I woke up a little after nine the next morning.
My mouth was sticky and my throat dry from the morphine--I don't know why he hadn't used hyoscin like any damned fool should have--and all I could think of right then was how thirsty I was.
I stood in the bathroom, gulping down glass after glass of water, and pretty soon it began to bounce on me. (I'm telling you almost "anything" is better than morphine.) But after a while it stopped. I drank a couple glasses more, and they stayed down. And I scrubbed my face in hot and cold water, and combed my hair.
Then I went back and sat down on the bed, wondering who'd undressed me; and all at once it hit me. Not about her. I wouldn't think about that. But--well, this.
I shouldn't have been alone. Your friends don't leave you alone at a time like that. I'd lost the girl I was going to marry, and I'd been through a terrible experience. And they'd left me alone. There wasn't anyone around to comfort me, or wait on me or just sit and shake their heads and say it was God's will and she was happy, and I--a man that's been through something like that needs those things. He needs all the help and comfort he can get, and I've never held back when one of my friends was bereaved. Why, hell, I--a man isn't himself when one of these disasters strikes. He might do something to himself, and the least people can do is have a nurse around. And...
But there wasn't any nurse around. I got up and looked through the other bedrooms, just to make sure.
And I wasn't doing anything to myself. They'd never done anything for me, and I wasn't doing anything for them.
I went downstairs and... and the kitchen had been cleaned up. There was no one there but me. I started to make some coffee, and then I thought I heard someone out in front, someone cough. And I was so all-fired glad I felt the tears come to my eyes. I turned off the coffee and went to the front door and opened it.
Jeff Plummer was sitting on the steps.
He was sitting sideways, his back to a porch post. He slanted a glance at me, then let his eyes go straight again, without turning his head.
"Gosh, Jeff," I said. "How long you been out here? Why didn't you knock?"
"Been here quite a spell," he said. And he fingered a stick of gum from his shirt pocket and began to unwrap it. "Yes, sir, I been here quite a spell."
"Well, come on in! I was just--"
"Kinda like it where I am," he said. "Air smells real good. Been smellin' real good, anyways."
He put the gum in his mouth. He folded the wrapper into a neat little square and tucked in back into his pocket.
"Yes, sir," he said, "it's been smellin' real good, and that's a fact."
I felt like I was nailed there in the doorway. I had to stand there and wait, watch his jaws move on that gum, look at him not looking at me. Never looking at me.
"Has there... hasn't anyone been--?"
"Told 'em you wasn't up to it," he said. "Told 'em you was all broke up about Bob Maples."
"Well, I--"Bob?""
"Shot hisself around midnight last night. Yes, sir, pore ol' Bob killed hisself, and I reckon he had to. I reckon I know just how he felt."
And he still didn't look at me.
I closed the door.
I leaned against it, my eyes aching, my head pounding; and I ticked them off with the pounding that reached from my head to my heart... Joyce, Elmer, Johnnie Pappas, Amy, the... Him, Bob Maples.... But he hadn't known anything! He couldn't have known, had any real proof. He'd just jumped to conclusions like they were jumping. He couldn't wait for me to explain like, hell, I'd've been glad to do. Hadn't I always been glad to explain? But he couldn't wait; he'd made up his mind without any proof, like they'd made up theirs.
