Bea doesn’t want, doesn’t need, to read any further. Enfolded in that last sentence lies the one true note. Henry’s yearning pilgrim spirit resides in that voice: “A great mercy, largely because it has allowed me to think …”
To think … She snaps the letter back in her purse. The streetcar grates in reply. It occurs to Bea just how wonderfully appropriate is her condition as she carries home this unforeseen document in which, so she has been informed, Henry will profess his love: she has a fever, just the way Henry had so many, many fevers. And the fever allows her to think …
Down Inquiry Street she is carrying Henry’s love. The city is drifting away, into its outskirts, or floating away, up in smoke, but that’s all right, since she houses within her the knowledge that she was the only girl ever to commune with Henry’s spirit. As he communed with hers. Yes, she understood him before she understood she understood him. And this was the reason, one beautiful, imperishable evening, in the photograph-jammed living room of a complete stranger, eighteen-year-old Bea had chosen to give herself wholly, body no less than soul, to the late Henry Vanden Akker.
CHAPTER XXIV
Long Drive to the City
The book he was reading just before turning off the bedside light was called The Man Who Chose His World. In this one, a sort of religious cult moved to the highest Andes. Their religion was really Science, and in their dizzy, thin-aired isolation they began to make unprecedented strides. They began plausibly to envision an Earth free of hunger, menial toil, childhood disease. They mastered the mysteries of genetics, and foresaw new generations of better, brighter, healthier human beings. But with every new advance, the people they’d left behind—the People Down Below—regarded them with increasing suspicion and, eventually, hatred. Down Below, a plot was hatched to exterminate the cult.
It fell upon the book’s hero, a young man raised by the scientists, to arrange a compromise. He went down from the mountains and negotiated. The cult would build a rocket ship and fly away. They pledged never to return to Earth. They would take to the stars, those infinite spaces where they could pursue in tranquillity the infinite reaches of Science.
And so it was agreed. Only, now a complication developed. For while visiting the People Down Below, the young man had fallen helplessly in love with one of their young women. Now he faced a choice: abandon his people, and all their unbounded aspirations, or abandon the girl? He must choose his world.
The ringing phone was a call from another planet—or what might just as well have been. A call put through from Detroit. The bedside clock said twenty-five after one. It was Vico calling.
“Dennis, it’s Vico.”
It was Vico calling from Detroit at one-thirty in the morning and all at once Dennis felt fully, fearfully awake. During nights at home, alone with Grace, this was always the one call above all others to be dreaded: some cry of distress from the Paradisos. He and Grace might have moved from Detroit, but that snug home on Inquiry remained almost more real and precious to the two of them than their own capacious house in Cleveland.
“Vico, what is it?”
A charged pause, during which Dennis sensed that the news must hit in the most vulnerable spot of all.
“It’s Bia,” Vico said. Of course it was … “She’s all right, she’s all right, but it’s a very high fever. I think it may be the influenza.”
“How high a fever?”
“One hundred four?”
“For how long now?”
“One hundred four point two, actually.”
“Vico, how long has the fever been going on?”
“A day. Maybe a little more than a day. Though not quite so hot before. The influenza can be serious for someone like Bia?”
“Can be.”
Dennis knew all about influenza in Detroit. It had been a true epidemic this winter, the worst since ’18. It was deadlier than the War. In recent months, the city had suffered more casualties at home, from influenza, than boys lost overseas.
Grace was up and out of bed, standing beside him. Dennis scribbled on the notepad by the phone: Bea—fever—104°.
“Vico, you have her at home?”
“At home, right. I know you don’t like hospitals.”
“Up to a point, Vico. She gets any hotter, take her right away to Ford. Or Ferry. The emergency room. Keep a cool washcloth on her forehead. If she’ll drink anything, give her cold water but not ice water. It’s one-thirty. I can be there by six-thirty I think.”
“You don’t have to do that. I just thought you ought to know.”
“I’m on my way, Vico.”
