by Janie DeVos
“Aren’t I already, Dr. Ludlow?”
He laughed. “Indeed you are, Mrs. Cavanaugh, indeed you are. And we’re going to win this war together.”
CHAPTER 14
Crossing Paths
The walkway leading to the lab would have flowers lining it come late spring, but for now, the beds lay empty. I wondered how many people it took to maintain the enormous grounds. Thinking about my conversation with Dr. Ludlow just moments before, the idea of getting my hands in the rich-looking soil of this place was motivation enough to make me a stellar patient. I was born of the earth, and raised in the deep belief that through the careful tending of it, the earth would take care of me, as well. I needed to physically connect with it again. As far as I was concerned, working with the earth was as vital to the health and well-being of the soul as food and water were for the body. As I passed the janitorial building, I was able to look out at one of the huge vegetable gardens. The garden was actually a field. I realized that I needed to get to the lab, but the weather was beautiful, and an empty bench just ahead of me was too tempting to walk by. Sitting down on the cold granite, I closed my eyes and tilted my face up toward the morning sun. The familiar warmth was like an old friend. It eased away all remnants of chill from the night before, and I was able to take my sweater off. Suddenly, I was hit hard by a coughing fit that felt as though I was breaking every bone in my torso. I was glad that I was sitting down, for the intensity of my coughing was worse than any I had suffered up to that point. I gripped the edge of the bench for support, praying it would pass. When it finally did subside, it left me completely winded, so I stayed on the bench and tried to focus on something other than the terrifying fact that I was slowly suffocating to death.
Out in the field, several men and women were working the rows with hoes and rakes. They were obviously preparing the ground for the spring planting, which would likely happen in the next week or so. In Howling Cut, however, planting would have to wait until after Mother’s Day, for the ground was still much too cold to trust the vulnerable little seeds to it. Ah, home. My thoughts turned to what each member of my family would be doing at that moment. Donnie would be tagging along with Mama or Daddy; maybe working in the orchard or the kitchen, or even helping to prepare the garden. In Cabot, Geoffrey would be at his office by now, and thoroughly engrossed in some legal protocol. I was anxious to talk with them all, and not simply because I wanted to hear the voices of those I loved most in this world, but because I wanted to know if they’d all been tested for TB, and what the results had showed.
Focusing back on the field, I noticed that there were mainly men working it, but there were a couple of women, too. All of them were in coveralls, some dark blue ones, while others were brown. Even from that distance, I could see block lettering across the fronts and backs of them. Obviously, they were institution-issued, and these were patients. I suspected that the colors differentiated the psych patients from the non-psych ones. One of the workers particularly caught my attention—a woman wearing blue overalls, and while all the others were involved in working their particular rows, this woman seemed to be frozen in place. She stood completely still, staring out at something only she seemed interested in, or, perhaps, was able to see. She craned her head as if trying to see it more clearly.
She was small and frail looking, her back slightly bent, as if the world’s weight had been far too heavy a burden for her to carry. She didn’t strike me as being old, though, for her hair was very dark, perhaps even black. It was rather long and in the morning’s stiff breeze, it blew about her head like wild, long fingers, twisting and twirling through the air. Several times, she swiped the restless strands back from her face to keep them from interfering with whatever she was trying to see. Finally, she held her hair back with her right hand, which gave me a clear view of her profile. She was femininely delicate looking, but her chin jutted out as if in defiance, giving the impression that there was determination in her character, perhaps stubbornness, too. As though I’d called her name, she turned slightly to look at me. She kept her hair swept out of her face and leaned on the hoe with her left hand, like a makeshift cane. She stood that way, unmoving, staring at me, and it made me very uncomfortable. It was more than just the fact that she wouldn’t take her eyes off of me; it was the intensity of her gaze. I could see that she was middle-aged, but that her weathered face had probably been beautiful at one time. There was a hardness to it now, though, and a wildness. Just like her hair. I looked down to break eye contact.
