Rainwater Read Online Free Page B

when he outgrows you and you can no longer physically restrain him?”
    She forced herself to unclench her hands. In a slow and deliberate voice she said, “The medications you’re suggesting to suppress his impulses would also inhibit his ability to learn.”
    Her saying that caused the doctor’s eyes to become even kinder, sadder, more pitying.
    She took umbrage. “I know you doubt Solly’s capacity to learn, Dr. Kincaid. I do not. I won’t rob him of the opportunity just because it would make my life easier. I won’t have him drugged into a stupor, where he would be breathing but little else. What kind of life would he have?”
    “What kind of life do you have?” he asked gently.
    She drew herself up to her full height. Her face was hot with indignation. “I appreciate your professional opinion, Dr. Kincaid. But that’s all it is, an opinion. No one really knows what Solly is or isn’t capable of understanding and retaining. But as his mother, I have a better perception of his abilities than anyone. So I must do what I think is best for him.”
    Yielding the battle if not the war, the doctor glanced away from her toward the clump of larkspur growing at the edge of her yard. Their blue spikes were wilting in the noon heat. “Send Margaret ’round for that salve,” he finally said.
    “Thank you.”
    “No charge.”
    “Thank you.”
    The street was deserted except for a spotted brown and white dog that was trotting alongside a wagon driven by an elderly black man and pulled by a pair of plodding mules. The man tipped his hat to them as the wagon rolled past. They waved back at him. Ella didn’t know him, but the doctor addressed him by name and called out a greeting.
    “If that’s all, Dr. Kincaid, I need to set out lunch.”
    He turned back to her. “Actually, there is something else, Mrs. Barron. About Mr. Rainwater.”
    Other than his name, and his willingness to pay her fee for room and board, she knew nothing about the man. She was taking him in as a boarder based solely upon Dr. Kincaid’s implied recommendation. “Is he a man of good character?”
    “Impeccable character.”
    “You’ve known him for a long time?”
    “He’s my wife’s late cousin’s boy. I guess that makes him some sort of a second or third cousin by marriage.”
    “I guessed he might be an old friend or family member. He called you Murdy.”
    Absently he nodded. “Family nickname.”
    “Is he in the medical profession, too?”
    “No. He was a cotton broker.”
    “Was?” Was Mr. Rainwater a victim of the Depression, one of the thousands of men in the nation who were out of work? “If he’s unemployed, how does he plan to pay his rent? I can’t afford—”
    “He’s not without funds. He’s…” The doctor looked toward the retreating wagon and continued watching it as it rounded the corner. Coming back to her, he said, “The fact is, he won’t be needing the room in your house for long.”
    She stared at him, waiting.
    Softly he said, “He’s dying.”
     
     

 
    THREE
     
    “Please, Mr. Rainwater. Leave that.”
    He was crouched, picking pieces of broken china off the kitchen linoleum. He glanced up at her but continued what he was doing. “I’m afraid the boy will hurt himself again.”
    “Margaret and I will tend to the mess, and to Solly.”
    Margaret was at the stove drizzling bacon grease from that morning’s breakfast into the greens. Solly was sitting in his customary chair at the kitchen table, rocking back and forth, fiddling with a yo-yo that Margaret must have given him from his box of toys. He wound the string around his index finger, unwound it. His concentration was fixed on the winding and rewinding.
    The crisis had passed, and he didn’t appear to be suffering any lasting effects, but would she know if he were? She had to take his passivity as a good sign. Looking at his blond head bowed over the yo-yo, she felt the familiar pinching sensation deep within her heart, a mix of