Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (66 page)

“I don’t want it now,” Mr. Acarius said. “I want to suffer a little more yet.”

“You want to what?” the nurse said.

“The man’s suffering,” the stranger said. “Go on, Goldie. Bring him a drink. You’ve got to have something to put down on his chart.”

“Says you,” the nurse said.

“You’ve got to watch Goldie,” the stranger said to Mr. Acarius. “She’s from Alabama.”

“What time everybody’s not watching you,” the nurse said to the stranger. She glanced rapidly, apparently at Mr. Acarius’s discarded clothing, because she said sharply, “Where’s his suit?”

“I’ve already put it in,” the stranger said, tossing Mr. Acarius’s shoes and underwear and shirt into the suitcase and closing it rapidly. Then he crossed to a narrow locker in the corner and stowed the suitcase in it and closed the door, which now revealed itself to be armed with a small padlock. “You want to lock it yourself, or will you trust me?” the stranger said to the nurse.

“Hold it,” the nurse said grimly. She set the tray on the table and entered the bathroom and then reappeared. “All right,” she said. “Lock it.” The stranger did so. The nurse approached and tested the lock and then took up the tray again. “When you want this, ring,” she told Mr. Acarius. At the door she paused again, speaking this time to the stranger. “Get out of here now,” she said. “Let him rest.”

“Right,” the stranger said. The nurse went out. The stranger watched the door for perhaps half a minute. Then he came back to the bed. “It’s behind the tub,” he said.

“What?” Mr. Acarius said.

“That’s right,” the stranger said. “You’ve got to watch even the good ones like Goldie. Just wait till you see the one that’s coming at midnight. Boy. But we’ll be all right now.” He looked down at Mr. Acarius, speaking rapidly now. “My
name’s Miller. You’re a patient of Doctor Cochrane’s, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Mr. Acarius said.

“That’ll do it; Cochrane’s got such a good reputation around here that any patient of his gets the benefit of the doubt. Judy’s down stairs—Watkins’s girl friend. She’s already tried once to get up here. But Watkins himself hasn’t a chance; Goldie’s got him sewed up in his room and is watching him like a hawk. But you can do it.”

“Do what?” Mr. Acarius said.

“Call down and say Judy is your guest, and to send her up,” Miller said, handing Mr. Acarius the telephone. “Her name’s Lester.”

“What?” Mr. Acarius said. “What?”

“OK. I’ll do it for you. What’s your name? I didn’t catch it.”

“Acarius,” Mr. Acarius said.

“Acarius,” Miller said. He said into the telephone: “Hello. This is Mr. Acarius in twenty-seven. Send Miss Lester up, will you? Thanks.” He put the receiver back and picked up Mr. Acarius’s dressing gown. “Now put this on and be ready to meet her. We’ll take care of the rest of it. We’ll have to work fast because Goldie’s going to catch on as soon as she hears the elevator.”

It did go fast. Mr. Acarius in his dressing gown was barely on his feet and Miller was scarcely out of the room, when he heard the elevator stop, followed by a hard rapid clatter of female heels in the corridor. Then the next moment his room seemed to be full of people: the brassy, slightly buxom slightly faded girl whom he had left screaming in the foyer, running in and flinging herself upon him shrieking, “Darling! Darling!” with Miller and another man in pajamas and robe on her heels—an older man of at least sixty, with no actor’s face this time because Shriner’s conventions and nightclubs and the first-night lobbies of musical comedies were full of it—and last of all, the nurse and the elevator attendant, Mr. Acarius watching in horror the brassy girl now hissing viciously: “Hurry, you bastards, hurry!” holding the fur coat open while Miller and the other man tore savagely at the front of her dress until it fell open and revealed a half-pint bottle tucked into each lobe of her brassiere. Then the room was empty again, as suddenly and violently as it had filled, though not for long; indeed, to Mr.
Acarius it seemed almost simultaneous, superposed: The uproar still fading up the corridor, the older patient’s voice still raised in adjuration at the nurse or whoever it was who had finally got the two bottles, when the heels clattered again, the brassy girl entering this time at a dead run, snatching the front of her dress and slip into a wad at her middle and revealing a third bottle, a full pint this time, taped high between her running legs, running to Mr. Acarius and crying down at him: “Grab it! Grab it!” then, while Mr. Acarius, incapable of moving, merely stared, ripping the bottle free herself and thrusting it into the chair behind him and turning already smoothing her skirt over her hips as the nurse entered, saying to the nurse haughtily, in a voice of a princess or a queen: “Have the goodness not to touch me again.”

