Ironweed - William Kennedy [85]
“He got hit in the head,” Francis said. “He can’t walk.”
“What happened?” the nurse asked, inspecting Rudy’s eyes.
“Some guy down on Madison Avenue went nuts and hit him with a brick. You got a doctor can help him?”
“We’ll get a doctor. He’s been drinking.”
“That ain’t his problem. He’s got a stomach cancer too, but what ails him right now is his head. He got rocked all to hell, I’m tellin’ you, and it wasn’t none of his fault.”
The nurse went to the phone and dialed and talked softly.
“How you makin’ it, pal?” Francis asked.
Rudy smiled and gave Francis a glazed look and said nothing. Francis patted him on the shoulder and sat down on a chair beside him to rest. He saw his own image in the mirror door of a cabinet against the wall. His bow tie was all cockeyed and his shirt and coat were spattered with blood where he had dripped before he knew he was cut. His face was smudged and his clothes were covered with dirt. He straightened the tie and brushed off a bit of the dirt.
After a second phone call and a conversation that Francis was about to interrupt to tell her to get goddamn busy with Rudy, the nurse came back. She took Rudy’s pulse, went for a stethoscope, and listened to his heart. Then she told Francis Rudy was dead. Francis stood up and looked at his friend’s face and saw the smile still there. Where the wind don’t blow.
“What was his name?” the nurse asked. She picked up a pencil and a hospital form on a clipboard.
Francis could only stare into Rudy’s glassy-eyed smile. Isaac Newton of the apple was born of two midwives.
“Sir, what was his name?” the nurse said.
“Name was Rudy.”
“Rudy what?”
“Rudy Newton,” Francis said. “He knew where the Milky Way was.”
o o o
It would be three-fifteen by the clock on the First Church when Francis headed south toward Palombo’s Hotel to get out of the cold, to stretch out with Helen and try to think about what had happened and what he should do about it. He would walk past Palombo’s night man on the landing, salute him, and climb the stairs to the room he and Helen always shared in this dump. Looking at the hallway dirt and the ratty carpet as he walked down the hall, he would remind himself that this was luxury for him and Helen. He would see the light coming out from under the door, but he would knock anyway to make sure he had Helen’s room. When he got no answer he would open the door and discover Helen on the floor in her kimono.
He would enter the room and close the door and stand looking at her for a long time. Her hair would be loose, and fanned out, and pretty.
He would, after a while, think of lifting her onto the bed, but decide there was no point in that, for she looked right and comfortable just as she was. She looked as if she were sleeping.
He would sit in the chair looking at her for an amount of time he later would not be able to calculate, and he would decide that he had made a right decision in not moving her.
For she was not crooked.
He would look in the open suitcase and would find his old clippings and put them in his inside coat pocket. He would find his razor and his penknife and Helen’s rhinestone butterfly, and he would put these in his coat pockets also. In her coat hanging in the closet he would find her three dollars and thirty-five cents and he would put that in his pants pocket, still wondering where she got it. He would remember the two dollars he left for her and that she would never get now, nor would he, and he would think of it as a tip for old Donovan. Helen says thank you.
He would then sit on the bed and look at Helen from a different angle. He would be able to see her eyes were closed and he would remember how vividly green they were in life, those gorgeous emeralds. He would hear the women talking together behind him as he tried to peer beyond Helen’s sheltered eyes.
Too late now, the women would say. Too late now to see any deeper into Helen’s soul. But he would continue to stare, mindful of the phonograph record propped against the pillow; and he would know the song she’d bought, or stole. It would be