The Carpetbaggers (79 page)

From around the corner behind him, Tom could hear the sudden explosion of their whispered conversation. Then one boy snickered and another boy laughed and the merriment had a sick, dirty sound to it that tore at his heart. Abruptly he let go of Jennie's arm and walked back around the corner. They looked at him in surprise, the laughter frozen on their lips.

"What's the joke, boys?" he asked, his anger making his face white and cold. "Tell it to me so I may laugh with you."

They stared at him silently, shamefaced. They looked down at their feet, they shuffled awkwardly, glancing at each other with secret looks filled with a meaning that Tom remembered from his own youth. It was as if they'd been surprised looking at dirty pictures.

A shame for what he'd been at their age came over him and a sick weariness replaced the anger. "Get off this corner," he said softly. "And if ever I hear of any of you laughing or making any remarks about me or any member of my family, I’ll come down here and tear the lot of you apart with my bare hands!"

The tallest of the boys took a step toward him. His eyes were sly and insolent. He was slightly taller than Tom and he looked down at him with a faint, contemptuous smile. "It's a free country. We can stand here if we like."

The resentment in Tom suddenly exploded. He seized the boy by his jacket lapels and forced him to his knees. "Free, is it?" he shouted, his veins purple on his forehead. "Free for you to stand here and choose who you'll rape tonight?" He raised an open hand to slap the boy across the face.

The boy cringed, the insolence gone from his face. "What yuh pickin' on us for, Mr. Denton? We aren't the ones fucked Jennie."

The words seemed to freeze the blood in Tom's veins. He stood there, his hand still upraised, staring down at the boy. Fucked Jennie. They could say that about his own daughter and there was nothing he could do that could change the fact of it. Slowly he let his hand fall to his side, then with a violent gesture, he flung the boy away from him.

Tom glared at them, looking from one to another. They were only boys, he told himself. He couldn't hate all boys because of what two had done. The boy was right. They weren't the guilty ones.

A sense of failure came over him. If anyone was guilty, he was the guiltiest of all. If he'd been a man and kept his job, all this might never have happened. "Get off this corner," he said. "If any of you ever see me coming this way again, you'd better be on the other side of the street."

They looked at him and then at each other and it almost seemed now as if they were pitying him. Suddenly, as if a secret message had been passed mysteriously between them, they began to disperse in ones and twos.

A moment later, he was alone on the corner. He stood there for a moment to quiet the sudden trembling that came over him, then he, too, turned and walked around the corner to where his wife and daughter were waiting for him. "It's over now," he said for the second time that morning, as he took Jennie's arm and started for the house again. But this time, he knew, even as he said it, that it wasn't over — that it would never be over as long as he was alive to remember.

* * *

The cool September breeze held the first hint of autumn. Jennie looked out the cable-car window toward her stop. Her father was standing there under the street lamp, waiting for her as he did each night now. The car stopped and she stepped down.

"Hello, Daddy."

"Hi, Jennie Bear."

She fell into step beside him as they turned the corner toward home. "Any luck today?"

He shook his head. "I don't understand it. There just are no jobs."

"Maybe there'll be one tomorrow."

"I hope so," he said. "Maybe after the election, things will look up. Roosevelt says the government has to take the lead in providing work, that big business has fallen down on its responsibilities. He makes more sense for the working man than Hoover and the Republicans." He looked at her. "How did it go today?"

"All right," she said. But there still was an uncomfortable feeling in the office. Many of the company agents had taken to stopping at her desk on their way in and out of the office. Sometimes they just chatted, but some of them had tried to date her. Maybe if things had been different, she'd have gone out with them. But when she looked up from her desk into their eyes, she knew what they were thinking. She'd refuse politely and some of them would stammer or even blush, for they knew somehow that she knew.

"You don't have to meet me every night, Daddy," she said suddenly. "I'm not afraid to come home alone."

"I know you're not. I've known it from that first day I came to meet you. But I want to do it. It's the one time of the whole day that I feel I've really got something to do."

