The Coldest Night Read Free Page A

room smelled of the barn: hay, manure, sweat, leather, and oats.
    “How’s your mother?” Walter said.
    “She’s good.”
    Most days Walter wore overalls and a blue and gold Legion cap, but today he was hatless, his skull bald and gaunt, and he wore creased khakis, a pressed blue chambray shirt, and tennis shoes.
    “She is good,” Walter declared. “She is an angel walking the ground. I gave up women years ago, but she’s a good one.”
    “How do you know she’s good?”
    “I seen her today.”
    “Where’d you see her?”
    “Down at the VA. She looked good.”
    Walter set out two mugs. He splashed rye whisky into his and held up the bottle. His good eye wet and glittering. Henry shrugged and Walter splashed some in his mug too and then he filled both mugs with coffee from a vacuum bottle.
    “The main thing is to keep a woman busy,” Walter said.
    Walter carried his mug to a splintered sideboard where he fixed a plate of ham, boiled eggs, bread, and butter.
    “Baseball starts soon,” Walter said.
    Henry held up his hands, his fingers spread.
    “Ten day,” Walter said, tossing him an egg.
    “Ten,” Henry said, catching the egg.
    They drank quietly, Henry waiting patiently for what Walter had to say. He knew there was no point in hurrying him. He worked his thumb inside the eggshell and peeled it away.
    At last Walter said, “I have to go into hospital. They are going to take care of this leg and tuther one.”
    Henry’s first thought was the horses, their feed, water, and care, and whatever small business there was, who would conduct it.
    “I have been praying for a long time it wouldn’t come to this.”
    “What about the bid’ness?” Henry said.
    “The bid’ness is not lost on me.”
    “I can stay here.”
    “That’s what I’m wantin’ to ask you,” Walter said.
    “I can do that.”
    “What about school and baseball and your good mother?”
    “I will explain it to them.”
    “That would be a great service to me.”
    “When do you go?”
    “Now,” Walter said.
    “You going to make it?”
    “I am not about to lay down and die, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    Walter’s powers of endurance seemed extraordinary. There were days he could not mount a horse because of the pain and once on he rarely dismounted for fear of not being able to step back into the stirrup.
    “It was first the one,” Walter said, “and now both knees burn like hell.”
    He never complained, but there were whole days his face was the tight mask of pain and the cast of his spirit one of torment and suffering.
    “They say you use more butter when it’s soft than when it’s hard. How can that be?”
    “I never thought about it,” Henry said.
    “What’s yor’ blood type?”
    Henry shrugged.
    “That’s something you ought to know.”
    “What’s yours?”
    “I don’t ’member,” Walter said. He finished buttering a slice of bread and folded it in half. He worked up his quid of tobacco, spit it into his hand, and tossed it aside.
    “Someday,” Walter said, waving his fold of bread in the air, “there will be giant mechanical brains to cook and take dictation.” With a flourish, he stuffed half the folded slice into his mouth, closed his eyes, and chewed.
    “That will be something to see,” Henry said.
    “All my troubles,” Walter said, “come from the fact that my ’magination is a little more active than those of others.”
    Walter pulled himself erect, and then hobbled over to a cupboard, its door hung with a cracked mirror. He paused and looked into the mirror.
    “You look like shit,” he said.
    From the cupboard he removed a white glass jar and a pair of tweezers and returned to the table.
    “I am afraid my life is vanishing,” he said. “Do you ever feel that way?”
    “No,” Henry said. “Sometimes.”
    “I need a swallow of the strong,” Walter said, and took another drink of the whisky and coffee he favored. He unbuckled his belt and let his khakis fall to the floor