Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [133]
Twenty-Three
When Billy was around seven months old, he caught something, and was terribly sick for three days. It was the first time he had been really sick, and Jack felt a combination of terror and sheepishness; but sheepish or not, he stayed home from work. Sally was worried, too, but contemptuous of Jack.
“He’s got the flu, for Christ’s sake. He’s not going to die or anything. I can take care of him. Don’t you trust me?”
“I’d just as soon stick around,” Jack said. “Tell me what the doctor said.”
“I already told you. What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?”
“It’s that goddam doctor I don’t trust. What does he care?”
On the second night, Billy’s fever went to 105°, and he just lay there hot and flushed, not even crying or fussing. Jack and Sally stood over the crib, afraid to touch each other, or even speak, for fear of making a corny gesture. Jack wanted to call the doctor again and inform “the son of a bitch” that if he did not get over there in five minutes flat, Jack would personally guarantee that the doctor would never have another child of his own. But he did not call the doctor. The doctor would be very patient, but Jack would know that secretly the doctor would be laughing at him. The high fever was expected. It was supposed to get very high and then break. It was called “The Crisis.”
Jack and Sally went into the living room and sat waiting for it, with the FM radio on. They listened to a panel discussion on the plight of California agricultural workers, and then a series of Beethoven sonatas, with comment. Then the radio station went off the air, and neither of them got up to tune in another. After a minute Sally went into the back, and then returned, her face drawn.
“He’s not so hot, now,” she said. She sat down and picked up a copy of Ring Magazine, thumbing through it idly.
Jack got up and went into the back to check, and she gave him an irritated glance, but did not speak. He looked down at the baby through the gloom. The baby just lay there, eyes open, not moving. Jack put his hand on the baby’s forehead. It seemed cool, almost cold. It occurred to Jack that his baby was dead. His legs felt weak. He went into the kitchen and sat down. It was impossible that Billy could be dead. The doctor said it was just the flu. Babies don’t die of the flu. Or do they? With proper care? Could you do everything and still lose your baby? Jack knew the answer, but he would not let the words form in his mind. He knew what he had to do. He had to get up on his legs and go in there and see if the baby was dead or not. A strange thought occurred to him and helped him stay in the chair. What did you do with a dead baby? Did you have to call the police, or just a mortician? Jack remembered what had happened to a man he had known in the old Portland poolhall days. The man’s wife had her baby, and then on the third day it died, and the hospital told the man how much the little coffin, the hearse, and the ceremony would cost, and the man had to tell the people at the hospital that he didn’t have any money at all, and no job, that he had used up his last cent paying for the birth; and so the hospital put the dead baby in a plastic bag and handed it to the man to dispose of himself. They also gave him a mimeographed sheet of city and county regulations concerning the disposition of bodies. Jack would not have believed the story, except the man came into Ben Fenne’s with the dead baby and the sheet of regulations and wanted somebody to help him. The two men at the front billiard table looked at the man, and then at each other, laid down their cues, put on their coats, and led the man out. Jack never did find out what happened after that. Nobody seemed to want to ask.
But he had tortured himself enough. He had to get up and go in there. He did, knowing that very near the surface of his mind was the hope, the wish, that the baby was dead. It was only curiosity, the need to see if he would feel