Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  “You got any boys?”

  “One. He’s four, too.”

  “Oh.”

  He sounded downcast, forcing Spence to ask, “Why’d you say that?”

  “Ma says she cain’t feed all of us. I guess she’s fixin’ to give us away.”

  “She won’t do that,”

  “I was thinkin’ if you wasn’t havin’ no boys, you might could take Jimmy, seein’ as he’s the one that’s gettin’ sick mostly, and you bein’ a doctor man. I’d miss ‘im, but Ma cain’t take care of him proper, and ain’t nobody gonna want ‘im like he is.”

  “She’s not going to give any of you away,” Spence consoled the boy. “Mas don’t do things like that.”

  “She cain’t help it. We ain’t eatin’ most times. And it ain’t gettin’ no better, ‘cause Pa ain’t comin’ home. He done busted her up for the last time, and he ain’t comin’ crawlin’ back, even if she’s got to starve, she says.”

  To Spence’s way of thinking, that was a damned sordid situation, for Abby Daniels to be discussing with a child. As hard as things had been for his own mother before she married Bingham, she’d never let on to him. It had taken him years to realize it for himself.

  “I ain’t goin’ to no orphan place,” the kid went on. “And when I get growed up big enough to work, I’m gettin’ back any of us that does.” Nate stopped in his tracks. “We been talkin’ till I went plumb past it—that’s Ma’s wagon over there. Well, it ain’t ours,” he conceded. “But we got to live in it.”

  “It’s easy to miss in the dark.”

  “She ain’t lightin’ the lantern agin till I get you here, ‘cause we ain’t got enough kerosene neither. I got ‘im, Ma!” he yelled, climbing onto one of the supply wagons.

  “Let me get the light on, or he’s liable to fall. There—you kin bring ‘im in now,”

  The wagon was a mess. Boxes of supplies came up above the canvas, leaving little room for six people to live, but the Daniels woman had covered the flattest area with a ragged blanket and called it bed for the entire brood. The only things he saw that could pass for her belongings were two gunnysacks stuffed with what looked to be clothes. An Indian in a teepee was a lot better off than this.

  Her haggard face looked up at him as Spence climbed over the boxes barring the entrance. “Well, you was right, Dr. Hardin, and I was just dead wrong,” were her first words to him. “It ain’t just a hole anymore. His whole laig’s swolled up, clear above his knee bone—I had to take a knife to his pants just to get a look at it. Guess I ain’t paid enough attention to know how bad it was gettin’.”

  “I’ll have to have some room.”

  “Nate, you and Frankie take Jack outside.”

  “Ma, I hain’t got no britches on,” a small boy protested.

  “You hush that, Frankie. I’ll be comin’ out with the blanket when I bring Billy out. He’s last, ‘cause I don’t want ‘im catchin’ cold while he’s teethin’, or ain’t nobody gettin’ no sleep. We’ll wrap up together, and nobody’s goin’ to know if you’re nekked or not”

  Spence waited until they were all outside before he opened his bag. He was probably going to need help, but there wasn’t room for all those kids, and the last thing he wanted was a cranky baby screaming in his ear. He had to crawl to reach the sick child, and even then, he couldn’t stand up.

  “Jimmy?” he said gently, touching the boy’s face. It was hot enough to burn him. “Jimmy, it’s Dr. Hardin. Your mama wanted me to look at that leg.”

  The little boy’s fever-dulled eyes fluttered open. “It ain’t there,”

  A chill ran down Spence’s spine. “Yes, it is,” he said, touching it, finding the skin hot and tight.

  “See?”

  “It ain’t hurtin’ no more.”

  Holding the lantern closer, Spence looked down, and his gorge rose in his throat. The boy was so thin his eyes looked huge in a small, pinched face, but his injured leg was as big as Spence’s forearm. From the knee down, there were about two inches of hot, red flesh, but below the zone of demarcation, the skin ranged from slate gray to black. The wound itself stunk like something rotten. The June warmth had helped the infection along.

