WAS (32 page)

And sometimes poison would jet out of her, as if from a wound.

He said hello to her one morning. "Why you talking to me?" Dotty demanded. "You must have something better to do." She shrugged herself deeper down into her own embrace.

"I'm just visiting."

"Go visit somewhere else. I know what you're after. All you men are just the same."

Then she said, "You'd pig-back Christ on the cross given half a chance."

"Dotty, there's no call to talk to me like that."

"You wanna see? You wanna see? You wanna have a good look?"

She said it in hatred. She started to pull her dress up. "Go on, then have a look at a poor old lady."

Bill backed away. You had to make sure people saw you weny nowhere near her. For legal reasons.

"You know you do it to children. Go on. Look at a poor old lady You can't hurt her anymore with that thing of yours. Go on!"

Bill had to walk away. He knew his face was white and he could feel his hands trembling. He had been shaken in the depths of his purity. She had been made so bitter! Bill could not imagine what could make anyone as full of bile as that. Except that it seemed to him that it must have come from something terrible that was done to her.

The next day he saw her, and she laughed when she saw him and clapped her hands, like a child again.

"I baked you a cake," she would say. "A nice plum cake." And she would move the invisible cake onto her tray and pretend to cut it.

"How big a slice you want?"

"As big as you can cut it."

"Oh!" she said. "I know you! You'd have me cut just a teeny piece for myself and give you the rest. I don't know. Here you go."

And she passed him the cake on an invisible plate, and he would pretend to eat it.

Tom Heritage passed by the bed. "Watch it, Billy," said Heritage. "That's the first sign." He turned to Dotty. "How often does he eat cake that isn't there?" he asked Dotty.

"Only," she insisted, "since he's met me and I showed him how. Now he doesn't ever have to go hungry. Would you like a slice?"

"Uh. No thanks. Just had my invisible lunch," said Tom.

After Heritage had gone, Dotty said, with a sigh, "He'll never leave Kansas."

Christmas bore down on them like an express train, jamming all the days together. Billy put up lights on his mother's house for the last time. He and Carol were at a party every night, with relatives or friends. Their high-school class had a Christmas reunion party. Six months after graduation, everybody was pretty much the same, except for a couple of the brainy kids who went away to college. Muffy Havis was there.

Billy wanted to talk to her because she was studying psychology. He tried to talk to her about Dotty.

He loomed toward her. He and Muffy Havis had never spoken much. Muffy had grouped him together with the rest of the huge and popular athletes of the school. She called them the Dumb Oxen.

His hands did most of the talking, as if trying to pull words out of the air. He talked about some patient in the Home, a few scraps of her conversation; some problem she had with the television.

"What's the diagnosis been?" Muffy asked him. "Schizophrenic?"

"I don't know," he said, and smiled his big, dumb, sweet smile.

"It's a bit early in the course for me to give a diagnosis," she said wryly. She was amazed Bill Davison was interested. It made her feel on edge.

"What… what kind of things do you study?" Bill Davison asked her. "Do they help you understand people better?"

"No," admitted Muffy quite cheerfully.

Muffy Havis liked classical music and read all kinds of things and had not been terribly popular. She was hefty and pale and had her hair pulled back into a plain ponytail. Being asked unanswerable questions by one of the Dumb Oxen was not something she enjoyed.

"I sure wish I could understand Dotty better."

Really? Muffy thought. Or did you think everything would be as open and straightforward as playing football and getting drunk with your cronies? Muffy wished she had not come. She was tired of realizing that there was not a single person in her high-school class that she could call a friend.

And here came Carol Gilbert, blond hair, curls, bright smile; she's going to be oh so gracious and get him away from me. Oh, come on, Carol, this is Muffy, remember? You don't have to be jealous of me. Plain old Muffy. Aren't you going to pretend to be nice to me?

"What are you two finding to talk about?" Carol asked.

"Psychology," said Muffy.

"That's all he talks about these days since that job of his." Carol was smiling and dancing in place to get away.

"Maybe he should go into insurance," said Muffy, coolly.

"Something sensible like that," agreed Carol.

There are two kinds of stupid people, thought Muffy. The nice ones and the shrewd nasty ones. And both kinds come out on top.

