Spooner (11 page)

“The teacher’s just a kid herself, barely out of school,” he said. “She doesn’t know anything about children.”

But it was too late; she was furious, so mad at him he might as well have been rich. A few moments passed; he heard Calmer’s
spoon scraping against the side of the glass, finishing his crackers and milk. He always finished everything, down to the
last bit.

“I suppose I’ll have to take him to the doctor,” she said. He’d let her down, that was clear as day—this by the way was an
expression Spooner had picked up at kindergarten, so you couldn’t say it was all a waste of time.

“I’ll take him to see Dr. Woods,” he said, “that’s no trouble at all. I just hate to see you so upset when nothing’s necessarily
wrong.”

It was quiet again, and then he said, “If you want, I’ll have a talk with him too. I just don’t think we ought to make too
much of it…”

But Spooner’s mother had made up her mind that something was wrong with Spooner and didn’t want any arguments. A little later
he said, “Are you all right, my sweet?”

“I’ve got some tightness in my chest,” she said, not about to call him
my sweet
too. It sounded like it might be Calmer’s fault. “I think I’ll go to bed.” Spooner heard her chair slide across the floor
and then her footsteps going past his door on the way to her bedroom. Calmer stayed in the kitchen a few minutes, and then
Spooner heard him scrape the glass again with his spoon, then wash it in the sink and put it into the cupboard, then let himself
out the front door.

They went to the doctor’s office on Saturday morning, Calmer and Spooner, in the same building where Spooner had been born.
Calmer was wearing the heavy wool uniform that all the instructors at the military school wore at that time of year, with
a tie and a folding cap. He had to drop Spooner back at home after the appointment and be at work by noon. It was warm for
October, and Calmer took off his cap in the car and laid it on the seat between them. Spooner looked at the shiny major’s
bars, worrying about them falling off and getting lost. But then, Spooner worried constantly about losing things, his hat,
his catcher’s mitt, the bullet he’d stolen from Kenny Durkin’s father. He worried that Calmer would lose his car and not come
to see them, and he worried at the movies when a cowboy rode into town and went into the sheriff’s office without tying the
horse carefully to the rail.

For a long time they rode in silence, neither one of them knowing what to say and both of them wishing Margaret were in the
backseat, talking a mile a minute, and then, as they parked, Spooner glanced at the freshly painted artillery pieces across
the street and had a thought. He said, “Did you kill any Krauts in the navy?”

Calmer jumped at the sound of the voice, as if he’d forgotten Spooner was there. This was only the second time they’d gone
anywhere alone since Calmer began seeing Spooner’s mother.

Calmer took his time answering, and as he waited Spooner realized that he’d broken the dead-and-dying rule. He wasn’t supposed
to talk about dying, or mention dead people or dead animals he saw along the road. He wasn’t even supposed to think about
anything dead.

“Germans,” Calmer said. “Let’s not call them Krauts.”

“Mr. Durkin does. He says they were harder to kill than the Japs.”

“Well, not everybody who talks like that knows what he’s talking about,” Calmer said. He’d had a look by now at Kenny Durkin’s
father, heard him over there beating the kid.

“He was in the war,” Spooner said.

“A lot of people were in the war.”

Spooner didn’t see what he meant. “Did you shoot anybody in the navy?”

They got out of the car. There was a fence around what was left of the old folks’ home across the street—it still hadn’t been
rebuilt after the fire, or even taken down—and the smell of that night was never completely out of the air.

Dr. Woods was as old as Spooner’s grandmother and had been the Whitlowe family doctor since he got out of medical school.
He’d delivered Lily and Uncle Phillip and two of Lily’s three sisters and both of Lily’s children. He was now forty-six years
in the same office, and swore that he had never seen a more difficult labor than the one that produced Spooner. He mentioned
this to Lily every time she brought in the boy for repairs, and it never failed to cheer her up to hear him say it.

As for the child, he was injured often and in uncommon ways. Dr. Woods had some experience with this sort of patient—they
came young and old, men and women, rummies and churchgoers alike, people who would stand in line to get hit by lightning—and
was of the opinion that Spooner would not live to see his majority.

And on the one hand, he considered it his obligation as a physician to prepare Spooner’s mother for that eventuality, and
on the other hand, the woman was high-strung and prone to asthma attacks, so instead of talking about the boy as he was sewing
up his head or setting a broken finger, he usually brought the conversation around to what a pretty, well-mannered little
girl she had in Margaret Ward. And smart? My Lord, smart as a whip. Dr. Woods and his wife had no children of their own, but
he had been around them since the day he set up his practice and saw them for what they were—whole little people. Good or
bad, handsome or misshapen from the start, and he allowed himself to quietly judge which was which, to despise the ones he
despised. The little Spooner girl was an angel and the boy, well, he’d been there himself but it was still hard to believe
they come out the same rabbit hole.

