Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

“Damn good job—now go get me that coffee and some hot water.”

  He looked at Jim Rudgers.

  “Help me to turn him over,” he said.

  Jim stared.

  “That’s where that ball is,” Randy explained patiently. “If it didn’t come out the back of him, it’s still a hell of a lot closer to the back than the front. That was almost point-blank range—and even a derringer ball should have gone clean through, except, which God forbid, it hit bone.”

  Carefully they rolled him over. Randy reached for his satchel. Then he saw Sarah standing in the doorway.

  “I’d thank you to leave, ma’am,” he said; “this isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “I can stand it,” Sarah whispered.

  “All right,” Randy said; “but if you faint, by God I’m going to leave you lying there and get on with my work.”

  “I won’t faint,” Sarah said.

  The ball hadn’t come out; Randy looked at the wound, squinting at it with one eye to observe the angle of penetration.

  “Just about here,” he said; “bet you this rib stopped it.” He made a quick, neat incision, and pushed in the probes, turning them so that they were underneath the rib. The blood gushed out, dyeing his hands. Then he withdrew the probes and the bullet was in them. It was a little flattened, but not much. The thirteen grains of powder ordinarily loaded into a derringer hadn’t that much force.

  He worked very fast, bandaging the wounds. Then he straightened up, smiling. The whole thing had taken him a shade under seven minutes.

  When Sarah came back with the coffee, he smiled at her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Benton,” he said; “I’m all done with him now.”

  “Will he—?” Sarah murmured~

  “That’s hard to say. He should live. He looks as strong as an ox. But infection might set in. I’ve packed the wounds with lint so they won’t close too fast.”

  “What about his insides?” Jim Rudgers growled. “Reckon that ball hit the big gut?”

  “That worries me, I must confess,” Randy sighed. “And he’s in no shape for me to do an exploratory. But there’s one sure way of knowing.”

  “What’s that?” Sarah said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Benton; but if the intestinal wall was pierced, he’ll be dead by this time tomorrow night. If he isn’t, he has a chance, a rather good chance, I’d say.”

  He downed the coffee in one gulp, hot as it was; then he stood up.

  “If you’ll allow me, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll stay the night. I’m not too busy. Most people in these parts think a doctor has to be at least sixty before he’s good.”

  “I’d be glad to,” Sarah said; “I’ll put you in the guest-room.”

  “Excuse me,” Randy said, “but if you have an extra bed, I’d rather you’d have some of the blacks move it in here. I’d like to be on hand. It might make a lot of difference.”

  “Is it that bad?” Jim Rudgers whispered after Sarah had gone to get the negroes.

  “Yes,” Randy McGregor said, “it’s that bad.”

  Later, when he was stretched out in the small bed, placed at the foot of the one in which Tom Benton lay, Randy McGregor thoughtfully extracted a bottle of bourbon from his satchel. As he opened it, he stared at his patient.

  Strange, he thought. I’m a doctor. All my life I’ve worked towards an objective viewpoint. But I don’t like this man. I don’t understand it. I don’t know him. I came here and did my work upon an inert hulk of flesh—not dead, but unliving in any real sense of the word—lacking everything: mannerisms, ideas, opinions, anything at all that should cause me to react to him. And I quite definitely don’t like him.

  He raised the bottle to his lips and took a good long pull. Then he put the bottle down. He knew then that he wasn’t going to drink any more. That, for the first time since he had fled Scotland, pursued Orestes-like by his private Furies, he had no desire for liquor. He considered Tom Benton gravely.

  “It’s not the stories I’ve heard,” he mused. “I heard them long ago, and they didn’t matter. I didn’t know him then—and I don’t know him now. Then why in hell-fire do I have this feeling? And I can’t even define the feeling itself—except to say 1 sense somehow that in saving this man’s life I’m doing the world a disservice—the world, and myself. That’s it—that’s the crux of it—there’s something personal involved—but what?”

  He worried it over in his mind, but he could make nothing of it. He had to give it up finally; but it kept him awake for a long time, and afterwards it troubled his dreams.

