Bess stayed there on the farm for seven years then, and helped—putting up food, companion to her mother. Maybe she felt chastised, but the family would not have said a word to her. She was like a mother to me.
The brothers all had parcels of the land but were twenty, fifty miles distant. They farmed or mined and drifted by the homeplace every few weeks, on horseback, alone; women and children didn’t travel in the winter. My father, Warwick, was the only brother worked in towns a while and wore a suit. Later he went back to the mines, but then he was a wholesaler for a dry goods company. Just a few weeks after he brought Bess home from St. Louis, Warwick brought this bride of his to the farm and moved her in. Then he left, as Bess tells it, and was only back twice the months the girl was there. She was a girl he’d met in his work, a working girl. She never gave any facts about herself, Bess says, and went away after I was born. Went away as soon as she could travel, and sent no word to anyone again. Warwick paid for a wet nurse half the winter, but there is more to a baby than feeding it I never saw my father, not really. You did see him, you don’t remember, He had the new wife, but by then you were accustomed to us. Then he died when you were still in skirts.…
They gave the impression it was his new wife didn’t want me, but I knew it was him. I don’t remember what he looked like, except from pictures. I just remember him yelling at me once or twice. He never did a damn thing for me, never noticed me. One summer—I was real young, at the farm—I had a baby coon. My father had his rifle and was standing over me. It was out at the edge of the fields, away from the house, where the grass was tall. He said go into the field and let that coon go, you can’t keep a wild creature. I held the coon and walked in. The grass was over my head, deep and high. He started shooting. The gun made two sounds, a big crack from behind, like thunder, and a high zing close by, like a stinging fly close your face. The grass was moving and he was shooting where the grass moved. I stayed still for a long time. I don’t know what I thought. Years later I asked Bess about it and she said wasn’t Warwick did that at all, was a neighbor man, because it was a danger to have coons when there was rabies in the county.
I don’t know. He was well liked. There is an old homemade album Bess must have pasted together. The pictures are taken outside the old house, and everyone is dressed in their best. My father is wearing a woman’s big hat and posing like Napoleon.
They had his funeral there at the house. The brothers made the casket out of pine board, and the lid was kept shut. That was the practice in that country; if a man died in the mines, his coffin was closed for services, nailed shut, even if the man was unmarked. They would have put Warwick’s coffin on the long table in the parlor, the best room. The window shades in that room were sewn with gold tassels. Silk tassels, and children weren’t to touch them. The parlor was seldom used, but it was dusted everyday, spotless, and the floor was polished once a week with linseed rags fastened onto a broom.
It was soon after Warwick’s funeral Bess left the farm.
She came to Bellington because it was the closest good-size town, and started working as secretary to Dr. Bond. Bess would have been in her late twenties, an old maid. She met Clayton because he was Doc Bond’s younger brother.
Doc Bond and Doc Jonas were the only two doctors here besides the veterinarian. Clayton was in the construction business, always was, so the three men started the hospital. Bought two houses; Bess and Clayton lived in the smaller and built onto the bigger one. Knocked down walls inside, built wards. The modern addition that stretches out from the back now wasn’t there then; the place was much smaller. Didn’t need to be so big; most people birthed and died at home. And Bess has lived here, in this house across the alley, for sixty years. She sold the hospital twenty years ago, but they still get mail addressed to her. She learned a lot about nursing by working for Doc Bond, keeping the office, helping with examinations. Doc Bond died a few years after the hospital got going, and Clayton was building roads, so Bess ended up doing most of it herself—ran the hospital, the kitchen, hired nurses, did the books. Katie Sue and Chuck grew up running back and forth between the house and the hospital.
There was so much talk about Doc Jonas in the later years that Bess didn’t like to let him use the hospital, but for a long time hers was the only one in town and she couldn’t turn his patients away.
