“Sure,” he grunted sleepily. “You’ll find a couple of blankets in that
box yonder. You can lay right here if you ain’t afraid of sleepin’ on
the ground.”
I unfolded the blankets and had hardly touched them before oblivion
seized my senses. From this sleep I was wakened by a kick in the ribs.
“Get up!” Frank was yelling at me, “and beat it to a doctor.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, drowsily.
“Bill’s run wild--half crazy with booze.”
Grabbing my coat, which I had been using as a pillow, I stumbled out
into the darkness, but hesitated as an awful cry came from behind me. In
it sounded such unutterable fear that I stopped, shivering.
“Float along!” Frank’s voice had a desperate note in it. “He’s workin’
into a fit again.”
It seemed a long way to the town and my shoes were soon soaked with dew
which afterwards caked into mud as I struck the grey, dusty wraith of
road. Even then, I felt the comfortable security of a dry road in the
cold, wet darkness and appalling silence of late night. By rare luck, I
met a belated traveller who directed me to the doctor’s residence.
After I had pounded on the door until my knuckles were raw, the doctor
finally appeared. When I stated my case, he seemed pleased in a
leisurely way, at the strangeness of it all.
“Hurry, please!” I urged, growing angry. He seized his case and I could
hear the muffled thudding of his feet behind me in the dust of the road.
When we arrived at the stand, Frank came from behind a tree. He was
mopping his face vigorously.
“The old cuss’s crazy!” he groaned. “Go in there once and see.”
Inside of the stand, Bill lay on the blanket that I had vacated. His
eyes, red and blood-shot, glared wildly at us. Like a tired, beaten dog,
he whined in his throat. Then he began to mumble in a rising voice until
it came as a prolonged scream. “Look!” he cried, clutching at the
darkness with his skinny talons. “See, it’s tryin’ to get me. You
devil--!” He fought madly with some invisible horror. His face twisted
into awful lines. Perspiration glistened on his forehead, but his face
was ashen pale. He lay silent for a moment, sobbing. Then, without
warning, his voice rose into a wild scream so full of unfathomed terror
that the doctor looked fearfully about him into the darkness. I felt my
finger nails cutting into my palms. But Bill was subsiding and, at last,
lay in a stupor. The doctor bent over him for a few moments and then
arose. “Delirium Tremens,” he announced, with a gesture of helplessness.
Then he added, “A fool--such a fool.” Encouraged by seeing that we were
listening respectfully to him, he swore with the careful pride of a man
who knows how to swear virtuously.
“Pretty bad, Doc?” Frank asked mildly.
“He’s got a weak heart,” answered the doctor shortly, “probably he won’t
recover from this.”
I suddenly thought of the pretty girl in Peoria who was going to repay
Bill’s kindness at last--but too late. For her, too, life would resolve
itself into darkness.
“Poor little kid,” I murmured, “--and poor old Bill.”
They looked at me questioningly, so I told them about the letter Bill
had received from his adopted daughter. The doctor stalked about in
great sympathy. Frank seemed unmoved. I felt a hot anger against him. He
noted this and grinned.
“So he told you that story too, did he?” Frank spoke in a curious tone.
“He always does that when he’s soused.”
“It wasn’t true?” I exclaimed.
“Oh, he picked up a fool kid from the streets once but she ran away with
a travelling man. When Bill is tight with booze, he’s got it all fixed
up. Poor old devil--she never come back.”
We were silent after that. The far, crystal-clear notes of the
whip-poor-will came to us faintly like the impersonal, haunting presence
of the night, which seemed passively to behold the tragedy of life,
sorrowing at it, but unable to help. The gloom deepened about us and
slowly the lifeless chill of grey dawn wound its tenuous fingers about
us as we sat in the yellow flare of light, stupidly considering the
futile struggles of the broken man lying in our midst.
I was sick with the heaviness of my senses. I remembered the Open Road;
its promise of freedom had led to this--the painted lure of life and
youth was but the mask of wanton death.
And in the east, dawn gathered in a cloudless sky that promised another
hot day.