She pointed miserably to the ceiling. “Howard’s up there, in our bedroom. With the Luger he brought home from the war. He locked the door after I got up and when I went up to call him to breakfast because he didn’t come down, he said, real peaceful through the door, ‘Trudie, don’t be afraid. But I’ve got to die, and you’ll have the insurance for yourself and the kids.’”
She put her young and work-worn hands over her face and sobbed desperately. The house was utterly silent. “We’ve got two children, Joe and Elsie,” she stammered. “Joe’s seven; Elsie’s five. They’re sitting on the floor near the door, upstairs, but Howard won’t listen to them. But he won’t shoot himself, either, long’s they’re there.” She wiped her face as simply as a child with the palms of her hands, and looked at Johnny with her wet eyes. “Is that why you wanted them to talk to him?”
“Yes, of course,” said Johnny gently. “He’s a good father, and doesn’t want to frighten them. Tell me about him. How old is he? What does he do? Why does he want to kill himself?”
Howard Thorne was thirty-four. He and his wife had been born in a very small country town in West Virginia; they had been “sweethearts” all their lives, and so they had married when Howard was twenty-three and Elsie was twenty. They had come to Barryfield shortly after that. They had no “folks” back in West Virginia, none that mattered, anyway.
Mrs. Thorne kept her trembling head cocked in terror toward the ceiling as she talked, sitting on the edge of a chair and wringing her hands. They were Methodists, she said, but they were broad-minded, and went to Mr. Fletcher’s church. She appealed to Johnny for understanding of her broad-mindedness, with a pleading look in her really pretty black eyes. Johnny nodded without comment. “Well, anyway,” said Mrs. Thorne, her voice shaking, “Howard always worked hard in that big service station out on Union Road, and we saved our money, because Howard wanted a service station of his own. He is real handy with tools; he can take apart a car and put it together again like nobody’s business. Then Howard was drafted, and he and the government sent money, but I had to get a job part time in a store to make out. I didn’t really have to work; we’d’ve got along, but I wanted to save Howard’s money so he could get that service station when he got out of the Army.”
A childish voice floated down the stairway. “Daddy, Daddy, we want to come in and talk to you. Daddy, this is Joe. Please, Daddy.” A little girl’s voice cried out once, piteously, and Mrs. Howard jumped to her feet.
“Leave the children alone with their father,” said Johnny. He was sitting on the arm of an old but polished rocker. “Go on, Mrs. Thorne.”
Howard Thorne had returned from the wars—the everlasting, accursed wars, thought Johnny with bitterness—eager, happy, ambitious, and without a scratch. He and his young wife had figured out it would take about four more years of careful saving, or maybe only three, to have that coveted service station. “We didn’t want to be left broke,” said Trudie Thorne, “so we wanted an edge, for a down payment on a house. Howard don’t hold with government loans. He always said a man’s got to stand on his own feet, or what’d become of the country? Anyway, Howard got his old job back in the big service station, with a big raise, Mr. Judd was so glad to have him back. And then Howard’s legs got weak. He didn’t pay too much attention. That was almost two years ago. But the legs got weaker, and he’d come home, and he’d have to sit down right away, couldn’t play with the kids like he used to do, and then he’d get real tired and go to bed early, not even staying up for the radio, even his favorite stories.”
And then, four months ago, Howard’s weak legs got very much worse, and he went to a doctor. It was multiple sclerosis, a particularly rapid and relentless kind. In the past two months he had not been able to take-more than two or three steps at a time, and then only a few times a day. He had had to give up his job. He had had to give up his ambition for his own service station. The doctors had said that the disease was temporarily arrested, and that his arms were not affected, and might not be for years. But what could a man do without his legs, asked Mrs. Thorne, with a fresh burst of agonized tears. “Especially a big, upstanding man like Howard, who liked sports, and couldn’t hardly stay still a minute, even after working hard all day.”
