“Just coming to a boil.”
“Drop a bouillon cube in that cup, will you, dear? The doctor says it’ll build your father up.”
When her mother carried the steaming cup upstairs, Abra opened the incinerator end of the gas stove, put in the letters, and lighted them.
Her mother came back, saying, “I smell fire.”
“I lit the trash. It was full.”
“I wish you’d ask me when you want to do a thing like that,” her mother said. “I was saving the trash to warm the kitchen in the morning.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Abra said. “I didn’t think.”
“You should try to think of these things. It seems to me you’re getting very thoughtless lately.”
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Saved is earned,” said her mother.
The telephone rang in the dining room. Her mother went to answer it. Abra heard her mother say, “No, you can’t see him. It’s doctor’s orders. He can’t see anyone—no, not anyone.”
She came back to the kitchen. “Judge Knudsen again,” she said.
Chapter 53
1
All during school next day Abra felt good about going to see Lee. She met Cal in the hall between classes. “Did you tell him I was coming?”
“He’s started some kind of tarts,” said Cal. He was dressed in his uniform—choking high collar, ill-fitting tunic, and wrapped leggings.
“You’ve got drill,” Abra said. “I’ll get there first. What kind of tarts?”
“I don’t know. But leave me a couple, will you? Smelled like strawberry. Just leave me two.”
“Want to see a present I got for Lee? Look!” She opened a little cardboard box. “It’s a new kind of potato peeler. Takes off just the skin. It’s easy. I got it for Lee.”
“There go my tarts,” said Cal, and then, “If I’m a little late, don’t go before I get there, will you?”
“Would you like to carry my books home?”
“Yes,” said Cal.
She looked at him long, full in the eyes, until he wanted to drop his gaze, and then she walked away toward her class.
2
Adam had taken to sleeping late, or, rather, he had taken to sleeping very often—short sleeps during the night and during the day. Lee looked in on him several times before he found him awake.
“I feel fine this morning,” Adam said.
“If you can call it morning. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”
“Good Lord! I have to get up.”
“What for?” Lee asked.
“What for? Yes, what for! But I feel good, Lee. I might walk down to the draft board. How is it outside?”
“Raw,” said Lee.
He helped Adam get up. Buttons and shoelaces and getting things on frontways gave Adam trouble.
While Lee helped him Adam said, “I had a dream—very real. I dreamed about my father.”
“A great old gentleman from all I hear,” said Lee. “I read that portfolio of clippings your brother’s lawyer sent. Must have been a great old gentleman.”
Adam looked calmly at Lee. “Did you know he was a thief?”
“You must have had a dream,” said Lee. “He’s buried at Arlington. One clipping said the Vice President was at his funeral, and the Secretary of War. You know the Salinas Index might like to do a piece about him—in wartime, you know. How would you like to go over the material?”
“He was a thief,” said Adam. “I didn’t think so once, but I do now. He stole from the G.A.R.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Lee.
There were tears in Adam’s eyes. Very often these days tears came suddenly to Adam. Lee said, “Now you sit right here and I’ll bring you some breakfast. Do you know who’s coming to see us this afternoon? Abra.”
Adam said, “Abra?” and then, “Oh, sure, Abra. She’s a nice girl.”
“I love her,” said Lee simply. He got Adam seated in front of the card table in his bedroom. “Would you like to work on the cutout puzzle while I get your breakfast?”
“No, thank you. Not this morning. I want to think about the dream before I forget it.”
When Lee brought the breakfast tray Adam was asleep in his chair. Lee awakened him and read the Salinas Journal to him while he ate and then helped him to the toilet.
The kitchen was sweet with tarts, and some of the berries had boiled over in the oven and burned, making the sharp, bitter-sweet smell pleasant and astringent.
There was a quiet rising joy in Lee. It was the joy of change. Time’s drawing down for Adam, he thought. Time must be drawing down for me, but I don’t feel it. I feel immortal. Once when I was very young I felt mortal—but not any more. Death has receded. He wondered if this were a normal way to feel.
And he wondered what Adam meant, saying his father was a thief. Part of the dream, maybe. And then Lee’s mind played on the way it often did. Suppose it were true—Adam, the most rigidly honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Lee laughed to himself—now this second will, and Aron, whose purity was a little on the self-indulgent side, living all his life on the profits from a whorehouse. Was this some kind of joke or did things balance so that if one went too far in one direction an automatic slide moved on the scale and the balance was re-established?
He thought of Sam Hamilton. He had knocked on so many doors. He had the most schemes and plans, and no one would give him any money. But of course—he had so much, he was so rich. You couldn’t give him any more. Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight—the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards. He wondered if that were true. They acted that way sometimes.
He thought of Cal burning the money to punish himself. And the punishment hadn’t hurt him as badly as the crime. Lee said to himself, “If there should happen to be a place where one day I’ll come up with Sam Hamilton, I’ll have a lot of good stories to tell him,” and his mind went on, “But so will he!”
Lee went in to Adam and found him trying to open the box that held the clippings about his father.
3
The wind blew cold that afternoon. Adam insisted on going to look in on the draft board. Lee wrapped him up and started him off. “If you feel faint at all, just sit down wherever you are,” Lee said.
“I will,” Adam agreed. “I haven’t felt dizzy all day. Might stop in and have Victor look at my eyes.”