“C’mon, now, Mary.” Hearing a voice, I looked up and saw Philip McAllister, the rescuer of Captain Crow, talking to the strange woman. The breeze was blowing toward me, so it carried his voice. “You’ve got to get back to work or they’re gonna make you go inside. You don’t want to do that, do you? It’s a beautiful day. C’mon, I’ll give you a hand.”
The woman, Mary, did not answer him but began to hoe. As she did, he walked behind her, further working the ground. “How you feeling today?” he asked her. I didn’t think he really expected an answer; he was simply trying to put her at ease. Rather than ask another question, he began to softly sing: “I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day. I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away.” When Philip got to the chorus, Mary stopped hoeing, turned around to face him, and with absolutely no expression on her face, began to sing, too. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah. Someone’s in the kitchen I know oh-oh-oh. Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, strumming on the old banjo!” Mary sang each word in the last sentence of the chorus louder than the one before it, with Philip following her lead. When the last note of the last word died down, her deadpan expression finally broke and they laughed together like two small children.
“Mrs. Cavanaugh?” I was startled out of my fascinated observation by a young man in a white lab coat. “Are you Kathryn Cavanaugh?” I told him that I was. “I’m one of the lab techs, Ernie Glass. Dr. Ludlow called down to let us know to be expecting you. Said you were coming in right away. That was nearly thirty minutes ago. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hurry you, but we’ve got a full load of patients coming in this afternoon, so we need to get started with you.”
“Oh, Mr. Glass, I’m so sorry! I was just gonna rest for a minute, but the day is so nice . . . I got sidetracked watchin’ everything going on around me.”
“No problem, Mrs. Cavanaugh. It is a nice day.” He looked up at the sky, then across the field. “Spring has sprung.” The sun shining down on the land illuminated all of the new growth in a golden haze, making the grounds a lemon-lime color. “Let’s get your tests done and then you can come right back here—as long as you’re not on FBR.”
“As of now, I’m not, but Dr. Ludlow is limiting my activities.” I stood up, grabbed my sweater, and we started down the walkway. “But I guess depending on what my tests show, that may change. I do need to get a move on, though. I told my family I’d try to call them sometime this morning.”
We walked for several yards then the walkway curved and immediately ended at a one-story brick building with an A-frame roof. It looked more like someone’s summer cottage than a laboratory at a state hospital. “Here we are,” Ernie said, as he quickly stepped ahead of me and opened the lab’s front door. Inside, he spoke to the receptionist behind a sliding glass window, and she jotted something down in her logbook. Then he led me down a short hallway to a dressing room, where he handed me a hospital gown and instructed me to meet him in the X-ray room, two doors down from the dressing room. From there, it was nearly a carbon copy of my visit to the mobile clinic, except that my test results would not be reviewed while I waited in the waiting area, but instead would be sent to Dr. Ludlow’s office in the main administration building.
I wasn’t there for more than fifteen minutes before I headed back toward my building, following the same walkway back. I passed the field where people had been working less than half an hour earlier, but it was empty. The clock on the outside of
the huge administration building read ten forty-five. I wondered if Mama would be in the house to answer my call.
“Hey.” The voice came from just behind me. Startled, I turned around and saw Philip McAllister step onto the walkway. He was lugging a heavy sack from which protruded the handles of the farm tools the workers had been using. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” His smile was a little mischievous, which made me smile, too.
“Do you always pop out at people? Isn’t that a bit risky around here?”
“Well, I guess if it causes someone to have a heart attack, they’re in the right place, wouldn’t you say?”
I laughed. “Lord, that’s some way of looking at it.”
“Where’re you headed?” He shifted the awkward weight of the sack. I could see he was breathing a little heavily.
“Here, do you want me to carry something, Mr . . . ?” I didn’t want to let on that I already knew his name.
He set the sack down. “I’m sorry. I’m Philip McAllister, and you’re Kathryn Cavanaugh.” He didn’t mind letting me know that he knew mine.
