The Avion My Uncle Flew (3 page)

I upset my mother, too. For about the first time I can remember, my mother and father nearly quarreled. My mother said, “But, Richard—” which is my father's name. “But, Richard, those Army doctors were very rough with him. After all, Johnny's only a little boy.”

“A little boy?” said my father, his voice going kind of queer. “He's almost thirteen, and in another three or four years, the way he's starting to shoot up, he'll be bigger than I am. Those doctors weren't rough on him. They were busy. They came up here to look at him as a favor to me, my dear.”

“Perhaps,” my mother said, “we shouldn't plan to go to France with you, Richard. Perhaps we've made a mistake to do this with Johnny.”

My father got a gray sort of sadness in his face. “I've been gone a long time, haven't I?” he said; and that was all he said.

He walked out of my room. My mother looked at me and went out. After a little while she came back and she looked at me again. Her voice wasn't quite as soft and sweet as it generally was when she said, “Johnny, these last three years while your father has been away, I have tried to do the best I can for you. But if
ever
I hear you shout and scream again, just because a doctor is trying to examine your leg, and say it was all your father's fault because he came back and made you leave Wyoming—if
ever
” she said, “you do such a thing again, I won't speak to you. I'll
never
speak to you. We're going to France. I
want
to go to France. Even if you don't seem to,
I
want to be with your father!”

After that, somehow, something changed between my mother and me. She remained just as sweet and pleasant as ever, but it was as if a thin curtain or shade had been pulled down between us. The worst part of it was, I blamed my father for it. I know it was wicked of me to think that—but I couldn't help it. I lay in that bed in New York, most of the time alone while my mother and father were running around in New York, having a gay time for all I knew. I thought how much better it had been back in Wyoming before my father returned, when the whole house and ranch more or less circled around me.

Well, we stayed about four days in New York. Afterwards, my father went to Washington. From there he flew to France. My mother and I had two more days of it, and it was pretty dismal. I wanted to go back home. I said if she'd agree to go back home I'd even let her take me to San Francisco where the doctors there could tinker with my leg.

On that subject she spoke a lot more sharply than she ever did before my father came home. She said it was silly for me to talk that way. I was big enough to understand there wasn't anything so dreadfully wrong about my leg that couldn't be fixed. It could go on this way for six months or a year, possibly, maybe two years. There was a chance I'd grow out of the trouble. She and my father had talked about it together, before he departed. The thing was, it wasn't good for me to stick to bed all the time and wait to see whether I'd grow out of the trouble. The operation wouldn't take very long; in the hands of a top-notch specialist, the job was simple and—she said—it hadn't ought to hurt too much. It wouldn't hurt—she said—nearly as much as my father had been hurt. By having it done in France, we could all be together instead of having the family split up once more. She thought I should be glad to go to France. She didn't understand why I acted this way.

I turned my face away from her when I said, “Nobody likes me any more.”

Well, you'd have thought that might have brought some sort of response because I felt as low as dust. Do you know what happened? She laughed. Yes sir, my own mother. She laughed. I never heard such a heartless thing.

It was because my father had come back and filled her head with ideas about France and the two had made plans of their own, leaving me out. There I was sick, practically alone in New York, in bed, my leg hurting, wanting sympathy and kindness and maybe a big dish of chocolate ice cream or a promise from my mother I'd get a bicycle—and all that happened was my own mother laughed at me.

Perhaps if I died, they'd think back and feel sorry and wish they hadn't acted as mean as they had. After I died, I'd probably haunt them. It would serve them right.

I nearly did die, too, on that boat, although nobody but I realized it. I never have been so almighty sick in my life as I was on that boat going to France. Sick? Now I'm writing it down, even at the thought of how sick I was, I turn green around the gills and wish I hadn't eaten so much tonight for supper.…

The ship's doctor said I had to expect a touch of seasickness. He said he guessed almost everyone had it now and then. That man was the most casual person about sickness I ever did see. He seemed to think being seasick was something ordinary and cool like having a case of measles or scarlet fever or something on an even lower level.

At least my mother worried. She changed around when she saw I was likely to die and stayed up with me all the second night. I think maybe she had melted enough to promise a bicycle if I hadn't gotten hungry and told her, the third day, what I wanted was a couple of pieces of that mince pie and some ice cream they were serving for dinner. You'd think a proper mother would realize, wouldn't you, that a fellow can still be sick enough to die, maybe, and yet be starving to death, particularly for hot tantalizing mince pie?

Anyway. It was a mistake asking for the mince pie. I can see that now. Mother's eyes flashed sparks. She said she understood better than ever what Richard—that is, my father—my mother wasn't like some mothers who go around saying “your father” in the same tone of voice they'd say “your bicycle” or “your trousers need scrubbing,” or “your teacher is coming to dinner,” but she called my father Richard when she was speaking about him to me as if he was somebody important and real and human and—come to think of it—he was all of that. Where was I?

Oh yes. She said she understood better than ever what Richard meant about me needing to get well all the way through.

She said she hated wars. She said she hated wars for many reasons. One of them, not the least, was that wars split up families and did things to families but the Littlehorn family—which was our name—was one family that wasn't going to be licked by a war. When she said that she put down her foot hard. She said, “Do you understand, Johnny Littlehorn? Your father wasn't licked. I'm not going to be licked. And you're not going to be licked.”

