A Father for Philip (12 page)

“Oh… Yeah. I forgot. I hope she feels a
little better tomorrow. See you, Jeff.”

~ * ~

On Monday morning Eleanor staggered
around, got her son off to school before she crawled back into bed. There she remained
until the hammering on her door brought her out of a restless feverish sleep.
It was Bill.

“Kathy…” He panted. “The baby… babies…”

“Oh, Bill,” said Eleanor through her
nose, “that’s great.” She tried to inject enthusiasm into her voice. “Thanks for
letting me know. Come back and tell me when it’s all over.” She swayed caught
the doorframe and forced a smile.

Bill frowned. “You okay, Ell? You don’t
look so good.”

“I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me.”

“Okay. I’ve been in touch with Ralph
Exley and he’ll send a man over to supervise the milking and rest of it. The
boys will just put in their normal hours, so you’ll be alone here for the
night. I wish you’d get a phone down here! But anyway, you have keys to the
house. Call on Ralph if you need anything.”

“Fine, Bill. Now scoot back to Kathy and
drive carefully. The stork’s never in a furious rush for first babies.”

Bill took off at a sprint up the slope
and as she climbed shivering back into her bed, Eleanor heard the gravel spray
into the stone wall at the top end of the driveway. Bill, ignoring her
admonition, was driving like a maniac… Or a man whose wife was about to give
birth.

How wonderful it must be to have an
anxious husband drive you to the hospital when your child is about to be born,
she thought, and wiped a tear of self-pity from her face. She huddled deeper
into her bed. All I had was an old father, hovering hopefully, praying that I
give him a grandson to take over the farm.

Philip came home sometime after that and
Eleanor called out to him that he could have a couple of cookies, some milk or
juice. “Don’t forget to feed Casey before you go out to play,” she told him,
adding that she would get up and fix his dinner at five-thirty, so be on time.

Philip did as he was told, quietly for
once, and she heard the screen door squeak then slam shut, heard his bike, with
its loose back fender rattling as he pedaled along the path, headed for the
creek and ultimately, the woods.

Eleanor dozed, woke and reached for a
glass of water. It fell over as she tried to pick it up and she was aware of
the sound of water trickling onto the floor. She struggled to sit up, to reach
for something with which to mop up and the trickling of water became a hollow
rushing roar, which thundered in her ears, flooded over her, black and deep,
washing her away, taking her off to some other, far place, drowning… Black…
Deep…

~ * ~

Philip came home after feeding Siwash
and tried to wake his mother. She moaned a little but wouldn’t talk to him.
Shrugging, he wandered into the kitchen, not yet worried, just a little peeved
that she should be so sleepy when he was so hungry.

He fed Casey half a can of dog food,
even though he had given him bread and milk not two hours before, and when he
was looking in the fridge for that, he found some of the casserole Grant had
made on Saturday. It didn’t taste very good cold, but Philip didn’t quite know
how to make it warm, not even in the microwave, so he ate it anyway. He didn’t
think it had tasted very good warm, either. He finished off his meal with a few
peaches out of a bottle Kathy had sent down a couple of days before.

After he ate, Philip played with Casey,
but the silence from his mother’s room disturbed him. Holding the puppy in his
arms he went and sat on the end of her bed and watched her sleep. She sure was
rolling around a lot, he thought, and making funny noises. He tried again to
wake her up and make her talk to him and when she wouldn’t he decided to go and
talk to Kathy and Bill. Maybe Mommy would wake up for them.

Kathy and Bill were gone away. The two
big boys who helped Bill, Curtis and Mike, had gone home because all the
milking had been done and there was fresh fodder in the feed bins. Bill had
finished all his chores before he went out. Maybe they wouldn’t be back until
late, so he better go home and see if Mommy… No! Mommy was for babies!… See if
Mom would talk to him now. He didn’t like the farm to be so quiet, to see
Bill’s car gone and no lights in the big house. It was like there was no one
home at him and Casey.

As he opened the screen door Philip
could hear his own heart thundering in his ears and he smashed the door shut,
just to hear the noise it made. It made the silence deeper because Mommy didn’t
even say “Don’t slam the door!”

He turned on the TV and the sound of rifle
fire ricocheting through sandstone hills was too loud. He turned it off and
watched pinpoint of light die out in the center of the screen, then looked out
the windows.

It was getting dark and he was tired.
Maybe if he went to bed all by himself like a big boy, Mommy… Mom would be
better in the morning and would talk to him.

