Gently she washed each body, changing the water in her white basin over and over, leaving the gauze over the burns or wounds. She closed the dead men’s eyes, put a rolled-up washcloth under their chin to keep their mouth shut, and then bundled them tight in a white sheet with only their feet sticking out; four bodies with white feet and two with brown. Little paper tags are tied on the toes and labeled with their names in Patience’s neat writing.
“Where’s Daniel?” she asks me.
“He went into Liberty for medication and supplies, Bayers, gauze, more laudanum, and some Silvardene, a new drug that’s supposed to prevent infection. Dr. Blum had used it at the hospital in Charlottesville.”
I lean over and read aloud the names of the six men, starting with one of the coloreds.
“John Doe. Who’s this?”
“No one knows. Head trauma. A tree fell on him and someone found him after the storm. We think he’s one of the homeless men who joined the firefighters. Probably has a family somewhere who’ll never know he died a hero.”
I continue reading. “Drake Trustler . . . Captain Norman Wolfe . . . Nate Bowlin . . . I met Nate Bowlin at Livia’s delivery in Hazel Patch,” I observe. . . . “And another time when he and Reverend Miller brought us some wood.”
“The boy was like kin to me,” Patience says. “Bitsy married his brother, Byrd. Nate was a real sweet kid, planned to go to college at Howard University next fall.” She takes off her wire-rimmed glasses and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “The first of his family to go on to college.”
The death count goes on as we stare at the row of bodies. Percy Bishop . . . Clarence Mitchell. This last name is familiar. . . .
“Lucy’s husband. Lucy with the twins! Clarence Mitchell.”
The sadness almost brings me to the floor. “Poor Lucy,” I whisper. “Poor Lucy and those three little kids.”
“You know this one too. Percy Bishop.” She points to a short, thick body wrapped in her neat white shroud.
“I don’t think so.”
“The Bishop brothers? Beef?”
“Beef, the son of a bitch? What was he doing here?”
The midwife looks at me as though I’ve lost my mind. “Fighting the fire. Don’t speak ill of the dead, Becky. Men came from all around. Daniel told me that Beef died trying to save Clarence Mitchell. Smoke inhalation.” She puts her arm around me. “Death is the great leveler, and in the end, death takes us all, the weak . . . the strong . . . the angry and loving. Mrs. Potts, used to say that some of us get nine days on this earth, some get ninety years, there’s no telling. . . . People like us should know that.”
“People like us?”
“Midwives,” says Patience. “Healers.”
Feeding the Army
Twenty-four hours after the first men left to fight the wildfire, Starvation has the wood cookstove going and is prepared to feed the Forest Army, but when we enter the mess hall, it’s as quiet as a church at midnight.
The corpsmen eat their eggs and pancakes, but have no appetite. Years later, they’ll tell stories about the Wildfire of ’35, but today they have lost good friends, have lived through a nightmare, have battled an inferno, and a motion picture of it still rolls behind their dark eyes.
CCC officers, corpsmen, and volunteers from the surrounding farms, both black and white, sit together, and I recognize a few faces. The Indian man, Mr. Hummingbird, looks up and waves a tired hand. One-Arm Wetsel is sitting with Reverend Miller, and John Dyer, the young polka-dancing father. Even the bearded, bootlegging coal miner who came to the house and his short, dark companion are here. As we walk past the tables I catch a few muted snatches of conversation.
“ . . . They estimate five thousasnd acres burned, maybe more.”
“ . . . The only green left, between here and the Hope, is the hundred acres around the camp.”
“ . . . It was the rain that saved us.”
“ . . . Did Lou Cross and his crew ever report?”
Patience and I had planned to just get coffee, but it smells so good we end up eating a whole breakfast.
“Excuse me,” Patience says when we’re almost finished. She stands and walks toward the kitchen to talk to the bald-headed cook. I can’t imagine what she’s saying. “More pancakes, please”? “Thank you for the nice meal”? She comes back with a clean, empty mason jar.
