“The doctor at the as-as-” He tried to get the word out but couldn’t.
“Never mind,” Tiger said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… ”
“But I do. I wa-want to, only it’s – it’s hard. I n-never told anyone. Dr Epstein was – at the as-asylum.”
“You mean” – the Bomber showed surprise – “the loony bin?”
Leo nodded.
“Why? What happened to you?”
Leo giggled. “I guess they must have thought I was loony.”
There was a bit of a laugh over that. Leo was feeling better. '
“Yeah, but, really, why were you there?” the Bomber insisted.
Leo shrugged. “I couldn’t remember anything. My mind just went blooey. You know-” he imitated the “cuckoo” in a cuckoo clock. “That’s when they told me my mother wa. s dead.”
“Jeez,” said a sympathetic Bomber. “How’d that happen, anyways?”
There was a pause; Tiger watched and listened, saying nothing. Leo interlaced his fingers and rotated his palms together, thinking it out.
“There was this bridge,” he said at last. “The L Street Bridge. It was old and rusty. They’d been working on it, trying to repair it. The river overflowed, it – it just carried the bridge away.”
The Bomber leaned on the foot of the bed. “And your folks were on it?”
“Yes. On it.” Leo was staring out the window. All he had to do was close his eyes and he would see them, Emily and Rudy in the delivery truck, driving onto the bridge – and below, the deep and rushy river swirling and foaming, that boiling witch’s pot – and hear her cries -“Help! Help!” – the words ringing in his ears. “Mother! Mother! MOTHER! I’ll save you” – but he cannot save her. No one can. The bridge begins to sway, it humps up like as camel’s back and buckles, and all at once goes crashing down into the river, taking with it all the stars in the sky, all of them falling and drowning in the Cat River and Leo had a siege of coughing that he relieved with a full tumbler of water. When he had drained the glass the Bomber took it, and Leo lay back against the pillow. His backside was hurting again; maybe Wanda would give him another one of those little pills.
Nobody said anything more until Emerson came back from taking his pee and climbed stiffly into bed, pulling up the sheet until only his itchy, swollen, bunny-pink face was visible.
“Jeez, Emmy,” the Bomber boomed, “you shoulda heard what we just heard.”
“Yeah? What was it?” Emerson asked.
“Forget it, Emmy,” Tiger said. “You didn’t miss anything.” He slipped Leo a wink and leaned closer to the bed, his gray eyes shining in the lamplight. “It’s getting late,” he said. “We’d better break it up.”
A look to the Bomber forced him reluctantly to his feet just as Wanda reappeared to send the two visitors on their way and get her patients ready for bed. Deftly she touched up Emerson’s calamine lotion, then gave Leo a refreshing witch-hazel sponging, afterward folding down his coverlet a precise eight inches and smoothing it with deft, professional strokes. It was like being put to bed by Emily, a little.
“Do I get another pill?” Leo asked in a small voice, looking as pathetic as he knew how.
“Is your baganza hurtin’ again?” She brushed his hair back. “I’ll go get one for you,” she said, and went out; her pharmacopoeia was in Doc Oliphant’s keeping at Three Corner Cove.
No sooner had she gone than Tiger’s crewcut head reappeared at the windowsill. He leaned over and tossed a pillow onto Leo’s bed, following it with a small cardboard box that rattled. The pillow was Albert, the box contained Black Crows.
“In case you get hungry,” Tiger explained. “Don’t say anything to Wanda.”
“Thanks,” Leo said.
“Anytime. Listen…” Tiger’s voice sank to a whisper. “I’m really sorry – about what happened, I mean. It wasn’t fair of Reece to let it go on that way. You shouldn’t have been paddled. Sometimes things just go too far, that’s all. It won’t happen again. Friend-Indeeders don’t act that way.”
He said it with such assurance that Leo got the feeling Tiger was making himself personally responsible for seeing to it.
“ ‘Never say die,’ ” Tiger added, then was gone.
Emerson took a drink and gave Leo a curious look. “What was that about?”
“Nothing, Emmy, something between us Jeremians, that’s all. Have a Black Crow,” he added. “Just don’t get licorice on your sheets.”
Hearing a footstep, he tucked the candy under his pillow and swallowed as Wanda returned to dole out his pill, give the boys another drink of water, and turn out the light. When she’d gone again Emerson corked right ‘off; he was a good sleeper. Ten minutes later, however, Leo was still awake, and, lying there, he turned his head and stared out the window into the velvety summer dark, where gleaming fireflies hung in luminous clusters, and the thick air hummed with the persistent twang of night peepers.
It was such sights and sounds that reminded him of earlier, childhood days, when Emily was still alive, when he and she would sit sipping lemonade on the back porch, watching the nightpeepers at the bottom of the yard. Before… well, just “before.”
His last living memory of her was on the evening of the big storm, when he was alone with Rudy in the Gallop Street house, anxiously waiting for her to come home. He would never forget the storm raging outside, the wind that banged the shutters against the clapboards and threatened to loosen the chimney bricks – and the river rising hourly, the Cat River that threatened to carry the whole bridge away. The L Street Bridge that would bring her home on the trolley – the bridge everyone feared would wash out.
It had rained so hard all day that Rudy hadn’t opened the shop – few customers would have come – and the streets ran with water. At the south end of town the river flooded the dike, and the torrent rushed under the L Street Bridge. Schools were closed; Leo stayed in his room, praying that Emily would come home: there had been a telephone call and she had hurried away right after lunch, telling Leo only that she had to go see somebody. As the hours passed he became panicky. Where had she disappeared to in all this awful weather? If she was going upstreet she would have to cross the L Street Bridge; it was the only way. What if – No, he wouldn’t think it, he mustn’t! Suddenly he wanted to go and shout at Rudy, tell him to do something to save her.
Rudy was downstairs in the front room, drinking whisky from a glass, his ear glued to the radio for the latest bulletins, and from time to time Leo would go lean over the stair railing and listen to the announcer giving further details: roads were being washed out; more volunteers were manning what remained of the levees, and a special crew had stayed all afternoon sandbagging the supports of the bridge.
Around four Leo lay down on his bed and dozed; the storm seemed far away; the rattle of the rain in the tin drains lulled him. He was awakened by the sound of another trolley car coming down the street; he tiptoed to the front window. Yes! There she was! He watched with relief as a man helped her down. He recognized John Burroughs. John was coming to their house! Something wonderful was going to happen, Leo felt sure of it. Something that would change his life. He was going to the music school after all! He was sure of it! He ran into the hallway and leaned over the banister, saw them coming into the vestibule. Glimpsing him from below, Emily motioned for him to stay upstairs and wait. The doors to the front room closed behind them.
To calm himself, Leo found his violin and began to play. The song was “Poor Butterfly.” But then had come Rudy’s footsteps on the stairs. The door was flung open. “No rhapsodies in this house,” he shouted, and Leo put the violin away. When he heard the parlor doors slam shut again, he crept to the head of the stairs and listened, he heard their voices, Emily’s, Rudy’s, John’s.
“Didn’t I say? No rhapsodies in this house?!” came the angry roar from below.
When John spoke in a reasonable tone Rudy only shouted more angrily. Then Emily was crying out, and John was saying he would take Emily away, Leo too. “You don’t love her, Matuchek,” John went on. “You use her badly. She is a good woman and doesn’t deserve such treatment.”