So for two months Howard had sat in this little snug house, brooding desperately, sitting alone in silence for hours, not answering his wife or children, not laughing. “And he’s got such a big fine voice,” said his wife tearfully. “The best and nicest voice in the world. It’s like he died, two months ago. It’s like having a stranger in the house. And I do try, I do! I thought about my old job, they wanted me back full time, and I said to Howard I’d go back, and he could watch the kids from a chair, a wheel chair. That made it awful bad for Howard when I said that, but I was just trying to cheer him up and showing him it wasn’t the end of the world, or something. But after I’d said that he wouldn’t even take his medicine, and wouldn’t let the doctor examine him or do anything for him. He was like he wanted to die.”
Johnny nodded compassionately. Yes, Howard Thorne had wanted to die. He felt he was a burden, and for such a man the idea was intolerable.
“He just sits with the bankbook,” said Mrs. Thorne, gulping painfully. “And then I go every week and draw some money out, and he looks at the balance again. Sure, it’s going down, but it kind of hurts him terribly. Once in a while he’ll say, ‘Well, Trudie, there goes a little more of our service station. And one of these days, maybe in a couple of years, it’ll all be gone. And what then? Welfare? Our kind of folks don’t ask for that; we’d rather die!’” Mrs. Thorne lifted her head proudly. “And we sure would, and that’s why I know how Howard feels.”
There was five thousand dollars in GI insurance, Mrs. Thorne said, and Howard also had fifteen thousand dollars in other insurance. Today he’d told his wife that would help her, with their five thousand dollars savings, for a number of years, “until the kids can take care of themselves.” Worst of all, sobbed Mrs. Thorne, he’d told his wife that she was still young, and still pretty, and she could marry again, “and have a real man. Mr. Fletcher, that’s what he said. A real man! As if my Howard isn’t! Why, I never looked at another man in my life, and I wouldn’t look at another, that’s for sure!”
Johnny stood up. He said gently, “The situation for Howard isn’t as desperate as he thinks it is, Mrs. Thorne. In fact, no situation is quite as terrible as we all think. He’s been hit pretty bad, I know. I’ll go up and talk to him, and you come too.”
The little hall upstairs was hardly more than a box with three doors leading off from it. But the floor, though bare, was brilliantly polished, even in this dim light. Crouched on it, in a miserable small heap, were two very blond children, their faces stained with tears. Their heads were pressed against one of the doors, and they were whimpering dolefully, face to face for the first time with absolute tragedy. They did not even look up at their mother and Johnny. As Johnny stood over them, aching, the boy lifted his fist and beat mournfully on the door, and cried, “Daddy, Daddy, come out!” The girl cried, rubbing her hands into her eyes.
A man answered in a muffled voice, “Go away, Joe, boy. Go away, Elsie, honey. Go away to your Ma. Don’t cry, don’t cry. Daddy can’t stand it. He’s got to do something for you, and you’re stopping him.”
“Howard, Howard, darling!” sobbed Mrs. Thorne, and leaned across her children and put her lips to the door. “Don’t do this to us, sweetheart. Don’t!”
Howard’s voice came subdued, mourning: “Trudie, Trudie. I’ve got to. You’ll have the money. If I don’t, how’re you and the kids going to live? I’m no good, God damn it; I’ll never be any good from here on, don’t you know that? Take the kids away. I’ve got to do a little praying, first.”
Johnny spoke up, firmly, “Don’t pray, Howard. It won’t do you any good. God won’t forgive you.”
“It’s the minister, Mr. Fletcher,” Mrs. Thorne said with haste. “The minister, who’s in the papers, Howar
d, you know, the one you like. I called him, honey.”
There was a little silence, and then, heartbreakingly, Howard began to sob, the heavy, dry sobs of a man in total anguish. “You shouldn’t’ve called him, Trudie. You shouldn’t’ve troubled the Reverend. What can he do for any of us? A man’s got to face God all by himself.”
“That’s right, Howard,” said Johnny. “All by himself. But you’re not facing God. You aren’t telling Him your troubles, and asking for His help. You’re hating God, Howard. You’re trying to revenge yourself on Him, because of your illness. You’ll show God, won’t you, that He can’t do this to you?”
“That’s a goddam lie!” Howard shouted, and there was a squeak of wheels, and Johnny knew that the poor young man had come closer to the door. “I just want to do something for Trudie and the kids! I can’t do nothing for them no more! You ministers, why, you—!”
