“I’ll never crawl under another house,” Lennie said, moaning a little as they went over a bump.
“They used to tease him about it. ‘Get the ball, Hank,’ they’d call. ‘It’s right over there in the
grass.’”
He smiled. “Hank would back up a mile to keep from touching a clump of grass. He’d always say, ‘One rattlesnake bite’ll do me for the rest of my life.’”
“That’s true,” Lennie moaned.
As they got to the highway, the siren started up. It sounded different, Lennie thought, when it was you inside the car, when it was
you
that the trucks and cars were going to pull over to the side of the road for. He tried to raise his head and see if it was happening. He was too weak.
“You all right, son?”
Lennie opened his eyes. He looked at the big cop. He nodded.
“Well, just hold on.”
Lennie kept looking at the big cop’s face.
Suddenly he thought of the time his mom had taken him down the street in Nashville to see a man who was buried alive. The man was buried in a special box, and there was a green awning over it. For a dime you could look down a tube and speak to the man who was buried below.
Lennie would never forget looking down the tube. He had had a million questions he wanted to ask, but as soon as he saw the man’s face below him, he couldn’t say a word.
“Ask him how long he’s going to stay down there,” his mother had prompted.
“How long are you going to stay down there?”
“As long as the people of Nashville want me to,” the man had answered.
“Ask him how he eats.”
“How do you eat?”
But the woman taking up the dimes had said, “Move on now, these girls want to see too.” And Lennie had to move on and make room for three girls who were already arguing over who would have to look first.
Lennie had moved on, but it had left him with a funny sensation, looking at a stranger through a tube like that. Because for a moment the stranger’s face had blotted out the whole world. It had just been the stranger and Lennie.
Lennie had thought everybody should have to look at everybody else at least once through a tube. You could see them so much more clearly.
Now Lennie could see the big cop in the same clear, one-to-one way. Lennie said, “Tell me about your friend some more, your friend that got bit.”
“Well, let’s see. He lost his fingernail—I remember that.”
“What did they do to him at the hospital?”
“Well, they gave his some shots, as I recall it, and something to take away the pain. He was real happy to be in the hospital—” He broke off. “Pull in here, Bert, this is the emergency entrance.”
The big cop turned back to Lennie. “We’ll get you inside and you’ll be fine.”
In Lennie’s mind the big cop suddenly got mixed up with Sam. Maybe it was because they were both so big. Lennie half expected the big cop to turn around and say, “Hit me in the stomach, kid.” Lennie put out his hand and held tightly to the cop’s sleeve. “I want you to carry me, not him.”
“All right.” Bert opened the door. Awkwardly the big cop climbed out and reached back to help Lennie. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Sixteen
“
A
ntivenom test was negative,” a voice was saying.
Lennie was lying with his eyes closed. He was sobbing to himself. He opened his eyes once to see if the big cop was still standing in the doorway. The big cop lifted his hand and said to Lennie, “Your mom’ll be here in a minute. Bert’s gone to get her.”
Lennie turned away. He closed his eyes. His body shook with sobs.
“Just hold on,” the cop called.
Lennie felt himself being given shots all over his body. It was just another pain. Then they were making slits in his legs, and just when he thought it was all over, he got two more shots, one in the ankle and one in the thigh, then two more in the hip. He lost count.
Somebody said, “We gave you something to ease the pain. You should be feeling some relief soon.”
They rolled him out of the emergency room, down the green hall, and into the elevator.
“I’ll stay with you till your mom gets here,” the cop said.
Lennie nodded. He reached out and took the cop’s hand. He was beginning to relax a little now.
“The doctors say you’re going to be just fine.”
“I don’t know,” Lennie murmured.
Two people lifted him onto a bed. Lennie reached out for the cop’s hand again. He ran his free hand over the sheet like a small child comforting himself with a favorite blanket. He felt sleepy.
“Here’s your mom,” the big cop said.
