Should have turned it off, he thought. It’ll be on all night. But he had meant to return to the living room and to the television shows he enjoyed. “Bonanza.” He had wanted to see “Bonanza.” He liked Ben Cartwright and he liked Hoss, but he didn’t think much of Little Joe and Adam. Little Joe and Adam seemed put-ons to him. But not Hoss. Hoss had the heart of an innocent, a large, playful man who believed in being right and doing right. Hoss was the kind of man everyone ought to be, he believed.
She had liked “Bonanza” also. She saw in Hoss and Little Joe and Adam likenesses of her own sons. Sometimes she would say, “That’s just like …” and she would name one of her sons. Always, when she found the comparison, Hoss or Little Joe or Adam had done something heroic. And she had liked Sid Caesar and Milton Berle. They made her laugh. And she had liked to hear Dennis Day sing. His soft Irish ballads made her weep. Her sons were also like Dennis Day.
The sizzling of the television was like the sound of burning green wood.
I’m wrong, he thought. “Bonanza” ’s not on tonight.
What is tonight? he asked silently.
Thursday, he answered silently.
No. Not Thursday.
Wednesday.
What was the date of his journal?
Friday?
He could feel the burning from his hip seeping into his body, spiraling through him, rising into his stomach and throat, and he began to weep from the pain and from the realization that he was alone.
He thought of her. When she was there, she would sit near him with a book she pretended to read, watching his face for the signals of hurt.
“You want water?”
“A little bit. My throat’s dry.”
“Better take another pill.”
“What time was it when I took the last one?”
“It’s been a couple of hours. You can take another one now.”
But she was not there, and he could not get the water or the pills.
He felt White Dog move against his chair and nuzzle her face gently into his arm. If you want out, you’ll have to get out by yourself, he thought. He leaned his head against his chair and smiled at the absurd image of White Dog opening a door with her paws and strolling outside. But maybe it was possible. Some animals were smarter than people. He remembered a mule he had owned: Bell. Bell was smart. There was not a gate lock Bell could not open, given time, or a fence Bell could not leap. In spring, in the time for plowing, Bell would tease him by escaping from the pasture at night and he would have to go into the swamp in the mornings and play hide-and-seek until Bell surrendered. In his mind, he could see Bell slowly circling the thicket of swamp brush, watching him. Great God Almighty, Bell could jump. Not a horse alive could jump fences better. But mules were smart. Smarter than horses.
The pain was in his mouth, his face, behind his eyes. He sucked hard to breathe. A trickle of perspiration seeped from his forehead, down the slope of his nose and into his eye. He moaned aloud and White Dog rubbed against his arm.
He knew he would have to get the pill and take it. Maybe the pill would break open inside him and spread its numbing anesthesia to his brain, and he would rest. He pulled his foot from the lower brace of the walker, where he had rested it to stop the aching in his hip. A surge of blood pumped through him, slamming against the thin shell of his chest. He swallowed to control the nausea. White Dog stepped back from him and whined. Don’t get in the way, he thought. You get in my way, I’ll fall for sure. He caught the hand support of his walker and eased himself forward from his seat. The pain raged in his body. There was no strength in his arms or legs and he paused and bowed his head and waited for the pain to subside. He could feel in his lips the pulse of his heartbeat. He had never felt as weak. Got to get the pill, he thought. Got to.
He pulled harder at the hand support and his body rose up slowly from the chair. Lights exploded in his eyes, flashing in colors. Perspiration oozed from his face, across the corners of his mouth. A fire was in his hip. White Dog lifted her front feet and placed them on the bar of the walker. He tried to speak, to push the dog away, but he could not make words. He stood on his good leg and lifted the walker and slipped it forward and White Dog dropped from the bar and moved away. He limped once on his good leg, sliding the walker. He could sense a queasiness rising sourly from his stomach, and he tried to swallow it back, but it filled his mouth and spilled over his chin and onto his chest. He coughed, and the walker slid from his hands and he fell violently across the floor. He cried aloud, cried in great hurt, and the pain crushed him, squeezed his mind into unconsciousness.
