Paris Trout (11 page)

At the top of the second flight of stairs the doctor
opened the door, and Seagraves walked through it, pleased to hear the
doctor breathing hard, and found himself at the end of a long, narrow
hall. The hall was dark, lit only by the sunlight from the rooms. All
the way down, the doorways seemed to glow.

Dr. Braver walked ahead again, first to the nurse's
station, where a woman as white-haired and serious as the doctor
himself was sitting, reading the Saturday Evening Post. There was a
painting of a doctor's office on the cover, a red-headed boy with
freckles in a sling. It reminded Seagraves of Carl Bonner. He thought
it must be a sign, to think of the boy twice in the same day.

The woman looked up from the magazine, saw it was
Braver, and straightened herself to look alert. "You're early
for your rounds, Doctor?" she said.

Braver nodded at Seagraves. "This is the famous
attorney Harry Seagraves," he said. "He wants to look in on
Miss Rosie Sayers on a legal matter."

If the woman knew the name Harry Seagraves, she did
not show it. "Well," she said, without ever looking at
Seagraves, "she's right where you left her."

Braver walked past the nurse and almost to the end of
the hall. He went slower now, as if the reason to hurry were gone.
The last door on the left was closed to the hall, and that was the
one. Seagraves could read the number, 313. Braver turned the handle
and stepped aside.

There were eight beds in the room, all but one
occupied. An orderly sat at the far end, his chair against the
window, his feet resting on one of the beds. His chin was tucked into
his shoulder, and his arms were laid across his stomach.

"
That there is Miss Sayers," the doctor
said. His voice seemed too loud for the room, and at the sound of it
the orderly stirred and then scrambled.

Seagraves looked in the direction Braver had
indicated and saw the girl. Her eyes were closed, and her teeth
protruded and lay across her bottom lip. The pillow rose up around
her face and softened it, she looked like some dark-centered flower.

Somebody in another bed coughed and then moaned. The
orderly was on his feet now, smoothing his hair. Braver paid him no
attention. He walked to the girl's bed and looked at the chart hung
at the foot. Seagraves stayed where he was.

"You want to see the girl, Mr. Seagraves, here
she is."

Seagraves walked as quietly as he could across the
floor. He kept his eyes in front of him, not wanting to look into any
of the beds he didn't have to. Seagraves had an aversion to illness.
Braver handed him the girl's chart and moved closer. He held her
eyelids open, each side, he checked the needle going into her arm. He
seemed rough with the girl, but it was less in the way he touched her
than the way he let go.

"
That line acrost the top of the chart is the
times," Braver said, laying his fingers along the girl's neck
for a pulse. "All the patients in this room are in jeopardy. We
keep an orderly in here day and night, and he carefully checks each
patient's life signs on the hour, and that way we know when they have
passed on."

He looked at the orderly over the word "carefully."

Then he let go of the orderly, in a way that was
related to the way he let go of the girl, and returned to Seagraves.
"You can see from the blood pressure notations on Miss Sayers's
chart that at seven o'clock this morning she was nearly expired."

Seagraves looked at the chart but could not read it.
"By eight," Braver said, "she rallied back, and by
nine she regained consciousness and complained of pain."

The doctor pulled the sheet back and Seagraves
realized the girl was naked. It took a moment because of the
bandages. They had wrapped her arms and covered her whole stomach,
from the little tuft of pubic hair to her chest.

It was the undamaged parts that touched Seagraves,
though. Her shoulders and legs were no bigger than the bones
underneath them. He could have wrapped his hand all the way around
her neck. The doctor looked at the orderly and said, "Scissors."

The orderly produced a pair of scissors. They had
long handles and took a small bite. Braver accepted them and began to
cut the wrapping off` the girl's stomach, starting at the bottom and
working up. The orderly stood by, waiting to be of use.

Braver finished the cut and opened the dressing. The
hole was almost perfect, crusted around the edge, smaller than
Seagraves had imagined.

"
This right here is the approximate angle of
penetration," Braver said. He moved farther up the bed and
pointed slightly down. "It perforated her stomach and liver and
ended up in her right buttocks."

Braver removed his finger and stepped away. "You
want a closer look, Mr. Seagraves?" he said.

"
The bullet's still in her?" he said.

"One of them is," he said. "The others
passed through her appendages. Her arm's broke in two places. Come
get a good look if you want, it ain't catching."

Seagraves said, "I never asked to see this."

Braver took off his glasses again and cleaned them
against the corner of his coat. He put them back on and then pulled
the sheet back over the girl. It fell half across her still, narrow
face, covering half her mouth, part of her cheek. It fell like the
first shovel of dirt. Seagraves felt a panic loose somewhere inside
himself.

"
All I asked for was a prognosis, Dr. Braver,"
he said, and the sound of his own voice quieted the feeling.

Braver looked at the orderly, who still hadn't washed
himself of sleep. "The orderly here excepted, Mr. Seagraves, I
believe that you will find an agreement among the medical community
that Miss Rosie Sayers is dead." He picked up an edge of the
sheet and dropped it over rest of her face, covering everything but
the fuzz on top of her cad.

Someone moaned, someone coughed. Braver was fastened
on the orderly again, the orderly was looking at his watch. "It
must of only happened," the orderly said.

Braver held him a minute
longer and then said, "Have it cleaned up," and walked out
the door. Seagraves followed him, making no effort to keep up,
picturing the  small, perfect hole in the girl's stomach. He
felt the gun then, a secret in his pocket. And the secret settled on
him with a weight, distinct from the gun.