Philip took a slice of bread, clumsily
spread with peanut butter, poured himself a glass of milk, only slopping a
little. He idly watched two tiny black ants swimming in the peach juice he’d
dribbled on the table at dinnertime, put Casey in his basket on the back porch,
then, munching on his bread, he went to look at his mother again.

Her face was all funny looking. It
seemed little somehow, and white. She made an odd noise in her throat and was
still rolling around in her bed. Philip stared hard at her, put his glass on
her dresser and went across the hall to his own room.

He put on his pajamas and crawled into
bed. Much later he woke to find it very, very dark and a noise, which scared
him and made him want to cry, came from somewhere. He jumped out of bed,
crying, “Mommy! Mommy!” and ran across the hall to her room. “Mommy, there’s a
bad noi—” He stopped. The bad noise was coming from his mother’s bed…
She was making it!
He went to her,
touched her and jumped back. She sure did feel hot, and that noise she was
making hurt his head, made his ears ring, sort of like Casey when he thought he
wasn’t going to get fed, only this went on and on!

“Mommy, do you want a drink of water?”
She said this to him sometimes at night. No answer, only the noise. “Mommy, do
you want me to get Bill and Kathy?” And suddenly his seven-year-old mind told
him he better not hang around here asking questions, waiting for answers which
would not be given. He better get Kathy and Bill or someone, and fast.

He grabbed the flashlight his mother
always kept in her bedside table and ran outside with its beam bobbing up and
down as he pelted up the slope to the big house.

Bill’s car was still not back.
Jeff! I’ll get Jeff. He’ll know what to do.

The small pajama clad figure with his
flashlight dashed off across the meadow and disappeared into the forest. His
feet followed the dark path through the trees. He let out a shriek when he
passed the lean-to and Siwash whinnied gently, startling him. Philip stopped,
froze for an instant, then remembered that the horse was his friend. He carried
on to the place where the camper was always parked.

It was gone!

And then Philip remembered. Jeff
wouldn’t be back until late but wasn’t it late now? It was dark. And Mommy was
sick and he had to get a big person to help! He sobbed once, thinking of the
long walk along the highway to the Exley house. Then, he recalled Siwash’s
whinnied greeting…

As the little boy led the big horse out
of the darkness of the path, the moon came sailing up from behind the mountain,
lighting the forestry road, making the shadows blacker. Philip shivered as much
with fear as with cold, but he led the horse to a point near a large stump, and
talking to Siwash the way he had heard Jeff do, he climbed from the stump onto
the horse’s back. His fingers clung to the coarse hairs of the mane, and his
knees clung to the warm flanks. He leaned forward and said, “Go, boy!” but the
horse stood still. Oh, how did Jeff make him go? Then the reins hanging down
where he had left them after leading Si here caught his eye. The child
struggled to reach the leather strap and finally managed to capture it without
dismounting. He caught the reins tightly in his small hands and as he pulled up
on them the horse raised his head and slowly walked forward down the forestry
road toward the highway.

Philip was nearly at the turn-off,
wondering desperately what he would do to make Si go in the right direction
when they got there, when the twin beams of headlights swept across him,
blinding him. Siwash stepped carefully to the edge of the track as the camper
screeched to a stop, its rear end slewing in the loose dirt as it pulled up on
the other side of the road.

“Philip!” Jeff cried. “What are you
doing?”

“Mommy… My mom’s making funny noises,
she sick and she’s making noises! Bill and Kathy are gone away and you are gone
too so me and Si was going to get Mr. and Mrs. Exley!” Philip was shivering,
his teeth were chattering, but Jeff could make sense out of what the child
said. Before the last word was out of the trembling lips, the truck had been
shut down, lights off and Jeff had swung up behind Philip on the back of the
horse. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it round Philip even as he used
his knees to turn the horse.

“All right, son. I’ll take care of your
mom for you. That was a brave thing you did, sport, riding Siwash all by
yourself when you’ve never done it before.”

Philip felt the tempo of hoofbeats
quicken under him as Jeff urged Siwash out of a trot and into a gallop. He felt
warm, suddenly, no longer afraid, and the horse was carrying him…
Cathumpity, cathumpity, cathumpity
,
along with Jeff…
Cathumpity, cathumpity,
cathumpity
, back to his mom. He felt like laughing! Riding fast was fun!
“Hey, Jeff! Aren’t you going to call the sheriff ’cause I rustled your horse?”

