by Deb Spera
“Come in, Doctor. I’m afraid you must stay even if for a moment.” I raise my bandaged hand. “I’ve had an accident.”
Edwin was on the hiring committee for the doctor. John Southard was a young man then, and while totally competent, he was viewed with suspicion by Branchville, as Northerners often are. I expect they looked at me the same way when I arrived, but the Coles family is a powerful one, so I never felt the object of their judgment. I only noticed it after the doctor arrived. The rest of the committee wanted to hire a Southern doctor, someone from the region, but Edwin convinced everyone that we needed an outsider’s perspective, someone who knew of things we didn’t. He felt it the best way to protect the town. Of course the committee submitted and hired the man. No one says no to Edwin. It took several years for the town to forget the doctor’s Yankee roots. It was his wife who won everyone over. So fat and gregarious, no one could resist her charms. They were an odd pair. Fat Lady and Stick, Eddie nicknamed them. Men and women liked her. She volunteered for every church function, raised funds for the needy and made quilts for the sick. In time everyone softened. Even Edwin liked her. No one can dispute kindness regardless of motive. She died a few years ago of a bad heart. It was a surprise to everyone. Her husband continued to treat the citizens of Branchville, but without his wife pulling him to and from various events he disappeared from the social scene altogether. It wasn’t until her absence that we were reminded of whom he was before he came, an outsider. The town descended, as it does for death, but he closed the door to everyone who tried to get a look inside to see how he was faring. Never mind the poor man was grieving and seeking solitude. Their judgment stuck and there it stayed.
“Northerners lack warmth,” people said. “Don’t try to hug one. They’ll run in the other direction.”
Upon seeing my predicament, the doctor is at once through the door and into the dining room. I turn on the electricity so he can see properly. Even though we are in midafternoon, the light is dark as dusk. He walks hastily through the room and places his bag beside the table settings. Retta comes with an open bottle of red wine and pours a glass for the doctor. I pat my hand on the table, and she leaves the bottle before disappearing to the kitchen. I pour a second drink for myself.
Dr. Southard unwraps the bandage, and I’m struck by how gentle he is. The object of his attention has settled him. He inspects and pries the wound. It opens to reveal the white flesh beneath. I wince and he is at once sympathetic.
“That’s a nasty cut. What happened?”
“I was playing with knives.”
He lifts his head at my flippant response.
“I was careless, not paying attention. That’s all,” I say.
That satisfies him, and he reaches for his bag.
“You need sutures. I wish I could say they won’t hurt, but I’ve yet to meet a patient who likes being stitched up.”
“That’s what I have this for,” I say as I raise my glass and take another drink.
“You should have some, as well,” I tell him. “No doubt your day warrants a good stiff drink.”
“Most of my weeks of late warrant such.”
I push his glass closer and say, “Then by all means, indulge. I won’t count it as a mark against your character.”
He laughs and opens his leather bag to retrieve his tools.
“Retta will have a plate of food for you to eat when you are finished. You cannot go home without a full belly. I suspect you’ve not eaten all day.”
“I haven’t,” he confesses and looks out the window to assess the weather. His carriage and horses are tied beneath the trees at the end of the drive.
“You’ll have plenty of time to get home,” I tell him. “If I am wrong you are welcome to stay until it passes.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” he says.
“Thank you for yours.”
He threads the needle easily and knots it at the end, then lays it across the china that Retta has laid out for supper. Pushing the silverware to the center of the table, he pulls back the tablecloth so he has a nice wide space to work from, and retrieves a small bottle of clear liquid and cotton from his bag. He soaks the cotton and holds my hand open along the table. I swallow a mouthful of wine.
“Are you ready?” he asks. “This is most unpleasant.”
“May I call you John?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Dr. John. I am ready.”
“I apologize in advance,” he says, then drenches the wound with rubbing alcohol. The sharp smell and searing pain brings tears to my eyes, and all at once I am eight years old with bloodied knees on a chair in the kitchen at our home in New York. My father cleaned my knees that day. It was then I confessed the countless brutal acts committed by other children toward me. He was shocked that anyone dared treat me poorly, and I was too young to understand the country’s significant divide was further illuminated by my Southern accent. He should have known. We left for Europe shortly thereafter.
I don’t flinch when John pulls the needle through my skin. It’s become paper-thin in my old age so he must dig deep to secure the suture. He’s kind enough not to explain himself. I know the symptoms and signs of age. They’ve stalked me for years. It’s a relief to focus on the stab of pain as the needle works its way through flesh. I breathe through it. Physical pain is like labor. As bad as it gets, eventually it passes. You just have to get to the other side. I take another drink, and hold the glass steady in my left hand as he finishes the fourth stitch on my right. His work is clean, and his stitches smaller than I imagined they would be.
“Why, you are a tailor,” I proclaim. “Have you ever sewn anything other than limbs?”
He laughs. “Limbs are enough for me.”
“All the things men do in Europe, they refuse to do here. Cooking, sewing, I wonder why that is?” I ask.
“Advanced civilization, I daresay.”
“Yes, we Americans are barbaric, aren’t we?”
“I suppose there is barbarism everywhere, in everyone, regardless of culture.”
