“When he got hit with that fire ax? Because I saw it. I was watching all the hoorah out my front window. I suppose by that time the whole neighborhood was. When he got hit, it looked like a fine chance to just busybody over and see what the commotion was about, so I did.”
“Mr. Free didn’t call you, then.”
“Nobody called me. I just came.”
“Doctor, I’m not very good at asking questions, but Stubb told me specifically to ask this one. When was the last time you saw Mr. Free?”
“I’m not much on answering ’em neither. I don’t know.”
“You mean you don’t think it’s any of my business.”
“Nope. I mean I don’t know.”
“You were his friend.”
The old doctor seemed to hesitate, his eyes roving from the yellowed, wired-together skeleton by the halltree to the window and back. At last he said, “I’d like to think so,” and let the words hang, as though there were no more to say. Barnes was conscious of the warmth of the room and the smell of carbolic acid clinging to everything.
“I’d like to think so, Mr. Barnes. I know for certain, that if you’d have asked, Ben would have said he was mine. I’m getting old.”
“Not mentally, Doctor.”
“Old every way. I’ve got an old mind in an old body. I’ve got an old soul. That Chinese wise man …”
“Confucius?”
“Yes. We used to make up jokes about him. Confucius say this and Confucius say that. What Confucius really said was that in the pursuit of knowledge he forgot he was getting old. My practice does that for me, Mr. Barnes, that and keeping up with the new developments. But it doesn’t stop me from getting old, only from thinking about it.”
Barnes waited.
“You ask me when I saw Ben last, and I feel like I just did. But I can’t pin it down. Maybe yesterday. Maybe today. Maybe it was last week, and maybe it was last year.”
“I think I understand.”
“It may come to me. Then again, it may not. I could tell you a hundred things we did, a thousand things we talked about, because we talked about everything. But I couldn’t tell you just when it was, except sometimes that it was summer or winter or whatever because I remember what kind of clothes I wore, or maybe that Ben got himself a soft ice cream. Then too, it isn’t always easy to know when you saw Ben, if you didn’t see him right to his face. One way he looks like everybody else, but another way he looks like everybody. Sometimes he’s just as straight as a poker. Sometimes he’s stooped over like his back’s giving him a lot of trouble. He—”
“Is it?” Barnes asked.
“Hurting him? I think so, but he never came to me for doctoring. I used to try to get him to, but when I started I made the mistake of telling him I wouldn’t charge him. After that he wouldn’t come.
“Now, Mr. Barnes, I like to take an interest in all my patients, just like in my friends. You said something about that policeman I stitched up yesterday. Why don’t you quit prying into Ben Free’s affairs and tell me about him?”
Barnes nodded, uncertain at first about putting his thoughts into words. “You said yesterday he might have a slight concussion, isn’t that correct?”
“I believe we’ve mentioned it today too.”
“Right. Is it possible for a slight concussion to make somebody a little confused and very suspicious of—of another group of people?”
“Paranoia? No.”
“It isn’t possible?”
“Slight concussions can cause some confusion, Mr. Barnes. If you’ve ever seen a boxer or a football player walking around and maybe even doing what he’s supposed to, fight or run with the ball, but acting kind of dazed and maybe staggering a little, you’ve seen the results of a slight concussion. But a concussion like that doesn’t cause paranoia or any other mental disorder, in my experience. Sometimes almost any kind of trauma will produce overt paranoia in a person who’s had it for years and been covering it up, though. How does … I can’t recall his name.”
“Sergeant Proudy.”
“How does Sergeant Proudy act?”
Barnes told him.
I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia
Little Ozzie cried until he could cry no more. He could not have said just why he cried, but he cried because he knew, in some deep part of him where the knowledge would remain till he was dead, that the world was a more horrible place than he could ever imagine. He might think of monsters or mad dogs, but the world would beat him. It would turn the people he loved and trusted to monsters; it would reveal those meant to help him as mad dogs. He wept for himself, and he wept because he knew there would never really be anyone else to weep for him.
It ended slowly. Perhaps half an hour passed between the first slacking of his tears and his last choking sob.
