The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [84]
She was on her knees, face downward in the dirt, the tails of her coat parted over the broad, worn seat of her britches and her boots toed in like a child’s, so stripped of her humanity, so defeated—Moses remembered the earnest notes of her voice—in her attempt to enjoy the early summer day, that he felt a flash of repugnance. Then he went to her and more out of consideration for his own feelings than anything else—more out of his desire to return to her the form of a woman than to save her life—he straightened out her legs and she rolled with a thump onto her back. He rolled up his coat and put it under her head. A cut in her forehead, over the eye, was bleeding and Moses got some water and washed the cut, pleased to be occupied. She was breathing, he noticed, but this exhausted his medical knowledge. He knelt beside her wondering in what form and when help would come. He lighted a cigarette and looked at the stranger’s face—pasty and round and worn it seemed with such anxieties as cooking, catching trains and buying useful presents at Christmas. It was a face that seemed to state its history plainly—she was one of two sisters, she had no children, she could be inflexible about neatness and she probably collected glass animals or English coffee cups in a small way. Then he heard hoofs and leather and her bereaved husband bore down in a cloud of dust. “There’s nobody at the farm. I’ve wasted so much time. She ought to be in an oxygen tent. She probably needs a blood transfusion. We’ve got to get an ambulance.” Then he knelt down beside her and put his head on her breast, crying, “Oh my darling, my love, my sweet, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.”
Then Moses ran up the path to his car and, driving it a little way through the woods, he got it onto the loose dirt of the bridle path where the man still knelt by his wife. Then, opening the door, they managed together to lift her into the car. He started back for the road, the wheels of the car spinning in the loose dirt, but he was able to keep it moving and was cheered when they got onto the black-top road. There were choking and grunting sounds of grief from the back seat. “She’s dying, she’s dying,” the stranger sobbed. “If she lives I’ll repay you. Money is no consideration. Please hurry.”
“You know you both seem pretty old for horseback riding,” Moses said.
He knew there was a hospital in the next village and he made good time until he got stuck, on the narrow road, behind a slow-moving truck loaded with live chickens. Moses blew his horn but this only made the truck driver more predatory and how could Moses communicate to him that the thread of a woman’s life might depend on his consideration? He passed the truck at the crown of a hill but this only excited the driver’s malevolence and, roaring downhill, his chicken crates swaying wildly from side to side, he tried, unsuccessfully, to repass Moses. They had come down at last into the leafy streets of the village and the road to the hospital. Many people were walking at the side of the road and then Moses saw signs nailed to the trees advertising a hospital lawn party. They were out of luck. The hospital was surrounded by the booths, lights and music of a country fair.