They rushed on to the anonymous dead. Finishing estimates as to the death time of their own living friends, they hurried on to people who were dying all across the land.
Planes crashed in the parlor. Trains toppled like timbers aflame. There were silent screams and tortures as the men sat idle-smoking their fresh-unwrapped cigars. Never ducking, the men sat flat-flanked in their chairs as cars splintered at their elbows and passengers were flung to hit the walls with soft, swift impact.
“Charred beyond recognition—”
“Crossing the tracks and she fell—Train ran over her—Picked her up in a basket—”
“Woman in Mellin Town—Husband came home—Found her in bed—Another man—Shot them and himself—”
While the women mingled their gasping breaths like perfumes, the men calmly carried out their direct, eye to eye, gray-frost talk of friends. “Remember Charlie Nesbitt who threw the burned mattress from the Clark Hotel at the Elk’s Convention? He died last year.” “Not old Charlie!” They stared at each other. “And here we are, still alive. Whatta you know?”
The women shuddered, clucked and laughed half-hysterically at what a world it was. They turned over several automobiles together, shook out the contents, examined them. They played detective, putting together a foully raped and dissected woman like a Chinese puzzle. After each subject they washed out their mouths with coffee and started fresh.
And finally, when the momentum died and the coffee pot was empty, they spiraled around and around to finally touch the subject to which they had been leading all through the autumn evening.
Themselves. How were they feeling?
Oh, Mrs. Hette still had her gallstones, but was bearing up.
Mrs. Spaulding was having her trouble too. She just knew she had stomach cancer. Was Mister Hette all right?
Mr. Hette’s back bothered him.
Oh, Mr. Spaulding’s back hurt him something awful, too. Some mornings he didn’t rise until nine!
Well—Mrs. Hette smiled her triumph—Mr. Hette didn’t get up until NOON!
“Of course,” Mrs. Spaulding fixed her hair. “I imagine Leonard and I’ll live to be old people. We’ve a good family record for it.”
“So have we,” said Mrs. Hette instantly.
Mrs. Spaulding ticked her fingers. “My mother died at eight-five, my father at ninety—”
“I thought you said he died at sixty-three?”
“Who?” Shrilly. “Father?” A laugh. “Ho, not him! Brisk as bacon at ninety!”
“Which one was it was an invalid from sixty on?”
“Invalid?” The blank surprise in Mrs. Spaulding’s eyes. “Oh. You must mean cousin Wilma. Third cousin Wilma...”
“Now.” Mrs. Hette moved her shoulders. “All my folks lived to be ninety. Same with Will’s. We’re liable to live a long, long time.”
“I just hope we all have our health. It ain’t no fun being old if you’re sick. You’ll be lucky if your gallstones don’t kick up.”
“I’m having them treated this month. And it’s a matter of time before Will’s back is cured. You ought to look into your cancer, also, Mrs.”
“Heavens, it isn’t cancer. Just gas, I know.”
They sat regarding each other, one eye no brighter than another, hair about the same grayness, wrinkles in like profusion; all balanced, mentally, physically. Not liking it.
“Well, it’s been nice.” Mrs. Hette got up suddenly, not looking at her hostess. “Hope when we come back to town in five years you’ll still be here.” A stiff smile.
“You just be sure you come back.” Drily.
The two men rose, smoking soft blue puffs of smoke, looking at each other with ancient soft warm eyes. They shook hands, slowly, tightly. “Well, Will?” “Well, Leo?” A hesitation. “Come back some time.” They both looked at the floor. “If I don’t see you again, well—be good.” “Same to you.”
“Lands, you’d think we were old, to hear you men talk!”
Everybody laughed. Coats were helped on, there was a hesitation and a number of farewells at the door, and some wavings when the Hette’s car finally drove off down the dark midnight street.
The walls of the living room were yellow with the nicotine given off by the talk of death. The entire house was dim, cut off from the world, all the air sucked out under great pressure. Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding walked about the parlor in a little solemn merry-go-round of emptying ash trays, clearing dishes, and turning out the lights.