She was standing in the doorway in blue jeans and a tie-dyed shirt. She came over to the bed and started to cry.
Lennie said, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she said. “You just get well.”
“I shouldn’t have tried to hide.” His lips were dry. It was getting hard to talk.
“Don’t say anything. You just rest and concentrate on getting well. You are very important to me.”
His mom kept patting his arm. His mom used to play the piano long ago, but she had been taught by an aunt who could only play hymn chords, and now she was patting him with all her fingers, the same chord over and over.
Lennie felt confused. He said, “Am I still in the hospital?” The room was blurring. The green walls were moving closer.
His mom said, “Now, you just keep hold of yourself.” She kept patting his arm, the same chord.
Lennie thought of his arms rising and winding around his body like ropes. He ran his fingers back and forth on the sheet.
“Try to sleep.”
“I got to tell you something first,” Lennie began through his dry lips, but before he had a chance to go on, he had forgotten what he wanted to say.
“No, don’t talk. I understand.”
Lennie sighed. It was easier, if she really did understand, not to have to tell it, whatever it was. He couldn’t remember.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Four thirty.”
“When was I bit?”
“Well, they said it must have been about an hour and a half ago. You were lucky to get help that fast.”
“I know.”
“Now you just lie back and rest. Get well. That’s all that matters. Want me to close the blinds?”
Lennie opened his eyes and saw the sun. It looked like it was setting. It didn’t seem possible. He couldn’t remember what day it was. Maybe, he thought, this was the longest day on record. They would put it in a book. The longest day ever recorded was on an afternoon in early October, the day a boy was bit by a rattlesnake under a stone house at a lake.
His mother got up and closed the blinds. “There, is that better?”
“I can still smell the lake.”
“No, hon, the whole hospital’s air-conditioned,” she said. “The window’s shut tight.”
“I can smell it, Mom, I tell you. I can smell it. Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, yes,” his mother said, playing three quick chords on his arm. “Don’t get upset, Lennie. Just lie there and try to sleep. I think I can smell the lake too.”
Lennie remembered suddenly what he had wanted to tell her. “I failed my Science test,” he said. “It’s under my socks.”
“That’s all right.”
“You will have to sign it.”
“I will.”
“It’s the Science test you thought I was studying for so hard.”
“That’s all right.”
“It’s the Science test you said you were proud of me for passing.”
“It’s all right.”
“It doesn’t matter to you?”
“No.”
Comforted, Lennie sighed. His mother kept patting his arm, and in a few minutes he slept.
Chapter Seventeen
“
H
e’ll be all right, ma’am. They’ve made a lot of progress in snake-bite treatment.” It was the big cop talking to Lennie’s mother. Lennie heard him, but he didn’t open his eyes for a moment. The pain was back now, as bad as before.
“I hope,” his mom said.
“Folks who talk about the world going to the dogs forget all the progress we’ve made.”
“I know,” his mom said.
“Why, I read the other day that there’s McDonald hamburger places in Japan now and shopping centers in India.”
“We all have a lot to be thankful for.”
“And your boy’s going to be just fine. Living in modern times has its advantages, and one of them is that your boy’s going to be all right.”
“Mom,” Lennie said through dry lips.
“I’m right here, Lennie.” He could feel her leaning over him. He could smell her clean lemony smell.
“What time is it?”
“It’s—” She paused and looked at her watch. “It’s eleven forty.”
“At night?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,”
Lennie moaned. He hadn’t known pain could be this bad. The worst pain he had suffered before today was the digging out of a splinter at Sam’s Diner and the setting of a broken arm in Nashville. This was a total, all-out pain.
“I don’t think I’m going to get through the night,” he said more to himself than to his mom.
“Yes, you will, Lennie. It’ll get better. Just hold on to yourself.”
“Can’t they give me something for the pain?”
“They already have, hon.”
“Are you sure?”
“They’ve given you all they can. It’ll ease up soon.”
“I know it won’t.” He began to cry. “Pain like this doesn’t ease.”