  It was not until two weeks later, after he had become an accepted member of the household, that he began to realise what his feeling was, and from what source it came. He had had to stay on, for Tom Benton did not die that next night, nor any of the nights that followed; but lingered on in a trance-like coma, between sleep and waking; between life and death.

  Randy was sitting on the gallery, a glass in his hand as usual, puzzling the matter over once more in his mind, when Sarah came out. He got to his feet at once.

  “No, sit right back down,” she said; “I’ll sit a spell with you. The girls have got the cleaning going right pert—and Tom seems all right. He looks stronger today.”

  She sat down in a big rocker, turning it so it faced him.

  “Doctor McGregor,” she said, “why do you drink so much? You’re a young man and a good doctor—a heap better one, to my way of thinking, than old Doc Muller. So why do you have to drink?”

  Suddenly, unaccountably, under the level gaze of her soft grey eyes, he found himself telling her. He could see her expressive face growing paler during his recital; but he could not stop. He had held it in too long, and it had to come out now—it had to.

  “So I came back from Edinburgh,” he finished, “and I found that she was gone from my house. She was living quite openly with her lover in a house a few streets away. There was even—a child. I went through hell. I thought of killing the man, killing her—and myself. But there was the child. In the end, I did nothing. Divorced her, of course, started drinking, drifted down to England, then to Canada, New York—and finally here—God knows why. Perhaps I’m looking for something.”

  He was aware then that she was crying.

  “Oh, I say,” he got out, “I’m so sorry. That was beastly of me. I’m sure I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s not yore story,” she whispered. “Reckon I’m too selfish to cry over other folks’ sorrows. It just reminded me too much . . .”

  She raised her eyes to his face.

  “I did that to a man once,” she said; “with—with Tom. I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t care really—couldn’t help myself. But my first husband, he was a preacher, and he lost his religion over what I done. In the end, he killed hisself put the barrels of a shot-gun in his mouth and—”

  “I know,” Randy said harshly.

  “Oh!” she whispered, and her eyes were very big. “I reckon you think I’m a mighty bad woman.”

  “I don’t judge people,” Randy said. “I’m a doctor, not God.”

  She sat there, staring at him. Then suddenly, impulsively, she put her hand over his where it rested on the arm of his chair.

  “She was a fool,” she said. “You’re a nice man, Doctor. Nicest man I ever did meet, I reckon.”

  “Nicer than—Tom?” he said.

  She stiffened a little, drew away her hand. He could see her considering the thought.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “ever so much nicer. But that ain’t hard. Tom’s a devil, kind of . . .” She looked down at the floor a moment, then back at him, steadily. “The only trouble is—I love him,” she said. Then, abruptly, she stood up. “Reckon I’ll be going now,” she said; “don’t do to leave them nigger gals alone too long.”

  He sat there very still after she had gone. He knew now. Then, at that moment, quite suddenly and perfectly, he knew.

  It was the day after that one that Tom Benton regained consciousn
ess. Sarah came and told Randy about it. He didn’t say anything; he just got up and went into the bedroom. When he came out again he said:

  “He’s going to be all right now. Not much use in my staying around any more. I’ll stop by once in a while to check. . . .”

  But he did not finish his thought. Something in Sarah’s eyes held him—something wild and deep and unfathomable.

  “Don’t go,” she said; “not for a spell leas’ways. S’posin’ he was to take a turn for the worst? He’s still so weak, Doctor.”

  Randy studied her.

  “All right,” he said quietly, “I’ll stay.”

  He turned abruptly and walked away from her. Sarah stood there, looking after him.

  Now why on earth did I ax him to stay? she thought. I don’t need him—I don’t. I could manage Tom just as easy—Lord, Lord, what a mixed-up, foolish kind of a woman I am!

