American Boy (22 page)

Two more cars passed while we were heaving and straining against the Valiant’s trunk, but neither stopped. The second car slowed, and I eased up in my grunting effort to glance in its direction. A boy looked out at us from the backseat, his face as pale as moonlit snow. I thought I saw his lips move, and I imagined him telling the driver they should stop. But the car sped by, and my glimpse of him lasted no longer than my glimpse of Louisa Lindahl’s bare breasts.

As if that passing car told him once and for all that the car would never leave the ditch with the help of any hands except those that were already on it, the big Indian said, “The hell with it. Let’s get this fucker out of here.”

Barney punched the transmission into gear once again, and his big friend heaved hard, releasing a sound that was equal parts grunt, roar, and scream.
“Heerr-ahh!”
And before its echo died away, he damn near lifted the Valiant out of its ruts. Instead of helping push the car free, I was soon being pulled along behind it. The wheels spun and whined and churned up more snow, but Barney managed to drive the car out of the ditch.

And he kept on going, cruising down the highway for a good fifty yards or so before the brake lights blinked on and the car glided to a stop at the side of the road.

My momentum was already carrying me that way, so I ran after the car while the man who had been strong enough to heave the car clear stood in the snow and gasped for air.

When I caught up to the Valiant, Barney’s head was thrown back and his hat had fallen into the backseat. His eyes were closed, and he was trying to bring his knees up toward his chest.

I opened the car door and the dome light came on. Barney didn’t even glance at me. He was too busy biting back his pain and shaking with chills.

Instinctively, I put my hand to his forehead. “Damn—you’re burning up!”

Barney smiled through his pain. “And he says it’s just a bellyache.”

“A fever means infection.... Where did you say the pain was?”

“Down here,” he said, indicating the position of his hands on his abdomen.

“Lower right quadrant.... Have you been vomiting?”

“I puked a couple hours ago. But I haven’t ate much, so there ain’t much to bring up.”

“Diarrhea?”

Barney closed his eyes again and shook his head. “Huh-uh.”

The big Indian caught up to us, and he stood behind me, looking over my shoulder at his ailing friend. “Gettin’ worse, Barney?”

Barney nodded and slid lower in his seat.

“You could have appendicitis,” I suggested.

“Nah,” Barney said. “The army already took my appendix out. For free.”

“Okay, okay. Let me think. Pain in the lower right abdomen. Guarding. Fever. Chills.”

“Fuckin-A he’s got chills,” the big Indian said. “What’s the goddamn temperature? Ten?” He stamped up and down and flapped his arms. “I got chills. Hell, we all got chills.”

“This is different,” I said. “Barney, will you do something ? Will you lie down across the front seat?”

“He lays down,” the other man said, “he ain’t going to want to get up.”

But Barney complied. He stretched out across the seat, a shudder coursing through him as if he’d just tossed back a shot of whiskey.

“Okay, Barney—” When Dr. Dunbar treated a patient gripped hard by illness or injury, he made a point of saying the patient’s name as often as possible. It was a way, the doctor used to say, “of keeping the patient in the world.”

“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said to Barney. “I know your stomach hurts, but I want you to put your hand, okay, both your hands, right over the spot that hurts the worst.”

Barney did as I asked.

“All right, Barney. Now press down right there. Right on the spot. Okay, good. Keep pressing. A little harder. Now, when I tell you, take your hands away. Fast. Okay—now!”

Barney was an obedient patient, even when everything I asked him to do caused him pain. And the last step was agonizing.

He jerked his hands away on command and instantly cried out. “Oooh! Goddamn!”

His knees jerked upward and he twisted so hard to the side he almost toppled off the car seat.

Just as I’d expected. Blumberg’s sign. Dr. Dunbar had told us about it as a test for peritonitis when a perforated bowel almost killed Harley Platt, the owner of a butcher shop in Willow Falls. Then Dr. Dunbar made Johnny and me lie down, each in turn, while he pressed on our abdomens and showed us how to check for rebound tenderness.

I reached into the car and grabbed Barney’s ankle, bare above his oxford, its cracked worn leather his only protection against snow and cold. I wasn’t trying to control him; I was trying to comfort him, though I had no idea whether I had that power.

