Dearest | Page 5

numb, and he believed that it was broken. "I can try."
He managed to roll onto his back, with his head toward the clump of pine seedlings.
Using both hands and his right heel, he was able to propel himself slowly through the
snow until he was out of the worst of the wind.
"That's good; now try to cover yourself," Dearest advised. "Put your hands in your coat
pockets. And wait here; I'll try to get help."
Then she left him. For what seemed a long time, he lay motionless in the scant protection
of the young pines, suffering miserably. He began to grow drowsy. As soon as he realized
what was happening, he was frightened, and the fright pulled him awake again. Soon he
felt himself drowsing again. By shifting his position, he caused a jab of pain from his
broken leg, which brought him back to wakefulness. Then the deadly drowsiness
returned.
* * * * *
This time, he was wakened by a sharp voice, mingled with a throbbing sound that seemed
part of a dream of the cannonading in the Argonne.
"Dah! Look-a dah!" It was, he realized, Sergeant Williamson's voice. "Gittin' soft in de
haid, is Ah, yo' ol' wuthless no-'count?"
He turned his face, to see the battered jeep from "Greyrock," driven by Arthur, the
stableman and gardener, with Sergeant Williamson beside him. The older Negro jumped
to the ground and ran toward him. At the same time, he felt Dearest with him again.
"We made it, Popsy! We made it!" she was exulting. "I was afraid I'd never make him
understand, but I did. And you should have seen him bully that other man into driving the
jeep. Are you all right, Popsy?"
"Is yo' all right, Cunnel?" Sergeant Williamson was asking.
"My leg's broken, I think, but outside of that I'm all right," he answered both of them.
"How did you happen to find me, Sergeant?"

The old Negro soldier rolled his eyes upward. "Cunnel, hit war a mi'acle of de blessed
Lawd!" he replied, solemnly. "An angel of de Lawd done appeahed unto me." He shook
his head slowly. "Ah's a sinful man, Cunnel; Ah couldn't see de angel face to face, but de
glory of de angel was befoh me, an' guided me."
They used his cane and a broken-off bough to splint the leg; they wrapped him in a
horse-blanket and hauled him back to "Greyrock" and put him to bed, with Dearest
clinging solicitously to him. The fractured leg knit slowly, though the physician was
amazed at the speed with which, considering his age, he made recovery, and with his
unfailing cheerfulness. He did not know, of course, that he was being assisted by an
invisible nurse. For all that, however, the leaves on the oaks around "Greyrock" were
green again before Colonel Hampton could leave his bed and hobble about the house on a
cane.
Arthur, the young Negro who had driven the jeep, had become one of the most solid
pillars of the little A.M.E. church beyond the village, as a result. Sergeant Williamson
had also become an attendant at church for a while, and then stopped. Without being able
to define, or spell, or even pronounce the term, Sergeant Williamson was a strict
pragmatist. Most Africans are, even five generations removed from the slave-ship that
brought their forefathers from the Dark Continent. And Sergeant Williamson could not
find the blessedness at the church. Instead, it seemed to center about the room where his
employer and former regiment commander lay. That, to his mind, was quite reasonable.
If an Angel of the Lord was going to tarry upon earth, the celestial being would naturally
prefer the society of a retired U.S.A. colonel to that of a passel of triflin', no-'counts at an
ol' clapboard church house. Be that as it may, he could always find the blessedness in
Colonel Hampton's room, and sometimes, when the Colonel would be asleep, the
blessedness would follow him out and linger with him for a while.
* * * * *
Colonel Hampton wondered, anxiously, where Dearest was, now. He had not felt her
presence since his nephew had brought his lawyer and the psychiatrist into the house. He
wondered if she had voluntarily separated herself from him for fear he might give her
some sign of recognition that these harpies would fasten upon as an evidence of unsound
mind. He could not believe that she had deserted him entirely, now when he needed her
most....
"Well, what can I do?" Doctor Vehrner was complaining. "You bring me here to
interview him, and he just sits there and does nothing.... Will you consent to my giving
him an injection of sodium pentathol?"
"Well, I don't know, now," T. Barnwell Powell