“Do you really believe that?”
He raises his eyes to look at me.
“In my work you see many things you’d rather not.”
He finishes and ties off the thread.
“Such as?”
“Many things,” he responds.
“Retta?” I call to the kitchen.
She arrives at the door wiping her hands on her apron.
“You may serve supper.”
Retta and Edna come through from the kitchen, steam rising from platters and bowls, and then our plates as Retta fills them. She’s made fried fish, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and the last of the tomatoes and cucumbers of the season. Outside a lightning flash brightens the room. Edna drops the corn bread, and it scatters across the table. She apologizes, and Retta purses her lips while Edna hurries to put the corn bread back on the platter. I catch the girl’s hand and say, “Five seconds equals one mile. That is the formula I was taught as a child. Count it out and you will see the storm is far away yet. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“See?” I tell the doctor after Edna flees to the kitchen. “You’ve plenty of time. Eat.”
He spreads his hands at the bounty before him, then folds and brings them to his chest, bowing his head. I follow suit.
“We ask that You look after the sick and hurt, and we thank You, dear Lord, for Your endless bounty. In Your name’s sake, we pray.”
“Amen,” we say together.
Thunder rumbles in the distance. Edwin and I haven’t prayed at the dinner table in years. We only ever did it out of respect for his parents and the children.
“Does God watch over us?” Sarah and Molly asked when they were ten and eight years old.
They’d become fixated on Biblical miracles during that time, t
o the point of distraction. It became an obsession. All the children in Sunday school took to calling them Miracles to tease. Finally the teacher pulled me aside to ask if all was well at home. To put an end to it I told Sarah and Molly that God had more important things to do than to worry about each and every single person, and it was arrogant to think otherwise.
“Aren’t you eating?” John asks.
“I’m not hungry. Is it good?”
“Remarkable. The best meal I’ve had in a long time.”
He reaches for the wine as lightning flashes across the darkening sky.
“You are a religious man?”
“Not as much as I should be.”
“But you pray.”
“Yes, often.”
“Do you think God loves monsters?”
“God loves everyone.”
“Should a monster be treated as a monster or a human being?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
The shrubbery outside the dining room scrapes the window, and the curtains blow and bellow in rippled waves. Thunder rumbles loudly again in the distance, and John gives a quick look outside. The treetops swish against one another. His horses snort and stomp the ground beneath them.
“If a human being behaves like a monster, if he does monstrous things, should he be treated as a monster or a human being?”
“The correct answer is human being, of course.”
“I don’t care about correct. I care about what you truly think.”
He sits back, takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly.
“I can’t answer that.”
“Are you happy here, John? In this town?”
His brow furrows.
“As happy as can be expected, I suppose.”
“I’ve never fit in. I thought with enough time I could become one of them, be from here. But we will always be outsiders, you and I. Dirty Yankees. Me because of my father, and you because of yours.”
A streak of lightning brightens the room again, and thunder answers in quick response, startling us both. John wipes his mouth and folds his napkin in his plate.
“Don’t leave, you haven’t had cobbler.”
“I regret that very much, you have no idea, but I’ve got to go if I am to make it home before the storm strikes.”
A gust of wind comes through the window so strongly the tablecloth rises at the corner and topples the saltshaker.
“Wait,” I say, as John moves toward the door. “I must pay you for your services.”
“The meal was payment enough. Come to my office next week so we can see how that hand is coming along,” he tells me. “Keep it clean. With any luck we’ll extract the stitches in two weeks’ time.”
Leaning into the wind he leads the horses out of the yard and is swept into the wake of coming darkness. I finish what is left of the wine knowing I’ll regret tomorrow’s headache, but I don’t care. Lightning hits so near and the thunderclap is so strong, I wonder what tree on our property has been its victim. Shrieks emanate from the kitchen followed by Retta’s quick and firm shush. Pushing open the kitchen door I find Retta holding two little girls by their hands.
“Girls,” I say, “how many times have I spoken to you about coming downstairs without your hair brushed?”
They stand, mouths agape, and I quickly realize my mistake. These aren’t my girls. Lightning flashes so closely you can feel the crackle of electricity in the air. A mighty roar rattles the windows. The girls scream in terror, and I cup my hands to my ears for the noise. Pain shoots up my arm. The lights flicker, and we are plunged into darkness.
26
Gertrude
It ain’t easy to bathe a dead man. Every limb is heavy. The more time passes, the heavier he gets. My brother’s been dead for two hours and already he’s stiffening. I ain’t never seen a man naked except Alvin, and it don’t seem right that I got to now, but it’s my duty as his sister to see that Berns is prepared for the afterlife. Marie lies naked beside my brother. She died quick, but Berns wouldn’t let me move her, so she lay cold next to him for the better part of a day and night. My own body is heavy, too. Every move I make takes all the energy I got. I can’t tell if it’s from my own sorrow or what I got taking root in my chest. The storm carries with it a wet, hot heat, but still a shiver goes through my bones. I watched how the sickness took them both, so I know the path before me. The fever is settling in.