* * *

SEAGRAVES LEFT THE CLINIC without speaking another
word to Dr. Braver. He crossed the street to the campus of the
officers' academy, stepped into a cluster of trees, and got sick. He
collected himself there and then returned to his office. He borrowed
a car from Dick Spudd and drove out to Indian Heights.

He did not tell Spudd, the junior partner in the
firm, where he was going. The car was a new Cadillac, and he was
fussy where it went. Seagraves found the house almost without trying.
He stopped the car when he saw it at the end of the road. There were
youngsters in the yard, a man sitting on a chair in the porch. The
house had two front doors, both of them were open. A pair of chickens
picked their way through a ditch, eating gravel, and there were car
tracks in the clay alongside the house.

The man on the porch was watching him. Seagraves
found himself out of the car, walking toward him. He stopped at the
foot of the porch and looked up. The sun was behind the roof of the
house, and Seagraves had to squint to see him. "Mr. Boxer?"

The man shook his head. "No sir."

"
Are you Thomas Boxer?"

"
No sir. You must of have the wrong house."

Seagraves looked up and down the street. "Is
this where Mary McNutt lives?"

"No sir, I tol' you this ain't the right house
for you."

Seagraves held out his hands. "I don't mean
nobody harm," he said.

"What that in your pocket?" the man said.

Seagraves felt the weight there and shook his head.
"I'm an attorney of the law," he said. "I don't shoot
nobody."

"
Uh-huh."

He took the first step to the porch, the man sat up.
"I wonder if I might look inside," he said.

"
Fo' how long?"

"
Only a minute," Seagraves said. "I
just want to see where it I happened."

The man nodded at the entrance on the right. "In
there is where it happened," he said.

"
May I go in?"

"He'p yourself," the man said. "People
been through it already, I don't see how it make no difference one
more."

Seagraves stepped onto the porch and then, nodding at
the man, into the house. It was cooler inside than out, the smell of
gunpowder was still in the room.

He went through quickly. There were stuffed chairs in
the first room, and a cot. Beds in the second and third, and a
kitchen at the back of the house. A wood stove, a table, an old trunk
sitting in the corner.

In the kitchen he stopped, knowing this was the
place. It was the smallest room of the house, and the ceiling back
here slanted down for reasons he could not discern. He imagined
Trout, stooping to fit himself into this place where he did not
belong. The pots and pans were hung from nails over the stove, a line
of canning jars sat empty against the far wall. The door from the
kitchen outside hung half off its hinges.

Paris Trout had come into this room, where there
wasn't anything, and taken a child's life.

Seagraves had accustomed himself to the gunpowder now
and could not smell it, but there was something in its place, bitter
and metallic. More of a taste than an odor.

" He turned back toward the front of the house,
meaning to leave the way he had come, but the taste got stronger, and
he could hear the words the man on the porch said when he came in:
"This ain't the right house for you."

Seagraves looked back through the rooms, and the
taste filled his mouth. He saw that something had been stirred as he
came through and was waiting for him now to come back.

He pushed open the back door and stepped outside. He
was dizzy in the sudden light and steadied himself against the side
of the house. He closed his eyes, feeling the shaking in his hands
and legs. He remembered he had been sick earlier, he thought he
needed something to eat. When he looked again, there was a child not
five yards away, barefoot in a dirty pink dress, sucking her thumb.
It seemed to Seagraves he had seen the girl before. He smiled but the
taste was still in his mouth, and then he was sick again, without
warning, without anything in his stomach to come up. His eyes
watered, and he bent in half.

And beyond the noises coming out of his body, he
heard the child screaming as she ran. She was screaming that the
devil was back. He straightened himself and walked back to the
Cadillac. The man on the porch sat in his chair, watching him, and
people on other porches watched him too. The only sound was the child
— the same child — standing in the road now, screaming it over
and over, the devil was back. No one moved to hush her.

Seagraves opened the car door and sat heavily behind
the steering wheel. The taste was still in his mouth. He fit the key
into the starter, and then the passenger door opened — he never saw
even a shadow of movement — and then a freshly decapitated chicken
was spraying blood and feathers all over the front seat, pounding the
air and the seat with its wings, propelled a different direction each
time its feet found a hold.

Seagraves covered his face with one arm and found the
door handle with the other. He spilled out of the car backwards and
fell into the road. He got to his feet, opening the car door wider,
and waited for the chicken to spill out too. But the chicken had lost
its range now and lay on the floor between the brake and the clutch,
its movements reduced to spasms.

Seagraves waited, keeping his eyes inside the car but
feeling the dark faces on the porches and in the windows. The chicken
stopped moving. The windows and seats were sprayed with its blood,
and tiny spotted feathers hung everywhere. There were larger feathers
too, one of them floated in a puddle near the chicken.

He waited, and then he reached in for the bird, and
as he touched it, it jumped, as if it had been hit by a current of
electricity, and Seagraves jumped too, and yelled. And then, ashamed
of himself; he took the chicken by the feet and dropped it in the
road. The chicken had turned the rearview mirror almost straight
down, and as Seagraves adjusted it, driving slowly up the road and
beginning to talk out loud to settle himself; he saw one of them walk
into the road and retrieve it.

Dinner.

* * *

SEAGRAVES DROVE THE CADILLAC to Bud Ramsey's Sinclair
filling station on Samuel Street and left it to be cleaned. He walked
from there to his home and found Lucy sitting in curlers and lipstick
in the kitchen while the maid vacuumed the living room. She made a
face when she saw him and closed the top of her robe.

She said, "What on earth?"

He sat down heavily across the table. "Would you
get me a Coke-Cola?" he said.

She reached across and picked a feather off his lapel
and looked at it carefully. "Your suit's spotted," she
said.