wrong with him.’
‘Drunk, perhaps,’ said Doc.
‘No, he isn’t drunk. I came home and found him sitting in the kitchen.
He’s all twisted up and babbling.’
‘Babbling about what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Just babbling – when he can talk, that is.’
‘All right,’ said Doc. ‘I’ll be right over.’
That’s one thing about Doc. You can count on him. At any time of day or
night, in any kind of weather.
I went back to the kitchen. Stiffy had rolled over on his side and was
clutching at his belly and breathing hard. I left him where he was. Doc
would be here soon and there wasn’t much that I could do for Stiffy except
to try to make him comfortable, and maybe, I told myself, he might be more
comfortable lying on his side than turned over on his back.
I picked up the object that had fallen out of Stiffy’s coat. It was a
key ring, with half a dozen keys. I couldn’t imagine what need Stiffy might
have for half a dozen keys. More than likely he just carried them around for
some smug feeling of importance they might give to him.
I put them on the counter top and went back and squatted down alongside
Stiffy. ‘I called Doc,’ I told him. ‘He’ll be here right away.’
He seemed to hear me. He wheezed and sputtered for a while, then he
said in a broken whisper: ‘I can’t help no more. You are all alone.’ It
didn’t go as smooth as that. His words were broken up.
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked him, as gently as I could. ‘Tell
me what it is.’
‘The bomb,’ he said. ‘The bomb. They’ll want to use the bomb. You must
stop them, boy.’
I had told Doc that he was babbling and now I knew I had been right.
I headed for the front door to see if Doc might be in sight and when I
got there he was coming up the walk.
Doc went ahead of me into the kitchen and stood for a moment, looking
down at Stiffy. Then he set down his bag and hunkered down and rolled Stiffy
on his back.
‘How are you, Stiffy?’ he demanded.
Stiffy didn’t answer.
‘He’s out cold,’ said Doc.
‘He talked to me just before you came in.’
‘Say anything?’
I shook my bead. ‘Just nonsense.’
Doc hauled a stethoscope out of his pocket and listened to Stiffy’s
chest. He rolled Stiffy’s eyelids back and beamed a light into his eyes.
Then he got slowly to his feet.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked.
‘He’s in shock,’ said Doc. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter. We’d better
get him into the hospital over at Elmore and have a decent look at him.’
He turned wearily and headed for the living-room.
‘You got a phone in here?’ he asked.
‘Over in the corner. Right beside the light.’
‘I’ll call Hiram,’ he said. ‘He’ll drive us into Elmore. We’ll put
Stiffy in the back seat and I’ll ride along and keep an eye on him.’
He turned in the doorway. ‘You got a couple of blankets you could let
us have?’
‘I think I can find some.’
He nodded at Stiffy. ‘We ought to keep him warm.’
I went to get the blankets. When I came back with them, Doc was in the
kitchen. Between the two of us, we got Stiffy all wrapped up. He was limp as
a kitten and his face was streaked with perspiration.
‘Damn wonder,’ said Doc, ‘how he keeps alive, living the way he does,
in that shack stuck out beside the swamp. He drinks anything and everything
he can get his hands on and he pays no attention to his food. Eats any kind
of slop he can throw together easy. And I doubt he’s had an honest bath in
the last ten years. It does beat hell,’ he said with sudden anger, ‘how
little care some people ever think to give their bodies.’
‘Where did he come from?’ I asked. ‘I always figured he wasn’t a native
of this place. But he’s been here as long as I remember.’
‘Drifted in,’ said Doc, ‘some thirty years ago, maybe more than that. A
fairly young man then. Did some odd jobs here and there and just sort of
settled down. No one paid attention to him. They figured, I guess, that he
had drifted in and would drift out again. But then, all at once, he seemed
to have become a fixture in the village. I would imagine that he just liked
the place and decided to stay on. Or maybe lacked the gumption to move on.’
We sat in silence for a while.
‘Why do you suppose he came barging in on you?’ asked Doc.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘We always got along. We’d go fishing now
and then. Maybe he was just walking past when he started to get sick.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Doc.
The doorbell rang and I went and let Hiram Martin in. Hiram was a big
man. His face was mean and he kept the constable’s badge pinned to his coat
lapel so polished that it shone.
‘Where is he?’ he asked.
‘Out in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Doc is sitting with him.’
It was very plain that Hiram did not take to being drafted into the job
of driving Stiffy in to Elmore.
He strode into the kitchen and stood looking down at the swathed figure
on the floor.
‘Drunk?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Doc. ‘He’s sick.’
Well, OK,’ said Hiram, ‘the car is out in front and I left the engine
running. Let’s heave him in and be on our way.’
The three of us carried Stiffy out to the car and propped him in the
back seat.
I stood on the walk and watched the car go down the street and I
wondered how Stiffy would feel about it when he woke up and found that he
was in a hospital. I rather imagined that he might not care for it.
I felt bad about Doc. He wasn’t a young man any longer and more than
likely he’d had a busy day, and yet he took it for granted that he should
ride with Stiffy.
Once in the house again, I went into the kitchen and got out the coffee
and went to the sink to fill the coffee pot, and there, lying on the counter
top, was the bunch of keys I had picked up off the floor. I picked them up
again and had a closer look at them. There were two of them that looked like
padlock keys and there was a car key and what looked like a key to a safety
deposit box and two others that might have been any kind of keys. I shuffled
them around, scarcely seeing them, wondering about that car key and that
other one which might have been for a safety box. Stiffy didn’t have a car
and it was a good, safe bet that be had nothing for which he’d ever need a
safety deposit box.
The time is getting close, he’d told me, and they’ll want to use the
bomb. I had told Doc that it was babbling, but now, remembering back, I was
not so sure it was. He had wheezed out the words and he’d worked to get them
out. They had been conscious words, words he had managed with some
difficulty. They were words that he had meant to say and had laboured to get
said. They had not been the easy flow of words that one mouths when
babbling. But they had not been enough. He had not had the strength or time.
The few words that he’d managed made no particular sense.
There was a place where I might be able to get some further information
that might piece out the words, but I shrank from going there. Stiffy Grant
had been a friend of mine for many years, ever since that day he’d gone
fishing with a boy often and had sat beside him on the river bank all the
afternoon, spinning wondrous tales. As I recalled it, standing in the
kitchen, we had caught some fish, but the fish were not important. What had
been important then, what was still important, was that a grown man had the
sort of understanding to treat a ten-year-old as an equal human being. On
that day, in those few hours of an afternoon, I had grown a lot. While we
sat on that river bank I had been as big as he was, and that was the first
time such a thing had ever happened to me.
There was something that I had to do and yet I shrank from doing it –
and still, I told myself, Stiffy might not mind. He had tried to tell me
something and he had failed because he didn’t have the strength. Certainly