Read Online Nancy Culpepper by Bobbie Ann Mason - Free Book Online Page B

with money, didn’t even think to ask what the specialists would charge. When she brought Lila home, it was late—feeding time. Spence was at the pond feeding the ducks, with Oscar, the dog. When Oscar saw the car turn into the driveway, he tore through the soybean field toward the house, as if he, too, were anxious for a verdict.
    They had told Lila that her dizzy spells were tiny strokes. They also found a knot in her right breast. They wanted to take the knot out and do a test on it, and if it was cancer they would take her whole breast off, right then. It was an emergency, Lila explained. They couldn’t deal with the strokes until they got the knot out. Spence imagined the knot growing so fast it would eat her breast up if she waited another day or two.
    They’re crawling through the traffic on the edge of Paducah. When he was younger, Spence used to come and watch the barges on the river. They glided by confidently, like miniature flattops putting out to sea. He has wanted to take Lila for a cruise on the
Delta
Queen,
the luxury steamboat that paddles all the way to New Orleans, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do it.
    He turns on the radio and a Rod Stewart song blares out.
    “Turn that thing off!” Lila yells.
    “I thought you needed a little entertainment,” he says, turning the sound down.
    She rummages in her purse for a cigarette, her third on the trip. “They won’t let me have any cigarettes tonight, so I better smoke while I got a chance.”
    “I’ll take them things and throw ’em away,” he says.
    “You better not.”
    She cracks the window open at the top to let the smoke out. Her face is the color of cigarette ashes. She looks bad.
    “I guess it’s really cancer,” she says, blowing out smoke. “The X-ray man said it was cancer.”
    “How would he know? He ain’t even a doctor.”
    “He’s seen so many, he would know.”
    “He ain’t paid to draw that conclusion,” Spence says. “Why did he want to scare you like that? Didn’t the doctor say he’d have to wait till they take the knot out and look at it?”
    “Yeah, but—” She fidgets with her purse, wadding her cigarette package back into one of the zipper pockets. “The X-ray man sees those X-rays all day long. He knows more about X-rays than a doctor does.”
    Spence turns into the hospital parking lot, unsure where to go. The eight-story hospital cuts through the humid, hazy sky, like a stray sprig of milo growing up in a bean field. A car pulls out in front of him. Spence’s reactions are slow today, but he hits the brakes in time.
    “I think I’ll feel safer in the hospital,” Lila says.
    Walking from the parking lot, he carries the small bag she packed. He suspects there is a carton of cigarettes in it. Cat keeps trying to get Lila to quit, but Lila has no willpower. Once Cat gave her a cassette tape on how to quit smoking, but Lila accidentally ran it through the washing machine. It was in a shirt pocket. “Accidentally on purpose,” Cat accused her. Cat even told Lila once that cigarettes caused breast cancer. But Spence believes worry causes it. She worries about Cat, the way she has been running around with men she hardly knows since her divorce last year. It’s a bad example for her two small children, and Lila is afraid the men aren’t serious about Cat. Lila keeps saying no one will want to marry a woman with two extra mouths to feed.
    Now Lila says, “I want you to supervise that garden. The girls won’t know how to take care of it. That corn needs to be froze, and the beans are still coming in.”
    “Don’t worry about your old garden,” he says impatiently. “Maybe I’ll mow it down.”
    “Spence!” Lila cries, grabbing his arm tightly. “Don’t you go and mow down my garden!”
    “You work too hard on it,” he says. “We don’t need all that grub anymore for just us two.”
    “The beans is about to begin a second round of blooming,” she says. “I want to let most of