Galatea (2 page)

“Keep talking, Mrs. Val. Fight.”

She screamed, then screamed again, from the pain. She said: “I can’t stand it! I can’t!”

“Hang on! Fight!”

A
LL THAT TOOK TIME
, long, terrible seconds, but I couldn’t help it, because what stymied me was the certainty that if she ever actually passed out I could never move her dead weight, and by the time I got to the house, looked up numbers, and called for help, she’d be gone for the big count. But the pain did what no pep talk could do, whipped her to life, and I could get at the rest of it. I let go her head and knelt in front of her, squinched in so tight one leg was back of the other. I took one of her feet, put it on my knee, said: “Now—your arms—wrap ’em! Around my neck—tight! Lean on me—throw your weight! Twist your hips and
pull!
”

She did, and I felt her move. She gasped: “Oh—thank God—I can breathe! But—let me rest—please.”

“That’s it, relax.”

She let herself down, a little, and I felt her weight, so heavy it was frightening to think what it would have been like if I’d had to move it alone. I said: “Feel better?”

“Yes, but my leg’s cramped.”

“O.K., straighten up.”

She couldn’t, and I stopped her, to save her juice. I slid her foot down and put her knee on my knee, so she wouldn’t be doubled up and could get some force to her push. I said: “All right, you raise up three inches. You twist your hips and sit. On the edge of the trench you sit, then raise your feet—don’t worry about me, I’ll close my eyes. When your feet are out, roll over, and that’s it. Ready?”

“I’ll try.”

“It’ll hurt. You’re cut.”

“I’m all over blood, from these root ends, and it tickles where it’s running down. But never mind that—”

“Let’s go. One, two—”

Her scream, the grunt of the ground, and my heave came together, as one. I’d let her rest too long, and the tree moved, against the sky, like some terrible fingers. I bunched myself up, got under her, and somehow pushed her out. The tree was already pinching me, but as she rolled I clawed and came out. Then, just exactly then, when her gingham dress, which had been ripped clean off her, bellied out in the breeze and settled on my head, like some crazy blue sail. I tore clear and the tree was still falling, though not in an arc to threaten us—until my shackle tightened. Then it swung straight at us. I grabbed, threw her over me, and did it again. The ground jumped at the crash, and the butt whipped out of the hole.

She was out cold, face in the grass, and except for pants, belt, bra, and the blood smeared all over her, as naked as the day she was born. I took the dress, what was left of it, and spread it over her, then fanned her with my jumper. She hardly breathed, and her face looked blue, the little I could see. I turned her head, to give her air, unscrewed my water Thermos, slopped splashes on her cheek. She moved her hand I should stop, so at least she was partly conscious. I wiped off the water, said: “Mrs. Val, can you hear me? You understand what I say?” She nodded and I asked her: “What’s the name of your doctor? Or do you want me to call Mr. Val, first of all?”

“No! Help me in!”

“You mean, to the
house?
”

“In a minute, yes.”

“Mrs. Val, listen, you’re in bad shape, you’ve taken one hell of a beating, you need a doctor, right out here now, and—”

“I—said—no! I’ll go—directly.”

“I’ll do what I can. I’ll get stuff to make it easier. Stay where you are until I come back.”

I hustled to the cottage, which was a little one-story shack with a front porch, four rooms, and a little hall. From the bed, where I’d parked my bag, I grabbed up a blanket, and from the parlor two company chairs, which were the kind with chromium pipes and green plastic seats. When I got back she was sitting up, her face hanging in folds, her hair in her eyes, and her breath coming in puffs, but still more alive than she had been. I said: “O.K. First we put on the blanket, keep you a little bit warm. Then you let me help you into this chair I’m putting right here. Then you
rest
. Then you let me help you to the other one, which I’m putting a few steps nearer the house. Then you
rest
. I move the first chair nearer, you get to that and
rest
. Pretty soon, taking one hop at a time, you’ll be there. O.K.?”

“That way I can do it.”

She made it, leaning heavy on me, but at the last stop she sat there, staring off at nothing, as though thinking of something. Then: “Duke, can I ask a favor? That may sound kind of funny?”

“Whatever you want, just say it.”

“You know first aid, don’t you?”

“Not really, no.”

