Nancy Culpepper by Bobbie Ann Mason Page B

ammunition passer. Storms battled the ship relentlessly, slopping the decks and plunging and hurtling the ship like a carnival ride. In the dark, cramped quarters—stinking with B.O. and puke—he tried to sleep, but he thought about Lila, nursing the baby and helping his parents get the crops in. He could see her milking the few cows they had during the war, washing the milk cans. One calm, sunny day, he carried buckets of water to swab the deck and forgot momentarily where he was, imagining he was carrying buckets of milk from the barn to the house. Then a fighter plane zoomed down low over the destroyer to land on the aircraft carrier a few hundred yards off the port bow.
    When Spence enters Lila’s room, the girls are reading magazines. The air-conditioning is cold. He’s in a short-sleeved shirt, but they are wrapped up in layers of clothes.
    “We stole her cigarettes,” Cat says. “She had five packs at the bottom of her bag.”
    Nancy seems smaller each time he sees her, while Cat fattens up like a Butterball turkey. Cat has on a wrinkled jumpsuit with buttons and zippers all over it, and a wide belt with three buckles, and several pounds of beads. Nancy has on a sweater and a jacket and baggy pants with buttons at the ankles. This is July.
    “Where did y’all get them clothes?” he says. “The rag barrel?”
    Cat lets out a giggle. “One of the doctors called us ‘honky Shiite terrorists.’ ”
    Spence’s daughters have never acted their age, but in a way he doesn’t mind—they are still his little girls. He may burst into tears. Feeling a pang of heartburn, he sits down and grabs a section of the
Courier-Journal
from the floor. Too late, he thinks about the germs on the floor.
    A nurse flies in and says to Nancy, “I’ll have to ask you to get off the bed, hon. It’s for the patient.”
    “I was warming it up for her,” Nancy grumbles. She folds her reading glasses and slips them into a case.
    “Y’all are always arguing with the doctors and nurses,” Spence says to his daughters after the nurse leaves. “Talking back to them.”
    “Well, if we left it up to you, who knows what could happen to Mom!” Nancy says, sitting up on the edge of the bed and reaching for her shoes. “She could get mutilated. A lot of doctors just want to operate because they’re enamored with their equipment.” Nancy situates herself on a spread-out newspaper on the floor. “Let me ask you one thing, Dad. If you were in the hospital hooked up to tubes and you weren’t even conscious, or maybe you were in excruciating pain—what would you want us to do?”
    “I’m afraid of what y’all might have them doctors do to me.” Spence shudders.
    “Well, maybe you ought to think about it,” Nancy says. “While you’re still in charge.”
    “I’ll solve that one,” he says. “I just won’t go to doctors. You’re right about them anyway. They just want to work you over and take your money.” He folds the newspaper and drops it to the floor. He says to Cat, “I believe your mama is more worried about you than she is about this operation.”
    “Well, I don’t know what to do about it. She didn’t see Scott laying on the ground that time. I thought he was dead!”
    “He wasn’t hurt.”
    “But Lee never should have let Scott ride that dumb three-wheeler. He was too little, and he didn’t have a helmet. Those things are dangerous, the way kids ride them all over creation.”
    For a moment Spence sees Lila in his daughter. Lila swinging in a porch swing the night they married, her shoulder pads sticking out like scaffolding.
    Cat goes on, “When I took Scott to the hospital, his fingers were numb—that’s a sign of concussion. There was a kid killed just last week on a three-wheeler. Didn’t you see that in the paper?”
    Spence shakes his head in despair. It was an accident, and Lee was scared too. He says, “That’s not what I meant. Lila’s just worried about you—staying by yourself at