The Big Rock Candy Mountain (86 page)

Bruce closed up the cottage by himself, refusing to let his mother get up. His father had gone down to the coast, vaguely on business, and would meet them in Salt Lake. It was clear enough what he was going for. With the club sold, the notes of the Denver gamblers laid away to mature, the move back to Salt Lake coming up, his mind frayed and undone, he turned naturally and immediately back to whiskey. It would give him something to do, it would bring in a little cash.

“By hell, it would make me laugh if it didn't make me want to kill him,” Bruce said to his mother. “What if we get raided in Salt Lake? That would be a fine help to getting you well, wouldn't it? Why couldn't he wait till you got back on your feet, at least?”

“He'd just sit around and stew himself to death if he didn't have something to keep him busy,” she said. “I don't care. He's better off doing something, even that.”

She was thinner, a week had made her thinner, and her cheeks looked sunken, but her eyes were still a sudden and incredible blue, unmisted by sickness. “You're not going to be too comfortable going across in the Ford, either,” he said. “He might have thought of that.”

She shook her head and smiled. “Don't worry about me. You help us get moved and then you go back to school and be the head of the class.”

“Head of the class,” Bruce said. “I've been head of the class quite a lot, haven't I?”

“You have,” she said, and the pride in her voice made him crawl. “You've got a good head. You can be an important man if you try, Bruce.”

“Will you promise to come and live at the White House?” he said. With a fury that was close to tears he went back to his half-finished packing. There were only two possibilities that he would go back to school this fall. One was that she would die before school opened. The other was that he would deliberately leave her to die with only the old man for company. He would have cut his throat before he would have agreed to either.

They were packed for two days, waiting, before they had word from Bo. He wired from Salt Lake that he had taken an apartment and that they should come on. In the afternoon a truck came and got their freight. The next morning at six, with the woods all around them showing the first fall color and the lake a sheet of pure emerald and the eastern sky so pure and blue it hurt the eyes, they started down the Big Rock Candy Mountain for home, for Salt Lake City, for the spot where the dead was buried and the living would die, and there was for Bruce none of the exhilaration that had blown him westward in June, though he was now more truly than then going home.

IX

All through September she lay dying in the
dark little apartment, in the bedroom through whose open windows in the morning Bruce could smell the bitter tang of the winter pall of smoke, coming down now, settling in the evenings and lasting until the valley breeze cleared it out about noon. Through those windows, when he came in at six or seven o‘clock to find his mother wide awake, awake for no one knew how many hours, maybe all night, he could see the thin morning sun touching the back lawn of the apartment house opposite, and the yellowing leaves of the hickories along the sidewalk, like sunlight cut into long ovals.

But no sun touched the bedroom. It was gloomy even at mid-day, and more than once Bruce felt like kicking the windows out of their frames, tearing down the curtains, pushing the wall out to let one sweep of sun and light cleanse the room. The very air in the place was the color of patience and pain. The old man might at least, he thought, have found her a pleasant room to die in.

He told her so, obliquely. “A pleasant room to be sick in,” he put it, but she smiled at him from the bed, trying to braid her long hair with fingers that tired after a few motions. “It's a nice enough room,” she said. “It could be more cheerful, but then your dad never did have much of an eye for what made a house pleasant.”

“No,” Bruce said. “Here, let me do that.”

He took the rope of hair from her and braided it, found a rubber band for the end of each braid, and lifted her while he smoothed out sheets and pillow. “Now what for breakfast?” he said. “How about some ham and eggs this morning?”

Her smile was like the smile of a very old, very wise, very gentle grandmother. “Maybe some orange juice,” she said.

“Nothing else?”

“I'm not hungry, really.”

Seeing how thin she had grown, he said miserably, “You need to eat to get your strength back,” and he saw in her eyes, the bright, incredibly blue eyes, unmarked and clear, that she was smiling inside herself at the idea of getting her strength back. If she pretended not to know that she was going to die, she did it to spare him, not herself.

“No milk?” he said. “Some milk toast, maybe?”

“No thanks. Just some orange juice. Don't go to any trouble.”

“I'll bring you in an orange and you can peel it yourself,” he said. He took the tray from the bed table and went into the kitchen. Orange juice, when she had hardly eaten anything for ten days! He squeezed a big glass of orange juice, poured a glass of milk just in case it might tempt her, opened the icebox door and got out some grape juice for the same reason, scooped a dish of bright jello. The icebox was full of invalid's dishes that he had made and never got her to eat. He ought to give it up, he thought, lifting the tray. He ought to quit urging her to eat, let the weariness take her, shorten it for her. But how could he? She didn't want it that way. She wouldn't deliberately shorten her agony one second.

Play it out till the whistle blows, he said bitterly, and hardened his mouth at that football-field stupidity that was here somehow present in his mother and that he could neither fight against nor condemn. Sixty to nothing against you and the other team with a first down on your five yard line, but play it out, break your neck on that last tackle in the end zone. That was the way she had done it all her life, and there was no changing her.

His father was in the sickroom when he came back, standing near the door looking big and uneasy and out of place, his lips forming the platitudes that were all he could ever say to her now. How you feeling this morning? Having any pains? And, stooping to look out the window, Nice day again outside.

He moved aside when Bruce came with the tray. His eyes were bloodshot and wandering. “There you are,” Bruce said. “Let's see you clean that tray.”

She laughed. “My goodness, I can't eat all that.”

Bo Mason wagged his head, and Bruce hated him for his fumbling bulk, his stupid, vague embarrassment. “You want to eat,” he said, and catching Bruce's eye he almost flushed.

At least he feels it, Bruce said. At least he feels frozen out. Nobody wants him around, and he knows it. And by God he's earned it.

“Well,” the old man said, and looked out the window again. “Going to be a nice day.” He moved toward the door. “Anything you want from town?”

