The Little Giant of Aberdeen County Read online

  “You can’t really be suggesting that I leave him here all alone to die? Besides, did it ever occur to you that I might have other reasons for staying?”

  Amelia shrugged. “What goes around comes around.” She paused in her mopping. “You don’t know the half of it with the doctor,” she said, “and, trust me, you don’t want to, either.”

  I opened and closed my mouth. “You don’t know the half of it, either,” I finally said. I still hadn’t told her about my condition. She thought all my pills were a vitamin program.

  Amelia looked up at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” I wanted to come right out and tell Amelia about my illness, but something stopped me. I’ll tell her later, I vowed, after she’s done cleaning, when we’re having our coffee. Today, I was particularly eager for Amelia to be finished with work so I could ask her for news about Bobbie.

  Ten times a day I imagined myself walking across town to the cemetery to visit him, but there was the issue of Marcus. The doctor had made it clear what would happen if I let Marcus back in my life, and I didn’t want to make trouble for him. Also, I wasn’t sure where we stood with each other. Were we friends? Back to old acquaintances? Or were there still some unopened buds left on our branches? He’ll come to you, a voice inside my head urged. Just wait. I randomly wondered if Tabby had sewn any love charms into the quilt but quickly squashed the idea.

  Amelia waited a beat to see if I’d give in and pour out what was sitting heavy on my heart, but I didn’t, so she shook herself, offended as a rooster. She wrung out her mop and leaned it in the corner. “That’s that,” she said. “I’m going out to tackle the office.” I watched her march across the porch to the clinic and throw open its windows. All afternoon she scrubbed and polished, but by the end of the day, her breath was coming in shallow scoops and her heart was skipping beats. She finally returned to the kitchen to switch disinfectants.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed at how flushed her cheeks were.

  “This stuff’s no good,” she said, dumping the cleaning fluid and grabbing a jar of vinegar from the pantry. “I think I’m allergic.”

  Next, she tried tying a bandanna over her nose and mouth, but after only an hour, she tore it off, her heart hammering, frantic as a landed fish. She vacuumed and dusted the blinds, scrubbed at the upholstery in the desk chair, and took apart the light fixtures, but none of that appeared to help. Then she dusted the doctor’s books. I peered through the kitchen windows, watching as she stood frozen halfway up the stepladder, her pink feather duster gripped in one hand, a single book clenched in the other. I saw her lips move and her finger trace a line across the cover, then she shook her head, clamped her lips, and stuck the book back on the shelf.

  Moving carefully—she’d inherited her father’s dodgy back—she pushed all the books back into their original places and maneuvered herself backward off the ladder. She didn’t bother to fold up the ladder, however, and she didn’t position that last book very well, and I remember thinking that was out of character. The book remained stuck out on the shelf, its spine cracked from rough handling. I considered pointing it out to her, but I was too eager for news about Bobbie, so I let it go.

  “Tell me how he is,” I urged when we were finally settled in our usual places in the kitchen and I was pouring her out a cup of strong black coffee. “Tell me if he’s happy.”

  Amelia seemed less waspish now that she was finished with her chores, and I was glad. Maybe it’s just the pomp of the doctor’s death she’s dreading, I thought. Waiting around for someone to make up his mind and die, I knew, could wear the living out. Maybe she wishes we could just put him in a hole at the farm like her father.

  Amelia slurped her coffee and gave me the skinny. “His friend Salvatore just got him a job at that men’s bar in Hansen. I’ve read about that place in the paper. The church folks picket out front sometimes, and a couple of times now, the police have been called in for a fight.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What does Bobbie do there? He’s not of age.” I held my breath, hoping it wasn’t anything illegal.

  “He works in the back, I think. They serve food, I’ve heard, so he helps out in the kitchen. Turns out he’s a prodigal whiz at the stove.”

  I exhaled. “What’s he dressing as these days?” I thought back to my own early childhood of rough-hewn boy’s clothes and how I still preferred plain garments to frills or fluff. Did we dress ourselves from the outside in, I wondered, or was it the other way around?