I fling open all the windows and yank the soiled sheet from under them. The force of the wind makes the stench somewhat tolerable, but does not take the smell of death away. Rain comes into the room sideways, wetting the bed frame and ticking. The pages of the Bible on the nightstand flap in the wind and hailstones clang on the tin roof. Let the heavens rage. They should. In the three days since I come here I have done no good. Useless in life and useless in death, not the sister my brother deserves. I rip the clean part of the sheet into a long strip and use it to tie up Berns’s jaw so his tongue won’t do like Marie’s. Her tongue swoll so big after she passed I couldn’t get it back in her throat. The pain on Berns’s face is etched deep, even now, the sole reminder of what he endured, the one thing his body won’t let loose of. The water I used to bathe Marie is gone cold, and I know it ain’t right to bathe my brother with the same water as another dead person, but she is his wife and he would not mind. Marie was the only person I ever saw my brother cry for. I never witnessed that kind of love before. Likely I never will again. Berns was still with fever when I found them. He’d broke sweat, that was a good sign, but by then Marie was sick. She succumbed quick, and Berns fell into a deep mourn that he could not pull away from. He turned on his side and took her face in his hands.
“Marie,” he cried. “I never had nobody love me like you.”
I wanted to tell him, I do, Berns. I love you. But I didn’t. I never said those words out loud.
I should dress them in their Sunday clothes, and Berns needs a haircut and shave. I wish I could’ve seen that need sooner, such an easy thing to offer, but I got to save what little strength I have for the journey ahead. I lay the fullness of the wet rag on my brother’s brow until his face loosens and the last of his tension is gone.
My brother was locked in battle with Alvin on his deathbed. Before he died, Berns saw my husband and tried to warn me. He reached for me, wild-eyed.
“Alvin ain’t here,” I said.
But he was frantic and pointed to the empty door to show me what only he could see, and that’s when I knew. Alvin took my brother as sure as I stand on this earth, then he jumped down my throat and now sits on my chest, squeezing it so tight I can’t hardly breathe. I did not think what Alvin’s death would un-do, only what it could do. The killing of him released the fury in him. In death a spirit’s force is greater. Alvin’s anger never stopped. When he finishes with me, he will hunt our children and will not rest until he’s taken or killed every last thing I love.
“Goodbye, sweet brother,” I say. I kiss Berns on the forehead and am seized about the chest. If I don’t get up and go home, I will surely die here. There’s a handful of coins and a box of bullets atop the chest of drawers. I count out four pennies and pocket the rest, then empty the box of ammunition into my pockets. I place the coins on my brother and Marie’s eyes, fold their hands together and cover them with one of Mama’s quilts. I’ll send word when I can to the Reverend.
I lift Berns’s rifle from where it hangs above the hearth, and step out onto my brother’s porch for the last time to walk headfirst into what I smelled coming. The black sky moves fast from the east. It’s different to step into a storm here than it was in the swamp. In the swamp you’re in the belly of the beast protected by the body of it, but here in the open, you face the head of the creature. There ain’t nothin’ between you and the power that comes bearing down.
There are evil spirits in this world, and Alvin is
among them. But Berns’s spirit released with a mighty roar. Berns and Marie, and Mama and Daddy—they are here with me, too. Even still I wonder if I will live to find my girls and see their faces one last time. The wind lifts and carries, whipping at my back, until I find myself at Main Street, not a soul in sight. Looks like everybody left in the middle of what they were doing to seek shelter. Open signs sit in the windows of businesses, and in the Branchville station a green-and-yellow train stands empty on the tracks as if waiting for passengers. There is a loud crack, and I turn to see two metal panels tear loose and fly off the roof of the station. I stay close to the storefronts to shield myself and am grabbed from behind by my arm. A young woman hangs on to the screen door of the general store. She is my age, maybe younger, and heavy with child.
She yells above the wind, “Come inside!”
Her fear doubles when she sees I am sick. I shake my head and wave her away. She backs up and retreats to the dark of the store, slamming shut the heavy wood door. Hailstones the size of robin eggs fall from the sky and bounce across the fields, covering the ground in a white blanket. I catch what I can in one hand and swallow the ice to ease the pain in my throat. Everything the wind touches makes noise. Even the folds of my skirt flap like I’m shaking out a rug. All around me is a choir of sound.
It is my own dread and sorrow that pushes me on. I’ve been without my girls for three days. I miss Mary running and jumping into my arms, wrapping her tiny body around my neck and waist. I miss my Alma’s wonder at the world around her, dragging every new thing through the door to show me, and Edna, the one who loves me though I could not protect her from her own daddy’s wickedness. She got the worst of him when she was small, and he locked her in the cedar chest for talking too much. She can’t stand to be confined and can hardly sleep under blankets anymore. Lily, my flower, must submit to the pain of the love that grows inside her. She will understand more of me after her own child is born. No one can stop what is coming for her.
As soon as I step through the door of our home, I know they are gone. They’re smart girls and know to seek help in times of trouble. To hide ’til it passes. They learned that from me because of their daddy. All those times I made them run for fear of his rage, so many times that I made a safe place for them through the cornfields, out by Sweat’s Pond. They spent many a night there. That was before the swamp—the place that left us nowhere to go.