by Joan Sargent
"No, I'm not," Donna agreed coolly.
"Well, thanks anyhow for lookin' out for me. When was it? Last night? This morning?"
Now that the matter of whether she was friendly or not was settled, Donna didn't find him quite so repulsive. He was simply another human being. "Both, really. Before day, but not much. Don't get in another fight."
He grinned. "No'm. Not unless somebody else starts it."
Left alone, Donna became once more conscious of the sound of the storm. Its shriek was vicious, its tone so high that her ears ached with it. She put her hands over them to shut it out.
She sat down and stared at the closed door, trying to sift out her feelings of a few minutes ago. She had danced with a feeling of triumph and release. She had been young and happy, careless of the tragic things that went on about them as the most carefree youngster turning and twisting near her. The music had dared her, had egged her on. She had made a spectacle of herself, and she had been unconscious as a child. She felt shamed by the scorn of the older faces, shamed and hurt as a child who does not quite understand why he is being punished is hurt.
But her hurt went deeper. Those critical people with their turned-down mouths and their hard eyes meant nothing to her. Even Hank's shocked censure was immaterial. But something else wasn't.
Cliff hadn't even bothered to disapprove. He wasn't watching her. He was looking at Mary; his hand was on Mary's shoulder. They were both smiling. They looked as if they had only that moment ceased dancing. She had never felt the least twinge of anything like jealousy before, but in that moment she had longed to slap both their faces. And that feeling had melted into a feeling of being lost in the great reaches of the universe, as lost as a child who knows not where to go and cries for his mother. Somehow it was in the midst of that feeling of being lost that she knew she was in love with Cliff Warrender.
Now, her emotions rather better under control than before, she told herself that such a thing was impossible. "I don't really know him. And what I do know I don't approve of. He flaunts the law, holds it lightly. Most of the people he knows seem to come from the near-slums. I can't be in love with him. It's because I'm tired and there's been all the excitement of the storm, and everything. I have more sense than to get a crush on a stranger. Even a crush. Certainly I wouldn't fall in love with one."
She had just reached this conclusion when her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Irritated by the intrusion, she called a sharp, "Come in."
It was Hank, a frown between his brows, consternation not quite gone from his face. "Good lord, Donna, what were you thinking of out there?" he demanded.
Her voice held an edge. "I wasn't thinking. I was dancing," she told him.
"Dancing with Dusty Hosey," he reminded her. "With a juvenile delinquent who wears a black leather jacket and races about on a motorcycle."
The edge was sharper this time. "A black leather jacket and riding a motorcycle make a delinquent?"
He looked at her, puzzled, as if he had expected to see a friend and had found a stranger. "No, of course not. But he was expelled from school and he won't hold a job. He's fresh, ignorant, lazy. That's what makes him a delinquent."
"He's a good dancer," she said meditatively.
"Certainly he is. He's the kind who has nothing better to do. But teachers don't dance with boys like that."
"And I'm not a teacher," she reminded him.
"You're part of the school faculty. It's a part of your duty to uphold the dignity of the school. And there you were, dancing the twist! Dancing barefoot!"
"I had on my stockings!" she snapped. She had never put her shoes back on. She glanced down at her feet and noted with an impersonal eye that both of her stockings had runs in them.
"You can't do things like that, Donna. Not with school patrons looking on." His voice had pain in it.
Donna wasn't sure the pain was for the outraged dignity of his school or for her not knowing what was expected of a school nurse. She was about to make a sharp reply when she remembered that he was the youngest principal in the county and that he was extremely proud of his school and of being the principal of Flamingo Elementary. She spoke gently, apologetically. "Let's not quarrel, Hank. I didn't mean to do anything that would cause either of us to be criticized. I didn't quite realize—I wanted to dance, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I didn't think about the school patrons until I looked up and saw their faces—and yours. I'm sorry I disgraced myself and the school."
Hank flushed. "Oh, it wasn't that bad. But Dusty isn't the sort of person you should associate with, and the twist—well, let's say if a teacher or school nurse wants to indulge, she should do it in a place where none of her audience is patrons. I'm not angry."
