There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  The work on the new well proceeded with desultory languor, and only quickened on Frank’s “shift.” The Cunninghams complained plaintively among themselves. God, did that Yankee think of nothing but work and money? Here it was winter, and sensible men lounged and drank and slept through gray dreary months. But not Frank. And, alas, not the Cunninghams. They had another reason for uneasiness, but this they prudently kept from Frank. They were running out of money. If the new well did not come in generously, they were finished as private prospectors. They would be reduced to hiring themselves out to more prosperous companies in the hills. They talked among themselves of going down south, in the vicinity of Bowling Green, where, it was rumored, a hundred-barrel-a-day well was sneered at loftily. Had Frank been “regular,” they complained to each other, they’d have told him the situation. Moreover, Ira hinted, he had about fifteen hundred dollars stowed away, and if he had been a Southerner instead of a damned Yankee, it would have been an easy matter to persuade him to “lend” his cache to his friends. After all, they were all in it together, weren’t they? They did not ask him.

  The gray heavy rain came down day after day. Sometimes it was speckled with wet snow. Frank, looking through the small dark windows, thought of the blazing whiteness of a Bison winter, the clean and dazzling air, the cold and sterile smell of Lake winds, the pale virgin sun in an arch of white and blinding sky. He thought of the decorous neat streets, the curbs heaped with mounds of snow. He heard the jingling of sleigh bells, and saw the vapor of his own breath in the sunlight. None of all this was here, only the dull lightless rain, the boiling gray sky, the dun-colored hills drenched and mouldering, and, within, the bare cabin room with the black cots and the fire. Nostalgia sickened him. The Cunninghams had contemptuously dismissed the North as “not really America,” but Frank, looking at all this rain and desolation, felt that he was in an alien land, and that America lay, cold and shining, brawny and strong and vigorous, beyond the Mason and Dixon line. A kind of sweet and urgent patriotism came to him, a passion for America, such as he had never felt before.

  The leaden rain of February passed into the leaden rain of March. Here was no burst of the wild cold greenness of a Northern spring, but only a slight, imperceptible rise of sluggish temperature, and a very slight slackening of rain. Spring brought no urge of anticipation, no eagerness for life and joy and movement. But it did bring a letter from Maybelle:

  “Your grandma and I are leaving on April 3rd for home, at last. On the White Star Line, thank God. Home at last, after all my prayers. We’re going to Manchester, where your grandma will open a new lodging house, in dear old England. Had you been a proper son, you’d be going with us now, to your native land. But no, you stick down there in Kentucky, where there’s nothing. Don’t you ever long for home? We thought you’d come back to Bison and say good-bye to us, at least. But no. Well, take care of yourself, Frankie, and write often. I’ll write you when I get home, and perhaps you’ll run over, yourself, one of these days. You say you are making money, and saving it, and though I was sorry you sent me so little money from time to time, I’m thankful you try to save. Maybe it’s all for the best. If only Pa was going with us. That’s our sorrow. Well, you can’t have everything, I suppose. I’m giving you this citizen certificate which Pa took out when you were twelve years old. I don’t need it. Your name’s on it, and perhaps you’ll want it.”

  The letter aroused in Frank no emotion at all. But he looked at the naturalization certificate with intense feeling. He had never seen it before. There was his name! He had known long ago that he was a citizen of the United States, but now he had the actual paper in his hands, and for some reason it was beautiful to him. He folded it up, unfolded it, read it again, smoothed it out with his calloused fingers, and held it tightly. Then he placed it in the cotton bag with his money in the trunk, and closed the lid carefully and slowly. Never before had he said to himself: “I am an American!”

  For days, he was almost contented and happy. He even sang with the Cunninghams. They were Americans. But so was he! They had been born in this country. They could not feel the lift of heart, the airiness, the sensation of liberty and pride which he now felt. He pitied them, who had only been born here and knew nothing of the true exultation in citizenship.

