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CHAPTER 30

A Trip To Town

      IT WAS only a few minutes later that Lucy heard someone knocking at the front door and she looked out to see Swan standing on the dusty porch.

      The morning light streamed like gold around her, but it did nothing to soften the weariness in her face. "Good, it's you," she said. "I was deadly afraid I'd have to face Normalade."

      Swan was the last person Lucy had expected to see. And seeing her, Lucy felt something like panic. Didn't she know Bobby was here? Or, worse, had she come to —

      Lucy's expression must have mirrored her thoughts, because Swan shook her head and said, "Don't worry, it's you I came to see. When Tagg told me what had happened, I had to come be sure you're all right." In spite of the cold, she took Lucy by the hand and drew her out onto the porch. Turning her to face the sun, she touched Lucy's sore cheek with gentle fingers.

      "It's just like Tagg said," she murmured, scrutinizing the bruises. "And he's right — we got to see to you, because nobody else here will lift a finger to do it."

      "I'm okay," Lucy mumbled.

      "Maybe so," Swan returned briskly, "But anything that looks that bad deserves a trip to the doctor. Go on in there and get your sweater. I'll take you."

      "Now? But Swan, nobody else is even up yet."

      "So what. You don't have to ask permission," Swan snapped. "Leave them a note if you want to — but come on. We've to go this morning, though, or I'll be late to work this afternoon."

      Lucy nodded. She went back indoors and left a note for Bobby to say where she was. She also looked in on Uncle Bob, but he was still sleeping.

      Then she went out and got in Swan's little blue Volkswagen. But once in the car, Lucy began thinking about it. "Swan, are you sure you want to stay on?"

      "I can't go right now, Lucy, when you really need me." After this, Swan drove on for a few miles, almost as if she hadn't thought any more of the question than that, but at last she continued, "I understand what you're asking me, though, and I know you think I should go. That I'm tempting him, by staying."

      "Well, I don't mean that exactly."

      "Yes you do," Swan said. "And you're right, in a way. But you have to take some other things into consideration, too. Like what Normalade's like. And what Bobby himself is like. You know, Lucy, you love him too, but you have to admit he's got a temper, although he's weak as dishwater about so many things."

      "Well, okay, but what about it?"

      "So Normalade, being Normalade, is going to make him mad again, and he's going to leave her again."

      Lucy said cruelly, "And you plan to be there to catch him when that happens?"

      Swan didn't seem to resent it, however. "Yes. Until she lures him back again, or I get to feeling guilty and send him back. Until the next time she makes him too crazy and he leaves her again. And I need to be here to do that. Because you know, Lucy, although Tagg's looked after him for a long time now, he doesn't like all that coming and going and his having to get involved in their fights; he's tired of it. Been tired of it for quite a while; the only reason he ever put up with it at all was because of you."

      "ME?"

      "Don't play dumb, you know he's crazy about you. And to prove it, he looks after Bobby for you, keeping him out of trouble. But the day Tagg backs off, if I'm not here to help, Bobby's going to run wild!"

      Lucy looked at her sharply. "What do you mean, run wild!"

      "I mean he'll drive too fast, and party too much, like poor old Cal Arthur, and finally he'll do something really crazy like run off."

      "He would not!"

      "Yes he would, because she'd drive him to it. So I can't leave, because I'm going to look after him, because, Heaven help me, I can't get over loving him in spite of himself." Swan's eyes were now shining with tears, and looking at her, Lucy ceased to argue. Maybe she was dead wrong, but there was nothing Lucy could do to change her mind.

      And what's more, she just could be right about all that.

      The little car moved along briskly, and a few minutes after ten, they pulled up in front of Doc Swerengen's.

      "I'll come in with you if you want," Swan said as Lucy got out.

      "No, that's all right."

      "Then I'll go run some errands. And when I come back, we'll have a nice lunch and go home again." Leaning across the now empty rider's seat she added, "I'm picking up some things for Mama; anything I can get for you?"

