“It looks like he just can’t get caught up.
I think he is asleep again and I lay him down and then he hollers and I have to put him back again.”
“You ought not to be here alone,” he says. He looks about the room. “Where—”
“She’s gone, too.
To town.
She didn’t say, but that’s where she has gone.
He slipped out, and when she woke up she asked me where he was and I told her he went out, and she followed him.”
“To town?
Slipped out?” Then he says “Oh” quietly. His face is grave now.
“She watched him all day.
And he was watching her.
I could tell it.
He was making out like he was asleep.
She thought that he was asleep.
And so after dinner she gave out.
She hadn’t rested any last night, and after dinner she set in the chair and dozed.
And he was watching her, and he got up from the other cot, careful, winking and squinching his face at me.
He went to the door, still winking and squinting back at me over his shoulder, and tiptoed out.
And I never tried to stop him nor wake her, neither.” She looks at Hightower, her eyes grave, wide. “I was scared to.
He talks funny.
And the way he was looking at me.
Like all the winking and squinching was not for me to not wake her up, but to tell me what would happen to me if I did.
And I was scared to.
And so I laid here with the baby and pretty soon she jerked awake.
And then I knew she hadn’t aimed to go to sleep.
It was like she come awake already running to the cot where he had been, touching it like she couldn’t believe he had done got away.
Because she stood there at the cot, pawing at the blanket like maybe she thought he was mislaid inside the blanket somewhere.
And then she looked at me, once.
And she wasn’t winking and squinting, but I nigh wished she was.
And she asked me and I told her and she put on her hat and went out.” She looks at Hightower. “I’m glad she’s gone.
I reckon I ought not to say it, after all she done for me.
But …”
Hightower stands over the cot.
He does not seem to see her.
His face is very grave; it is almost as though it had grown ten years older while he stood there.
Or like his face looks now as it should look and that when he entered the room, it had been a stranger to itself.
“To town,” he says.
Then his eyes wake, seeing again. “Well.
It can’t be helped now,” he says. “Besides, the men downtown, the sane ... there will be a few of them. ...
Why are you glad they are gone?”
She looks down.
Her hand moves about the baby’s head, not touching it: a gesture instinctive, unneeded, apparently unconscious of itself.
“She has been kind.
More than kind.
Holding the baby so I could rest.
She wants to hold him all the time, setting there in that chair— You’ll have to excuse me.
I ain’t once invited you to set” She watches him as he draws the chair up to the cot and sits down. “...
Setting there where she could watch him on the cot, making out that he was asleep.” She looks at Hightower; her eyes are questioning, intent. “She keeps on calling him Joey.
When his name ain’t Joey.
And she keeps on ...” She watches Hightower. Her eyes are puzzled now, questioning, doubtful. “She keeps on talking about— She is mixed up someway.