Christy

by Catherine Marshall

  Rather than resisting the suggestion, the man nodded, relief in his eyes. “Hit’d be an accommodation. I’m plumb give out, a-tryin’ to holp Lety.”

  I rose to go, but as I got to the middle of the room, I knew that I could not leave Bessie in such a plight. I thought of all the pails of water it would take to scrub this cabin properly. And each one would have to be fetched from a spring a quarter of a mile away! Sanitation? In a situation like this with flies crawling over those unwashed dishes, it became a farce. Yet here was thirteen-year-old Bessie, so weak that she could not lift her legs up two steps.

  “Look, Bessie, I’ve got to help you a little before I leave. What do you wash the dishes in?”

  My pupil looked startled. “Teacher, hit’s not fitten . . .”

  “I wash dishes at home in Asheville. I’ve washed dishes all my life. Come on, show me the pan. Some of your mother’s homemade lye soap too.”

  Kyle Coburn’s face was a study in amazement. I decided to strike immediately. “Mr. Coburn, Bessie and I are going to need more water here. Would you be so kind? As a matter of fact, if you have another bucket—as soon as I empty this one, would you bring me two at once?”

  I knew perfectly well that Kyle considered carrying water women’s work but that he dared not refuse me. So as soon as I had poured the contents of the one bucket into the wash-up pan, he strode out the door with a pail in each hand.

  Knowing that Bessie needed to rest, I suggested, “Why don’t you take over with your mother now? You sit in this chair by her bed and wipe her forehead, give her water if she wants it, and talk to me while I work.”

  She looked at me gratefully and sank into the chair.

  By the time I left two hours later, the cabin was considerably cleaner. We had made Lety Coburn as comfortable as we could, though there were no sheets in the cabin, clean or otherwise. We had gotten her to swallow two more tablespoons of liquid, had sponged her face and hands, tried to wash out her mouth, and put sheep’s tallow on her parched lips. I would send glycerine to put on her tongue and more carbolic acid for disinfectant, along with some food—and Dr. MacNeill.

  On the way home I was aware of aching legs, a throbbing head, an odd twitch—like a tic—in the muscles of my face and a bitter taste in my mouth. Tiredness, I supposed.

  The feel of crisis met me at the front door of the mission house. I could hear footsteps running up the stairs. At the sound of the door opening, the figure on the stairs turned to look. It was Opal McHone carrying a pail of water.

  “Opal! Anything wrong?”

  “It’s Lundy. Awful sick.” She rushed on.

  Several people were running around upstairs and I could hear gagging. I didn’t even wait to take off my coat, but with dread in my heart, climbed the stairs to Lundy’s room. Miss Ida was standing to one side of the open door, looking in, disgust on her face.

  “Hurts! Ow-whee-ee!” Lundy groaned. “Got a-hurtin’ to my stummick.”

  Miss Alice had been holding his head over a basin. “There now, lie back.” Her voice was gentle. “I want to see where your stomach hurts and take your temperature.” She looked up at me briefly. “Christy, would you shake down the thermometer and put it in Lundy’s mouth?” Then to her patient, “Straighten your legs out, Lundy. I have to see where the pain is.”

  “Can’t! Ain’t a-gonna do it!”

  His legs were drawn up rigidly. “Under your tongue, Lundy,” I ordered, and Miss Alice used the moment of distraction to grip his big legs with firm hands and unbend them. Her hands moved over the left side of his abdomen, pressing lightly. “Does it hurt there?”

  “Um-m-muh.” He shook his head.

  But as her hand reached the right lower side, he bellowed, “Oh, A-oo-oo!” and I had to snatch at the thermometer to keep him from swallowing it.

  “I’m sorry it hurts, Lundy.”

  I took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and handed it to Miss Alice. It stood at 103.6 degrees. Yet I knew that Lundy’s temperature had been normal for eight consecutive days.

  “All right, Lundy.” Miss Alice pulled the covers back up. “Just lie quietly now.”

  “Can’t ye give me no easin’ powder?”

  “We’ll see.” She motioned us into the hall.

  “Ida,” Miss Alice asked in a low voice, “has Lundy been sneaking food yesterday or today?”

  “Not that I know of. Of course, with that young hellion you never can tell what he’s up to.”

  “Would you have a careful look around your kitchen? See if you miss anything?”

  Miss Ida went off looking as if she relished the assignment.