Jeff made a sound deep in his chest.
“No!” he called back over the noise of the horse. Philip didn’t know the word
jubilation, but he recognize the sound of it in Jeff’s voice. “I’m proud of
you, my son!”

When they arrived in the yard in front
of the small house Jeff flung himself off the horse, and with Philip tucked
under his arm, ran to the house. He dumped Philip in his bed, bundled blankets
tight around him for warmth and bent to kiss his forehead. “I’m going to look
after your mom, Phil. When you’re warm again, you can come in and see her.”

Philip smiled sleepily in the dark. “I
knew you’d come and help, Jeff,” he said, but got no answer beyond the sound
Jeff’s voice across the hall. He wondered for a moment why Jeff was saying
that, but he was too warm and sleepy and contented to wonder long. Seemed right
somehow for Jeff to be saying, “Eleanor, Eleanor, sweetheart, for God’s sake
tell me what’s wrong. Oh Eleanor…”

As David’s hands touched Eleanor, his
lost, beloved wife, he could feel the terrible heat burning under her skin,
which was dry and taut. She moaned, tossed restlessly, muttered mostly
incomprehensible things between clenched teeth.

“All right, Eleanor,” he said his most
gentle voice, a voice which he thought with a tinge of amazement, sounded as if
it should not be working at all. “All right, my sweet, I’m here and I’m going
to help you. Lie still, darling. I have to leave you for a minute or two but
I’ll come back to you.” Was he getting through to her at all? She seemed less
agitated, the moans had grown quieter, hadn’t they, as if she was listening to
him? The wild thrashing had diminished, if nothing else. He placed his cool
hands around her face tenderly, kissed her burning forehead and loped from the
room.

Into the living room he dashed, turning
on lights as he went. He scanned every surface rapidly, then ran to the
kitchen, his eyes seeking, raking the hall as he crossed it, and still he
couldn’t find it, not even in the kitchen. Where was the phone? Dammit! He
needed a phone! He needed a doctor for Eleanor and he needed one now.

There was no phone. What do I do now? he
asked himself, standing still, trying not to panic. In her purse? Did she have
a cell phone? No, he answered himself silently. Even if she did, he knew there
was no cell service here. At least there wasn’t where his camper was parked,
and this place was even lower. Still, he dug through her purse, but found no
phone. He tried to collect his thoughts. I don’t dare leave her to find help,
and that fever has got to be brought down. The fever, that’s the big thing
right now. Whatever else ails her, if I can just get that fever down half the
battle will be won. Think, man, think! Remember!

He bolted unerringly for the bathroom
and wrenched open the medicine cabinet. Rubbing alcohol. The memory of a sweet
faced nun who had cared for him stood in the forefront of his mind, now. It was
as if her hands guided his, her voice spoke to him calmly as he found a basin,
mixed alcohol with water, put a cloth in it, took a large towel from the linen
closet, and filled a hot water bottle. Ice. He remembered ice at the back of
his neck, the hot water bottle at his feet.

He wrapped a bag of peas from the
freezer in a towel and returned, laden, to Eleanor. She lay thrashing wildly
once more, calling, “David… David… Come back… David…” So his voice had broken
through the wall of her fever! His presence had been what made her calm.

“Hush, darling. I’m here. Sit up.”
Gently he lifted her, slid the nightgown off her, straightened the sheet under
her. She tossed her head and struggled away from the ice pack. He smoothed it
out and replaced it. She tried to kick away the hot water bottle. “No, darling,
leave it there. It’s to keep you from getting chilled.”

He draped a large towel over her, as the
nun had done for him when she refused to let him die, and began to bathe
Eleanor. First her face, and then her arms and hands, one at a time, not drying
them, but letting alcohol evaporate to cool the fever-heat from her skin. When
one hand and arm were done, he returned to her face, and the next hand and arm,
then the face, then the legs and feet, and in this matter, talking soothingly
all the while he worked over her, he tried to bring her fever down.

Face, arms, face, legs, face, torso, and
back to her face again, wetting her hair, praying deep inside and feeding
terror at the rate with which the cloth became hot, at the rate with which the
water in the basin took on the heat of her skin. Aspirin, he told himself. She
must have aspirin. He dared to—must dare to—leave her and return to the
bathroom. More cold water. More alcohol. And aspirin. Water in a glass. Back to
the bedroom.