  Once, to his utmost startled amazement, he heard himself thinking: “Some day I shall write of America!” Utterly shaken by the thought, he stood over the stove where he was making a soup, and stared into space. Why had he thought that? He would never write again; he knew it. Yet that absurd idea had come to him, flushed with light, triumphant and strong. He shook his head and stirred the soup, but the singing splendor of his thought remained with him, like a strain of music blowing through the corridors of his mind, and would not be shouted away.

  One day Tim Cunningham went “down on Benton” for coffee and salt and gasoline, and returned with a bag of books and a letter from Wade O’Leary. The letter was brief and curt and hard, and began without salutation:

  “You must have heard that typhoid has broken out again down here, in spite of our efforts to induce the people to boil all suspected water. Then there are several smallpox cases hereabouts. Peter and I are working ourselves to death, and we need intelligent help. I am demanding, not asking you, to give us a little time and help us administer typhoid serum and vaccinate our patients. I can use you for a few days. I hear from Tim that work on the well has stopped until you can get some new supplies. If you have any sense of decency and any feeling of friendship for me, in God’s name, come in and help us! In the meantime, I’m sending you a bottle of iodine. If you aren’t sure of your water, add a drop of iodine to each glass, let it stand half an hour before drinking it. I’ll be expecting you.”

  Frank flushed with anger at this note, and tossed it into the fire. He was infuriated with Wade for this impudence. So he was going to demand payment for his books and magazines, was he? The hell with him and his mountain cattle! Let the dogs die in their moldy hills. They had no right to live anyway.

  Later he thought: I’ll send him a little money for his damned serums. Alone in the cabin, he opened the trunk, got out his bag. He withdrew several bills reluctantly. Then he saw the crisp folded naturalization certificate, unfolded it, and reread it.

  CHAPTER 52

  “First,” said Wade through pale drawn lips, “you scrub the arm like this, with soap and hot water. Scrub hard. Then you dab on this alcohol with this sterile cotton. Then you take this needle and scratch. Three or four little scratches, so you draw a little blood. Then you squeeze this vaccine onto the scratches. Take this gauze, then, and make a light bandage, and tell the poor fools not to take it off for any reason.”

  Wade’s face was gray with exhaustion. The hills were full of sick and dying and terrified people. Moreover, the women had improved on this occasion to have a spate of babies, and there was much pneumonia. The O’Learys had taken possession of the half-finished little hospital which was being built by Isaac Saunders, and had set up their first-aid station in an interior which smelled of new pine and resin. Each delivery of mail and books also brought in fresh serums and vaccine and medical supplies. The mountains were in a desperate state, but the people obstinately and vacantly refused to boil their water or to clean their sodden and stinking privies. They wailed for the circuit riders, who could “pray” away this visitation, and while they accepted Wade’s profane administrations, they did so listlessly and with fear. They trusted him, and if he wished to expose them to the “blood-pizen” with his needles and his bandages, well, he had queer ways of amusing himself. They submitted out of affection. He and Peter were handy with babies, and saved many of them from “the fits.” Let him go around with his new-fangled “idees”; with his needles he brought blankets and canned milk, and Peter brought his banjo to entertain the sprawling children. They saw no connection between their sicknesses and their murky wells, and Peter and Wade often found children playing at the bedside of a father or mother dying of smallp
ox.

  The O’Learys had set up their cots and cooking equipment in the back room in the little hospital. They had ordered cots for the hospital, at Mr. Saunders’ expense, and these began to fill the one narrow ward. Men, women and children in extremis, or unconscious, were brought here on hastily contrived stretchers, accompanied by relatives who docilely nursed them under Wade’s direction. Another room was the laboratory, where the serums and vaccines were administered ruthlessly and speedily. Day after day, lines of fathers and mothers and children and old people stood shivering in the rain, waiting for their terrified turns.

  The rain came down, the lines expanded and dwindled and whined. It was warm in the ward, and Peter patrolled it vigilantly, forcing the mountain nurses to wash their hands frequently, pausing to take a temperature and give medicines. The bare blank walls, still unplastered and unfinished, gleamed damply in the lamplight. The groans and whimpers of adults and children blurred together in one vast, hushed chord of pain and fear.