Mr. Spaulding went up the stairs without a sound save a kind of old engine coughing. He was already in bed when his wife arrived, exhilarated, and got in. She lay half smiling, glowing, in the dark.
Finally, she heard him sigh.
“I feel terrible,” Leonard Spaulding said.
“Why?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he moaned. “I just don’t feel good. Depressed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You and that damned Mrs. Hette. Christ, what an evening. Will, he’s not so bad. But her and you. Christ, Christ, talk, talk!” He groaned in the dark room, all misery and ancient tiredness.
She tightened up. “We never have any one in any more.”
“We’re getting too old to have people in,” he cried, faintly. “There’s only one thing for old people to talk about, and you talked about it, by God, all evening!”
“Why, we didn’t—”
“Shut up,” he said, wearily, pleadingly, like a small withered child beside her. “I want to sleep.”
They both lay for five minutes in the dark. She turned away from him, cold, stiff, her eyelids tight clenched. And just before her anger at him seeped away and sleep flooded down all through her like a drenching of warm rain, she heard two faint far women’s voices talking one unto another, distantly, obscurely:
“My Will’s funeral was the finest the town ever had. Flowers? Thousands! I cried. People? Everyone in town!”—“Well, you should have been at Leonard’s funeral service. He looked so fine and natural, just like he was asleep. And flowers? Land! Banked around and banked around, and people!” — “Well, Will’s service was” — “They sang ‘Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.’” — “—people—” — “—flowers and—” — “—singing—”
The warm rain pattered over her. She slept.
I GOT SOMETHING YOU AIN’T GOT!
AGGIE LOU COULD hardly wait through the morning until Clarisse stopped in the house on the way home from school to lunch. Clarisse was the braided ten-year-old girl who lived next door and there was considerable rivalry between them.
Aggie Lou folded her body half out of the sunshiny window and called, “Clarisse, come up!”
“Why weren’t you in school?” cried Clarisse, perturbed that her life opponent should be bedded down and taking it easy away from the grim school life.
“Come up and find out!” replied Aggie Lou, flopping back into bed.
Clarisse came upstairs quickly, a strap of books pendulumming in one grubby fist.
Aggie Lou lay back, eyes closed, pleased with herself. “I got something you ain’t got,” she revealed.
“What?” asked Clarisse suspiciously.
“Maybe I’ll tell, maybe I won’t,” said Aggie Lou, lazily.
“I gotta go home and eat,” said Clarisse, not taken in by this strategy.
“Then you’ll never know what I got,” said Aggie Lou.
“Well, what is it?” shouted Clarisse, scowling.
“Bacteria,” announced Aggie Lou proudly.
Clarisse’s eyebrows went down. “What?”
“Bacteria. Microbes. Germs!”
“Oh, poo!” Clarisse swung her books carelessly. “Everybody’s got germs. I got germs, too. Looky.” She displayed ten fingers, equally begrubbed and the furthest state from antiseptic.
“That’s on the outside,” criticized Aggie Lou. “I got my germs on the inside, where it counts!”
Clarisse was finally impressed. “Inside?”
&nbs
p; “They’re running around all over my machine, Dad says. Dad smiles funny when he says it. So does the doctor. They say I got them all over my lungs, having a regular picnic.”
Clarisse looked at her as if she were some black-braided saint glowing in holy repose upon crisp linen. “Lordy.”
“The doctor took some of my germs and put them under one of them seeing things and they ran around playing cops and robbers under his eyes. So there!”
Clarisse had to sit down. Her face was a little pale and flushed at the same time. It was easy to see that Aggie Lou’s triumph had made inroads upon her peace of mind. This particular triumph was much bigger than Clarisse’s Monarch butterfly which she had captured with a piggy squeal in her back yard last week and taunted Aggie Lou with. It was even the next size triumph over Clarisse’s party dress, which was all ruffles and pink roses and ribbons. It was a factor over and above Clarisse’s Uncle Peter who spat brown spit from a toothless mouth and had one wooden leg. Germs. Real germs, inside!
