Free The Development by John Barth Page A

husband welcomed the errand: something to occupy him while Susan made conversation with their hostess, a couple of her golf partners, and other party guests. He worked his way barward through the merry grape-bobbers, their equally merry encouragers and referees ("How many left down there? Let me check." "No, me!" "Hey hey, no hands allowed ..."), and the occasional two or three talking politics, sports, business. Couldn't immediately locate his tennis pal, in whose present position he himself would ... well, what, exactly? Not hang around to
be
in that position, he hoped and more or less re-vowed to himself. Then he heard the old fellow (but who was Dick Felton, at age five-and-seventy, to call eighty "old"?) sing out raucously from the living room, to the tune of "Oh Holy Night":
    "
O-O-Oh ho-ly shit!
..."
    Sam stumbled out onto the lanai, doing the beer-bottle-microphone thing as the Hardisons had done earlier, but swigging from it between shouted lines:
    "
The sky, the sky is fall-ing!
..."
    Smiling or frowning people turned his way, some commenting behind their hands.
    "
It is the end
...
of our dear
...
U-S-A!
..."
    Dick approached him, calling out as if in jest, "Yo, Sam! You're distracting the thong-throwers, man!"
    "And the grape-gropers, too!" someone merrily added. Thinking to lead him back inside and quiet him down, Dick put an arm around the old fellow's bony shoulders. He caught sight of Pat Hardison, clearly much concerned, heading toward them from the food tent. But as he made to turn his friend houseward, Sam startled him by snatching the machete from it's sheath, pushing free of it's owner, raising it high, and declaring, "If there's no red wine, I guess I'll have a bloody mary."
    "Sam Sam Sam ..."
    Returning to his carol parody, "
Fall ... on your swords!
" Sam sang. "
Oh hear ... the angels laugh-ing! ...
"
    Too late, Dick sprang to snatch back the blade, or at least to grab hold of it's wielder's arm. To all hands' horror, having mock-threatened his would-be restrainer with it, Sam thrust it's point into his own chest, just under the breastbone. Dropped the beer bottle; gripped the machete's carved handle with both hands and pushed it's blade into himself yet farther; grunted with the pain of it and dropped first to his knees, then sideways to the floor, his blood already soaking through his robe front onto the lanai deck. Pat Hardison and other women screamed; men shouted and rushed up, her husband among them. An elderly ex-doctor from Stratford—whose "toga" was a fancied-up set of blue hospital scrubs and who earlier had complained to the Feltons that the ever-higher cost of medical malpractice insurance had pressured him into retirement—pushed through the others and took charge: ordered Tom Hardison to dial 911 and Pat to find a bunch of clean rags, towels, anything that he could use to stanch the blood flow; swatted Sam's hands off the machete handle (all but unconscious now, eyes squint shut, the old fellow moaned, coughed, vomited a bit onto the deck, and went entirely limp); withdrew and laid aside the bloody blade and pressed a double handful of the patient's robe against the gushing wound.
    "Bailey, you idiot!" he scolded. "What'd you do
that
for?"
    Without opening his eyes, Sam weakly finished his song: "
It was the night ... that my dear ... Ethel died ...
"
    "We should call his son in Stratford," Sue said, clutching her husband tearfully.
    "Right you are." Dick fished under his caftan for the cell phone that he almost never used but had gotten into the habit of carrying with him. "Where's a goddamn phone book?"
    Pat hurried inside to fetch one. "Tell him to go straight to the Avon Health Center!" the doctor called after her.
    Men led their sobbing mates away. A couple of hardy volunteers applied clean rags to the blood and vomit puddled on the deck; one considerately wiped clean the machete and restored it to it's owner when Dick returned outside from making the grim call to Sam