Still I ate supper with Miles, and sometimes stayed the night. It was a comfort, from time to time, to sleep under the same roof as kinfolks. Miles was usually pleasant company. He was happy with his work, but lonesome. He had been in love at Berea, but never heard from the girl after he graduated. Clary Leach, back on Scary Creek, was out of the question, he said.
“They aint nothing wrong with Clary,” I said.
“Aw, what would she do with a big house like this?”
“Same as you do. Look silly.”
“Come on, Carrie. She’s not educated.”
“That dont mean she’s stupid. If you’re gitting uppity, go on up to Boston and marry one of your old rich boss’s daughters.”
“You know what? I’ve been thinking of going to that Episcopal church in Justice. Those are good people to socialize with.”
I went with him once. The building was solid stone and stained glass with red doors, just like the churches in Wuthering Heights. I loved to walk by it when I was in school. But during the service, I got tired of standing when everybody else stood, and kneeling when they knelt, and looking up prayers in a book.
“God could bung them people over the head and they wouldnt know who done it,” I said. “They’d have to look it up.”
“I like it,” he said. “It’s a dignified service.”
Miles worked hard at being dignified. He never went outside the house without his hat, tie and starched collar. He had been to Boston, he said, and seen how they lived. He said it the way other people describe their religious experiences. Every Friday he sat at his desk and wrote to the mine owners; every Monday he went eagerly to the post office to receive their letter to him. In June he made his second pilgrimage to New England. I helped him pack and saw him off at the train station. He waved to me through the dusty glass window, his face bright and eager as a child’s.
When he returned two weeks later, I went to the big house for supper. Miles picked disinterestedly at his ham, prepared by the widow woman who cooked for him.
“They took me to their summer cottage in Maine. Cottage! It was bigger than this house. We had lobster. I ate my salad first, real slow, so I could watch how they got at that lobster and not let on like I was ignorant. It wasn’t too hard to eat.”
“What’s it like?”
“Like a great big old crawdad.”
I giggled. “Was it good?”
“Oh, my! I wish we could get it here. You dip it in melted butter. One of these days I’ll take you up there and buy you one.”
“One of these days mules will fly. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy this here ham and sweet potatoes.”
He had come back with his corn-colored hair parted in the middle and cut short, “like they wear in Boston.” He looked very young. After dinner we went to sit by the fireplace and he smoked a cigar he brought back with him.
“We had Baked Alaska for dessert,” he said.
“Well, while you was having Baked Alaska, we was having typhoid.”
“What?”
“Typhoid. We had five cases while you was gone. Two died and one is like to go any time. Hit’s the season for it.”
He sighed. “I reckon I got to come back down to earth, dont I?”
“I been looking around. The privies is built over the creek and that’s where most folks gits their water. With this many folks living cramped together, you got to build new privies, deep ones, and treat them with chemicals. That, or bring water into the houses. If you dont, you’ll keep right on gitting typhoid.”
He frowned. “I don’t know if they’ll approve that. They aren’t spending any money on living facilities right now. They’re talking new tipple. Privies or plumbing would take some money.”
“Sounds to me like they got some money.”
He wrote, after much prodding on my part, and asked permission to install new sanitary facilities at Vulcan. The answer came back in a week. There was no money in the budget for such frills. As for disease in the camp, it was caused by the filthy habits of the miners and their families.
I was furious. “They built this here camp. They built the privies where they are. Anybody on Scary Creek will call you a fool ifn you build your privy next to your drinking water. Is that how they do things in Boston?”
“Don’t be silly, Carrie.”
“Dont call me silly. Who do them people think they are? And what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve done all I can do. I took a risk bringing it up to them in the first place. They don’t like to be bothered by details.”
“And that’s all you got to say?”
“That’s all I’ve got to say.”
He was my brother, so I said no more, tried to smother my anger. Two more typhoid cases died. I was silent. Each of us has our price, I thought bitterly. Miles has not walked behind a plow in six years, and he will do what he must to stay here. I have lost my mother and father, I have no husband and am not likely ever to have, and family means all the world to me. I’ll not turn on my kin.
I was restless through those summer nights, and often rose at dawn to look out my window. Scores of miners walked to the drift mouth. From that distance they appeared gray, and slow-moving, and transparent, as though they could pass through the mountainside and disappear.
June was balmy, a blessing before the sweaty heat of July and August. In good weather I especially missed the Homeplace. I was used to taking walks in the evenings, searching out berries or poke, or fetching the cows. Vulcan kept me penned in. There was no way to get away from the sights and sounds of coal mining without trudging three miles up the creek. I walked farther than that on Grapevine, but here it felt oppressive. My legs would not take me so far. On pretty days I scanned the blue skies out the windows of the doctor’s office and thought myself a prisoner.
On such a day late in the month I had the office all to myself. The doctor was gone to see about a hard birthing on Turnhole Holler where the Italian miners lived. It was a breech birth, long and drawn out, and we had been expecting it. The call came just before noon, and the doctor would not be back until late that night.
