gapin’ after him with her mouth open. He walked right into the room whar they was a-settin’ behind a table facin’ the do’ with their pistols layin’ on the table.
“When us boys outside heard the three shots we run in. Thar wuz Miz Winterbottom standin’ thar, a- gapin’ up the stairs, and in a minute hyer comes Cunnel with his hat cocked over his eye, marchin’ down the stairs steady as a co’t jury, breshin’ the front of his coat with his hank’cher. And us standin’ thar, a-watchin’ him. He stopped in front of Miz Wihterbottom and lifted his hat again.
“‘Madam,’ he says, ‘I was fo’ced to muss up yo’ guest room right considerable. Pray accept my apologies, and have yo’ nigger clean it up and send the bill to me. My apologies agin, madam, fer havin’ been put to the necessity of exterminating vermin on yo’ premises. Gentlemen,’ he says to us, ‘good mawnin’. And he cocked that ‘ere beaver on his head and walked out.
“And, Bayard,” old man Falls said, “I sort of envied them two nawthuners, be damned ef I didn’t. A feller kin take a wife and live with her a long time, but after all they ain’t no kin. But the feller that brings you into the world or sends you outen hit...”
Lurking behind the pantry door Simon could hear the steady storming of Miss Jenny’s and old Bayard’s voices; later when they had removed to the office and Elnora and Isom and Caspey sat about the table in the kitchen waiting for Simon, the concussion ofMiss Jenny’s raging and old Bayard’s rock-like stubbornness came in muffled surges, as of faraway surf.
“What dey quoilin, about now?” Caspey asked. “Is you been and done something?” he demanded of his nephew.
Isom rolled his eyes quietly above his steady jaws. “Naw’ suh,” he mumbled. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
“Seems like dey’d git wo’ out, after a while. What’s pappy doin’, Elnora?”
“Up dar in de hall, listenin’. Go tell ‘im to come on and git his supper, so I kin git done, Isom.”
Isom slid from his chair, still chewing, and left the kitchen. The steady raging of the two voices increased; where the shapeless figure of his grandfather stood like a disreputable and ancient bird in the dark hallway Isom could distinguish words:...poison...blood...think you can cat your head off and cure it?...fool put it on your foot, but...face, head...dead and good riddance...fool of you dying because of your own bullheaded folly...you first sitting in a chair, though...
“you and that damn doctor are going to worry me to death.” Old Bayard’s voice drowned the other temporarily. “Will Falls won’thave a chance to kill me. I can’t sit in my chair in town without that damn squirt sidling around me and looking disappointed because I’m still alive on my feet. And when I come home to get away from him, you can’t even let me eat sapper in peace. Have to show me a lot of damn colored pictures of what some fool thinks a man’s insides look like.”
“Who gwine die, pappy?” Isom whispered.
Simon turned his head. “What you hangin’ eround here fer, boy? Go’n back to dat kitchen whar you belongs.”
“Supper waitin’,” Isom said. “Who dyin’, pappy?”
“Ain’t nobody dyin’. Does anybody soun’ dead? You git on outende house, now,”
Together they returned down the hall and entered the kitchen. Behind them the voices raged and stormed, blurred a little by walls, but dominant and unequivocal.
“Whut dey fighfin’ erbout, now?” Caspey, chewing, asked.
“Dat’s white folks’ bizness,” Simon told him. “You tend to yo’n, and dey’ll git erlong all right.” He sat down and Elnora rose and filled a cup from the coffee pot on the stove and brought it to him. “White folks got dey troubles same as niggers is. Gimme dat dish o’ meat, boy.”
In the house the storm ran its nightly course, ceased as though by mutual consent, both parties still firmly entrenched; resumed at the supper table the next evening. And so on, day after day, until the second week in July and six days after young Bayard had been fetched home with his chest crushed, Miss Jenny and old Bayard and Dr. Alford went to Memphis to consult a well-knownauthority on blood and glandular diseases with whom Dr. Alford, with some difficulty, had made a formal engagement. Young Bayard lay upstairs in his cast, but Simon and Elnora would be about the house ill day, and Narcissa Benbow had agreed to come out and keep him company.
Between the two of them they got old Bayard on the early train, still pro testing profanely like a stubborn and bewildered ox. There were others who knew them in the car. These stopped and spoke to them, and remarking Dr. Alford’s juxtaposition, became curious and solicitous. Old Bayard took these opportunities to assert himself again, with violent rumbling, but Miss Jenny hushed him coldly and implacably.
They took him, like a sullen small boy, in a cab to the clinic where the specialist waited them, and in a room resembling an easy and informal hotel lobby they sat among other consultants and an untidy clutter of magazines and papers, waiting for the specialist to arrive. They waited a long time. Meanwhile Dr. Alford from time to time assaulted the impregnable affability of the woman at the telephone switchboard, was repulsed and returned and sat stiffly beside his patient, aware that with every minute they waited, he was losing ground in Miss Jenny’s opinion of him. Old Bayard was cowed too, by this time, though occasionally he rumbled at Miss Jenny with stubborn and hopeless optimism. “Oh, stop swearing at me,” she interrupted him. “You can’t walk out now. Here, here’s the morning paper—take it and be quiet.”
Then the specialist entered briskly and crossed to the switchboard woman, where Dr. Alford saw him and rose and crossed to him. The specialist turned—a brisk, dapper man, who moved with arrogant jerky motions, as though he were exercising with a small sword, and who in turning, almost stepped on Dr. Alford. He shook Dr. Alford’s hand and broke into a high, desiccated stream of rapid words. “On the dot, I see. Promptness. Promptness. That’s good. Patient here? Asked for a room yet?”
“Yes, Doctor, he’s—”
“Good, good. Undressed her already, eh?”
“The patient is a m—”
“Just a moment.’’ The specialist turned. “Oh, Mrs. Smith?”
“Yes, Doctor “ The woman at the switchboard did not raise her head, and at that moment another specialist of some sort, a large one, with a profound, surreptitious air like a royal undertaker, entered andstopped Dr. Alford’s, and for a while the two of them alternately rumbled and rattled at one another while Dr. Alford stood ignored nearby, fuming stiffly and politely, feeling himself sinking lower and lower in Miss Jenny’s opinion of his professional status. Thai the two specialists had done, and Dr. Alford led his man toward his patient.