“What’s that for?” I ask, thinking it may have something to do with the burial preparations.
“My breasts,” she whispers, smiling, as if I would enjoy the joke. “They’re so full, I need to go somewhere private and get the milk out before I get a breast infection. I left the baby and Danny with Mrs. Maddock.”
“What are you going to do with the milk?”
“I don’t know. Put it in a pitcher next to Mrs. Ross’s coffee?” Here we both start laughing so hard I almost choke.
Rescue
Back at headquarters, the big news is that Lou Cross and his crew have at last been rescued. Loonie Tinkshell sits on one of the wooden chairs in the waiting area projecting his voice so the men can hear through the open infirmary door.
“I went out to look for them and in a little gully about a quarter mile west of the trench, I heard a sound. Standing in a rocky area at the side of the ravine, I could hear water dripping somewhere, so I began to explore. That’s when I slid down the mining shaft. It must have been one the bootleggers’ coal mines. Their holes are all over these hills.”
Here the porch door swings open and, who should limp in, carrying a mug of steaming coffee but Lou Cross himself, still wearing his cowboy hat. He has on a clean uniform and, of course, looks quite dapper.
“There you are, you son of a bitch.” He slaps the mechanic on his back, pulls up a chair, and straddles it backward. “Pardon my French, ma’am, but he’s my friggin’ hero. We were more dead than alive when he slid into that hole.
“Here’s how it happened . . .” he begins, like a storyteller. “My boys and I found the bootleggers’ mining shaft about the same way Loonie did and it saved our lives,” Lou continues. “We were headed across the west slope, trying to meet up with the rest of the camp when the fire pounced on us like a cougar.” He smacks his hand hard on the back of his chair to make his point. “Smoke so thick and air so hot, we dropped our tools and ran, but there was no way we could outrun the flames.
“Arthur, hunched over and coughing, was in the lead one minute and the next he was gone. Fell right into the hole. Lucky for all of us, the slope was only a forty-five-degree angle, not straight down, but there were boulders at the bottom. That’s how Arthur broke his ankle.” I look across the waiting room and see a small, pale young man with his lower leg in a cast, Dr. Blum’s handiwork. Arthur grins and raises his hand, in case some of the group don’t know him.
“The rest of us were able to slow our descent by digging in our hands and heels. If it hadn’t been for that mineshaft, we’d be goners. The fire was right on our tails, drawn up the ravine like creosote in a tin stovepipe . . . Whoosh!”
“When I dropped down into the pit, I was kind of scared.” This is Loonie Tinkshell, continuing the narrative. “I wasn’t sure what I had found. ‘Hello!’ I called into the black. ‘Anyone down here?’
“‘Hell yes!’ Lou answered me. I couldn’t stop laughing.”
“The worst part was the heat,” Arthur, the kid with the cast, observes. “It was like we were trapped in a cooking pot. The twelve of us crowded away from the opening, got as far back as we could, but the shaft ended right there.
“Lou ordered us to take off our shirts, wet them with what we had in our canteens, cover our heads, and get down on the floor. The sergeant lay nearest the opening to keep any of the fellows from bolting out of there. Threatened to shoot us if we tried.”
“Well, I know how men are,” Lou gets back in the narrative. “We’d rather take our chances out in the open than be cornered. On the other hand, I was certain anyone who tried to break for it would be burned
to a crisp. Turns out I made the right decision, boys! We are all still alive . . . Praise the Lord!”
“Praise the Lord!” the men echo.
43
Red Sails at Sunset
The days after the fire are only a blur. I walked and worked through a daze of acrid smoke, Boodean, hollow-eyed, at my side. In a lull between vital signs and dressing changes, I found my medic sitting in the corner of the superintendent’s closet listening to Count Basie, tears streaming down his face.
“You okay?” I could see that he wasn’t so I sat down on the floor beside him. “Is there something I can do to help?”
“Nah. Thanks, Nurse . . . I’m just tired. Don’t tell the fellows I was crying, okay?”
