[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
porch in a dawn-to-dark marathon of vigilance. One of them, the twice-widowed Mamie
Canfield, specialized in spotting pregnancies (some legendary fellow is supposed to have told
his wife Why waste money on a doctor? just trot yourself past Miss Bell's: Mamie Canfield,
shell let the world know soon enough whether you is or ain't). Until the Judge moved there,
Amos Legrand was the only man in residence at Miss Bell's. He was a godsend to the other
tenants: the moments most sacred to them were when, after supper, Amos swung in the seat-
swing with his little legs not touching the floor and his tongue trilling like an alarm-clock. They
vied with each other in knitting him socks and sweaters, tending to his diet: at table all the best
things were saved for his plate- Miss Bell had trouble keeping a cook because the ladies were
forever poking around in the kitchen wanting to make a delicacy that would tempt their pet.
Probably they would have done the same for the Judge, but he had no use for them, never, so
they complained, stopped to pass the time of day.
The last drenching night in the tree-house had left me with a bad cold, Verena with a worse
one; and we had a sneezing nurse. Dolly. Catherine wouldn't help: "Dollyheart, you can do like
you please-tote That One's slopjar till you drop in your tracks. Only don't count on me to lift a
finger. I've put down the load."
Rising at all hours of the night. Dolly brought the syrups that eased our throats, stoked the
fires that kept us warm. Verena did not, as in other days, accept such attention simply as her
due. "In the spring," she promised Dolly, "we'll make a trip together. We might go to the Grand
Canyon and call on Maudie Laura. Or Florida: you've never seen the ocean." But Dolly was
where she wanted to be, she had no wish to travel: "I wouldn't enjoy it, seeing the things I've
known shamed by nobler sights."
Doctor Carter called regularly to see us, and one morning Dolly asked would he mind taking
her temperature; she felt so flushed and weak in the legs. He put her straight to bed, and she
thought it was very humorous when he told her she had walking pneumonia. "Walking
pneumonia," she said to the Judge, who had come to visit her, "it must be something new, I've
never heard of it. But I do feel as though I were skylarking along on a pair of stilts. Lovely," she
said and fell asleep.
For three, nearly four days she never really woke up. Catherine stayed with her, dozing
upright in a wicker chair and growling low whenever Verena or I tiptoed into the room. She
persisted in fanning Dolly with a picture of Jesus, as though it were summertime; and it was a
disgrace how she ignored Doctor Carter's instructions: "I wouldn't feed that to a hog," she'd
declare, pointing to some medicine he'd sent around. Finally Doctor Carter said he wouldn't be
responsible unless the patient were removed to a hospital. The nearest hospital was in Brewton,
sixty miles away. Verena sent over there for an ambulance. She could have saved herself the
expense, because Catherine locked Dolly's door from the inside and said the first one to rattle
the knob would need an ambulance themselves. Dolly did not know where they wanted to take
her; wherever it was, she begged not to go: "Don't wake me," she said, "I don't want to see the
ocean."
Toward the end of the week she could sit up in bed; a few days later she was strong enough to
resume correspondence with her dropsy-cure customers. She was worried by the unfilled orders
that had piled up; but Catherine, who took the credit for Dolly's improvement, said, "Shoot, it's
no time we'll be out there boiling a brew."
Every afternoon, promptly at four, the Judge presented himself at the garden gate and whistled
for me to let him in; by using the garden gate, rather than the front door, he lessened the chance
of encountering Verena-not that she objected to his coming: indeed, she wisely supplied for his
visits a bottle of sherry and a box of cigars. Usually he brought Dolly a gift, cakes from the
Katydid Bakery or flowers, bronze bal-loonlike chrysanthemums which Catherine swiftly
confiscated on the theory that they ate up all the nourishment in the air. Catherine never learned
he had proposed to Dolly; still, intuiting a situation not quite to her liking, she sharply
chaperoned the Judge's visits and, while swigging at the sherry that had been put out for him,
did most of the talking as well. But I suspect that neither he nor Dolly had much to say of a
private nature; they accepted each other without excitement, as people do who are settled in
their affections. If in other ways he was a disappointed man, it was not because of Dolly, for I
believe she became what he'd wanted, the one person in the world-to whom, as he'd described
it, everything can be said. But when everything can be said perhaps there is nothing more to
say. He sat beside her bed, content to be there and not expecting to be entertained. Often,
drowsy with fever, she went to sleep, and if, while she slept, she whimpered or frowned, he
wakened her, welcoming her back with a daylight smile.
In the past Verena had not allowed us to have a radio; cheap melodies, she contended,
disordered the mind; moreover, there was the expense to consider. It was Doctor Carter who
persuaded her that Dolly should have a radio; he thought it would help reconcile her to what he
foresaw as a long convalescence. Verena bought one, and paid a good price, I don't doubt; but it
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]