Death In The Family, A - James Agee [61]
“I know,” Mary whispered.
“But just as he came off the far end of the bridge—you come down at a sort of angle, you know ...”
“I know,” Mary whispered.
“Something caught in his lights and it was one of the wheels of the automobile.” He looked across his mother and said, “Mary, it was still turning.”
“Beg pardon?” his mother said.
“It was still turning,” he told her. “The wheel he saw.”
“Mercy, Andrew,” she whispered.
“Hahh!” her husband exclaimed, almost inaudibly.
“He got out right away and hurried down there. The auto was upside down and Jay ...”
Although he did not feel that he was near weeping he found that for a moment he could not speak. Finally he said, “He was just lying there on the ground beside it, on his back, about a foot away from it. His clothes were hardly even rumpled.”
Again he found that he could not speak. After a moment he managed to force himself to.
“The man said somehow he was sure he was—dead—the minute he saw him. He doesn’t know how. Just some special kind of stillness. He lighted matches though, of course, to try and make sure. Listened for his heartbeat and tried to feel for his pulse. He moved his auto around so he could see by the headlights. He couldn’t find anything wrong except a little cut, exactly on the point of his chin. The windshield of Jay’s car was broken and he even took a piece of it and used it like a mirror, to see if there was any breath. After that he just waited a few minutes until he heard an auto coming and stopped them and told them to get help as soon as possible.”
“Did they get a doctor?” Mary asked.
“Mary says, ‘Did they get a doctor.’ ” Andrew said to his mother. “Yes, he told them to and they did. And other people. Including—Brannick, Papa,” he said; “that blacksmith you know. It turns out he lives quite near there.”
“Huh!” said Joel.
“The doctor said the man was right,” Andrew said. “He said he must have been killed instantly. They found who he was, by papers in his pocket, and that was when he phoned you, Mary.
“He asked me if I’d please tell you how dreadful he felt to give you such a message, leaving you uncertain all this time. He just couldn’t stand to be the one to tell you the whole thing—least of all just bang like that, over a phone. He thought it ought to be somebody in the family.”
“That’s what I imagined,” Mary said.
“He was right,” Hannah said; and Joel and Mary nodded and said, “Yes.”
“By the time Walter and I got there, they’d moved him,” Andrew said. “He was at the blacksmith shop. They’d even brought in the auto. You know, they say it ran perfectly. Except for the top, and the windshield, it was hardly even damaged.”
Joel asked, “Do they have any idea what happened?”
Andrew said to his mother, “Papa says, ‘Do they have any idea how it happened?’ ” She nodded, and smiled her thanks, and tilted her trumpet nearer his mouth.
“Yes, some idea,” Andrew said. “They showed me. They found that a cotter pin had worked loose—that is, it had fallen all the way out—this cotter pin had fallen out, that held the steering mechanism together.”
“Hahh?”
“Like this, Mama—look,” he said sharply, thrusting his hands under her nose.
“Oh excuse me,” she said.
“See here,” he said; he had locked a bent knuckle between two bent knuckles of the other hand. “As if it were to hold these knuckles together—see?”
“Yes.”
“There would be a hole right through the knuckles and that’s where the cotter pin goes. It’s sort of like a very heavy hairpin. When you have it all the way through, you open the two ends flat—spread them—like this ...” he showed her his thumb and forefinger, together, then spread them as wide and flat as he could. “You understand?”
“No matter.”
“Let it go, son,” his father said.
“It’s all right, Mama,” Andrew said. “It’s just something that