University of Northern Iowa

Well I'll Be DamnedAuthor(s): Walter McDonaldSource: The North American Review, Vol. 263, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 14-15Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118052 .

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walter McDonald

WELL I'LL BE DAMNED,

he says. The second jury summons in a year.

What do they think I am, retired? I can't afford another week. He shakes his head.

Turns back to his office. Stops and sips his coffee. Goes in and shuts the door.

Mark and Maureen run a pharmacy. Take turns

at the store, and home. Someone has to be

with Joel. Maureen always wanted children.

Intended to have four. Tried to be good. Obeyed her doctor. Took faithfully the prescription from their own pharmacy: thalidomide. Joel has no arms, no legs, no penis. An active

mind. Seal-like: a torso and a head.

After his birth, Maureen had a hysterectomy. Mark, a vasectomy. Taking no risks.

Kyle is a doctor. Three children. For sixteen

years his wife died in their home. M.S. Unconscious the last eight months. Within a year

he took another wife, plain, an old friend, perfect as a mother for his kids. Two left home within a week. The youngest calls the new wife "Ma'm."

Sometimes shakes her head. Cries at night. Cuts

school. Sits in the park all day. Kyle is a doctor. Takes care of people's pain.

Four houses down from us the Jenners live. Or used

to live. The wife last week drove toward her parents'

home in Idalou. The children rode in back. She may have, angry, reached to swat them. And lost control.

Or only a blowout. No one knows. Only that the car

jerked down into the median, rolled twice, stopped on the opposing highway on its wheels. The cattle truck smashed over the hood, sliced off the top and Jane Jenner's head. Dragged the crushed car a hundred yards. The car tank exploded first. Both

truckers lived. The diesel tanks burst into flames.

The men crawled under the fire and tried opening a door, a window, anything. They saw a bloody

torso. Blood-splattered kids. Eyes pleading louder

than screams. Both tried until they caught on fire. Ran desperately away. Some people knocked them down,

14 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/Winter 1978

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rolled out the flames. Most of the cattle

burned. The smell of diesel fuel. The stench of burning tires, of cows. And something else.

Ray and Nadine retired at sixty-two. No children.

Took tours to England, Paris, Rome. The Holy Land. In Spain Ray had his first small stroke. Next spring, they cruised the Caribbean. Back home, at sixty-six

they worked two months assembling three-thousand slides,

splicing five-thousand feet of 16 mm movie film.

Invited friends to come and see. The Bates declined, infirm. The Woods were out of town. A dozen others

had lost mates, didn't feel up to fun. The new young

couple next door stayed an hour, the man checking his

watch. Next week Ray bought tickets for the Orient. In Singapore Nadine suffered an insulin shock. Back home, Ray had another stroke. Could only move

his eyes. Nadine showed movies on the ceiling.

After a week, Ray closed his eyes when she turned on

the film. Had seen enough. She nursed him for three years.

Died suddenly one day out shopping in the Mall. Police found Ray in bed and moved him to a nursing home. It took Ray four years more to die.

Carl and Lucille were college sweethearts. Practical.

Waited three years to marry. After graduation, waited

three more, saving, then bore a child. Three more

to have a second child. Beautiful frail girls. Their skin almost transparent. The first

lived to be four. A rare disease, transmitted through their blend of genes. The second died at three. Carl and Lucille went celibate for years. Considered divorce,

and suicide. Went to psychiatrists. Lucille wrote

three-hundred letters to newspapers, warning young

people not to marry, to have no sex. None of her letters

published. Carl had cancer of the lungs at forty, welcomed it as penance. Lucille looks no one

in the eye. Wears no make-up. Tries to look

old. Looks forward to menopause. To death.

In Bangladesh infant mortality is one in two; life expectancy is twenty-eight. Names: Bangladesh,

Uganda, Ghana. Statistics have no arms, no legs.

A torso and a head. A world of pharmacies and disease. Thousands of movie feet. A child sits in a park. Sometimes shakes her head. The truck sliced off the

top. The stench of burning tires. And something else.

The jury deliberates. Looks no one in the eye. Wears cancer like a curse. Wants to be damned.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/Winter 1978 15

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