Kate awoke suddenly, jerked from sleep by intuition violent in its power. She touched Noah, and Noah rolled sleepily from his side to his back.
“What’s the matter?” Noah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You hear something?”
“I’m not sure.”
Noah listened. “I don’t hear anything,” he said. “Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong,” Kate said. “Get up and see what it is.”
“Good Lord, Kate.” Noah did not move. The gathering of the thin curtain billowed easily at the opened window of their bedroom.
“Well, if you won’t, I will,” complained Kate. She slipped from the bed and went to the window and looked out. She could see the lights from her father’s house. “What time is it?” she asked.
Noah turned the clock on the bedside stand to him. “One,” he said. “A few minutes after.”
“Daddy’s up.”
Noah could hear the fretting of her voice. He moved from the bed and stood beside her at the window. “Maybe he’s just using the bathroom.”
“Too many lights on,” Kate mumbled. “Maybe he’s sick.”
“Maybe,” Noah said. He pushed back the curtain of the window and peered into the murkiness of the night. Then: “God Almighty.” His voice was a whisper.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
“Out there.”
“What?”
“Look.” He pointed with his finger. White Dog stood at the side of the road, leading to the house, her head majestically lifted.
Kate’s hands flew to her face. “The white dog,” she gasped. “Daddy was right. It’s there.” She shuddered suddenly. “Noah, something’s wrong.” She touched her own arm with her hand. Her arm was cold. She shuddered again. She could sense her father’s voice clinging to her like air. She said again, in a loud cry, “Noah, something’s wrong.”
And Noah, too, shuddered. “I’ll go see.” He quickly pulled on his pants and started out of the room. “Call Carrie,” he said. “Tell Holman to come on out.”
“I’m going, too,” Kate insisted.
“Call Carrie first, then come on,” Noah said. He rushed from the room.
Noah did not see the white dog, but it did not matter. The white dog had been there. He had seen it. And Kate had seen it. There was something eerie about seeing the white dog standing motionless at the roadside. As he ran across the yard to his father-in-law’s house, Noah could feel the chill still clamped to him. Where in the name of hell had the dog been all this time? he wondered. How could a dog keep out of sight so well? God, it was white, the whitest animal he’d ever seen, and he’d killed a white deer on a hunt to Little St. Simon’s Island.
Noah saw the lights snap on in the house where Carrie and Holman lived. Yes, he thought, something’s wrong. Bad wrong. He ran faster. He saw the white dog again as he crossed the road. The dog was standing on the steps of the back porch, its head bobbing at the door in a sniffing motion. And then the dog turned its head to him and moved slowly from the steps and disappeared into the shrubbery beside the house. “Damn,” Noah muttered. The dog frightened him.
Noah did not think his father-in-law was alive when he saw him on the floor, his walker toppled across his body. He threw the walker aside and fell on his knees and turned his father-in-law and saw the thick, clabbered waste on his face and chest. The odor struck Noah
forcefully, and he gagged. He cupped his hand and wiped the waste away from his father-in-law’s mouth and he tried to feel for a neck-pulse. The pulsebeat was weak and erratic. “Oh, God,” Noah whispered. He heard the screened door to the back porch open and the rush of footsteps through the kitchen. He knew it was Kate.
“Daddy?” Kate cried from the kitchen.
“In here,” Noah said.
Kate hurried into the room and saw Noah holding her father.
She stopped abruptly and stared down at them. She stepped backward, as though pushed. She said, in a small, frightened voice, “Is—is he … ?”
“No,” Noah snapped. “Call out to Holman and tell him to bring his car, then get me a wet cloth.”
“He’s—he’s dead?”
“No, damn it. Do what I tell you,” Noah growled. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”
12
The sweet, numbing medicine flowed in the rivers of his blood stream, and he was euphoric.
