“Only two more treatments on your side and then we radiate your neck,” the doctor said. “That will suppress the growth, and give palliation for a good long time.”
The thought of time, any time, gave him a chill, how the bored doctor could talk easily of a “good long time” when he knew it could not be more than three years at the most for him, this doctor who could easily yawn away three years of his own life without even thinking about it.
Leonard did not say anything. He lay still, as he should, looked up at the perforated squares on the ceiling, lay silent in the air-conditioned comfort of the lead-in room. The red light came on after the radiologist and nurse exited to the safety of their control booth, the machine above him thukked and a little complacent hum of the machine began, as of a digestive process deep within it. He contemplated lying there, and of the discovery three weeks before of the malignant cancer in him, not localized, spread already with unseemly haste, and where the doctors had at first talked confidently of energetic treatment and suppression, now their lips could manage murmurs of only “palliation,” an unforgivable word to him, absolutely a devilish word to him at thirty-three. Palliation and defeat, and nothing to be done, oh the best doctors agreed, there was nothing else to be done, for “it” had already spread beyond localized bounds, and what was there now to do but palliate and wait?
He waited the six minutes, felt nothing but the hard cot beneath him, heard nothing but the mystery of the tiny hum, looked at the perforations, little holes in the ceiling, clean as if made by tiny bullets, and the efficient gamma rays burned into his bowels, warmed his kidneys, all unfeeling. The curved machine thukked exactly on time, the red light went out, the nurse forced open the heavy door and came in smiling, wheeled him from under.
In somber quiet, as usual now on this, the eighteenth trip to and from radiation, they shot the thirty-four miles back to Charleston, needed nothing in the little town, saw Gavin Terrell camped strategically in the police car at the edge of town, waved to him. Gavin waved back, smiled.
“They haven’t got him yet,” Leonard said, the first words in all that way.
“How do you know?” his wife asked.
“Gavin wouldn’t be sitting there if they had.”
They went the two and a half miles to the farm and down the long lane from the gravel road.
“Oh, the cattle are down this way!” the wife said, delighted, and it was true, the large herd spread on both sides of the creek, near the farmstead. “We’ve got to take some pictures.”
“That will be nice,” he said, the sullenness still on him.
The brother, Melvin, and the old hired man who came whenever Melvin needed him worked on the seeder; there were soybeans to be replanted and the seeder was pulled in the middle of the yard.
“The cattle are down this way,” the wife said to them. “Is it all right if I take some pictures of them?”
“Take as many as you want,” Melvin said, getting up from under the machine and looking himself. The pasture was a mile long, and narrow, for it flanked the creek on both sides. The cattle were young and tended toward wildness, newly brought from the Nebraska range. The first thing they’d done after the 160 head had been unloaded was to go to the far end of the pasture, the mile away, and herd up there. Melvin had explained it to them when they went out to count the cattle one time. “The only experience they’ve had with barns and buildings is with things that hurt, vaccination, castration, branding, and so naturally they want to stay away from anything that looks like buildings.”
And they had until now.
“Well maybe the grass is getting short up at the other end,” Melvin said, although he knew and Leonard knew that could not be.
The wife was excited and pleased. She got the camera and went out by the fence and the beautiful Hereford calves lifted their heads and sniffed, and she took the picture, with at least a hundred heads, white-faced and white ears, pointing at her.
“I thought I’d never get a picture of them,” she said, back at the yard, pleased with everything.
Leonard sat on the porch and slipped the oiled cloth along the spine of the Marlin rifle. Sullenly he cleaned the gun, although he had cleaned it the day before after shooting the six pigeons up at the other place that Melvin farmed. He knew that he was sullen, and told himself he could not help it, could not. The bandage on his neck bothered him, the bandage covering the latest biopsy only three days old. He cranked his head and touched the wad on his neck.
“Don’t pull at that, please, Len,” his wife said.
“Aaah,” he muttered, slipped the cloth the length of the rifle, noted appreciatively the steel gleam, the hard steel bolt reflecting neither figure nor shadow, only light.
“Aah,” he muttered again, touching the lump of bandage with his fingertips. The cold lumps of frozen things in himself, those lumps of growing cancers, and the hot unhealthy burn of the radiation, neither good, he thought, both or either would kill him, frozen and burning all at once, and if he thought of it he could feel them both, he believed, truly feel them crawl in his tissues, in his marrow, that dark cold cancer in him and the glow of the radiation; condemned to death quite surely, and he did not know how or why. Nor did anyone.
Snap! the bolt went shut, beautiful, slick and sliding elegantly the Marlin.22 that he had cleaned up and made good again. The shining steel-colored bolt slipped open and shut and open again beneath his finger touch. He looked down the barrel and the beautiful grooves spiraling down to the distant small opening where the small bullet entered, and closed the bolt.
“Think I’ll get a pigeon or two,” he said by way of explanation to the women, his wife working with the flowers in the front yard, his mother sitting in the lawn rocking chair. He took the new box of bullets, fingered out six and filled the clip, snapped the clip in, liked the way the bolt slid forward, seated the slender little bullet, closed solidly. Now truly a weapon.
“Na, there he goes again,” the mother said, “shooting birds and rabbits. Murderer,” laughing a little, looking at the wife to see if she would smile.
He turned sharply on his mother, really snarled, “Mind your own business, goddamn it,” feeling a ridge of blood thunder in his forehead, his arm tremble, and a burning beneath the bandage. Murderer! Murdered would be better, he thought.
“Well, Leonard,” his wife said chidingly, and softly too, lest he get really angry. The mother looked away as if she had not heard; she had had five sons and had borne many ferocious asides.
He went through the gate, carrying the good-feeling rifle. The dog wanted to follow; he sent him back. In deadly quiet he moved up along the heavy windbreak, any slight sounds he had to make completely hidden by the crash and bang of the hogs feeding in the near hog yard. Beyond the box elders he heard the chattering, unmistakable, of squirrels. He wondered absently if this was a female with young, knew they were almost impossible to tell apart from the males, and he had seen a dozen or so in the last week, cavorting foolishly and openly around the corncrib. Whatever it was, it would have to take its chances, for what followed would be purely by design. He slid up in the protection of a tree, peered gingerly forward, could tell finally the movement high in a far maple, the scolding squirrel, head and body pointed straight down the trunk.
He brought the rifle up, not moving fast, careful to avoid startling motion, traced the barrel at the squirrel thirty yards away, planted the rear sight on him, on his neck, lowered the blade of the front sight so that it rested at the bottom of the rear, exactly as he had tested it from a hundred practice shots, followed the squirrel perhaps six inches or so as it came down the trunk, and worked back on the tender trigger.