Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

But if he would not tell her, she must know otherwise how to take care of him. She went to Mr. Weeks, who was the church treasurer. She remembered Netta’s father as a poor man, a mechanic who had moved to the village from elsewhere and opened a small grocery store. Soon he was unaccountably prosperous, enough so to buy the shirt factory at South End, though he had not opened it yet. But they had never bought of him because her mother said they were used to Mr. Winters’ general store. She did not like Peter Weeks because he asked outright what Winters was selling for, and twisted his tight small mouth to say, “I’ll let you have it two cents under his price — anything you want.”

“No, thank you,” she replied coldly. When Mr. Weeks had joined the church and Hannah said, “Reckon we’d oughta buy a little of him now and then,” her mother had replied proudly, “We don’t do that sort of thing.”

She entered the grocery shop, her head high and her heart water within her.

Netta’s father hastened toward her. “Well, well,” he cried, but she would not answer his meager joviality. “Mr. Weeks,” she said directly over the counter, “I’ve come to ask one thing — when does my father have to go?”

“Well, now,” he considered, taken aback. His angular wizened colorless face fell into his conventional shopman’s smile. “You and Netta are old friends — I want to do all I can.”

“It’s not necessary,” she said steadily. “I’ll take care of my father.”

“The fact is,” Mr. Weeks said, moving a cud of tobacco in his cheek, “the old man’s kind of stubborn. Won’t give his resignation.”

“I see,” said Joan.

“We’re waiting for that. Can’t technically close him out before then. The fact is, we’d want to get a new man started as soon as we can, but I’m treasurer and I know we can’t afford any overlapping. Finances in bad shape, but I’m getting things in order—”

“I see,” said Joan. “Then the sooner we go the better.”

“He’d better hand in his resignation, you see, Joan.” He moved his quid. “I don’t want to be hard on him — you and Netta — Say, hear Netta’s going to splice up with Ned Parsons? She was a long time going off, Netta was, but she did well in the end. Ned takes after his pa, I’m glad to say, instead of his ma. He works steady. I’m thinking some of starting up the factory, and if I do I’m going to put Ned in charge — that is, if he goes ahead with Netta.”

“I’m very glad for Netta. Will you tell her? Good-bye.” She forgot Ned and Netta at once.

Across the table at supper when Hannah was gone she said, “Father, let’s do proudly what has to be done. We’ll go to the city — I’ll find a job. And Francis can help. We’ll start again.”

He had been eating rapidly and hungrily. Of late, with all the worry, he had let himself eat more. He often felt faint and he needed strength. Tonight the stew had been unusually good, and the steamed pudding. But Joan was so quick. He stared at her and put his hand to his mouth, and she saw he was sick. She ran to him, but he fended her off with his arm and rose and went out. When after a long time he did not call her, she went to find him. He was in his room and when she called he cried feebly that he was undressing and she could not come. She sat down on a little stool by the door and waited. But the door did not open, and at last she opened it softly. He lay on his back, his folded hands on his breast. His eyes were closed and he was drawing deep breaths, snoring now and then. He had crept into bed without calling her and gone to sleep. She closed the door and went to her own room. He did not want her.

For her there was no sleep. She could not sleep in such uncertainty, in such loneliness. Rose was far away and Francis had written only once. But she remembered Francis, how he had leaped from his bed and dashed for Dr. Crabbe that day. She went to her desk and began to write to Francis. “We must go. You see how it is,” she ended. “We had better come to New York and I could get a job. At any rate, we must get out of this house.”

She sat a while and added, “I have no one to count on but you. And he is your father, too.”

She sealed and stamped the letter and lay down in her bed, listening, to fall at last into sleep.

She woke with the feeling of a strange sound just heard. She had heard it in deep sleep and waked instantly from old habit with her mother. She lay awake, taut, listening. What was it? The house was very silent. The night was still. Then it came again, a loud choke, a snore, a voice struggling and stifled. She leaped out of bed and ran to the door between his room and hers. But he had locked it. Sometime, without her knowing it, he had locked it so that he might be quite alone. She cried through the panel, “Father — I’m coming—” But he did not answer. There was the door from the hall. She ran down the hall, calling upward to the attic for Hannah as she ran. This door was not locked, thank God! She pushed it open. The room was dark. There was no moon and even through the open window only darkness streamed.

But out of that darkness she heard his strange breathing. She fumbled for the light and heard on the stair Hannah’s stumbling and muttering against the darkness.

“Hannah!” she cried. “Go and get Dr. Crabbe. Something’s wrong with Father!”

Hannah’s voice grated through the darkness. “He’s overeaten. He’s always held back, but last night he kind of let go and ate. I noticed him on the pudding.” She reached the door as Joan found the switch. The light flashed down upon the bed, upon him. They stared at him in the instant together. He lay stiffly, his arms flung into a shape of agony. His mouth was twisted, across his jaws and pinned there; held by invisibly crooked muscles. His eyes were dim, half-open. His usually snow-pale face was strained with purple—

“My soul and body!” whispered Hannah. “It’s a stroke!” She turned and padded away …

This figure on the bed did not stir. She was afraid of him — so strange, so twisted. She lifted his hand to place it nearer his body in a more easy pose and the arm was stiff. She could not move it. A dribble of saliva ran from the loose corner of his mouth and she lifted the sheet and wiped it away, sickened. “Father, Father!” she cried. But he neither saw nor heard. He was absorbed in the heavy breath he drew.

And then, as she stood there alone with him, the breathing stopped. At one instant the breath came, deep and thick, roughened, grating, like something dragging harshly over a rocky road. Then it stopped. Even as she stood, crying to him, it stopped. She waited, in terror, for it to begin again. But the strange purple faded out of his face, gravity fell upon his crooked mouth, and the twisting left his flung limbs. The body seemed to relax, to curl, to shrink. The breath was finished. She turned away and ran — ran down the stairs, calling, “Hannah, Hannah!”

The front door opened and Dr. Crabbe was there, his overcoat over his striped pajamas, his hair a fringe of tangle about his baldness. “Father’s gone — he’s gone!” She shrieked at him as though she were a little girl. “Oh, Dr. Crabbe — oh, what shall I do!” She began suddenly to cry aloud.

He lumbered up the stairs, and she followed behind him, and Hannah behind her, a frenzied procession. She could not keep from sobbing, every breath arose a sob. She felt weak with sobbing. They were by him but he had not moved. There he lay, just as she had left him, Dr. Crabbe lifted his arm. It lay limp in his grasp and he put it down gently. Hannah began to sniffle. “It was a stroke, wasn’t it, Doctor? He always kept himself starved and last night he took three helpings of my dried fig pudding and the hard sauce. I was that surprised, beside all else he’d eaten—”