Jennie didn't answer and they walked along silently for a moment. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Not if you want to meet me, Daddy."

They were at the steps of the house now and she started up. Her father placed a hand on her arm. "Let's not go up just yet, Jennie Bear. Let's sit here and talk a minute."

She looked down at him. His face was serious. "What is it, Daddy?"

"I didn't tell your mother. I went to see Father Hadley today."

"Yes?"

"He won't come down to court to testify to your character. He told me it's against the rules of the church. And the same goes for the sisters at the school."

"Oh," she said. The sick feeling came up inside her again. The lawyer had been right. He'd come to see them a month ago, a little man with the eyes of a weasel.

He'd sat down in the kitchen and looked across the table at them. "Mr. Burke and Mr. Tanner asked me to see you," he said. "I think you know how much they regret this, er — " He had glanced at her quickly and then away. " — this incident and they would like to make amends if they can."

Her father's face had flushed angrily. "In the first place, Mr. O'Connor," he had said quickly. "That incident you are referring to was not an incident. Those two boys ra— "

The lawyer held up his hand interrupting. "We know what they did," he said. "But surely, Mr. Denton, what purpose would their trial serve except to call even greater attention to your daughter and remind her of what already must be a painful experience. And what if the boys should be adjudged not guilty?"

Her father laughed. "Not guilty? I was at the station when the police brought them in. I heard them sniveling and crying then how sorry they were that they did it."

"What they said then, Mr. Denton," the attorney had said, "is unimportant. It's what they say in court that counts. And they will say that your daughter led them on, that she asked them to go to the park with her."

"They will have to prove that," Tom said grimly.

"It will be harder for you to disprove it," the lawyer said. "There's two of them and only the word of your daughter. And they will have as many character witnesses for them as you will have to have for your daughter."

"It's beginning to sound as if my daughter were on trial, not them!" Tom burst out.

"Exactly," the lawyer nodded. "That is the way it is in these cases. The accuser stands to lose more than the accused."

"My daughter's reputation speaks for itself," Tom said. "Father Hadley of St. Paul's and the sisters at Mercy High School will tell you of my Jennie."

The lawyer had smiled mysteriously. "I doubt it, Mr. Denton," he said quietly. "I doubt it very much." He glanced at Jennie again, then back at Tom. "I am authorized by my clients to offer you a thousand dollars if your daughter will drop the charges against the boys."

"I think you might as well go, Mr. O'Connor," her father had said, getting to his feet. "You cannot buy what's already been stolen."

The attorney rose also. He took a card from his pocket and placed it on the table and walked to the door. "You can reach me at my office any time before the trial begins if you should change your mind."

"What do we do now, Daddy?" she asked, back in the present again.

"Father Hadley said they'd told your mother the same thing three weeks ago."

She stared at her father. "Then she knew all along and never told us?"

He nodded. A chill ran through her. There was something wrong with a God who would let a mother expose her own child to shame and ridicule just to save her own conscience.

"Father Hadley also said the scholarship to St. Mary's is still open if you want it, Jennie."

Suddenly, she began to laugh. They refused to give her a good name, yet were willing to give her charity. She couldn't reconcile the two attitudes. Was one merely to compensate for the other?

Tom looked up at her in surprise. "What are you laughing at, Jennie?"

Her laughter died and she looked at him, unsmiling. "Nothing, Daddy," she said. "I think you might as well give that lawyer a call."

"Then you'll take the thousand dollars?"

She nodded. "And the scholarship to St. Mary's, too. That way, you'll be able to live while I'm away."

"I won't accept your money."

"Yes, you will, Daddy," she said softly. "At least, until you find a job and get back on your feet again."

He felt the tears rush into his eyes and suddenly he pulled her to him. "Do you love me, Jennie Bear? Do you love your poor miserable failure of a father?"

"You know I do, Daddy," she said quickly, her head against his chest. And they clung to each other, crying, there on the steps in the quiet, cool autumn twilight.

