Moving On (3 page)

Patsy would have liked to kick her, but the clown stood up and pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “If you got a nickel you can buy one for your little sister too,” he said.

“I only got brothers. Did your skunk die?”

“No, it got stolen in Tucumcari.”

The quarter grew bigger in her mind and Fayette said a perfunctory thanks and rushed off to find her best girl friend and tell her about the skunk.

“Thank you so much,” Patsy said. “I guess I’m scared—my legs are shaking. Could I lean on you for one second? I’ve got a Sno-cone in my shoe.”

She handed him her purse, quickly emptied the water out of her pump, and, with one hand on his shoulder, slipped the shoe back on. “How did you know me?” she asked.

“Kind of an educated guess,” he said. “You don’t look like nobody else here. Your husband met with a little accident, not very serious. Let’s go see if he’s come to yet.”

His voice was low and unworried and sure of itself, and it made her feel better. She snapped her purse shut and he took her firmly by the arm, his hand above her elbow, and they hurried into the bright dusty arena. Sand stuck to her wet shoe. A crowd of cowboys stood near the heavy wire fence, all of them looking healthy and very cheerful. They parted for the clown, and she saw Jim lying stretched out on the ground, his head on a pair of brown chaps. She had never seen him stretched so flat. His lower lip was split, and there was dirt in his blond hair and a raw skinned place on one temple.

“Was he run over, or what? What’s wrong with him?” Patsy asked, tears starting in her eyes. It was terrifying to see her husband lying with his eyes closed amid a crowd of cowboys.

“Just knocked out,” the clown said. “He was in a kind of fight, he’s not hurt bad. We’ll get him in an ambulance in a minute.”

“But Jim never fights,” she said, kneeling and brushing awkwardly at the dirt in his hair. He was very blond and she could see the dirt against his scalp. “We don’t even know anybody here—who could he have wanted to fight?”

The clown squatted beside her and silently took off his bandanna and handed it to her. “He ain’t hurt bad,” he said calmly. “You don’t need to have no hysterics. What happened was a couple of bronc riders beat him up. He snapped ’em at the wrong time, I guess.”

When Patsy looked up, all she could see was the legs of cowboys, long legs in blue Levi’s, and large hands with the thumbs hooked in the pockets of the Levi’s.

“Where is the ambulance?” she asked. “I won’t be hysterical, but can’t it come on?”

“Oh, it’s right out there,” the clown said. “Its the driver we can’t locate. He went off with some woman and took his keys with him.

“Pete’s my name,” he added.

“But that’s awful,” she said. “That’s awful.” Jim’s face seemed waxen to her. She had an urge to feel his pulse but was afraid to for fear she wouldn’t be able to find it. The clown’s hair was sandy and curly at the back of his neck, and only the fact that he seemed genuinely unworried kept her from breaking down completely.

Then, to her relief, there was the sound of a motor, and a white ambulance spun into the arena, cut sharply their way, and skidded through the knot of cowboys, almost to Jim’s feet. It scared Patsy terribly, but the cowboys jumped gracefully out of the way and seemed amused at the driver’s recklessness. Suddenly several of them converged on Jim. Pete helped her up, and in a moment Jim was in the ambulance and Pete was helping her in after him. When she looked around to thank him all the cowboys were standing behind him, arranged like so many wooden-faced sculptures, all of them staring at her. It embarrassed her, and she blushed.

“Have you to town in no time, ma’am,” the driver said. Patsy turned and saw that he too was watching her. He was a balding man, with such hair as he had slicked down. His shirt wasn’t buttoned.

“Couldn’t you come?” she said, turning back to Pete. “I don’t know what to do.”

“No, got to work,” he said. “He’ll come to in a minute.” He nodded kindly as he shut the ambulance doors.

She realized then that she had his bandanna in her hand, but it was too late to give it back. The ambulance was already spinning around in the soft dirt, and a cloud of dust hid the clown and the cowboys. “We’re off,” the driver said cheerfully, as if it were a race. The ambulance came out of its curve and almost plowed into two black Shetland ponies that had wandered into the entranceway to the arena.

