by Joan Sargent
"I don't know what he wants to hang around here for. Looks like anybody could take no for an answer. I told him no. You heard me tell him no, didn't you? Now what am I supposed to do for Johnnie?"
But before Donna could answer her, Cliff's deep voice spoke softly. "Hello, Anna. Johnnie sick, too? A lot of the youngsters are. Donna, can you come and look at four or five other children? Their mothers are scared to death."
Donna straightened up. Her back was sore and ached dully. "I've given Johnnie aspirin. I hope it will help. You might keep a damp cloth on her head if you have water enough. Give her water to drink whenever she wants it. I'll be back before long. I hope it's measles, or something like that. I think it may not be serious, but I can't be sure."
She left Anna still talking to her, and followed Cliff into the hall.
"Seems to me, we've got an epidemic among the younger generation," Cliff told her. "I hope it isn't something they all ate. It's too soon for them to have developed typhoid, isn't it?"
"I hope so," Donna answered wearily.
Chapter XV
The night before, Donna had been sure that she could never feel more alone and helpless than she did with an expectant mother on her hands. Tonight, she had eleven children with high fevers, sore throats, runny noses and eyes. Those symptoms might indicate any of a dozen of diseases in the developing stage. She did not know which. She thought of diphtheria. She had never seen a case of that, although she had book knowledge of it. She checked. Only Johnnie Brinkley had had all the shots required for diphtheria. Shirley Swenson had had one, the others none. Suppose it were diphtheria?
She thought of scarlet fever, measles, everything in the book, likely and unlikely. She had run out of aspirin. The water supply grew shorter and shorter. Nothing could be sterilized. The night moved slowly on. Outside, there was the menace of the howling wind. Inside, this threat that she could not even define.
The young people stopped dancing and went off, for the most part in pairs. They sat on the steps, their arms about each other, whispering to each other. The second floor was forbidden them, had been shut off by heavy fire doors. Adults and younger children had bedded down. The darkness was complete except for prowling flashlights that went up and down the corridors. Mary had gone to the teachers' room on the second floor. Hank, Cliff, and Donna were behind three of the moving lights. The two men were almost as worried about the outbreak of sickness as she, but the responsibility was hers.
She thought wearily of going into her office and lying down on a cot there, but two more of the Worth children had come down with sore throats and runny noses. They were occupying the second cot. She went in, tiptoeing to be sure of not waking Mrs. Worth, who snored softly beside Sammy's bed. Gently she touched burning cheeks, shook her head because there was nothing she could do about them, picked up a chair and went out into the hall again. She wished she had a stool. If she could put up her feet, maybe she could get a little sleep.
Cliff came by and chatted with her a moment. She turned to him with her troubled thoughts.
"Was I the one who mentioned death—that we hadn't had any deaths?" she said despairingly.
"You don't believe that such a thing could have caused the Wards' deaths? They were well past the threescore and ten promised them. As for the children, you're nurse enough to know they run up fantastic temperatures without it meaning anything serious. The way this is developing, it could be one of the children's diseases that run through a neighborhood. You're tired, and that depresses you. And it's easy to think foolish things when you're awake in the dark, especially when you can't turn on a light. I'm going to bring you another chair to put your feet on. Maybe you can snatch forty winks before somebody else comes and wants your services."
He was as good as his word, but before she could drop off to sleep, Dusty came and spoke to her.
"Are the kids awfully sick, Miss Ledbury?"
To another boy his age, she might have said something noncommittal, but Dusty seemed seriously concerned. She told him the truth. "I don't know. I can't do anything for them, either. Maybe by tomorrow morning we'll know something. And maybe by tomorrow night we can get them to a hospital, or get a doctor here."
He dropped to the floor near her feet. "You've been pretty good to everybody, Miss Ledbury. Especially to these sick kids."
"You have brothers or sisters who are sick?" she asked, realizing for the first time that this independent young man might be a part of society, not an island to himself.
