Unknown (5 page)

t.A. - B

Summer comes early to south Alabama. Less than two months later, when Sarah Howell returned home from work a little after five, the air was stifling hot, and water from a late-afternoon shower burned off the driveway in a slowly dissipating fog.

Jo Howell hated the heat because it reminded her of the years in the fields with Jimmy. In summer, all the curtains of her house were kept closed from early morning to sundown. This kept out only a little of the seasonal warmth, and all of the cooling breezes and cheering light. Sarah Howell moved directly through the kitchen, into the dim, close living room, paused a moment, and then resolutely entered her own bedroom.

Double drapes were drawn close here, and the
Venetian
blinds behind them lowered; the room was almost wholly dark, and Sarah could see nothing until her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light. In those moments, when she stood with her hand behind her, on the knob of the door, she could hear the soft whirr of an oscillating fan, and beneath that, somewhere, the irregular breathing of two people.

'Home late', said Josephine Howell.

Sarah could just make out the figure of her mother-in-law. She sat in-an overstuffed chair that had been drawn out of its usual place in the corner to stand at the foot of the bed. 'No, I'm not', Sarah said, and glanced at the clock on the dresser: its luminous dial read 5.20.

'Clock's wrong', said Josephine.

Sarah did not bother to contradict her mother-in-law. There was something monumentally immobile about that great woman's bulk oozed, for all the afternoon Sarah was sure, into the soft faded plush of that chair. Sarah had brought that chair from her parents' house, one of the few pieces that survived the paying ofthe debts after their deaths. 'So',said Sarah, 'youtook over that chair too.'

'You're just lucky I'm here to take care of him during the day', said Jo, with quiet malice.

For the first time since she had entered the room, Sarah glanced down at the bed. In it lay her husband, his face and neck completely swathed in white bandages. His flat, tight stomach was bare, and below the waist he was covered with loose pyjama pants that had belonged to his father. The bed had been turned down but he rested, completely still and breathing just perceptibly, on top of the sheets. Dean's eyes were wrapped over, and the bandages were parted over the mouth, a simple black slit that widened and contracted with the man's breathing.

Sarah stared a few seconds at the figure, refusing to admit to herself that she still couldn't even recognise it as her hu sband. It was difficult to feel anything but revulsion for that anonymous body that responded to nothing, that only breathed and swallowed, and filled bedpans.

Sarah glanced back to her mother-in-law. For the first time she saw that Jo had been sewing in the almost non-existent light, putting a new hem on one of her vast shapeless dresses.

Jo nodded in the direction of her son. 'Asleep', she said briefly.

'How can you tell?' asked Sarah. Since he had returned, Sarah had been unable to make out any changes or variations in her husband's movements or reactions.

'His wife ought to know', said Jo.

Sarah shook her head with fatigue mixed with despair, and sat in a straight chair beside the bed. She sighed despite herself and wearily removed her shoes. 'Well', she said, 'I don't. I can't tell when he's awake. I can't tell when he's asleep. I don't know if he's hungry, or wants to—'

'You ought to
feel
them things, a wife ought to know her husband like she knows ha
^-
own kitchen.'

'He just lies there, though', sighed Sarah. For the past week she had been relying on Jo to tell her what to do for Dean. She wondered if he ever heard them talking about him; Sarah didn't like to address him directly, because it was like talking to a corpse.

Sarah stood up out of the chair, and removed her dress. After putting it on a hanger back in the closet, she took a paper fan on a stick from the little rickety bedside table, and sat down again in her slip.

Sarah fanned herself wearily, wondering how long she would be able just to sit still here without Jo lighting into her about something or other, something she had done, something she hadn't done. There was bound to be something.

She thought suddenly how much she disliked the doctors at Fort Rucca - with the single exception of the one who had proved himself of so much assistance to her with the government forms - the doctors who had taken care of Dean after the accident on the firing range. They weren't good men, she thought, and it wasn't just because they had strange accents and came from different parts of the country; it was that they hadn't seemed to realise that Dean's life was ruined - probably just as she hadn't realised at first that hers was ruined along with it.

Becca had driven her over to Fort Rucca as soon as the news came, that very night. She had even offered to let Jo go along as well, but Dean's mother only said, 'He'll be home soon enough. I'D have plenty of time to be with him then. Besides, I ought to stay here and get things ready for him coming back, coming home for good.' Becca said nothing to this little speech, and if Sarah had not been almost beside herself with worry over Dean's condition, she would have made a couple of little digs regarding the probable extent of Jo's preparations for Dean's homecoming.

They had arrived past visiting hours, but Dean's condition was so bad that it was thought that Sarah ought to be allowed to see her husband, while she still had the chance. It was really not known at first whether he would survive or, surviving, whether his wife would want him. He had already been wrapped in the bandages that he still wore. He made no special movement when she entered the room, when she came nearer his bedside, when she turned in tears and left. Kindly, the nurse had told Sarah that her husband was asleep, but Sarah had known better than that.

They kept him seven weeks more. He was no longer in danger of dying, but there didn't appear to be much life in him either. The doctors talked hopefully of the surface wounds healing more or less quickly, but they were more vague when they spoke of the good that could be accomplished by a plastic surgeon in ameliorating his ravaged features, and could not be brought to speak a word of any operation that might help to restore the part of his brain that had been seared away in the blast of the exploding rifle. They told Sarah, in quiet voices, that they could not even know the extent of the damage until Dean had rested himself for some time, till he had got over the physiological shock of the injury to his head. That didn't make sense to Sarah, but she must suppose that they knew more about what was wrong with Dean than she did. Yet she had never got over the notion that something they knew about Dean they were not telling her.

