The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [89]
“Your wife will be all right,” Moses said.
“She isn’t my wife,” Mr. Cutter sobbed. “She’s so kind and lovely. My wife isn’t anything like that. We’ve had such hard times, both of us. We’ve never asked for very much. We haven’t even been together very much. It couldn’t be retribution, could it? It couldn’t be retribution. We’ve never harmed anyone. We’ve taken these little trips each year. It’s the only time we ever have together. It couldn’t be retribution.” He dried his tears and cleaned his spectacles and went back down the hall.
A young nurse came to the door, looking out at the carnival and the summer evening, and a doctor joined her.
“B2 thinks he’s dying,” the nurse said. “He wants a priest.”
“I called Father Bevier,” the doctor said. “He’s out.” He put a hand on the nurse’s slender back and let it fall along her buttocks.
“Oh, I could use a little of that,” the nurse said cheerfully.
“So could I,” the doctor said.
He continued to stroke her buttocks and desire seemed to make the nurse plaintive and in a human way much finer and the doctor, who had looked very tired, seemed refreshed. Then, from the dark interior of the place, there was a wordless roar, a spitting grunt, extorted either by extreme physical misery or the collapse of reasonable hope. The doctor and the nurse separated and disappeared in the dark at the end of the hall. The grunt rose to a scream, a shriek, and to escape it Moses walked out of the building and crossed the grass to the edge of the lawn. He was on high land and his view took in the mountains, blackened then by an afterglow—a brilliant yellow that is seen in lower country only on the coldest nights of February.
In the trees on his left the fair or carnival had hit its gentle, countrified stride. An orchestra on a platform was playing “Smiles” and on the second chorus one of the players put down his instrument and sang a verse through a megaphone. Strings of lights—white and faded reds and yellows—were hung from booth to booth to light, with the faint candle power of these arrangements, the dark of the maples. The noise of voices was not loud and the men talking up hamburgers and fortune’s wheel called with no real insistence. He walked over to a booth and bought a paper cup of coffee from a pretty country girl. When she had given him his change she moved the sugar bowl an inch this way and that, looked at the doughnut jar with a deep sigh and pulled at her apron. “You’re a stranger!” she asked. He said that he was. The girl moved down the counter to wait on some other people who were complaining about the chilly mountain dusk.
In the next booth a young man was pitching baseballs at a pyramid of wooden milk bottles. His aim and his speed were superb. He stared at the milk bottles, drawing back a little and narrowing his eyes like a rifleman, and then winged a ball at them with the energy of sheer malevolence. Down they came, again and again, and a small crowd of girls and bucks gathered to watch the performance but when it was ended and the pitcher turned toward them they said so long, so long, Charlie, so long,