Some swore by Jonas, others said he was a scoundrel. I grew up with his son, Reb, who we always called Doc after his father. Doctors’ sons then became doctors as well, inherited their fathers’ patients same as another boy would inherit a farm or a storefront. Reb never cared much for doctoring, but he liked being called Doc and he liked not having to go to war when the time came. He and I had some scrapes, all through high school while I was living with Bess and Clayton.
But that was later. Right after Warwick died, I was sent to live with Ava, my aunt ten years older than Bess, and her husband, the train man.
I lived with Ava and Eban eight years but was gone every summer, to the farm, to one cousin or another. Eban was a railroad porter, then a conductor. We lived at Raynell, down near the Kentucky border. That town has nearly disappeared now, but when the trains still moved goods and passengers, Raynell was a big junction for Southern Rail. There was a pride about the railroad then—a railroad uniform in the ’20s had almost as much respect as military dress. Eban wore blue trousers, suitcoat and vest, and a visored hat trimmed in braid. He wore white shirts with cuffs that Ava was always ironing. She would stand at the ironing board, a broad wooden one, while the iron heated on the stove.
If Bess was the youngest and prettiest of those Hampsons, Ava was the most stubborn. She was spirited and tall, a handsome woman even if her face was plain. Knew her mind and fought plenty with Eban. They had two little girls, just babies when I went there. Ava kept me out of school all she could, to watch them and help her do the garden. Train ran right back of the house, right the length of the town. Houses shook when the train passed. Kids always played on the tracks, tag and roughhousing. Ava had a fear about her kids getting too close to the trains. The younger girl was slow, never said a word till she was three or four, and collected things the way blackbirds will, shiny things. That was my cousin Emily. She would always be going down to the tracks to pick up pebbles or bits of glass. She never really learned to talk but would sit and stare at anything bright, a gas light or a coal fire. That child died young. Just took sick and died suddenly. They stood her coffin up against the wall; the box wasn’t very big, about as high as a man’s waist, and it was narrow at the foot the way homemade coffins were. The church at Raynell gave a velvet altar cloth, deep red, to put inside.
Ava arranged the flowers all around. Seems to me she asked the children who lived near to come to the service and sing a hymn. Yes, she did, and the shortest ones were in the front, closer to the coffin; I was nearly ten years old by then and stood in back.
Ava was distracted for weeks. A neighbor woman came in to look after the other daughter and me.
Near that time the B&O Railroad discovered they had employed a leper and, for want of any other plan, deposited the man on forest land by the tracks near Raynell. Townspeople were alarmed. It was said this man was a Chinese known as Li Sung, banished by his own government because of his disease. He had a brother in Washington, D. C., who was a tailor, and he traveled to that city to work in his brother’s shop. He wore gloves to cover the lesions on his hands, but somehow his brother discovered the secret. Or maybe Li Sung confessed. Anyway, he was turned out and wandered for a time, then finally got a job maintaining track for the B&O. The railroad often hired laborers who didn’t speak English, and paid them very low. Li Sung never removed his gloves and co-workers became suspicious, so the rail superintendent sent him to a doctor well-known in that area. The leprosy was confirmed. B&O had no policy for such a case, so they isolated Li Sung in a boxcar at the rear of the train and transported him all over the state, asking privately after hospitals. No hospital would accept him, and passenge
rs began avoiding the railroad. B&O lost workers on all lines, since no one knew which train pulled the car where the leper was kept. Finally it was decided to put Li Sung in some isolated place with supplies and make him stay there. The railroad sent the B&O surgeon and a caretaker out to prepare a site near Raynell. They found a grassy knoll near the river and put up a World War I army tent with a stout pole in the middle, then camped to await the leper’s arrival. The B&O brought him in by night. Employees stood aside as Li Sung was ordered to the tent, then they burned the boxcar and left on the train.
The surgeon stayed behind in the town to arrange for Li Sung’s meals, and offered a small subsidy to any widow willing to prepare his food. The food was to be delivered once a day in disposable wooden trays provided by the County, and Li Sung himself was to burn the trays at his campfire.
