“Now, now.
Now, now.
Here, take your drink.
This one’s on me.
I aint going to let no girl of Popeye’s—”
“I dont want anymore,” Temple said.
“Now, now,” Miss Reba said.
“Drink it and you’ll feel better.”
She lifted Temple’s head.
Temple clutched the covers to her throat.
Miss Reba held the glass to her lips. She gulped it, writhed down again, clutching the covers about her, her eyes wide and black above the covers.
“I bet you got that towel disarranged,” Miss Reba said, putting her hand on the covers.
“No,” Temple whispered.
“It’s all right.
It’s still there.”
She shrank, cringing; they could see the cringing of her legs beneath the covers.
“Did you get Dr Quinn, Minnie?” Miss Reba said.
“Yessum.”
Minnie was filling the tankard from the bottle, a dull frosting pacing the rise of liquor within the metal.
“He say he dont make no Sunday afternoon calls.”
“Did you tell him who wanted him?
Did you tell him Miss Reba wanted him?”
“Yessum.
He say he dont—”
“You go back and tell that suh—You tell him I’ll— No; wait.”
She rose heavily. “Sending a message like that back to me, that can put him in jail three times over.”
She waddled toward the door, the dogs crowding about the felt slippers.
The maid followed and closed the door.
Temple could hear Miss Reba cursing the dogs as she descended the stairs with terrific slowness.
The sounds died away.
The shades blew steadily in the windows, with faint rasping sounds.
Temple began to hear a clock. It sat on the mantel above a grate filled with fluted green paper.
The clock was of flowered china, supported by four china nymphs.
It had only one hand, scrolled and gilded, halfway between ten and eleven, lending to the otherwise blank face a quality of unequivocal assertion, as though it had nothing whatever to do with time.
Temple rose from the bed.
Holding the towel about her she stole toward the door, her ears acute, her eyes a little blind with the strain of listening.
It was twilight; in a dim mirror, a pellucid oblong of dusk set on end, she had a glimpse of herself like a thin ghost, a pale shadow moving in the uttermost profundity of shadow.
She reached the door.
At once she began to hear a hundred conflicting sounds in a single converging threat and she clawed furiously at the door until she found the bolt, dropping the towel to drive it home.
Then she caught up the towel, her face averted, and ran back and sprang into the bed and clawed the covers to her chin and lay there, listening to the secret whisper of her blood.
They knocked at the door for some time before she made any sound.
“It’s the doctor, honey,” Miss Reba panted harshly.
“Come on, now.
Be a good girl.”
“I cant,” Temple said, her voice faint and small.
“I’m in bed.”
“Come on, now.
He wants to fix you up.” She panted harshly.
“My God, if I could just get one full breath again.
I aint had a full breath since.……” Low down beyond the door Temple could hear the dogs.