In a voice as gentle as I owned, I said, “How are you doing, Barney? Okay?”

Through his pain, Barney managed a smile. He was too polite to say anything about the stupidity of my question. “Okay,” he said, and struggled to sit up again.

I motioned for Barney’s friend to join me behind the car. There, both of us eerily illuminated by the car’s taillights, I said, “Your friend’s in bad shape. He’s got an infection that’s making him really sick. He has to go to a hospital.”

He nodded, his smile dimming for the first time. “I’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow. If he ain’t better I’ll take him to the VA hospital.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Tomorrow’s no good. It will be too late. Your friend’s got peritonitis. He’s only going to get worse. This is an emergency. You have to go to the hospital in Bellamy. And you have to drive like hell to get there.”

Barney was out of the car now and limping toward us. I don’t know if he’d heard the word “peritonitis,” but he knew we were talking about his condition.

“Hey,” Barney said, “are you a doctor or something?”

The wind seemed to die as the snowy plains around us waited for my answer.

“No,” I said. “But my father was.”

20.

I DIDN’T RUSH BACK TO WILLOW FALLS, and not just because I was shaken after spinning out and sliding off the road. I couldn’t handle any more suspense. If Dr. Dunbar was speeding after me and his wife’s car, I was ready to be overtaken. If law enforcement was on my trail, I was ready to be caught.

But I saw just two other cars on the drive back to Willow Falls, and neither driver displayed any interest in me. The streets of my hometown were snow packed and drifted over, but completely quiet, and I drove the Valiant back to where it belonged.

Lights burned in a few windows of the Dunbar home. Was Mrs. Dunbar waiting up? Didn’t she know that neither her husband, nor her son, nor Louisa Lindahl was likely to return to their own bed that night? Didn’t she realize that when they did return none would be the person who left? And for that matter, did she have any sense that though she was comfortable and warm in a place with light and heat, her house had been blown apart as surely as if the afternoon’s winds had flattened every wall that sheltered her?

The driveway was partially cleared—perhaps the result of the twins’ enthusiastic but inefficient shoveling—but I managed to park the Valiant in its usual spot in the garage. When Johnny and I left the house that afternoon, the wind had stacked snow on the porch so high we practically had to climb over a drift to leave. But during our absence the wind had shifted and now the path in and out of the back door was as clear as July. I entered quietly and paused in the kitchen to announce my presence. “Hello,” I said. “It’s Matt. Anyone up?”

No one answered. I slipped off my shoes and padded into the house’s quiet, warm interior. In each room I called out softly, but there was no response.

I found Mrs. Dunbar in the living room, asleep on the couch. On the table next to her was an ashtray brimming with lipstick-stained cigarette butts smoked right down to the filter, and the cup she had been drinking coffee from didn’t have a saucer.

I probably could have crept through the house and completed my mission without waking Mrs. Dunbar or her daughters, but I didn’t want to take a chance. For a moment I stared at her. Her hair was mussed, her mouth was open, and her skirt had ridden up above her knees.
What won’t you do that Louisa will?

“Mrs. Dunbar,” I whispered.

She was stretched out on the couch and didn’t stir. She was wearing the clothes she had worn that morning to church, and her pearl necklace—those omnipresent pearls—were twisted and tugged tight to her throat.

I crouched down beside her, close enough to hear her breathing. “Mrs. Dunbar?” I said, louder this time.

She came awake suddenly, but without a physical start, as if her body lagged well behind her mind. Her eyes blinked open, and she recognized me. “Matt?” she said, but she was already looking past me.

“I came alone,” I said. “I was afraid my mom would be worried, so I drove back in your car. The others will come later tonight or tomorrow morning.”

“Johnny—?”

“Johnny’s with them.” It took a moment for the import of what I told her to take hold, but once it did, her relief was visible.

“He decided to ride back with his dad,” I added.

“I called your mother earlier—”

“Yeah, but I just thought it would be better if I came back sooner rather than later. You know. She worries. Because of what happened with my dad.”

She smiled kindly at me and sat up, careful to tug her skirt down in the process. “You’re a good son, Matt.”