Ava had done nothing for weeks but mend and starch all the dead child’s clothes, smoothing each piece and packing them away in clean boxes. She’d ironed even the handkerchiefs and undergarments, but it was all done and now she volunteered to cook for the leper. Eban tried to talk her out of it, but for the first time she seemed more herself, so he signed a paper saying he allowed the endangerment of his wife and family and would not hold the railroad accountable.
In just a day, the County delivered six months’ supply of wooden trays and stacked them like firewood on the south wall of the porch.
The appearance of the trays got the town talking. There were fears Li Sung would bathe in the river and contaminate the water. The railroad surgeon walked with Ava and me to show us the route to the tent, ten minutes’ walk along Ransom’s Ridge. We put the tray (bread and cow cheese and cold grits, as it was a warm day) on a stump fifteen feet from the site. And the surgeon yelled for Li Sung to come out.
He did, and stood by the tent pole, barefoot, dressed in a white button-collar shirt, suspenders, and the wool trousers of a winter rail uniform. The trousers were too large for him and he wore bulky work gloves, tied to his wrists with twine. He was slight and looked younger than Ava, who must have been in her late thirties then. Not many people in those parts had seen an Oriental. His black hair was long like a woman’s and hung in one thin braid down his back. His eyes were slanted, almost like slits, and hid any expression. He stood politely and waited for us to talk. The surgeon yelled—as though the leper was deaf—not to go into the river or touch the water, to fill his bucket by holding to the handle and dipping the bucket in, and to burn all his trays and the paper used to wrap his food. He was told to eat with his fingers, as no one could solve the problem of utensils. To each instruction, the leper called back, “Yes, yes,” in an accent. Anytime I heard him talk, he had a tone of question in his voice. He understood some English. The surgeon said, “Do you see the bucket?” and the leper pointed to it.
The first month, Ava put up his food every morning and carried it out herself. She would be gone about an hour and watched to see that the leper ate. She spoke to him a bit and he talked back, though sometimes only repeating what she’d said to him. He was cheerful and often waiting outside the tent when she arrived. She took him a tin coffeepot, a supply of tea and coffee, a mirror, scissors, needle and thread, and a comb. She gave him some of Eban’s old clothes, but Li Sung never wore them; he wore only his railroad uniforms, which he laundered himself with soap provided by the railroad. After Li Sung’s death, it was discovered he’d saved Eban’s shirts and trousers and sewn them layered onto his blankets during the cold. But that was later.
Early on, Ava tried to give him a dog for companionship, but he chased the animal back to her as though afraid he would infect it.
He was grateful for the smallest kindness; the railroad men must have been very brusque to him. I took no liberties and addressed him as “Sir” or “Mister.” I would put the tray down and back up to the edge of the woods; he would nod and bow, pick up the food, and then sit cross-legged by the tent, eating. He seemed to feel he showed thanks by eating in silence with great concentration. I went closer again. Later we spoke briefly or sat without speaking. He knew some words but understood the ideas behind many more.
I hadn’t been outside my house in weeks. Early mornings in the woods were so quiet and green, all the wildflowers blooming and the sounds of the river so cool The clearing was like a churchy the sky arched over and deeply blue. I think I talked aloud because I knew he didn’t understand all I said. I told him my little girl had died and showed him in motions. She was … this tall, etc. He knew someone had died and folded his hands, then pointed to his eyes and touched his cheeks. When I describe these simple gestures, I don’t mean to give the impression he was not smart. I believe he was quite intelligent, and wishing to comfort me. He gave me to understand that he also had children, two, in his homeland. He would not see them again. I explained he might send letters, messages, but he said, “No, no,” holding his finger to his lips.
I wanted him to see Emily so badly that I took him a photograph of her, knowing once he touched it I could not take it back. I put the picture on his tray. He understood at once and looked at the image carefully; then he bowed his head to me in gratitude and put the picture in his breast pocket. He placed his hand there and said, “Yes, safe. Safe.” “Yes,” I said to him, and knew she was, when before I’d felt only the injustice.
