“His feet are cold,” Neil said critically.
“What do you expect?” Alice snapped at him, past all patience. “Your father is dying. Don’t you understand that? Only an amputation could save him at this point, and in his condition he couldn’t survive amputation. He’s worn out, an old man. He
“That’s not my fault, is it?’ Neil shouted. Anderson woke for a moment at the noise, and Neil went away. His father had changed so much in the last few days that Neil felt awkward with him. It was like being with a stranger.
“The baby—is it a boy or a girl?” His voice was barely audible.
“We don’t know yet, Mr. Anderson. It may take another hour. But no more than that. Everything is ready. She made the ligatures herself, from scraps of rope. Buddy went up to the surface for a bucket of snow—he says it was a real March blizzard up there—and we’ve been able to sterilize the knife and wash out a couple of pieces of cotton. It won’t be a hospital delivery, but I’m sure it will be all right.”
“We must pray.”
“
Anderson smiled, and it was not, for a wonder, a really unpleasant expression. Dying seemed to mellow the old man; he had never been nicer than now. “You’re just like my wife, just like Lady. She must be in hell for her sins and her scoffing, but hell can’t be much worse than this. Somehow, though, I can’t imagine her there.”
“Judge not lest ye be judged, Mr. Anderson.”
“Yes, Lady would always hark on that one too. It was her favorite Scripture.”
Buddy interrupted them: “Time now, Alice.”
“Go on, go on, don’t dally here,” Anderson urged. Unnecessarily, for she was already gone, taking the lamp with her. The darkness began to cover him like a woolen blanket, like a comforter.
It was a boy.
Anderson was trying to say something. Neil could not make out quite what. He bent his ear closer to the old man’s dry lips. He couldn’t believe that his father was dying. His father! He didn’t like to think about it.
The old man mumbled something. “Try and talk louder,” Neil shouted into his good ear. Then to the others standing around: “Where’s the lamp? Where’s Alice? She should be here now. What are you all standing around like that for?’
“Alice is with the baby,” Blossom whispered. “She said she’d be only another minute.”
Then Anderson spoke again, loud enough for Neil but no one else to hear. “Buddy.” That was all he said, though he said it several times.
“What’d he say?” Blossom asked.
“He said he wants to talk to me alone. The rest of you, go away and leave us together, huh? Dad’s got things he wants to tell me alone.”
There were shufflings and sighs as the few people who were not yet sleeping (the waking period having ended many hours ago) walked off into other areas of the tuber to leave father and son together. Neil strained to hear the least sound that would have meant that one of them remained nearby. In this abysmal darkness, privacy was never a sure thing.
“Buddy ain’t here,” he said at last, assured that they were alone. “He’s with Maryann and the baby. So’s Alice. There’s some kind of problem about the way it breathes.” Neil’s throat was dry, and when he tried to make saliva and swallow it, it hurt.
Curiously, Greta’s lie had made its most lasting impression on Neil. He believed in it with the most literal, unquestioning faith, just as Maryann believed in Christ’s virgin birth. Neil had the ability to brush aside mere, inconvenient facts and considerations of logic like cobwebs. He had even decided that
“Then get Orville, will you?” Anderson whispered vexedly. “And bring the others back. I have something to say.”
“You can tell it to me, huh? Huh, Dad?”
“Get Orville, I said!” The old man began to cough.
“Okay, okay!” Neil walked some distance from the small hollow in the fruit where his father was lying, counted to a hundred (skipping, in his haste, everything between fiftynine and seventy), and returned. “Here he is, Dad, just like you said.”