  “How bad is it?” Abigail Daniels asked from outside.

  “Damned bad.” Closing his eyes for a minute, he summoned the strength to break the news to her. “It’s gangrene.”

  “I was afeard of that once I seen it tonight. I guess he’s goin’ to die, ain’t he?” There was a fatalistic sadness in her voice—no anger, just acceptance. “It’s my fault,” she added, sighing. “I wish t’ God, I’da paid more attention, but I didn’t.”

  He wasn’t going to disagree with her. “Send Nate for my wife,” was all he could say. “Have him tell her to ask Mrs. Wilson to look after Jessie.”

  “I kin look after her.”

  Nearly too angry for words, he wasn’t about to let her touch his daughter. “You’ve got enough to take care of,” he answered curtly. “I just want Mrs. Hardin here right now.”

  The wait seemed like an eternity, but he knew it wasn’t. She had to dress, get Jessie up, and wake Mrs. Wilson before she could come. But he wanted to talk to her before he decided what he’d do, and that made the minutes pass slowly.

  Finally, he heard her tell Nate, “You’re such a good young man,” and he wanted to cry. A boy of five needed to be a child.

  “Spence, what’s the matter?” she asked, climbing into the wagon. “Nate said you wanted me, and Abby isn’t saying anything.”

  “Because she knows she killed her son.”

  “What?” she fairly screeched. “He’s dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  Crawling over crates and boxes, she managed to get to him. Her eyes found the child’s face first. “Oh, Jimmy—how you must hurt,” she whispered, smoothing dirty hair back from his forehead. Kneeling beside the little boy, she murmured soothingly, “It’s going to be all right, honey—you don’t listen to anybody who says it isn’t. Spence is going to do his best to make you better,” Looking up at her husband, she said, “He’s burning up.”

  “I don’t know that Spence can make him better,” he said wearily. “Laura, it’s gangrene. You can see the demarcation clearly. He can’t feel anything below it because the tissue’s died. And by now, he’s probably got blood poisoning to go with it.”

  “You can’t say that in front of him—he’s got to fight.” Tears welled in her eyes, and her throat was so tight she could scarce breathe. She had to force herself to look at the child’s leg. “Good God!” she gasped before she gagged. When she finally managed to swallow, she whispered, “But how could this happen so quickly?”

  “There are a lot of reasons, but two are pretty obvious—the wound was dirty, and it’s summer.”

  “Yes, but—” She had to bite her lip to keep from crying. “He’s just four, Spence.”

  “Yeah.” His palm caressed the boy’s forehead, absorbing the burning heat. “I’ll need chloroform.” As she looked up, he took another deep breath, then nodded. “I’m going to amputate, Laura—it’s the only chance he’s got, and even then it may not be enough. If the poison’s in his blood, everything’s going to fail. She lied to you, Laura—I don’t know why, but she lied to you.”

  “What?”

  “This wound’s more than sixty hours old. Maybe she didn’t want anybody to know she hadn’t done anything for it. I’d say this leg started swelling up day before yesterday instead of today. It’s got to come off.”

  “Oh, Spence—I’m so sorry—so very sorry.”

  “I need chloroform, Laura, and I don’t have any. If I have to do it without putting him out, as bad as he is, the shock’s going to kill him.”

  “I don’t want him to hear that.”

  “He’s too sick for it to sink in. He told me the leg was gone.”

  “I don’t know where to find any chloroform—it’s not anything a body’d be carrying wi
th him.”

  “Ask around. If we can’t get that, we’ll have to use something, and whiskey’s not much of an answer. As small as he is, enough to put him out will give him alcohol poisoning.”

  “I’ll see what I can find You want his mother in here, don’t you?”

  “No. I want you here to help me. I want you to see what it’s like, and maybe you’ll understand why I can’t do it anymore,”

  The very thought made her sick, but she nodded. “I’ll do what I can for you. But Abby—”

  “I don’t want to look at that woman again in this life.”

  “You’ve got to tell her.”

