Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [13]
So be it, he thought, as he put the lid on the garbage can. The day may come when I will wish for a death as painless and quick.
15 The Dream
Douglas, winking significantly, stood on the roof of the house. Ruth, a black-haired grandmother, lay voluptuously on her back in a garden while thirty or forty children crawled over her body like bugs.
He awoke. His forehead was damp. He felt chilled and sick at his stomach. Trembling, he got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. Then he sat on the toilet and held his head in his hands. The dream meant that the children were going to grow up and live as they pleased, leaving him to grow old and die. He tried to recall if Carolyn had appeared in the dream, although that was not important: the inference of two children was enough. He did not want to die and there seemed to be no reason that he must. He was happy, everybody in the family was happy, therefore this life ought to continue indefinitely. Suddenly his heart began flopping back and forth. He could feel it throbbing beneath his ribs like a fish at the end of a line. Protectively he cupped his hands over his heart, expecting a terrible hot stroke. But after a while the violent beating subsided.
He waited a few minutes, then got up and washed his face and remained standing in front of the mirror. He wondered if he ought to wake his wife and have her drive him to the hospital; however, since there was no pain, he decided he was all right.
He thought again about the dream. He could imagine no other interpretation. Sooner or later he was going to die, while the children went on living.
“Are you all right?” Mrs. Bridge inquired. She stood at the door of the bathroom. He had been staring so intently into the mirror that he had not seen her.
“Should I call Dr. Stapp?” she asked.
“I have a slight stomach upset,” he said. “Go back to bed. I’ll be there soon. You have nothing to worry about.”
16 Struggling Upward & Other Works
A few nights later he was wakened again in the middle of the night, this time by the realization that his wife was not in bed. He opened his eyes and listened. The house seemed unnaturally quiet. He turned his head on the pillow and looked out the window and saw that it had begun to snow. Just then she returned, slipped off her robe, and got into bed.
“Carolyn was crying,” she whispered.
“What about?” he whispered.
“She was afraid a star might fall.”
He smiled and shut his eyes. He remembered the fears he used to have. He remembered that he had cried himself to sleep many nights because he believed that on the day he became twelve years old he would be forced to leave home and seek his fortune. He could not recall how he had gotten this idea but there was a picture in his mind, which must have come from some magazine or illustrated book: a boy was leaving home with a stick over his shoulder and a few things tied up in a bandanna on the end of the stick. The boy’s parents stood in the doorway of a cottage. The mother was weeping, the father was trying to comfort her, and the boy, too, was very sad. Now it seemed as ludicrous as Carolyn’s fear, but once upon a time nothing had been more real.
17 Thayer’s Drugstore
Every week a large picture puzzle appeared in the window of Thayer’s: an elaborate drawing of a jungle filled with an intricate assortment of nearly concealed birds, beasts, and hunters. The neighborhood children looked for these figures and reported to the druggist how many they had found, and every Saturday somebody won a silver dollar. Ruth, when she was younger, had entered this contest from time to time but never won the prize. Now she was no longer eligible. Carolyn, however, had begun to win the dollar often enough that Mr. Thayer