Three-four-ex-seven-six-eight! 34x768. I repeated the numbers to
myself, I whispered, sang and chanted them as I ran back toward our
motel. I mustn't forget them; 34x768--34x--
"Pardon me, ma'am, could you tell me how far it is to Riverside?"
"Thirty-four ex seven sixty-eight miles!" I panted, brushing past the
tall soldier who was blocking my path.
I rushed into the office, hunted frantically for a pen, and wrote the
license number down on a registration blank. Then I telephoned the
police department.
I was just hanging up the receiver and mopping the perspiration from my
forehead when Grant returned. Abruptly all my resourcefulness and
courage melted away, and I flung myself howling into his arms.
"A rabbit held me up and took all of our money!" I wailed.
It was about ten minutes before Grant could soothe me to a point where
he could get a coherent explanation of what had happened.
The police caught the terrified thief before he was twenty miles out of
town. When they stopped at the motel so that I could identify him, and
to check on the money which had been stolen, I was busy writing the
story of the holdup for the Banning paper.
Grant, of course, didn't know how much money had been in the drawer;
and I had been in no condition to count the money as I handed it to the
frightened desperado. I didn't know how much had been in the drawer
because Grant's airy carelessness about money, once earned, had led me
to put cash in and take it out from the drawer with as much nonchalance
as his, and as little regard for amount. I was pretty sure, though,
that it was in the neighborhood of sixty dollars that the little man
had taken; and that was the amount they found on him. They gave us a
little advice on keeping better track of the money we took in, which
left me with a momentary glow of triumph, and an excuse for being on
the delivering instead of the receiving end of one of those maddening,
superior, meaningful glances--but I knew that neither the advice nor
the glance would have any effect on Grant.
My career as a part-time newspaper reporter was thriving, and without
my ever finding it necessary to go out looking for news. Highway
accidents, which were an old, old story to us by now, occurred
frequently in front of our motel. It was usually easy for me to get the
names, addresses and ages of the occupants of the involved cars while
the police were asking their routine questions. I simply wrote the
facts, dramatizing them a little, and the editor of the paper accepted
them eagerly.
The frequent wrecks, and the fact that in two of them the cars had come
right off the highway onto our land, made me very glad that the front
of our motel was sixty feet from the highway. A hundred and sixty feet
would have been safer! And after a truck, struck by a car when it was
trying to make a left turn into Moe's restaurant, rammed into the
garage of cabin 16--which corresponded to the children's bedroom on the
other side--I rearranged the furniture in their room, in such a way
that neither David's bed nor Donna's crib was near the side of the wall
that was closest to the highway.
Watering the calendulas and the roses that Oliv Snyder had planted in
front of the office was, I felt, one of the most hazardous jobs
connected with running the motel. The flowers in the tip end of the
rock-enclosed triangle were only about six feet from the edge of the
highway. And six feet from the edge of a highway where busses hurtle
past and trucks roar by and there is no speed limit, and where cars are
continually cutting in and out of traffic to go to the cafe or to the
bar or to one of the motels, and where wrecks are a common occurrence,
is a locality that not even Lloyds of London would care to insure
against anything, at any premium.
But it wasn't only highway accidents as prospective items for the
Banning paper that clamored for my attention. Things happened all the
time, with our motel usually the geographic center. There was the civic
news picked up from gossip around the motel and at meetings of the
motel owners' association. There were the miscellaneous odds and ends
about fires, sicknesses, promotions, and so forth, that drift naturally
through a busy, public place like the office of a motel. And there were
the trivial "personals" so dear to the heart of a country paper editor.
I had developed such a nose for news that I couldn't let any of these
pass by without dashing to the typewriter and slamming out a few
paragraphs about it. If David so much as mentioned that a certain
playmate of his had to hurry home from school because an uncle from
Michigan was coming to visit, I had to find out about it, even if it
meant tracking down the child's parents through his address at school,
and asking them point-blank if they had a visitor--and if so, how about
a few details. At first I fought against this compulsion to track down
every potential however-minor story. But, for hours after I conquered
the urge to follow a certain lead, I would feel a gnawing sense of
guilt, a feeling of having left something unfinished. It was a familiar
feeling; I have experienced it many times after failing to turn back a
page of a magazine to see whether that ad read "You must try
Whippersnapper's Mange Medicine" or "You should try Whippersnapper's
Mange Medicine." I've experienced it after failing to count the exact
number of stairs I climb in a given flight. I always experience it if,
after idly making creases in one side of my skirt, I neglect to make an
equal number of identical creases in the opposite side of my skirt.
