The Third Generation (32 page)

He was given a local anesthetic and his arm set. They didn’t think it was necessary to wire his jaw. His torso was wrapped in a cast. The vertebrae could not be set without endangering the spinal column. As far as they could determine, the spinal column had not been injured, although the bone pressing against it caused paralysis of the lower limbs. The purpose of the cast was to hold the vertebrae in place and give the fracture a chance to heal. They hoped that the spinal column would eventually adjust to the curvature and the pressure be relieved, restoring movement to the lower limbs. His chin was dressed, his mouth washed, and he was wheeled into a private room. The rest was up to God.

Lying quietly on the wheel stretcher, his huge, incandescent eyes drug-widened and remote, he seemed a disembodied spirit floating in a world of unreality. He heard the voices distinctly and watched with mindless fascination. As yet he’d felt no pain.

His mother was the first to come. She was carrying a shopping bag of groceries and her face, devastated as it had been when William lost his sight, older now and haggard to the bone, was held stiffly from within by tremendous will power.

“It’s Mother, Charles. It’s Mother, son.” Only her voice gave her away, so high and light and dead.

Out of his drugged remoteness he saw the grief there again as it had been the night she came from the hospital with William and walked into the light. Now as the seamed and powdered flesh, the tortured mouth, bent forward to kiss him, he braced himself as if against the kiss of death. All the kinds of mothers he’d wanted her to be bloomed in his mind; the tenderness of doing her nails, the soft delight of fingering her hair, the passion of her whippings—his beautiful mother disfigured with grief. It was not physical hurt but spiritual anguish that came up in him in waves. He closed his eyes as if shutting out the sight of her would dam the flood. But when her cold dry lips touched his forehead, tears made a sudden fringe beneath his tightly pressed lids. He began crying all down inside himself.

“I’m all right, Mama. I’m all right,” he said in his faint, indistinct voice. “Don’t worry, I’m all right.”

She sat down beside the bed, holding herself from within, and tightly clasped her hands. She was struck by the immobility of his posture; his body was held so straight and rigid in the cast, laid out almost for burial, his soft, tan face pale as death. He looked final, permanent, as if he might never rise again. The one who’d been so active, so physically assured, whose body had been more expressive of himself than all else, now broken. It seemed a sacrilege against nature. Her baby, she thought, the last of all her sons, the one—She didn’t dare think it. And yet the loss to her, then, as she first suffered it, him lying there in such total disability, was everything, the final, bitter end of all her high and eager dreams. But desperately she tried to hold it, to keep it from her thoughts. If she once thought it she couldn’t hold herself. She tried not to think beyond the room.

“Go to sleep, son,” she said. “Mother’s here. Mother will look after you.” Now there was this other thought that she was being punished for having forced him back to work against his will. “You mustn’t worry, son.” She stroked his forehead. “God always has a purpose and we must trust in Him.” But it wouldn’t come that God had any other purpose but to punish her for her own incontinent vanity.

“Don’t worry, Mama,” she heard him saying in that faint, pebbly voice. “I don’t feel anything at all.”

It was his saying that that broke her. All of her body began to cry, shaking. “Forgive me, son,” she cried in agony. “Forgive your mother.”

He couldn’t bear it either, and turned his face away, crying toward the wall, A nurse entered.

“You shouldn’t disturb him. The shock should wear off gradually.”

The spell of exquisite agony was shattered. Mrs. Taylor exerted a semblance of control.

“I know.” She tried to hold herself in, turning to her son. “You must try to sleep, Charles. Mother will sit here quietly.”

Her presence, the nearness of her, became uppermost now, and he gave in to her, ceased struggling against her grief, and the anguish slowly ebbed from him, and he became her baby, drowsily in her arms. He went to sleep.

When he awakened it was evening. She sat as if she hadn’t moved. His father and William were there now, dressed for work and school. In his father’s face, also, were the ravages of grief; these two elderly people at this time in their lives having to carry the burden of his hurt because he was born to them.