I didn't get any mince pie that night. I didn't get mince pie or a promise to be given a bicycle. When I was sick again that night and yelled for her, where she was sleeping in the next stateroom, do you know what she did? She closed the door. That's what she did. She closed the door. Although I yelled some more she kept the door closed, and I got so mad I guess I forgot I was seasick. The rest of the night I just thought about how my mother and my father were changing on me, and felt sad and sorry for myself, and homesick, with the ship we were on going up and down, creaking to itself, sloshing through the almighty blackness toward a place hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

My father met us at a town called Cherbourg. I won't try to tell you what a French town looks like yet, because I was too scared and worried about what was to happen to me to care anything for French towns or the special smells that French towns seem to have. They lugged me on a train which was less than half the size of our trains, with a little engine up front; and we got to this city that was Paris. They carted me out to a hospital and I was there for nearly two weeks.

Father and mother had taken rooms in a big hotel. After two weeks I was moved to one of these rooms in the hotel. The doctor who had worked on me, a little short white-headed man, Colonel Melvon—he came to the hotel a day or so later.

This time, though, he was in uniform. He didn't have his white clothes on. And somehow the hands didn't look as terrifying as I'd remembered them from those days in the hospital. They were still big, but they looked worn and thin, with brown spots on the skin. They were old hands. The yell slid back down into my throat and vanished. I found he was kind of smiling at me, and he said, “Johnny, I've come to tell you good-by. I'm on my way home. Are you feeling any better?”

He was smiling still more. Something in his eyes seemed to reach out to me. It was as if there was a special secret between him and me. He knew I was lying to him. He knew I didn't feel any better and never expected to feel better and the pain and hurt would always be in my leg, forever and ever.

He bent over and said, “I want to tell you something. That's why I came. Johnny, your leg is as good as an old man can ever make it. I can't do any more. From now on it depends on you whether you'll be able to run as well as you used to run. I can't help you. Your father, he can't help you. Your mother can't help you. If anything,” he said, and he said it thoughtful and slow, “if anything, they'll hinder your getting well, Johnny. That's a funny thing for me to say, isn't it?”

I didn't answer.

He wasn't talking so much to me now, I could see, as to my mother and father who were in the room listening.

He said, “If they try to help you too much, they're liable to prevent you from recovering completely. They can't baby you, Johnny. If they do that, you're done for. You've got to want to get up. You've got to want to walk and run, no matter if it hurts like blazes. You've got to want to run and jump and make that leg of yours adjust itself to acting like a normal leg again and make that brain of yours realize the same thing. Good-by, Johnny. Good luck.”

I blamed Colonel Melvon for the decision my father and my mother reached. My father was to go to England for a couple of months—not right away, but in a few weeks. He and my mother talked over what Colonel Melvon had said. They concluded England wasn't the place for me. I should be in the country, with sunshine and trees and grass. My father would have to stay in London.

They proposed sending me down to St. Chamant, in the middle of France. The first I heard of it was a few days later. My mother opened up the subject to me. She said she'd received a letter from her brother, Paul Langres. He was finishing his military work. He was in a city called Rouen, somewhere north of Paris, and planned to come to Paris in a week or so to see us, just as quickly as the military people would allow him to go. He was eager to see all of us. He'd written, after visiting us, he planned to return to St. Chamant, where he and my mother had been born. He hadn't been back to St. Chamant since the war had started. He wanted to stay there during the summer and part of the fall to rest and work on one of his projects and he suggested perhaps we'd like to go with him.

Well, that had given my mother an idea. She'd written to ask him if I could go with him and stay with him in St. Chamant. Of course, I protested. I wanted to be with my parents. My protests didn't do much good. My father thought it would help me. A day or so later, mon oncle wrote back and said he'd be delighted to take me.

I complained I wouldn't be able to walk or move—and I'd be a bother to him. By now, you see, I'd become accustomed not to move. As long as I remained in bed or stuck to a chair, it was all right. And all I wanted was to go home. I didn't even receive any enjoyment when my father brought home a collection of German coins for me. You can see how low I was.

The only friend I had was the hotel porter, Albert. My father had hired him to wheel me around Paris, hoping I'd pick up and find more interest in life once I got out of the hotel room. I told Albert how I might have to leave my parents and go down to a little no 'count French village. Albert spoke English, although he didn't speak it very well. He was fat with tiny eyes and puffed like a leaky kettle as he pushed my wheel chair.

“I'd rather die than be shoved off to St. Chamant,” I said.

“St. Chamant?” he said, stopping.

“That's the name of the place,” I said.

“St. Chamant?” he said once more, his voice having a squeaky sound to it. “You say it iss St. Chamant, Master Littlehorn?”

I said, “Sure. My mother was born there. She was a Langres.”

“A
Langres
?” he said, the same way he'd said the name of the town, as if he was echoing me.

I twisted around at him. His mouth was open. I said, “My uncle's Paul Langres. He ought to be here in a couple of days. You don't know him, do you?”

“Know him? Ah, no,” said Albert, giving my chair a jerk as he started pushing it. “For why should I know him?”

“You haven't ever been to St. Chamant?” I asked, hoping he had.

He shook his head. He said he'd never heard of it before. A little later he explained he'd been surprised to hear I was going because he enjoyed wheeling me in the chair and that seemed a reasonable explanation too. I said I wasn't sure I was going. I was going to get out of going if I could and he supported me in that. He said he didn't believe a lame boy such as me would enjoy being away from his parents. Well, that didn't hit me exactly right. I allowed I could exist without my mother and my father for a couple of months. But he went on and sympathized and pitied me and I began to feel sorry for myself. That night I argued louder than ever against going.

The following day Albert wheeled me into a little parc. He asked to be excused a few minutes. He said he wanted to buy some tobacco across the street. A tall man happened to walk by me and went on and returned and sat on one of those iron benches the French have in parcs. He was one of the tallest men I've ever seen, all bones, with a white face and a beard that was lopsided. I mean, it grew thicker on one side than the other. He had greenish eyes. He watched me with those greenish eyes. They made me uncomfortable. I wished Albert would hurry back.