  I asked, “The pain’s only on the right side. Couldn’t it be appendicitis?”

  “Perhaps,” Miss Alice answered thoughtfully. “Always possible, but not likely.” She sighed. “We need Neil.”

  “Where is he?”

  “All the way across the river in the direction of Lyleton. I don’t think we can expect him back under three hours.”

  “And Bird’s-Eye?”

  “Took some soup to the Allens. He didn’t want to go there, of course.” Her eyes twinkled. “I have my reasons.” She walked back into the bedroom. “Lundy, have you eaten anything you shouldn’t?”

  “Naw.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Ain’t et nothin’ but mincy lady-vittles.”

  Opal came out into the hall carrying the pail and urinal. “He’s a lyin’ puppy,” she whispered to me.

  “How do you know?”

  “By the vomit.”

  Miss Ida came back up the stairs and Miss Alice stepped into the hall to hear her report. “I think I’ve found what you want to know,” Miss Ida told her. “I’d hard-boiled a dozen eggs—getting ready to devil them—and left them in a pan on the table. Two are gone.”

  Miss Alice looked frightened. “You’re sure about the number?”

  Miss Ida smacked her lips. “Absolutely sure. I knew that boy couldn’t be trusted.”

  Miss Alice’s eyes were wide with apprehension. “If he’s eaten hard-boiled eggs, they could cause either hemorrhage or perforation. If Neil were here and diagnosed it perforation, he’d want to operate immediately.”

  With a look of desperation on her face, she went back to the bedside. “Lundy, Miss Ida says that some hard-boiled eggs are missing from her kitchen. Did you eat them?”

  He turned his head away from her and muttered, “Naw—”

  “Two eggs are gone. We’re trying to help you, Lundy. You’d best tell us the truth.”

  “Waal, what did you expect,” he lashed out, “givin’ me smidgens on my plates, a-starvin’ me most to death. You needn’t hack at me.” Then he grabbed his stomach as a new paroxysm of cramps gripped him. “OO-oo-law! Can’t you do nothin’ for me?”

  For the next two hours Lundy’s temperature mounted steadily. Bird’s-Eye got back and took over the unpleasant part of the work, for there were two more attacks of nausea, and Lundy had to use the urinal every few minutes. I had never seen Miss Alice’s usual calm so nearly shattered. She went to her cabin to study what her medical books had to say on typhoid perforation and came back looking more troubled than ever. “Osler even specifies that in perforation the pain is likely to be on the right side. The only suggestion is to turn the patient on the left side. Then if that doesn’t relieve the pain—operate. If only Neil would come!”

  Soon after we got Lundy onto his left side, hiccoughs set in. The look on his face was changing, so I decided to take his temperature again. When I found that it had dropped a degree, I went to Miss Alice, elated. But she only shook her head and looked more distressed than ever.

  The hiccoughs went on and on. Miss Ida made Lundy sit up and try to hold his breath and drink from the far rim of a cup. It did not help.

  Then Bird’s-Eye suggested his pet remedy: to scare the hiccoughs away. He got his hog-rifle and, without warning, fired a blast out the window two feet from Lundy’s bed. The boy was start
led all right, then grinned. “What you a-tryin’ to do, Paw, hawk hell out’n me?” But then the hiccoughs began again.

  The next hour saw his temperature dropping even more. Oddly, the pallor of his face was being suffused by a pink, almost dusky color and his forehead was beaded with perspiration. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly, not protesting so much now. Miss Alice kept feeling his pulse. Opal, great compassion in her eyes, stayed close to the head of the bed, wiping the big boy’s forehead. I saw Bird’s-Eye watching her. His eyes were as soft as I had ever seen them.

  Hearing someone at the front door, I ran to the top of the stairs. If only it would be Dr. MacNeill . . . It was! And David and Isaak. “Are we glad to see you!”

  One look at my face and Dr. MacNeill came bounding up the stairs; David and Isaak followed more slowly. I stayed in the hall with David and explained to him what had happened.

  Our momentary relief at seeing the doctor soon faded. He had gotten back too late to operate. Lundy had sunk into deep shock. His temperature had dropped a total of seven degrees and his heart action was erratic and ­feeble. The big boy lay unconscious with half-open eyes, his breathing shallow, his body turning blue and bathed in a cold sweat.

  Surely we haven’t put in all these weeks of effort to have it end like this, I thought. David’s face was stony. Bird’s-Eye stood to one side, almost against the wall, watching his son’s face on which there was now no flicker of consciousness. Once I thought I saw a tremor around Bird’s-Eye’s mouth.

