The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [48]
“Fred Beecher’s car was full of blood,” Adelaide said, turning to Frances. “He had the trunk open, he had the baby buggy in it that he was taking over to his sister-in-law’s, and the trunk of his car was full of blood. It was full of blood.”
“Was it Fred Beecher?” said Frances, because there was no getting away from it now, she would have to be told. “Did Fred Beecher hit— the Makkavala boy?” She knew Bobby’s name, of course, she knew all Ted’s children’s names and faces, but she had developed an artificial vagueness in speaking of any of them—of Ted, too—so that even now she had to say the Makkavala boy.
“Don’t you know about it either?” Adelaide said. “Where were you? Weren’t you at the high school? Didn’t they come and get him?”
“I heard they did,” said Frances. She saw that Adelaide had made tea. She badly wanted a cup, but was afraid to touch the cups or the teapot, because her hands were shaking. “I heard his son was killed.”
“He wasn’t the one killed, it was the other one was killed. The O’Hare boy. It was two of them in it. The O’Hare boy was instantly killed. It was awful. The Makkavala boy won’t live. They took him to London in the ambulance. He won’t live.”
“Oh, oh,” said Frances’ mother, seated at the table, her book open in front of her. “Oh, oh. Think of the poor mother.” But she had heard it all once.
“It wasn’t Fred Beecher hit them, that wasn’t it at all,” said Adelaide to Frances in rather a scolding way. “They tied their sled on to the back of his car. He didn’t even know they done it. They must’ve tied it on when he was slowed down in front of the school with all the kids just let out and then on the hill a car was coming behind and it skidded and run into them. It run the sled right under Fred’s car.”
Old Mrs. Wright made an assenting, moaning noise.
“They must’ve been warned. All the kids been warned and they been doing it for years and it was just bound to happen. It was so awful,” Adelaide said, staring at Frances as if to will more reaction out of her. “All the ones that saw it says they will never forget. Fred Beecher went and threw up in the snow. Right in front of the post office. Oh, the blood.”
“Terrible,” said Frances’ mother. Her interest had quite faded. She was probably thinking about supper. From about three o’clock in the afternoon on, her interest in supper mounted. When Frances was late, as she was tonight, or when somebody dropped in during the late afternoon, thinking, no doubt, that she would be glad of a visitor, she would become more and more agitated, thinking that supper was going to be delayed. She would try to control herself, she would become very affable, eager to respond, rummaging in her collection of social phrases, tossing them out one after another, in her hope that the visitor would soon be satisfied and would go away.
“Did you get the pork chops?” she said to Frances.
Of course, Frances had forgotten. She had promised breaded pork chops and she had not gone to the butcher shop, she had forgotten. “I’ll go back.”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“She had too much on her mind with the accident,” Adelaide said.
“We had a pork-chop casserole last night, it was one you do in the oven with creamed corn, and was it ever good.”
“Well. Frances does them in bread crumbs.”
“Oh, I do that, too. That way’s good, too. Sometimes you feel like a change. I saw the O’Hare boy’s father coming out of the undertaker’s. It was awful to see him. He looked sixty years old.”
“Viewing the body,” said Frances’ mother. “An omelette would