Two days later, on January third, a Monday, I helped bury him. I was one of the pallbearers. He was still dressed in his good dark suit, and we lowered him in his silver coffin into the frozen ground beside his mother. I had instructed John Baker to dig the hole in that place. It seemed fitting to me. There would be at least that much distance—the width of his mother’s grave—between him and the old stump-armed man that Lyman had spent a good fourth of his life running away from. I figured Lyman would appreciate the head start, in case he ever had to run again.
Edith didn’t attend the funeral or the graveside rites, though. She was still too sick. In fact, she almost died. They had her in an I.C. unit with machines attached to her everywhere they could think to attach them, monitoring her round the clock, and I admit to you that there were times, particularly in that first week or two afterwards, when she was lying there with that damn tube shoved up her nose, when she was still unconscious and coughing, her thin throat wracked with the awful effort and the yellow spit brought up and bubbling on her cracked mouth—there were plenty of times when I wished she would die. I wished that she would just give up. But she didn’t. Edith hung on and hung on, like she didn’t know how to let go or stop even yet.
And now I’m afraid she’s getting better. I’m afraid Bud Sealy and these imported lawyers will be able to drive her over to the courthouse after all and make her endure a trial for something they insist is murder. There is not one son of a bitch amongst them that understands a goddamn thing.
SO, IN THE PAST three and a half months, I have gone up to see her almost every day. Of course, Mavis and Rena have gone with me. We went up there last night. Because of that front page Denver Post newspaper article a week ago, they have begun to position a deputy sheriff outside her room in the hallway. And the hell of it is, I don’t for a minute believe that anything would have come of it if it hadn’t been for that damn newspaper kid poking around. Bud Sealy had forgotten any notion he had of charging me with obstruction, and folks were calling the fire itself just an accident. At least in public, for the record, that’s what people were calling it. But then, somehow—I still don’t know how—those Denver people got wind of the thing, discovered a wild hair up their ass, and sent their kid out here to sniff around. He talked to enough of the wrong people, and now it’s all gone to hell. Last night they even had a new guy stationed at the hospital, somebody I never saw before. He had a cop’s revolver on his hip, and the son of a bitch wanted to frisk us before we went in. I told him to keep his damn hands off us.
“I’ll have to call Bud Sealy,” he said.
“Call him then, goddamn it,” I said. “But you ain’t touching us.”
We walked past him on into that white room. Inside, as usual, there was nothing but quiet and pulled blinds and some flowers on a bedstand. Edith was asleep. One arm was outside the covers with that steady flow of liquid still pumping sugar water through a needle into her hand. She woke up when she heard us enter. Rena went over and sat down on the edge of her bed and cocked her feet on the bed rail.
“How do you feel now?” Rena said.
“I’ve been asleep, sweetheart. I can’t tell yet.”
“Do you think you feel any better?”
“Why yes, seeing you always makes me feel better.”
She took Rena’s hand, and Mavis and I pulled up chairs beside her bed. We talked together for about an hour. A nurse came in once to take her temperature and her pulse and to check the drop chamber, while we waited for her to leave so we could go on talking. Then at eight-thirty another nurse stuck her head in the door to tell us visiting hours were over. We stood up to leave.
“Is it nice outside?” Edith said.
“Not bad,” I said. “Looks like another clear night.”
“I can’t always tell,” she said. “They won’t let me open any windows.”
“Why not?”
“They say the bugs will fly in.”
“There aren’t any bugs in April. Do you want me to open it?”