“So,” finished Aggie Lou, controlling her triumph with admirable calm, “I won’t go to school ever again. I won’t have to learn arithmetic or anything!”
Clarisse sat there, defeated.
“And that ain’t all,” said Aggie Lou, holding back the best thing for the last.
“What else?” demanded Clarisse harshly.
Aggie Lou looked about her bedroom quietly, settling back and worming into the blankets warm and nice. Then she said, “I’m going to die.”
Clarisse leaped from her chair, hair bouncing in blonde startlement. “What?”
“Yes. I’m going to die.” Aggie Lou smiled gravely. “So there, Smarty!”
“Oh, Aggie Lou, you’re lying! You’re a dirty fibber!”
“I’m not either! You just ask Mama or Papa or Doctor Nielson! They’ll tell you! I’m going to die. And I’m going to have the nicest coffin ever. Dad said so. You should see Dad when he talks to me. Sometimes he comes in late at night and sits here, where you’re sitting, and holds my hand. I can’t see him very well, except his eyes. They’re funny. He says lots of things. He says I’ll have a coffin plated with gold, and satin inside, a regular doll house. He says I’ll have dolls to play with. He says he’s buying me some land of my own for my doll house where I can play all by myself, Smarty. It’ll be on a hill where I can own the whole world just by looking at it, Dad said it, too. And, and, and I’ll just play with my dolls and look pretty. I’m going to have a green party dress like yours, and a Monarch butterfly, and better than your Uncle Peter I’ll have SAINT Peter for myself!”
Clarisse’s face was tense with keeping back the jealous rage in her. Tears stood bold on her cheeks, and she rose undecided from her perch to stare at Aggie Lou.
Then, screaming fitfully, she plunged from the room, ran down the stairs, and out into the spring day, and across the green lawn to her house, sobbing all the way.
Clarisse slammed the door in upon herself and the kitchen cooking odors. Clarisse’s mother was dissecting apples into a crust-lined tin and she declaimed against the door slamming.
“Oh, I don’t care!” snuffled the little girl, sliding her pink bloomered bottom upon the built-in table bench. “That old Aggie Lou next door!”
Clarisse’s mother looked up. “Have you two been at it again? How many times have I told you?—”
“Well, she’s going to die, and she sits there in bed smiling at me, smiling at me. Gee!”
The mother dropped her knife. “Will you say that again, young lady?”
“She’s going to die, and she sits there laughing at me! Oh, mother, what’ll I do?”
“What’ll you do? About it? Or what?” Bewilderment. The mother had to sit down, her fingers were jumping up and down on her apron.
“I’ve got to stop her, Mother! She can’t get away with it!”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Clarisse, being so thoughtful.”
“I’m not being nice, Mama. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.”
“But I don’t understand. If you hate her, why are you trying to help her?”
“I don’t want to help her!”
“But you just said—”
“Oh, Mama, you don’t help!” She cried bitterly and bit her lips.
“Honestly, you children. It’s so hard to figure you out. Do you or don’t you want to do something about Aggie Lou?”
“I do! I’ve got to stop her! She can’t do it. She’s so stuck up about her—germs!” Clarisse pounded the table top. “She keeps singing ‘I got something you ain’t got!’”
Her mother exhaled. “Oh, I think I’m beginning to see.”
“Mother, can I die? Let me die first. Let me get even with her, don’t let her do this!”
“Clarisse!” A heart whirled like the egg-beater beneath the calico apron. “Don’t you ever talk like that again! You don’t know what you’re saying! My land, oh, my land!”
“Why can’t I talk like this? I guess I can talk if Aggie Lou can.”
“Well, you don’t know anything about death, in the first place. It’s not like what you think it is.”
“What is it like?”
