“You’ll be all right,” he said to the girl. “We’re getting a doctor. He’ll be here right off.”
Her lips moved a little.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “Don’t try to say anything.” As he worked gently with his cloth a huge warmth crept over him. “You can stay here,” he said. “You can stay here as long as you want. I’ll take care of you.” He squeezed out the cloth and sponged her matted hair and lifted it out of the gashes in her scalp.
He could hear himself talking as he worked, almost as though he were a stranger listening. “There, does that hurt? The poor eyes—I’ll put some brown paper over your eyes. You’ll be all right. That’s a bad one on your forehead. I’m afraid you’ll have a scar there. Could you tell me your name? No, don’t try. There’s lots of time. There’s lots of time. Do you hear that? That’s the doctor’s rig. Wasn’t that quick?” He moved to the kitchen door. “In here, Doc. She’s in here,” he called.
2
She was very badly hurt. If there had been X-rays in that time the doctor might have found more injuries than he did. As it was he found enough. Her left arm and three ribs were broken and her jaw was cracked. Her skull was cracked too, and the teeth on the left side were missing. Her scalp was ripped and torn and her forehead laid open to the skull. So much the doctor could see and identify. He set her arm, taped her ribs, and sewed up her scalp. With a pipette and an alcohol flame he bent a glass tube to go through the aperture where a tooth was missing so that she could drink and take liquid food without moving her cracked jaw. He gave her a large shot of morphine, left a bottle of opium pills, washed his hands, and put on his coat. His patient was asleep before he left the room.
In the kitchen he sat down at the table and drank the hot coffee Charles put in front of him.
“All right, what happened to her?” he asked.
“How do we know?” Charles said truculently. “We found her on our porch. If you want to see, go look at the marks on the road where she dragged herself.”
“Know who she is?”
“God, no.”
“You go upstairs at the inn—is she anybody from there?”
“I haven’t been there lately. I couldn’t recognize her in that condition anyway.”
The doctor turned his head toward Adam. “You ever see her before?”
Adam shook his head slowly.
Charles said harshly, “Say, what you mousing around at?”
“I’ll tell you, since you’re interested. That girl didn’t fall under a harrow even if she looks that way. Somebody did that to her, somebody who didn’t like her at all. If you want the truth, somebody tried to kill her.”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Charles said.
“She won’t be talking for quite a while. Besides, her skull is cracked, and God knows what that will do to her. What I’m getting at is, should I bring the sheriff into it?”
“No!” Adam spoke so explosively that the two looked at him. “Let her alone. Let her rest.”
“Who’s going to take care of her?”
“I am,” said Adam.
“Now, you look here—” Charles began.
“Keep out of it!”
“It’s my place as much as yours.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Well, I’ll go if she has to go.”
The doctor said, “Steady down. What makes you so interested?”
“I wouldn’t put a hurt dog out.”
“You wouldn’t get mad about it either. Are you holding something back? Did you go out last night? Did you do it?”
“He was here all night,” said Charles. “He snores like a goddam train.”
Adam said, “Why can’t you let her be? Let her get well.”
The doctor stood up and dusted his hands. “Adam,” he said, “your father was one of my oldest friends. I know you and your family. You aren’t stupid. I don’t know why you don’t recognize ordinary facts, but you don’t seem to. Have to talk to you like a baby. That girl was assaulted. I believe whoever did it tried to kill her. If I don’t tell the sheriff about it, I’m breaking the law. I admit I break a few, but not that one.”
“Well, tell him. But don’t let him bother her until she’s better.”
“It’s not my habit to let my patients be bothered,” the doctor said. “You still want to keep her here?”
“Yes.”
“Your funeral. I’ll look in tomorrow. She’ll sleep. Give her water and warm soup through the tube if she wants it.” He stalked out.
Charles turned on his brother. “Adam, for God’s sake, what is this?”
“Let me alone.”
“What’s got into you?”
“Let me alone—you hear? Just let me alone.”
“Christ!” said Charles and spat on the floor and went restlessly and uneasily to work.
Adam was glad he was gone. He moved about the kitchen, washed the breakfast dishes, and swept the floor. When he had put the kitchen to rights he went in and drew a chair up to the bed. The girl snored thickly through the morpnine. The swelling was going down on her face, but the eyes were blackened and swollen. Adam sat very still, looking at her. Her set and splintered arm lay on her stomach, but her right arm lay on top of the coverlet, the fingers curled like a nest. It was a child’s hand, almost ä baby’s hand. Adam touched her wrist with his finger, and her fingers moved a little in reflex. Her wrist was warm. Secretly then, as though he were afraid he might be caught, he straightened her hand and touched the little cushion pads on the fingertips. Her fingers were pink and soft, but the skin on the back of her hand seemed to have an underbloom like a pearl. Adam chuckled with delight. Her breathing stopped and he became electrically alert—then her throat clicked and the rhythmed snoring continued. Gently he worked her hand and arm under the cover before he tiptoed out of the room.
For several days Cathy lay in a cave of shock and opium. Her skin felt like lead, and she moved very little because of the pain. She was aware of movement around her. Gradually her head and her eyes cleared. Two young men were with her, one occasionally and the other a great deal. She knew that another man who came in was the doctor, and there was also a tall lean man, who interested her more than any of the others, and the interest grew out of fear. Perhaps in her drugged sleep she had picked something up and stored it.
Very slowly her mind assembled the last days and rearranged them. She saw the face of Mr. Edwards, saw it lose its placid self-sufficiency and dissolve into murder. She had never been so afraid before in her life, but she had learned fear now. And her mind sniffed about like a rat looking for an escape. Mr. Edwards knew about the fire. Did anyone else? And how did he know? A blind nauseating terror rose in her when she thought of that.
From things she heard she learned that the tall man was the sheriff and wanted to question her, and that the young man named Adam was protecting her from the questioning. Maybe the sheriff knew about the fire.
Raised voices gave her the cue to her method. The sheriff said, “She must have a name. Somebody must know her.”
“How could she answer? Her jaw is broken.” Adam’s voice.
“If she’s right-handed she could spell out answers. Look here, Adam, if somebody tried to kill her I’d better catch him while I can. Just give me a pencil and let me talk to her.”
Adam said, “You heard the doctor say her skull was cracked. How do you know she can remember?”
“Well, you give me paper and pencil and we’ll see.”
“I don’t want you to bother her.”
“Adam, goddam it, it doesn’t matter what you want. I’m telling you I want a paper and pencil.”
Then the other young man’s voice. “What’s the matter with you? You make it sound like it was you who did it. Give him a pencil.”
She had her eyes closed when the three men came quietly into her room.
“She’s asleep,” Adam whispered.
She opened her eyes and looked at them.
The tall man came to the side of the bed. “I don’t want to bother you, Miss. I’m the sheriff. I know you can’t talk, but will you just write some things on this?”
She tried to nod and winced with pain. She blinked her eyes rapidly to indicate assent.
“That’s the girl,” said the sheriff. “You see? She wants to.” He put the tablet on the bed beside her and molded her fingers around the pencil. “There we are. Now. What is your name?”