STORY "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" - (11)

LAST CHAPTER

In 1920, Roscoe Button’s first child was born. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it “the thing” to mention, that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the new baby’s own grandfather.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was a source of torment. In the idiom of his generation Roscoe did not consider the matter “efficient.”

It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a “red-blooded he-man” _this was Roscoe’s favorite expression _but in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour drove him to the edge of insanity.

Roscoe believed that “live wire” should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale was…was…was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.

Five years later Roscoe’s little boy had grown old enough to play childish games with little Benjamin under the supervision of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, and Benjamin found that playing mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world.

Once he was bad and had to stand in the corner _then he cried_ but for the most part there were gay hours in the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and Miss Bailey’s kind hand resting for a moment now and them in his tousaled hair.

Roscoe’s son moved up a shadow would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realized that those were things in which he was never to share.

The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the bright shining strips of paper were for. He cried because the other boys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not understand at all.

He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her starched gingham dress, became the center of his tiny world. On brigth days they walked in the park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and say “elephant,” and Benjamin would say it after her, and when he was being underssed for bed that night he would say it over and over aloud to her:

“Elephant, elephant, elephant.”

Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it would bounce you up on your feet again, and if you said “Ah” for a long time while you jumped you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.

He loved to take a big cane from the hat-rack and go around hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: “Fight, fight, fight.”

When there were people there the old ladies would cluck at him, which interested him, and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he submitted to with mild boredom.

And when the long day was done at five o’clock he would go upstairs with Nana and be fed on oatmeal and nice soft mushly foods with a spoon.

There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls.

There were only the white, safe walss of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour and called “sun.” When the sun went his eyes were sleepy _there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.

The past _the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved.

The days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstansial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.

He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at this last feeding or how the days passed _there was only his crib and Nana’s familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried _that was all.

Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.

Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.

_the end.