Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [35]
"That's better," he shouted into my ear. "He's only a man. Remember that. He's only a man!"
I wanted to tell him that Mr. Norton was much more than that, that he was a rich white man and in my charge; but the very idea that I was responsible for him was too much for me to put into words.
"Let us take him to the balcony," the man said, pushing me toward Mr. Norton's feet. I moved automatically, grasping the thin ankles as he raised the white man by the armpits and backed from beneath the stairs. Mr. Norton's head lolled upon his chest as though he were drunk or dead.
The vet started up the steps still smiling, climbing backwards a step at a time. I had begun to worry about him, whether he was drunk like the rest, when I saw three of the girls who had been leaning over the balustrade watching the brawl come down to help us carry Mr. Norton up.
"Looks like pops couldn't take it," one of them shouted.
"He's high as a Georgia pine."
"Yeah, I tell you this stuff Halley got out here is too strong for white folks to drink."
"Not drunk, ill!" the fat man said. "Go find a bed that's not being used so he can stretch out awhile."
"Sho, daddy. Is there any other little favors I can do for you?"
"That'll be enough," he said.
One of the girls ran up ahead. "Mine's just been changed. Bring him down here," she said.
In a few minutes Mr. Norton was lying upon a three-quarter bed, faintly breathing. I watched the fat man bend over him very professionally and feel for his pulse.
"You a doctor?" a girl asked.
"Not now, I'm a patient. But I have a certain knowledge."
Another one, I thought, pushing him quickly aside. "He'll be all right. Let him come to so I can get him out of here."
"You needn't worry, I'm not like those down there, young fellow," he said. "I really was a doctor. I won't hurt him. He's had a mild shock of some kind."
We watched him bend over Mr. Norton again, feeling his pulse, pulling back his eyelid.
"It's a mild shock," he repeated.
"This here Golden Day is enough to shock anybody," a girl said, smoothing her apron over the smooth sensuous roll of her stomach.
Another brushed Mr. Norton's white hair away from his forehead and stroked it, smiling vacantly. "He's kinda cute," she said. "Just like a little white baby."
"What kinda ole baby?" the small skinny girl asked.
"That's the kind, an ole baby."
"You just like white men, Edna. That's all," the skinny one said.
Edna shook her head and smiled as though amused at herself. "I sho do. I just love 'em. Now this one, old as he is, he could put his shoes under my bed any night."
"Shucks, me I'd kill an old man like that."
"Kill him nothing," Edna said. "Girl, don't you know that all these rich ole white men got monkey glands and billy goat balls? These ole bastards don't never git enough. They want to have the whole world."
The doctor looked at me and smiled. "See, now you're learning all about endocrinology," he said. "I was wrong when I told you that he was only a man; it seems now that he's either part goat or part ape. Maybe he's both."
"It's the truth," Edna said. "I used to have me one in Chicago --"
"Now you ain't never been to no Chicago, gal," the other one interrupted.
"How you know I ain't? Two years ago . . . Shucks, you don't know nothing. That ole white man right there might have him a coupla jackass balls!"
The fat man raised up with a quick grin. "As a scientist and a physician I'm forced to discount that," he said. "That is one operation that has yet to be performed." Then he managed to get the girls out of the room.
"If he should come around and hear that conversation," the vet said, "it would be enough to send him off again. Besides, their scientific curiosity might lead them to investigate whether he really does have a monkey gland. And that, I'm afraid, would be a bit obscene."
"I've got to get him back to the school," I said.
"All right," he said, "I'll do what I can to help you. Go see if you can find some ice. And don't worry."