Psychologists call it, I believe, a compulsion neurosis.
Whatever it is, I've got it.
I always give in finally and go back to count the stairs, check on the
exact wording of the ad, or belatedly crease my skirt in the required
manner; and I always wind up by tracing the news item to its lair.
Sometimes I wish I had never heard of newspapers.
Tyrone Power had once stayed at the Peacock, and I waited eagerly for
him, or some equally famous personage, to spend a night with us, so
that I would have a really worthwhile story for the paper--one that
would make Banning's citizens sit up and gasp--and, incidentally, give
the Moonrise Motel a little good publicity. I turned over in my mind
the few famous people I had met, wishing I knew them well enough to be
able to write a casual note suggesting that they take a vacation in
Banning. I had interviewed Margaret Lee Runbeck and Rupert Hughes,
before we left Los Angeles, but of course neither of them would
remember. And I had met Dick Powell one Sunday afternoon. I was
introduced to him by Virginia Gregg, a radio actress I was interviewing
who was working with him on that afternoon's broadcast of "The Rogue's
Gallery." Dick Powell, I'm sure, will always remember the day--not
because of meeting me, but because of the fluff he made. Closing the
drama in a narrated summing up of the afternoon's story, he let the
radio audience in on the fact that the villain had been convicted of
"robbery and murdery."
A green coupe drove into our driveway with a swish of gravel. I sighed.
I felt almost too tired to cope with customers. Grant, with his usual
lack of system, had started the big job of washing all the soiled
bedspreads, doilies and dresser scarves--forgetting that he had an
appointment with the dentist in half an hour. Remembering the
appointment just in time to keep it, he left me to finish the job he
had started.
The spreads, scarves and doilies were hanging on the line now. I opened
the office door and walked wearily out toward the green coupe.
The middle-aged driver reached onto the seat beside him for his hat,
put it on quickly and removed it with a courtly gesture. His narrow
brown eyes were amused.
"Mr. Hawkins!" I exclaimed. My first impulse was one of joy at seeing
him again, but then I remembered the blanket he had made me think was
stolen, and the apple-pie bed he had made for the new occupants of his
cabin the day he left on his honeymoon.
Miss Nesdeburt's plump little body was already halfway out of the car.
She hugged me, tears running down over the fine wrinkles around her
eyes.
"Ma chere amie!" she exclaimed, dabbing daintily at her eyes with a
lace-edged hanky. Her fair skin was flushed with emotion. "It's simply
terribly good to see you again, and to be back at the sweet little
motel where I first met my Herbert! We just thought we'd drive out this
way for old times' sake! After all, it's only a few miles from Burbank,
n'est-ce pas?"
When we were all seated in the living room Mr. Hawkins caught my eye
almost guiltily and said, "I apologize deeply, madame, for any
unpleasantness that may have occurred during my stay at your charming
motel. I seem to recall something about--ah--a blanket, wrongly
supposed to have been stolen, and--ah--"
"An apple pie bed?" I refreshed his memory.
"I'm sure," he said gallantly, "that you are too sweet and fair-minded
a young lady to hold grudges. Let's let bygones be bygones, shall we?"
"I'm willing," I laughed. And he held out a big, strong-looking hand
for me to shake.
I shook my head, instead. "I'm willing to let bygones be bygones," I
said, "but that doesn't mean I have to trust you. I'm afraid if I shake
hands with you I'll either find a spider in my hand, or glue all over
my fingers, or maybe you'll try some kind of a jiu-jitsu trick on me.
We'll be friends--but at a distance, if you don't mind."
Mr. Hawkins laughed and sat down again. "All right--but you must at
least let me thank you for the cockroach you sent me. You'll be happy
to hear it's in perfect health, and we've made quite a pet of it. We
named it 'Ermintrude.' A neighbor is taking care of it for us today
while we're away from home."
Miss Nesdburt was quivering with eagerness to get into the conversation.