Only two people sat in the waiting room, neither of them seriously ill, so I sent them home, then retired to the back office to eat my lunch and read a book. I was so absorbed in the mysteries of Jane Eyre that I started when a knock came on the door frame and stared stupidly at the black-faced man who stood there.
“We brung up a hurt feller,” he said.
“Oh, no! The doctor’s gone for the day. Is he bad?”
“Dont know, ma’am. Hunk of slate fell on his foot.”
“I’ll see to him then. Thank you for helping.”
He tipped his cap and left.
The man sat on the examining table with one leg dangling and the other propped on a stool. He listened to his own heartbeat through my stethoscope.
“What are you doing?”
He looked sheepish and draped the stethoscope over the back of a chair.
“Sorry. Hit was right where I could reach it and I couldnt resist.”
I smiled to show I wasn’t angry. “I’d think you’d be in too much pain to be fooling around.”
“It does hurt. Like hell. I was trying to git my mind off it.”
“I have to examine it. It’s going to be painful.”
“Right.”
The foot was purple and swollen to twice its normal size. I washed it gently.
“Good thing they took your boot off,” I said.
“Had to cut it off, even so. I know it’s broke.”
“I got to check anyway. You hold onto something.”
He gripped the back of a chair. “This here is a nice office. Lots of instruments.”
“Yes, we’ve got most things we need.”
“You been nursing long?”
“Just a few months.”
“Where’d you st—Ow! Jesus!”
I palpated his foot, felt the bones pull apart like a chicken wing. I stood up.
<
br /> “Broke,” I said.
His face was pale, the skin drawn tight with pain. It was a handsome face, square, with high cheekbones. His hair was brown and curled on the back of his neck, and he had a full moustache.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Justice. Lloyd Justice.”
I wrote it down.
“And whereabouts you live?”
“I board with the Widder Schoolcraft in the main bottom.”
“Schoolcraft? Didn’t she have a typhoid case recently?”
“That’s right. One of her younguns took sick and died. You come to visit the house one day, she said. I was down in the mines.”
“I remember now.”
“Betty was that little girl’s name. Sweet youngun. You know what causes typhoid, dont you?”
His voice was no longer friendly and his blue eyes were cold. I tried to fill out the rest of the form.
“Yes, I know.”
“You’re a health officer and you aint done nothing about it?”
“That aint true. I had words with my brother over it.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s right. He’s your brother. I heard that but I’d forgot it. Stupid of me, weren’t it? Reckon I’m fired now. Will you fix my foot before you send me packing? How do yall do it hereabouts?”
“Dont be silly. I dont care what you have to say.” I bent over the form, tried to look busy. “What do you know about typhoid anyway?”
“Enough. I wanted to be a doctor oncet.”
“Is that so?” I tossed my pencil on the counter and glanced at the clock. “Tell me about it on the train. We got fifteen minutes to git over to the platform. I’ll fetch you some crutches.”
“Train? What for?”
“I got to take you to Grace Hospital in Justice town.”
To my surprise, he looked frightened.
“What’s wrong? You aint scairt of hospitals?”
“Where’s the doctor? Why cant he set my foot right here?”
“He wont be back until after midnight, most likely. We got an agreement with the hospital. Whenever the doctor aint available, I take the patient in to Justice on the train. I know you’re in pain but it’s only seven miles. It’s better than waiting for him.”
“I cant go to Justice.”
“Why ever not?”
“I just cant go, that’s all.”
He slid off the table, grimaced, and wavered on one foot. I stood in front of him and folded my arms.
“This here is foolishness,” I said sternly. “If you dont git that foot tended proper, you wont never walk again. Now as you said, I am the health officer in charge here. And if you dont come to Justice with me, you wont never work again neither, here or any other mine. Nobody wants a gimpy miner. You understand that?”
His voice trembled with anger. “They’s a doctor at Chieftan camp. Why cant we go to him?”
“That’s a whole different coal company. Besides, Doctor Redman is a lots busier than we are. By rights they ought to have two doctors in that camp, big as it is.”
I went to the closet, selected a pair of crutches.
“Please,” he said.
“You come with me or I’ll have somebody fetch you. It’s simple as that.”
We barely made the train. When we sat down I found that I was trembling. He was obviously in terror of something, and I knew I must seem cold and heartless. But I didn’t know what else to do. Doctor Harless would be furious if I let the foot go untended, and I would have to live with the knowledge that a man might be crippled.
I turned from the train window and looked at him. He sat rigid, the crutches upright between his legs, and stared straight ahead.
“You mad at me?” I whispered.
He started to answer, ran his fingers back through his hair, and looked away.
“What are you scairt of?”
When he didn’t answer, I turned back to the window. The train approached Chieftan, the last stop before Justice.
His hand, still black from the mine, gripped my arm, soiled my white uniform. I pulled back, but he leaned closer.
“I like the way you talk. Sounds like you’re from around here. Is that so?”
