Page 50 - A Little Life: A Novel

His second year of college, Hemming had had to have an emergency
appendectomy. “They said they caught it just in time,” his mother told him
over the phone. Her voice was flat, very matter-of-fact; there was no relief

in it, no anguish, but neither was there any—and he’d had to make himself
consider this, even though he hadn’t wanted to, was scared to—
disappointment either. Hemming’s caregiver (a local woman, paid to watch
him during the night now that Willem was gone) had noticed him pawing at
his stomach and moaning, and had been able to diagnose the hard truffley
lump under his abdomen for what it was. While Hemming was being
operated on, the doctors had found a growth, a few centimeters long, on his

large intestine and had biopsied it. X-rays had revealed further growths, and
they were going to excise those as well.
“I’ll come home,” he said.
“No,” his mother had said. “You can’t do anything here. We’ll tell you if
it’s anything serious.” She and his father had been more bemused than
anything when he had been admitted to college—neither of them had

known he was applying—but now that he was there, they were determined
that he should graduate and forget the ranch as quickly as possible.
But at night he thought of Hemming, alone in a hospital bed, how he’d be
frightened and would cry and listen for the sound of his voice. When
Hemming was twenty-one, he’d had to have a hernia removed, and he had
wept until Willem held his hand. He knew he’d have to go back.
The flights were expensive, much more than he’d anticipated. He

researched bus routes, but it would take three days to get there, three days
to get back, and he had midterm exams he had to take and do well in if he
was to keep his scholarship, and his jobs to attend to. Finally, drunk that
Friday night, he confided in Malcolm, who got out his checkbook and wrote
him a check.
“I can’t,” he said, immediately.

“Why not?” asked Malcolm. They argued back and forth until Willem
finally accepted the check.
“I’ll pay you back, you know that, right?”
Malcolm shrugged. “There’s no way for me to say this without sounding
like a complete asshole,” he said, “but it doesn’t make a difference to me,
Willem.”
Still, it became important to him to repay Malcolm somehow, even

though he knew Malcolm wouldn’t accept his money. It was Jude who had