“I’m tired too. It will take us some time to get over this. You were a hero out there, Boodean. You know that? You saved a lot of men’s lives.”
“I didn’t save Drake Trustler or the captain or that colored kid Bowlin. He died in my arms.”
“No, we didn’t save everyone.”
“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Miss Becky, be a medic. I’m not cut out for it.” Boodean Sypolt breaks down then, crumbles like a little boy, all the pain and death and suffering pouring out of him in great gulping sobs. I turn up Count Basie so that no one can hear.
Dr. Blum stayed with me for three days. There were the wounded and burned to care for, and he slept in the dorms and ate in the mess hall, while I slept in the infirmary to be close to the men.
Side by side we worked as he talked, gave instructions. It was almost like old times. He even comforted the corpsmen in a kind but stiff way. Then one morning he insisted I get out of the clinic.
“Go up to the captain’s bungalow and get some rest,” he encouraged. “If you don’t take a few hours, you’re going to get sick, and the patients still need you.”
He knew from experience that such an approach always works on me. Get rest, not for yourself, but so you can better take care of others!
Nearly ten hours later, I woke to a hazy orange light pouring through the four-pane windows in the captain’s log cabin. The sun was fading to the west, and one thing I’ve learned is, you get spectacular sunsets after a big fire.
On the homemade oak table beside the captain’s bed, rests a book of poetry and a framed photo of a beautiful woman. I reach for the book, where a ribbon marks what he must have last read, a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. . . .”
Then I pick up the photograph and stare into the woman’s eyes. What was her name? Caroline . . . I remember now. His wife was a blond schoolteacher with a heart of gold. The captain wasn’t thinking of me when he read that poem, but his wife.
“And if God choose,” the sonnet ends, “I shall but love thee better after death.”
I roll on my side, kiss the captain’s wife on her forehead, and put her photo back on the table. Then I kiss the captain’s pillow and smell his scent, now gone forever, a man who could have been my lover.
Wherever they are, they are together, Captain Wolfe and his wife, Caroline, flying hand in hand, sailing over the tops of the White Rock Cliffs through the red-golden light.
Torched
Before Blum and I leave the camp, the new major, sent over from District Five, calls both of us into his office. “You need to rest. You’re exhausted,” he tell us, sitting behind the desk we’d done an amputation on a week earlier. “I’m going to ask for a nurse from Camp Roosevelt in Virginia to come over for a few weeks, so you can take some time to recover.”
“That’s very gracious.” The doctor clears his throat. “But speaking for Nurse Myers, will her leave be paid?” My mouth falls open and my cheeks redden. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask.
“Gadzooks, yes! And I’m going to put in for a position for you as an L.E.M. too.”
Dr. Blum looks puzzled.
“Locally employed nan. I understand the camp hasn’t had their own physician for a couple of months. Maybe we can work out a schedule, if you’re willing to alternate with Nurse Myers.”
The doctor doesn’t respond, and for a moment I think he’s gone mute again, but finally he speaks. “Yes. Certainly. But I’ll need to discuss it with my other employer.” Who the hell is that? I think. Hester?
Patience had gone home with Daniel in the Ford and left the Pontiac for us, and I’m so tired I don’t even notice when Blum slides into the driver’s seat. We leave the green forest of the camp and enter the nightmare remains of hell. All along the road are the blackened monuments to the wildfire, black spikes without branches reaching into the sky.
Crockers Creek is almost overflowing with rushing brown water. “The ground can’t hold the rain after a burn like this. The rain put out the fire, but it doesn’t heal the earth. Not yet,” Dr. Blum says, taking the tone I’ve heard before: learned professor. “The soil will be fertile, full of minerals and nitrogen, but the ashes coat the ground, so the water can’t penetrate.”
I’m just going to ask how he knows these things when something catches my eye, a stone chimney, standing alone where there should be a house.
“Stop!”