  But Frank’s place was with Wade, who initiated him into the simple procedure of scratching arms and forcing the greenish smallpox vaccine into the scratches, of plunging a hypodermic syringe full of typhoid serum into quivering and shrinking arms, scrawny with malnutrition. There was no time to wash the whole arm. Frank was disgusted at the pale patch which his washing produced in the area of soiled skin, and while he did his work expertly, he upbraided the mountaineers for their filth. They submitted to him sullenly, turning their fearful eyes in a childlike imploring towards Wade, who smiled at them sympathetically. The women huddled in their damp shawls, their cotton skirts trailing over broken boots borrowed from husbands or sons, their heads bent in their ubiquitous gingham sunbonnets. The men displayed more bravado, commenting lewdly on the proceedings, and watching Frank with dislike. They snapped their galluses, chewed tobacco, shrugged, but carefully spat into sand-filled boxes provided by the O’Learys. The children wailed at their mothers’ skirts, or hung sleepily over their fathers’ arms. Frank saw their pinched and pallid faces, the dead dumb eyes of the women, the gaunt unshaven faces of the men, and hated them. There was no end to them. They came on mules and on foot, steaming in the warmth of the little room, smelling to high heaven of manure, rancid grease and dirt. Every hour or so, Frank would scrape away the red mountain sludge from the floors, and throw a pail of hot water, heavily disinfected, over the bare wood.

  But Wade, in spite of his sinking exhaustion, spoke to the people with gentleness, friendship and compassion. He joked with them. He patted the children’s cheeks or heads. He had a huge box of lollipops for the youngsters, and promised each child a dainty if he did not “holler.” The wan faces of the women brightened with smiles; the men looked at Wade with sheepish love. The quick heavy footsteps of Peter O’Leary could be heard marching to and fro in the ward beyond the shut door, and sometimes he sang to console a weeping child or a moaning woman.

  Nothing could induce Frank to go into the ward. He stood, grim hour after grim hour, washing arms, scratching, injecting, filling and emptying syringes, cursing the people under his breath, and glancing with dark wonder at Wade. There was no time for conversation. There was time only for administering the vaccines and the serums, for washing floors, for cooking hasty meals in the half-finished kitchen. Where the hell did all these people come from anyway? What magic did Wade possess which had brought them here, against all their illiterate and superstitious convictions? Frank knew that Wade was working against time. Once the circuit riders rode through these hills, the people would no longer come for preventive treatment. Almost any day, now, the psalm-shouting and bellowing riders would arrive, and the laboratory would be empty. Every hour was precious. The army of science and enlightenment would soon be dispersed in the dusty uproar of the Bible-screamers, the gospel-thumpers, and the pounding hoofs of darkness and ignorance. It was hopeless. Why preserve the lives of these wretches?

  Wash, scrub; scratch and clutch at shrinking arms; squeeze out the vaccine, bandage, roll down the sleeve, exhort sternly, dismiss. Hour after exhausting hour. Plunge in the syringe, ignore the shrieks, withdraw the syringe. Sterilize needles in the bath of water on the fuming oil stove. Bring out fresh supplies of cotton-batting, bandages.

  This had gone on for days, days without end. There were interludes when Frank threw himself on his cot, which was near Wade’s, and slept briefly and soddenly. Then up again, to cook the quick hasty meal, wash and scrub his own hands, and return to the laboratory, where Wade, shirt-sleeved and covered with damp sweat, turned whiter by the hour and smiled constantly. Sometimes Frank was alone with the people, who stared at him blankly or with hostility, feeling his antagonism and disgust for them. Wade, catching an hour’s feverish sleep on his cot behind the door, would hear Frank’s angry curses, the cries of the children, the oaths of the men. But Frank was a good and tireless assistant, and Wade would close his eyes, sighing, and sink into a nightmare of weary sleep, thanking God for even this angry and resistant helper.

  “I only do it for you, damn you!” Frank said to him once, and Wade had laughed. “I don’t want to see you and Peter die on your feet. I like to get your books too much.”