“Well, it’s—it’s—well. Goodness, Clarisse, what a silly question. There’s—nothing wrong with it. It’s quite natural really. Yes, it’s quite natural.”
Her mother felt herself caught between two philosophies. The philosophy of children, so unknowing, so one-dimensional, and her own full-blown beliefs which were too raw, dark and all-consuming to descend upon the sweet little ginghamed things who skirted through their ten year era with soprano laughter. It was a delicate subject. And, as with many mothers, she did not take the realist’s way out, she simply built upon the fantasy. Heaven knows it was easier to look on the bright side, and what little girls don’t know can’t hurt them. So she simply told Clarisse what Clarisse didn’t want to hear. She told her, “Death is a long sweet sleep, with maybe different kinds of nice dreams. That’s all it is.”
Therefore she was dismayed when Clarisse broke into a new storm of rebellion. “That’s the trouble! I’ll never be able to talk to kids at school, after this. Aggie Lou’ll laugh at me!”
The mother suddenly got up. “Go up to your room, Clarisse, and don’t bother me. You can ask questions later, but for heavens sake leave me alone to think now! If Aggie Lou’s going to die, I have to see her mother right away!”
“Will you do something to stop Aggie Lou from dying?”
The mother looked down into the child’s face. There was no compassion or understanding there, just the bright ignorance and primitive jealousy and emotion of a child wanting something and not understanding what degree of something it wants.
“Yes,” said the mother strangely. “We’ll try to stop Aggie Lou from dying.”
“Oh, thank you, Mother!” cried Clarisse in triumph. “I guess we’ll show her!”
The mother smiled weakly, vaguely, closing her eyes. “Yes, I guess we will!”
MRS. SHEPHERD knocked at the back of the Partridge house. Mrs. Partridge answered. “Oh, hello, Helen.”
Mrs. Shepherd murmured something and stepped into the kitchen, thinking to herself. Then when she was seated in the kitchen eating nook she looked up at Mrs. Partridge and said, “I didn’t know about Aggie Lou.”
The carefully assembled smile on Mrs. Partridge’s face fell apart. She sat down, too, slowly. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“No, of course you don’t, but I’ve been wondering...”
“About what?”
“It seems silly. But somehow I think we’ve raised our children wrong. I think we’ve told them the wrong things, or else we haven’t told them enough.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” said Mrs. Partridge.
“It’s just that Clarisse is jealous of Aggie Lou.”
“But that seems so strange. Why should she be jealous?”
“You know how children are. Sometimes one of them gets something, something neither good
nor bad nor worth wanting, and they build it into something shining and wonderful so all other children are jealous. Children have the most inexplicable methods of obtaining their ends. They promote jealousy with the most peculiar weapons, even Death. Clarisse doesn’t really want—want to be sick. She just—well—she just thinks she does. She doesn’t really know what Death is. She hasn’t been touched by it. Our family has been lucky. Her grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts are all alive. There hasn’t been a death among us in twenty years at least.”
Mrs. Partridge drew into herself, and turned over Aggie Lou’s life as if it were a doll to be examined. “We’ve fed Aggie Lou on pretty dreams, too. She’s so young, and now with the illness, well, we thought we would make it easier for her if anything should happen.
“Yes, but don’t you see that it’s causing complications.”
“It’s making my daughter’s life bearable. I don’t know how she’d go on otherwise,” said Mrs. Partridge.
Mrs. Shepherd said, “Well, I’m going to tell my daughter tonight that it’s all nonsense, that she’s not to believe one more word of it.”
“But how thoughtless,” came back Mrs. Partridge. “She would only rush over and tell Aggie Lou, and Aggie Lou would—well—it just wouldn’t be right. You see?”
“But Clarisse is unhappy.”
“She has her health, at least. She can bear being unhappy awhile. Poor Aggie Lou, she deserves what little joy she can find.”
Mrs. Partridge had a good point and stuck to it. Mrs. Shepherd had to agree that it might be wise to let it go a while longer, “Except that Clarisse is so disturbed.”