Three-Legged Race

by Чарльз П. Кроуфорд

  "Six o'clock rolled around and no father. I paced around the kitchen for a while and then I paced around the living room until I bugged my mother so much that she told me to go upstairs and play in my room and she would call me when my father got home.

  "Well, he got home all right. Like at about seven thirty and stewed to the gills. I was sitting at the top of the stairs. He stumbles in and heads for the bar and mixes another just to keep himself rolling along. By that time my mother had a few under the old belt as well. She was pissed. I mean really pissed. She'd been working on a slow burn for hours. The first thing she says is, 'And where were you, or need I ask?' Man, her voice could have formed icicles.

  "I yell, 'Hi, Dad.' He grunts at me and flops down in his favorite chair. My mother is going to get an answer whether he likes it or not, so she says again, 'And just exactly where have you been until this hour? And on you son's tenth birthday as well.' She always was quick on the guilt bit.

  "'Business,' my father says and takes a healthy swig. No wonder I got stoned when I was six." Kirk laughed.

  "'Business, my eye,' my mother says. 'Who was she?'

  "Now I may not have been an unsoiled ten, I'd heard talk like that through the walls plenty of times before, but it was the first time that they'd ever gotten into this area of their marital bliss right in front of me.

  "So my father says, 'Look, we'll talk about it later, just relax. It's nothing important,' or something like that.

  "'Nothing important, you say. Relax, nothing.' My mother says, 'I don't care if Kirk does hear. It's about time he learned what his father was really like. It wasn't business you were up to this afternoon. I called your office hours ago to remind you to get home at a decent hour for Kirk's birthday dinner.'

  "I almost felt like saying, 'Listen, I know, I know. So what's new?' but I just sat there on the stairs with my mouth shut.

  "So my father says, 'Dear, this isn't something to talk about now. It was just a business meeting, nothing else.'

  "'Like how many other business meetings over the years?' my mother shouts. She's getting all riled up and they're both swigging away at the booze as fast as they can, which is their answer to the communications gap. 'A little business conference with another of those secretaries, I suppose?' It wasn't very pleasant to hear, I can tell you that.

  "'Well, I don't know what you're complaining about,' my father says. 'I'm home in the evenings. I provide for you and the kid. I don't see you lacking good clothes or your weekly hair appointments. You've got a damn good deal going for you here, if you ask me. Just don't push.'

  "'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you,' my mother shouts. 'You stop this fooling around. I've put up with it long enough. And if you don't, one of these days you'll come staggering in here and you won't find me or Kirk around to hold your hand.'

  "'Don't make promises you aren't going to keep,' my father says, and my mother starts crying.

  "I could see my big birthday dinner going right down the drain with all the other crap that was flying through the air. I'm just giving you the high points, you understand, and guessing at what they said. If I remember correctly, this particular battle lasted for several hours and ended up with somebody hitting somebody else, I think. I finally sat down and read a magazine for a while, surrounded by all that yelling and crying. I felt all squeezed up inside. I tried to close the whole thing out just waiting for one of them to look up and say, 'Hey, it's Kirk's birthday. Let's eat dinner and have a good time.'

  "Needless to say, I never got my birthday dinner. I felt pretty lousy about it, but they never knew. I had long since stopped showing them how I felt about anything. So it was one beautiful birthday. I don't know what my father finally did, passed out in his chair probably. I got myself a bowl of cereal and went on up to bed."

  "What happened to the bike?" Amy asked.

  "When I came down to breakfast in the morning, my mother was all smiles and brushed away the argument of the night before as if it had never happened. The bike was propped up against the table. I said, 'Thank you,' although I didn't much care at that point. My father brought me home a new tennis racket from work that evening."

  "That's really sad," Amy said.

  Brent didn't know what to say right then. Anything I say will sound stupid, he thought.

  "Who gives a shit? I don't let things like that bother me anymore. Maybe they did when I was little, but I guess I'm used to them now," Kirk said.

  "What's the nicest memory you have?" Amy asked.

  "Yeah, make it a happy one," Kirk said. "I can tell my last little story really cheered everybody up a lot."

  "I don't know," Brent said. "There've been a lot of great times."

  "Think," said Amy. "I'd really like to hear."

  "I remember when I was younger, I had to spend the night out in a boat by myself," Brent said.

  "That sounds scary," Amy replied. "Make it a nice memory."

  "No, it's all right. It was nice. It was wonderful, really. My family and I were up at our summer place in Maine. It's an island house a little way off the coast, and you have to go back and forth to the mainland by boat. We'd done it for years so it was no big deal. It's great to get away in the summer to such a peaceful place. It gives me plenty of time to be by myself and paint and watch the sea and things like that.

  "Sometimes fog would come in, and if one of us was over on the mainland to a movie or something, we would have to spend the night in the car. It's very easy to get mixed up in a Maine fog, I'll tell you that, even if you only have about a half mile to go from shore to island.

  "This one night, it was a Saturday, my parents had let me take the boat over to the mainland so I could go to the Cundy's Harbor square dance that was held every Saturday night in the firehouse. I had some other friends and we always used to meet at the dance. It was a great time.