“Uh, yes. I am.” We shook hands. “How’d you know that?”
“I read the papers. I’ve seen you in the Asheville Citizen Times, and the Cabot Tribune a few times. You’re a busy lady.”
“Was a busy lady.” I smiled, then started to walk again. I needed to make my phone calls. “Where’re you from, Mr. McAllister?” He had no Southern drawl, so I knew he wasn’t from these parts.
“Illinois. Outside of Chicago for much of my childhood, then in the city later on.”
“Are you a White Sox fan?”
“Ahhh, now, Mrs. Cavanaugh, you’ve gone and insulted me, and I’ve known you for all of two minutes. Tell me, do I look like a degenerate White Sox fan?”
“Oh, you’re one of those.” I laughed, nodding my head. “You’re one of those faithful but pitiful souls who believe the Cubs will win the World Series someday. Surely you’ve heard about the curse?”
“I believe in the curse about as much as I believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.”
“Oh, really? Well, if that’s so, then how come I send a letter to Santa each year—I personally pop it right in the mailbox—and I always get what I ask for.”
“I bet you do.” He chuckled, nodding. “Yes, ma’am, I bet you do. Well, I bet there’s one thing you didn’t ask for that you got, though.”
“And what’s that?” I was enjoying this repartee.
“To be stuck here, on this most glorious spring day. I bet that wasn’t on your list.”
“You’d win that bet, Mr. McAllister,” I said with a fading smile. We looked at each other with a certain kind of understanding that only two people navigating a leaking boat in rough seas could share.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Cavanaugh. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say in our first conversation together.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the truth.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “That it is.” We continued to walk, comfortably quiet, until we came to a fork in the walkway; then Philip stopped. “Well, this is where I leave you,” he said, shifting the weight of the bag again. “I have to check these back in. I’m sure this is not the most appropriate thing to say, but welcome.”
“If the shoe fits . . . Thanks.” I started to turn away, then thought of something. “Mr. McAllister? Can I ask you something?” He turned around. “That woman you were helping in the garden a little bit ago, the one with the long dark hair.” I was embarrassed to let him know I’d been watching them that closely, but my curiosity was greater than my pride. “If you don’t mind my asking, who is she?”
“You mean Mary Boone? The one singing with me?”
“Yes, that’s her. I don’t mean to be nosy, but is she from around these parts?”
“I think she might have been originally, but from what I’ve been told, she lived out West—California, I think, for a good while. Why, you think you might know her?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I was just curious, that’s all. She’s very . . . striking.” For some reason, I didn’t want to use the word ‘strange,’ but apparently, it was the word that best described her.
“She’s a strange one, that’s for sure—intense, too. Doesn’t say much but when she does, it can be really out there. She’s got a short circuit somewhere, that’s for sure.”
“Can you tell me, is she a TB patient? I know it’s none of my business, and you certainly don’t need to tell me.”
“Oh, you’ll know everyone here before too long, Mrs. Cavanaugh. It might seem like a big place when you first check in, but really, it’s not. This ‘big place’ is really a very small world. She’s a psych patient. Sometimes she’s way, way up. And sometimes she’s way, way down. But when she’s ‘way, way’ anything, it’s best to just leave her alone. She can be pretty damn scary then, to be honest about it.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
“You take care of yourself, Mrs. Cavanaugh,” he said. I told him to do the same, then continued down the walkway toward my building, while Philip headed off toward the tool shed. I was lost in my thoughts, and without even realizing it, began to softly sing, “I’ve been working on the railroad . . .”
