Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [156]
“Drink this,” he told her, “and no more palaver. Ollie’s all right, he’s sleeping now. Have at least as much sense as a four-year-old.”
Finally, hesitating, fluttering, dreading, changing her mind and having to be persuaded all over again, she drank it and stared at him over the cup as if it had been the arsenic of a death pact. She kissed Ollie’s sleeping face with the emotions of one going on a long journey, and tucked him into his hammock and touched his cool forehead and let herself be led away and put to bed. Within minutes she was up again to lay out the makings of the eggnog laced with brandy that he was to have, to strengthen him, as soon as he awoke. She extracted promises, she took a half-irritable scolding and a kiss, she lay back and braided her hair into pigtails and felt her weakness flow into the bed as if the sleeping potion had begun to liquefy her body. She blinked a tear, and talked a little while Oliver sat at the bedside and watched her. Sometime in the midst of her talking, the potion snuffed her like a candle.
She awoke to find Oliver sitting just where he had been when she had dropped off, and thought she had only drowsed. Her mouth was fuzzy and her mind felt numb. Then she saw that the blind was up and the window opened on broad daylight. It had been dusk when she went to bed. Morning, then. Oh, good! A bumblebee buzzed in, crawled around on the cretonne flowers of the curtains, and buzzed out again. Oliver was watching her with a slow, amused, memorizing look; she knew that he had been watching her sleep. Rigid with readiness, she sat up. “How is he?”
“Asleep.”
“Have you felt his head?”
“I’ve about worn his skull out, feeling his head. He’s cool, he’s fine.*
“Did you give him his eggnog?”
“Three times.”
“Three times! What time is it?”
“A little after two.”
“Oh my goodness! How long have I slept?”
He consulted his watch. “About sixteen hours.”
She was awed. “What on earth did that doctor give me?”
“Just what you needed. What you ought to take every time you get wound up like that.”
“Oh no,” she said, “no, I couldn’t.” Groggily she turned her head to look at the brightness outside, the brown hill sloping up to aspens that wavered as unstable as water. “You should have waked me up. I’ve kept you from going to the mine.”
“Frank’s there. There’s nothing to do but wait anyway.”
“Ah,” she said sympathetically, “I haven’t been paying enough attention to my husband. Is everything still all snarled up?”
“Still snarled up.”
“I keep hoping you’ll run into a rich ore body.”
“We won’t do that unless they give us some money to operate with.”
“And they won’t do that till the suit is settled.”
“Maybe it’ll be settled by 1883 or so.”
She put out a hand. “I’m sorry it’s so hard for you. How’s Frank? He’s been such a lamb about helping out, and I’ve hardly said good morning or good evening. We’ve got to have him up for supper. Tonight. Let’s get the Wards and some others and have an evening again.”
“That’d be good. Frank would like that.”
“And Pricey. How is Pricey?”
He had opened his knife and was working at the horny callus on his palm. His eyes lifted, without any movement of his head, he looked up at her over half-moons of white, so apologetic, ashamed, angry, or embarrassed that he scared her. “Pricey’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“England.”
“Did they send for him?”
“No. I sent him.”
The tears that welled weakly to her eyes made him swim and flow, fluid and out of focus in his faded blue shirt and blue jeans. “Oh, Oliver, why?”
“Why?” He sat with his jaw bulging. His knife clicked shut, he stretched his leg to slide it into the tight pocket of his jeans. “Why,