The man who brought the boy in was wearing a uniform from the military school, which meant he was a schoolteacher, and Dr.
Woods only hoped Mrs. Spooner knew what she was doing. He did not think much of men as schoolteachers; he didn’t care if they
wore a uniform or not. In his experience, most of them deviated from the norm, and even if it wasn’t that or something worse,
not one of them ended up with a pot to piss in anyway, and if they weren’t smart enough to see that, what business did they
have teaching anybody else?

Still, the widow was asthmatic, and excitable, and had the two children, one of them this hellion, and he supposed in her
situation you took what come along.

The schoolteacher was at the desk outside Dr. Woods’s office, trying to persuade his receptionist, a middle-aged woman named
June Oakley, to let him speak privately with Dr. Woods regarding the boy’s situation. Miss June had married into an old Milledgeville
family far above her own family’s social station, then was divorced out of it, and having tasted the good life once, could
not abide having her authority questioned by anybody common. Dr. Woods watched her a little while and when he saw that she
was about to cry or quit—which she did once or twice a month—he came out of his office to head it off, and asked Miss June
would she kindly take the boy back to the examining room while he and the gentleman spoke. He led Calmer back into his office
and lit a cigarette.

The schoolteacher was ill at ease, and Dr. Woods did nothing to make him more comfortable. The room smelled of alcohol and
warm vitamins.

“So, Major Ottosson,” Woods said, “I perceive there is a certain amount of discomfiture regarding the situation heah which
you do not see fit to disclose to my receptionist.” Letting him know right off that he’d been to college too.

“I didn’t want to embarrass anyone needlessly.”

The doctor smiled at that and said, “No cause to worry there. That woman is got skin as thick as a barefoot nigger,” then
waited to see what the schoolteacher would say to that.

“I’m not sure it’s even a medical problem,” Calmer said.

“Well, as long as you come all the way down heah, why don’t let’s let me decide?”

Calmer shrugged. “They sent Warren home from kindergarten with a note for staring at the teacher.”

“What teacher is that?”

“Miss Tuttle. He was putting finger paint in his hair so she’d have to wash it. She seemed to think there was something sexual—”

Dr. Woods stroked his chin and looked at the ceiling. “Well,” he said, “I heard of something like this before, but never in
a white family. Colored children, you know, they tend to start at an earlier age. Especially the girls.”

Spooner was sitting in the examination room in his undershorts. Dr. Woods did not speak to the boy when he came in, and Spooner
sat nailed to the spot, his bare legs sweating against the butcher paper they used to cover the table. They had been here
before, he and Dr. Woods, and it was never pleasant.

Dr. Woods looked him over and then went to the cabinet and pulled out a long syringe and laid it on a tray. He always did
that, to show who was boss. Next, he took out a thermometer and a small rubber hammer and a stethoscope. Then a tongue depressor.

Dr. Woods attached the stethoscope to his neck and approached Spooner from the side. He took the boy by the elbow, a little
roughly, and placed the thermometer in his armpit and then closed it down. He put the cold end of the stethoscope against
Spooner’s chest. Spooner sat still while the doctor listened, then took deep breaths when Dr. Woods moved behind him and told
him to breathe. As if he needed to be told.

He ran his fingers through Spooner’s hair, looking for ticks, and then tapped at his knees to check his reflexes. He looked
in Spooner’s ears and opened Spooner’s mouth and had a look down his throat. Spooner smelled cigarettes and aftershave and
saw dried blood on the doctor’s jawline where he’d cut himself shaving.

Dr. Woods took a step back and sat down on his stool. He picked up a pencil and a clipboard and then balanced it on his lap
while he lit a cigarette. “So,” he said, “what’s this bi’nis heah all about?”

Spooner didn’t care for sitting undressed in front of Dr. Woods. It reminded him of whichever chicken Major Shaker’s maid
had picked out for supper being carried off to the chopping block by the feet, all the other chickens in the coop watching.

“You start fires?” the doctor asked, referring now to the clipboard.

Spooner shook his head. He’d thought of it a few times, pictured the fire engines and the sirens, but that was after Miss
Tuttle had asked the kindergarten class what they wanted to be when they grew up, and every boy in the class, Spooner included—she’d
asked him last—said a fireman. Which seemed to be the right answer.