He did not know he was in a hospital bed or that a slender plastic tube curled down from a container above him and fit into his arm, slow-dripping the sweet, numbing medicine into him. He did not seem to be at all fixed to a place or an object. He seemed, instead, to float weightlessly in the thin ether of a dream, with the power of gods to push himself about in flight. And in swim strokes, his arms pulling him easily through cool, astral distances, he soared freely above his daughters and sons, who waited as sentinels at his bedside.
His dream was as sweet as his medicine.
Marshall Harris asked, “You going to marry Cora?”
“Would if I had some money,” he said.
“Sam, you wait on money, the only way you’ll be taking that woman to bed is in your sleep and I’ll guarantee you that ain’t as good as the real thing.”
“Lot you know about it,” he snorted. “Don’t see you knocking down the doors of any women around here.”
Marshall laughed. “What you see and what you don’t see are two different things. I do all right.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t marry me if I asked her,” he said. “She’s got her mind set on being a nurse.”
“Sam, you’re about as blind as that old colored man that plays the guitar up by the courthouse,” Marshall countered. “Never saw a woman that wanted to be married as much as Cora. Looks to me like the only person she wants to play nurse to is you.”
“I don’t know—”
“Well, I do,” Marshall said. “Every time I see her, she’s asking where you are. I swear to God, it looks like you think more of them mules down in the stables than you do her. You spend more time with them.”
“I got work to do, Marshall.”
“You plowing the wrong fields, Sam. The wrong fields. That’s one good-looking woman.”
He stroked his arms through the ether and turned in his flight like an eagle skimming across currents of warm, billowing air and he was in bed with her, holding her, and she was fitting her body gladly to him. Her face was against his face, damp-hot in the dark, damp-hot room. There was a sound, as soft as purring, in her throat. She moved quickly and raised her body over him, her face thrown back in a swallowed cry. The pink nipple tongues of her breasts were moist and slippery. She was beautiful. Slender and muscled and graceful. She was beautiful beyond all beauty he had ever imagined. And he bridged his hard, strong body against her, effortlessly lifting her with his thighs and abdomen, and the swallowed cry flew like a song from her throat.
He stroked again with his arms—powerfully—and now he was standing on the roadside with her as she coaxed the uncertain white puppy to her.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.” She turned her face to him. “Looks starved. We need to find it some food.”
“Somebody threw it out,” he said. “Looks like they just opened a car door and threw it out.”
“It’ll die out here.”
“I guess. It’s not very old.”
“I’m going to take it home.”
“I don’t know—”
“I do.”
He twisted his body and flipped his hands gently and felt the cool air of his dream sliding through his fingers. His fingers touched the face of White Dog. White Dog stood with her front feet on the brace of his walker.
“You want out, you’ll have to let yourself out,” he said. “I can’t move.”
White Dog stepped back, still on her back legs, standing as erect as a man. She turned and walked on her back legs to the kitchen door and turned the knob with her paw and pushed open the door and walked outside.
He laughed, watching White Dog. He said, “Great God Almighty. Nobody believes I’ve got a white dog. And she can dance with me and walk on her hind legs and open doors.”
“Daddy?”
He opened his eyes. He could smell the disinfectant of the hospital.
“Daddy? It’s me. Alma.”
He nodded. The faces of his other children crowded in the periphery of his vision.
“How do you feel?” asked Alma.
He was tired, but he did not hurt. He saw the coil of the slender plastic tube. “All right,” he said hoarsely.
“You’ve got an infection in your hip,” Alma told him. “They’re giving you antibiotics. I guess you passed out from the pain.”
“I slipped,” he said weakly.
Kate moved beside Alma. She said, eagerly, “Daddy, we saw the white dog.”
He heard her voice from the hallway of the hospital, a lunatic squawking that pierced the thickness of the walls and echoed in a shrill, annoying pitch. Neelie.
Good God, he thought: Neelie.
She entered the room with Kate, pushing past Kate in an exaggerated rush that carried her dramatically to his bedside. She clasped her hands nervously, in a praying motion, and let them tremble beneath her chin. Her eyes dampened instantly. “Oh, Jesus, Lord, you doing all right, Mr. Sam?” Neelie cried.
