Proud Flesh (31 page)

Darkness came on and he was still not out of the woods. And now behind him he heard his pursuer crashing through the undergrowth. He fumbled in his bag and found two pills which he hoped were nitroglycerin and took them dry and plunged on toward the sound of that baying dog.

He was getting near and this decided him to spend his last strength. Through it all hanging on to his bag, he thrashed through the brush, and it was then, crossing a slough, that he sank in mud, and pulling himself out, lost his shoe. It was sucked off his foot and in the mud and in the dark and in his haste he could not find it. Let it go: he was almost there.

He risked crossing an open field, though the moon shone on it like a searchbeam, knowing that he was that close now to sanctuary. Through a final thicket and then out into the clearing, ready to fall into the arms of his deliverer and pour out his tale, and there was the house and with his last breath he gasped, then choked, could have cried only there was no time to cry, no time for anything but to turn and run, begin all over again at the beginning. He was back on square one, at the Renshaws'.

So for the rest of the night—

No. To answer the gentleman's question: no, he had managed to keep far enough in the lead never to see his pursuer at any time. He had heard him—it had been that close—more than once—but no, thank God, he had not seen him, and when daybreak finally came, when he finally got out to the highway and ventured out onto it and that truck came along and …

It was Mr. Murphy who broke the long, embarrassed silence. “Ah … Doctor,” he said, “I … ah … I've been listening to all you've told us, and, ah …”

He knew what was coming. He had been listening to himself, too. A distance had developed between him and what he was narrating. It sounded now as though he were listening to a playback of that recording tape. He knew he had come to the end of his story. He did not need this stranger or anybody else to tell him. He would a lot rather nobody said anything at all. Just quietly pack up and go. Erase everything from his magnetic tape so it could be used over again, and go. Leave him alone.

They were going to get away with it all. They could not be touched. There was no case against them. A man kidnaped, a physician dishonored, an old, sick man mistreated, the victim, the plaything of a pack of bullies male and female, who owed him their safe entry into the world and all reasonable care of their ailing mother for years, callously indifferent to their neighbors' health, their very lives, to his wife's anxiety—and there was no case against them. Not a charge could be preferred. Not by word or deed had he been forced to go with them. Not by word or deed had he been forbidden to leave whenever he felt like going. He had not been refused permission to communicate with his wife. He had never asked for permission. There was not a particle of evidence that when he did escape he had been pursued. No force, no threat, no coercion, no intimidation—none that would stand up in a court of law—had been used upon him. None had been needed. They had known their man. That was the worst of it: they had known him, and knew they could count on him. Through his own cowardly cooperation he had spared them having to incriminate themselves. He had complied. Complied? You had to be ordered to do something before you could comply. He had not complied, he had anticipated their wishes.

“A civil suit, maybe. Damage to your practice …”

Umh. Get up on the witness stand in court and tell it all over again. Entertain the whole county—even without the prompting of their attorney—with the tale of what a fool and what a coward he had been. They were going to get away with it all.

“A bill for your services, of course.”

Some house call! There was just one weapon left him. One way to shame them. Not send them a bill. Treat them as charity patients.

Some house call.

THREE

The mistake he had made was in not chasing the very first ones off of the place, with a shotgun if necessary, then it would never have come to this. And this was nothing to what it was going to be after this. After this they would have to build a Holiday Inn—a Hilton hotel—across the road. Not of course the very first ones. They were friends and neighbors who had come to condole with them over this latest calamity to befall them. Had come out of the same thing the later ones came out of: morbid curiosity; but being friends and neighbors they could pretend to themselves and to you that they had come to condole and there was nothing you could do but pretend along with them and let them have their look. But the next batch—strangers, total strangers—he ought to have run the first one that showed his nose off of the place with a gun.

