“I BROUGHT HIM,” SAID ELI. “HERE HE IS.” Taft followed him into Calpurnia’s room. From the bank of pillows that propped her up in the bed, Calpurnia held out her hand to Taft, and he took it, with a little bow. “Mrs. Lincoln,” he said.
“Miss,” said Calpurnia.
“Callie’s still waiting for Mister Right,” said Eli. Taft smiled.
“Hah,” said Calpurnia. “Go ahead, sit, if you can find room. Try the chair.” In the tiny room, with the bed, Calpurnia’s armchair, a dresser, and a night table, there wasn’t much extra space. Taft took the chair, and Eli sat on the foot of the bed.
“Cozy, ain’t it?” said Calpurnia.
“How have you been?” Eli asked her. “Keeping busy?” He was watching her. Calpurnia’s eyes seemed to Eli to have enlarged and lightened to a pale gray-blue. The skin of her forehead and scalp, the very bone, looked to Eli to be growing thin, like eggshell, to be becoming transparent. With that, though, she was much as ever. “Keeping busy?” he asked her.
“Awful busy,” said Calpurnia. “Never a free minute.” She looked at Taft. “That’s a joke,” she said. “I’m like the old fellow they tell about. Sometimes he sits and thinks, but mostly he just sits.”
Calpurnia looked out the window. A tray from the clinic’s cafeteria had been screwed down onto the sill outside. An overweight nuthatch picked and pecked among the sunflower seeds scattered over the surface of the tray.
“I sit here and I watch them,” Calpurnia said. “The birds. They’re pretty interesting. They’re so feisty, especially the little ones. They’re so crabby. This place must have a dozen feeders like this one. They put out fresh seed about every day. They have to. The little things, all they do is eat. And what, then? They fight, all the time, over the seeds. They chase everybody off. They’re greedy. They’re nasty, they’re quarrelsome. And for why? That’s what I wonder. Here are these tiny little creatures, they have all they can eat served up for them for free, they have their nests, their homes, everybody loves them, everybody admires them, they’re beautiful, and if all that wasn’t enough, they can fly. Anything they don’t care for where they are, they can up and fly away to somewhere else. All that, and they’re fighting? What for? What have they got to fight about? Why are they so angry? You’re an educated man,” she said to Taft. “Why is that?”
“They’re birds, Miss,” said Taft. “They’re not philosophers.”
“Like us,” said Eli.
One of the Hospice workers looked in at the door. She saw Eli sitting on Calpurnia’s bed. “Can I bring in another chair for you?” she asked.
“You can if you can figure out where to put it,” said Calpurnia. The volunteer looked again. She laughed. “Good point,” she said. “Well, can I at least bring you some coffee?”
“That would be good,” said Calpurnia. “But you don’t have to fetch it. This boy can get it,” she indicated Eli.
“I can?” asked Eli.
“Come on down to the kitchen, then,” said the volunteer. “Don’t hurry. They’ll have to make a new pot, so it will take a little while.” She left them.
“Go ahead down,” Calpurnia said to Eli.
“You heard her,” said Eli. “It’s not ready. I’ll go in a few minutes.”
“Go now,” said Calpurnia. Eli looked at her, looked at Taft. He got up off the bed.
“Close the door behind you,” Calpurnia said.
When Taft and Calpurnia were alone, she smiled at him. She patted the bed at her side. “Sit here where I can see you,” she directed. Taft sat on the edge of the bed.
“That’s better,” said Calpurnia. “I used to be able to see,” she went on. “Had about perfect eyesight, never even needed glasses to read until I was seventy-some. Now it’s as though I was wearing a veil all the time, couple of veils. Can’t say I like it.”
“No,” said Taft.
“But, then. I don’t have to like it, do I?”
“I guess not.”
“There are some things, you don’t have to like them, all you have to do is do them.”
Taft smiled. “You sound like Eli,” he said.
“It’s not I who sounds like Eli,” said Calpurnia. “It’s Eli who sounds like me. I taught that boy everything he knows.”
“I believe it.”
“Eli’s a good man,” said Calpurnia.
“He certainly is.”
“He comes here almost every day. He comes to visit me. He doesn’t have to do that.”
“He enjoys doing it,” said Taft.
“I don’t know,” said Calpurnia. “I don’t know if he does or if he doesn’t. I know I wouldn’t want him to stop. I don’t know if I could do without him.”
“I don’t know if I could, either.”
“He’s a good friend,” Calpurnia went on. “Friends …” she trailed off. Taft thought her mind might be wandering, but, “Everybody needs friends,” she finished. “Don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” said Taft.
“You suppose?”
“Well, if they’re good friends.”
Calpurnia shook her head. “Good, bad, either way,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Friends is what matters. Having them. Can’t have too many. Look at those birds.”
“I thought you said all they do is fight.”
“They do. They fight with their friends. Who else are you going to fight with?”
Taft smiled. “Eli told me you’re hard to win an argument with,” he said.
“We’re not arguing,” said Calpurnia. “We agree everybody needs friends. You more than most, maybe.”
Taft raised his eyebrows at her. “I?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Calpurnia. She leaned forward in the bed. “I asked Eli to bring you around,” she said, “on account of what you did for the Kennedy girl, that time. She’s part of my family, and I wanted to thank you for what you did.”
“I didn’t do much of anything.”
“You’re too modest, Mr. Taft.”
“Call me Lang.”