Johnny waited until the raucous panting close to the door stopped. Then he said, “All right, Howard. You want to make your family feel wretched and guilty all their lives, because of you. You aren’t a brave man; you’re a coward. You haven’t any self-respect, because you think that a few thousand dollars are more valuable to your family than you are! How much? Twenty-five thousand dollars altogether! Why, in the old slave days a man could buy a couple of slaves for that! Is that all the pride you have in yourself? Howard Thorne, sold for twenty-five thousand dollars!”
“Minister or no minister, them’s fighting words, mister!” Howard’s voice rose to a yell. “If I had my legs I’d make you eat ’em, so help me God!” He beat frenziedly on the door with his fists, and they sounded like the roll of drums. The children raised their voices in a wail of fear.
Johnny smiled at the furious passion in that Southern voice, and he said cheerfully, “All right, let me in, and make me eat my words. You’re not convincing me that you’re worth even twenty-five thousand dollars. You convince me, and I’ll”—he paused, for he had been about to relapse into lusty Army language. He coughed. Howard was listening, then he grunted. “It’s a trick, a lousy trick,” he said. “You probably got some cops with you.”
“No cops,” said Johnny. “But I warn you, I’m a big man and I can take on ten like you, Howard. Ten like you even with good legs.”
He smiled again at the angry and contemptuous snort. Make a would-be suicide enraged, and half the work was done. Howard said, “I can lick you even now, with these damn legs of mine, and I can prove it!”
“What’re you doing in a wheel chair?” asked Johnny.
Mrs. Thorne said eagerly, “Howard made it for himself, Mr. Fletcher! He sure did! When his legs got real bad. He can walk downstairs, but then he goes up and gets around in his chair. It’s got rubber wheels.”
“To match a rubber head,” said Johnny. The children were staring up at him, their tears drying on their cheeks. This was a refreshing note to them, a normal, happy note, in the incomprehensible horror that had come upon them this morning. Joe actually giggled weakly, and his sister, not understanding, giggled with him. Johnny bent and tousled their heads, and they laughed with shy pleasure. “Nice kids,” he said. “Bright kids, too. Wonder where they got their intelligence. From their mother, I guess. Nobody else.”
“Leave my kids alone!” roared the poor young man behind the door.
“I’m just looking them over,” said Johnny soothingly, and he winked at Mrs. Thorne. “Their mother won’t be able to take care of them after you’ve shot your fool head off. She’ll want to save the money for their education, so I’ll arrange for them to go to an orphan asylum. We’ve got a fairly good one here.”
“Daddy don’t have a rubber head,” said Joe, and laughed happily. “He’s got red hair.”
Mrs. Thorne was blinking, over and over, trying to comprehend. The minister should be talking about God and sin, and sympathizing with poor Howard instead of tormenting him. But there the Reverend stood, grinning down at the children, while Howard bellowed and cursed behind the door. It wasn’t good for the kids to hear such language. “Howard,” she pleaded, when her husband paused for breath—and effect—after a particularly lurid passage. “The kids never heard you talk like that before. Joe’s listening, and laughing fit to kill. Let the minister in to talk to you, please, Howard.”
“Making fun of me, my own kids,” Howard groaned.
“Well, you are funny,” said Johnny. “By the way, you’ve made me homesick for the Army. Where’d you steal the Luger?”
“I paid ten dollars for it!” shouted Howard. “Listen to the ——!”
“You’re wrong,” said Johnny. “My parents were married. Were yours? Decent people don’t go around scaring the wits put of their wives, trying to drum up sympathy. Well? Let me in, and I’ll weep on your shoulder.”
“I’ll let you in!” said Howard between his teeth. “And I’ll knock your head off! Trudie, get the kids away from the door; take ’em into their bedroom. I’ve got something to talk about with that fella out there!”
Trudie pulled the intensely interested children to their feet and hustled them off, looking backward at Johnny over her shoulder, her eyes wide and fearful in the dusky light of the hall. He nodded at her reassuringly. “All right, Howard. They’ve gone. By the way, are you going to shoot me when you open the door?”