The doctors allowed Dean to return to Pine Cone because they said there was very little that constant care at the hospital could do for him that could not be done better, or to more effect, with Sarah and his mother at home. It would have been a different case, the doctors continued, if they had not been assured that Dean's mother was in the house all day to make sure that he was all right. But as things stood, he would probably recover quicker in familiar, congenial surroundings. He was to return to Fort Rucca once a week for a checkup, but when Sarah explained that she had no car in which to transport her husband, one of the doctors suggested that since he lived in Opp, it was no great hardship for him to go through Pine Cone once a week and check on Dean in his own home before he came to work at Rucca. Sarah said that she was thankful for this, as indeed she was; she would not have wanted to take too much advantage of Becca's good nature to the extent of a weekly trip with Dean - though she was sure that Becca would readily have agreed to the inconvenience, and would never have admitted that it was a burden.

This doctor who lived in Opp had taken a liking to Sarah, and one afternoon, had talked to her for a good half hour, advising her about veterans' benefits for those disabled in the line of duty, even going so far as to secure for her the proper forms to be filled out, and promising to do what he could to expedite the matters. Of course there were to be no present charges for Dean's medical care, nor would there be so long as he continued to see the doctors at Fort Rucca. But Sarah was warned that there might be - there would doubtless be -problems in the years to come, and she ought to be cognisant of what was Dean's due in these things.

Sarah and Becca spent several evenings filling out the forms as carefully as possible, for Becca, who was superstitious in things small and great, had warned Sarah that a single mistake would negate the entire claim. If she misspelled a word, Dean would never get a penny out of the government for what had happened to him. Now the forms had been submitted, and Sarah awaited the government's decision on how many dollars a week Dean's injury had been worth. It was these thoughts that went around and around in Sarah's mind, while she stared at Dean - and saw little more than he did, with the bandages over his eyes - when Jo, looking up suddenly from her sewing, said harshly, 'How much do you think we'll get?'

Sarah shook herself slightly to dissipate the melancholy reveries, and said, 'I don't know. I don't have any idea, Jo. I asked the doctor, but he didn't tell me, he said it v/as best to say nothing at all, because you never knew what the government was going to say about these things—'

'I sure hope it's enough to buy a air conditioner for this room', said Jo, impatiently trammelling the end of Sarah's response, 'I sure hope we can get a two-ton job in here, because it sure is hot, and Dean is suffering. Look how he's just laying there, burning in hell on the top of the covers—'

Dutifully, Sarah looked at the figure on the bed. 'He's not sweating', she said, and wondered if it was really her husband beneath the bandages.

"Course you can't see the sweat', said Jo, 'it's under the bandages. Hot as hell under them bandages. The bandages soak that sweat up, and you can't see it, but I know it's there, and Dean is suffering, like you and I don't suffer. We got to have at least two-tons in here, I've got the place marked in the Sears catalogue, so that Dean won't suffer so—'

'We also got to buy a lot of medicine with that money when it comes. I can get it at the PX over at Rucca, but it's still expensive, Jo, and the doctor says that Dean has to have that medicine.'

'A two-ton air conditioner would do Dean a world of good more than a whole handful of pills taken every hour on the hour. I know it would and you ought to know it too.'

'Well', said Sarah placidly, 'we have to do what the doctor says do, or else I guess they'll take Dean back to Rucca—-'

'Nope!' cried Jo. 'They won't take him back. I got him, and he's not getting out of my sight again. He left me once, and he married you. He left me again and they blew his face off...'

Sarah determined that she would not take offence. She smiled at her mother-in-law, though that was possibly the last thing in the world she felt like doing at that moment, and said, 'You do a good job, Jo. I'm glad that you can be here during the day with him. We wouldn't have him here at all if it weren't for you. He's taken care of, and he's not so lonely.'

Jo nodded with reluctant satisfaction. She didn't like to agree with Sarah on any subject at all.

'Larry Coppage said he was coming by after the plant was closed', said Sarah. 'He said he wanted to see Dean, see how he was.'

1 know', nodded Jo, with a malignant smile. 'He called me up earlier from the plant. Dean and I have been getting ready for him.'

'Do you talk to him?' said Sarah curiously. It was not idle questioning, she wanted to know. Dean never moved, Dean never showed recognition of anything in Sarah's presence, and she found it impossible to address a remark directly to him. When she was alone with Dean, she was completely silent. When Jo was with them (which was most of the time) Sarah directed all her remarks to her mother-in-law.

Jo evaded the question. 'I know what Dean wants, and I know when he wants it.'

i don't see how you can tell. He doesn't talk, he doesn't say a word. They won't even tell me if he's got a voice or not.'

'Don't matter if he says anything or he don't', snapped Jo. 7 know it. And you ought to know it - you're his wife.'

They had been through it more than once, and Sarah didn't want to pursue the argument. She was bound to lose, and for all she knew, it was possible that such bickering might have an adverse effect on Dean's recovery. She shrugged and said, 'Wake him up. Larry's on his way.'

'He weren't never asleep', said Jo quietly, but with an unmistakable smirk of triumph.

With a little shock, Sarah stared down at the figure of her husband still motionless on the bed. While she was trying to figure out which time her mother-in-law had lied to her, telling her that Dean was asleep, or that he had been awake all the time, the doorbell rang.

Sarah pulled a robe quickly around her and went to the front door. She opened it to a man about thirty, with a good-natured but not handsome face. Though he was clumsily dressed, it was apparent that he had a great deal more money than the Howells. His current-model Buick Riviera was parked in front of the house.

'Hey, Sarah', said the man shyly, with lowered eyes.

'Larry', Sarah replied with a warm smile, generously trying to relieve the man of his obvious
embarrassment.