Samuel went back to the living room. He put the lamp on the table by the laundry basket and looked in on the small sleeping faces of the babies. Their eyes were pinched shut and they sniffled a little in discomfort at the light. Samuel put his forefinger down and stroked the hot foreheads. One of the twins opened his mouth and yawned prodigiously and settled back to sleep. Samuel moved the lamp and then went to the front door and opened it and stepped outside. The evening star was so bright that it seemed to flare and crumple as it sank toward the western mountains. The air was still, and Samuel could smell the day-heated sage. The night was very dark. Samuel started when he heard a voice speaking out of the blackness.
“How is she?”
“Who is it?” Samuel demanded.
“It’s me, Rabbit.” The man emerged and took form in the light from the doorway.
“The mother, Rabbit? Oh, she’s fine.”
“Lee said twins.”
“That’s right—twin sons. You couldn’t want better. I guess Mr. Trask will tear the river up by the roots now. He’ll bring in a crop of candy canes.”
Samuel didn’t know why he changed the subject. “Rabbit, do you know what we bored into today? A meteorite.”
“What’s that, Mr. Hamilton?”
“A shooting star that fell a million years ago.”
“You did? Well, think of that! How did you hurt your hand?”
“I almost said on a shooting star.” Samuel laughed. “But it wasn’t that interesting. I pinched it in the tackle.”
“Bad?”
“No, not bad.”
“Two boys,” said Rabbit. “My old lady will be jealous.”
“Will you come inside and sit, Rabbit?”
“No, no, thank you. I’ll get out to sleep. Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.”
“That it does, Rabbit. Good night then.”
Liza Hamilton arrived about four in the morning. Samuel was asleep in his chair, dreaming that he had gripped a red-hot bar of iron and could not let go. Liza awakened him and looked at his hand before she even glanced at the babies. While she did well the things he had done in a lumbering, masculine way, she gave him his orders and packed him off. He was to get up this instant, saddle Doxology, and ride straight to King City. No matter what time it was, he must wake up that good-for-nothing doctor and get his hand treated. If it seemed all right he could go home and wait. And it was a criminal thing to leave your last-born, and he little more than a baby himself, sitting there by a hole in the ground with no one to care for him. It was a matter which might even engage the attention of the Lord God himself.
If Samuel craved realism and activity, he got it. She had him off the place by dawn. His hand was bandaged by eleven, and he was in his own chair at his own table by five in the afternoon, sizzling with fever, and Tom was boiling a hen to make chicken soup for him.
For three days Samuel lay in bed, fighting the fever phantoms and putting names to them too, before his great strength broke down the infection and drove it caterwauling away.”
Samuel looked up at Tom with clear eyes and said, “I’ll have to get up,” tried it and sat weakly back, chuckling—the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat. And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore had not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.
4
Liza stayed away a week. She cleaned the Trask house from the top clear down into the grain of the wooden floors. She washed everything she could bend enough to get into a tub and sponged the rest. She put the babies on a working basis and noted with satisfaction that they howled most of the time and began to gain weight. Lee she used like a slave since she didn’t quite believe in him. Adam she ignored since she couldn’t use him for anything. She did make him wash the windows and then did it again after he had finished.
Liza sat with Cathy just enough to come to the conclusion that she was a sensible girl who didn’t talk very much or try to teach her grandmother to suck eggs. She also checked her over and found that she was perfectly healthy, not injured and not sick, and that she would never nurse the twins. “And just as well too,” she said. “Those great lummoxes would chew a little thing like you to the bone.” She forgot that she was smaller than Cathy and had nursed every one of her own children.
On Saturday afternoon Liza checked her work, left a list of instructions as long as her arm to cover every possibility from colic to an inroad of grease ants, packed her traveling basket, and had Lee drive her home.
She found her house a stable of filth and abomination and she set to cleaning it with the violence and disgust of a Hercules at labor. Samuel asked questions of her in flight.
How were the babies?
They were fine, growing.
How was Adam?
Well, he moved around as if he was alive but he left no evidence. The Lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they’d starve without.
How was Mrs. Trask?
Quiet, lackadaisical, like most rich Eastern women (Liza had never known a rich Eastern woman), but on the other hand docile and respectful. “And it’s a strange thing,” Liza said. “I can find no real fault with her save perhaps a touch of laziness, and yet I don’t like her very much. Maybe it’s that scar. How did she get it?”
“I don’t know,” said Samuel.
Liza leveled her forefinger like a pistol between his eyes. “I’ll tell you something. Unbeknownst to herself, she’s put a spell on her husband. He moons around her like a sick duck. I don’t think he’s given the twins a thorough good look yet.”
Samuel waited until she went by again. He said, “Well, if she’s lazy and he’s moony, who’s going to take care of the sweet babies? Twin boys take a piece of looking after.”
Liza stopped in mid-swoop, drew a chair close to him, and sat, resting her hands on her knees. “Remember I’ve never held the truth lightly if you don’t believe me,” she said.
“I don’t think you could lie, dearie,” he said, and she smiled, thinking it a compliment.
“Well, what I’m to tell you might weigh a little heavy on your belief if you did not know that.”
“Tell me.”
“Samuel, you know that Chinese with his slanty eyes and his outlandish talk and that braid?”