17

 

        Puck got sicker.

        I thought he might die.

        “You need a doctor,” I told him.

        “You try and I'll shoot you and the doctor,” Puck said, waving his pistol vaguely in my direction.

        So I sat at his side, leaving only to fetch more fire wood with which to keep the room reasonably warm and to heat up the soup I fed him.

        From time to time, I even helped him hobble outside to piss the liquid out again.

        Puck mumble as he drifted in his delirium, most of it was gibberish, though occasionally, I made out things that made some sort of sense – yet not in any context that allowed me to understand it.

        Two days passed since the shooting in the graveyard. The storm had dumped its load on the city, leaving its citizens to slowly dig out.

        Puck continued to mumble, often calling out “Momma.”

        “Don’t go, Momma,” he yelled at one point. “He didn’t mean it. It was my fault. I said it was okay. I wanted him to love me.”

        Then later, Puck cried out again.

        "You drove her away, you son of a bitch! She caught you trying to stick your prick up my ass -- and she left. She said she hated you. She said she hated me. She said we were two of a kind and deserved each other. She said she deserved better than both of us. But I'm not like you, Old Man. I don't want to stick my prick in every little boy's butt. I don't want to stick my nose in no fucking books, pretending like the world doesn't exit. You say I'm no good. Maybe that's right. But who made me that way? Who's driving me out now when I need him most?"

        Then still later, Puck cried for his mother again, begging her not to go, begging her to come back, then eventually, threatening to kill her.

        I listened to it all, gripping the arms of the wood chair as if everything was happened to me. Sometimes I dozed and dreamed of the dark shapes playing out this drama, with me as the central character.

        I forced myself to remain awake after that.

        Gradually, as Puck’s fever broke, his ranting faded and his frantic breathing slowed.

        After a while, he slept the way ordinary people slept and I fell into a less troubled sleep of my own, dreaming my own dreams as trouble in their way as Puck’s but at least they were my own.

        I saw flashes of TV reports on Vietnam interspersed with the face of my uncle Charlie from the last time I saw him as he walked down the front steps of the house, a sharp figure in full uniform going off to serve his country.

        When I woke up, the first was out. Sunlight streamed through the chick in the class. I got up as quietly as I could, gathered what I wanted and eased out into a melting world.

        I done by duty.

        Puck would survive.

 

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