  Amelia shrugged. “Boy, mostly, but Marcus says he’s not giving up on that blue dress of his mother’s.”

  I nodded. “He must miss Serena Jane fierce. Robert Morgan never let us mourn her right.”

  Amelia looked uneasy all of a sudden. She shifted in her chair a few inches, opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it up tight again. At the mere mention of Marcus’s name, it was as if vines were choking us both. “And how is Marcus?” I finally asked, my heart squeezing into a familiar fist in my chest. “Garden going good?”

  Amelia avoided my gaze. “Real good. We’ve already got bean vines halfway up the poles. Why don’t you come see sometime? He’s out there most days of the week. He could tell you more about Bobbie. Besides, I know he misses you.” When it came to Marcus, it seemed, Amelia never minded being wordy.

  I tilted my chin down toward my chest. “Maybe.”

  Amelia went funny again, as though she had a pound of lead she wanted to get off her tongue, but she still didn’t say anything. We see what we want to see in life, regardless of whether it’s really in front of us or not, and what I saw at that moment was how Amelia’s braid hung over her shoulder like a bell pull, how her birdlike clavicles rose and fell with each breath she took, how tiny and precise her fingers were. In short, I saw everything I was not, and I was jealous. I looked down at my own rough arms and my thunderous legs, and I wished they were as petite and neat as Amelia’s. Maybe then, I thought, Marcus would come to my door and plant a garden, no matter what the doctor says. Then I thought about what might happen between Marcus and Amelia if I disappeared, and my heart grew even more pinched. I longed to go visit Marcus and see what could be between us, but then I checked myself. I was a ticking time bomb. How could I offer myself to a man who’d already had his fill of death?

  Of course, this memory makes me sorrowful now, for if anyone ever knew the shape of me, it was Amelia—and not just the outer lines of me, either, but all my innards as well. She was as necessary as the sun to me. She was the quiet heat that shimmered inside my shadow and made it live, and without her, I am a little darker. Amelia stood up and gathered her bags and buckets. “I have to go,” she sniffed. “I need to get back and feed the chickens before dark. At least they’re some company.”

  I rose with her. “Okay.” I walked her to the door and watched her climb into August’s old truck. She started the engine and drove off, pulling all the unspoken tension between us taut, then tauter still, until, like a rubber band stretched too thin, it went flying.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The doctor warned me that he would grow sick quickly, but it was still hard to believe when the exact morning arrived that he couldn’t get out of bed. It was the middle of May—high spring—and the birds were chirping so loudly that I didn’t hear the small pewter bell the doctor was ringing, our prearranged signal for help. Soon, however, the metallic sound became hard to ignore. I followed it down the corridor and found the doctor half-covered and blushing all the way out to his ears.

  “Truly, I need help going to the toilet,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, which, given that it was Robert Morgan, was actually quite a lot.

  “Why don’t you let me fetch Bobbie?” I asked as we shuffled down the hallway. “You must miss him. Wouldn’t you rather your own flesh and blood do this?”

  Robert Morgan grappled with the bathroom doorknob and looked sour. “He made his choice. He gave up everything th
is family holds dear, and now he’s out of the circle.” He turned around. “I can manage from here.”

  I blushed. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was far from ready to let the matter drop, though. As I plumped pillows and rearranged covers, I regaled the doctor with the latest news about Bobbie, straight from Amelia’s mouth. “He’s in love,” I crowed, tucking the doctor’s feet up tight in the sheets and figuring that it was best if he heard it from me first. “You’ll never guess with who.”

  “Whom,” Robert Morgan corrected, but I ignored him. He must know, I told myself. He must realize about Bobbie by now, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. I took a deep breath and got ready to explain.

  “Do you remember his friend Salvatore, who used to come by and spend time with him?”

  Robert Morgan turned his face away from me. “No.”

  “Of course you do. Tall boy with dark hair. A few years older.” Not to mention Bobbie’s only friend, I wanted to add but didn’t.

  Still, the doctor refused to play along. “No,” he repeated.

