Eventide (Plainsong #2)(27)

16


WHEN HE GOT HOME FROM PLAYING IN THE SHED WITH Dena, his grandfather had already gone to bed in his little room at the back of the house, and when he switched on the light the old man raised up on his elbows in his long underwear, with his white hair disheveled and a wild look in his eyes.

Turn that off, he said.

What’s wrong, Grandpa?

I don’t feel very good.

Do you want supper?

I want you to turn that goddamn light off is what I want.

DJ cut off the light and went out to the kitchen. He made toast and coffee and carried these on a dinner plate back to the bedroom but now the old man was asleep.

In the night he heard him get out of bed. His grandfather stayed in the bathroom a long while before shuffling back to his room. Through the thin wall he could hear the bedsprings creaking under his weight, and then he began to cough. After a while there was the sound of his spitting.

In the morning when he went in to see him the old man was awake. He looked small under the heavy quilt, his white hair sticking out sideways, his thick red hands beyond the cuffs of his underwear lying slack and empty over the blanket.

Are you going to get up, Grandpa?

No. I don’t feel like it.

I made fresh coffee.

All right. Bring that.

He brought the coffee and the old man sat up and drank a little, then set the cup on a chair next to the bed and lay back again. He started coughing as soon as he was stretched out. He twisted around to reach under the pillow and pulled out a filthy handkerchief and spat into it and then used it to wipe his mouth.

You must be sick, Grandpa.

I don’t know. You better get on to school.

I don’t want to.

Go on. I’ll be all right.

I should stay home with you.

No. It ain’t nothing to worry about. I been sicker than this before and always come out of it. I took a fever of a hundred and six one time before you was ever born. Now go on like I told you.

He went unhappily to school and sat all morning at his desk at the rear of the room while his mind wandered back to the house. Through the tedious hours of the morning he paid little attention to his schoolwork. The teacher noticed his lack of attention and came to his desk and stood beside him. DJ, is something wrong? You’ve done nothing all morning. It’s not like you.

He shrugged and stared ahead at the blackboard.

What’s bothering you?

Nothing’s bothering me.

Something must be.

He looked up at her. Then he lowered his head and took up the pencil on his desktop and started to work at the math problems she’d assigned them to do. The teacher watched for a moment and returned to her desk at the front of the room. When she looked at him again a few minutes later, he’d already stopped working.

At noon when they were released from school for the lunch hour he began immediately to run. He raced home through the town park and across the shining railroad tracks and didn’t stop until he got to the house. He paused in the kitchen to catch his breath, then walked down the hall to his grandfather’s room. The old man was still in bed, coughing steadily now and spitting into the dirty handkerchief. He hadn’t drunk any more of the coffee. He looked up when DJ entered the room, his face very red and his eyes wet and glassy.

You look worse, Grandpa. You better go to the doctor.

The old man had lowered the window blind during the morning and the room was dark now. He looked like someone who had been put away in a dim back room and left there to his own devices.

I ain’t seeing no doctor. You can just forget about that.

You have to.

No, you head on back to school and mind your own business.

I don’t want to leave you.

I’m going to get out of this bed. Is that what you want?

DJ left the room and went out in front of the house, looking up and down the empty street. Then he ran across to Mary Wells’s house and knocked on the door. After some time she opened the door wearing an old blue bathrobe, and the pretty grown-up woman’s face he was used to seeing, always made up with pink rouge and red lipstick, was now plain and bare. She looked haggard, as though she hadn’t slept in days.

What are you doing here? she said. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?

Grandpa’s sick. I just came home to check on him. Something’s wrong with him.

What is it?

I don’t know. Could you come over and look at him?

Yes, she said. Come in while I get dressed.

He waited for her near the door but didn’t sit down. He was surprised to see the newspapers on the floor and the various magazines and pieces of mail scattered around. Two half-filled coffee cups were set on the side table next to the couch, and milky coffee from one of the cups had spilled out in a gray pool on the polished wood. In the dining room last night’s dishes were still on the table. It was clear she had troubles of her own. Dena had said so when they were out in the shed, but she wouldn’t talk more about it.

Mary Wells came out of the bedroom in jeans and a sweatshirt, and she had brushed her hair and had put on some lipstick, but that was all. She didn’t say anything and they went outside. They started across to his grandfather’s house.

How long has he been sick? she said.

I don’t know if he is sick for sure. But he seems like it.

How long has he seemed sick?