The doctor washed, sterilized a long, sharply pointed probe and began to dig. The first three pellets came out easily enough, though not without pain. The doctor disinfected each wound with alcohol, a flaming sensation if ever there was one, then bandaged each with a gauze patch and a strip of adhesive. The fourth and fifth were deeper and even more painful. But the last one, in the arm, was a bastard. It wouldn't come and it seemed the more the man dug, the further into the muscle it slipped. But Earl didn't move or scream; he closed his eyes, tried to disassociate himself from his hurting, and thought of other places, better times, and his teeth ground together as if they meant to crush each other to dental powder, and then he heard a clink as the last pellet was deposited in a dish.
'You're not from around here?' said the doctor. 'No white man would let a black one inflict so much pain on him without the word 'nigger' being spoken at least ten times.'
'Funny, never crossed my mind. I grew up in Polk County'
'No, I'd say you grew up in the South Pacific and became more than a man, you became a human being.'
'Don't know about that, sir.'
'I won't ask you how you got these wounds. I doubt it was a hunting accident. It's not bird season. And I heard tell of a great battle in Hot Springs, but I know you not to be a Grumley sort. So if you carry the badge of the law, I assume you're a good man. I know you're a lucky one: No. 7 birdshot doesn't play so gende in most cases.'
'Been lucky my whole life. What do I owe you?'
'Nothing. It's not a problem. You continue with the aspirin, have another doctor look at it the day after tomorrow. Possibly, he will prescribe penicillin, to fight an infection. But you must go now.'
'Sir, I have a hundred dollars. I'm guessing you don't charge poor women who come to you much if anything at all. You ain't no rich doctor, I can tell. So you take this hundred, and it's for them.'
'That's a lot of money.'
'Hard earned too, by God, but I want you to have it.'
He pressed the money on Dr. Peterson, shook his hand, dressed and slipped out the back, in the dark, as he had come.
'Well, ain't we a sight?' he said with a laugh. 'You're all swoll up and I am full of holes.'
'Earl,' she said, 'that is not funny a bit.'
'No ma'am. I don't suppose it is.'
Chastened, he took another sip on his Coca-Cola and then a bite of his hot dog. Under his shirt, his wounds still occasionally stung, particularly the arm, where the doc had dug so deep. They sat at a picnic table in a park in Fort Smith that overlooked the Arkansas River, a meadowy place that rolled down to the water, where the pines sprouted up. There, the black waters rushed thunderously along; there must have been a big rainstorm up north.
But there were no storms here. It was a hot, bright Sunday in August, a year after they dropped the big ones on the Japs, and people frolicked in the shadow of an old courthouse, famous in an earlier century for its public hangings. Adults pushed their babies along the walkways in elaborate strollers; young servicemen from Camp Chaffee spooned with their townie belles. Even Negroes were welcome; it was an afternoon on the Grand Jette, Fort Smith style, complete to points of light in the bright air, and in the green of the pines, and if there weren't monkeys on leashes there were spaniels on them. Everybody was eating Eskimo Pies or hot dogs and thinking about the future and no one looked to the southwest, for in that quadrant of the scene lay the vets' cemetery, newly expanded, hills of rolling white markers that gleamed in the sun so freshly planted were they. One of the state's other war heroes rested there, William O. Darby, the young Ranger major who'd fought the Germans in Italy so hard and then gotten killed by a piece of metal the size of a dime from an artillery shell late in the spring of 1945 while he stood on a hill as an observer. Earl didn't want to go anywhere near that.
'You were in that ruckus all the papers wrote up,' she said.
'I was there, yes.'
'And that's why you have bandages all over your body.'
'I caught some pellet, that's all. It ain't no big thing. Hurt myself shaving worse most mornings.'
'Earl, they say that was the most violent gunfight in the history of the state. Fourteen people died.'
'Eleven of 'em was bad-boy Grumleys, as low a form as has existed, whose passing is of no note whatsoever. They didn't have to die. They could have surrendered to the law, easy as pie.'
'It wasn't their nature.'
'No ma'am, guess it wasn't.'
He looked at her. Her face had broadened considerably, and her shoulders, legs and arms thickened up a bit. But still and all: a beautiful woman, an angel, full and fair and blond and decent, the very best of America. She licked at her Eskimo Pie, with that special grace that seemed hers alone. She was the only human being on the planet who could eat an Eskimo Pie in the full blaze of afternoon and not spill a drop of it.
Under her breasts, the child seemed eager to come into this world, so forcefully did it thrust itself out and away from its mother. She had worn a red maternity blouse to hide it, but the subterfuge was poindess: that was a lot of baby in there.
aI am so frightened, Earl, that you are going to die for nothing and I will be alone with this child,' she said, the last of the ice cream pie gone.
'If it happens, you will get a nice big chunk of insurance money from the state. It'll get the two of you a fine start in a new life. Maybe you'll meet up with a fellow who's around more than I am. And that money is more than my mama got when my old man got hisself bushwhacked back in '42. She got a gold watch, a hundred dollar burial fee, and commenced to drink herself to death in a year. I know you'll do better.'
He took another sip on the Coca-Cola. The river wound blackly through the trees, but between here and there, boys threw a ball or sailed planes, girls cradled dolls, moms and dads held hands.
'I am so sorry,' he finally said. 'I know you didn't sign on for this thing. But I am in it now, and I don't know how to get out of it.'
'You could just quit and go back to the sawmill.'
'You know I couldn't do that.'
'No. You have no quit in you, that's for sure.'
'I think I could go to Mr. Parker and see about getting a loan against the money they'll be paying me before this thing is finished. Maybe there's a credit union or something. Also, there's some veterans' rights I got coming I ain't looked into yet. That way I could move you out of that damned Quonset hut in the village and into a nice little place much closer. Say in the towns outside of Little Rock. I'd see you much more often.'
'Earl, it seems so ridiculous with the farm.'
He sat a long moment, looking again down and across the meadowy grass to the river. Then he said, 'I wasn't trying to hide that place from you. It wasn't no secret. I just never got around to telling you about it.'
'I wasn't prying. A letter came from the Polk County tax assessors bureau, which had been forwarded by the Marine Corps. It was stamped Open Immediately. I opened it. You owed back taxes on two hundred acres out in Polk, out Route 8. It was past due: $127.50, plus a three dollar penalty. I sent them a check. Then I got to thinking about it and so last week, before all this gun-battle business, I had Mary Blanton drive me out there. We spent the day on the farm.'
'It's a nice place, I recollect,' he said. 'The old man had it up and running pretty tight at one point.'
'It's a wonderful place, Earl. The house needs work, mainly paint, but there's a big garden. I counted four bedrooms. The kitchen hasn't been touched in years. It could use some work too. But Earl, there's land. There's farmland which could be leased out, there's a creek, there's a stand of timber where you could hunt and raise your children. There's meadowland and a corral and a fine barn. Earl, honey, we could be so happy out there. And we own it. We already own it. We could move in tomorrow. I don't have to stay in a sewer pipe and take the bus to work. I could teach in Polk County. When the baby comes, he or she'd have a wonderful place to grow up.
'The week I left the Marine Corps,' he said, 'when I was driving up to Fort Smith for you, last December? I stopped there and spent some time.'
'You don't want to go there, do you, Earl? I can tell from your voice.'
'I almost burned it to the ground. That would have felt good. I'd love to see that place go up in flames. It's..'
