The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [359]
"She married? Where's her husband? That where the trouble was?"
Now, while the women in the room, too, broke out in sounds of amusement, the doctor stumbled where he stood. "What the devil's running in here? Rats?"
"You wrong there."
Guinea pigs were running underfoot, not only in this room but on the other side of the wall, in the kitchen where the water had finally got boiled. Somebody's head turned toward the leaf end of a stalk of celery wilting on top of the Bible on the table.
"Catch those things!" he exclaimed.
The baby laughed; the rest copied the baby.
"They lightning. Get away from you so fast!" said a voice
"Them guinea pigs ain't been caught since they was born. Let you try."
"Know why? 'Cause they's Dove's. Dove left 'em here when he move out, just to be in the way."
The doctor felt the weight recede from Ruby's fingers, and saw it flatten her arm where it lay on the bed. Her eyes had closed. A little boy with a sanctimonious face had taken the bit of celery and knelt down on the floor; there was scrambling about and increasing laughter until Dr. Strickland made himself heard in the room.
"All right. I heard you. Is Dove who did it? Go on. Say."
He heard somebody spit on the stove. Then:
"It's Dove."
"Dove."
"Dove."
"Dove."
"You got it right that time."
While the name went around, passed from one mouth to the other, the doctor drew a deep breath. But the sigh that filled the room was the girl's own, luxuriously uncontained.
"Dove Collins? I believe you. I've had to sew him up enough times on Sunday morning, you all know that," said the doctor. "I know Ruby, I know Dove, and if the lights would come back on I can tell you the names of the rest of you and you know it." While he was speaking, his eyes fell on Oree, a figure of the Holden square for twenty years, whom he had inherited—sitting here in the room in her express wagon, the flowered skirt spread down from her lap and tucked in over the stumps of her knees.
While he was preparing the hypodermic, he was aware that more watchers, a row of them dressed in white with red banners like Ruby's, were coming in to fill up the corners. The lamp was lifted—higher than the dipping shadows of their heads, a valentine tacked on the wall radiated color—and then, as he leaned over the bed, the lamp was brought down closer and closer to the girl, like something that would devour her.
"Now I can't see what I'm doing," the doctor said sharply, and as the light jumped and swung behind him he thought he recognized the anger as a mother's.
"Look to me like the fight's starting to go out of Ruby mighty early," said a voice.
Still her eyes stayed closed. He gave the shot.
"Where'd he get to—Dove? Is the marshal out looking for him?" he asked.
The sister moved along the bed and put the baby down on it close to Ruby's face.
"Remove him," said the doctor.
"She don't even study him," said the sister. "Poke her," she told the baby.
"Take him out of here," ordered Dr. Strickland.
The baby opened one of his mother's eyes with his fingers. When she shut it on him he cried, as if he knew it to be deliberate of her.
"Get that baby out of here and all the kids, I tell you," Dr. Strickland said into the room. "This ain't going to be pretty."
"Carry him next door, Twosie," said a voice.
"I ain't. You all promised me if I leave long enough to get the doctor I could stand right here until." The child's voice was loud.
"O.K. Then you got to hold Roger."
The baby made a final reach for his mother's face, putting out a hand with its untrimmed nails, gray as the claw of a squirrel. The woman who had held the lamp set