The Tie That Binds(14)

“Oh Daddy,” Edith cried. “Oh God, Daddy. Come on, we’ve got to get to the doctor. Can you walk? Oh God, come on, though.”

Roy seemed almost to wake up then. He seemed almost to come out of his wild fascinated daze. “I ain’t leaving,”

he said. He wasn’t yelling anything now; he was just talking, high, in a kind of old man’s shocked whine. His fingers were gone. “I ain’t leaving,” he said. “They’re mine.”

“What? No, come on. What are you talking about? We’ve got to hurry. Help me.”

“I ain’t leaving them here. They’re mine. They ain’t yours, are they? They ain’t yours.”

“No, please. Oh God. Help me, John.”

John Roscoe took Roy’s arm and tried to lead him away, tried to get him to walk towards the road. But he pulled his bloody arm free.

“They’re mine, goddamn it. I tell you, they ain’t yours. I told you, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you told us,” John Roscoe said.

“They ain’t yours.”

“No.”

“They’re mine. I told you already.”

“Yes, all right. We’ll find them.”

“Give them to me. I want them all.”

“We’ll find them,” John Roscoe said. “Lyman, go get my car started. Bring it here.”

“Oh Jesus,” Lyman said.

“Hurry up, goddamn it. Run.”

Lyman turned and ran stumbling across the wheat stubble to get the car. He fell down, jumped up again, and ran on. Edith and my father stood with Roy Goodnough beside the header. His hands and arms were twitching uncontrollably now, dripping blood all the time. He held them out in front of him. His face was bloody from the wound above his eyes, and there was more blood running down the back of his neck.

“I told you,” he said. “I already told you so.”

“He’s going to die,” Edith said.

“No, he isn’t. Not yet.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to die, though.”

“Stay with him. I’ll look if I can find any of his fingers. Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“Give them to me. They’re mine. They ain’t yours.”

“Yes, Daddy. Hush now.”

“I want them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“They’re mine, I told you.”

“Oh, please be quiet. Please, Daddy.”

“They ain’t yours. They’re mine.”

JOHN ROSCOE found two of the fingers and one of the thumbs. The thumb was still stuck in the section blades. The two fingers he found in the sand and stubble behind the header, but he couldn’t find any more. Edith held them in her lap on the way to town, sitting in the back seat of the old Model T Ford behind her father. They looked like thick bloody sausages in the handkerchief on her lap, except that they had black hair on them between what would have been knuckles and they had fingernails on the ends. There was still dirt under the nails. Edith brushed the sand and wheat chaff off them: the fingers were very stiff. Roy sat in front of her with his head fallen on his chest. He was mumbling to himself, and his bloody hands dripped blood steadily onto the floorboards of the car.

“I’m afraid he’s going to bleed to death,” Edith said.

“I don’t know,” John Roscoe said. “He’s getting weak.”

“Daddy,” Edith said. “Daddy, can you hear me?”

“I told you,” Roy was saying. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you.”

“God in heaven,” Edith said. “At least he’s still alive.” “Yes. We’ll be there soon.”

Lyman sat beside his sister, staring forward at the back of his father’s head, without saying a word. They drove as fast as they could in the Ford on the dirt road going north to town.

Holt didn’t have a hospital yet; there wouldn’t be one for another fifteen years. They stopped the car on Main Street at the storefront that was the doctor’s office, next to the harness and general store that has since become a Coast to Coast store. They got Roy Goodnough out of the car, and my father and Edith supported him under the arms and walked him inside. Doc Packer wasn’t there.

“Go find him. Quick.”

“I can’t,” Lyman said. “What if I can’t find him?”

“Just look for him. Hurry up. Goddamn it, ask somebody.”

“But Jesus,” Lyman said. Then he ran out onto the sidewalk.

I don’t know whether or not Marcellus Packer was the first doctor in Holt, but he was one of the first. He was a short man, and fat, with a walrus moustache like you see in pictures of Teddy Roosevelt. His moustache was always discolored from tobacco juice, even as an old man, when I was taken to him as a kid with mumps. He parted what hair he had in the middle. Lyman found him in the dark beer saloon on the corner, talking to some of the men at a table.

“You got to come,” Lyman said.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

“It’s Pa.”

“What’s wrong with him? Slow down. Stand still a minute, can’t you?”

“It’s Pa.”

“Where is he?”

Lyman ran back onto the sidewalk in the sun and up the block to the office. Packer followed him, taking short quick steps under his big stomach, on up the sidewalk and into the back room of the office, where Edith and my father had Roy seated on a chair with a bucket on the floor between his feet to catch the blood.