Either that or else charge admission. There was a fortune going unmade out there. Parking fees—they already had the parking lot. Put Jug in a billed cap and one of those carpenter's nail aprons for him to make change out of. Put up a barbecue stand and let Shug sling sandwiches? Sell picture postcards? Souvenir plates? A china whatnot of the cellar mound? That ought to go over big. Put dayglo stickers on the bumpers like
See Carlsbad Caverns
? Yesterday he had seen a car out there with a Nebraska license plate. Nebraska! And all that had been just through word of mouth. After today they would come like those hordes in Italy swarming to see a statue of the blessed Virgin shed tears.

This when he was aching for privacy. When that wound had healed, leaving an itch—an itch on top of an itch. When the migrant workers, already here a month later than they had ever been before even in the rainiest picking season, ought, surely, to be done before much longer and move on, leaving their cabins vacant. A little privacy … if he didn't get it pretty soon he could no longer be held responsible for what might happen. Not strict privacy—privacy for two. Privacy! My God, he had a revival meeting on the grounds! And this was nothing to what it would be after today! There was no place where they could get together even if he had known where to find her, that whore. He could hardly remember any more what she looked like. Twice, just twice in all this time, he had caught glimpses of her—just the sight of her was enough to make him fairly slobber—and then he had been unable to get her eye, to draw her aside for a word. He had always kept strictly away from that house of hers and vowed he always would, but a little more of this …

“What would happen,” he asked offhandedly, “to a person who swallowed gunpowder?”

“Who what?” asked Mr. Bulloch, the pharmacist, as he wrapped his bottle of milk of magnesia, his underarm deodorant and his mouthwash. “Swallowed what? Gunpowder?”

“Accidentally. You reckon it would do them any harm?”

“I don't reckon it would do them any good.”

“What would you say to do?”

“Call a doctor.”

“It's made out of saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal. Charcoal won't hurt you. Sulphur's good for you. It's in lots of tonics. Saltpeter—well, you know what they say that does to you. Any truth in that?”

“What?”

“They used to put it in our chow in the Army. At least, so everybody complained. Why, I don't know. If they did put it in it never had much effect as far as I could see. But maybe they just weren't using enough for a bunch of young goats like us, eh?”

“Nobody has, have they?”

“What?”

“Swallowed gunpowder.”

“Oh. No. No, I was just curious. In case it should ever happen. You know how kids are: put anything they find in their mouths.”

“Don't leave any laying around where they might get hold of it.”

End of a conversation he need not initiate because any fool could see beforehand how it would go.

Wasn't there something about using it to rot stumps? You bored a hole in a stump and filled it with saltpeter and when you came back six months later you found the stump all rotted out hollow? If it would do that to say a hickory stump it ought to be able to take care of his problem—though it might take six months to do it. You could buy some saying that was what you meant to do with it. Only how would you know how much to take? If it would do that to a stump … Suppose you took an overdose? You might never again be able to …

Aspirin? It might help. Seriously. Headache, as the announcer was saying, was caused by too much blood swelling the arteries of the brain. Aspirin constricted the blood vessels and slowed down the flow of blood. It was blood swelling the arteries that caused the swelling he had. He had read that somewhere. Hah! Joke! Poor Ma was dead from hardening of the arteries and he was dying of arteries of the hardening. Oh, funny!

And now on Lone Star Television, Channel 6, following the mouthwash and antiperspirant and laxative and painkiller commercials: a News Special. On the screen appeared the old pear tree he knew so well and which he had only to turn his head and look out the window to see, and then the camera came up the path and drew near and there on television was the house in which he sat looking at the television. It reminded him of the box of salt with the girl on it who carried under her arm a box of salt with a picture on it of herself carrying a box of salt with—Then, the kitchen door—it was as though the camera had zoomed right through the house, or as though he had been drawn through the set and come out the back—and there was Eulalie bent over pulling that toy wagon of hers with—there it was, close-up, for all the world to see—the empty slopjar, along with the supper. With silver and a linen napkin in a napkin ring. That was keeping up the fine old plantation traditions under trying circumstances. A napkin ring, for Christ's sake.