      "No, I'm fine thanks."

      As Swan drove off, Lucy went up the steps to the old house, into the doctor's dark little waiting room.

      Doc Swerengen was at least as old as Uncle Bob, Lucy knew, but he had always looked after their family. He had been practicing medicine in Belen since he was 27 years old. He had come there and he had bought this farmhouse on the edge of town, converted the two front rooms to a waiting room and an examining room, and turned the upstairs into an apartment for himself and his young, Dallas-born wife. In all those subsequent years, he'd made only one major change — he'd built a room onto the back of the house in 1945, to house a little two-bed infirmary. Other than that, everything was just the same. He even had his original office furniture.

      There seemed to be nobody around. After glancing into the deserted waiting room, Lucy crossed the hallway and looked into the examining room, but it was empty too.

      She went down the hall to a door that led to the kitchen, and when she knocked, a harried-looking Mrs. Swerengen opened it. "What!" she demanded, peering nearsightedly out into the dark hall.

      "I want to see the doctor."

      "Isn't he out there?"

      "No Ma'am."

      The doctor's wife came out into the hallway and looked at Lucy critically. "You look pretty beat up. You all right?"

      When Lucy nodded, the woman said, "I guess he's out back. I'll find him."

      "Shall I go back to the waiting room?"

      "No, go on in the examining room; he'll be right there."

      Lucy went back into the front of the house. In the waiting room. she picked up an ancient copy of the Saturday Evening Post to look at. A layer of dust lay across the cover, and the pages felt gritty under her fingers. She blew off the dust and took it with her to read while she waited.

      It was several minutes before the doctor appeared, a gray-and-sandy man, whose bulk blocked the door as he came through it. "Well, I know you! You're little Lucy Vance from down in Los Nietos!"

      "Yes sir. I was here a few weeks ago with my sister-in-law."

      "Sure. She'd just had a healthy girl-baby. I remember that."

      "It was a boy, Doctor."

      "Of course it was, and a fine one, too! They both doing okay?" He looked around the empty room. "Guess you brought her up for a six-weeks checkup today. Where is she — in the car still?"

      "No Sir, I came about me." Lucy put her hand to her bruised cheek. "They thought I ought to see you about this, and about my arm. But mostly I want to talk to you about my Uncle Bob."

      "Oh, for yourself?" For the first time, he looked at her carefully. "Well I should say so. That's quite a black eye you got there."

      From a countertop he took up a gun-shaped instrument with a little flashlight in it, and with it he took a close look in both her eyes. As he leaned toward her, Lucy could smell coffee on his breath. And something else: a hint of whiskey. "Waggle your jaw for me, can you? Hurt much?"

      "Not much. About the same as when I don't."

      He went to his desk, rummaged around in one of the drawers, and came back with a brightly-colored packet of pills. "Here's something to take for pain, in case starts hurting you at bedtime. And when you get home, you might put a cool compress on the eye to help take the swelling down." Then, without any perceptible change in tone, "How did it happen, some sort of accident?"

      Lucy hesitated, ". . . not exactly. There's a bruise on my arm too, if you want to look at that." She pulled back her sleeve.

      "Uh huh. Lift the arm for me? Now move it the other way. And make a fist? Okay."

      Then he looked down her throat and into her ears. Seen so close, the skin on his hands was thin and spotty, but on his face it was thick-looking as old leather.

      At last he stepped back, "All right now, let's hear about it." And when Lucy hesitated, he prompted, "Somebody roughed you up, I can see that. Who did it, your husband? A boyfriend? I can report him, if you want. What's his name?"

      "No, I'm not married. And I don't have a boyfriend." She forced herself to come out with it. "It was Uncle Bob that hit me. With his cane."

      "Your uncle?" He looked up, surprised. Then, narrowing his eyes, "But I know Bob Vance, the one that was crippled up from polio. Cowboy Bob he was, used to be on the radio — and he runs that restaurant down there. He's a respectable man!"