She nodded. "I know. You were anxious about the reputation of the school."
"And I wanted to protect you from criticism, too, Donna. No man likes a girl he—" What the verb might have been Donna never learned. Baby LaRue appeared in the open door, her round face without its usual smile.
"Miss Ledbury, honey," she began worriedly, "you know where Toby's food is? I've put it down somewhere and —"
"Toby?" Donna echoed, her mind a thousand miles from the problems of Baby.
"My parrot. He's squawking for food and I'd got so wrapped up in the Little Stranger that I'd put him clean out of my mind, the poor old buddy-boy. And I can't find the box I brought his seed and stuff in."
Donna stood up and looked about her. "Is that it, Baby?" she asked, pointing out a square pasteboard box still sitting on the floor in the closet where the bird had been hidden last night.
Baby darted in and picked up the box, holding it to her bosom as if it were all the treasures of Ali Baba. Her dimples were back now and her round face wore a pleased flush. "I left it there myself. You know, I'm always misplacing things. Sometimes they're lost for good. I make it a rule never to worry about anything I can't find for three days. By that time, it's either turned up or I'm sort of used to being without it. Only, Toby wouldn't let me leave his dinner lie. Listen to him squawk!" She sounded honestly proud of the ungodly noise the bird was making. "I guess I'd better go over there and feed him before he decides to snap up the Little Stranger."
She ran squarely into the arms of Mary Hendley as she went out, and when apologies had been made, Mary, her face excited, came in to take her place.
"My goodness, Donna," she began admiringly, "I didn't know you could dance like that. You could have opened a dance studio, or gone on the stage or something."
"Thank you, but I'm not that good," Donna said mildly. She and Mary had seen little of each other either at school or since they had come to Flamingo for the storm. She determined that she wouldn't let Mary know that she'd had that attack of jealousy out there in the hall if it killed her. She'd be as cordial as anyone could possibly expect. "I do appreciate your thinking so, though." She accented the "your" a little.
Hank was looking at Mary with something very like disgust. "You're probably undermining everything I've been trying to do, Mary," he accused. "You at least have been teaching long enough to know that patrons don't like teachers behaving like that in public places."
Mary's reply echoed Donna's earlier one. "But Donna's not a teacher, Hank. And she's young enough to do the things that the rest of the young people do."
Hank looked as if he would like to swear. "You both should know how people feel about all the faculty since they deal with their children," he accused with a primness that belied his usual understanding of other people's problems and opinions. "I'd better get to work," he finished, and left the room with a huffiness that was entirely unlike him.
Mary giggled. "Poor dear. He's so used to most of the teachers agreeing with him, especially me. Hank has a way of rushing the most attractive new teacher every year. I was the one two years ago, and I got a real crush on him. Silly of me. Just this weekend, I've begun to see how silly." She broke off, laughing softly. "Only, it isn't a weekend, is it? It just seems like it
because there's no school."
Donna nodded and said, rather stupidly, she thought, "How much we depend on habits." Mary had said that until this weekend she had kept Hank in her heart. These days during the storm! That meant she had turned her thoughts to Cliff. She wouldn't have done that without encouragement. Donna swallowed, then took a deep breath. Well, that was that.
Mary stretched and wriggled her shoulders. "I'm tired. I guess everybody in this place is. And we've got at least as much time to go as we've already spent. People are always saying modern Americans are soft. I must be. At least I'll be glad to get back into my comfortable bed at home."
"Me, too," Donna admitted. "I've sat up with patients for two shifts and not been as bone-tired as I am now. This storm seems to be something else."
"The low barometer doesn't exactly give you a lot of energy, and there's an excitement in the storm that wears on you, too." Mary spoke thoughtfully, her eyes on the window where rain flowed down in rivulets. She turned back toward the room and smiled. "I came to help with the children and maybe I'd better get to doing just that."
