Courage in a White Coat

by Mary Schwaner

  Student nurses flew from chore to chore as she updated inventories. Paniwallas carried supplies, filled the larder, and cut back another ten yards of encroaching jungle. She organized a task force to dredge the sand out of buried water pipes, a task which they could never manage to keep ahead of.

  And she read Fred’s letters.

  Even the ugly kapok trees seemed enchanting when she lingered beneath one long enough to read, for perhaps the tenth time, his most recent letter that she’d carried in the pocket of her white coat for two days.

  My darling wife,

  You shall just have to get used to my impetuosity. I’ve changed our visitation schedule and shall not take no for an answer. I’m coming this Thursday evening, not Friday. I simply cannot wait. So...

  I’ll be down to get you in a taxi, honey,

  better be ready ‘bout a half past eight.

  Now honey, don’t be late, I wanna be there when

  the band starts playin’!

  So get your glad rags on, lovely wife. And be ready, because I’ll be down to get you, darling. Thursday night. Half past eight.

  Your ever-loving Fred

  Dorothy beamed as she tucked the letter back into her pocket. She had almost heard him singing as she’d read the lyrics he’d quoted. They’d sung Darktown Strutter’s Ball halfway to Jorhat the first time he’d taken her up there.

  I’m gonna dance out both my shoes

  When they play those Jelly Roll Blues

  Tomorrow night at the Darktown Strutter’s Ball

  She could still see Fred’s hands tapping out the percussion on the Ford’s steering wheel. When Dorothy reached over to add a toot of the horn here and there Fred knew he’d married a real corker. And she knew she had, too.

  Her trip-hammer heart was in full swing today. Anticipation was at its very highest. Because today was Thursday.

  At her earliest opportunity, Dorothy hurried back to the bungla to prepare for Fred’s visit, swinging along the path to the rhythm of her heartbeat. She’d stayed up late the night before making the frozen dessert he liked so much, all the while sweet-talking the Frigidaire in hopes she could cajole it into working through the day. And it had.

  She polished the dusty scuffs off her shoes, pressed the lace on the headscarf she’d need if they went for a drive, knitted a new rosette and pinned it to the bodice of the dress she’d wear. It was remarkable how a dress could take on a whole new look and feel just by adding something as simple as that. Just like a life could.

  Around six o’clock she turned off the Victrola, just to make sure she’d hear his car the moment he arrived. She straightened the doily beneath the fruit bowl and let her eyes sweep the corners of the room for any unwelcome guests, then swung into the kitchen for one last check on the dessert.

  The Frigidaire hummed steady and strong, and the dessert had the look of perfection. Even in the little china dishes with the chipped rims. They were all she had at the moment, since she’d sent all her good china up to Jorhat.

  Dorothy dipped a finger into the corner of the dish nearest her, just to check the consistency. It was firm, not mushy at all. Perfect.

  “Thank you, my sturdy little Frigidaire.”

  She smiled as she patted the fridge with one hand and licked the frozen delight from the finger of her other hand. She danced away from the appliance and made a small twirl in the kitchen doorway.

  And then she heard it.

  The sound was low and easy, mellow with a bit of a wail. It lifted and dove, lingered and danced, and released a flood of emotion she thought she’d held within so very well.

  It said I’m here.

  It said You’re not alone anymore.

  It said I love you I missed you I can’t wait to hold you.

  Fred had brought his saxophone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MONOTONY IS NOT IN HER VOCABULARY

  September 20, 1936

  Letter from Fred to his mother

  Well, I’m alone and mighty lonesome. Dorothy was here last weekend and this place was a perfect Heaven. She telegraphed on Wednesday a week ago and stated that she would arrive at noon the next day. Well, I simply came right up off the ground and it is only lately that my feet have been touching the soil again. She stayed until the following Wednesday afternoon and since her going this place has continued to hold a kind of fragrance of her that has transformed it into a real home for me.

  Dorothy put up some curtains and arranged the vases for flowers, and Amu and I have been seeing to it that things remained just as near like her arrangement as we can keep it. Even he was mighty happy for her being here (she makes everyone love her wherever she goes) and the first morning after she had returned to Gauhati, Amu served my breakfast and then remained standing in the door looking as if something radically were wrong with him, then he came out with this, “I don’t feel good. The Memsahib is gone and this place is empty. You and I don’t know how to arrange this house but she does. And without her, I don’t work hard.”

  So it would seem that Amu has fallen for Dorothy.

  Fred paused midway through writing his letter. Amu had indeed fallen for Dorothy. But how could he not? She didn’t treat him as a servant, she welcomed him as a partner in helping to keep the household running smoothly.

  Letter home from Dorothy

  We will try and get some pictures of the place. It is such a big one that there would be plenty of room for four or five more of you if you could only manage to get here. We are hoping to begin to get some tennis in regularly, and Fred hopes to get in some golf.

  ...He brought his saxophone...and also his baby organ, and I am having some fun trying to remember a bit of what I used to know so that we can play at least some of the hymns together. Mother, you score again. You said that I would rue the day some day that I hadn’t made more of my music, and I guess that day has come, but maybe it isn’t too late even now.

