‘We got to try.’ She went in. She stopped and he deftly took the basin from her as she stood, white-faced, her eyes closed. ‘Ma—‘
‘Come,’ she said softly. She went to the bed and began to clean the tattered body.
He lasted the night. He lasted the week too, and it was only then that the Prodds began to have hope for him. He lay motionless in the room called Jack’s room, interested in nothing, aware of nothing except perhaps the light as it came and went at the window. He would stare out as he lay, perhaps seeing, perhaps watching, perhaps not. There was little to be seen out there. A distant mountain, a few of Prodd’s sparse acres; occasionally Prodd himself, a doll in the distance, scratching the stubborn soil with a broken harrow, stooping for weed-shoots. His inner self was encysted and silent in sorrow. His outer self seemed shrunken, unreachable also. When Mrs Prodd brought food—eggs and warm sweet milk, home-cured ham and johnny-cake—he would eat if she urged him, ignore both her and the food if she did not.
In the evenings, ‘He say anything yet?’ Prodd would ask, and his wife would shake her head. After ten days he had a thought; after two weeks he voiced it. ‘You don’t suppose he’s tetched, do you, Ma?’
She was unaccountably angry. ‘How do you mean tetched?’
He gestured. ‘You know. Like feeble-minded. I mean, maybe he don’t talk because he can’t.’
‘No!’ she said positively. She looked up to see the question in Prodd’s face. She said, ‘You ever look in his eyes? He’s no idiot.’
He had noticed the eyes. They disturbed him; that was all he could say of them. ‘Well, I wish he’d say something.’
She touched a thick coffee cup. ‘You know Grace.’
‘Well, you told me. Your cousin that lost her little ones.’