"No'm. I didn't forget what a wonderful dancer you was, and after that I sort of watched where you went and what you did. A lot of hard work it's been, and you ain't gettin' paid a penny extra for it, are you?" She couldn't see his face, but she felt that his eyes were fixed on where he thought her face might be.
Once again, he had presented a new idea to her. She laughed. "I really don't know. I hadn't thought about it."
"That's the way I thought you'd be about it," he said, his voice as serious as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. "That's the way Mr. Warrender is, too. It ain't the money he cares about. You know what he done for me?"
"No," Donna said softly. She hadn't imagined that Cliff had done anything for Dusty.
"I'm crazy about cars, see?" he began his tale. "Cars and all sorts of machinery, but mostly cars. Well, last year I was walkin' along and wantin' to just drive a car once. I never had, but I'd watched other people drivin' and I was sure I could do it. And then I seen, parked at a curb, a car with the keys in. And I went ridin'. At first, I thought I'd only go around the block, but it was just great, ridin' along like that, and I kept going on and on. Even that first time, I was pretty good. Only, I run out of gas and the State Patrol took me up. I was done for, for sure. My old man was pretty fed up with me, anyhow, and Mom had all the other kids to think about. They're divorced, you know, and married to other people, an' it looks like I don't belong anywhere, an' the police—sometimes it looks like they're just down on a guy like me."
He had paused, and Donna nudged him on with a softly spoken, "Yes?"
"So I was at Youth Hall, and who come along, 'specially to see me, but Mr. Warrender. 'Course I knowed him by sight before that, but he never knowed me. And he sat down and started in by askin' me what it was all about. I wasn't goin' to tell him. I figured he was a big guy an' he wouldn't believe how it was. And then he started in to tell me how he got in with a crowd when he was about my age and was about to be sent up when a lawyer had him paroled to him and give him advice and sort of looked out after him, and so he decided to be a lawyer like this other fellow, even if he did have to work his way through an' all. He used to live around here. Did you know that?"
"He told me," Donna answered.
"Me, if I ever get shut of a place like this, I ain't goin' to tell nobody I ever been here, even. But he ain't ashamed. Anyhow, he made me think he'd see it my way some, an' I told him how it was. So he got me a suspended sentence an' had me paroled to him. An' he got me a motorcycle on credit and a job so's I could pay for it. I got only two more payments to make and she's mine."
He heaved a deep sigh and sat silent for a moment, then went on: "Danged if he ain't pretty near talked me into goin' back to school again. Me, that hated ever' day I ever went. He says I can study about engines an' things. Not that I really need it, understand. I can take pretty near any engine apart and put it back together again right now, but, like he says, folks keep askin' how much schoolin' you got, an' I might as well be able to hold my head up with the best an' tell them I got a high-school diploma. He says that high-school graduates make more money an' that someday I might want to quit racketin' around and marry a girl and have some kids. If I do, I'm goin' to stay married to one girl an' see that them kids walk a chalk, you can bet on that. Say, are you Mr. Warrender's girl friend?"
"I— No. I've never had a date with him. He brought me out here yesterday. I don't have a car," she explained.
Her mind was in chaos. This was a new picture
of Cliff, who seemed to have as many facets as a fine diamond. The newspapers spoke of him as a lawyer who was clever to get the guilty off. She had considered him some sort of a shyster, in spite of her apartment mate's partisanship. Then he had seemed good company, gay. She had found a certain hardness in him. She had realized that, deep down, there was a sensitivity to an unhappy boyhood when he had spoken of his parents and quickly changed the subject. To Karl (Dusty) Hosey, he was a saint. This was a complex man with whom she had fallen so precipitately in love. There would be that desirable quality Shakespeare had spoken of as "infinite variety" in him. You'd never know exactly what to expect. You'd never be bored.
Dusty was speaking again. "He likes you, all right. I see him watching you when you don't know he's lookin'. Maybe he don't know it, neither. But he goes after you with his eyes ever' time you walk away."