  Dr. MacNeill, having done everything he knew to bring Lundy out of shock, now sat by the bed with his hand on the boy’s pulse. His face was set in grim lines. Alice Henderson was standing at his elbow, ready to help in any way she could. Without turning his head, I heard him speak almost in a whisper to her, “Saying a prayer, Alice?”

  “Yes, Neil, I was.”

  “Prayer, Alice, isn’t going to change the course of typhoid.”

  Finally, he put Lundy’s hand down, felt his chest and listened to it, examined the eyes, straightened up. “It’s all over.” He turned to speak to Bird’s-Eye.

  But Bird’s-Eye had slipped from the room.

  Around the supper table that evening we were a restrained group. Miss Alice did her best to pull our thoughts off Lundy’s body lying in the bedroom over our heads by telling us story after story about Dr. Ferrand and his genial eccentricities. I could not keep my mind on what she was saying.

  As I toyed with the food on my plate, I was wondering how much Bird’s-Eye really understood about the cause of his son’s death, whether he would blame us. If only the boy’s death would not dishearten Bird’s-Eye to the point of snapping that fragile life line of his new resolutions. He had made a promise to Miss Alice. What if he had now decided to flee the law after all?

  The questions were answered when Bird’s-Eye showed up again after supper. All of us except Dr. MacNeill were sitting in the parlor too weary to start the next round of chores, reluctant to leave the comfort of one another’s company, when he appeared suddenly in the doorway. “Bin a-trompin’ and a-trompin’,” he began, speaking directly to Miss Alice. “I’m needin’ to talk to you. To Opal too.”

  Miss Alice drew him into the room and, with a gesture, indicated that she spoke for us all. “We’re glad you decided to come back, Bird’s-Eye. Dr. MacNeill is out searching for you. We haven’t even had the chance to tell you how sorry we are. We’re grieving along with you. You know that.”

  “Oh, I ain’t faultin’ none of ye, Ma’am. Doc nuther. Couldn’t nobody do nothin’ for that Lundy. Never could learn him nothing, so stiff-necked he was, and raspy.”

  “There are a lot of details to be attended to,” Miss Alice went on hastily, as if eager to turn off that line of talk. “Opal and Ida have volunteered to take care of the laying-out, but we need a coffin. Will you build it, Bird’s-Eye?”

  The pale blue eyes in the weathered face looked at her unblinkingly. If there was emotion, I could see none. “Aye. Tomorry.” He ran one hand over the stubble of several days’ growth of beard on his chin. “Reckon, Preacher, when we lay Lundy by, you could make one of them long speeches over him?”

  David’s face was a study. All he said was, “Sure, Bird’s-Eye, I’ll make a speech.”

  But the mountain man had something else on his mind. He came a few steps farther into the parlor but was too self-conscious to sit down even after Miss Alice indicated a chair. Although the bravado of the old days was gone, the blood-shot eyes with the deep vertical lines between them held no cravenness—only a determination to say what had to be said. “No need to let no grass grow under my feet, guess.” He looked directly at Opal who was sitting opposite me on the other side of the lamp table. “My give-out is about Tom. Like I writ ye, Opal, it wasn’t me kilt Tom. Bin a-wantin’ to tell you, but with Lundy sick to his bed ’n’ all—” His voice trailed off.

  David was looking at him narrowly. Isaak was standing beside his mother. She reached for his hand as if to hang on to him.

  “That day you fed me, Opal, you said how I couldn’t eat gredges and how hate wouldn’t fill my stummick. Said most ony addlepated fool could pull the trigger of a rifle-gun, but that it took a man to fix things. Wal, got to thinkin’ on that considerable. Left yer place, shoved fer Bob Allen’s mill, but he warn’t thar. Studied on hit some more. Knowed you was right—I couldn’t do no good a-killin’. Had my craw full of hit onyway. Took my three men, cloomb back up the mountain to my place.

  “Nobody was thar. Lundy had gone traipsin’. Didn’t know whar. He come in at rooster-crow, a-packin’ my old hog-rifle, braggin’ that he’d done hisself proud—squawkin’ that he’d kilt Tom. Said now he’d holped me, so he was a man-person.”

