Free Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler Page A

could feel his rage. "What happened?" she asked, and Caleb told her, straight out, while struggling upstairs with his burden to Justin's high carved bed. Laura's face grew as dark as coffee but she said not a word. She had the kitchen maid fetch the doctor from down the street, and she listened stonily to the doctor's diagnosis: apoplexy, brought on by a shock of some sort. He did not hold out much hope for recovery. If Justin lived, he said, one side would likely be paralyzed, although it was too soon to say for certain.
       Then Laura went downstairs to the parlor where Caleb stood waiting. "You have killed your half of your, father," she said.
       On Monday, Caleb started work behind the roll-top desk.
       Daniel, meanwhile, had finished his courses at the University in record time and was now preparing himself further by working at the offices of Norris & Wiggen, a fine old respectable law firm. He lived at home and often relieved Laura at his father's sickbed, reading aloud to him from the newspaper or from Laura's enormous Bible. Justin would lie very still with one fist clenched, his flinty blue eyes glaring at the wall. He had not recovered the use of his left side. It was apparent suddenly that he was a very old man, with liver spots across his dry forehead and claws for hands. Half of his face seemed to be melting and running downward. He spoke only with difficulty, and when people misunderstood he would fly into a rage. Because he could not bear to have his weakness observed by the outside world (which would take advantage immediately, he was certain of it), he had determined to stay in his bedroom until he was fully recovered. For he assumed that he was suffering only a brief, treatable illness, his convalescence hampered by a worse-than-useless doctor and a half-wit wife. Therefore he undertook his own cure. He had all the panes in his windows replaced with amethyst glass, which was believed to promote healing. He drank his water from a quassia cup and ordered Laura to send away for various nostrums advertised in the newspaper- celery tonic, pectoral syrup, a revitalizing electric battery worn on a chain around the neck. His only meat was squirrel, easiest on the digestive tract. Yet still he remained flat on his back, whitening and shriveling like a beached fish.
       On Friday nights Caleb came and summarized the week's business in a gentle, even voice, directing his statements to the foot of the bed.
       Justin looked at the wall, pretending not to hear. As a matter of fact it seemed that Caleb was handling everything quite adequately, but it was too late now. The time for that was past, there was no undoing what had been done. Justin went on looking at the wall until Caleb left.
       Laura brought out an old busybody she had-a mirror arrangement placed to reflect passers-by on the street below. She thought he might like to keep in touch with things. But when Justin turned his face to the busybody he saw Caleb just descending the front steps, turned faded and remote and long-ago by the blue glass of the windowpanes. He told Laura to take her nonsense elsewhere.
       In February, 1904, the Great Fire burned out the heart of Baltimore, sweeping away every tall building in the city and most major businesses, including Justin Peck's. When it was over Justin insisted upon being taken to see the damage for himself. His sons carried him to the buggy and drove him downtown, through the peculiar yellowish light that hung over everything. It was the first trip Justin had made since his illness.
       From the satisfied look he gave to the rubble and the littered streets and the jagged remains of walls, it seemed that he credited the destruction not to fire but to his own absence. Without him Baltimore had gone up in smoke. Under Caleb's care the warehouse had caved in, the office had disappeared, the roll-top desk had dissolved into ashes. He turned to Daniel with a crooked, bitter smile and waved his