"There's so much to tell you, I simply don't know where to begin," she
said. "We've sold my car, and we've moved into Herbert's lovely little
place in Burbank, and we had a long, wonderful honeymoon. We camped in
the mountains near Big Bear Lake for a few days--we got a tent and
Herbert put it up all by himself. He's so strong and wonderful. One
night we woke up and heard something scratching at the flaps of the
tent. We were miles from anywhere, and we were simply terrified. I
thought maybe it was one of the big bears the lake was named for. It
was pitch black outside, no moon or stars, and we got out of the tent
and started to run. One shouldn't become so frightened, of course, but
anyway we ran--for miles, it seemed, and all the time this bear, or
whatever it was, was right behind us. And then, of all things to
encounter in the mountains, we ran up against a fence! It was really
dreadful, with the big old creature gaining on us and ready, for all we
knew, to kill us the moment he caught us. We scrambled over the fence
as best we could, with dear Herbert risking his life by helping me
over. It took us quite a while to get across, and we were all scratched
up by wire and frightened half to death. The animal had apparently
given up in the meantime, because we didn't hear him any more. We
didn't dare to go back to our tent, though, so we stayed out there
until morning. We were half frozen."
"Well, that was quite an adventure," I exclaimed. "When it was
daylight, did you climb back over the fence and go back to your tent?"
Mr. Hawkins and Miss Nestleburt exchanged rueful glances.
"No," she laughed, one of her tiny white hands fluttering up to adjust
a blue brooch at her neck. "We didn't climb over the fence when
daylight came. We simply walked around it. You see, it was just about
five feet long--a remnant of an old fence that had apparently been torn
down for years."
When I could stop laughing I said, "What about the animal that had been
chasing you? Did you ever find out what it was?"
"No--o," Miss Nestleburt said. "But we looked at the tracks, and
Herbert said they couldn't have been made by anything else but a cow!"
"Speaking of cows, my dear," said Mr. Hawkins, brushing a speck of dust
off one neatly pressed, striped trouser leg, '"Why don't you give her
the present we brought for David? And then we must leave."
"Mais oui! I must go out to the car and get it! I almost forgot all
about it!" exclaimed Miss Nestleburt. "Where is David?"
"Grant went to the dentist, and he was to get David from school as soon
as he was through. They should be here any minute," I said.
Mr. Hawkins sprang to his feet and held the door open for Miss
Nestleburt. Then he closed the door and sat down again.
"Ah, my dear madame," he said to me, "marriage is indeed wonderful.
Since Miss Nestleburt did me the great honor of becoming my wife, I
have been the happiest man alive."
His brown eyes were full of laughter, as they had been every time I had
seen him.
"You never struck me as being a particularly unhappy type," I said.
"No, how true that is, madame! I'm full of joie de vivre, as my dear
wife would say."
Just as Miss Nestleburt tapped lightly at the door and came in again.
Grant drove up with David. They came in behind her, David making as
much noise as a calliope.
"I have a present for you, little David!" Miss Nestleburt said; and she
handed David what she was carrying--a large, soft black cat.
David was ecstatic. "Is it really mine? Can I really keep it?" he
demanded.
I eyed the cat's bulging sides askance. "I think it's about to calve,"
I whispered in an aside to Grant.
"Yep, you can keep it," Grant said good-humouredly. "We'll quick fix it
a bed in one of the garages."
"Is it a boy cat or a girl cat?" David asked.
"A girl cat, dear," I replied drily.
Miss Nestleburt's blue eyes sparkled as she watched David's joy in his
new pet. "Let's go out now and see where the cat wants his bed to be,"
David cried, pulling a dried piece of gum off his cheek; and Grant and
Mr. Hawkins followed him outside.
"Such pretty black, curly eyelashes the boy has!" Miss Nestleburt
exclaimed.
I was about to ask her where she got the plump cat when I remembered
that there was something else I was curious about.
"A long time ago Mr. Hawkins did something that embarrassed you--one of
his practical jokes, I suppose--and you said you'd tell me all about it
when you'd known me longer. Do you remember?" I asked. "And do you
think you've known me long enough now?"
Rosy color flooded her fair skin, and I saw that she remembered what I
was talking about.
I knew I shouldn't have brought up the subject again, but I reasoned
that I would suffer more from curiosity if she never told me than she
would suffer from embarrassment if she did.
Her bright blue eyes darted around the room, to avoid meeting mine.
"Yes, I remember. Of course I've known you long enough. It's just that
one has difficulty in talking about such things ..."