“You’re too modest, Lang,” said Calpurnia. “You say you didn’t do much of anything for Jessie Kennedy.” She reached toward Taft and touched him lightly on the knee with her right forefinger. “I think you did,” she said.
“No,” said Taft. “It was one of those cases where somebody drowns but the water’s cold, so they don’t die right away. They can revive. That’s what it was.”
Calpurnia left her finger on his knee. “I heard all that,” she said. “All that medical business. That Doctor Dish business. I don’t believe that’s all there was to it. I think there was more.” She removed her hand and sat back among her pillows. She regarded Taft. “Fact is,” she said, “I’ve kind of been keeping track of you, Mr. Taft.”
“Lang,” said Taft. “Why?”
“You interest me.”
“Like the birds?” Taft smiled, but he was wary.
“More than the birds,” said Calpurnia. “You know, there are people who think you’re not in your right mind?”
Taft nodded.
“Polly Jefferson, from the P.O.? She’s one. She says she came by your place one day, and she heard you inside talking and talking, talking away, talking to somebody who wasn’t there.”
“Oh, it’s a habit of mine,” said Taft easily. “I live alone. I talk to myself. I was talking to myself.” But Calpurnia shook her head.
“No, you weren’t,” she said. “You were talking, but not to yourself.”
Taft wasn’t smiling now. “To whom, then?” he asked her.
“To an old friend of mine, I’m guessing. Well, say an old acquaintance.”
“Who would that be?”
“That would be Mister Dangerfield.”
Taft blinked. He became very still. “You know Dangerfield?” he asked.
“Oh, my goodness, yes. Mr. Dangerfield and I go back a long, long—a long way.”
Taft was silent.
“And it’s because I know him,” Calpurnia went on, “and because I know who he is and what he does, that I’m guessing you need a friend—more than one, if possible. I’m guessing you have a problem, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Taft.
“You have a contract.”
“Yes.”
“You have a date?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“When?”
“Columbus Day,” said Taft.
“Mercy,” said Calpurnia. “That’s not much time. You could use some help, then, couldn’t you?”
“What help?” Taft asked her. “If you know about this, then you know there is no help. I took his deal, didn’t I? That’s all there is to it.”
“No,” said Calpurnia. “There’s more.”
“What more?”
“Me,” said Calpurnia.
“You?”
“That’s right.”
“What can you do?”
“I can go over Dangerfield’s head. I can go upstairs.”
“How? What have you got to do with Dangerfield?”
“As little as possible,” said Calpurnia. “Put it this way,” she went on: “Dangerfield and I? We’re not on the same team—far from it—but in a manner of speaking, we’re in the same game.”
“I don’t understand,” said Taft.
“No reason you should,” said Calpurnia. “No reason you have to. Dangerfield will understand, believe me.”
“Why, though?” Taft asked her.
“Why, what?”
“Why would you help me?”
Lying back in the bed, Calpurnia sighed and closed her eyes. She passed her hand over them. She looked a little tired. “I told you,” she said. “I’ve been keeping track of you. You interest me. You see, these contracts, like yours with Dangerfield? I’ve seen a good many of them. A good many. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the—what would you call him, the contracting party? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the contracting party wants the same things. First, he wants money, lots of money, so he can buy all kinds of stuff for himself and have fun. Then, he wants power, so he can boss everybody around and make them afraid of him. And, of course, he wants you-know-what: women, men, little girls, big girls, fat girls, thin girls, boys—all that department. Ninety-nine percent, that’s what they’re after when they sign the contract.”
Taft watched her. Calpurnia’s eyes had been closed as she spoke, but now she opened them and turned them on Taft. She beamed. “But you?” she went on, “you didn’t want that, it didn’t look like. You wanted to be of use. You wanted to be able to pay for that poor sick kid of Marcia’s. You wanted that moron of a wife-beater to disappear. You wanted the Polk boy to have a break, you stuck up for him with those kids who were making his life so miserable. Then you took him in and gave him something to do and a reason to do it when his next stop was jail or worse. You put the boots to the bank’s fancy lawyer when he came to kick that old fool Orson Hayes off his place. You brought Jessie back from the other side. You didn’t do any of that for yourself. Far as I can tell, you didn’t want anything.”
“Well,” said Taft. “There was one thing.”
“Hah,” said Calpurnia. “You’re talking about that little policewoman. Well, I wasn’t counting her. She’s a little slip of a girl, is all.”
“She’s a state trooper,” said Taft with a smile. “Can there be a little slip of a state trooper?”
“I have nothing against her,” said Calpurnia. “But I said she’s a little slip of a girl, and that’s what she is. Just because she wears a gun and can do a thousand push-ups, doesn’t make her anything else. You’re welcome to her.”
Taft gave Calpurnia a long, thoughtful look, but then he shook his head. “What makes you think you can do anything?” he asked. “What makes you think you can do anything with Dangerfield?”
“Not with him. His boss.”
“You know his boss, too?”
“I know them all, Mr. Taft,” said Calpurnia. “And they all know me.”
“Lang,” said Taft again. “Friends in high places, eh?”
“No, Lang,” said Calpurnia. “Not high places. Low places. Way down low.”
“Suppose you’re right,” said Taft. “What can you do with Dangerfield’s boss?”
“I’ve got a deal for him.”
“What deal?”
“Never mind what deal.”
“What if he doesn’t like your deal?”
“He’ll like it.”
There was a bump on the door of the room. It swung open, and Eli came awkwardly through it carrying a tray with three cups, a sugar bowl, and a carton of milk.
“Coffee’s up,” said Eli.