“Are you going down already?” she said. “You haven't had breakfast yet.”

“I can get something downtown.”

“There's plenty of stuff here,” Bruce said. “I'll fix something in a minute.”

Nothing to do, he thought. No place to go. But he has to rush out of here before breakfast, just so he can hang around cigar stores and hotel lobbies all day.

He watched his mother sip her orange juice. “Come on,” he said, “let's get out of here and let Mom eat in peace.” He went into the kitchen and started breakfast. He was just‘putting the toast in the toaster when he heard his mother in the bedroom, and ran in. Leaning back against the pillow wiping her lips, she gave him a weak, apologetic smile. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I couldn't keep it down.”

“Feel all right now?”

She nodded, and he took the pail into the bathroom. Not even her orange juice this morning. Worse and worse.

“Pa,” he said when he came back, “I think we ought to get a nurse for Mom, till she gets back on her feet.”

“You're better than any nurse,” his mother said. “Unless you get tired of taking care of me.” She wiped her lips, puckered her eyes at him. “You're stuck in this apartment too much,” she said. “But I don't need a nurse. I guess I can still do a few things for myself.”

“And tire yourself all out,” Bruce said. “I don't know how to take care of you right.”

“You take care of me beautifully,” she said. “A nurse would be expensive, too.”

“Only six dollars a day.”

“Six dollars a day!” his father said. He seemed suddenly angry, the indecision and helplessness dissolved in violence. “My God, doesn't that show you? The minute anybody gets sick. there's ten million vultures waiting to pounce. What makes a nurse worth six dollars a day?”

“See?” Elsa said. “It's out of the question. Now why don't both of you go out and get some fresh air? You don't want to stick around with me all day.”

“Yeah?” Bruce said. “What if you got a pain?”

“I guess I could stand it. Maybe you could pull the telephone close, and if I need anything I could call Mrs. Welch.”

“What does she know about giving hypos?” He looked at his father, and it was with difficulty that he kept his voice down. “If you were sick yourself you'd think a nurse was worth six dollars a day,” he said.

His father threw up his hands and walked to the door. “Fifteen dollars a shot for x-rays,” he said. “The doctor coming here three or four times a week at five bucks a throw. Medicine to buy. Syringes to buy. God Almighty, we're not made of money. We have to eat, too, you know. I'll play nurse myself, if we need a nurse.”

“You'd be a lot of good,” Bruce said between his teeth.

“Please!” Elsa said. “I don't need a nurse, Bruce. Really. We're getting along just fine.”

The old man came over to the bed, stooped to kiss her. His face was sober and tired and his eyes redder than ever. “Don't think I don't want you to have the best care,” he said. “It's just so damned quiet now, all out-go and no income. How'd it be if I got some good woman who could cook and clean and do things for you?”

“No,” she said. “I'm an awful expense. I'm sorry.”

He stared at her with whipped, bewildered eyes, rolled his shoulders, winced. “I've got a damn boil coming on my back,” he said. “Every time I move it half kills me.”

“Oh dear!” she said. Her instant sympathy, the spectacle of her lying there in the bed she would die in, crucified by unbearable pain every few hours, and wasting sympathy on a great booby's boil made Bruce so furious he couldn't stay in the room. When his mother called him to fetch iodine and a bandage he brought them sullenly, looking sideways at his father's milk-white body stripped to the waist, the angry red swelling between his shoulder blades, and his mother propped on one weak arm, all her attention and strength focussed on painting and dressing the boil. He couldn't stand it. He escaped again.

Boils, he said. Wouldn't it be just like him to have boils, the dirtiest, messiest kind of affliction he could get, and then come running to let his half-dead wife waste her strength babying him! Oh my God, he said, if he was only the one on that bed, and she the one on her feet!

And he knew that that too was wrong. It would have been obscene to see him have to bear the things she bore.

When his father came out, shouldering himself gingerly into his coat, Bruce went out into the hall with him and confronted him there. “Mom just simply has to have a nurse,” he said. “I can't do the things to make her comfortable that a nurse could.”

His father sighed. “If you can tell me how we can afford six dollars more a day ...”

“Go in debt!” Bruce said. “She's dying in there, can't you get that through your head?”

His father's eyes were glassy. He looked dazed, as if he had not slept for a long time. The outburst of irritability a few minutes ago had gone completely..“None of it can save her,” he said. “That's just it. Do you think if she had a chance I wouldn't do everything, spend every cent we've got?”

“All right,” Bruce said. “She's dying, so let's let her die. I'll cut out the orange juice. That'll save fifty cents a day.”

For an instant, watching his father's hand clench, he thought they were going to have a fight there in the hall. He stood up to it, so furious himself that his stomach was a sick fluttering. Then the dark face of the old man twitched, his hands loosened, and without a word he turned and went out.

“You mustn't be too hard on your dad,” his mother said later. “He never was any good in sickness, his own or anybody else's.”

“No,” Bruce said. “Witness his boils.”

“Boils are painful,” she said. “There's hardly anything worse than a boil.”

“You're having a little pain yourself,” he said. “Why should you have to tend that big baby? What does he do for you when a pain hits you, except stand around looking helpless?”

“He wants to help,” she said. “He just can't stand to see anybody in pain, that's all. It drives him frantic. I remember when I scalded my arm, he was ten times more scared than I was. He almost cried.”

“If he wants to help so bad,” Bruce said, “why won't he let me get a nurse? If he's so broke he can't afford a nurse for a couple weeks he ought to apply for charity.” He went to the window and tried to make the shade roll higher, to let in a little more light. “Broke!” he said. “He's rolling in money. Twenty or thirty thousand dollars, and he can't even ... !” He turned on her. “You're going to have a nurse, whether he'll pay for her or not.”