"I suppose he played a rather crude joke on you?" I prodded.
"No, it--it wasn't a joke. It was something he gave me. It was--oh,
dear, I don't know how to say it. I suppose he meant well, but it was
really a most embarrassing gift . . ."
She clasped and unclasped her tiny hands. "It really shocked me,
especially since it had been only a few minutes since we had met. You
see, he gave me a little undressed--that is, actually nude--ooh!" Miss
Nestleburt gasped. Her eyes, in their uneasy jaunt around the room, had
caught sight of the bookcase and what was on top of it--the perfume
atomizer Mr. Hawkins had given me.
"He--he gave you one too?" she asked weakly. I nodded, and we dissolved
into helpless laughter.
Our merriment was cut into abruptly by a loud crash and splintering
outside.
"A wreck!" I exclaimed, dashing through the door and forming the first
catch sentence for the story as I ran.
It wasn't exactly a wreck. A heavy truck, loaded with grapefruit, had
been parked on the highway in front of Moe's cafe while the driver went
in to eat. The brake had failed to hold, and the truck had slid
backward, gaining momentum until it crashed heavily into one of the
small cabins across the highway behind Mr. Bertram's grocery store.
Fortunately, no one was in the cabin, which was half destroyed.
I knew Mr. Bertram would take time out from his snuff-chewing to get
all the details about the incident, the name of the truck driver and
everything else that I'd need in order to write up a story for the
paper. I didn't have to wade into the mob of curious people that had
collected. I'd just go over and talk to Mr. Bertram in an hour or so.
Someone had called the truck driver's attention to what had happened.
He came dashing out of Moe's, his eyes wild, a doughnut clutched in one
hand. He went galloping across the highway toward his truck.
"And look at the bar across the street!" Miss Nesdeburt cried, her
little hands going to her mouth in dismay. "The front of it is smashed
in a little bit too!"
"Oh, that happened last week," I said airily. "A man who was going to
go in for a drink couldn't stop his car in time. We're so used to
accidents like that that we hardly notice them any more."
Grant and David and Mr. Hawkins appeared from the direction of the
garages, where they had been arranging for the black cat's living
quarters.
Grant went across the highway to see the excitement and, I suspected,
to get a few of the crushed or slightly damaged grapefruit that the
truck driver would have to discard.
I was right. Miss Nestleburt and Mr. Hawkins had a big sack of slightly
crushed grapefruit in the car with them when they left, and as for
us--for three weeks we dined on sliced grapefruit, halved grapefruit,
peeled grapefruit, grapefruit salad, grapefruit a la mode and
grapefruit au gratin.
One morning as I placed grapefruit halves before Grant and David, Grant
caught my expression. He said something that sounded like, "Don't feel
that way. Grapefruit is good for hales."
"What?" I asked.
"I said you shouldn't feel that way. Grapefruit is healthy."
"No, that isn't either what you said. You said something that sounded
like 'Grapefruit is good for hales.'"
"Well, I don't remember exactly what I said, but that's what I meant.
Grapefruit is healthy."
"I knew what you meant; what I wanted to know was, what did you say?"
Grant sighed. I know my curiosity exasperates him, but it annoys me for
hours if I can't discover exactly what a word was that I didn't quite
get.
"Why do you always have to change the wording of what you say when I
say 'What?' instead of actually repeating what you say, which is what I
want you to do?" I railed at him.
This argument of ours, which has come up over and over again, grows
very involved if we don't drop it in its earliest stages--and sad
experience has taught me that Grant can't, or won't, recall and tell me
the exact word he used, anyway.
I was clearing away the remains of the sugar-sprinkled grapefruit
slices we had had for dessert one evening, and Grant was in the office
assuring some man that we hadn't found his toupee in the cabin he had
occupied the previous night, when a lanky, thin-faced, big-eyed boy
opened the living room door and walked into the living room.
"Oh, I guess I musta got the wrong door," he said, twisting his dirty
handkerchief nervously between skinny fingers. "I'm sorry, maam, but I
thought I oughta tell you--I guess my ma is gonna have a baby."
I remembered renting a double cabin, number 3, earlier in the day, to
an extremely pregnant woman and her son.
I stared at the pale boy. I must have been rather pale myself. "You
mean--right now?" I gasped.
He nodded shamefacedly.