  I waved a hand. “Oh well. It doesn’t matter. But that’s who it is. That’s who Bobbie’s with.”

  The doctor was so quiet, I thought I might have killed him right then and there, but then he spoke, and what he said shocked me all the way out to the hair on my head.

  “Is he good to him, this Salvatore?” he asked, still not looking at me.

  And then I shocked myself. Without thinking, I took the doctor’s hand and squeezed it, as if we were old friends instead of barely tolerable in-laws. “Very good,” I whispered, imagining Salvatore’s coffee-colored fingers intertwined with Bobbie’s white ones. “He’s the best.”

  “Okay, then,” Robert Morgan rasped, “I guess I can live with that.” And he fell into a deep, rapturous sleep—the first one, I believe, that he had ever earned on his own.

  As summer warmed, the doctor grew weaker. “Don’t we have more blankets?” he chattered one evening, a plaid wool wrap flung around his bony shoulders. “I’m freezing. I need another cover.” His eyes suddenly lit up, and he half sat. “What about the quilt in the parlor downstairs?” he croaked.

  My heart flip-flopped as I shook a pair of his pills into the palm of my hand. I snapped the bottle lid back on tight and tried to sound casual. “Oh, you don’t want that old thing. It’s probably all musty.” The last thing I wanted was the doctor cozied up under the very catalog of spells that may have started him on this road in the first place.

  But the sick have minds of their own. They want what they want. “I don’t care,” the doctor insisted. “Go fetch it for me.”

  I tried again. “Here, take your pills.” I’m ashamed to admit that not all my appetite for vengeance had been quelled by Robert Morgan’s actual illness. Temptation sometimes triumphed over my contrition, and I would find myself withholding water from him or giving him only one pill when he could have had two. He was getting so addled, though, that he was starting not to notice. Today, hoping to distract him from the quilt, I gave him both pills, but it didn’t work. He swallowed them down, then immediately resumed pestering me.

  “Please, Truly, my bones feel like they’re going to grow ice. That quilt is just the thing to warm them.” I pretended not to hear him, which turned out to be a mistake. Next time I glanced over, the doctor was half out of bed, his stick legs dangling over the edge.

  “What are you doing?” I cried. “You’ll break your dang hip, and that’s the last thing I need.”

  He shot daggers at me. “If you’re not going to do what I want, then I’ll do it myself.”

  He swayed a little, and I propped him up with one arm. “Okay, okay. For the love of the devil, I’ll bring you the quilt. Just get back into bed.” He allowed me to tuck the covers back over him, a cat-who-ate-the-cream smile tugging at his lips.

  When I returned, he was already dozing, his mouth hung open like a puppet’s, and I was half in a mind to turn around and take the quilt back downstairs, but I didn’t. The doctor was sick all right, but he wasn’t putty in my hands. He still had his memory and his eyes intact, and if he woke up without that quilt, I knew, there’d be no end to it. I sighed and tucked the corners of it gently around him, folding it back on itself a little so the designs didn’t show quite as much. Robert Morgan snorted and opened one eye. “Thank you,” he grumbled, and nodded off again. I watched him sleep for a moment, unaccustomed to the ragged new arrangement of his face. He grimaced and moaned, fretful even in rest, and for a moment, I was tempted to soothe his brow the way I used to with Bobbie.

  The doctor was going to get worse than this, I knew. He had warned me. “Toward the very end,” he had said, his jaw clenched, “I’m afraid you will have to do all the heavy lifting, and for that I apologize.”

  “Good thing I have big arms, then,” I’d answered, but I was starting to question what I had gotten myself into—nursing a man who had tortured me for years, a man my sister and nephew had hated and from whom they had fled. When the time came, I wondered, shouldn’t I maybe just give him Tabby’s drink? Wouldn’t it be easier? And, if I was being totally honest, wouldn’t it also be a little bit gratifying? For once, I would beat the man at his own game. I could give him the cure he hadn’t been able to give me.

