment.”

“When’s ...” Catherine began.

“What’s...” Rufus began at the same moment; they glared -at each other.

“What is it, Catherine?”

“When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Why
good golly
, Catherine,” Rufus began. “Hold your tongue!” his Aunt Hannah said fiercely, and he listened, scared, and ashamed of himself.

“Catherine, he
can’t
come home,” she said very kindly. “That’s just what all this means, child.” She put her hand over Catherine’s hand and Rufus could see that her chin was trembling. “He died, Catherine,” she said. “That’s what your mother means. God put him to sleep and took him, took his soul away with Him. So he can’t come home ...” She stopped, and began again. “We’ll see him once more,” she said, “tomorrow or day after; that I promise you,” she said, wishing she was sure of Mary’s views about this. “But he’ll be asleep then. And after that we won’t see him any more in this world. Not until God takes us away too.

“Do you see, child?” Catherine was looking at her very seriously. “Of course you don’t, God bless you”; she squeezed her hand. “Don’t ever try too hard to understand, child. Just try to understand it’s so. He’d come if he could but he simply can’t because God wants him with Him. That’s all.” She kept her hand over Catherine’s a little while more, while Rufus realized much more clearly than before that he really could not and would not come home again: because of God.

“He would if he could but he can’t,” Catherine finally said, remembering a joking phrase of her mother’s.

Hannah, who knew the joking phrase too, was startled, but quickly realized that the child meant it in earnest, “That’s it,” she said gratefully.

But he’ll come once more, anyway, Rufus realized, looking forward to it. Even if he
is
asleep.

“What was it you wanted to ask, Rufus?” he heard his aunt say.

He tried to remember and remembered. “What’s kuh, kuhkush, kuh ... ?”

“Con-
cus
-sion, Rufus. Concus-sion of the brain. That’s the doctor’s name for what happened. It means, it’s as if the brain were hit very hard and suddenly, and joggled loose. The instant that happens, your father was—he ...”

“Instantly killed.”

She nodded.

“Then it was that, that put him to sleep.”

“Hyess.”

“
Not
God.”

Catherine looked at him, bewildered.

Chapter 16

When breakfast was over he wandered listlessly into the sitting room and looked all around, but he did not see any place where he would like to sit down. He felt deeply idle and empty and at the same time gravely exhilarated, as if this were the morning of his birthday, except that this day seemed even more particularly his own day. There was nothing in the way it looked which was not ordinary, but it was filled with a noiseless and invisible kind of energy. He could see his mother’s face while she told them about it and hear her voice, over and over, and silently, over and over, while he looked around the sitting room and through the window into the street, words repeated themselves, He’s dead. He died last night while I was asleep and now it was already morning. He has already been dead since way last night and I didn’t even know until I woke up. He has been dead all night while I was asleep and now it is morning and I am awake but he is still dead and he will stay right on being dead all afternoon and all night and all tomorrow while I am asleep again and wake up again and go to sleep again and he can’t come back home again ever any more but I will see him once more before he is taken away. Dead now. He died last night while I was asleep and now it is already morning.

A boy went by with his books in a strap.

Two girls went by with their satchels.

He went to the hat rack and took his satchel and his hat and started back down the hall to the kitchen to get his lunch; then he remembered his new cap. But it was upstairs. It would be in Mama’s and Daddy’s room, he could remember when she took it off his head. He did not want to go in for it where she was lying down and now he realized, too, that he did not want to wear it. He would like to tell her good-bye before he went to school, but he did not want to go in and see her lying down and looking like that. He kept on towards the kitchen. He would tell Aunt Hannah good-bye instead.

She was at the sink washing dishes and Catherine sat on a kitchen chair watching her. He looked all around but he could not see any lunch. I guess she doesn’t know about lunch, he reflected. She did not seem to realize that he was there so, after a moment, he said, “Good-bye.”

“What-
is
-it?” she said and turned her lowered head, peering. “Why, Rufus!” she exclaimed, in such a tone that he wondered what he had done. “You’re not going to
school
,” she said, and now he realized that she was not mad at him.

“I can stay out of school?”

“Of course you can. You must. Today and tomorrow as well and—for a sufficient time. A few days. Now put up your things, and stay right in this house, child.”

He looked at her and said to himself: but then they can’t see me; but he knew there was no use begging her; already she was busy with the dishes again.

He went back along the hall towards the hat rack. In the first moment he had been only surprised and exhilarated not to have to go to school, and something of this sense of privilege remained, but almost immediately he was also disappointed. He could now see vividly how they would all look up when he came into the schoolroom and how the teacher would say something nice about his father and about him, and he knew that on this day everybody would treat him well, and even look up to him, for something had happened to him today which had not happened to any other boy in school, any other boy in town. They might even give him part of their lunches.

He felt even more profoundly empty and idle than before.

He laid down his satchel on the seat of the hat rack, but he kept his hat on. She’ll spank me, he thought. Even worse, he could foresee her particular, crackling kind of anger. I won’t let her find out, he told himself. Taking great care to be silent, he let himself out the front door.

The air was cool and gray and here and there along the street, shapeless and watery sunlight strayed and vanished. Now that he was in this outdoor air he felt even more listless and powerful; he was alone, and the silent, invisible energy. was everywhere. He stood on the porch and supposed that everyone he saw passing knew of an event so famous. A man was walking quickly up the street and as Rufus watched him, and waited for the man to meet his eyes, he felt a great quiet lifting within him of pride and of shyness, and he felt his face break into a smile, and then an uncontrollable grin, which he knew he must try to make sober again; but the man walked past without looking at him, and so did the next man who walked past in the other direction. Two schoolboys passed whose faces he knew, so he knew that they must know his, but they did not even seem to see him. Arthur and Alvin Tripp came down their front steps and along the far sidewalk and now he was sure, and came down his own front steps and halfway out to the sidewalk, but then he stopped, for now, although both of them looked across into his eyes, and he into theirs, they did not cross the street to him or even say hello, but kept on their way, still looking into his eyes with a kind of shy curiosity, even when their heads were turned almost backwards on their necks, and he turned his own head slowly, watching them go by, but when he saw that they were not going to speak he took care not to speak either.

What’s the matter with them, he wondered, and still watched them; and even now, far down the street, Arthur kept turning his head, and for several steps Alvin walked backwards.

What are they mad about?

Now they no longer looked around, and now he watched them vanish under the hill.

Maybe they don’t know, he thought. Maybe the others don’t know, either.

He came out to the sidewalk.

Maybe everybody knew. Or maybe he knew something of great importance which nobody else knew. The alternatives were not at all distinct in his mind; he was puzzled, but no less proud and expectant than before. My daddy’s dead, he said to himself slowly, and then, shyly, he said it aloud: “My daddy’s dead.” Nobody in sight seemed to have heard; he had said it to nobody in particular. “My daddy’s dead,” he said again, chiefly for his own benefit. It sounded powerful, solid, and entirely creditable, and he knew that if need be he would tell people. He watched a large, slow man come towards him and waited for the man to look at him and acknowledge the fact first, but when the man was just ahead of him, and still did not appear even to have seen him, he told him, “My daddy’s dead,” but the man did not seem to hear him, he just swung on by. He took care to tell the next man sooner and the man’s face looked almost as if he were dodging a blow but he went on by, looking back a few steps later with a worried face; and after a few steps more he turned and came slowly back.