  "When I got back to the boat that night, a thick fog had settled in over the water. I couldn't even see the lantern that my parents always left burning for me at the end of the pier on the island. It was really thick stuff.

  "I should have stayed in the car on the mainland, but I figured I'd be able to make it over to the island if I just followed the reefs around and kept a look-out for the lantern. So I went down to the dock and got into the boat. It was all wet and cold. I got the motor going - it was our old ten-horse Johnson. Off I went. I was sure I'd be there in a few minutes.

  "I got lost. I got so lost that before you knew it I didn't even know in what direction I was headed. Those fogs can be really tricky."

  "Weren't you scared?" Amy asked.

  "I suppose I should have been, considering I could have run aground on some rocks or something. But I wasn't. The night was really calm. I cut the motor, hoping I'd hear something that would give me a sense of direction. I could hear the foghorn from the point, and the far clang of the bell buoy near Bear Island. The water made lapping sounds on the boat. But I really couldn't tell what direction any of it was coming from.

  "It was beautiful out there. There was phosphorus glowing in the wake of the boat. I just let myself drift for a while. I knew that I had no idea of where I was. I hadn't been in the boat long enough to get too far from home, so I still wasn't worried.

  "I drifted toward a lobster buoy that a lobster-man had attached to his trap, and decided to tie myself up to it. There was no point in just drifting into trouble. I sat there in the dark and quiet. The fog drifted in waves around me. Every once in a while the moon shone through for a minute or two.

  "Some seals stopped by and poked their heads out of the water near the boat. They were curious, I guess. They barked and snorted a few times and then slid back into the water and disappeared.

  "It was a great night. I slept some, I guess, but it really didn't matter. It was fine to be out there all by myself on the water. I'm sure my parents thought I was sleeping safely in the car or at my friends' house.

  "The dawn was beautiful, too, and the fog burned off. It turned out that I was only a
hundred yards or so from home the whole time. Sounds crazy, I guess, but I'll always remember that night as being - I don't know - really great."

  Kirk didn't say anything.

  Amy sighed. "I wish I'd been there too. You know what I found a few days before I came to the hospital?"

  "What?" Kirk asked. "Prince Charming?"

  "Oh, stop it, Kirk, I'm serious. Just before I came in here, I was going over some old boxes of my stuff and I found a clay hand I'd made when I was in first grade. You know, one of those things where you make a pancake out of clay and press your hand in it with your fingers all stretched out and then run home and give it to your mother. I took it out of the box and held my hand against it. It was very strange."

  "Why?" Brent asked.

  "The thing that amazed me so much was that it was hard to believe that I had ever had such small hands. The hand in the clay seemed too little to have ever been mine."

  "You'll have to face it one day, baby, we all have to grow up sometime," Kirk said.

  "Oh, I know, Kirk. It's just that sometimes I don't much like the idea."

  Sometimes Brent worried about things like that too, but he had never had anyone to talk about it with before.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon gabbing about the past and things little kids do and what makes them scared and all, while Brent tried to forget the conversation he had overheard between Kirk and his parents earlier.

  "Oh, Monty, pick me! Oh, Monty, pick me, pick me!" Kirk shouted in a falsetto voice. "I want to win a refrigerator! Pick me, Monty, pick me!"

  The three were watching Let's Make a Deal on television the next day.

  "Can you believe those jackasses?" Kirk said in his normal voice. "There they are, dressed as carrots or buffaloes, screaming their greedy heads off so they can pick some stupid curtain and win a gag prize like a horny llama or something. You know what I'd do if I were on that show? I'd scream and squeal like the best of them and Monty would have to choose me. Then I would ask for the curtain girl instead of the curtain. I think she's listed in the Spiegel catalogue, f.o.b. Detroit, retail value forty-seven fifty. These daytime game shows make me want to puke."

  Amy began to cry. She didn't make any noise at first, just her shoulders shook as she sat at the end of the bed facing the television. Brent and Kirk turned to her. She didn't say anything, she just continued to cry.

  Kirk swung his legs over the side of his bed and grabbed for his crutches. He stumbled from the room without looking back. Amy buried her head in her hands. The deals and the boxes and the curtains continued flowing from the television.

  Brent rolled onto his side so he could see down the bed to where Amy was sitting. He didn't know why she was crying, but he wanted to comfort her. He felt he wouldn't know the right thing to say, though.

  "What's the matter?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I feel sad. I'm scared, Brent."

  "Why?" Brent asked.

  "I don't know. I'm just scared. I wish I knew what was going to happen to us, to me."

  "Yeah, I know. But you're fine. Your mother says you're fine."

  "I'm scared anyway. I'm worried, Brent. I wish I felt fine."

  "Look, Amy. Everything's going to be all right. There's nothing to worry about. You'll be out of here soon and so will I, and nothing's ever going to get to Kirk. It would take a bulldozer to knock him flat."

  "I know. I'm being stupid."

  The television blasted: "And which curtain will you choose for the big deal of the day, Curtain One, Curtain Two or Curtain Three?"

  Amy continued crying.

  "Look, it's all right, Amy. I don't know what else to say."