      Lucy nodded.

      "So what made him do it?"

      This was so hard. "I . . . I guess I made him mad. That is, he got mad over something I did," she explained lamely. She could feel herself blushing; it was so awful to tattle on Uncle Bob. It made her feel guilty.

      He'd begun to look irritated, and increasingly suspicious. "Hold on now, did you get yourself in trouble with some man? Because if that's why you're here, you'll get no help from me."

      "In trouble?" she repeated puzzled, "Well yes I was. With Uncle Bob — I just said so."

      "I'll tell you right now, I don't do that kind of doctoring, and I never did. Shame on you!"

      Only then did Lucy realize what he'd been driving at.

      "You mean you think I'm — well of course it's not that," she cried indignantly. "That's the whole point. All I did was offer a second kind of chili at the restaurant. And that was not enough reason for Uncle Bob to get so upset. And he's been acting so strange. Don't you remember, I called you about it days ago, when he didn't know me one morning. And you said if it got worse, to let you know."

      She pointed to her bruised face. "And if this isn't worse, then I don't know what is"

      He stared at her intently, then with a brusque nod, turned and seated himself at his battered desk in front of the window. "All right, tell me about it."

      Lucy got off the examining table and followed him across the room. "He hasn't been well all this year, and about midsummer, he quit going in to work. Then lately he's started acting kind of strange . . ." She told him about Uncle Bob's pretending to have been in the secret service, and about his mistaking her for someone else. And a little bit about his hitting her, although that part was hard to talk about, even to the doctor.

      He listened without asking questions, making marks on the desk blotter with a pencil. They were squares, drawn one over the next, to make a larger box of interlocked figures, like a maze.

      Finally she fell silent. And when he didn't comment she prodded him, "Well? What do you think?"

      "Think?" He looked up. "About your uncle? Well we don't exactly have a test that proves it, but . . . how old is he now?"

      "I don't know exactly. But Mama once said he was past fifty when we came to Los Nietos, she and Bobby and I."

      "I remember like it was yesterday, the big spread in the paper when the restaurant opened. He'd kind of retired early, he said. So he's only in his late seventies, maybe. Not so old." He sighed, and again she smelled whiskey in the exhalation. "And he's imagining things, you say. Well that's too bad. I imagine things myself now and then."

      "So you think this is normal," she asked doubtfully. "All this?"

      He gave her a weary look. "Well, maybe not quite that. Understand me, I'm not saying there's got to be anything wrong — not necessarily. But I guess you can't expect that he'd keep sharp forever."

      "Doctor Swerengen — " Lucy started to interrupt, but he held up his hand, silencing her.

      "You got to recognize that a lot of people never even live to be that old. And he's had a full life, being an entertainer, and a restaurateur. And then taking in his brother's widow so late in life, and her getting sick and dying, and him taking responsibility of you children . . ."

      He didn't finish. His gaze drifted past Lucy and out the window. Whatever he was looking at, his thoughts were now far away. "You start getting old, you begin thinking about all the things you've missed," he added, wistfully.

      "But what should I do," Lucy persisted. "Can you give him something? Some kind of medicine?"

      Swerengen shook his head. "They don't make a medicine that cures old age," he answered. "Except patience, maybe. You need to have a lot of patience to get along with old people, just like you do with children. You got any children?"

      "No, I'm not married."

      "Well, someday maybe. You got plenty of time."

      Lucy decided this conversation was not going anywhere. She got up. "You sure there aren't some kind of vitamins or something?"

      He looked vague. "No. Vitamins can't help what we've got. Not enough anyway."

      This was not what Lucy had come for. "All right then, how much do I owe you?"

      "Oh, twenty dollars, I guess."

      "Twenty!"

      "Well, make it ten, then . . ."

      She gave him ten dollars and then went out on the front porch and sat down on the steps to wait for Swan. It had been a thoroughly unsatisfactory visit, she thought. "What a waste."

     


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