“Oh yes you do, I could tell. From all you said out there. From how you took charge and all. I want you to fix me up.”

“Mrs. Val, you need a doctor.”

“Duke, I can’t have it known, what happened to me. It’s bad enough to be this way, just a sideshow freak. And it’s bad enough when things happen, as they do all the time. But to have it
talked
about—to have a holy
show
made out of it
whatever
it is that happens—to have your
heart
cut out—like there was something I could do—”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“You will help me, won’t you?”

“After the way you’ve helped me?”

“How have I helped you, Duke?”

“Treating me human.”

“Everybody’s human.”

“Not everybody remembers it. You and your brother and sister-in-law kind of helped with a pretty bad day. Say what it is and I’ll do it.”

“ ... I want it done in the cottage. So I can shower off there, and in the big house leave nothing to show, like drops of blood on the rugs. In my bathroom are Band-Aids and things, and in my bedroom clothes. You bring it all to me here, and while you’re doing that, I’ll be figuring out what happened to me, and the rest of what has to be done to remove every last trace. Of my unfortunate mishap.”

The big house, when at last I was in it, was just as nice inside as it was out, being furnished modern, in yellow maple, tan rugs, blue upholstery, and copper lamps. I found the stuff she said get, took it into the cottage, and lit the kerosene heater so her shower would be hot. The plumbing and stuff out there was interior, but not up-to-date like what was in the big house, which worked at the snap of a button. When I went out again, she said get the take-out, as it would have to do after all, and I could have it while the water was heating. So I ate while camped down beside her, there on the patio grass, and she said it would all be simple, just a matter of filling the hole, dumping some sawdust on, cutting the tree up in such a way that branches were piled on the sawdust and the stump fell on them. The power saw, she said, would plug right into the cottage and, except for a little shoveling, I wouldn’t be put to much trouble. When it was all done, she said I could pour on some gasoline, toss a match on top, and everything would go up in smoke, “down to the last twig.”

Not quite a political job, at least as I sized it up, but if that’s what it took to please her, I meant to do it her way. I drank from my Thermos of coffee, told how my heart had stopped beating when I saw the death trap I’d dug, assuming there’d be a taproot when nothing was down there but dirt, and we both shivered to think of it, and relived each horrible moment. But whatever we said always led back to the fat. She kind of chanted it: “It’s glandular, glandular, I know it. There’s no cure, none at all, none, and I’ll never live to be thirty. I don’t complain, I speak no word of that kind. I do what I can, my small mite of good, so I leave this earth a little bit better than I found it. But can’t they leave me alone? Do they, do they all, do they every last one—have to
talk?
”

I was so flabbergasted, since I had supposed her middle-aged, maybe fifty or more, that I was a second late answering: “ ... Why—O.K., but don’t
you
talk.”

“You told me to.”

“Out there. Here now, take it easy.”

Her face beaded up, as it did when flashes hit her, and I dried it off with a face towel, wrapping it on, then patting it soft. Then again, pretty soon, she was off: “And, Duke, talking’s not all they do. They laugh. That’s the worst, as it’s meant to be mean. And they turn away, or close their eyes, or make a face, as though you were a mess on the pavement. That cuts into your heart. Maybe they can’t help it, but you’d think they could if they tried. Why do they do things like that?”

“People are funny.”

“You didn’t.”

“I don’t really know what you mean.”

“That’s not true but it’s nice. It’s nice because it’s kind. Duke, I want you as my friend.”

“Mrs. Val, can I say something?”

“Please, Duke. What is it?”

“I was in jail.”

“I didn’t mention it.”

“I spent a night there, and if you ever looked at the moon shining at you through bars, it puts a scar on your soul. And when you didn’t mention it, when you treated me human, it healed that scar—just a little. I’m proud to be your friend, and I want you for mine.”

“The afflicted, Duke, they know.”

“You bet they know.”

“We could say one thing more.”

“Yes, Mrs. Val, what?”

“You being so gentlemanly.”

That kind of shook me up, and for some little time we said nothing. When the time came for the wash-up, I worked through the shower curtains, a one-inch slit I pulled open, but to me she wasn’t sickening any more. I could see her, and the fat rolled and dappled and shook. But all I noticed was her slim, pretty shanks, and all I thought was what a shame they should tremble so, under that mountain of meat!