"Oh, dear. Well, sit down on the davenport there. Don't be nervous.
What's your name?"
"Eugene."
"Well, well. And how old are you?"
"Ten."
"Ten? Well. That's a nice age. And what kind of work does your daddy
do?"
"He's a salesman. He travels. On'y gets home once in a while."
"And do you have any brothers or sisters?" I asked. It was as though,
by stalling and refusing to face what was happening in one of our
cabins, I could postpone it, or make it not so. I was coming out of my
first condition of shock and realizing that I must call a doctor, and
tell Grant what was happening, immediately, when the boy answered my
last question.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "I got six brothers and five sisters. My
littlest sister is still a baby. On'y one and a half. My oldest sister
is takin care of the kids now while Ma and me was gonna visit Gramma in
Frisco. Ma didn't think she'd have this new baby for awhile yit. But I
guess she's gonna, though. She's got pains somethin' awful."
Numbly I seized the telephone book and looked up the number of one of
the town's three doctors. There was no answer when I dialed his number.
I dialed the number of another; he was, a crisp feminine voice informed
me, out on a call. I dialed the number of the residence of the third
doctor. I heard a ringing sound, and I prayed that this doctor would be
avail able. The suspense of waiting for someone to lift the receiver at
the other end of the line was terrible, and I tried feverishly to
occupy my mind. Doctors ... doctors . .. how many famous ones could I
think off? I kept my mind off what was happening in cabin 3, and
concentrated on doctors. Famous doctors; well, there were the Mayo
brothers, of course, and Dr. Kildare. He's pretty famous, I mused, even
though he is just a figment of someone's imagination.
Imagination .. . some philosophers think everything is a figment of
people's imagination--or would it be figments? Figments, pigments,
pudding and pie; babies are cute, but they sure do cry. And here I was
back on the subject of babies again.
The ringing at the other end of the line stopped (although the ringing
in my head continued) and the doctor himself answered. I said,
"I'm calling Dr. Kildare! I mean--" I laughed apologetically, "I'm
calling Dr. Adams. Is this Dr. Adams?"
When he gave me a curt, affirmative reply, obviously bored with what he
considered my facetiousness, I told him what was going on; and he said
he'd be over at once.
By that time Grant, having convinced the man that we hadn't found his
toupee, came back into the living room, and I told him about the
impending blessed event. His complexion took on a hue to match mine and
that of the skinny boy.
"I've called the doctor," I said. "What do we do in the meantime?"
Grant, the ever resourceful, the maddeningly efficient, was stymied for
once.
"Well..." he said uncertainly.
"That's how I feel about it," I said. "But we can't just--sit here."
"You're a woman," Grant pointed out cruelly, passing the buck to me.
"You've had two babies."
"Yes," I came back at him, "but I just had them--I didn't deliver them."
"Well, you won't have to deliver these either. I mean, this one. The
doctor will be here in a few minutes."
"I know, but--what about in the meantime?"
"Well," Grant said uneasily, "I suppose you should go in once and see
how she's getting along. Maybe you can give her some aspirin or
something."
"Aspirin!" I snorted.
Donna was playing contentedly in the bedroom, stacking blocks, knocking
them over, and stacking them up again. David was outside adding another
worn-out baby blanket to the bed he had made in the garage of cabin 6
for his new black cat. With the children occupied, and the dinner
dishes done, obviously I couldn't claim any pressing domestic duties.
"Well... come on," I said.
The door of cabin 3 had never looked so forbidding. While we were
standing in front of it, wondering whether or not to knock, little
Eugene brushed past us and opened it. He went to stand beside the bed,
where he looked from his mother to us with big, dark eyes.
"You had the baby yit?" he asked her anxiously.
"You don't see it nowheres, do you?"
Grant and I edged into the cabin. "How do you do," I said. "We
heard--that is, your son said--you were--well, having a little
difficulty."
"That ain't the half of it, honey," the woman remarked, biting her
lower lip until there was a row of neat little white teeth marks
printed upon it.
She was a huge woman, broad-shouldered and big boned, and her body rose
like a small mountain beneath the blankets. Her greying hair was long
and untidy on the pillow. Her dark, beautiful eyes were like jewels in
a crude setting; they were surrounded by flushed, large-pored flesh,
and complemented by a large, misshapen nose. Her teeth were pretty, but
they were too much in evidence when she talked, as were all the other
details of the interior of her mouth. The brazen display of such an
expanse of gums and tongue made me feel ill.
