The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [57]
He looked back at the lighted wall, at the square he’d drawn there. “And now here I am, pulling down two-fifty a year, but I get weekends free and I’m my own boss.” He reached to the desktop, pushed a button there, and the row of X rays started up, the lighted wall rolling into the wall itself, and now here came another row of X rays from beneath, already clipped into place. “No barium ceiling here,” he said. “Sky’s the limit!”
He pulled out the monocular, said, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” and leaned up against the first row. “Too bad I’m here till eleven most nights, and my daughter is going to Yale without a scholarship, and I’m still paying off my own student loans, and my lovely wife won’t let me hang a set of fourteen-point antlers in the house, afraid they might carry Lyme disease, no matter how much I try to dissuade her of this ill-founded fear. And yes, we too have a Lexus. Otherwise I’d join you boys on whatever expedition you’re on. Whatever fact-finding mission you’re on.” He leaned away from the X ray, looked at me, then Unc. “Ahh, greed,” he said. “It’s an invigorating but lonely drug.” He put the monocular to the next X ray, leaned in.
I pushed myself away from the doorjamb, went to Unc, hooked my arm in his. Cray was done.
But Unc wouldn’t move, only stood there, facing Cray, leaned in just like he had for the whole thing. Listening.
He turned to me, on his face the same look as Cray’d had when he’d turned from his drawings: it seemed he didn’t know me, as though the touch of me on his arm were something brand-new, and he was scared.
And I was, too. Mom was out there.
“Unc,” I said. “It’s getting late.”
He swallowed, took a breath, and reached, touched my cheek with the back of his fingers, in his fist the stick. It was next to nothing, that touch, and I could smell the wood of the stick in just that second. Then his hand was down. “Yes,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
He was struck by this all, I could see. Struck by something I wasn’t able to see. Not yet.
He started for the door, and I turned, looked back at Cray, close up on the screen. I said, “Thank you, doc.”
“Yes,” Unc said, though quieter. He paused, half-turned to Cray, but I could see he wasn’t thinking on manners, on thanks and goodbye. “Thank you, Brother Cray. You have been of the utmost help.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said, still with his eye to the screen. I watched him a moment longer, wondered if he’d look at us, wave, something. But he didn’t.
And Unc was already gone, out to the front office.
I caught up with him in the waiting room, and we headed out the front door. The sign, IMAGING NETWORK SERVICES and the man lying flat inside a circle, was lit now, the sun down and gone, the sky above us blue and purple and orange. No stars yet.
“Keep going on down Old Georgetown,” he said. “Turn right at the second street.” These were the first words he’d said since we were inside the MRI place, and his voice was low, near a whisper. “Won’t take but a second. Then we need to head downtown. To the Battery.”
I looked at him. We were at the light at Bowman and Old Georgetown, a few cars back, traffic heavy down from the Mark Clark for rush hour, everybody hurrying home to their neat houses with neat lawns here in Mount Pleasant.
“Where’re we going?” I asked. “And when are we going back to Hungry Neck?” I paused. “Or did you forget about my mother?”
I knew I was being smart-mouthed. But that’s what I’d intended. I wanted a rise out of him, wanted to wake him up out of whatever stupor he was in.
He didn’t even look at me.
I turned right at the light, drove down Old Georgetown away from the Mark Clark, and took the second right.
It was a neighborhood,