The only sound for a moment was the slight hissing that came from the fluorescent lamps over the surgical area. Dr. Grant's hands were quick and sure as he deftly lifted the perfectly normal appendix from the heavy-set, wealthy woman lying on the operating table. His deep, masculine voice rumbled in the silence. "That will do it," he said, sighing in satisfaction. "You can close her up now, Dr. Lobb."

He turned away from the table and one of the nurses quickly wiped the perspiration from his face as the surgical resident began to clamp the edges of the incision together.

Jennie glanced up at Sister M. Christopher. If the senior nurse was aware that the appendix had not been infected, her dark eyes, visible over the face mask, gave no indication.

"Suture," Dr. Lobb grunted, holding out his hand. Automatically Jennie gave it to him. Then she didn't have time to look up for a few minutes. She was too busy. But she was aware that Sister Christopher was watching her. It didn't make her nervous, as it had at first. But that was almost three years ago. Next month was graduation.

Sister Christopher watched Jennie with approbation. This girl was one of the bright spots in her class. Perhaps one girl in a hundred had a vocation for surgery the way Jennie had. There were so many things needed and Jennie had them all. The sight of blood didn't upset her, not even the first time she'd experienced it. And Jennie was deft and sure in her actions. Quickly she'd developed an affinity between herself and the instruments, then between herself and the surgeons. Without the affinity, which permitted an unspoken form of communication between the doctor and the nurse, surgery could be dangerously delayed while instruments were fumbled back and forth.

The final important factor was strength. No one ever quite realized how important it was for a surgical nurse to be strong. To be able to stand for hours beside the quiet white table, even though your feet hurt and your thighs and back ached from that peculiar, slightly-leaning-forward position. To be able to feed the doctor that strength and reassure him with it, so that the chain of healing formed one unbroken line. And the strength to be stoic when the chain was broken and the now forever silent patient was wheeled away; to stand there quietly and begin to scrub up again, sure that the chain would rebuild itself when a new patient was wheeled in.

Dr. Lobb looked up and nodded. "Dressing." He held his white-gloved hand out over the neatly stitched incision.

Jennie was ready with the gauze packing as he lifted his hand. Immediately, she covered the incision, while with her other hand, she lifted the strips of adhesive tape from the clip board at the side of the table. She pressed the tape down firmly with her fingers, checking the bandage for smoothness and support, then lifted both hands to signify she had finished.

Sister Christopher nodded and the patient was quickly wrapped and transferred to another table by the assistants. There was a click as the fluorescents went out. The morning operating-room schedule at St. Mary's had been completed.

* * *

"That's the fourth good appendix he's taken out this month," Jennie whispered above the gush of water into the basin. "Why does he do it?"

The young resident laughed. "At two hundred and fifty dollars a crack, you don't fight the patients."

"But he doesn't have to," she whispered. "He's a great surgeon. He has scarcely enough time for all he has to do."

"Sure," Dr. Lobb whispered back. "But even great surgeons have to eat. Most of the trick cases are either for free or tough collections. So who's to blame if once in a while, he lifts a harmless appendix from some rich old hypochondriac? There's no risk in it. The doctor can pay his bills and the patient can brag about his operation."

He straightened up, reaching for a towel. "Oh-oh," he said warningly. "Here comes the great man himself."

Jennie took a towel from the rack and began to dry her hands. The doctor's voice came from behind her. "Miss Denton?"

She turned around, looking at him. "Yes, Dr. Grant?"

"I understand you're graduating next month."

"I hope so."

"I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said. "I was just talking to Sister Christopher. She thinks a great deal of you. And so do I."

"Thank you."

"Have you made any plans yet for after graduation?"

"Not really," Jennie answered. "I'm going to take the state exam and get my name on the lists for one of the big hospitals."

"All hospitals are pretty well staffed."

Jennie knew what he really meant. They weren't well staffed, at all. Actually, they were all understaffed because there was no money to pay for the staff they needed. Especially those in the operating room. They were the best paid of all. "I know," she said.