“I’m all right, Neelie,” he said calmly. He could see Kate behind Neelie, rolling her eyes upward, mumbling to herself.
“They told me you done almost drown in your own puke,” Neelie wailed.
Kate sighed aloud.
“Don’t think so,” he said. He wanted to laugh at Kate.
“Jesus, Lord, don’t know why them girls didn’t call Neelie soon as it happened,” Neelie complained. “Them girls don’t think right, Mr. Sam.”
“I called you the next day, Neelie,” Kate said defensively. Neelie turned to acknowledge Kate. “I know you did, honey,” she said pitifully. “You one of the sweet ones, thinking about Neelie.”
Kate moved close to the bed. Her face was splotched from aggravation. “You feeling better, Daddy?”
“Honey, he feeling fine,” Neelie said authoritatively. “Got him some color. He feeling fine.”
“I’m better,” he said. “Not much pain in my hip.”
“Neelie insisted on coming to see you,” Kate told him. “We left Carrie cleaning the house and watching the kids.”
“Them’s two sweet girls,” Neelie declared. “They always helping Neelie out. I been trying to get up here, but Arlie’s been off working a sawmill job up near Gainesville, leaving me with all them babies. Jesus, Lord, them babies keep Neelie on the go.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m glad you could come today.”
“Well, you quit your worrying,” Neelie commanded. “We getting things ready for you down at the house. Bless them sweet girls. They been helping Neelie out a little.”
Kate rolled her eyes again, wearily.
“It’s a good thing you around, Neelie,” he said. “I noticed they work better when you’re there with them, setting a good example.”
Kate glared at him.
“They good girls.”
“They are. Yes, they are,” he said.
“They just ain’t never had it hard, like we did, Mr. Sam.”
“I guess not.”
“Ain’t their fault. Neelie’s been
doing for them since they was babies. They used to it.”
Kate looked away. He knew she was chewing on her lower lip, her habit of frustration.
“You been feeding my dog?” he asked Kate.
“We put some food out every night and it’s gone the next morning,” Kate said. “I guess it’s your dog. Nobody’s seen it since the other night.”
“Can’t nobody see my dog unless she wants you to,” he said smugly.
Neelie leaned close to him. She whispered, “That a ghost dog, ain’t it?”
“Might be,” he said.
“The girls told me about that dog. Say it’s white.”
“What I call her. White Dog.”
“Kate say she seen it.”
“I did,” Kate said evenly. “Noah saw it, too. Noah found where it’d been staying, Daddy. Under the house, right under where your bed is.”
He moved against the pillow on his bed. He could see the apprehension in Neelie’s eyes. “Maybe you saw her, or maybe you just thought you did. Sometimes when I’m playing with her, she just turns her head and she’s gone.”
Neelie moaned fearfully.
“Daddy’s just putting you on,” Kate said. “It’s a real dog. I saw it. Noah, too.”
“Just disappears, like it never was there.”
“Daddy, don’t do that. You’ll scare Neelie.”
Neelie touched Kate’s arm. “Honey, you don’t know about ghost dogs. I seen two or three. Don’t never bark. Don’t no dogs bark around it, neither.” Her voice trembled.
Funny, he thought. I’ve never heard White Dog bark. Never. Whimper, yes. But not bark. And I’ve never heard any other dogs barking because White Dog was around. He forced a short laugh. “Nothing but a stray,” he said. “Somebody must of had her tied up and beat on her. She’s scared of people. Everybody but me. That’s what you get for feeding a stray.”
“I don’t want nothing to do with that dog,” Neelie said.
“Neelie, that dog doesn’t want anything to do with you either, or nobody else for that matter,” Kate said. “God knows where she stays, but she keeps away from everybody but Daddy.”
“You’ll see her,” he promised. “Soon as I get home, you’ll see her. I’ll get her to come out. You’ll see her dancing with me on my walker.”