  Yesterday a box walla came around and I enjoyed getting some of the things that I had planned to get but hadn’t had time before we were married.

  Fred has a fine bearer-cook by the name of Amu. He speaks and understands English quite well. He was much interested in the purchases yesterday and helped me quite a bit by telling me what linen Fred had, etc. He is a Christian, and is more than just a servant—a real friend. When someone said to him the other day, “Well, you’ll have a memsahib to work for now” he said, “No, another helper.” We have laughed a good deal over it.

  I wish that we could tell you more of our plans for the future, but a good deal depends on what is decided regarding certain phases of the work out here. I expect to go to Jorhat just as soon as Alice gets back to Gauhati, and hope that it won’t be more than until November 1st that I will have to stay in Gauhati. Fred’s furlough is due in the spring of ‘38. Of course furlough plans are still in the making, but he is hoping to get his doctorate at Columbia while at home. Later we can let you know more about our plans.

  Letter home from Fred

  I believe I have the best wife in the whole flat world. I was crazy about her...but that’s nothing to the way I feel now and I get worse daily. She can think up the nicest things to do and say for my happiness and then goes on to do them in about the finest way you can imagine. Some folk thought because she was so good professionally that she wouldn’t be so good domestically. The fact is, she is showing them all where to get off.

  Can she cook! Each time I think she has made about the best there is and then she springs a new one on me and it puts the former one in the shade. She makes such good cookies that they simply won’t last any time at all. Then she countered with some doughnuts and they went just as fast. Her green tomato pickles get better all the time and she has turned out a real supply of orange marmalade that beats the market all to pieces and has a much better flavour.

  She seems to never lack for originality, and monotony simply isn’t in her vocabulary. And on top of all the good food sh
e is giving me, she fixes the house up so tastefully that I am proud as punch every time someone comes to call.

  As impossible as it seemed, Fred found ways to manage his angst over the separation. He tried desperately not to take his frustration out on Amu, who had delighted Fred with his instant loyalty to Dorothy. He bit his tongue bloody trying to soften his tone with the Swedish Baptists who had nothing but disdain for his teaching methods. No matter how they disparaged his work, he knew they would come to appreciate Dorothy, if he just gave them a chance.

  And he worked equally as hard to maintain some level of patience with the schoolboys who managed to find any number of ways to thwart his plans for an orderly classroom. But to Fred’s surprise, one simple phrase wrought magical results. When things began to get out of hand, all he had to do now was shush them and ask, “Gentlemen, please. What would Mrs. Dorothy say about that?”

  There was no other word for it but magical. They had only met the new Mrs. Chambers once, and she had utterly charmed them. Who but Dorothy could influence such modifications of behavior while not even being present?

  Yet when an insidious viper threatened their small community, it was Fred for whom the boys came running.

  Letter home from Fred

  From what I have experienced this last week, there is ample evidence that this is India. In the first place, the cobras have kept us going. I think I wrote you about the other one, and this one happened just before Dorothy arrived. One of the boys came to me and asked for a “dhow” (small axe-like knife) and I told him where he would find it. Then he casually remarked that they had found a snake. I went to the killing with them.

  When I arrived on the scene, I saw a five foot cobra lying under a wheelbarrow one of the boys had been pushing. We attacked and the snake put up a good fight. It would rise about two feet off the ground and strike ferociously. That swelled neck is an interesting sight and this one had beautiful silver diamonds about a foot along his neck. It was a beautiful sight in spite of all the deadly poison involved.

  I feared for the boys, for one lad was going into it with a four foot stick. We finally chopped it into pieces with a hoe. Then I discovered something that nearly made my heart stop. I found that the wheel of the wheelbarrow was holding the snake pinned to the ground and this is what happened. The boys had seen the snake crawling from a small patch of jungle across toward the church building and this one lad had run his wheelbarrow on it to stop it and hold it. It could reach at least two feet and I don’t know yet what kept the boy from being bitten.

  My knees actually shook when I turned to walk away. This is the first live cobra I have seen and the fewer the better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART HURT

  Fred tapped his knuckles against the screening he’d just stretched tightly across its frame. It would do the job in superb fashion. Taut, very small mesh, just the ticket. No cobra was going to get through that screen.

  It was the last of a dozen frames he’d re-screened, and he’d added a dozen more to completely screen the verandah to his satisfaction. He intended for Dorothy to feel safe in their home. Completely safe.

  But who was he kidding. He was the one who needed to know Dorothy would be safe here. The project had taken up most of his week, and now he dared any snake, scorpion, or insect for that matter, to breach his defense.

  Dorothy had spent hours making curtains, acquiring drawn-work table linens, arranging furniture and more, all to make sure that every evening Fred could come home to the loveliest place this side of heaven. It had taken his breath away, just watching her hum about the house on their few precious days together. The very least he could do was to secure the nest she’d made for them.

  Once the last screen was hammered into place, Fred carried a plat of starter plants out into the yard and began digging nicely spaced holes along the edge of the walk. Defensive barriers were great, but he wanted the entrance to her home to look like an English garden. He wanted it to be a lovely, welcoming path to her front door, and the starters he’d collected in order to accomplish that had taken all his resources to gather. But she was so very worth it.