“I didn’t call asking you. I’m not asking you to drive all that—”
“Vico, Vico, I know you didn’t. Expect me at six or six-thirty. Sooner, maybe.”
“You don’t have to come,” Vico protested. “There are other doctors in Detroit.”
But Vico himself must have heard his own beseeching diffidence. As far as he was concerned, there was but one trustworthy doctor on earth, who happened to be his brother-in-law and best friend, Dennis Poppleton.
“Yes, there are some very good ones, if you need them. Over there at Ford. Or Ferry. Six or six-thirty, Vico. Have some coffee on. Bye now.”
Grace—the faithful helpmeet—was already busy in the kitchen. She had the coffee brewing and was assembling a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
“What do you think it is?” she said.
“I’m guessing influenza.”
“How serious?”
“Normally not. I mean statistically. What troubles me is his calling at one-thirty in the morning. You know Vico. He wouldn’t do it if he weren’t scared silly.”
“Oh Dennis …”
“Yes,” Dennis said.
“You know, Vico played his last card, calling here.”
As he often did, Dennis stared at his wife in puzzlement. For a moment, he did not understand. But then he saw that Grace, as was her way—a quicker way than his—had intuited just how things stood in Detroit. Vico never did anything without deliberation. He had weighed the call in his mind, checked on the girl, weighed the call, checked on the girl, weighed the call, checked on the girl … And then he’d played the one remaining, desperate card he held: Vico had telephoned Cleveland.
“I could go with you,” Grace said.
“I need you here, darling. Call the hospital, tell them what’s happened. Reschedule what needs rescheduling. I hope to be back by late afternoon. The girl’ll be all right.”
“Oh I know she’ll be all right.”
“She has a strong constitution. They all do—all three of those kids.”
“That’s right.”
Dennis went out to the toolshed, where he kept a five-gallon container of gasoline, and, grunting under its weight, hoisted it into the trunk of his car. In the past year, the gasoline situation had improved for everyone, and as a doctor he’d been given a “C” sticker anyway, all but exempting him from rationing. But at this hour of night you never knew when you’d find an open service station. Being a doctor meant being prepared.
By the time he returned to the house, Grace had fitted his sandwiches in a lunch box, along with an apple, a molasses cookie, and a wedge of spice cake. The big thermos was full of hot coffee. Having asked her once, he had no reason to remind Grace to call the hospital; she was the most competent person he’d ever met. At the front door, he embraced her with one arm (his medical bag was in the other) and pushed his body up against her—his jewel, his pillar of strength.
“You’re not too worried, Dennis?”
He confessed the truth. “Normally, I wouldn’t be. But Vico clearly is. Calling at one-thirty in the morning from Detroit. The man must be scared out of his wits. You know what she means to him.”
“And to you,” Grace replied.
“Yep.”
“And to me.”
“Yep.”
Dennis turned and walked toward the dark car, turned once more on his heels, and found
Grace where he expected her, surveying him from the lit doorway. “Now don’t you worry,” he said.
“And you,” Grace called, softly. “Don’t you worry.”
“You’re my palm tree,” he called, more softly still—a mere whisper. He heard a tremulous “Thank you” as he closed the car door.
It was a doctor’s house, their house, with little room for nonsense jokes, and yet the line about the palm tree was a treasured exception.
The phrase had sprung to his lips one evening some fifteen years ago, back in those delirious days when he’d set his sights on the most desirable woman he’d ever laid eyes on, who was somehow all the more unapproachable for being a divorcée. Who was he to aspire to such a creature? He was a pop-eyed frog—he knew it well enough. He was the penniless kid from Alton, Illinois, who had somehow managed to scrounge and scrape his way through medical school, where for one three-week period he’d read his textbooks with one eye, his glasses having lost a lens he couldn’t afford to replace. On that vertiginous evening when Grace first allowed him a kiss, Dennis, overwhelmed, so frantic to please her, and to praise her, had proclaimed, “You’re my palm tree.” The words had popped out from some unvisited, exotic sector in his brain. Of course, back then neither of them had ever seen a palm tree.