  The rain still poured incessantly. Now there was a sickly warmth to the spring air. The mules bellowed as they stood in muddy puddles, awaiting their owners. The Benton road flowed in reddish mud and water, the cabins streaming with gray moisture while the purplish hills slowly turned green. The “branch” that ran below Benton showed mottled blotches of yellow, purple and red on its rushing surface, for there was oil from the hills mixed with the water.

  Any day now the circuit riders would be here, to set up their Gospel workshop in the raddled little church near the general store. The mountain folk still streamed into Benton, as if they, too, felt the cold wind of death and superstition on their necks. They came, out of simple gratitude to Wade, and affection for him, and out of a bemused faith in his “idees.” Certainly, something had halted the smallpox in its evil tracks; certainly, the fever was dwindling. But it was still a race, and Frank knew it.

  As each day passed, and the circuit riders did not come galloping into Benton on their wild mules, Frank was filled with excitement. Another life saved, another child’s eyesight or features snatched from smallpox disfigurement and mutilation. Now the sight of the children softened him a little; they were so bewildered, so pallid, so trusting. He was surprised when they smiled at him, for he had not been aware that he had smiled at them first. When he saw that his own hands had become unusually white and thin, he could not tell why he felt exultation and pride. When he saw his face in the patch of mirror near the door, and observed how his cheeks had fallen in, giving him a gaunt and haggard expression, he was not alarmed. There was something good, something excellent, in this fight against death and ignorance. However unworthy the objects, he added mentally.

  It was good to fight with Wade. Though he knew with the deepest conviction that never again would he trust another man as he had trusted Paul Hodge, that never again would he have an alter ego to whom he could speak or not speak and be utterly understood, he trusted and loved Wade O’Leary with what was left of his childhood’s faith and unthinking devotion. His tongue was forever inhibited from completely revealing his secret mind, but it revealed as much as it would ever be possible for him to reveal to the other man.

  Frank had only one puzzled regret: he knew that Peter O’Leary did not like him particularly, and he was sorry. For he liked Peter very much.

  Once, in a momentary lull of mountaineers, Frank said to Wade: “Your brother doesn’t like me.”

  Wade put down a container of serum, looked long and seriously at Frank, then said gently: “No. No. You don’t understand Peter.” He paused, then came closer to confidences than he would ever come again: “Peter’s engaged to a very nice girl in Salt Lake City, a girl of good family and education and background. She—” Wade hesitated, then went on, trying to lighten the cloudiness on Frank’s face, “she is just lik
e him. They’ll never expect too much from each other.”

  “Peter seems intimate and close enough with every one except me!” said Frank angrily, his fair skin darkening with humiliation.

  “Perhaps it is because no one else gets that close to—to either of us,” answered Wade, rather ambiguously.

  Out of his loneliness and the barrenness of his life, Frank suddenly decided, one morning, that he would not stay here much longer. Jealousy began to torment him. In spite of Wade’s affection and concern for him, he felt his friendlessness. Frank must have all, or he would have nothing. He did not know this yet. He did not know that he must always run from the kind of friendship that could not deepen into love. For he must either love or hate. For him, there was no middle ground. He must either trust completely, opening wide all the doors of his mind and his heart, or he must never trust at all, and keep the doors barred and locked and guarded.

  A change took place in him, a kind of retreat, as if preparing for absence. Wade saw this and was helpless. He could do nothing more for Frank. For he, Wade O’Leary, was not capable of giving more than he had already given.

  CHAPTER 53

  There came a Sunday when the little hospital was quiet, except for the hospital sounds in the ward. No mountaineers waited docilely at the door of the laboratory. Frank woke from a long sound sleep to see that a golden day had come, a day all soft warm gilt, moist and shimmering. He went outside in the quivering sunlight, to see that, overnight, the hills had turned an intense green under a gentle blue sky. Even Benton appeared less raw, its rows of little wood houses and log cabins picturesque in the shimmering light. The great trees, which had been empty hardly a day ago, now were fountains of pure emerald green, swaying in a murmurous wind. Frank sniffed appreciatively, and smelled the rich pungent breath of the awakened earth. Then he heard the vehement sound of clanging church bells. So the circuit riders had arrived, and there would be few mountaineers to whom to administer serums and vaccines.