CHAPTER 15
News from Home
“The doctor didn’t want to take any chances on Donnie getting full-blown TB, so he gave him that BCG vaccine,” Mama explained on the phone as she filled me in on the family’s test results. “Lord bless that baby! He hollered at the top of his lungs when the doctor put that shot into him. Finally, your daddy got him to calm down by telling him he’d take him to the mercantile afterwards and get him a baseball glove he’d been eyeing. That child played it for everything it was worth, too. He stopped hollerin’, and with lips still tremblin’ says, ‘An’ a baseball, too?’ And your daddy tells him okay, and the floodgates were immediately shut off. Lord, Kathryn, that child ought to run for president, seeing as how he can sway people into giving him what he wants!” Mama laughed. I laughed, too, but felt more like crying. It should be me there consoling him.
Mama told me that both she and Daddy had tested negative, and even though Donnie’s skin test had been positive, the doctor emphasized that the results did not mean he’d have the disease, it simply showed that he’d been exposed to it. But knowing that Donnie had been exposed to TB—to me—for some time, the doctor did not want to play the “wait and see game,” so, erring on the side of caution, he gave Donnie the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG, vaccine to ensure that he wouldn’t get it. It would be a day or so before we would know if he had any reactions to the injection, but I knew that any reaction would be better than falling victim to the disease. He was too young and too small to fight off a monster of this size and ferocity. I said a silent prayer and thanked God for Calmette and Guérin, who’d developed the inoculation.
“How’s Donnie eating and sleeping—just doing in general, Mama?”
“Oh, he misses you, that’s for sure. He’s been real quiet since you left, but that baseball glove cheered him a little, and so did the homemade butter pecan ice cream we churned up last night. Honestly, honey, he’s doin’ okay. I wish he was here to talk to you, but he’s gone to town with your daddy for some fertilizer. I’m sorry. I guess I should have made him stick around here so you could talk to him, but I just wasn’t sure when you’d call.”
“No, Mama. I’m glad y’all are keeping him busy. I’m glad y’all are just plain keeping him. He’d be miserable back home, stuck with a nanny all day. God forbid that Charlotte would want to spend any time with her one and only grandson. I swear, as much as that family cares about their heritage and the family bloodline, you’d think she’d be all over Donnie, spoiling him rotten or, at the very least, trying to mold him into a miniature version of Geoffrey. I always knew she was disappointed that Geoffrey didn’t marry someone from his own side of the tracks, but not to the point that it would keep her from enjoying her own grandson. But that fifty perce
nt of Donnie that’s Harris blood keeps that woman away better than kerosene does mosquitoes. Besides, spending time with him would interfere with her bridge club and hair appointments. Lord, listen to me. I’m carrying on like an ol’ crabapple. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
Mama jumped in. “You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry about. That woman ought to be ashamed of herself for having so little to do with her own flesh and blood. Guess our lineage can’t measure up to hers, but if you ask me, we’re pretty good folk! Listen, enough about that ol’ fool. Tell me how you’re doing, honey, and what the doctors are sayin’.”
“I’m doin’ okay, Mama, really. It’s a good place, with good folks, at least the ones I’ve met so far. I have three nice roommates. And I like my doctor, very much. Oh, I saw Aunt Harriet last night! Bless her. She went all the way home and then came back. She brought up our evening snack. She was worried about me, she said. It’s really good knowing she’s around.
“I had more tests run this morning, right before I called you, and I should know something this afternoon. The nurse told me Dr. Ludlow would be in around two o’clock. Then I’ll know if this thing has progressed any, and what treatments they’ll have me on. I’ll also find out if the doctor wants to put me on full bed rest and restricted visitations. I don’t think he will, though, from what he said earlier. Let’s just hope and pray my test results won’t change his mind.”
“Well, if the doctor says it’s all right, how ’bout if we come to see you on Wednesday? Geoffrey might want to come on the weekend since he has to work during the week, and that way it’ll spread out your visitors a little.”
“Oh, Mama, I know it’s a long drive for y’all. It’s about two-anda-half hours each way. Why don’t y’all wait and come week after next? Maybe it’ll give my medications a chance to start working and I’ll look a little better by then. I’d hate for y’all to see me looking any worse than I did when I left. It would really scare Donnie.”