DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and
bending over the dead kid. She is putting a looking-glass
to its lips. He asts her why.
She says she thought she might be mistaken after
all. She couldn't say jest WHEN it died. It was
alive and feeble, and then purty soon it showed no
signs of life. It was like it hadn't had enough
strength to stay and had jest went. I didn't show
any pulse, and it didn't appear to be breathing.
And she had watched it and done everything before
she beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that
it was dead. But as she come back into the room
where it was she thought she noticed something
that was too light to be called a real flutter move its
eyelids, which she had closed down over its eyes.
It was the ghost of a move, like it had tried to raise
the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and
had been too weak. So she has got busy and
wrapped a hot cloth around it, and got a drop of
brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting to
bring it back to life. And thought she was doing
it. Thought she had felt a little flutter in its chest,
and was trying if it had breath at all.
Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner
fambly has always been at home. And how high
they had always held their heads. And how none
of the women has ever been like this before. Nor
no disgrace of any kind. And that there kid, if it
is alive, is a sign of disgrace. And he hoped to God,
he said, it wasn't alive.
But he don't say so. He stands there and
watches that nurse fight fur to hold onto the little
mist of life she thinks now is still into it. She unbuttons
her dress and lays the kid against the heat
of her own breast. And wills fur it to live, and
fights fur it to, and determines that it must, and jest
natcherally tries fur to bullyrag death into going
away. And Colonel Tom watching, and wishing
that it wouldn't. But he gets interested in that
there fight, and so purty soon he is hoping both ways
by spells. And the fight all going on without a
word spoken.