Was this true? And if it were, did it mean anything? Dusty was a worldly-wise child. He might know a great deal more about such things than she. And it was true that Cliff hadn't seemed to be especially interested in Mary this afternoon.
"I hoped you was his girl," Dusty went on wistfully. "He's a really great guy, and you're so great. Seemed like you'd ought to fit together."
Donna laughed self-consciously. "I'm sure you've paid me the greatest of compliments, Dusty, and I do appreciate it, but maybe Mr. Warrender and I might see things a little differently. I have to go attend to my sick babies now. Thanks for talking to me."
And surprisingly, though she had not slept, she felt refreshed. Her step was buoyant as she started down the hall.
The only room where a bright light shone was the one where the card game still went on. Donna wondered if they were the same men, or if the personnel changed from time to time. As she glanced in, she realized that the game was less noisy now. Even these indefatigable players must be slowing up. Everywhere else there was silence except for the bereft cry of the wind outside, and here and there the fretful cry of a child. She made her rounds—seven children scattered up and down the hall, the three bedded down in her own office. She found nothing among her patients to encourage her. Their temperatures were, if anything, higher still. She did not use her thermometer. It didn't seem worth while to worry their parents or herself by discovering the exact degree when she could do nothing to help.
She ran into Hank at the north end of the hall.
"I thought I heard something down here," he explained. "I guess I didn't. Those boys, you know, Dusty Hosey and his crowd, have a room down here, and I don't trust those young bums not to pull the plumbing up by the roots. We've had refugees do that. During the last storm, a crowd like that unscrewed every desk from the floor. I don't know why they thought such a monotonous job would be fun, but evidently they did."
She smiled in the darkness. "Maybe it's the natural rebellion of the young against being molded into better citizens. Do you remember how you used to think when you were little that when you were grown you wouldn't make your children bathe every night before they went to bed? Or come in out of a rain when your shoes felt so delectably squishy when you wiggled your toes? I think it's something of the same kind."
Hank lifted his flashlight and studied her face. "You know, Donna, you do have some strange notions."
She felt dampened. She had thought her notion simply human. "Yes, I guess I have," she said lightly. "Mary went upstairs for the night, didn't she?"
"Last night, too," he said. "But don't think she's shunned her responsibilities. She's been wonderful with the little children. Even the mothers have said so. Mary's a wonderful girl, Donna. I'm not sure I ever appreciated her until this storm."
Donna was able to be more enthusiastic on this subject. "She is, Hank. I hope we'll be better friends after this is over. I hardly knew her before."
"I did. That's why I can't make it out," he said in a puzzled tone. "I used to be right crazy about Mary and then, for some reason I don't remember, I started going with somebody else and sort of forgot what she was like. Then when I was thrown with her again here—" He broke off as if his mind were lost in wonder.
Donna grinned, glad that it was dark enough to do so. Hank, on the subject of Mary, sounded very much like a cigarette ad that was always telling how somebody had discovered his old brand and how he'd never be led astray again. "She's a loyal, devoted sort of person," she said, hoping that she wasn't being too unsubtle.
"Well, good night, Donna," he said, and went on his appointed rounds.
Donna returned to the main hall. She would find her two chairs and surely be able to get a short nap this time. If only another child didn't wake crying with stopped-up nose and sore throat.
About halfway to her destination, she saw a man leaving the room where the card game was going on. His uneven steps and wavering flash told her that he was anything but sober. He passed her with a muttered "G'd evenin'," and disappeared behind a door on her right. Donna hoped that he had found the right door. A wrong one might bring about a real hurrah. Then she found her chair, put her feet up, sighed, and settled down.