  Stop it, I told myself as I brought Robert Morgan yet another tray of chicken broth in bed. You said you were done with the quilt. It’s just cotton and batting now, and a million little pieces of tangled threads. Except it wasn’t, and I knew it. Tabitha’s quilt was more than pieces of fabric sewn together. It was a patchwork of souls. I gasped and almost dropped my soup. The phrase had jumped unbidden into my mind. A patchwork of souls. Suddenly I understood the significance of the angel wings. They were more than random symbols—they were markers, as clear as any in the graveyard. Tabitha Morgan had done the same thing I had done for Prissy.

  The border had been a record of the deaths.

  “What’s wrong?” The doctor peered up at me groggily.

  “Nothing.” I spread a napkin out over the quilt, hoping the doctor would never see what was covering him and make me explain. What would I say? I wondered. What would I do if he asked? I didn’t know, but it turns out I didn’t have to. The day was soon coming when the doctor would make that decision for me.

  To witness a conversion is not always to recognize it. In Robert Morgan’s case, it started with time. More than softening him, more than breaking him, the doctor’s leukemia gave him opportunity to pay attention to the seemingly insignificant details of Aberdeen. “I never noticed those yellow roses in the back corner of the garden,” he drawled, pumped as full of narcotics as a baby after a feed. “They’re just the color of butter. And that tree across the way over there. What kind of tree is that? An elm? Did you ever notice that the jays just love that tree?”

  I peeped out the window at a pair of birds perched on the elm’s branches. “Why, yes, they surely do, Robert Morgan.”

  His head lolled on the pillow. “Why did I never notice the jays, Truly? Why did I never walk out and smell those roses against the fence?”

  Because you were a tight bastard, I wanted to say but didn’t. “Because you had your mind on higher things,” I suggested instead.

  The doctor nodded, emphatic. “That’s right. Higher things. My head was in the clouds. But no more. I’m putting my head down to the dirt now.”

  “You mean you’re burying your head in the sand?” I smiled, but Robert Morgan scowled. It was an appropriate comment, I thought, considering denial was his main method of handling Bobbie.

  “Laugh all you want to, woman. I’m serious. The little things—they’re all I have left.”

  “I wouldn’t know about those,” I sniffed, “what with being a giant and all.”

  Later, though, when he was sleeping, I went outside and cut some blossoms for him, propping them up in a bowl of water by his bedside so that when he woke he would be able to catch their sweetness
. They’re as much for me as they are for him, I told myself. After all, I was in there about twenty times a day. I thought I deserved a little burst of summer where I could see it.

  Men can regress when they’re desperately ill, and this certainly happened with the doctor. First he quit moving, then he quit speaking much, and finally, with his mind snipped free like a bone cut from a rigid cast, he slipped back and forth in time, careening from childhood to the present with awful frequency. Sometimes he called me by Serena Jane’s name, which always made me laugh to myself, and other times, like the rainy afternoon he grabbed me by the forearm and forced me to sit on the bed beside him, he thought I was his mother. “Please,” he begged, tugging on my hand, “stay awhile, Mother.”

  I tried to free myself from his grip. “I’m not Maureen. I’m Truly, remember?”

  Robert Morgan blinked and released my hand, his face turning cross. “Of course you are. Why are you telling me?”

  “No reason.”

  He shifted under the covers. “But while you’re here, maybe you could get me a fresh pajama top.” I had to strain to hear him. His voice was as hollowed out as a termite tunnel.

  “Of course.” I reached into the bureau and pulled out a striped pajama set.

  “Just the top.”

  “Right.”

  “Now look away.”

  “But don’t you want me to help you—”

  “Look away!”

  “Okay, fine.” I turned around and busied myself with the teapot I’d brought up. “But it’s not like the view is outstanding, trust me.”

  I waited a beat for him to shoot a barb back to me, but silence ruled the room. Curious, I turned around, and what I saw froze me to the core. The doctor was inspecting the folds of the quilt, his mouth stretched as flat as a pin, and I knew in an instant that he had discovered its secret. I quickly tried to shake out the quilt, but I was too late. In his eyes, I recognized a gleam of comprehension.