In January 1946, Gwillam Forte was brought on a stretcher into the ward that had been Creech’s home so long he felt the pride of ownership. There had been a lot of new faces during the previous two years, mostly young, but a sadder and more hopeless one than Gwillam Forte’s Creech had never seen. It was empty of expression, except for the pain registered when the dressings on his stumps were changed. Forte reacted, when he reacted at all, as if he had been heavily sedated and seemed only faintly aware of what was going on around him. He didn’t smile, let alone laugh, at the jokes on the Charlie McCarthy or Fred Allen or Jack Benny shows, which convulsed the other radio listeners in the ward. He had no visitors, read no newspapers or magazines, spoke to no one except in necessary reply to doctors’ questions and the insistent queries of his ward mates. They would ask him how he felt today, and he said fine. They said it’s beautiful weather this time of year, and he said that’s fine. They said somebody had just assassinated the president of Bolivia and raped his wife yesterday, and he said fine, fine. His eyes were on the ceiling, but his thoughts were considerably further away. The silent young man seemed to be awaiting only a decent excuse to die.
Otis Creech tried to cheer Forte up. He read the comics to him, and repeated the gossip he picked up in his rounds of the wards. He stole ice cream and cookies from the kitchen and fed them to the lad, who ate as if it were a duty. He reminisced on how it was in the Great War, and goaded veterans of the recent conflict into argument within young Forte’s earshot, in the unrequited expectation that he might somehow get involved. In vain. Forte’s response was always the same-a nod to show he was listening, and a murmured “Thanks” for services bestowed. Nobody, not even the outgoing Creech, could penetrate that wall of spare civilities. Creech kept trying, with flagging resolution, because he felt it his Christian duty, but he recognized a death wish when he saw it. Privately, he gave the boy three months, six at the outside.
“Too bad about that boy,” Creech remarked to a friend several beds down the line one day, when his reading of the news of the day had produced only a suppressed yawn from Gwillam Forte and, a little later, the regular breathing of one fast asleep.
“Yeah,” the other agreed. “He don’t have much to live for.”
“You got it wrong. What I mean is, it’s too bad he don’t realize he’s got everything to live for. He’s one of the luckiest young men I ever met.”
The other veteran laughed. “Ever tell him that?”
“Course not. Way he feels, he wouldn’t be likely to agree, let alone understand why I think that way. And that’s too bad, because that there’s one lucky white boy . . .”
A few days later, when most of the others were still in the dining room, Otis Creech was holding down the steak on the plate with a fork while Gwillam Forte sawed at it with a knife held in his good left hand. Suddenly Forte swung the knife up against Creech’s neck, the point at the angle of the jaw and Adam’s apple, where the slightest pressure would sever the jugular vein. For the first time since he had been wheeled into the ward, Forte’s eyes glowed with life- and an insane intensity.
“What do you know about luck, nigger?” he rasped.
Otis Creech swallowed. The knifepoint pricked the skin. A drop of blood appeared.
Gwillam Forte stared at it for a moment, then threw the knife across the ward. He slumped back against the pillows.
“Oh, so you was awake?” Creech said, getting the breath back in his one good lung.
“I was awake. I’m always awake.”
“I thought you was.” Creech smiled gently.
“You-you what?”
“I thought you was awake.” He wiped away the drop of blood with his thumb. He inspected it. ” ‘Bout time you woke up, too.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I said. You’re one lucky boy, and it’s time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and did something.”
“Did something?” Forte’s expression was a mixture of incredulity and outrage. “Like what? Fight Joe Louis? Or play the piano, or walk a tightrope, maybe?” He sneered. “What do you think I can do, nigger?”
Otis Creech’s smile faded. “Now, listen here, white boy, if you and I is going to talk, you better think of something better to call me than ‘nigger.’ I may be a nigger to you, but the only name I answer to is Creech.” He looked hard into Forte’s angry eyes. Forte just stared back at him. “As for what you can do-well, you may not be able to run a hundred-yard dash, or do card tricks, but you can do about anything else you put your mind to.”
“What the hell do you know, nigger?”
“That’s Creech.”
“That’s nigger.”
“Well, have it your own way.” Creech got up and started to walk away, limping heavily on his wooden leg.
“What do you know about me?” Forte’s voice followed him.
Creech paused. He didn’t hear the magic word. He turned back to the bed. “Don’t know anything about you, boy, except that-”
“Don’t call me ‘boy,’ nigger.”
Creech smiled, showing a lot of tobacco-stained teeth. “Make me a deal.”
Gwillam Forte glared stubbornly at the bed sheets. “Okay,” he said finally. “What do you think you know about me?”
The black man remained silent.
“. . . Creech?”
Creech smiled. “Why, not a damned thing, Forte, except that you got two legs and a hand off, and think the world’s come to an end.”
“That makes me lucky?”
“You’re lucky, all right,” Creech said with conviction.
“Then listen to this . . .”
Gwillam Forte told Creech the story of his life, what he could remember of it. He told it fluently and well, with a good choice of word and incident. It was something he had recited many times, although this was the first time anybody had heard it beside himself. It was a litany he had composed, and edited, and committed to memory, and told to himself, over and over. If nobody else was going to feel sorry for him, at least he could feel sorry for himself. It wasn’t a very long story, considering that it covered his entire seventeen years, but it made up for its brevity by the depressing uniformity, of its hardships, disappointments, frustrations, and pain.
“Call that lucky, Creech?” he said bitterly when he finished the morbid tale.
“About the saddest story I ever did hear,” Creech admitted. “You sure has had it tough.”
“Lucky, huh?”
Creech shook his head.
“Where’s all that luck you was talking about, Creech?” he goaded the black man.
“Oh, it ain’t gone no place. I never said you didn’t have a sad life. All I said was, you’re lucky. Now.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, now, let’s look at a young man just starting out in life. He’s got a few goals if he’s any kind of man. One of them is to serve his country if his country needs him, and to serve it honorably. Well, Forte, you’ve done that, and you’ve lived to tell about it, which is more than a couple of million other men did these past few years. Okay. Then he’s got to make friends, because you can maybe go through life without friends, but who wants to? You’ve got a whole ward full of friends right here, if you want them. Then there’s the business of making yourself a living, finding security. I know a lot of postal clerks and farmers and truck drivers who work their butts off for forty years, and at the end, what have they got? Debts, is what. They retire on seventy bucks a month from some damned insurance company they’ve been supporting all their lives, and they die like they been living-like dogs. You-you got any debts? No, sirree. You don’t owe nobody nothing. You got security. You don’t ever have to move from this hospital bed if you don’t want to. Three squares a day and a roof over your head and the best medical attention-all free. Those are things men work their lives out for, and most don’t get. You’ve bought and paid for them.”
“Sure, but they can walk to work, and play football, and-and they’ve got two arms and two legs, goddammit. I’d trade places with any one of them.”
” ‘Course you would. But you can’t, don’t you see? But that ain’t the main thing, Forte. Look at those guys. Every day they spend looking over their shoulder for the bill collector. They live in fear. They aren’t free men. You’re free. You have a hundred-percent disability check coming in every month. You can tell anybody on Earth to screw himself, you don’t need his lousy job. You can do anything you want, take no crap from nobody. But most of all, you’re young. You’ve had a lousy life-sure. But life is like the weather-one day cloudy, one day fair. It all averages out. So far, you’ve had nothing but rain. But now, it’s sunshine time, boy-sunshine time . . .”