And he still crouched there, weak and trembling, while the uproar really did die away; he was still there perhaps ten minutes later when Miller, followed by the older man, entered. “Good work,” Miller said. “Where is it?” Mr. Acarius made a weak gesture. Miller reached behind him and extracted a pint of whiskey.

“Did you ever see a dream … walking,” the older man said.

“Oh yes,” Miller said. “This is Watkins.”

“Did you ever hear a dream … talking,” Watkins said. “The best place to hide it is here.”

“Right.” Miller said. “The geranium too.”

“Go and get it,” Watkins said. Miller went out. Watkins carried the pint bottle to Mr. Acarius’s bed and thrust it beneath the covers at the foot. “And the dream that is walking and talking,” Watkins said. “This your first visit here?”

“Yes,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“You’ll get used to it,” Watkins said, “…  is you,” he said. Miller returned, carrying a potted geranium under his dressing gown, and a folded newspaper which he spread on the floor and then dumped the plant and its nurturing earth from the pot onto the paper, revealing another pint bottle.

“That puts us in pretty good shape,” Miller said. “We may not have to use your suit, after all.”

“My suit?” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“The fire escape goes down just outside my window,” Miller said, folding the refuse of the geranium into the paper. “Last week
Watkins got hold of the key long enough to unlock the window. I’ve still got my shoes and shirt, but we didn’t have any pants. But we’re fixed now. In an emergency, one of us can climb down the fire escape and go down to the corner and get a bottle. But we won’t need to now. We won’t even need to risk changing the charts tonight,” he said to Watkins.

“Maybe not,” Watkins said, brushing the earth from the bottle, “Get a glass from the bathroom.”

“Maybe we ought to put this back into the pot,” Miller said, raising the folded paper.

“Put it all in the wastebasket,” Watkins said. Miller dumped the paper containing the ruined geranium into Mr. Acarius’s wastebasket and dropped the empty pot on top of it and went into the bathroom and returned with an empty tumbler. Watkins had already opened the bottle. He poured a drink into the tumbler and drank it. “Give him one too,” he said. “He deserves it.”

“No,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“Better have one,” Miller said. “You don’t look too good.”

“No,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“You want me to send Goldie back with that bromide she tried to give you?”

“No,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“Let the man alone,” Watkins said. “This is still America, even in here. He don’t have to drink if he don’t want to. Hide this one good too.”

“Right,” Miller said.

“Did you ever see a dream … walking,” Watkins said.

And still Mr. Acarius crouched. After a while an orderly brought him a tray of supper; he sat looking at the food quietly, as though it contained poison. The nurse entered, again with the tray. This time it bore, in addition to the water, a small glass of whiskey.

“You’ve got to eat,” she said. “Maybe this will give you an appetite.”

“No,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“Come on now,” the nurse said. “You must try to cooperate.”

“I can’t,” Mr. Acarius whispered.

“OK,” the nurse said. “But you must eat some of it, or I’ll have to tell Doctor Hill on you.”

So he tried, chewing down a little of the food anyway; presently the orderly came and removed the tray; immediately after that Miller entered rapidly and removed one of the bottles, the one Watkins had opened, from Mr. Acarius’s bed. “We appreciate this,” Miller said. “Sure you won’t have one?”

“No,” Mr. Acarius whispered. Then he could crouch again, hearing the slow accumulation of the cloistral evening. He could see the corridor beyond his door. Occasionally other men in pajamas and dressing gowns passed; they seemed to be congregating toward another lighted door up the corridor; even as he knotted the cord of his robe he could hear the unmistakable voice: “Did you ever see a dream … walking,” then, creeping nearer, he could see inside the office or dispensary or whatever it was—a cabinet, open, the keys dangling on a ring from the lock, the nurse measuring whiskey from a brown unlabeled bottle in turn into the small glasses in the hands of the assembled devotees. “Did you ever hear a dream … talking,” Watkins said.

“That’s right,” Miller said to him in a friendly voice. “Better take it while you can. It’s going to be a long dry spell after Goldie goes off at midnight.”

But that was not what Mr. Acarius wanted; alone with the nurse at last, he said so. “It’s a little early to go to bed yet, isn’t it?” the nurse said.

“I’ve got to sleep,” Mr. Acarius said. “I’ve got to.”

“All right,” the nurse said. “Go get in bed and I’ll bring it to you.”

