Читать книгу Kings Row - Henry Bellamann - Страница 20

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Benny Singer was happy. Whenever he went to town on errands for Tom Carr, he went without shrinking from encounters with his old tormentors. He saw them, of course.

“Hey, Benny! Look, kids, here’s old crazy Benny!”

He didn’t mind being called “crazy Benny.” Not now. He laughed and shouted and waved greetings. Anything that anybody said seemed kind and jovial. He had a job. He worked for Madame, and Tom Carr was his friend. He was paid for working. There was not a cloud in Benny’s sky.

Tom Carr said Benny had “green fingers.” Young plants seemed to feel the good will in Benny’s touch.

“He has a way with growing things, ma’am,” Tom reported. “He understands them, and I declare I believe his plants know him.”

Old Tom almost winked at Madame von Eln. “He talks to them, you know.”

To such praise and goodness of heart Benny responded as his plants responded to sun and rain. He was beyond the reach of anything Fulmer Green and Fulmer’s gang could do.

Sometimes Parris followed Tom and Benny as they went about the varied work of the nursery. Tom’s talk was interesting most times, and there was something about Benny that touched him a little. It was exactly the way he had been touched by Lucy Carr. He wasn’t quite comfortable with Benny, however; it disturbed him to feel that Benny didn’t always understand simple words.

Parris remembered how he used to feel that Lucy’s mind darted here and there with no seeming attachment to anything. Benny’s mind didn’t do that. No; Benny’s mind sort of—well, sort of staggered ... the way a chicken staggers and tries to run, after its head is cut off. He shivered a little at the unpleasant picture, and looked sideways at Benny. It wasn’t a very nice way to think about anyone, he felt.

Once or twice Tom Carr talked to Parris about Benny. “He’s a little like Lucy, sometimes. I guess I got so used to Lucy’s ways that I kind of understand Benny. You know, Johnny, people that are a little off that way are just like a string of beads that’s come undone. The beads roll around any which-a-way. If there was some way of getting them on the string again, they’d be all right. Looks like there’d be some way of doing it. Doctors do some right wonderful things when it comes to cutting people open and sewing them up again, but they’re not so far along with people’s brains.”

Parris half listened. He had heard Tom say all of this so many times.

“You know, Johnny, what I’d do if I was you?” The old man’s sharp eyes shadowed with the gravity of his feelings. “I’d study that if I was you.”

“Be a doctor for—for—” He didn’t like to say “crazy people” to Tom.

“Yes, sir, Johnny, for crazy people. May be that nobody’s found out much about it yet, but it seems to me it would be a grand thing to study.”

Parris thought about the asylum and the way it smelled. He was sure he wouldn’t like to be a doctor for crazy people.

“People like Benny, and—like Lucy. Not real crazy, you know, Johnny, just off a little. If there was just some way of holding them together again ...”

Tom went on with his work as he talked, and Parris stood with his hands in his pockets, hoping the old man would change the subject. He was pretty sure now that he would like to be a doctor. His grandmother had spoken of it, too. But he thought he’d rather drive two fiery bay horses like Dr. Gordon and go around saving people’s lives. Suddenly he recalled that day Dr. Gordon operated on Willy Macintosh’s father. He remembered the terrible yells that came from that upper window, and Willy’s wild face as he tugged at the front door and cried, “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him!” Perspiration wet his upper lip as he thought of it. He didn’t believe he could cut at a man who yelled like that. He kicked a small white stone out of the way. He couldn’t think of anything he’d really like to do, except just to live here on this place forever.

It seemed that everybody talked to him about what he would do when he grew up. He shrugged impatiently, but a kind of weight lay on him that he couldn’t shake off. Why couldn’t they let him alone? He walked a few steps and kicked the white pebble again. He supposed he’d have to think about it. What would he like to do? Of all the things in the world, what would he like most to do? He looked across Thurston St. George’s farm. A distant undulation toward the prairie country showed an edge of blue above the yellow field. He made a face and grinned.

Goodness, he thought, I like to look at things; I like to look at everything, but I can’t think of anything else in the whole world I really like to do. I guess it’d be kind of hard to make a living out of that!

He realized that he loved this place—this, right here, the ground, the crisscross pattern the wiry grass made, the shiny red stems of vines, the dusky blue coat on winterberries.

Tom Carr broke in on his reverie.

“Want to come along, Johnny? We’re going over that way.” He pointed toward the evergreen plantings.

From where he stood Parris could see a gleam of water through the trees. A sudden cold tightness gripped him. The pond ... Renée ... all that terrible time....

“Parris! Want to come with us?”

“No, I guess not. No. I got to go on home now.”

He felt that he might cry if he didn’t go away by himself. He started at a dogtrot toward home.

Halfway down the slope he stopped where a clearing opened to a wide view of the warm, drowsy landscape. It was very pleasant to look at, he decided. The tightness across his chest let go, and he felt better. This—all of this was home. The faded green flecked with gold leaves, the obscuring blue against the far rise of the land to the south, the trembling loops of the creek passing now and again half out of sight beneath the thin-leaved birches, the big rusty stone house with its mossy roof there in the heavy billow of bright yellow maples. It was familiar and comfortable. He sighed happily—his own place in the world!

But even in that instant a small unease returned. A presentiment ruffled his content as a shiver of wind ruffles a poplar tree, lifting the quiet leaves in a thousand tiny signals of alarm. In just that way a multitudinous tingle of apprehension touched all of his nerves.

He knew what the feeling was, and what it came from. He had felt like this a good many times lately. Other boys had parents who were not so old as his grandmother. They had brothers and sisters and relatives. He had only his grandmother. What would happen when—when—? He couldn’t say the word even to himself. Then—all of this would be gone somehow. Where would he go? What would he do? His face worked slightly, but he did not cry. He looked across the field and then up toward the sky. If one could, maybe, pray about it. He looked down again quickly with a sudden expression of violent resentment. Once—once, a long time ago, in a moment of terrible trouble he had prayed. He had looked up at that very sky and begged—begged for help. His mouth set. No: he would not ask again. If they—he vaguely visioned rows of saints and angels like those in the old Doré Bible—if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help when you needed them as much as he needed help for Renée that time—why, they could just—just ... Just what? He asked himself the question. The shining row of wings and the robed saints showed transparent as glass. He knew all at once that he didn’t believe in them. They weren’t there at all. They never had been there.

He was shocked at himself. Good gracious! Was he an infidel? Tom Carr had said just last week that Isaac Skeffington was an infidel. Probably he wasn’t exactly an infidel because he wouldn’t go around talking about it as Mr. Skeffington did. Perhaps that made a difference.

At the bottom of the hill he looked back at the spruce and poplar plantings rising row above row, like soldiers standing, and waiting. That look of waiting that lay now over the whole place oppressed him. Everything was waiting for something to happen. He was certain that when it came it would be something terrifying and disastrous.