“It
will.”
He lay with his eyes closed for a moment, tears rolling down his cheeks. Then he said, “What time is it?”
“It’s”—she paused—“eleven forty-one.”
“Oh.” He lay without moving. He was trying to last just five more minutes. He could no longer think of getting through the whole night. Five more minutes was the best he could do. “What time is it
now?”
“It’s eleven forty-two.”
“Oh.” Four minutes to go.
The big cop—Lennie had forgotten he was in the room—said, “I’ll go speak to the nurse. Maybe she can do something.”
“I’d appreciate it.” After the cop left the room, his mother said, “You want to talk, Lennie? Maybe it would help you get your mind off the pain.”
“I’ll try.”
“Want me to tell you about the time I was in the hospital? I was just about your age.”
“All right.”
“It was an accident.”
“Car?”
“No, I was climbing a tree behind the motel—”
“Our motel?”
“No, this was a different one. It was in Kentucky, and it was called the Kosy K. We lived in one of the cabins. Kosy K Kabins was the full name. Anyway, I was out back climbing an old oak tree and I fell. I landed in the crook of the tree on my knee, and I broke that, and then I fell on the ground and broke my arm.”
“Oh.”
“And they took me to the hospital in the back of an old pickup truck. I can still remember how scared I was because I had never even spent a night away from home.”
“Oh,” Lennie said. He paused, wet his lips. “What time is it now?”
“It’s”—pause—“eleven forty-four.”
One more minute to go, Lennie thought.
“You want to hear the rest about my arm?”
“Yeah, go on.”
“Well, the knee wasn’t too bad, but the arm got infected. See, the bone had poked through the skin, and they thought I was going to die, Lennie. I was in the hospital for two and a half weeks. It almost caused me to fail fifth grade.” She broke off as the cop came back in the room.
“The nurse’ll be in in a minute,” he said.
“Did you hear that, Lennie? Hold onto yourself because the nurse is coming.”
“What time is it now?” Lennie asked.
“It’s eleven forty-six.”
He had made it. Five minutes. And he was already one minute into the next five.
His mom said, “Officer Olson was just telling me while you were asleep, Lennie, that a friend of his got bit by a rattlesnake on his little finger.”
“Oh.”
“I told him about it, ma’am.”
“And, Lennie, he says he’ll get the man to come see you tomorrow if it’ll make you feel better.”
Lennie nodded. He waited as long as he could stand it and then he said, “What time is it now?”
Chapter Eighteen
T
hat was how Lennie got through that first night—five minutes and then five minutes more. It seemed to Lennie that the night, separated into those five-minute periods, was longer than the whole rest of his life. He would never have believed that five minutes could be longer than a year, but now he knew it was true.
In the morning when the doctor came in to look at Lennie’s leg and to change the dressing, Lennie was past caring. He didn’t even want to get well any more.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
Lennie just shook his head.
“Well, let’s see that leg.”
Lennie closed his eyes and moaned. His leg hurt so bad he could even feel the doctor’s breath on his knee. It was like a blowtorch.
“Don’t get near my leg,” Lennie murmured as he fainted.
He didn’t remember anything else about the rest of the morning except that it was one terrible pain after another.
In the afternoon the big cop came in. He leaned on the foot of the bed. “Remember me telling you about my friend that got snake bit?” he said. “Well, here he is!” The cop sounded as cheerful as if he’d done a feat of magic.
Lennie tried. He opened his eyes. He blinked to clear his vision. He made an effort to see the man beside his bed.
“There’s my finger that got bit,” the man said, leaning over Lennie’s bed. “See? You can still see the scars; and here are the slits they had to make in my hand to relieve the swelling. Here, here, here, here, and here. And my fingernail’s gone.” He wagged his little finger. “See? No fingernail!”
Lennie tried to focus his eyes on the finger and the slits, but he didn’t care any more. Nothing mattered. He closed his eyes.