Death In The Family, A - James Agee [68]
“Not for sure. I told them I’d see them in the morning about all that.”
“Well you’ll just have to tell them we’ll let them know as soon as we do. In plenty of time. To get here I mean.”
“What’s the number, Mary?”
“Number?”
“What is Ralph’s telephone number?”
“I—can’t remember. I guess I don’t know for sure. You’ll have to ask Central. It’s always Jay who called.”
“All right.”
“It’s LaFollette,” she called, as he went into the hall.
“All right, Mary.” He went out.
“And, Andrew.”
“Yes, Mary?” He put his head in.
“Talk as quietly as you can. We don’t want to wake the children.”
“Yes, Mary.”
“It’s queer I don’t know,” she told the others. “But it was always Jay who called.”
“Tell your mother what’s up,” her father advised, for she was looking inquiring. Mary leaned across her.
“Bathroom?” her mother whispered discreetly.
“No, Mama. He’s gone to telephone Jay’s brother.”
Her mother nodded, and still extended her trumpet, but Mary had nothing to say.
“I hope he will extend all our most—heartfelt—sympathies,” her mother said.
Mary nodded conspicuously. “I specially asked him to,” she lied.
After a few moments Catherine gave up, and relaxed her trumpet between her withered hands into her lap.
Chapter 12
Andrew had shut the door but they could hear him, trying to talk quietly. He was talking, indeed, very quietly, close to the mouthpiece with his hand around it; even so, Mary and Hannah could hear most of what he said. They did not want to listen, but they couldn’t help it.
He said, “I want to make a long-distance call, please,” and the quietness of his voice made them listen the more carefully. It was full of covered danger.
“Hello? Hello, is this long distance? Long distance I want to call Ralph Follet, Ralph, Follet, F, O, L, L, E, T, no, Central, F, as in father—F, O,—have you got that?—L, L, ET. FOLLET. At LaFollette, Tennessee. No, I haven’t. Thank you. I said, thank you.”
“I don’t see how his mother’s going to bear it,” Mary said, in a subdued voice. “I said I just don’t see how Jay’s mother is going to bear it,” she told her mother.
“Her own husband right at death’s door,” she said to Hannah, “and now this. He was just the apple of her eye, that’s all.”
“Hello?”
“She has a world of grit,” Hannah said.
“Ralph? Is this Ralph Follet?”
“If she hadn’t she wouldn’t be alive today,” Mary said.
“Ralph, this is Andrew Lynch.” They sat very still and made no pretense of not listening.
“Yes. Andrew. Ralph, I have to tell you about Jay.” Hannah and Mary looked at each other. With everything that Andrew said, from then on, they realized in a sense which they had failed to before, that it had really happened and that it was final.
“Jay died tonight, Ralph.
“He’s dead.
“He died in an auto accident, on the way home, out near Powell’s Station. He was instantly killed.”
Mary looked down into the whiskey and began to tremble.
“Instantly. I have a doctor’s word for it. He couldn’t even have known what hit him.
“It was concussion of the brain, Ralph. Concussion—of the brain. Just so hard a shock to the brain that it killed him instantly.”
“They mustn’t tell his father,” Mary said suddenly. “It’ll just kill his father.”
“I don’t see how they can avoid it,” Hannah said. “Mary says they mustn’t tell his, Jay’s, father,” Hannah told her brother. “In his condition the news might kill him. I told her I simply don’t see how they can avoid it. They’ll have to account for coming away to the funeral, after all.”
“Just tell him he’s hurt,” Joel said.
Mary hurried into the hall. “Andrew,” she whispered loudly. With a contortion of the face which terrified her he slapped his hand through the air at her as if she had been a mosquito. “Just that one place, on the point of the chin,” he was saying. He turned to Mary, but the voice held him and he turned away. “He may have driven for miles that way. They don’t know. They looked all