Donna bent over, put on her shoes, and stood up. "I came to look after the sick. I'd better get back to that. Little Sammy Worth down the hall's pretty sick. I'd better take my thermometer and check on him. Although if he's worse, I'm sure I don't know what I can do for him."
The two girls left the office together. They were hardly into the corridor when the little children gathered about Mary, calling for a story, or a game. She was a good sort, this Mary, Donna decided. She couldn't be friends with her if she was going to marry Cliff. But maybe Cliff was like Hank. If he began to look for a new girl as soon as he realized that Mary was interested in him, she would like Mary for a friend. She really would.
Sammy's nose was running worse than it had been that morning. His throat was at least as sore. And his fever had risen a degree. Donna's hand felt almost cold on his dry, hot forehead. He opened his eyes and looked up into her face, then closed them again. His body lay limp on the pallet.
"Maybe if we bathed him in tepid water—" Donna thought aloud. "That's all we have, anyway. We could use the sink in my office. And he ought to be more comfortable on the cot in there than he is here. You can come with us, Mrs. Worth."
"And me. Me and the rest of the children?" Mr. Worth asked. "Who's going to get us something to eat?"
Mrs. Worth looked at him in disgust that turned to the patience her long knowledge of him engendered. "You could make a sandwich for yourself, and the kids can make sandwiches for themselves. Or Lana will make a sandwich for you, if you can get her out of that crowd dancing at the other end of the hall." A sudden anger shook her, and she added, "Or you can go hungry. I'm looking after Sammy. You pick him up and tote him down to Miss Ledbury's office."
He seemed startled by the command, but he obeyed. And with Donna leading, they started down the corridor, dodging children at play and shooing off children who wanted to know what was the matter with Sammy.
I wish I could tell them, Donna thought to herself. Oh, don't let it be anything that he'll die of. Or anything I could have helped if I had just known what it was.
The storm was unheard here in the center of the building, but the shrieking of children might have drowned it out, anyway, Donna decided. But suddenly an angry voice rose above the shrill hubbub of the place. "He stole it, I tell you. He was here and it's gone. He stole it. I know he did. I'll kill him. He can't steal from me."
Donna could see that the red-faced woman making the accusation was Mrs. Frailey. Her creeping hair had entirely escaped its knot and her face was wild enough to bear out her threat. The man at whom she pointed her finger was someone Donna had seen the afternoon before when she had been registering the crowd, she felt sure, but she could not remember who he was, or anything about him.
He was grinning at the angry woman with a complacence that was surprising whether he was innocent or guilty—an abnormal sort of confidence, plus the sneer of a person who thought himself above the rest of the human race.
Crazy? she wondered as she turned the corner toward her office. Or he could be taking dope. Both we can do without.
Chapter XII
Donna stripped the bed and, because she had run out of sheets, covered it with runners of paper towels from the roll over her sink. Mr. Worth put the boy down on it, and Mrs. Worth began to remove his clothes. Donna ran water into the sink, found, as she had known she would, that it was tepid. Gently she lowered the feverish little body into it, dribbling water over Sammy's thin shoulders with a washcloth. She kept him in the water five minutes. Then she dried him vigorously and gave him an aspirin. She hoped that would do it. She had no further means of treatment.
"Does he have clean night clothes?" she asked Mrs. Worth.
The mother shook her head. "He was clean when we come. I never thought of his getting sick. And I didn't think we would be here so long." She sighed. "The men and the kids act like it was some sort of holiday. It's the women who have to make do with things worse'n we got 'em home."
Mr. Worth growled like a goaded animal and turned to leave the room.
"Don't get into no card games now," Mrs. Worth commanded. "Nor no drinking."
He slammed the door.
Donna kept her smile hidden. She had thought at first that Mrs. Worth was somewhat put upon by a lazy husband. Now she wondered which had been short-changed in getting the other.
Almost immediately, Mr. Worth opened the door and stuck his uncombed, unshaven head into the room. "Miss Ledbury, there's a man up here bleeding. Mr. Fincher says will you come and bandage him up?"
