The Lesson of Her Death

Jennie and he killed Sayles. He was going to draw down on you.”
    “But I just don’t
know
he was.”
    Corde was looking back into the hospital room. All he could see was a mound under the gray sheet that was his Jamie. “We never really know, Wynton.…”
    “I didn’t want to bother you, Bill, but I had to say it, kind of get it off my chest.”
    “You get back, you and me’ll go hunting. We can talk about it then.” Corde closed his eyes and leaned wearily against the wall.
    “I hope Jamie gets better real soon.”
    “He talked to me,” Corde said. “Did I tell you that? He sat up and said something to me. I wish I could remember what.” Corde missed the nurse glancing at him with a sad, straight line of a mouth.
    Kresge said, “Tell him I’m thinking of him.”
    “I will, Wynton.”
    Corde hung up the telephone and walked back into Jamie’s room.
    Bill Corde, a tall man now hunched over, with short trimmed hair now mussed, a man in whose heart one grave burden had been eased while another had been accepted. He sat down on a low chair beside his son’s bed.
    Corde didn’t know what a fashion plate was but he decided if Dr. Parker was one it was no way an insult. He wished New Lebanon could get a few more of them.
    Sitting at the spotless desk, the good doctor was wearing a hot pink dress cut low enough so Corde could have seen a number of freckles on her chest if he was inclined to look, which he was and he did. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a thick gold bracelet, which Corde figured he himself might’ve bought her, what with all the fees. She had matching earrings and he imagined that those too were courtesy of him.
    “I’m pleased to meet you at last, Officer.”
    On the other hand the way she dabbed her eyes over him he believed she was examining him distrustfully. He wondered if Diane had blown some whistles. “Well, Isure have heard good things about you, Doctor. Sarah’s a whole new girl since she’s been seeing you.”
    The Dr. Parker of reputation emerged. She nodded aside the compliment and asked abruptly, “Sarah’s here, isn’t she?”
    “She’s in the waiting room.”
    “Why didn’t your wife come? She at the hospital?”
    “That’s right. Jamie’s been in and out of consciousness. They think he’s going to be all right. He might have some memory problems, they say. Maybe some other things. A neurologist is going to give him some tests. Dr. Weinstein? At Community? Supposed to be the best in the county. That’s what we heard.”
    Dr. Parker gazed at Corde passively and said nothing.
    “You know what happened was …” Corde’s voice suddenly stopped working.
    Dr. Parker continued, “He tried to kill himself. Mrs. Corde told me.”
    “I don’t know what it’ll be like when he gets home. I don’t know what happened exactly or why. But if you’d be available …”
    “I’d be happy to see both of you,” she said sincerely, but didn’t seem to be looking forward to it.
    Both of us?
Corde nodded. “I’d appreciate that.”
    The doctor opened her drawer and lifted out a thick handful of papers. Corde had a bad moment thinking they were more bills. She slid them across the desk. He glanced at the first one, dense with single-spaced writing and topped by Sarah’s byline. Without looking up he said, “She wrote these?”
    “They’re her most recent tapes. My secretary’s typed them up. She speaks very well, you’ll notice. There are only a few places where the words are garbled. And remarkably few places where she goes back to correct herself or misspeaks.”
    Corde flipped through the stack. “There must be a hundred pages here.”
    “Close to it.”
    He had thought all along that the whole idea was silly. If Sarah was going to do all this work why not make her copy a history book or science book? Something practical? Something that she could use in school. What possible benefit did these stories have? But he kept this to himself. He knew he’d play along with the doctor. She was the expert; besides, Bill Corde was nothing if not a sport.
    “Is it really a book?”
    “More a collection of short stories with recurrent characters. Like the Winnie the Pooh stories or
Song of the South
. You know, Br’er Fox and Br’er Rabbit.”
    “Are they any good?”
    “Mr. Corde, for a nine-year-old with her history and her problems they are remarkable.”
    “What should I do with them?”
    “You? Nothing. Dr. Breck is using