“Shit-toody,” the driver said, braking hard. “Get them goddamn ponies out of the way,” he yelled, leaning out of the window. “I got a hurt man in here.” A cowboy ran up and yanked the little ponies unceremoniously aside and the ambulance shot through the entrance-way, only to brake abruptly again when confronted with the milling crowd of children and horses and men. The starting and stopping seemed to wake Jim up. He blinked and made a restless movement.

“He ain’t hurt, he’s already movin’,” the driver said, looking back again. They passed out of the rodeo grounds, accelerated down a short dirt road, and lurched onto a highway. The rodeo pens were three miles outside the town. “Nothin’ to worry about,” the driver said, speeding into a curve. He kept looking back at Patsy, with more interest than he seemed to be able to muster for the road. She could see the lights of the little town, bright in the darkness, but the ambulance was going so fast it seemed to her they might not be able to stop even if they got there safely.

Jim suddenly raised up on his elbow. “Got to vomit,” he said.

“Get the pan, get the pan,” the driver said, and Patsy got it just in time. The sharp smell of the vomit made her feel nauseated herself.

“I hope you got my cameras,” Jim said when he was finished and lying back. “I feel bad.”

“Oh, I didn’t,” Patsy said. She started to explain, but her voice broke on the first word and she began to cry again. Jim had wiped his mouth on the clown’s bandanna and it seemed that for the hundredth time in an hour she had nothing to cry into but her bare hands. Jim was white around the mouth, whether from weakness or from anger about the cameras she couldn’t tell. As they flashed into the little town she lifted her husband’s arm and wiped her face on his blue shirt sleeve. He cupped his hand behind her neck a moment affectionately, and she felt relieved. A few street lights were on and some frazzled-looking rodeo flags were strung between the streetlight poles. The ambulance driver began to grow irritable, even baleful, as they neared the end of the run.

“Ain’t hurt a goddamn bit,” he muttered. “I knew it. Made a trip for nothin’ and was interrupted besides.”

“Oh, please be quiet,” Patsy said. “He
is
hurt. We’ll pay you for your trouble.

“I know your kind,” she added melodramatically, because the driver glanced back at her again.

“I wish you’d got the cameras,” Jim said.

They squealed to a stop behind a small dingy-looking brick hospital with a big television antenna on the roof and a swarm of moths and insects around the yellow light bulb that lit the back door. Jim gamely sat up, but he didn’t look mobile. The driver honked impatiently and they all sat waiting for attendants to run out with stretchers. None came. The driver sighed and stretched his arm across the back of the seat. He seemed content to wait, since he was there, and turned on the radio. A hillbilly song came over the air, plaintive and nasal.

Oh, my baby’s not in town tonight,
This ole town just don’t seem right,
Even my old friends don’t seem the same to me
. . .

Well my baby’s not in town tonight,
These ole lights don’t shine so bright,
And I’m cryin’ tears till I can’t hard-ly see
. . .

“Can you walk if I help you?” she asked Jim. “I don’t think there’s anybody in there, but maybe we can at least find you a bed.”

“Oh, there’s
somebody
in there, most likely,” the driver said, waxing friendly. He looked back at her with robust admiration. “I’ll help you drag him in, ma’am,” he offered.

He got out and opened the ambulance doors and the two of them helped Jim ease to the ground. Once on his feet, he waved them off and wobbled unsteadily toward the hospital, leaving Patsy to pay the driver. He stood watching her, scratching his stomach happily.

“We’re sorry we bothered you,” she said acidly. “I hope you can pick up where you left off, approximately at least.”

The driver, nothing abashed, took out an old billfold and stuffed the money in it. “Ain’t too likely, ma’am,” he said. “Somebody else probably done already has, if I know that gal. Besides, I’ll have to be hauling in them stomped-up bull riders before long. Such is the times. Glad to help you out, ma’am.”

His complacency and the way he kept calling her ma’am were almost too much. “Oh, I’d like to kick you,” she said hotly.

The driver was amazed, and silenced for a moment. “You sure you ain’t crazy?” he asked after a pause, unable to arrive at any other explanation.

“I don’t like being called ma’am,” she said and walked away. The driver continued to scratch his stomach, but a little less happily.

Jim was in the waiting room alone, sitting on a couch with his eyes shut. “No one’s here,” he said, but no sooner had he said it than a fat implacably jolly nurse walked in and stood with her hands on her hips looking at Jim. She was as rouged as any harlot, but no one could have looked less like a whore.