And Grace had seized delightedly upon this ludicrous slip, never permitting him to abandon it—until, in time, Dennis, too, cherished its quiet poetry, its lofty and rooted rightness: Grace was indeed his palm tree.
Dennis had later told her, which wasn’t quite accurate, that what he’d meant to say was that he wished someday to take her to a land where palm trees grew. In any event, he’d done precisely that, in various spectacular locales. Hadn’t he strolled with his beautiful wife along a beach in Key West, Florida, the southernmost tip of the United States?
He picked up Route 6 west of Cleveland and settled his powerful Packard at just under 50 miles per hour. It was 165 miles from his home on Brock Street to Inquiry Street, give or take a few miles. He found an open gas station at Lorain and filled his tank. The poor boy who pumped the gas had a harelip and a stammer. This was something Dennis had observed before: a disproportionate number of stammerers working the night shifts. Coincidence? Or was there, statistically, something to this? Stammerers might naturally gravitate toward lonelier hours and less talk.
Or, alternatively, the bosses might routinely assign the loneliest shifts to those least prepared to protest.
Though Dennis wasn’t very hungry, he was feeling extremely nervous, and he had polished off the cookie, the cake, and one of the sandwiches even before reaching Toledo. The car hummed along. In Vico’s heart of hearts he must have known Dennis would insist on coming, though perhaps Vico didn’t quite realize Dennis had no choice. He simply couldn’t have stayed home—pacing the floor, awaiting another call. At a time like this, his only comfort was located in the low roar of the engine, the steadily falling mile markers. No, much harder than driving to Detroit in the middle of the night was doing what Grace was doing: waiting at home for news. Once again, she was the strong one.
It was an hour or so later, having just crossed the Michigan state line, when the flashing red light of a police car exploded behind him. Dennis felt very little fear—almost exhilaration, actually. Dennis liked policemen. He’d very rarely met the copper who couldn’t be outmaneuvered. The fact was—policemen liked him. They seemed instinctively to recognize him as just the sort of person they were put on Earth to aid and protect. Yes, the police car’s lights were almost welcome. Though mostly an uncompetitive man, Dennis relished this opportunity to get the better of a cop.
“You Ohio people can’t read traffic signs?” the officer began. Dennis had rolled down his window, here on the shoulder of a lightless, flat, totally deserted road. The police lights bled across empty acres and acres of frosty black farmland.
“I’m a Michigan man myself, Officer, despite the license plate. And I’m a doctor.”
Dennis handed the officer his driver’s license and his hospital ID card.
“Says here Cleveland. Last time I checked, Cleveland was in Ohio.”
“The wife and I just moved. But trust me, we’re Michiganders through and through.”
“You were speeding. I say nearly fifteen over.”
“I never argue with a policeman,” Dennis said. A pause followed. “Never have, never will.” Another pause. Dennis went on: “You see, I’m off to examine a patient in Detroit. My own niece. She’s very ill. I got the long-distance telephone call a couple of hours ago and jumped right into my car.”
“You say you’re a doctor?”
“It’s there on the card.”
“I can read.”
This was a young cop, with much to prove about himself. He wasn’t going to bend easily.
“Long night?” Dennis asked.
“Too many speeders,” the cop said dryly.
“Deserted roads.”
“It’s still speeding.”
“No argument there. No argument there. Dr. Dennis Poppleton, by the way,” Dennis introduced himself, and extended his hand through the open window.
The officer, clearly nonplussed, stared at this hand extended out into the darkness of the night. Finally, reluctantly, he clasped and shook the doctor’s hand. “Officer Frank Santovetti.”
“Sounds Italian to me. My niece is Italian. Her name is Paradiso. Bianca Paradiso. She has a fever of a hundred and four point two. She’s a beautiful girl, and the apple of my eye, incidentally. I don’t have any kids myself, but the wife and I think of her as our own.”
“You were nearly fifteen over.”
“Officer Santovetti, I’m sure you’re quite right. You see, it’s the girl I’m worried about. She’s only eighteen. Younger even than you. She could be your kid sister.”