“I was raised over on Grapevine. Lived there all my life until I went to nursing school over at Justice.”
He was searching my face for something, a sign, an answer. The train stopped at Chieftan.
“Come on!” He was out of the seat before I had time to think. Five or six people went by before I could enter the aisle. By the time I gained the platform he had crossed the station yard and lurched along on his crutches toward main Chieftan. When I caught up to him, he rounded on me before I had a chance to speak.
“You ever seen a man die?”
I was so astonished that I could only nod my head.
“You seen a man murdered?”
“No,” I whispered.
He leaned closer. “Would you like to see me murdered? If I go to Justice, that’s what will happen. I been told never to set foot in that county again, or I’m dead.”
“Why? Did you kill somebody?”
He touched my cheek. “No, I aint killed nobody. I used to make whiskey over in West Virginia. They’s a man in Justice thinks I took some of his trade. Says he’ll shoot me ifn he catches me back acrost the river. That’s all.”
He dropped his hand, and his face was pale. “I feel faint,” he said.
I led him back to the platform and sat him down with his head between his legs. A company policeman came by and asked what was wrong.
“He’ll be all right,” I said. “I’m taking him to see Doctor Redman. But I would appreciate a cup of water for him.”
He revived some after he drank his fill.
“Will this doctor see me?”
“He’s a good man. I’ll try to talk him into it.”
He smiled. “I aint even asked your name.”
“Carrie. Carrie Bishop. Now ifn I dont git you to a doctor soon, they’ll be cutting that foot off. Can you walk now?”
“I think I can make it.”
Doctor Redman was an elderly man whose white hair had turned yellow at the temples. He listened to my vague pleading, asked no questions, and set the foot after only a half hour’s wait. The cast would stay on two months, he told us, and the crutches should be used for another six weeks.
“You may have a permanent limp, young man, but a slight one. Shouldn’t keep you from doing anything you want to do.”
“Thanks, Doc. How can I go about paying you?”
“I don’t want any pay. Just promise me you’re not getting this young lady here into some kind of trouble.”
“On my honor.”
Before we left, the doctor gave Lloyd a shot of morphine for the pain. By the time we got back on the train, he was drowsy, and he fell asleep before we reached Vulcan, his head dropping to my shoulder. I roused him with difficulty and we wobbled drunkenly toward the Widow Schoolcraft’s house. The widow came outside and helped him into the yard. I stayed at the gate until he disappeared inside the house.
A week passed without me speaking with Lloyd Justice, but he had taken up residence in my daydreams. I was touched by his confession that he wished to be a doctor. He was obviously intelligent and sensitive, a poor boy trapped in the mines. In the mornings I spied him from my window, swinging along on his crutches toward the tipple. I had talked Miles into giving him a job picking slate so he could pay his room and board at the Widow’s. I pictured him in the breaker shed, hunched all day over a conveyor belt, leg propped on a stool. He was so vulnerable, his potential so precious, I would have loved him for that alone.
I decided Lloyd Justice and Miles must become friends. They would put their heads together over a bottle of Miles’s bourbon. Lloyd could give Miles a firsthand account of the miners’ health problems. Miles would explain how troublesome the Bostonians were, but Lloyd possessed a great deal of charm and would convince him at last.
One ev
ening I stopped by the Widow Schoolcraft’s on my way to visit Miles. Lloyd lay flat on his back on a bed in the front room. He sat up.
“Look who’s here.”
“I come to see how you’re doing.”
“All right. It aches sometimes and itches like hell, but it aint too bad.”
“That’s good.” I was suddenly shy and looked down at my hands. “I had an idea. I wondered if you’d want to come up to the big house for supper. I’d like you to meet my brother.”
“What kind of game you playing?”
I looked up. “I aint playing no games. I thought you could tell him about how the miners see things, and about the typhoid. They aint too many of the miners he knows on a personal basis.”
“Sit down here.” He patted the side of the bed. “Does he know some of the miners?”
“Well, they’s two or three comes to see him from time to time. They sit and talk and smoke cigars.”
“What do they talk about?”
“Dont know. Miles allays sends me out. Business, I reckon. But I bet they dont say too much to him.”
“Same ones every time?”
“I only seen two or three.”
“Who?”
I hesitated.
“Look,” he said. “I got to watch out for my reputation. If the boys think you’re too cozy with the boss man, they may not trust you. Tell me who your brother talks with, and I’ll know if they’re respected by the others. I’ll know if I can come visit and not lose no faith.”
“Well, Tom Mace is one.”
“Do tell.”
“And Anse Crenshaw and that Negro with the beard, Albert something or other.”
“That all?”
“That’s all I ever seen come.”
He nodded his head contentedly. “Well, I never would of thought it of them boys. Aint that interesting to know.” He smiled at me. “Reckon if they can visit, so can I. When should I come?”
“I’ll have to let you know. I aint asked Miles yet.”
“You aint? What makes you so sure he’ll say yes? Most boss men wont fraternize.”
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