“Sit up, sweet,” he crooned, holding her
against his chest. “Open your mouth. I’m going to put a pill on your tongue and
give you water. I want you to swallow it. Do it for me, darling.”

Something in Eleanor grew dimly aware of
the orders being given her by this hallucination, but because she felt too weak
to think about it, she simply accepted the fact that someone was here, someone
was looking after her and she thought it was David. Of course it couldn’t be,
but whoever it was, she was being cared for, and she wasn’t going to die and
have Philip find her that way in the morning. She was dimly grateful and opened
her mouth when told, swallowed when told, repeated the process until three
pills had been administered.

The bathing went on and on until she
felt cold and shivery, then a sheet was placed over her so lightly she hardly
knew it was there, and the deep voice said, “Sleep now, my darling. I won’t
leave you.” The phantom with the cool, tender hands stroked the hair away from
her face and she managed to whisper, “Philip?”

“He’s all right. He’s in bed, sound
asleep.”

Eleanor tried to smile the phantom away,
tried to tell him he didn’t exist, but he made her feel so much better,
hallucination or not, that she let him stay. “David… Nice dream… Lemme… dream…
li’l longer. Only… stay…”

And the phantom’s voice went with her
into sleep. “I’ll stay forever, Eleanor.”

David Jefferson sat in a big chair, one
he’d sat in long before, and watched his sleeping wife, also as he had done
long before. Then, with a tender smile on his face he tiptoed across the hall
and looked down the face of his sleeping son, a thing he had never done before.
“My son,” he whispered softly. “My son… And my wife. My home…” He looked around
the darkened bungalow. Are they still mine, he asked inside. Are they? Or will
I have to leave them again? His entire being recoiled at that thought.
No! Never!
After all this time, all the
years they have been dead to me, to return and find them alive, it would be too
much for the fates to expect me to leave. She loves me, my warm and lovely
Eleanor, who is not dead.

He went back to her then and sat in the
big chair by her side, looking at her, drinking in the sight of her, knowing
she belonged to him and would never marry another man. She loved him, David,
not Grant. It had been him she called for, him and him alone for whom she had
waited with faith and loyalty all these years.

I should’ve checked, he berated himself
for the thousandth time in the past few months. Why, oh why did I leave it so
long before coming back? He knew that answer. There had been nothing, no one,
to come back to.

Eleanor stirred. With her eyes squeezed
tightly shut, her face tense, she huddled under the one sheet he had covered
her with. “What is it, darling?” he asked. “Are you too hot again,?” His hand
touched her face.

She shook the bed with her shivering.
“Cold,” she muttered. “So cold… I can’t get warm… I’m cold!” He piled blankets
on her. Still she shook. Her teeth rattled in her head, and he knew, he
remembered that her muscles would be aching with the force of the spasms
shaking her body. It had been that way with him, and he did now what the nun
had been unable to do for him then. He did it for his wife.

For not one second longer did he
hesitate. Eleanor was cold and she needed him. David stripped to the skin and
slid his warm body into the bed beside his shivering wife. His long naked
warmth touched her icy flesh and she snuggled close into the curve of his body,
coming into his arms as naturally as if she had been there yesterday. He drew
in one long, anguished breath and held her against his chest, his arms wrapping
around her back tightly, crossing over, his hands rubbing, stroking, warming,
comforting.

Eleanor sighed, deeply contented.
“David, your boniness… gone.” Then, presently, as the shivering subsided, she
nestled closer, malleable and silken, molding herself to him, every inch
touching, bringing him the most exquisite pleasure and pain. “Most sub…
stantial ’lucination…” she muttered.

“Lie still, sweetheart,” rumbled the deeply
resonant voice in the ear which was pressed to the warm chest. “Lie still, and
we’ll sleep… Just so. Are you warm?”

“So warm, my darling, my David, so
lovely and warm…”

~ * ~

David was up long before the clock on
the kitchen wall showed seven-thirty. At that time he went to Eleanor, checked.
She still slept, still had the same look of wonder on her face. He touched her
gently. Her skin felt damp, a fine film of moisture beaded her upper lip. He
put another blanket on her and went to wake his son. Shaking the boy by the
shoulder, he said “Wake-up, sport. What do you want for breakfast? Porridge, or
eggs?”

The child opened his eyes and stared at
first, then he beamed. “Jeff!” he said finally. “What are you do—” Before he
could complete his question, he remembered and fear flared in his eyes. “Mommy?
My mom?”

