THE SPECTRE
27
clustered about it. There was even a little smile on her face. And she
was dead. We knew that, the doc, Laurie and
I.
And lest Florie should
lind it out we sent her off to sleep. She departed quietly, with a weary,
worried look in her large eyes.
I
looked about the wretched room. Overhead the wallpaper was
rusty with the in-seeping rain of past years. Dreary, comfortless fur–
niture. The doc seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the dead child's
face. At last he turned to Laurie. "Where's your dad," he asked.
Laurie said not a word. He picked up and lit a lantern, then led us
to the barn. The doc entered.
I
followed with Laurie coming behind.
In the barn, before its stall, lay the milk-cow, Jenny. The vet was in the
act of putting his instrument into a black bag.
"Good thing you called me when you did," the vet said. "She'll be
okay in a day or two." The woman caught sight of us standing in the
doorway. Her hand went up to strangle the sob that stabbed at her throat.
"Naomi!'' she cried.
"Dead," said the doc tersely. Dry, racking sobs shook her body with
almost unbelievable intensity. The farmer took the iantern from her hand.
"My baby," she moaned. And over and over again. "l\1y baby."
Slowly the farmer set a pail rightside up, straightened a blanket. The
very pettiness of his actions drove the words from my lips in a raging
torrent.
"Do you know what the doctor said?"
I
demanded. "That if he'd
been called half an hour earlier he'd have saved her. Do you understand
that? You stayed with a cow and sent your wife after a veterinary when
your little girl lay dying! Why didn't one of you go for the doc instead of
Laurie? Did you expect him to be able to hurry on that leg of his?"
The farmer looked at me. He'd never seen me before, yet he asked no
questions. He led the way back into house. We followed, through the
big room and into the adjoining one. "There are six other kids," he said,
"not counting--Naomi. They got to be fed. There's no irrigation and
only one cow. We sell the milk," he added and slowly went
back
into
the barn.
Laurie sat at the foot of the bed. His brother's book lay beside him.
I
went outside. There was nothing to say, nothing. Or so
I
thought until,
on the way to the road,
I
passed the open kitchen window. Now Laurie
should have been crying. This is not unreasonable. When a kid sister
dies a fellow doesn't read. He cries. But Laurie wasn't crying. He was
reading. The smile was still on Naomi's face and she seemed to listen as
Laurie said, from his brother's book:
"A spectre is haunting Europe and California and Wheatpatch, the
spectre of Communism."
He had misquoted Marx but
I
could find nothing wrong with it.