A key grated in the lock, the door flew open, and there Howard sat in his wheel chair, panting, gritting his teeth, his big hands on his knees. One of the hands clenched the evil gun. Johnny could see his tousled mass of stiff rusty hair, the broad white face, the enraged hazel eyes, the short strong nose and the big snarling mouth. Howard Thorne was a massive young man, and the legs that hung from the chair looked quite adequate, which Johnny suspected they were. “Well!” cried Howard, swinging his chair away from the door, “come in, come in, damn you, parson!” He rapidly propelled the chair into the center of the room, breathing heavily, glaring with hatred at Johnny.
Johnny stood with his hands in his pockets. He looked about the shining little bedroom with pleasure. Something in a niche in a corner attracted his wandering eye, and he was surprised. Still looking at it, he said, “I’ve got to congratulate you and Trudie. Fine, upstanding people. We need a few more million like you. Wonderful kids. Too bad they had to be hurt this way. They’ll remember it all their lives. Maybe Elsie might be unhappy, sometime, when she’s older, and then she’ll think she’ll tell you, and then she’ll remember this morning and know that you have no real help for her. And Joe. Big, handsome boy. He won’t have a father to be proud of. Perhaps you should have blown your head off, after all. Of course that would give the kids a nervous shock they’d never get over. And they’d blame their mother, though she’s blameless, of course. But people are that way.”
Howard did not answer, though his hard breathing filled the room. Johnny sat down on the edge of the neat double bed with its homemade quilt. He smoothed the quilt, admiringly. “My mother made one just like this for me,” he said. “I had it for years. Then somebody stole it. I never forgot. Star pattern, like this. It was called, I believe, the Star of Bethlehem.”
He looked at Howard serenely. “When you kill yourself, your children will remember this quilt forever. That’s the way the human mind works. They’ll think of its pattern, the Star of Bethlehem, every Christmas, as long as they live. You won’t just be murdering yourself. You’ll be smearing every Christmas of their lives with your blood. And you’ll have murdered faith in their souls.”
Howard had become quiet, and very still. He looked at the Luger in his hand, and his big chest, under the clean white shirt, heaved in a soundless sob of anguish. Then he flung the Luger from him, and it hit the rag rug on the floor. Both men looked at it in silence. After a long minute Howard raised his head, and said furiously, “I can still lick you, big as you are! I’m bigger.”
The dull light from the small curtained window struck his reddish hair, and it was a halo of pathetic wrath. Johnny shook his head, smiling to hide the pity in his h
eart. “Maybe. Bet you can’t throw horseshoes as far as I can, though. I was the champion back home.”
He looked at Howard seriously. “Why the wheel chair? I know something about multiple sclerosis. It didn’t make you a sudden cripple, in spite of two years of muscular weakness. Why, I know half a dozen people who’ve had it for years and they’ve had treatment, and it can be arrested, sometimes for a whole lifetime. But you have to make yourself a wheel chair immediately! Trying to torture Trudie, eh?”
“Shut up! That’s a lie! I just wanted her to see what’d happen to me later, so she wouldn’t be crying for me long. The doc told me I’d probably be this way in maybe eight-ten-twelve years, that’s all!”
He pushed himself out of the wheel chair and, with a slight swaying, stood up. He took several slow steps, and Johnny watched keenly. Yes, the legs were definitely weak, but inertia was weakening them beyond their time. “Look at ’em!” said Howard with loathing. “I can’t stand on my feet for hours, as I should! How can I run my own station, or anybody else’s? The doc said I couldn’t.”
He looked at the wheel chair and shivered, took a step toward it, glanced at Johnny, hesitated, then stood stiffly, his hands clenched defiantly at his sides. There were marks of suffering about his mouth, his eyes. Johnny nodded.
“I think I can agree with you that you can’t stand all day, any longer. But I have a friend, the famous Dr. McManus. I’d like him to look you over, but I warn you his fee is large.”
“Hell,” said Howard, contemptuously. “I can pay. I got some money. Doc McManus, eh? Well, let him come.”
“I’ll call him in a little while. But let’s talk about you. Want to sit down?”
“No!” shouted Howard, and began to walk up and down the room, at first with obvious difficulty and pain, and then with more strength.