He did so, swallowed the capsule and then lay, the hidden bottle cold against his feet, though it would warm in time or perhaps in time, soon even, he would not care, though he didn’t see how, how ever to sleep again; he didn’t know how late it was, though that would not matter either: to call his doctor now, have the nurse call him, to come and get him, take him away into safety, sanity, falling suddenly from no peace into something without peace either, into a loud crash from somewhere up the corridor. It was late, he could feel it. The overhead light was off now, though a single shaded one burned beside the bed, and now there were feet in the corridor, running; Watkins and Miller entered. Watkins wore a woman’s jade-colored raincoat, from the front of which protruded or dangled a single broken-stemmed tuberose; his head was bound in a
crimson silk scarf like a nun’s wimple. Miller was carrying the same brown unlabeled bottle which Mr. Acarius had seen the nurse lock back inside the cabinet two or three hours or whatever it was ago, which he was trying to thrust into Mr. Acarius’s bed when there entered a nurse whom Mr. Acarius knew at once must be the new and dreaded one: an older woman in awry pince-nez, crying: “Give it back to me! Give it back to me!” She cried to Mr. Acarius: “I had the cabinet unlocked and was reaching down the bottle when one of them knocked my cap off and when I caught at it, one of them reached over my head and grabbed the bottle!”

“Then give me back that bottle of mine you stole out of my flush tank,” Miller said.

“I poured it out,” the nurse cried in triumph.

“But you had no right to,” Miller said. “That was mine. I bought it myself, brought it in here with me. It didn’t belong to the hospital at all and you had no right to put your hand on it.”

“We’ll let Doctor Hill decide that,” the nurse said. She snatched up the brown unlabeled bottle and went out.

“You bet we will,” Miller said, following.

“Did you ever hear a dream … talking,” Watkins said. “Move your feet,” he said, reaching into Mr. Acarius’s bed and extracting the unopened bottle. Mr. Acarius did not move, he could not, while Watkins opened the bottle and drank from it. From up the corridor there still came the sound of Miller’s moral indignation; presently Miller entered.

“She wouldn’t let me use the telephone,” he said. “She’s sitting on it. We’ll have to go upstairs and wake him up.”

“She has no sense of humor,” Watkins said. “Better kill this before she finds it too.” They drank rapidly in turn from the bottle. “We’ll have to have more liquor now. We’ll have to get the keys away from her.”

“How?” Miller said.

“Trip her up. Grab them.”

“That’s risky.”

“Not unless she hits her head on something. Get her out into the corridor first, where there’s plenty of room.”

“Let’s go upstairs and wake up Hill first,” Miller said. “I’m damned if I’m going to let them get away with anything as highhanded as this.”

“Right,” Watkins said, emptying the bottle and dropping it into Mr. Acarius’s wastebasket. Then Mr. Acarius was alone again—if he had ever been else, since there was no time to telephone anyone now, no one to telephone to: who was as isolate from help and aid here as if he had waked on an inaccessible and forgotten plateau of dinosaurs, where only beast might be rallied to protect beast from beast; he remembered in the group armed with the small ritual glasses at the dispensary one who looked like a truck driver or perhaps even a prize fighter; he might do to help, provided he was awake, though it was incredible to Mr. Acarius that anyone on the floor could still be asleep; certainly not now because at this moment there came through the ceiling overhead the sound of Doctor Hill’s voice roaring with rage, Mr. Acarius lying in a kind of suffering which was almost peaceful, thinking, Yes, yes, we will save her life and then I will get out of here, I don’t care how, I don’t care where; still lying so while Doctor Hill’s voice reached its final crescendo, followed by a curious faint sound which Mr. Acarius could define only as a suspended one: then one last thundering crash.

He was off the bed now; the nurse and an orderly running, had already shown the way: A door in the corridor which, open now, revealed a flight of concrete stairs, at the foot of which lay Watkins. He looked indeed like a corpse now. In fact, he looked more than just dead: he looked at peace, his eyes closed, one arm flung across his breast so that the lax hand seemed to clasp lightly the broken stem of the tuberose. “That’s right!” Mr. Acarius cried, “tremble! You only hope he is!”

Miller had said he put the suit behind the tub; it was there, wadded. Mr. Acarius had no shirt save his pajama jacket nor shoes save his carpet slippers. Nor did he have any idea where Miller’s room with its unlocked window on the fire escape was either. But he did not hesitate. I’ve done what I can, he thought. Let the Lord provide awhile.