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WACO[underlined]      125[underlined]
Clayt, Clem and I watched from the porch as the ambulance came down the street..so much like a hearse and left its precious burden. We put Sam in the front bedroom which was off the front porch, close to the street. This might help divert him. All sense of place and time had left him. His brain would clear and cloud. His voice like that of a child. The voice of his daughter in the next room was full and strong. She was Life..he the Echo. Surely the end was near. There had to be Sam. He alone could understand all the refinements of the punishment of the past seven months. Sam would talk slyly to "Buck", eyes alert for any eavesdroppers. He would tell "Buck" about OUR new baby girl. Tell him he had to come back and take care of us for he was too tired, we had to be cared for. When I would go in the room he would ask "Were's Buck, Hattie? Why doesn't he come to see me?" I would stifle the agony in my heart that cried out, "I am your[underlined] wife, the Mother of our child." Sam would seem to hear my inner cry, just as he heard all my "hurts" ever since we sat by George's sick bed. Realizing he had hurt me, say, "come here" put my head on his thin, thin shoulder, and cry his apology for hurting me so, and the injustice of it ALL. He lived over again every experience of his life. His long illness in Buffalo, the swollen ankles and joints of his present illness in all its anguish and he would cry out, "Let me go, let me go, I'm tired." He would tell me each day, "Today you have a husband, but to-morrow? Then one day, "When Buck puts the damn newspaper down, I'm going with him. What's he reading? and "when I put out to sea, let there be no moaning at the Bar..." He was kept under an oxygen cone and full Strychine hypodermics which held an unwilling spirit in a body long since dead.
      I brought the baby, now named Janet, for him to see. He put up his hand and she grabbed so tightly to his pinky, his gorgeous smile and voice like he was given LIFE came back as he said, "You're a sweet baby." (At the wheelchair visit to the hospital when she was born, he had brought a pair of pink edged white booties with a note in his hand-writing, "Love Daddy.")