Death In The Family, A - James Agee [22]
At the door, a few minutes later, when she leaned to kiss him good-bye and saw his face, she mistook the cause of it and said, more gently but very earnestly: “Rufus, I can see you’re sorry, but you mustn’t be mean to Catherine. She’s just a little girl, your little sister, and you mustn’t ever be unkind to her and hurt her feelings. Do you understand? Do you, Rufus?”
He nodded, and felt terribly sorry for his sister and for himself because of the gentleness in his mother’s voice.
“Now you come back and tell her how sorry you are, and hurry, or you’ll be late for school.”
He came in shyly with his mother and came up to Catherine; her face was swollen and red and she looked at him bleakly.
“Rufus wants to tell you how sorry he is, Catherine, he hurt your feelings,” their mother said.
Catherine looked at him, brutally and doubtfully.
“I am sorry, Catherine,” he said. “Honest to goodness I am. Because you’re a little, little girl, and ...”
But with this Catherine exploded into a roar of angry tears, and brought both fists down into her plate, and Rufus, dumfounded, was hustled brusquely off to school.
Chapter 6
When Jay found how things were at the farm, he was angry at having been so grieved and alarmed; before long, he felt it had all happened very much as he had suspected. Ralph had just lost his head, as usual. Now he was very much ashamed of himself, though still very defensive, and everyone, including Jay, tried to assure him that he had done the right thing. Jay could imagine how much Ralph had needed to feel useful, to take charge. He couldn’t think very well of him, but he was sorry for him. He felt he understood very well how it had happened.
Actually, he understood only a little about it, and Ralph understood very little more.
Late in the evening before, their father had suffered a much more severe and painful attack than any up to then. After no more than a few minutes, his wife had realized its terrible gravity, and had woken Thomas Oaks. Thomas had hurried across the hill and roused up Jessie and George Bailey and, without waiting for them, had hurried back, saddled the horse, and whipped it as fast as it would go, into LaFollette. The doctor was out on a call; he left a message, and hurried on to Ralph’s. Ralph was in a virtual panic of aroused responsibility the instant he heard the news. He asked if the doctor was there yet. Thomas told him; Ralph realized that his mother had told Thomas to rush out the doctor even before he called her son to her side. He put it aside as an ungenerous and mean-spirited thought, yet it stayed, hurting him like a burr. He felt it was no time for resentments, though; not only he, but Sally as well, must come to their help, must be there (Sally’d never forgive me if she wasn’t) if Paw was to die (she’d be the only wife there, of the only son; his mother would never forget that). He rushed back and told her what was happening as he hurried into his clothes, hurried two doors away, banged loudly on the Felts’s door, and apologized for the banging by explaining (his voice was already damp) that his Paw was at death’s door if not already passed on, and he wouldn’t have roused them only he knew they would be only too willing to help out so Sally could go too. They were very kind to him; Mrs. Felts arrived before Sally had finished fixing her hair. While she was doing so, Ralph sped across the street to his office, unlocked his desk, and took two choking swallows of whiskey in the dark. He rammed the bottle into his pocket and hurried down to start his car. They had been so quick that they overtook Thomas on his horse when he had scarcely passed the edge of