Death In The Family, A - James Agee [100]
They couldn’t be happy any more if He hadn’t, his mother had said. They could never get well.
Hannah wondered whether they could comprehend it at all and whether she should try to tell them. She doubted it. Deeply uncertain, she tried again.
“He was driving home last night,” she said, “about nine, and apparently something was already wrong with the steering mech—with the wheel you guide the machine with. But your father didn’t know it. Because there wasn’t any way he could know until something went wrong and then it was too late. But one of the wheels struck a loose stone in the road and the wheel turned aside very suddenly, and when ...” She paused and went on more quietly and slowly: “You see, when your father tried to make the auto go where it should, stay on the road, he found he couldn’t, he didn’t have any control. Because something was wrong with the steering gear. So, instead of doing as he tried to make it, the auto twisted aside because of the loose stone and ran off the road into a deep ditch.” She paused again. “Do you understand?”
They kept looking at her.
“Your father was thrown from the auto,” she said. “Then the auto went on without him up the other side of the ditch. It went up an eight-foot embankment and then it fell down backward, turned over and landed just beside him.
“They’re pretty sure he was dead even before he was thrown out. Because the only mark on his whole body,” and now they began to hear in her voice a troubling intensity and resentment, “was right—here!” She pressed the front of her forefinger to the point of her chin, and looked at them almost as if she were accusing them.
They said nothing.
I suppose I’ve got to finish, Hannah thought; I’ve gone this far.
“They’re pretty sure how it happened,” she said. “The auto gave such a sudden terrible jerk”—she jerked so violently that both children jumped, and startled her; she demonstrated what she saw next more gently: “that your father was thrown forward and struck his chin, very hard, against the wheel, the steering wheel, and from that instant he never knew anything more.”
She looked at Rufus, at Catherine, and again at Rufus. “Do you understand?” They looked at her.
After a while Catherine said, “He hurt his chin.”
“Yes, Catherine. He did,” she replied. “They believe he was instantly killed, with that one single blow, because it happened to strike just exactly where it did. Because if you’re struck very hard in just that place, it jars your whole head, your brain so hard that—sometimes people die in that very instant.” She drew a deep breath and let it out long and shaky. “Concussion of the brain, that is called,” she said with most careful distinctness, and bowed her head for a moment; they saw her thumb make a small cross on her chest.
She looked up. “Now do you understand, children?” she asked earnestly. “I know it’s very hard to understand. You please tell me if there’s anything you want to know and I’ll do my best to expl—tell you better.”
Rufus and Catherine looked at each other and looked away. After a while Rufus said, “Did it hurt him bad?”
“He could never have felt it. That’s the one great mercy” (or is it, she wondered); “the doctor is sure of that.” Catherine wondered whether she could ask one question. She thought she’d better not.
“What’s an eightfoot embackmut?” asked Rufus.
“Em-bank-ment,” she replied. “Just a bank. A steep little hill, eight feet high. Bout’s high’s the ceiling.”
He and Catherine saw the auto climb it and fall backward rolling and come to rest beside their father. Umbackmut, Catherine thought; em-bank-ment, Rufus said to himself. “What’s instintly?”
“Instantly is—quick’s that”; she snapped her fingers, more loudly than she had expected to; Catherine flinched and kept her eyes on the fingers. “Like snapping off an electric light,” Rufus nodded. “So you can be very sure, both of you, he never felt a moment’s pain. Not one moment.”
“When’s ...” Catherine began.
“What’s...” Rufus began at the same moment; they glared -at each other.
“What is it, Catherine?”
“When’s Daddy coming