Bill Davison murmured something. Muffy wasn't sure, but she thought it was "All-fired rush to be sensible."

"What was that, honey?" asked Carol, leaning forward. Oooh thought Muffy. Trouble in the ranks.

Bill didn't answer. Instead he looked up straight into Muffy's eyes big, dumb and not so sensible after all. "I'd really like to talk some more about this," he said. "Now's not really the time. Can I drop by while you're still in town?"

"Uh. Sure," said Muffy. What the hell, she thought, is happening?

"Maybe you could come out and see her."

"What? In the Home? Uh. Okay." Muffy looked to Carol, signaling: This is none of my doing.

"Give you a call," said Bill Davison. A football star, interested in me? Muffy maintained her quizzical expression.

"See ya, Muffy," said Carol, pulling at Bill's sleeve. She even gave her a dinky little wave with the tips of her fingers. Muffy gave her a dinky wave back. It's not you, Muff. It's that old woman he cares about. How strange.

People, Muffy decided. They really do grow up sometimes.

And, she thought, he really is sweet. Not to mention rather toothsome.

And sometime about mid-December, before Bill had a chance to call on Muffy, it snowed. A good hefty Kansas snowfall, in time for Christmas. It started about lunchtime. Bill was cleaning the tables and fixing trays. Some of the patients needed feeding. Dotty came running in. Her feet couldn't leave the ground, but she made a hurried, hopping motion with her hands and head.

"Billy. Billy," she said. "Come and see the snow."

She pulled him to the window. Great fat lumps of snow were falling like flakes of lard.

"God's dandruff," she announced.

Bill laughed out loud.

"Angel feathers. They're cleaning out the roost upstairs, making room for a few more."

"Dotty…" he said, shaking his head. He was going to say, You are out of your mind. It was what he said to anyone who made him laugh out loud.

"The snow's warm," she said. "The Eskimos make their houses out of it. They live in great snow cities, with snow skyscrapers, but nobody can see them because they mix right in with everything else. So the airplanes go over, and never notice. So it's all right. The Eskimos are safe. Nobody's going to touch them." She gave her head a determined nod. "Ride around on polar bears," she told him.

"Hell," she said, her voice suddenly different. "I used to sleep under snow six months out of every year. Snow's always been good to me. Let's go out."

"Can't, Dotty."

"Why not?"

"Rules," he said. "Besides, you haven't got a coat."

"You don't need a coat in the snow. I told you, the snow is warm!"

"Dotty. I can't let you out in it."

Her face went small and mean. She looked at him accusingly. "You're one of them," she said. "You're one of them!"

"Come on, Dotty, it's lunchtime. Let's have some food."

She snarled at him and threw off his hand.

"I'm not your servant," she growled. "I don't have to kowtow to the likes of you."

She held out her hand flat. "You can't do anything to me," she said. "Go on. Hit me! Hit me! You think that will stop me!" Her voice went down into a whisper. "I am the Happy One," she told him. "I come to avenge murder."

She walked away, flinging her hands around her head. "Hit me! Come on! Hit me! Doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt. They make us tough. They make us tough in Kansas." She walked toward the doors shouting, outraged.

"They sport us till we're as tough as old boots. They'd stick their things up Jesus Christ Himself and make their wives lick off the holy blessed shit from Jesus's holy, blessed asshole."

The doors swung shut behind her. The tirade went on, echoing, horrible, down the corridor. Was it okay just to let her go?

"Then they stick their knives up our sweet little dewlaps and rip them open and hang them from hooks until we dry in the sun and then they call us beef jerky and we clack and clatter when we walk, gutless, flies in the intestines. Oh, no! It's not just enough to kill us! No! Never enough just to make us die."

It was the worst it had ever been. Behind the doors, a man shouted. Bill decided he better go see. He had to put down the trays first. He swung open the doors, following her into the corridor.

Dotty was in a fight with Tom Heritage. She was punching him in the face as he hugged her. The Angel had fallen.

Heritage seemed to have forgotten all his training. Don't come at them from the front, don't try to hit them, get them from behind and make them go still. Billy saw why he had forgotten. Tom Heritage was angry. He was trying to get a good enough hold with one hand, so that he could hit her with his right.