In the shocking oscillating red light thrown by his patrol car, Officer Santovetti looked more puzzled still—as though he didn’t quite comprehend how, in these patchily lit negotiations, Dennis and his feverish Italian niece had acquired the upper hand. For there was no chance of a speeding ticket now.
“You were fifteen over.”
“It’s the girl,” Dennis said. “It’s the girl. She’s the apple of my eye.” “Now listen, Doc,” Officer Santovetti said sternly. “I want you to slow down.”
“Yes sir,” Dennis said. “I plan to do just that.”
This note of ready compliance visibly placated the young officer. It allowed him to hold his dignity intact. He patted the top of Dennis’s lowered window and said, “You know what? I think I’m going to give you a break.”
“I take that as a good omen,” Dennis said.
Another pause. The officer seemed younger than ever as he said, “Hey, I hope your niece gets better.”
“Yes. I’m going to see to that,” Dennis said, and feeling much better himself, he added, “Officer Santovetti, I’ll pass along your best wishes.”
A moment later, behind him, the red light extinguished itself and Dennis accelerated into the darkness. “I’m the last card,” he said aloud, and giggled into the darkness.
Soon he was traveling the same speed as before: fifteen or so over. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but Dennis thought he saw a glow to the northwest, out where the bomber factories of Willow Run lay. Twenty-four hours a day, day in and day out, the rivers of molten steel were flowing. Out on the front lines, military errors were being made all the time, and American boys were dying unnecessarily—it was the nature of war—but here in Michigan it was nothing but pure glory, a technological breakthrough without precedent. Dennis had thought about this and thought about this. No city on earth had ever fought a war the way this city was fighting: it had become democracy’s true arsenal. It was bearing the burden of a dream born perhaps in ancient Greece: the governed shall govern. And future historians would recognize that the War’s authentic center had lain not in London, or even in Washington, but here in the Midwest, in Michigan, in Detroit. This was where th
e War’s bloodied and beaten victims, the French and the Dutch, the Poles and the Czechs, the Chinese and the Burmese, would be redeemed.
The city’s skyline defined the horizon at last, the crowning ball of the Penobscot Building serving as a sort of lighthouse. Detroit as the world’s true harbor. The city’s familiar stone lineaments inspired such eager impatient nervousness that, though he wasn’t at all hungry, Dennis bolted down another ham-and-cheese sandwich and swigged another cup of coffee. He was nearly there …
Inquiry Street still lay in darkness when he pulled up before the Paradisos. Back when the city had first begun ordering occasional blackouts, Dennis had paid $1.49 to have the hands of his watch tipped in fluorescent paint—a wise investment. It was now six-ten in the morning.
Vico appeared in the doorway even before Dennis was out of the car.
After the long drive, Dennis was feeling so worried, and so weary, that as he mounted the front steps he forgetfully extended his hand in greeting. Of course Vico would have none of that. He tugged Dennis to him, chest to chest. You felt the man’s muscles when he held you.
They whispered to each other in the front hall.
“You didn’t have to come, Dennis.”
“I had to come, Vico.”
“I didn’t call asking you to come.”
“I had to come, damn it, now enough of that—how’s our patient?”
“Sleeping, mostly.”
“And her fever?”
“It is about the same.”
“And Sylvia?”
“Finally she went to sleep. She was up almost all night.”
“And you’re up all night too? No sleep at all?”
“It’s just sleep,” Vico said. “Sleep doesn’t matter.”
“Now you wait here, Vico. I better go check up on our girl.”
Twenty-plus years of visiting the ailing in sickrooms had taught Dennis a solid unflappability. He could usually meet the worst with a professional steadiness. But in Bea’s flickery bedroom, illuminated only by a candle on the desk, the pale stripped-away face in the bottom bunk—peaked as a death’s head—wrung a loud shivery groan from his chest. On wobbly legs Dennis stumbled to her bedside and lowered his face toward the girl’s beloved face. Her eyes were closed.
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