Shot of the cellar mound with the steps cut into the three sides leading up to the culvert pipe. Like something Indian, Aztec. He had watched them slither and slide trying to climb it just hoping and praying one of them would fall and break a leg. Mmh, and then get some shyster to go shares on it and sue him for liability because it happened on his property and even if the insurance company paid off when your policy came up for renewal your premium was tripled if you were lucky and they didn't outright cancel your coverage because after thirty years without ever putting in a claim you were suddenly a bad risk. They had had to tell Amy what they were doing so she would not think they were trying to dig down to her and bring her out, and to worry all the while whether or not she believed them. The steps were already rounded with wear and that was nothing to what they would soon be after today. He would have to hire a mason and pour cement, lay flagstones.

Shot of the parking lot and of the parking lot attendants, Archie and Jug.

“You want me to get shut of them for you?”

Mrs. Shumlin speaking. (“Call me Wanda.”) “I'll get shut of them for you. You just say the word.” It was not the pilgrim horde she meant. It was Archie and Jug. It was not the first time she had made the offer. Not the first time she had surprised him with a remark that showed she had been studying him without his knowing it and reading his thoughts in his face. He feared he was in for friction from this new sister-in-law of his, this new broom so ready to sweep clean. Already he disliked that smug smirk of hers which seemed to say, apropos of niggers, mmm, but you don't despise them as much as
I
do.

Clifford had kept a promise he had made to Ma, and Mrs. Shumlin had yielded to his proposal. It had not yet been made public, but in the family it was understood that as soon as the period of mourning was over Clifford and Mrs. Shumlin were to be married. Lois's case was different. Hers, after all, was not an occasion for rejoicing, and therefore need not be postponed. She was doing it as a public penance. It was the one atonement she could make to Ma. If poor Amy could bury herself alive in the storm cellar, then she could do this. Leon, of course, had not been consulted in the matter. Tipsy, as on the two former occasions, he married the same woman for the third time. The only difference was that this time instead of “I do” he had said, “I reckon.” He still limped from the kick his bride had given him. Ross had taken a final pledge to give up drinking once and for all. How that would have pleased Ma! Poor Ross! His shame over his inability to keep his pledge was making him drink harder than ever.

In the beginning they used to leave their cars and trucks along the road at a respectful distance from the house and trudge the rest of the way on foot. But they were such a woebegone, forlorn-looking lot—the ones who began to come after the first wave of ghouls—old and infirm, misshapen, demented, crippled, careworn, cowed, that Eulalie, seeing them straining past, and in that heat, took pity on them and had Archie mark out a parking lot for them in the pasture nearer the shrine which was their destination. They touched Eulalie also because they were so considerate of the family's privacy, so anxious to avoid giving offense. For these, although they too were curious, were anything but rowdy. They had come to see a rarity, all right; but to see a saint, not a sideshow. They were not on a holiday, they were on a pilgrimage.

Just from hearsay as to what they were about to see, the people approached in a hushed and reverential manner. There was no jostling for seats around the mound. There were no seats. The seating arrangement being circular, and no one section inferior to the rest, it was hard for the colored people to know where their place was. Lacking directions, they disposed themselves throughout the audience; and as everyone, black and white alike, took his seat as softly as though coming late to church, their manner was not noticeably more self-apologetic than the others'. Remarkably, no one challenged them, despite the fact that among the whites were many from the class ordinarily the most sensitive to the nearness of a Negro. Perhaps it was the lack of seats for all equally that made the difference. Under a roof, at a table or a counter or in a pew, or on a public conveyance, a man might feel he had to be more particular about whom he let sit beside him than beneath the sky and on the ground. It was not the time or the place to raise a fuss. There was a feeling that the sorrowing woman underground had no race or color; she belonged equally to all.