“I am.”
“Not no more,” he said, kicking at the ground. “Not no damn more.”
He walked away, his shoulders simian and his back humped, his brow furrowed under his fedora, like a modern-day Quasimodo in search of cathedral bells.
Chapter Twenty
THAT AFTERNOON JO Anne and I took flowers to Moon Child at the hospital. Her condition was unchanged. There had been no visitors, no telephone inquiries. In fact, no one knew her real name. The clipboard attached to the bed frame identified the occupant as “M. Child.” She was in the ICU, so she could not have flowers in the room. We left them at the nurse’s desk. We were on our way out when the nurse on duty called us back to her desk. She was an older woman and had an erect posture and bluish-gray hair. No one else was around.
“I know you,” she said to me. “The last name is Broussard.”
“That’s right.”
“I was in the ER when you came in. You had been severely beaten.”
I didn’t remember her, but I said I did.
“I belong to a church that has rather strict boundaries about certain things,” she said.
“I don’t know if I’m following you, ma’am,” I said.
“My religion teaches that the deliberate denial of information to a person who should have access to it is the same as a lie.”
“I understand,” I said. “But I don’t know how that fits in with my presence here.”
“Rueben Vickers attacked you,” she said. “I’ve known him all my life.”
“I see.”
“He was here. He looked in that poor girl’s room. I’m talking about the girl named Child. I asked him what he wanted. He left without speaking.”
“Was his son with him?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Be careful, young man. And you, too, young lady. Rueben Vickers has depths no one should test.”
Jo Anne and I walked back to my car. The sky was dark, the clouds swollen with rain or snow, the Indian summer dying like the leaves on the maple trees. I had a terrible sense of ephemerality, maybe because of the injustice done to Moon Child, or the nurse’s warning about Mr. Vickers, or the fact that there was no way to hold on to the season and prevent the coming of winter.
Jo Anne’s hair was blowing in a skein on her face, causing her to constantly brush it out of her eyes. “Why are you always staring at me like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Get that smile off your face.”
“I stare at you because I don’t want you to get away.”
“I look like I’m fixing to leave town?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Really?”
“Can I ask you something that’s a little private?”
“Depends on what you’re going to ask me.”