  I heard Opal suck in her breath. Isaak stood there clenching and unclenching his free hand. The bitter taste was in my mouth again. Most any addlepated fool can pull the trigger of a gun. The small pig-eyes in Lundy’s unintelligent face floated before me. A fool . . . An addlepated fool.

  David’s voice boomed out, “Just a minute, Bird’s-Eye. Seems to me this is mighty convenient timing. If this story’s true, why did you let so many weeks go by without telling us? You wait until the night your son dies to blame Tom’s murder on him—a dead boy who can’t defend himself.”

  “You ain’t believin’ me?”

  “What I believe isn’t the point. Any court of law is going to ask for more proof than your word.” David’s lips curled in scorn. “Your word hasn’t exactly been noted around here for its sterling quality. What proof can you show that Lundy shot Tom?”

  For a moment Bird’s-Eye looked nonplused. Uneasily, he shifted the weight of his body from one foot to the other. “Don’t reckon,” he said slowly, “I’ve got no ev-i-dence to show. Onct my passel of cronies heerd ’bout Tom bein’ shot, said they warn’t takin’ no chances of ruination with the Big Law. They was that oneasy ’bout hair-cuttin’ Prince and a-firin’ yer pulpit. So they lit out back home acrost the ridge-line into North Carolina—and they warn’t mosyin’ nuther. So they ain’t here to back me up.”

  He shrugged. “Onyway druther be clomped in jail myself than Lundy. Couldn’t turn in my own flesh ’n’ blood. That boy was high-stocked in honery-fixin’ and low-stocked in brains—and that’s the dyin’ truth.”

  Miss Alice leaned forward in her chair. There was a light in her eyes. “But there is proof, David. I’ve known for a month now that Lundy shot Tom.”

  Silent amazement gripped us all. Every eye in the room was turned to Alice Henderson.

  “After Lundy got sick Bob Allen came to see me. He said he was concerned about our nursing Lundy here. Said he knew something that was weighing on him—”

  She paused to regard the group, her gaze coming to rest on Bird’s-Eye.

  I glanced at him. The mountain man was staring back at her with a look of total absorption. Opal was still clinging to Isaak’s hand, waiting almost breathlessly for the next sentence.

  “Bird’s-E
ye, that night you left the McHones and went to Bob’s mill, Bob Allen was on his way to David’s bunkhouse. At the edge of the mission woods, he heard the shot that killed Tom and saw Lundy fleeing. Nobody else was around.”

  Excitement crackled from the man standing in our midst. “Saw him for shore?”

  “Yes. For sure.”

  But then the excitement died. “But he wouldn’t holp me. He be an Allen.”

  “If Bob didn’t mean to help, he would have kept quiet. Bob and I have had many talks. He hasn’t found hatred very good food either.”

  This was too much for Bird’s-Eye. Conflicting reactions struggled with the flint-like quality of his features, like a sledge hammer smashing a mighty boulder to bits. And in the breakup, for the first time, real emotion showed through. This is one of those moments, one of those great moments. I looked at Opal, the lamplight falling across her face. Though obviously she had found it agony to go back and relive any part of that night of her Tom’s murder, there was a kind of triumph on her face. Something important is vindicated for her. When she fed Tom’s enemies that day, she stepped out in faith—her own kind of faith. And she was obedient to speak the words rising within her. Homely words . . . But they had life in them. Like an arrow to its mark.

  And Miss Alice, whose love endured all things, faltered at nothing . . . All that time she was nursing Lundy, she knew. She knew!

  There was that swimming feeling in my head again. My feet were leaden. I did not feel like making the effort to move out of my chair. The others were leaving. I heard Opal’s soft voice speaking to Bird’s-Eye on the porch. Then closer by, Miss Alice’s voice saying, “David, would thee come on down to my cabin? I have a story to tell thee—”

  I opened my eyes. Only Miss Alice and David and I were left in the parlor. David was sitting in a chair, hunched over, his head bowed in his hands.

  “Tell me right here,” he said. “Whatever it is, I’d like Christy to hear it too. I have something I want to tell both of you.”

  Miss Alice looked uncertain. For a moment there was that look on her face that I had come to recognize, almost as if she were listening for an inner signal. Then she relaxed and sat down again. “All right—Christy, I was going to tell David about a man to whom God gave an assignment.” Her eyes smiled at him. “God told this man to travel to a far country where there was much wickedness. He was told to warn the citizens that if they did not change their evil ways, their country would be destroyed. And the man obeyed and delivered the message.