  “I’m going to let you do it. I already told her it was gangrene, and I don’t think she cared. All she could say was she probably should’ve paid more attention when it happened.”

  “I don’t know what to say to her.”

  “I had to say it a thousand times to somebody— you can say it once.”

  “All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you need anything else?”

  “Not for this. Ask her to boil water, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “You’re being hard on her, Spence.”

  “Any woman who tells her kids she’s giving them away doesn’t deserve to have any. I don’t care how poor she is, she had no right to say something like that to Nate. And don’t get started on that, Laura, because I don’t want to even talk about it I’m just damned mad.”

  Leaning his head against the cold metal canopy frame, he closed his eyes, thinking God had led him to the promised land, only to show him hell again. He could hear Laura outside, explaining, “If the leg doesn’t come off, he’s going to die, Abby. He may, anyway. Why didn’t you say something sooner, when Spence could have done something else?”

  “It happened like I told it,” the woman maintained stubbornly. “Just like I told it.”

  “But not when you said it did.”

  “To tell the truth, I didn’t know when it happened. I’d been feeling bad, and Nate was looking after the kids. It was him that tied it up, I guess.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Abigail Daniels! You’re not shifting responsibility to a five-year-old child!” Laura told her hotly. “It’s just not right, and you know it. I don’t care how bad things are for you; God gave you those kids to raise, and you’re supposed to do it”

  “It ain’t like that. You just don’t know what it’s like bein’ poor like me.”

  “I’ve probably been poorer than you,” Laura snapped. “But rather than dispute over that, I’ve got to find some chloroform so that man in there can do something he despises, and it’s because you didn’t take care of that child! You’re going to have a boy hobbling around on one leg, Abby—and if you don’t want him, I do!”

  It took a few moments for the words to sink into Spence’s consciousness. What the hell was she talking about? He had enough on his plate without adding to it.

  “I want my boy, Mrs. Hardin! I want all of ‘em— but you tell me how I’m supposed to feed ‘em!” Abigail shouted after Laura. “Does God want me to watch ‘em starve?”

  He couldn’t hear his wife’s answer. He straightened up and shrugged his shoulders, trying to ease the tension in them, before he crawled closer to Jimmy Daniels. Unable to do anything else at the moment, he lay down next to the boy and held the hot little body, offering what comfort he could.

  He must’ve dozed, because the next thing he knew, Laura was telling him, “Aside from whiskey, all I could find was some peyote.”

  “Peyote?” he mumbled, rousing.

  Behind her, the half-breed Crow guide hovered. “Cheyenne get peyote from Comanche. Peyote heap good medicine.”

  “He can talk, Spence. He says it comes from a cactus.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Peyote make dream.”

  “I don’t think he had much contact with the white side of his family,” Laura offered. “But he can speak, and he thinks the stuff will help.”

  “You don’t make much of an interpreter.” Opening his formulary, Spence thumbed through the index. He probably wouldn’t find it under peyote. If it was in here anywhere, it’d be listed in Latin. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “‘Mescal A potent intoxicant, capable of producing inebriation and hallucinations.’ I don’t have any idea of a dosage, but I’m willing to give it a try. God knows I don’t have much else to use. I’ll have to have a medium for delivery, and I’ll have to give a little at a time until I know what its effect is.”

  In the end, he used a mixture of medicinal alcohol and water, steeping the crushed buttons in it, reasoning it was better than using mineral oil. He didn’t want any oil getting into the kid’s lungs if he vomited the peyote up.

  Since the kid was almost unconscious anyway, he used the mixture sparingly. When he finally took his surgical kit from the bag and unrolled it, Laura flinched. Closing his eyes briefly, Spence prayed silently, then turned his attention to the boy’s leg. “I want you to get his arms,” he told her. “I’m going to tourniquet the leg, and then I’ll hold my end down. If he jerks, hold on. I want a clean incision before I start sawing.”