I stood up. “Well, I don’t know about that ...”

“And a good friend to Johnny. When the two of you left this afternoon I wasn’t worried because the two of you were going. I knew Johnny would be all right with you along.”

There was so much I could have said.
You didn’t send both of us; you sent Johnny and you didn’t know, at least not at first, that I’d go along. And did you really believe that Johnny would be all right?
But what was the point? I knew very well what Mrs. Dunbar was doing. She was smoothing her skirt and rearranging the collar of her blouse and straightening up the past, bringing it all in line with who she had to be. Like Louisa, like me, Mrs. Dunbar had her own list of what she had to do in order to create herself in her own image. Though she didn’t have to write anything down.

“Johnny drove,” I said. “I was just along for the ride.”

The room was dark, but Mrs. Dunbar saw something darker. “Matt, is that a bruise? On the side of your face?”

She reached up tentatively, and I wanted to crouch down again, to come close, to feel her cool fingers where my head still throbbed from her husband’s fist, to feel a mother’s touch....

“I slipped getting out of the car in Bellamy. Fell right on my face.”

“If Rex were here he could take a look at it.”

“He already did. He said I should be more careful.”

“I have an aspirin....”

“No, it’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. It was mostly just embarrassing.”

Mrs. Dunbar smiled up at me. She now had her ankles crossed. “It was very cute earlier. The twins wanted to stay up late, until you and Johnny came back. That’s what they said: Until Johnny and Matt come back, please? Not their father. Not just Johnny. Johnny and Matt.”

At any other time I might have been touched by her remark. There were times when I came close to forgetting that Janet and Julia were not my little sisters, too. But it was late, I was tired, and I still had something I needed to do before my night came to a close. “Yeah. Cute. But hey, I need to go upstairs and pick up something and then I’ll be on my way, okay?”

“Would you like me to give you a ride?”

The Dunbars... always ready to give me a ride. “That’s all right,” I said. “You have to stay with the twins. Besides, it’s not far.”

As I climbed the stairs, I kept to the side of each step so they were less likely to creak. I stayed close to the wall as I tread carefully down the halls, and I turned the doorknob slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. Mrs. Dunbar knew I was there. The twins were not likely to wake. It was the house itself I was trying not to disturb. I took what I came for and made my way out as quietly as I could.

21.

MY LIFE KEPT MAKING ragged duplicates of itself.

Before I went to bed that night I examined my swollen face in the bathroom mirror, another injury that had come at the hands of Rex Dunbar. But I didn’t look or puzzle long over the bruise or the how and why of it. This time I was sure of the motive behind the blow.

And once again I was waiting, just as I had done after New Year’s Eve, when Dr. Dunbar predicted consequences that never came. This time, however, I felt better equipped for what might come. When the doctor burst into the motel room and punched me I’d been completely unprepared for the blow, but I swore I wouldn’t be blindsided again.

But Monday came and Dr. Dunbar didn’t knock on our door, ready to kick my ass again. He didn’t pull up to the curb as I was walking to school, or leap from his big Chrysler and pummel me. Nor did the sheriff show up to pull me out of class. Not that day or the next.

I couldn’t relax though, because now I was waiting for Thursday. That was the day when Jay’s Pancake House slid a few tables together at the back of the restaurant for the afternoon Kiwanis Club meeting, and the women’s circle met in the basement of the First Presbyterian church. Dr. Dunbar belonged to the first organization, and Mrs. Dunbar the second.

On Thursday afternoon, shortly after lunch, when I felt confident both meetings were underway, I asked to be excused from my fifth-period history class. I told Mrs. Spires that I was sick to my stomach, and I said it with a grimace in the hopes of implying a messy urgency behind my request.

I had the car that day, so when I left the high school I was able to travel quickly to my destination. A light snow sifted down, as fine as cornmeal, which meant that I would leave a trail. But while that realization was upsetting, I also knew I couldn’t cover every contingency, and I wasn’t about to abandon my plan. Perhaps my footprints would mingle with the milkman’s and the postman’s, and perhaps as the snow continued to fall it would conceal my tracks rather than reveal them.