Bill slipped up from behind and got Old Dynamite in a headlock. He pulled back tighter, and she squawked and howled, her arms hoisted helplessly over her head. They waved in the air. She tried to kick backward, but her legs were feeble. Bill held off as long as he could and then swept her feet out from under her.

"Calm down!" he shouted at Heritage. Heritage swallowed blood and wiped his face. "Come on, Dotty, let's go sit down."

She howled in nameless rage and slapped the air and tried to kick. Heritage also slipped in behind, twisting one of her legs in front of the other so she couldn't kick. They lifted her up like a sack of potatoes. Both of them had been hired for their muscles.

Dotty began to sob "No, no, no," over and over. The Graveyard was near. Jackson the janitor saw them and pushed open the swinging doors and flipped down the side of her cot. By the time they had loaded her onto the mattress she had gone quiet. She shivered.

They stood over her. Heritage was nursing a split lip.

"Do you think you could see a way not to report it?" Bill asked Tom Heritage. He looked around at Jackson.

Tom Heritage glared back at him, working the inside of his mouth, tasting blood.

"It's only been this once. Only you, me and Jackson saw it. Please don't tell anybody, or they'll stick her back in the Pigpen. Please. It was my fault, I told her she couldn't do something and I should have just humored her or something. Please don't tell, Tom. Please."

"Okay, okay," said Tom Heritage, sounding bored. "I shouldn't have hit her anyway."

After lunch, Bill wheeled out the TV and stood guard over it. It was late afternoon by the time he got back to the Graveyard to see how Dotty was.

She was lying on her back, smiling the smile, singing to herself.

"Sleep well, Dot," he told her. "Have yourself a beautiful dream."

The next day he got to work late, and Jackson greeted him, wheeling out a tub of laundry.

"We've had a casualty," he said, his voice dark and laconic. Accusing?

"Who?" The old folks often passed away in the night or hurt themselves.

"Old Dynamite. They found her out in the snow. She'd slept out in it all night. She was lying on her back. She'd been making those angel things the kids make. You know, waving her arms up and down to make wings."

"Is she dead?"

"Near as, dammit. She can't breathe."

Bill started to move toward the Graveyard. "Not there," said Jackson, grabbing his arm. "Hospital ward."

Oh God, oh Jesus, please God, please Jesus. He said it over and over to himself as he walked. He got lost, found locked doors, heard strange cries, asked for help. "Why aren't you on duty if you work here?"

"The patient is a kind of friend of mine."

"We're not here to be friends of patients."

"She's ill. Can I see her?"

They'd strapped her to the bed as a precaution. There were tubes in her nose. Her breath came in wheezes and gurgles. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling the smile.

"Dotty?" he asked.

"She's been unconscious since they brought her in. She's got pneumonia pretty bad. They call it the old man's friend. It is around here, at any rate."

"She doesn't want to die," he said.

"Really?" said the Nurse. "Why not?" She looked at him with a hard, straightforward glance that said, Are you kidding, with the lives these people lead?

"She's happy. Most of the time, she's really happy," he said. "The only thing that makes her unhappy is us."

He went out into the snow. The snow was still falling. It was filling in the angel she had made. It was a huge angel, with great sweeping wings and a head and a long, wide dress that she had made by moving her legs out and in across the snow. She had even scooped a halo out of the snow, around the top of the head. There were footprints all over the snow, big, heavy, booted footprints. But none of them led directly to the angel. They had hoisted her up out of it. That was the whole point. It had to look like an angel had gone to sleep there. And then woken up and flown away.

"It's the best angel, Dot," he said. "It's the best angel ever."

He knelt down and tried to brush away the snow that was falling into it, blurring the crisp, deliberate outline. As he brushed, his gloved and clumsy fingers broke the edges, blurring them. There was no saving it. Like everything else, it was to melt away into history. Like all of us, he thought as he stood up and walked away. Like that great muddy brown river. Like those broken stones. The names wear away. Like the log cabins and the rickety old carts and the sod-and-stick houses and the tent churches. Whole towns swallowed up, gone, lost. A whole America, he thought, it's going.