  But afterwards she was glad she had asked him; for, curiously, Tom’s improvement was very slow. Sarah could not understand it, nor could Randy McGregor, because it was a thing beyond their times, beyond their knowledge, and even their instinctual sympathies: that the wound which held Tom Benton captive to his bed was not the fast-healing gunshot in his flesh, but the deeper, hidden, more abiding sore that festered in his spirit, was not, perhaps, beyond their powers of comprehension; it simply lay too far outside of ordinary experience for them to grasp it.

  But lying there silent, brooding, Tom himself grasped it. He even understood it. And it was the very completeness and perfection of his understanding that defeated him. He had been scorned, doubly scorned: by a woman he had wanted and by a man who had held him in such contempt as to set his negroes upon him. More, given the opportunity to take his proper vengeance, he had failed, had been shot down like a dog, and his assailant had escaped, got clean away, fled to Mississippi or Texas, and rested there, savouring, no doubt, the sweet memory of his victory.

  And this, moreover, for a thing that he, Tom Benton, had not done; had not, in sober truth, even thought of doing. There was, of course, something else: deep down there remained a bitter confusion in Tom’s soul. The idea clung that what he had been accused of was not totally lacking in justice; he was, he knew, quite capable of it, and worse. He would have, had the thought occurred to him, burned a hundred barns to get that land—and all this mingled with an acid tinge of regret that he had not thought of doing so.

  So he refused food, and lay there staring in morose distemper at the ceiling, speaking little, if at all—until that day when a new idea penetrated the black morass of his obsessions. He was lying there, while Randy examined him. Sarah sat by the bedside, watching. Then, the examination finished, Randy raised his eyes to hers. He started to speak; but suddenly, startlingly, he could not. He passed his tongue over dry lips; but that was not where the failure lay. He was lost, drowned in the grey pools of her eyes. And she too, sitting there looking at him, was conscious of something—something she could not put into words, but that was infinitely deep, sad, disturbing. She had the feeling that, if her life depended upon it, she could not turn her gaze from his. It was more than a feeling. It was fact. She could not.

  And Tom Benton, lying there, saw that look that passed between them, and a legion of fiends waged warfare in his soul. He sank fathoms deep into icy terror; for Sarah was his world, his life. He was constantly unfaithful to her in the flesh; but he had never been unfaithful to her in spirit. He was disturbed by Lolette Dupré because the relationship between them was too like love, had too much of an element of tenderness in it; which was a thing he could not define.

  Only with Lolette did he sometimes have the uneasy feeling that he was betraying Sarah; the others were nothing, a sport, a game to while away the idle hours. But Sarah he loved; more, he honoured her—falling easily into the Southern habit of venerating its womanhood to stifle the pangs of shame and self-loathing at the lusts that drove them even into the slave cabins to take their fill of the fiery and complaisant negro women; until he came finally to almost believe his protestations, to think in the natural Southern haze of romantic reverie that she was indeed something of a goddess, something to be enthroned, worshipped, held even above himself. And this Sarah aided by her lessening interest in pure passion; for she had three now to divide her heart among; growing older, she was also growing less simple, her emotions existing now on many levels, so that the early, basic need to have her man had grown weaker, though sometimes it surged back again. Now, finding her less carnal than himself, Tom came to think her better; as, in fact, she was, and always had been, only the idea itself was new.

  So his first reaction was one of terror at the thought of losing her. But his second was rage, black murderous rage at this man who dared lay hands even in thought upon the temple and fount of his idolatry, the chiefest of all his possessions. But he lay there and did not show it; his mind was working coolly, clearly, soberly.

  Got to get well now. Got to eat—going to need my strength. Been laying here brooding over what was done to me, and while I was wasting my time I was running the risk of being done to some more. Sarah’s good, but this red-haired bastard gets to her. Damn my soul if I ever thought to see . . .

  Lucinda, Sarah’s maid, came silently into the doorway. She coughed discreetly; and it was by this, at last, that the spell was broken.

  “Mister Hilton’s outside,” she said. “Says if Marse Tom is strong enough, he’d like to talk to him.”

  “I’m strong enough all right,” Tom growled; “I’m a heap stronger than a lot of folks would think.”