“I see the bloodshed’s begun,” she said. “Doctor’ll be out in a minute. He’s pumpin’ out a kid who had himself some rat poison for supper. It’s a wonder to me any of us survive.”

She gave Patsy a card to fill out, and they sat alone in the empty waiting room for twenty-five minutes waiting for the doctor to come. The bright overhead light was so piercing that Jim had to keep his eyes closed. Patsy hunted through his billfold and found their insurance card. The beige leatherette couch they sat on seemed to her the ugliest piece of furniture she had ever seen.

“I’m sure those cameras were right there somewhere,” Jim said. He had a way of being single-minded, even when in pain. “That’s nine hundred dollars gone if somebody steals them. Besides, they had pictures in them.”

“I just didn’t see them. I had pictures in me too—pictures of you dying and me being left at the mercy of about a thousand stupid cowboys. Maybe the clown took care of them. He was the only nice person there.”

But she felt guilty, anyway, for not having more presence of mind.

Soon a frail-looking doctor with a black hearing aid came in and led Jim off to be X-rayed, and she sat alone in the waiting room, fidgeting uselessly about the cameras. Jim had only been working at photography three months and she had difficulty taking it seriously. His decision to photograph rodeos seemed quite nonsensical to her. She was always unable to take his work seriously enough at the time when he was most intense about it; by the time she became enthused about one of his lines of endeavor he would almost invariably be bored with it and ripe for a new pursuit.

To escape the brightness of the waiting room she walked out into the front yard of the hospital. The grass was dry and crackly already, though it was not yet summer. She walked around the side of the building to the back, away from the street lights, and felt better at once. The depth and sweep of the sky was a relief after the tiny room, and the sky was sown with uncountable stars. Her hair was mussed; she took a comb out of her purse and stood combing it, her legs spread and her head bent back over one shoulder. Her hair was black and she wore it middling length, just long enough that it touched her shoulders. She felt refreshed and combed vigorously, looking straight up into the Milky Way.

It seemed very odd to her that anyone, even a cowboy, would want to hit Jim. He was mild-tempered and agreeable, and to her knowledge no one had ever hit him before. She walked back around the hospital, combing more leisurely, and saw a car filled with teenagers race down the empty street. It was an old two-tone Buick with no muffler. There were eight or ten kids in it, boys and girls all mashed together, yelling and laughing and waving their arms out the windows. As they passed the hospital a boy pitched an empty beer can high in the air. It rang when it hit the pavement, bounced into the center of the street, and spun around a few times before it stopped. The sound of the car gradually faded and the silence of the empty summer town was complete again.

When she went back inside, the fat red-cheeked nurse was sitting at the desk clicking her tongue over a coverless movie magazine that seemed to be several years old.

“Pore little Debbie,” she said. “Can’t tell a no-good when she sees one, can she, honey? We’ve about got your hubby patched up.”

Patsy felt defenseless. The slovenly ambulance driver she might have kicked, but no person of character would kick a jolly nurse. It irked her to be called honey, and it irked her more to hear Jim referred to as her hubby. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something very complimentary about Elizabeth Taylor, but before she could think of anything she glanced up and saw that the fat nurse was looking at the pictures with affection brimming in her face. Her voice had dropped with sadness when she said, “pore little Debbie,” and she was studying the pictures with as much fondness as she might have bestowed on a family scrapbook.

“I’m sure it was hard on her,” she said, choked for a moment, with a desire to be kind to the nurse.

“’Course Liz ain’t had no easy life either,” the nurse went on. “She was as sweet a little thing as there ever was when she was young. Growed up too fast, I guess, and let all them bright lights and them night spots confuse her. I was out there once, went with my sister and her family. We went to Disneyland and had us quite a time. You-all got any little ones?”

“Not yet,” Patsy said. It was a question she disliked being asked.

“Well, you ought to. Lord bless us, they’re what’s worth living for. ’Course I never married myself, but my sister has six and I love every one of ’em. Liz has been a good mother, seems like, but adult’ry’s adult’ry, don’t matter who does it. When you carry on like that you’ve got to pay. Thank goodness I’ve got a clean conscience, even if I don’t have much else.”