  "There's nothing you can say, Brent. I'll be fine. I'm just scared is all. Like this show. Like if I had to pick one of those curtains, it would be the wrong one. They'd open my curtain and something awful would be there, something frightening. It's like a nightmare. The curtain would be open and everybody would scream, and I don't know what my prize would be, Brent, but I know I wouldn't be a winner."

  "You'll be a winner this time, Amy. You'll be fine. It's all right to be scared."

  "You never are though, Brent."

  "Yes, I am. I just never show it is all. I don't know why sometimes I'm so scared it hurts. Or I hurt so much I'm scared, but I never want to show it. I'd never mention anything like this to anyone except you and Kirk. You two are special. Otherwise I don't show it to anybody at all."

  "Thanks," she said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands and sniffling. "I just wish I knew what was behind the curtain."

  Kirk barreled through the door, pushing the lunch cart ahead of him.

  "I don't know what's going on in here, but it's against the rules. How many times have I told you two, no one is allowed in a room alone without a chaperone, or you have to have at least three feet on the floor. Let's shape up, you two. The nurses are beginning to talk."

  "Let them talk," Amy said. "You can't stop the course of true love."

  "I think I'll write a book," Kirk said. "A girl and her pig, a heartwarming story of true romance."

  "Hey, I resent that," Brent said, laughing. "I'm no pig."

  "No?" Kirk said. "But it's what's for lunch. I bring you, hot from the kitchen, today's luncheon speciality, cooked to a turn by the seven nonfunctionals at the stove: breast of sow's ear stuffed with artichoke livers."

  "It's artichoke hearts," Amy said, laughing again.

  "Not this time, honey. And it's not the only thing that will be choking around here."

  "You can say that again," Brent said as Kirk lifted the platter lid and they saw what lay steaming on the plate.

  "Yummy," Amy said. "I could eat a horse."

  "Hang on," Kirk said. "That's what's for dinner."

  Chapter Six

  The hospital was quiet. Dinner had long since passed. Amy was with Kirk and Brent in their room watching a rerun of The Longest Day on television. The troops were beginning to land. Sirens were wailing, guns were firing, artillery was booming through the small speaker.

  Brent was idly sketching on a pad of drawing paper.

  A tooth paste commercial came on the tube and the sirens continued to wail.

  "What do you suppose that is?" asked Amy.

  "Just a fire, I guess," Brent replied, doodling on the paper with his drawing pencil.

  "Shhh," said Kirk. "I love toothpaste commercials. I can hardly hear the line about whiter than white with you two gabbing away."

  "They sound awful close," said Amy.

  "They sure do," Brent replied.

  A commercial for soda came on.

  "It sounds like action at the emergency ward," Kirk said.

  "Big action, from the sound of it," Brent replied. "There's more than one siren out there, that's for sure."

  "I hope it's nothing too serious," Amy said. "The sirens always make me kind of jittery."

  "Why don't we wander down and see," Kirk suggested. "No one would care at this hour."

  "I don't know, Kirk," Amy said. "It scares me. Besides, we'd be leaving Brent alone."

  "That's okay, Amy. I wouldn't mind. I'm curious too. Maybe you could find out what the excitement is," Brent said.

  "I still don't know."

  "Come on, Amy. No harm. We won't get into anybody's way. We'll just peek through the doors and psych out what's going on."

  "Go ahead. I've got the movie to watch," Brent said. "I don't mind being alone."

  "I don't like it, Kirk."

  The sounds of the sirens continued to pile up against the window and creep into the room like fog.

  "Just for a minute. Just to check on what's going on."

  "Okay, Kirk," Amy said. She stood up and wrapped her bathrobe close around her. She slid her bare feet into her slippers.

  "We'll be right back, Brent," she said. "I can guarantee we won't be long."

  Kirk and Amy left the room. The commercials were over. Brent returned to watching the invasion of Normandy.

&nbs
p; The halls were empty. Down to the right of the room the two night nurses were conversing quietly. Kirk and Amy sneaked away in the other direction toward the service elevator. They pushed the elevator button and Amy watched as the arrow worked itself up from the ground floor to number six. The door opened and flooded the dim alcove with bright light.

  Kirk took Amy's arm and put both crutches under his other arm. The doors hissed closed behind them. Kirk leaned against the wall and rested.

  "Which floor is Emergency on?" Amy asked.

  "One," replied Kirk.

  Amy pushed the "One" button and the elevator lurched and began to descend.

  "I think we ought to go back. I don't want to be in the way," Amy said.

  "We won't be in the way. We won't even go in, just peek through the door."

  The elevator came to a stop and the doors hissed open again. The first-floor hallway was very dim. Except for the emergency ward at the other end of the hospital, there were only offices and receptionists and gift shops and outpatient units on the first floor. In the silence, the sirens still wailed from outside the building.

  "It must be something pretty big from the sound of it. I wonder what could have happened."

  Amy and Kirk walked cautiously through the corridors toward the sound of the sirens. They turned a corner and saw the bright lights of the emergency ward beneath the door at the end of the hallway. Under the double swinging door, shadows crossed and recrossed in the light.

  "Let's go back," Amy suggested again.