With William it was different. He sat silent, his face furrowed with an intensity of emotion, his head cocked in an attitude of listening. Over his shocked sorrow he felt a rage of protest. First himself and now Charles. It was unfair—unfair to all of them. It was as if he was hurt again; and poor Charles, so dependent on his physical prowess in all the things he did. He was the first to sense that Charles was back with them.

“Chuck?”

“Will.”

“What happened, Chuck?”

“I fell down the elevator shaft.”

“What’s the matter with your voice? Does it hurt you to talk?”

“Naw, not much. I broke my jaw a little and broke some teeth.”

“Then you can’t eat anything?”

“Just liquids.” He looked about the room. There was a great bouquet of flowers from the hotel and the waiters had chipped in and sent an enormous basket of fruit. Professor Taylor had stopped on the way and bought a bag of oranges which looked so pathetic beside the others. He noticed that his father was crying, tears slipping unobtrusively down his black, seamed face.

“Don’t cry, Dad,” he said impulsively.

“Son!”

All were silent for a time. The sons were ashamed and embarrassed for their father, as if he didn’t have a right to cry.

“Wasn’t there a door or guard or something?” William asked.

“It had a door but it was open.”

“Oh!”

“It’s a shame,” his mother said. “It’s criminal negligence. I should think Mr. Small would be more careful.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” his father said. “They have an engineer who attends to that.”

“I don’t care who attends to it. It was someone’s fault and they’re not going to get away with it.”

William cut it off. “Is there anything you want before we go?”

“No, I don’t want anything.”

They rose. His father leaned down and patted his shoulder. “We’ll go now, son, and let you rest.”

“Mother will pray for you, son.”

William became tense again. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” he said.

It was dismal in the Taylor house that night. The grief was settling down into the soul, widening into worry, fear, horror. Self-blame attaches inconsistently, and the soul accepts full guilt even when no sin has been committed. If she just hadn’t forced him to go back, Mrs. Taylor grieved. She couldn’t rid herself of the conclusion that she’d gone against God’s will. She’d always tried to force him into doing things he didn’t like, and now she knew it had been to feed her own ambition. On the other hand, his father mercilessly condemned himself for having sent his son to Mr. Small in the first place. He’d known, even then, it wasn’t the kind of work the boy would like. But because he had had to do it, he’d wanted his son to do it too, telling himself at the time it was for the sake of discipline. Mr. Small blamed himself for not having prohibited the elevator being used when it was first discovered that the door was faulty. He’d simply reported it to the engineer. That had been a week before. The engineer blamed himself for not having fixed it immediately when it was called to his attention. The two young women blamed themselves for having distracted Charles’s attention. Both had gone home directly following the accident, prostrated with grief. They had seen him fall.

Later that night, when Charles awakened in the dark, he felt abandoned and alone. But he was not alone; no one can ever be hurt alone. Others are always hurt by the hurt of anyone. Had he known this, it would have made a difference.

21

T
HE NEXT DAY REACTION SET IN
. Thought patterns returned and the discomfort of lying in one stiff position was now clearly felt. Doubt and fear began to gnaw at his mind, and pain, more imagined than experienced, came throbbingly into his consciousness. As he began to realize the extent of his injury, self-pity settled slowly over his emotions. He tried not to think of himself being a cripple, of all the things he might never do again. But he couldn’t restrain himself.

The nurse noticed it. “Our patient is blue,” she smiled.

“Just thinking.”

“Don’t think about yourself. Think of all your pretty girls and what good times you’re going to have this summer.”

He tried to smile. But that was thinking about himself in the worst possible way.

For a time the visitors helped divert his thoughts. The doctor called early, glancing at his chart.

“How is it today, Charles?”

“All right.”

And then his mother came. “Is there anything Mother can get for you?”

“Some cigarettes.”

She tried not to appear shocked, but her silence revealed it. “Do you smoke, son?”

“Not often.”

“Did you ask the doctor?”

“I don’t think it matters.”

She sighed. “Ill ask him and if he says it won’t hurt you I’ll bring them to you. Is there any particular kind?”

“Any kind.”

