I tried to get out of my overcoat and stopped in midthought. It would be added protection from the rib blows. They could stand only so much. Paul was coming in again, swinging his foot.
I reached up with both hands, caught it and twisted it savagely. He went to the floor, howling and cursing me as he fell. His body was heavy and solid and the old house shook when he hit. I held on to the foot and tried to twist it the other way when his fall straightened it out again. Too late I remembered he had a second foot. It caught me full in the face, the hard heel smashing against my mouth.
Outside the dog was howling madly.
Paul wriggled free and tried to get to his feet. I braced myself on my hands, found blood on the floor beneath them, and as he stood upright, threw myself at his legs. He went over backwards.
Paul’s head struck the kitchen wall. His clubbed fists were swinging in long arcs, trying to reach me. I fell on top of him and began pounding his face.
Eleanor let me get in two licks. Exactly two.
I had forgotten Eleanor, forgotten that she held a gun. Until its handle whacked me on the back of my head, just above the hairline. There was blood in my mouth, blood and shirt buttons. I couldn’t account for the buttons.
And then there was nothing.
I’ll write again, tomorrow, Louise. Now I’m supposed to go to sleep.
Boone, Ill.
Saturday, A.M.
Dear Louise:
My second day in the hospital. I tried to get out of here last night with very little luck.
About midnight I had crawled out of bed, found my clothes in the closet, and put them on. I tiptoed downstairs with the intention of leaving by the doctor’s entrance. But I reckoned without the night-owlish tendencies of a headnurse.
“May I ask where you’re going?” She stood between me and the door.
“Out to catch a streetcar,” I snapped at her. “My wife has decided not to have the baby tonight. So I may as well go home.”
“I think not, Mr. Horne. There is no Mrs. Horne in the maternity ward at the present time, nor are there any unwed mothers. Are you returning to your room now?”
“Yes, mam,” I said. The price of fame, I suppose.
I’m a wiser man this morning. I know a safe and sure way to get out, tonight.
Eleanor had hit me with that gun butt, damn her soul. And then there had been nothing.
For a long time there was nothing. Nothing, like the stark, empty blackness of night skies on a barren planet; nothing, like the confining hollowness of a covered grave.
The first thing that came out of the empty nothingness was a painful buzzing. A buzzing by a solitary fly trapped in that coffin in a covered grave. The fly wanted out and couldn’t get out — ever.
The buzzing changed; it didn’t stop, but it changed pitch with a suddenly cold and refreshing wetness. I pushed myself up on one weak arm and looked down at the white light playing on the snow I was lying in. I realized only that it was a light, and it was snow, and fell face forward again. It was wet and cold and good on my face.
Above the buzzing a woman’s voice spoke to someone.
“Get up.”
She wasn’t talking to me, she couldn’t be talking to me. I didn’t want to get up; couldn’t she see that? I wanted to lie there and push my face deeper and deeper into the good, cold snow. It was wet and came up between my lips.
The voice spoke again.
“Please — get up!”
Who was she talking to?
“Please, Chuck! Get up from there.”
I don’t want to get up I said to the woman’s voice, I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to get up.
The woman picked up my arm and twisted it. The pain shot to my finger-tips and the buzzing changed pitch again. Damn you Eleanor, I don’t want to get up. Let me alone.
My arm was warm against the cold snow; the buzzing stopped, the pain stopped.
They were replaced by a smell. The smell was good and it was bad. It smelled like something I knew. A jail. It smelled like a jail — no, not quite. It was a different smell from a jail, a different kind of lysol. It didn’t smell like lysol at all now, now that I had thought of lysol. It smelled like ether. Ether and flowers.
The flowers were roses, a big bunch of them, and they were very pink roses placed in a very white vase. Beyond them was a window with snow on the sill and on either side of the window was a very pale green wall. All of the colors seemed rich and smooth and quiet as if they had been put there for me to look at when I opened my eyes. The very pink roses contrasted with the very pale green wall.
And on the left side of the bed was a small white table, a dresser, two chairs and a door. The door was standing open a few inches and through the opening came the clack-clack of fast heels on the marble floor of the corridor. Clacking heels accompanied by flashing glimpses of white. And everything smelled like ether and roses.
