The Saints of Swallow Hill(14)

She forced her attention back to setting the table, placing a crock of butter beside the biscuits. More scraping noises came and she grabbed a rag to mop up the puddle forming on the floorboards where rainwater drizzled in. The limb still poked through.

She was still on her hands and knees dabbing at another puddle when she heard, “Oh hell!” and an ominous skidding noise followed by a heavy thud.

She whispered, “Dear God,” jumped to her feet, and ran outside.

Warren lay facedown, draped over the wooden flower box he’d built for her five summers ago. The ladder was on the ground. Before she could get to him, he rolled over onto his back. It was the way he looked, the sound coming from him that stopped her. Grimacing and clenching his teeth, a guttural sound rose from him, but he cut it short when he saw her. He raised his arm, and she went to his side, dropping to her knees in the mud. She lifted his head onto her lap.

Bent over him, she said, “Where you hurting?”

Warren dug at his left side, below his ribs. He tried moving, his fingers prodding the area, his pain obvious.

Rae Lynn said, “Can’t you get up?”

Another crack of thunder came, followed by a flash of lightning. Warren looked around, appearing disoriented.

She repeated the question, “Warren, can’t you get up?”

He rolled onto his knees and hands, letting out a deep moan as he did so.

“I done got stoved up but good!” he wheezed.

“Let me help you.”

She grabbed his right arm, and between the two of them, he got to his feet. Hunched over, he continued to hold his side as she stumbled along with him through the muck and driving rain, both of them soaked now. When Warren got to the steps, he let go of her arm and grabbed the rail to haul himself up, one step at a time. He staggered through the front door and on to their bedroom. She followed, her hand on the small of his back.

Once there, she said, “Take off them wet clothes and get in the bed.”

He pulled the straps on his overalls off his shoulders and let them drop to the floor in a blue sodden pile around his ankles. He sat, and she pulled his boots off. He kicked the overalls out of the way and twisted around so he could lie on the bed while Rae Lynn raised his undershirt to reveal a bruised, reddish area.

“It’s god-awful,” he gasped.

“You might’ve broken a rib or two.”

“Wrap it good and tight.”

Rae Lynn went into the kitchen for her supply of rags. She took an old bedsheet back to the room and got her scissors from her sewing basket. She began cutting it into long strips, fast as she could. Every time she looked at Warren, his face was contorted with pain.

In between panting, he said, “It hurts. Something fierce.”

She could see the area had already discolored, and Warren had turned pale. She started to speak, but he cut her off, as if reading her mind.

“It’ll heal,” he insisted.

She exhaled sharply. “You ought to let me fetch the doctor.”

Warren was obstinate. “No, just wrap me up like I said, and let me rest.”

Concerned, Rae Lynn did as he wanted, him still panting as she wound the long strips round and round his torso, making them tight as she could. When she was done, she helped prop him against the pillows, and he made a show of acting like he felt better.

He grabbed her hand, kissed the back of it, and said, “Thank you, shug.”

The deep lines in his brow, his face glistening with sweat told her it was as bad as it had been before she’d done the wrapping. She brushed his hair back, and he squeezed her hand.

He tried to sound reassuring when he said, “I’ll be fine.”

She couldn’t think of what else to do, so she went into the kitchen and sat at the table, where the food waited to be eaten, but she’d long since lost her appetite. The sun was back out, the early-summer downpour having already moved off to the east. The irony. If he’d only waited like she said. If only she’d held the ladder for him. She heard the bed squeak, and rose from the chair to check on him. He hung halfway off the side of the bed like he couldn’t hardly stand whatever was wrong inside of him. She frowned, concerned. She didn’t want to be upset with him, not now, and especially not over some foolish argument about how he chose to do things.

He said, “My left shoulder hurts too. Must’ve jammed it somehow.”

She tried again. “You sure you don’t want me to fetch the doctor?”

He fell back onto the bed and said, “No, we ain’t got the money for such.”

Troubled, Rae Lynn watched as he closed his eyes, as if wanting to block her from his view. They had a whole fifteen dollars. More than most. Why couldn’t he spare a dollar to see a doctor?

She waited a moment in the silence, then said, “I’ll let you try to sleep.”

He didn’t respond, and she went out, closing the door behind her. Back in the kitchen, she took the food off the table and set it in a cupboard. With nothing else to do, she sat in a chair, watching the door to their room. She wanted to see Warren standing in the doorway, perfectly fine. She reckoned what happened to him shouldn’t be all that shocking. Quite honestly, how something like this hadn’t occurred already was a wonder. Rae Lynn could only hope he’d recover, and that it might somehow change him, make him think about outcomes. The afternoon turned to evening and every now and again, he would moan. Once he cried out so loud she thought sure he’d relent and allow her to get Doc Perdue.