Blum puts on the brake and pulls up next to the metal skeleton of a swinging bridge. Across the roaring creek there’s no house or barn where there should be. No family with little girls.
“Fuck!” exclaims Blum. “Where are the Hucknells? Their place has been torched. The fire must have swept over on the swinging bridge and burned across their land. You can see it didn’t go much farther.”
I don’t respond. My breath is knocked out of me. What happened to the family? The whole place is gone. Blum shifts the Pontiac into gear and speeds on to Liberty. Near the bridge that crosses the Hope, the scene changes again.
On one side of the river are charred forest and fields, a black-and-white world; on the other, a town with green lawns and flowers. It’s the same all the way home, green on one side of the river, black on the other.
The Hucknells
We stop at the Hesters’ before going home, and as I enter the kitchen I smell something good. Patience is baking bread. Danny plays with his tin truck on the floor and the baby sleeps in the sweet grass basket that Cypress, the grandmother from Hazel Patch, gave me.
“Oh, Becky!” Patience greets me. “How are you? Where’s Isaac?”
“Out at the barn, searching for Daniel.”
“You look so tired. Coffee?” I know what she means. No makeup, stringy hair, droopy army nurse’s uniform. I’ve not changed for days.
“I’m okay . . .” I trail off and then start up again. “We went past the Hucknells’.”
“Yes, the Hucknells . . .”
“Their house is gone. That was one of my old delivery stops. What happened?”
“I thought you knew.”
“No, nothing. What happened?” I ask again.
Patience looks puzzled and moves toward me. “You didn’t hear? Alfred and Willa and their baby boy died in the fire.”
“No!” Patience catches me as I drop, and helps me into a kitchen chair.
“Oh, Becky, I’m so sorry. It’s been almost a week and I thought everyone knew.”
“What happened? How could that happen? And what about the girls?”
“Alfred carried the girls out of the house, one by one, when he saw the fire had jumped Crockers Creek. It was in the paper and everything, an interview with the oldest child, Sally.
“He carried them through the burning fields down to the creek. Remember how the wind roared that night? The wooden boards on the swinging bridge were already in flames. He made each girl lie in the water with a wet blanket over her head.
“It was good thinking. The water saved their lives. Then he went back for Willa and the baby. When he got them as far as the creek bank, he ran back to the barn to free the frightened horses and cows.”
“But you said the parents and the infant died.”
“Willa slipped on the steep bank and lost hold of t
he baby. She couldn’t swim. Couldn’t reach the baby in the brown water. The oldest girl saw it happen, but it was dark and the current was strong. Within minutes, they were both swept away.
“The creek saved the girls but took the baby and their mother. Their bodies were found two days later in the rocks down by the gravel pit . . . I’m sorry. Am I telling too much? Should I stop?”
“No . . . finish.”
“Alfred was apparently caught by a burning beam in the barn. . . . The girls found him when they thought it was safe to come out of the water. Can you imagine, finding your father, burned and dead? Twenty-four hours later, Reverend Miller picked them up on his way back from the CCC camp, the four little orphans, walking along the road to town barefoot in their nightgowns.”
The tears that come out of me for the next hour, my head bent down over the kitchen table, would flood the Hope River. Patience stays with me the whole time, patting my back. I’m not just crying for the little girls, but for everyone, and not just the victims of this fire, but all the victims of all the fires, all the victims of this hard, hard life.
When Blum comes in from the barn, his eyes are red too.
44
Graveyard
I’ve not been feeling well and I know Isaac notices. He has even begun cooking and cleaning the house. Sometimes I go out in the garden and weed, even if it isn’t needed, just to sit with the plants. Sometimes I lie down in the meadow, down by the creek, looking up at the sky, just to feel the comfort of the earth. Secretly, I fear something has been burned out of me, something that will never grow back.
Despite all the many losses when I was young, I thought if people did what was right and played by the rules, all would be well, but life, I’ve learned, doesn’t work that way, and death and pain come on relentlessly whether you are good or not.
The Reluctant Midwife Page 32