“There’s too much to do,” she said.
Lyman did get better but he never got well. He never fully regained that crotchety spryness and bounce that he had shown for those six years before the accident; now, more and more, he was just crotchety. He was irritated by little things of no importance—his toast was cold; his shoestring was missing its plastic end; his sock had a hole— and he would pout. In the living room you would find him staring vacantly at the postcards on the wall. In time the padded horse collar around his neck came off and the bruises on his face faded; the welts on his scalp became thin white scars, and he still dressed himself every morning in suit pants and dress shirt with a bow tie at the collar. But he didn’t appear so trim or city-dapper anymore; his clothes seemed to hang on him like they were at least one size too big, as if someone had bought his shirt and pants thinking he would grow into them. He didn’t. He developed an old man’s stoop. Towards the end he was using two canes.
But for a while that first winter there was talk of buying another car, of replacing his Pontiac. They certainly had more than enough money to do that. Hell, they could have paid cash for three Cadillacs if they had wanted to; it had been that kind of year for wheat and they had no debts of any kind. So twice I drove them into town to shop for cars, looking in the show windows at Happenheimer’s Pontiac Dealership on the highway and sitting in that smell of new cars on display, trying out the comfort of fresh leather seats and playing the radio, while Hap himself hovered over us and talked heavy-duty shocks and horsepower but avoided mention of any trade-in. Like everybody else in Holt, Hap was aware of the wreck; he knew why the Goodnoughs were in the market for a new car and had the good sense not to say so. On the second trip to town Lyman decided to try one out.
It was kind of a silver-gray, two-door Bonneville, a nice car. One of the mechanics backed it quick out of the showroom and left it running. We got in, Lyman behind the wheel, and I thought at first it was going to be all right. I thought he could manage driving again. He seemed competent enough, able. But it was the hour for kids to be walking home in the afternoon from grade school, bundled up in the dry cold in stocking caps and mackinaws, throwing snowballs and kicking ice clods in the gutters, and at an intersection Lyman damn near ran over two girls and a boy who were crossing in front of us. I don’t know— maybe the low winter sun slanting from the west blinded him.
“Lyman,” Edith said. “For goodness sake, stop!”
He hit the power brakes too hard and threw us forward against the dash. In front of the car the kids’ faces looked shocked, white, big eyed. They stood there staring at us, then the boy—he must have been a fourth-or fifth-grader— gave Lyman the finger, and they scooted up onto the curb, where they regrouped, yelled at him and then ran off laughing like big stuff along the sidewalk. Lyman was sweating.
“Here,” he said. “You take it.”
“Nobody’s hurt,” I said.
“Goddamn it, I can’t drive anymore. I don’t even want to.”