John Toole - The Neon Bible

"It's the cold breeze, hon. Always makes my eyes water."

We waited there for what seemed a whole hour before the bus came. Then I heard it roaring somewhere far away, and I went out into the street to make a sign at the driver when he got near. It stopped about a block away. I picked up the suitcase, and we both ran to where the driver was opening the door. Aunt Mae got up on the first step and then got down again and kissed me, and I kissed her. I wanted to tell her not to go, but I handed her the suitcase, and the door closed. Somewhere in the dark inside I saw her waving at me. I waved back and smiled. Then the engine started and it pulled away. The bad smell of a bus got in my nose, so I stepped back on the sidewalk and watched it till it was gone around the far hill, and that was the last time I saw Aunt Mae.

It was getting dark when I got back to the house. All the way up the path I thought of how long it would be until I got the tickets from Aunt Mae and what we would do until they came. The wind was really up strong now. It was cold too, and when I got near the house I began to run. I closed my eyes because I knew the path by heart and didn't open them again until I felt the cinders crunching under my feet.

When I got into the house I closed all the windows because the wind was blowing through every room like it was the outdoors. I lit the old stove in the kitchen and opened a can of corn and put it in a pot. Then I wondered where Mother was. I opened the back door and called out into the wind, but then I remembered she never answered a call from somebody, and anyway, she always came inside when it was dark. The dark scared her.

She was probably upstairs, so I didn't think about it. When the corn was hot, I poured it in a plate and put some butter on it and got some bread and ate. The wind whistled around the corner of the kitchen, and I heard the pines in Poppa's clearing slapping each other with that sort of swishing sound they made. I could see the hill in the morning with needles and small branches everywhere and leaves from the bushes pressed up against everything. The cinders would be all covered with green things from all over, and the little animals would be acting wild. The wind always made them that way.

When I finished, I put the plate in the sink with all the other dishes. I looked at all the greasy plates and glasses, and I thought of how I was going to have to wash them all and wished Aunt Mae didn't take too long to write about the tickets. Then I stood there and thought how she just went off and didn't think about me taking Mother on a train, and I thought of leaving the valley. I was going to leave the valley for the first time, but Aunt Mae never told me anything about what to do about the things we had in the house, and there were a lot of other things you had to do before you could just pick up and move, and I didn't know where to write her a letter about what I was supposed to do. I looked up at the old greasy bulb on the cord. It never seemed to burn out, but it was the one we used all the time. I never remembered seeing anybody change it. And I thought that I was really alone with Mother like that bulb hanging from a cord it couldn't get off of.

As I went into the hall, the wind pulled the front door open and slammed it again. I felt the cold breeze blow past me on its way back to the kitchen. I had put a little latch on the door to lock it at night because there were a few more people around in the hills with all the new houses, and I went over and tried to hook it, but a screw was loose or something and it wouldn't work, so I just hoped the wind didn't get in again.

The stairs were all worn so that you had to put your feet where everybody else put theirs when they went up. Every step had two spots, both along the side, where the wood was about an inch lower than it was in the middle and at the end of the steps. Sometimes to be different I'd walk right up the center of the steps where nobody ever did. I did that now. I walked right in the middle where the wood looked like it was new. There were sixteen steps up to the top floor. I counted them as I walked up. Thirteen. Fourteen. I wondered what I was going to do around the house waiting for a letter from Aunt Mae. There wasn't anybody to talk to, and I never had read books like Mr. Farney said people should learn to so they could make themselves smarter and have something good for when they were lonely and didn't know what to do with themselves. Fifteen. There was something wet on the step right in a puddle in one of the worn places on the side. In the dark I couldn't see too well, but there was a little light from down in the kitchen, and I could see it wasn't water. It was too thick and dark. There was some more on the top step too, so I put my hand in it and rubbed it between my fingers, but I didn't know what it was. It looked sort of brown in the dimness.

I got to the top and started down the hall, but I stumbled over something that felt hard against my shoe. I stopped and tried to see what it was, but I couldn't make out anything in the dark, so I felt my way over to the lightbulb we had on the wall. When I pulled the cord and looked around, I saw something that I didn't think was real. Mother was laying out in the hall with blood coming out her mouth. It had flowed over to the steps because that was the way the floor leaned, and that was what I had felt in my hand. I looked at my hand. Blood was stuck in the cracks in my fingers and was starting to get dry where it was thin. I wiped my hands on my pants and went over to where she was. Just looking at her made me scared. I thought she was dead, but when I got down and touched her arm it was still warm, and I could hear her breathing loud. The blood was getting all stuck in her hair and was making a little shallow pool around her. I put my hand over her mouth to try and stop more from coming out, but when I took my hand away after a while, all that I had been holding in poured out all at once and made a little wave down the side of her face and neck and made the border of the pool on the floor get wider.

My mind couldn't seem to tell me what to do. I thought I felt my chin start to go in like it did when I was little, but I knew I was too old to cry. What I had to do was to try to think what I was supposed to do with her like that. Somewhere I had heard you shouldn't move people who were like that, but I couldn't let her stay on the floor because it was getting cold. I bent down near her face and began saying, "Mother, Mother," but she didn't move, so I put my hands under her, one by her back and one by her legs, and I carried her into the room where she slept. Mother was so skinny and her skin was so stretched-looking, but she was heavy, and once I was worried I was going to drop her. All the way into the room blood dripped from her dress and kept pouring from her mouth. Her hair was hanging down, and it was all white near her head, but it was red where it was in the pool on the floor, and blood dripped off the ends of it too.

I put her on the bed and put an old blanket over her mouth so it would soak up the blood. After I did this, I sat down on the edge of the bed and I poked at her. Her arm was right next to me, so I ran my hand along it and took her hand and held it. I wondered what was wrong. This was the first time I thought about it long enough to wonder. Blood coming out of her mouth. I rocked the bed a little bit and called her name, but she didn't answer. The wind just kept blowing around the house, and the front door slammed hard again and sounded far off.

Now I was afraid, and I didn't know what to do. Where could I get a doctor, and what would I pay him with? We needed the money I had in the house to eat. Doctors were expensive, especially for something like this that looked like it would cost a lot. We never did have a doctor up at the house, and I didn't know where to get one. I thought maybe if I kept Mother quiet, she would be better in the morning. The blood had stopped flowing, so that looked better, but it was all over the bed now, and it was starting to get sticky on the sheet. I went and got a wet rag and wiped her face and neck and got all the blood off that wasn't too stuck.