“She’s much better, Phil. Sleeping, but
lots and lots better. She’s not making that noise anymore.” He knew it had been
the noise which it worried Philip most. “Tell you what, let me know what you
want to eat, and while I get it started, you peek in the door and look at your
mother. But don’t you dare wake her,” he added with a smile.

Philip scampered from his bed and darted
to his mother’s door. Before he opened it, he turned and whispered hoarsely, “Can
you make porridge… With raisins in it?”

Jeff nodded solemnly. “I can. And with
brown sugar on it?” Philip nodded back, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes
alight with joy as he slowly pushed open his mother’s door.

A happy little boy quickly dressed, pretended
to wash his face and ran to the back porch to feed his dog. The horse, whom
until that moment had been completely forgotten by man and boy alike, was
eating his way around the rose arbor, nibbling at the tender new shoots,
sneezing at the pollen in the golden blossoms.

“Hey! Si! Quit eating my mom’s roses!”
Philip yelled, running out into the yard and dragging at the reins which were
hanging down in front of the horse.

Jeff appeared in the doorway, barefoot,
shirtless and wearing a frilly apron over his pants. Philip giggled. “Keep it
down, sport,” Jeff admonished quietly. “Mom’s sleeping, remember? Come on, now.
Let’s snap it up or you’ll be late for the school bus!”

Philip’s lower lip jutted out ominously,
trembling. “But I need to stay home and look after my mom.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jeff smiled. “That’s
what you have me for. It’s my job, son. And my privilege.” He threw the boy
over his shoulder and limped into the house where he dumped Philip on a chair
at the kitchen table. “Now you eat up all that porridge.” He sat, too, and
spooned up oatmeal made the way Philip liked it—the way he liked it as well,
because that was the way Eleanor had made it for him every morning before he
went off to work for those few, magical months they’d been together after their
wedding night.

Philip ate, drank a glass of apple juice
and grabbed for his lunch kit. It was empty! “Jeff, I can’t go to school. You
haven’t made my lunch.”

“Oh I’m a lousy mother, aren’t I?” Jeff
said. Quickly, he slapped together a bologna sandwich, wrapped up three cookies
and thumped in an orange beside them. “Milk in the thermos?” he asked, and not
waiting for an answer, filled the bottle, slipped it into its slot, then closed
the lunchbox. “Here, take it and run,” he said. “The bus driver will be honking
her horn up at the end of the driveway in two minutes if you’re not there,
waiting.”

Philip stared in amazement. “How do you
know what time my bus comes?”

“I know lots of things. Now quit
stalling and take off or I’ll have to chase you all the way up there.” He made
a mock-threatening move toward Philip, snapping a tea towel at him. The child
ran off, laughing.

David went back to his sleeping wife. He
stood looking at her for a few moments before he silently and quickly slipped
out of his clothes again. He lay beside her, not touching her, and pulled the
covers up around them both needing only to be close to her. After a time, being
close was not enough. He ran a gentle fingertip down her spine, wondering if
that, too, would be the same.

It was! She murmured softly, and turned
as he had hoped she would, still sleeping, into his arms. This he thought, is
heaven. He closed his eyes and let the sweet sensations of her softness, her
nearness, her scent, flood over him. He let one finger stroke the hair on her
temple, afraid to move too much, afraid to wake her, but needing to caress her.
She slept on, her soft cheek resting against his chest, her head fitting into
the hollow beneath his chin, fitting as it always had and she tightened her arms
around him whispering, “Love you…”

“I love you, too, my own sweet lady,” he
replied softly hoping she would know in her dreams it was true.

In her dreams Eleanor heard, and half in
a dream, felt the warm breath on her temple, felt the gentle fingertip on her
hair, and knew she was having a sweet dream of David. But this was a phantom
David who had come to her when she was ill, who had made her cool when she was
too hot, and then made her gently warmed when she was freezing, and half the
dream left her, leaving reality behind. But the reality was as the dream had
never been.

She opened her eyes. She saw a brown arm
and shoulder in the immediate foreground. They curved up and around her,
blocking her view of all else, and she shut her eyes tightly for a moment,
coming fully awake, fully aware of the protectiveness inherent in the curvature
of that shoulder as it shielded her. Protectiveness and possessiveness, too,
were in the arms which held her and Eleanor gasped slightly, opening her eyes
again.