"I'm Mrs. Watkins, you prob'ly know that. Cripes, I'm sorry if I was
rude when you come in, but I was havin' a pain. Say, didja call me a
doc?"
I nodded, and she went on, "Ain't it a fit, me havin' a kid in a motel?
I never thought I'd have it so soon, but you sure can't tell noways,
can you?"
She took my feeble smile for agreement that you sure can't tell noways,
and laughed heartily, slapping a swelling under the blankets that was
presumably her thigh. Her laugh was of a size to match her body; it
boomed and bounced through the room until the pictures on the walls
quivered.
Grant and I were so relieved at finding her in good spirits and not in
much pain that we began to giggle, too; and a moment later the three of
us were laughing uproariously at nothing, while Eugene stared at us
with wide, solemn eyes.
Mrs. Watkins was the first to regain control of herself.
"I'll bust a gut if I don't quit laughin'! Ain't it about time for the
doc?" she asked, dabbing at her moist eyes with a handkerchief she took
from under the pillow.
"Yes," I said. "He lives only about a mile and a half away. He'll be
here any minute."
"I wouldn't care," she said, "On'y I have my kids pretty sudden. It'll
be that way for you too, honey, after you've had eleven, like me."
I couldn't think of an appropriate reply to that one. Grant looked at
his watch anxiously, shook it and held it to his ear.
"Eleven!" I exclaimed after a moment. "You've had twelve, haven't you?
At least that's what Eugene--"
"Sure, ma, you know, there's Ruthie, and Lyon, and Ernest, and--"
"Well, I guess I know my own kids' names!" she interrupted. "Yeah,
that's right, twelve. So many I can't remember noways! My husband don't
git home very often, but he sure gits home often enough! I musta forgot
about the littlest one. Seems like I ain't got used to havin' her yit."
I couldn't keep my eyes off Mrs. Watkins' large, flapping red tongue
when she talked. The crease down the center of it seemed to separate
two smooth pieces of raw meat.
Suddenly her teeth clamped down on her lip again and she turned her
face away from us, moaning.
I looked at Grant. He looked at his watch again. We were still
standing, stiff and uneasy, beside the bed.
When Mrs. Watkins' pain had ebbed, she put one hand into her mouth,
took out her false teeth, and stared at them.
Grant and I stared at them too, fascinated. They were even and pretty,
a fragile pink-and-white toy in her big, roughened hands.
"Seems like it makes me feel better to look at 'em," she confessed.
"Makes it so I ain't so lonesome for Rodney. That's my hubby. He gave
me these teeth, for our tenth weddin' anniversary. I was gonna get some
cheap old ugly things, but he said no, the best wasn't none too good
for his girl, and so he bought 'em for me. They're the--the nicest
thing I ever had in my life!"
Tears were pouring out of Mrs. Watkins' lovely dark eyes, streaming
over the flushed, coarse skin of her cheeks. "Cripes, I wisht Rodney
was here!" she sobbed.
"I'd settle for Doctor Adams," Grant said. He glanced again at his
watch. '"He should be here by now. I wonder if his car could have
broken down?"
"Maybe--maybe you should go look for him," I said hesitantly.
"I think I will." Grant moved toward the door. "I'll call his home
first, and if he's been gone awhile I'll start out looking for him."
Mrs. Watkins replaced her teeth, wiped her eyes, and beamed at me.
"I'm awful moody, an awful sentimental," she admitted.
Eugene edged to the door behind Grant.
"I'm gonna go with him, ma. 'Bye, ma'am."
"The kid's gittin' scared," Mrs. Watkins remarked, chuckling, when the
door had closed behind them. "So's your hubby. Men are all alike, ain't
they? Pantywaists, when you git right down to it. Pantywaists!" Her
great booming laugh filled the cabin, while I tittered politely and
wondered where she got the idea that men had exclusive rights to the
term. My legs felt as though they were made of jello that hadn't quite
set, and my hands were useless, quivering hunks of ice.
"How long do you think it will be," I began; "I mean, you've had so
many, maybe you can almost tell..."
"How soon I'm gonna have the kid? Cripes, it ain't gonna be long,
honey, I can tell you that! Wouldn' it be a fit if I had it before the
doc come?"