American Boy - Larry Watson [42]
“My husband,” said Mrs. Knurr, “has a chronic back condition. He can’t predict when it will give out on him. Which is obviously what has happened.”
A first grader could have discerned Norbert Knurr’s true condition. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand, much less walk. “Obviously,” I replied.
“I need to get him to the car. And then home to bed.”
Mr. Knurr was a large man, and I had doubts about our ability to transport him. I was about to suggest to Mrs. Knurr that I recruit the help of another busboy when she said, “If you’ll grab hold of him on the other side, I believe we can manage.”
And manage we did. Mr. Knurr gave no sign of knowing what was happening, yet somehow he was able to help us help him. While Mrs. Knurr and I supported his weight, he took quick little steps, almost as if he were on wheels, and the three of us exited Palmer’s and moved rapidly across the parking lot to the Knurrs’ black Lincoln Continental. We folded him into the backseat, and I made sure none of Mr. Knurr’s appendages were sticking out before slamming the Lincoln’s heavy door.
“Can you watch him for a moment,” Mrs. Knurr asked, “while I go back for our coats?”
I assented, then shivered in my shirtsleeves while she went back into Palmer’s.
She returned shortly, wearing her fur coat and carrying Mr. Knurr’s topcoat over her arm. She held out the keys to the Lincoln. “Do you mind driving?”
“I’m still on the job,” I said. “I should go back in.”
“I spoke to Mr. Palmer. He knows you’re assisting me.” She jingled the keys. “Please? I won’t be able to get him into the house without help.”
I took the keys and opened the passenger door for her.
As I drove out of the parking lot of Palmer’s Supper Club, I had a new understanding of Johnny’s impromptu race with Chuck Killion. Like the Chrysler, the Lincoln floated so effortlessly over the streets that you felt there was nothing you couldn’t ask of a big car like that. Even the risks I had accused Johnny of taking seemed reduced once I was steering one of those boats myself. Looking out over the Lincoln’s hood was like looking across a football field, and it felt as if nothing could harm us once the heavy doors had thunked shut. At the first stoplight, I actually thought the engine had died, so softly did it thrum.
When the light turned green, I resisted the temptation to press hard on the gas and instead accelerated slowly across the intersection. Mrs. Knurr pushed in the cigarette lighter, and when it popped out, she lit a Marlboro. She inhaled so deeply and exhaled with such force that smoke billowed across the windshield. For a moment, the smell of cigarette smoke displaced the smell of Mrs. Knurr’s perfume, Mr. Knurr’s cigars, and the bourbon that both of them drank.
“You’re the young man who’s been working with Dr. Dunbar, isn’t that right?”
“Dr. Dunbar has been teaching me some medicine.”
“Are you hoping to make medicine your career?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I thought so. That’s why I asked for you. With Norbert’s back being the way it is, I wanted someone who wasn’t going to treat him like a sack of potatoes.”
Right on cue, Mr. Knurr moaned from the backseat.
I asked Mrs. Knurr, “Do you think we should take him to Dr. Dunbar?”
“For now let’s just get him to bed. If that’s not the answer, then we can take other steps.” She turned the heater up. “You must be freezing in that thin shirt. Do you want Norbert’s coat?”
“I’m okay.”
The Knurrs lived in a rambling brick ranch house in Rocky Run Acres, an expensive new housing development on Willow Falls’ west side. Before the houses went up, my friends and I would bike out here in the summer, racing up and down the low tawny hills, confident that even if we lost our balance we wouldn’t be hurt since any fall would only tumble us into the switchgrass, bluestem, and Indian grass growing in every direction. And in the winter we dragged