  Randy and Sarah both stared at him. It was the first time since he had been wounded that his voice had risen above a croaking whisper. They were both conscious of something else in it—an edge, perhaps, or a rasp like a file being drawn across steel.

  Randy stood up.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any further need of me now,” he said. “I’ll drop in from time to time to check. But I think you’ve found what you needed.”

  “And what’s that?” Tom said.

  “Something to give you the will to live,” Randy McGregor said.

  “Know what is it?” Tom demanded.

  “No,” Randy said easily, “I can’t say I do.”

  “A man crossed me and got away with it,” Tom said slowly. “That’s what’s been keeping me down. But it comes to me that there’s a few other polecats with ideas about crossing me some more in the back part of their heads. Crossing me in a way a mighty heap more serious than Davin Henderson did. Reckon I better get up from here. My trigger finger’s getting rusty. Kind of think I could do with a mite of target practice—if you get what I mean.”

  “No,” Randy said, “I don’t get what you mean—not that it interests me. But I agree with you: shooting polecats is a fine sport—big polecats, Mister Benton, as well as small ones. Goodbye now—I guess I’ll be moving along.”

  Sarah got up.

  “I—I’ll help you get your things together,” she said.

  Tom started to protest, to say that one of the house servants could do that just as well, but he checked himself. Give them enough rope, he thought grimly; after all, I’d better know just where Sary stands. Then, unbidden, Griselda Henderson’s words came flooding back: ‘Afraid? You have a right to be—for the time will come when she’ll serve you the same way she did her first husband. Adultery gets to be a habit, I’m told.’ He lay very still; but his hands gripped the coverlet until the knuckles whitened from the strain.

  “Howdy, Tom,” Hilton said from the doorway. “Hell—you look all right to me. Told me down in town the devil was stoking up his number one pit; but I can see they’re dead wrong.”

  “I,” Tom said flatly, “am going to live to bury the lot of them. Sit down, Hilt, and tell me what’s on your evil mind.”

  “Something that’s going to please you right smart,” Hilton grinned. “Got a letter yesterday from your dear friend, Davin Henderson. No return address, of course; but posted somewheres
in Mississippi. Says he won’t be able to pay, and instructed me to take over his place. Told me I could sell however I wanted to, because he was certain sure your widow wouldn’t have no interest in steamboat landings.”

  “The bastard,” Tom chuckled. “Reckon I got him by the short hairs at last, even if I did have to get shot to do it.”

  “Tom,” Hilton said, “tel1 me the truth. Did you send some of them clay-eating swampers to burn his barn?”

  “ ‘Fore God, no!” Tom said. “I never even thought of it. I was sitting in the saloon looking kind of down in the mouth and one of them pine-barren boys came up to me and asked me what was the matter. So I told him. And when Davin came riding down here with his niggers aiming to horse-whip me, you could of knocked me over with a feather!”

  “You mean they took it upon themselves to help you out?”

  “Exactly. You know I’m always good to those boys. I stand for their drinks and go hunting with them and suchlike. Reckon they felt they owed me a favour. But I didn’t even hint at it, let alone tell them to do it.”

  “I see,” Hilton grinned. “You can still skirt closer to the edge of the law than any other man I ever heard tell of and get away with it. Feel up to talking details of that business?”

  “No. Just transfer it over to me. Then bill my account. But stay within reason, won’t you? That land ain’t worth much.”

  “To you,” Hilton said, “it’s worth every penny I can stick you for. But considering what a hard time I have getting money out of you now, I’ll be kind of considerate.”

  He stood up, put out his hand.

  “Be seeing you, Tom,” he said.

  It took only a few minutes for Sarah to get Randy McGregor’s things together. He stood there, silently, watching her, the two of them enveloped in a painful kind of constraint. Then he took up the saddle-bag and his satchel and followed her out on the gallery.

  “I’ve sent one of the boys after your horse,” Sarah said. Randy didn’t answer. He stood there, looking at her.

  “You can send us the bill,” Sarah said lamely.

  “There’s no charge,” he said harshly.