She was on the very edge of sleep, neither conscious nor unconscious, but something of each, when she began to hear voices. Voices which grew loud, then louder. They were male and female, each inspired with fury. She resolved to do nothing about it. She wouldn't listen. She would close her ears and pretend that it was part of the storm. The man was profane. The woman was no less so. Invective was tossed back and forth. Donna learned that the husband had cashed his monthly check just before they came here for protection from the storm and that he had drunk and gambled it all away, and what was it to the woman, anyway? It was his money, wasn't it? She learned that the woman spent everything her husband gave her on extravagant groceries and then served them up in a way a hog wouldn't eat them. And a hog she was, for didn't she keep their house like a sty? And who knew who she was making eyes at when she was waiting on tables at that joint every night? Accusations were from probable to improbable to impossible.
And then there was the sound of a crash, followed by a woman's shrill scream which turned to cursing. "You get your dirty Hands off me, you low-down beast. You leave me alone, George Crandall. I won't take your beating me another time. Not once more."
The sharp sound of flesh on flesh replied. "Help! Somebody help me. He's going to kill me. Help!" the woman's voice screamed.
Doors opened. Flashlights popped out like lightning bugs on a summer evening. People crowded into the hall, milling about the door, which suddenly burst open. A half-naked woman ran screaming through it.
The man, lurching drunkenly, followed, struck her resoundingly on each cheek, then hit her with his fist, with force enough to lift her from her feet. She fell several feet away, whimpering, accusing, begging somebody, anybody, to save her from being killed.
None made a move. They only stood, their lights fixed like footlights on a theatrical scene. Hank had come running. He elbowed his way to the front row of the watching crowd. George Crandall moved menacingly on his wife, still uncertain on his feet, but his intentions clear.
Hank stepped in front of the cowering woman. George clenched his fists and swung, first with one hand and then with the other, missing his target, almost throwing himself from his feet. Hank moved closer and sent a blow against the other man's chin with all his might. George crumpled. Something like a snore issued from his loose lips.
Hank was entirely unprepared for what happened next. The frightened Mrs. Crandall turned in a wink from a frightened victim to a virago. She wrenched a heavy flashlight from a woman who stood beside her and swung, catching Hank on the crown of his head. Once, twice. The school principal fell over her recumbent husband.
"I'll teach you to pick on my husband!" Mrs. Crandall shouted at him.
Donna had not meant to be drawn into the curious crowd, but she was there, hand over her mouth, her eyes big with horror. She did not move to Hank's side. It remained for Mary to push through and kneel beside him. Mary's hands trembled, but they were gent
le as they touched the bloody mess that was the top of his head. What she said was indistinguishable, but its intent was plain. Those agonized murmurs were love.
Cliff spoke at Donna's elbow. "If you want that guy, you'd better move in quick. A man may be crazy about a beauty or admire brains, but it's sympathy that gets him."
Donna stammered. "B-but he wasn't trying to save her. I don't understand it."
"Don't ask me to explain the curious workings of the female mind, Donna. I can't. But I learned a long time ago not to interfere in a family fight. The outsider comes out at the little end of the horn every time."
"But Mary was asleep upstairs. How did she get here?"
Cliff laughed. "It's time for daylight and I think there's something like tattletale gray outside, dark as it is in here. It's my guess she was simply getting up for breakfast."
"Do you think the storm will be over today? Do you think we can go home?" Donna asked.
"This afternoon, I'd guess," Cliff told her.
She shrugged. "I'd better get my bag. I've still got some bandage, and Mary may want help in binding up Hank's head."
Chapter XVI
It was nearly eight o'clock, and the day was even darker than the one before. The rooms had a thick twilight, but in the hall it was wise to continue to use the flashlights. Donna went close to the front door and listened, as if her ear could actually measure the difference in sound from the day before. Finally she shook her head in admission that she couldn't.
Cliff came down the stairs just then. He and Mary had helped Hank up to the teachers' room, where he had been ordered to rest against possible concussion. Mary would shortly bring him breakfast.
"Is it ever going to let up, or are we stuck here for the rest of our natural lives?" There was a shade of irritability in Donna's voice.
Cliff came to her and put his arm about her shoulders. Without conscious intent, she sagged against him. Every muscle in her body ached and her eyes felt as if someone had thrown a handful of grit into each. She sighed.
