Free Nancy Culpepper by Bobbie Ann Mason

them make into shellies and save some for seed. And I don’t want the corn to get too old.”
    The huge glass doors of the hospital swing open, and a nurse pushes out an old woman in a wheelchair. The woman is bony and pale, with a cluster of kinfolks in bluejeans around her. Her aged hands, folded in her lap, are spotted like little bird dogs. The air-conditioning blasts Spence and Lila as they enter, and he feels as though they are walking into a meat locker.
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    She felt that lump weeks ago, but she didn’t mention it then. When she and Spence returned from a trip to Florida recently, she told Cat about it, and Cat started pestering her to see a specialist. The knot did feel unusual, like a piece of gristle. The magazines said you would know it was different. Lila never examined her breasts the way they said to do, because her breasts were always full of lumps anyway— from mastitis, which she had had several times. Her breasts are so enormous she cannot expect to find a little knot. Spence says her breasts are like cow bags. He has funny names for them, like the affectionate names he had for his cows when they used to keep milk cows. Names like Daisy and Bossy. Petunia. Primrose. It will be harder on him if she loses one of her breasts than it will be on her. Women can stand so much more than men can.
    She makes him leave the hospital early, wanting to be alone so she can smoke a cigarette in peace. After he brought her in, he paced around, then went downstairs for a Coke. Now he leaves to go home, and she watches him from behind as he trudges down the corridor, hugging himself in the cold. Lila is glad she brought her housecoat, but even with it she is afraid she will take pneumonia.
    In the lounge, she smokes and plays with a picture puzzle laid out on a card table. Someone has pieced most of the red barn and pasture, and a vast blue sky remains to be done. Lila loves puzzles. When she was little, growing up at her uncle’s, she had a puzzle of a lake scene with a castle. She worked that puzzle until the design was almost worn away. The older folks always kidded her, but she kept working the puzzle devotedly. She always loved the satisfying snap of two pieces going together. It was like knowing something for sure.
    Her son, Lee, towers in the doorway of the lounge. She stands up, surprised.
    “Did you get off work early?” He works at Ingersoll-Rand.
    “No. I just took off an hour, and I have to go back and work till nine. They’re working me overtime this month.” He has lines on his face and he is only thirty.
    He hugs her silently. He’s so tall her head pokes his armpit, where he has always been ticklish.
    “I didn’t know you were that sick in Florida,” he says. “We shouldn’t have dragged you through Disney World.”
    “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.” She explains the details of the X-rays and the operation, then says, “I’m going to lose my breast, Lee.”
    “You are?” The lines on his face freeze. He needs a shave.
    “They won’t know till they get in there, but if it’s cancer they’ll go ahead and take it out.”
    “Which one?”
    “This one,” she says, cupping her right breast.
    A woman with frizzy red hair hobbles into the lounge, her hospital gown exposing her fat, doughy knees. “I was looking for my husband,” she says, “but I reckon he ain’t here.”
    Lila waits for the woman to leave, then laughs. She’s still holding her breast. “You don’t remember sucking on these, do you, Lee?” She loves to tease her son. “You sucked me dry and I had to put you on a bottle after two months. I couldn’t make enough milk to feed you.”
    With an embarrassed grin, Lee looks out the window. “I believe you’re making that up.”
    “You want one last tug?” She reaches up and tousles his hair. His eyes are her eyes—the same vacant blue, filled with specks, like markings on a baby bird. They both laugh, and she takes a cigarette from her