M
R. VAL WAS A TALL
, thin man around forty, with gray hair, sallow skin, and a pious stoop, who got on my nerves, I didn’t exactly know why. Part of it, maybe, was how he rubbed his hands and jerked his head as he talked, reminding me of a waiter. And part of it, I’m sure, was his everlasting ant-pantedness, which had even annoyed the girls in the Marlboro courthouse. He cut in on everybody, hustled things up, listened to nothing at all. I owed him my freedom, it was only sense I should like him, and I tried to, don’t get the idea I didn’t. And yet, in the half-hour it had taken for him to drive me over, I don’t think I finished one answer to the questions he popped at me. He’d cut in, blow his horn, feed gas, or do something that made it impossible to talk.

He was that way tonight, soon as he got home. She’d called him, so he knew she was there, and the lights were on very friendly. You’d have thought he’d have lingered with a young wife who had been away, going inside with her when she stepped out the kitchen door. But he had no sooner spoken to her than he was calling to me that I should help him unload. I was back of the cottage, splitting the wood I had sawed, and was perfectly willing to help with whatever he had. But I hated to leg it, while he stood snapping his fingers and slapping his luggage compartment. Thermos buckets were in it, that he said went to the kitchen, and hams in muslin bags, that he said went to storage. She took the buckets from me and set them down. Then she led on to the cold room, which was a low brick building across the patio from the cottage. It had a Yale lock, which she opened, and steel racks inside with rows of hooks, where I hung the hams as she told me.

When we came out he was off in the field, looking at my tree. It was easy to see in the dark, looking like a fire in a Western oil field; I’d done it all as she said, using plenty of sawdust, as it turned out they had a lot of it, stored for smoking the hams. So you could have read the print in a newspaper when I stepped up beside him and said: “I’m sorry it took so long, sir. One whole day to get out just one tree. But—”

“Could you get it out at
all
—that’s what I wanted to know. Naturally it had to take time. I knew that. But you did it, and you did it right. Filling that hole, burning the stump—just right. I hadn’t expected it, but the ash’ll be wonderful fertilizer. We’ll plow it in, then disk it, with lime and the regular stuff. We’ll be set by the first of May to put in our corn. I’m well pleased, Duke. Now I know you’re my man.”

I’d have been better pleased if he’d let me say something once, but at least he seemed to mean well, and I went to the cottage to dress, as at least I had slacks, sport coat, and a couple of clean shirts.

Dinner, I must say, was remarkable, verging on art. Some of it, the hot vegetables and cold dessert, came from the Thermos buckets, the ones he brought from the Ladyship. But the steak was out of the storage room, the biggest piece of sirloin I think I ever saw. He brought it in the living-room, and told me crease with my fingers where I wanted mine cut. I creased an inch, and with the knife he marked an inch and a half. He marked his own, a half-inch minute steak. But when he went to the kitchen she followed him out. I heard her say: “No, Val, please! Cut me one like Duke’s and take the rest of it back. I shouldn’t have that much, and besides it’s too thick to broil.”

“Broil? I’ll bake it!”

“But it’s three pounds of meat and—”

“You’ve been down to St. Mary’s, and after that mule meat they eat down there, you need something to stick to your ribs.”

I thought to myself: “Is he giving her all the rest of that chunk? Doesn’t he know it’s practically murder, considering that weight she carries?” That was the answer, though, as came out when she waddled back and sat down to wait. She said: “Duke, he tries his best to make me happy—but he’s like all the others—he can’t understand—what this affliction
is
. It’s glandular! If the food is there on my plate, I have to eat it, I can’t help myself. No overweight person can. Not saying I don’t need a lot, else I get so terribly weak. But—all that meat—”

An electric stove cooks fast, and in a few minutes he was back, saying we’d eat in the nook. We went in there, and I caught the light in his eye as he served the meal, so pretty it was like an ad in the
Saturday Post
. I also caught how she ate, very dreamy, once she tasted that steak. She cut each piece off slow, sopped it in blood, and closed her eyes as she chewed. So as not to be caught looking, and more or less make like sociable, I put it on with a squirtgun, how wonderful everything was.