  He smiled to himself when Amu stopped what he was doing and came to observe.

  “Too close,” Amu said.

  “What? Too close together? I don’t think so, Amu. I want a nice solid row of flowers to line the path. Won’t that be nice?”

  “Too close to the path, sahib.”

  Fred’s laughter died on his lips. Amu never criticized. Everything Fred did was always highly complimented by his cook and personal assistant.

  “Too close why?” Fred turned and shielded his eyes with his hand as he looked up into the man’s kind face that now sported a scowl.

  “Sahib work many day to keep the snake out of the bungla, then sahib put this, this, and this alla way up to front door.” His hands swept the air to define the grand pathway Fred had in mind.

  “I don’t...what are you saying?”

  “Snake like pygmy hen egg, yes?”

  Fred nodded. “Yes,” he said, wondering where this was going.

  “What does pygmy hen like?”

  Fred looked down at the flowers he’d chosen to grace the path, and a part of his mind visualized them fully grown, in full bloom, covering the border with lovely blossoms and leaves. And a half dozen pygmy hens roosting in the midst of it all. If he’d seen that once, he’d seen it a hundred times, but never in someone’s dooryard.

  He was about to plant a border garden that would invite every pygmy hen in the neighborhood to take up residence. And half the snakes in the province would follow.

  “Oh. Oh my. Amu? What do I do?”

  Amu laughed. “Not to worry, my friend. Not to worry. Put lemongrass here, here and here, and seamoon flower here, maybe here, and here, and no snake, no pygmy hen. Just so.”

  Fred swallowed. He was speechless. Something about that made Amu laugh. He chuckled and hid his grin behind his fist as he walked back to the laundry he was about to fold.

  Lemon grass and seamoon flower repelled snakes. Who would have known?

  Fred called his thanks and said a prayer of gratitude for Amu—something that was becoming a daily habit, he found. Thank God Amu had kept him from making this colossal mistake.

  September 1936 — From Fred to his Mother

  These are trying days here. I am so lonesome for Dorothy that I have to fight every minute to keep the proper perspective on the work here. I try to keep busy from morning till night and definitely allot special times for writing to her and yet I find myself tempted all the time to break over and let my work slide. Am scheduled to return to Gauhati, leaving here on the afternoon of the 27th, and we will have three days together. I must leave there on Sunday night and get back here at noon Monday, in time to meet my class in the afternoon. If cases in the Hospital run properly, she may get to come up here for a short stay in September.

  To date, the return of Dr. Randall is more or less uncertain, and definitely not before November, so that makes us all the more unsettled, for it would mean something if we had a definite date to count on. Guess we are spoiled children, for we both get just about everything we wish for, and now we are both feeling that things will break so that we will get to be together in our own home sooner than we see it possible. We have to be optimistic about the matter or we might do something rash.

  One of the reasons I am getting such a kick out of Dorothy, is because I can think with her without reservation and just as strongly as I like and she can come back in the same strength. We have both decided that we will never get old but always find new things to learn. Music and literature seem to offer our first adventure and we know there are plenty worlds still unconquered, but, one at a time.

  September 1936

  Letter from Fred in Jorhat to Mr. & Mrs. Kinney

  Am enclosing a letter written to my Mother and had hoped that I would be able to write at length to you.
The fact is, between the lonesomeness and the heat, I am finding Jorhat a most unsatisfactory place these days. I try to discipline my mind sufficiently to keep busy at my work but I find it is almost a hopeless task.

  I know I can never be myself until Dorothy and I can be together in our own home. Those six weeks together are just intimations of the fullness that life will assume when we can work together in the same place. Had we not reckoned in advance on this present situation, I, for my part, would not put up with it a minute. But the absolute harmony and happiness of those six weeks were worth it all.

  I tell Dorothy again and again that I got the bargain and I hate to think what she got but I am willing to do my best to improve what she gets. I am glad that she and I discovered the secret of our hearts before we had any reactions from friends and relatives on either side at home. I tell her she will just have to take me for what I am and not for what others think I am, or what she herself might think I might become and she seems to be of that mind. However, when I get further word from home, I get a sinking feeling inside, for I know I can never live up to the expectations of some for Dorothy’s husband. Guess it will be better to stay in Assam, rather than disappoint her friends.

  But there is one point on which I offer no apologies at all. If there is anyone who can love her anymore, or be any crazier about her than I am, then I would like to find the rare person. I know I have found a prize and I knew just as soon as I realized that she cared for me that there were no questions about our marriage. In fact, I have done nothing in life in which I was more sure that it was the best thing to do; and that the Lord had a special hand in it, than when I married Dorothy Joy.

  The only thing I can’t understand is just why she should care for me. She and I don’t discuss that point and have stopped arguing over which got the better end of the deal. I feel that I have stepped over into an entirely new world and my desire to be of use to the Kingdom of God has multiplied many times. I can never be fully worthy of Dorothy’s love but if I can only do my best for the Lord’s Work, I feel I can approach something in that direction.