Donna rose from her knees beside the limp and drowsy Sammy. "Do you think you can get him to take an aspirin, Mrs. Worth?" she asked.
Mrs. Worth's prim mouth tightened. "All my kids do what I tell 'em. They'd better. No delinquents in my house. Their pop'd let them do anything."
Donna found the aspirin bottle in the cabinet and gave it to her. "One now. Another in a half hour if I don't get back. I think I will."
The stern mother had been replaced by one with pleading eyes. "He ain't as sick as he was, is he, Miss Ledbury?"
Donna always wondered what to say under conditions of this kind and always ended by telling the exact truth as gently as possible. "I don't believe he's worse, Mrs. Worth. Temperature nearly always rises in the afternoon. And children have high fever without it meaning a great deal. But you know that."
She smiled as encouragingly as she could and picked up her bag of bandages.
A crowd stood about the door of room 107, and it was there that Mr. Worth led her. It was Mrs. Frailey's room and Donna had been there earlier. Mrs. Frailey, looking about as belligerent as a woman could, faced the same sinewy little man she had been screaming at when Donna had gone down the hall with the Worths. The woman held a sharp-edged frying pan in her hand and her face looked at least as triumphant as it looked angry.
The man's face was streaked with grease and blood. Donna, with only a casual glance, saw the cut in his hair, curved to fit the edge of the frying pan. "Will somebody bring some water? And some paper towels?" she requested. "Sit down, Mr.—I'm afraid I don't remember your name."
"Frank Eustace, ma'am. You registered me last night." The man's voice was deep and there was the sound of education and a good background in it. Donna's eyes dropped from the scalp wound she had been examining to his face. It still wore the cock-o'-the-walk look it had worn when she had seen him only minutes before.
"Yes, I know," she said, dabbing gently at the wound and wishing she had hot water. Iodine would have to do. She hoped there wouldn't be the germs she suspected there were on that frying pan. When the water arrived, she set about cleaning and bandaging the scalp.
"Now, what's all this about?" Hank demanded. "I know you were shouting at each other and—" Everybody tried to answer him, Mr. Eustace and Mrs. Frailey and those who stood as near the door as possible. Hank held up his hand and spoke firmly. "I'll never find out anyt
hing like this. One at a time. We'll begin with you, Mrs. Frailey."
Donna finished her bandage and gave it a final pat. "There," she said.
Mrs. Frailey folded her arms and left the frying pan to dangle, dripping grease down the front of her dress and on the floor. "That scoundrel stole my hundred dollars. He claims he never, and I have to admit he ain't got it on him unless he swallowed it."
"Eustace?" Hank cracked the word at the man like an army sergeant.
Eustace transferred his superior grin to Hank. "Professor, I never believed much in feminine intuition, and feminine intuition's all she's got to go on. She says she had a hundred dollars. Because I was standing in her door when she came back from somewhere with her kid, she says I stole it. But if I'd stolen it, wouldn't I still have it?" He made a gesture toward two men standing nearby. "They searched me. I insisted on it. And I haven't got it. Just women. You know how women are, Professor."
"I can't say that I do," Hank told him crisply. "Now Mrs. Frailey, let's hear your side of it."
She still stood with her arms folded, frying pan in hand, feet planted far apart so that Donna thought of women soldiers standing guard on the Arabian-Israeli border. "That one was hanging around this place all morning. I reckon he knew I had a hundred dollars I been keepin' against sickness or my man losing his job, or things like that. Even my man didn't know I had it, but he knew."
Eustace's grin had become an evident sneer. "Now I'm the one who has feminine intuition," he said out of the side of his mouth.
"I seen him hangin' around earlier, but I got so worried about gettin' the kids fed an' bedded down an' not fightin', an' I forgot. There he was when I went down to Miss Ledbury's to get the baby. And there he was when I come back." Her voice grew angrier as she went on.
"I'd go on hanging about after I'd taken the money? Seems to me, I'd have got as far away as possible," Eustace snorted. "She hasn't anything except stupid notions, Professor."