Mr. Small and the hotel manager, Mr. Cochran, called before noon. They’d brought along a waiter loaded down with lunch, but he was not permitted in the room and the lunch was given to the nurses. The grip of tragedy still had its hold on Mr. Small. He smiled, but it was different. His poise was gone.

“There’s no need for me trying to tell you how I feel about this, son. I couldn’t feel any worse if it had happened to my own son.”

“I know.” He wished they wouldn’t talk about it.

“The hotel is at your disposal,” Mr. Cochran said. The tragedy hadn’t touched him as it had the others.

“Thank you.” After a moment he added, “Thank you for the flowers.” And then to Mr. Small, “Thank the fellows for the fruit.”

“We just learned you can only have liquids,” Mr. Small observed. “Is there anything you prefer?”

“Not particularly.”

Mr. Small placed a check on the bedstand. “This is a collection the boys took up for you.”

“There’ll be something coming from the hotel too,” Mr. Cochran added. “I think you’d like to know we’re going to continue your salary, and we’ll see to it that you receive the highest rate of compensation.”

The reference to money was meaningless to him. “Thank you,” he said again. “I’d like to have some cigarettes.”

“Right!” Mr. Cochran beamed. This was something tangible, something he could do immediately. “What’s your brand, Chuck?”

“Any brand, sir.”

“Right! I’ll send them right away.”

They stood, smiling, the smiles different, and Mr. Small made one last effort, “I’ll send one of the boys over with a thermos of clear turtle soup; and perhaps you’d like some eggnog and juices on hand.”

“Yes, sir, that’ll be fine.”

During lunch hour yellow roses came from the two young women at the hotel and all afternoon the bouquets of flowers and baskets of fruit came from his parents’ churches, his Sunday school, the members of his club, and from people he couldn’t remember. News of his accident had been reported in the daily papers and all the people who had known him only vaguely felt obligated to send condolences.

The members of his club came during the late afternoon and then his father’s relatives and afterwards his own family came and sat with him until the time for visiting was over. The small room overflowed with tokens and flowers were banked about the walls as if it was a florist’s shop. He’d had no time to think.

It was late that night, while the hospital slept, that the first blind panic shattered him. He was going to be a cripple, confined to a wheel chair, with a wizened, useless arm. He lit a cigarette, fighting a losing battle. He couldn’t bear it. Everything he’d ever dreamed of doing depended on his body. How could one be brave, noble, gallant, without physical perfection? He might never be in love, because it was of the flesh also; might never know what it was like to be with a woman. That was the bitterest thought of all. He pulled the covers over his head to muffle his sobbing.

The next day he was moved into a ward. His doctors thought the activity might distract his morbid self-obsession. There were twenty-three other patients. Something was always happening. Bitter quarrels ensued between the patients and the orderlies over bedpans. Internes flirted with the nurses, strutted importantly when alone, fawned in the presence of the doctors, and condescended toward the patients with sage demeanors. The doctors came each day, bringing their tidings of good and evil. Food, baths and dressings helped while away the time.

The patient to Charles’s right was convalescing from pneumonia; the one to his left slowly dying from a gangrenous arm. Charles watched with morbid fascination the slow decomposition of the horribly bloated arm as it lay floating in a tank of warm solution, the slimy fins of drainage tapes hanging from the rotten flesh like eels feeding on a piece of floating carrion. He shook with fear. Suppose blood poison should set into his arm. Extending from the bandaged splints were the fingers of his hand, waxen and atrophied as were a paralytic’s. He thought of the twisted, deformed limbs of beggars he’d seen down on the Square. Tears squeezed through his eyes.

Outside, the gray, dismal days of March’s end passed so slowly by the windows time seemed to be standing still. He kept his sight indrawn. From seven until eight each evening was the visiting hour. His parents always came. Sometimes they brought relief, more often not.

His mother had struck up an acquaintance with the wife of the patient who was convalescing from pneumonia. Her conversation consisted for the most part in denouncing the hotel. Charles was tired of hearing it. But the woman was a patient listener.

One night she said, “My man is going home tomorrow.”

“Oh, how nice. Then I won’t be seeing you again.”