  Jimmy Daniels didn’t respond when the catlin knife cut through his skin. White-faced, Laura watched from above the child as Spence pulled back the skin just above the knee, then sliced open the muscle to expose the bone, to scrape it clean where he intended to saw. The sound of the surgical saw cutting through bone made her almost sick, but at least it didn’t last long. It seemed as if he’d just gotten started when he was tying off blood vessels with silk thread. He filed the bone stump nearly smooth, then pulled the skin flap over it and closed it with neat stitches. When he finally sat back on his heels, she realized her dress was wet with her own sweat.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’ll need to dispose of the severed limb and clean up some of the mess, but whether he pulls through or not, it’s not going to be gangrene that kills him. I got all of it off.”

  ‘Then he’ll make it.”

  “Not necessarily. There’s still the danger of blood poisoning, but I’d say his chances are considerably improved right now.” Looking across the still little body, he met her eyes for a moment. They were brimming with tears. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “You need to go on and get Jessie. She doesn’t need to be up all night.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to stay here for a while and see what I can do about his fever. It’ll be a couple of hours before I can expect any kind of improvement, anyway, but I’ll feel better if I can get his temperature down.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “You’re welcome. I’ll try not to wake you when I climb into bed.”

  He sat with Jimmy Daniels most of the night and it wasn’t until the gray light of dawn crept through the open canvas that he decided it was safe to leave. While the boy hadn’t regained consciousness, his fever had come down enough for him to rest peacefully, and the bleeding was now minimal.

  Bone-tired, he crawled into the back of the Conestoga and crept on his hands and knees, trying to keep from waking Laura or the baby. They were asleep together, Laura’s body curved around Jessie’s. He didn’t move for a moment; he just stared at their faces, thinking they had to be the two most beautiful females in the world. Rather than disturb them, he decided to sit up a while longer. She’d have to drive while he slept later.

  As he was about to crawl back out, he felt something crackle under one knee, and he realized he was crushing her journal. Taking it with him to smooth the pages out, he tried to make out the words of her last entry, but it was still too dark. Curious as to what she’d written in all those pages, he found the lantern and lit it.

  June 19, 1866. Beneath the date, she’d chronicled the usual things, all the way down to a description of supper. But it was the last paragraph that caught his attention.

  Tonight, my husband did the most remarkable
thing I’ve ever seen. He saved the life of a four-year-old boy by removing a gangrenous leg with such precision that I felt as if I were watching a great artist at work. He has as much God-given talent for surgery as Michelangelo for art. While he believes heroes are made on the battlefields of this life, he does not realize he is one himself. Great generals send men into battle to die; Spencer Hardin repairs broken and diseased bodies, giving many of the fallen a chance to go home. Surely God did not give him this gift if He did not mean for him to use it as he did tonight.

  Somehow all of her spoken words on the subject had not moved him, but there was no denying the effect of the lines she’d written on this page. They’d never been meant for his eyes, something that made them even more powerful, because he knew they’d been written from her heart.

  As the stars faded into the grayness above the rich, warm hues of dawn, he closed the book and crept to bed, where he eased his body onto the mattress behind hers and reached his arm around her to hold her close. “I love you,” he whispered.

  She stirred, then turned over to face him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I just read your journal.”

  “Oh. I wasn’t writing it for you to find, but it’s the truth, anyway. I wanted Jessie and Josh to know the kind of man you are.” She yawned sleepily, then asked, “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Sun’s coming up.”

  “How is Jimmy?”

  “It’s too soon to tell, but I’m hoping he’ll make it. I cut it high enough to get all of the gangrene, and his fever was down some by the time I left. Not normal, but down.” Brushing her tangled hair with his fingertips, he murmured, “Where did you learn to write like that?”

  “Mama. But she was better at it. She didn’t have much education either, but she had a way with words.”

  Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the metal supporting the canvas. “I feel pretty good about his chances. I liked what you said to his mother, too.”

  “I was just plain mad at her, Spence. It’s one thing to make a mistake, but when it’s made worse by not admitting it, that’s something I can’t excuse. When I saw that leg, I was sick to my stomach. I don’t know how you did it—I honestly don’t.”