Safe. He knew that word because the railroad men had said it loudly, many times, about the woods and the tent, and where they were taking him.
By July Ava was much improved and began keeping house again. I was sent with the trays; Ava went with me on Sundays. She told me always to call out to the leper and make a remark or two that required answer. This was important, she said. The man could go crazy if he never spoke with anyone.
Some boys from the town tormented Li Sung that summer, but he didn’t know they were making fun. A few threw apples at him and he picked them up, nodding his head like the fruit was a present. If anyone came too close, he stood in the door of his tent, holding his arms over his head and calling out in his accent, “Unclean, unclean!”
Winters were hard in that country. A lumber company donated wood, and some rail workers arrived in September to build a shack. Li Sung sat at a distance and watched the work. The old tent was burned where it stood after the leper transferred his belongings, and a low fence was strung around the shack. The people of Raynell donated a wood stove, feather tick, and ax, and allowed the leper to gather and chop his own wood from near the shack in early morning.
Snow was deep for five months. I walked out once or twice a week, pulling a sled of provisions. Ava sent a cache of preserved foods, canned vegetables, jams, and meat jerky. The leper constructed a rabbit trap and used it with some success.
He got through the cold weather but wouldn’t talk anymore in the spring. I came with the trays every day again; he would only look out and pull away. Ava was concerned and walked out with me. She had dressed as though on a social call and stood talking in front of the shack. Mr. Li Sung? I know you are listening. Won’t you come out? He never answered, so we hid in the woods to watch for him. He looked just the same, though shabbier, peering from the door. Then he walked out and stood beside the tray. He stood for a full five minutes, looking down the ridge like he was trying to see trace of us in the distance.
Ava insisted I keep talking to him even if he didn’t talk back. I felt damn stupid standing in front of that shack every day and yelling. I had nothing to say and was in a hurry to get to school, so I would call out whatever was on the tray, tell him the weather according to the almanac, and say the date. Since I never saw him, I started being afraid of seeing him.
In May he didn’t pick up the tray at all, and Ava sent word to the railroad doctor. He found Li Sung dead in his cot. Heart attack, the doctor said, but I doubt he examined the body very close. Some men from Raynell, Eban among them, went out to put an end to the whole thing. They wore kerchieves over their faces, dug a grave, filled a casket with quicklime, and raked the leper into it. They covered t
he casket with lime and dirt. The shack was doused with kerosene and burned, and the ashes covered with lime. The men camped out there the whole day to be sure no one stumbled onto the contaminated ground unawares. It was the first time Eban had seen the leper or the leper’s house. He wouldn’t say anything when he came back home, though some of the other men talked around the town. They said it gave Eban a start to see his long-worn clothes sewn on those blankets, the sleeves of the shirts and the trouser legs spread out like one body on top of another and another.
Bess and Clayton let me come to Bellington when I was thirteen so I could go to high school there in the town. Bess seemed a lot older when I saw her again, and I called her Aunt. Clayton probably didn’t want me at first, but I became an older brother to their kids. Katie Sue was a pretty little girl and Chuck was moody like Clayton, thin as a rail—they were just tykes. The town looked like a big city to me. It was prosperous in 1924: several lumber mills were going, and the Methodists had started a college. Most people had automobiles, and the streets were paved with bricks.
That first day, Clayton took me for a ride in his Studebaker, up Quality Hill past the Jonas house, and he stopped to talk to the Doc. That old house is a wreck now, broken up into cheap apartments, but it was pretty then—a big white elephant on the hill back from the street. All those round cupolas in white shingle and a circular drive planted with boxwood. The drive went right up past the front porch under a latticed arch. There was Doc Jonas in his white rocker, and there was Reb, with green eyes like a snake’s. Fourteen, and drove his father’s car like a bat from hell. Brand-new Pierce Arrow coupe. You could see yourself in the running board. Reb tended that car like it was living, and thought of it every minute. His father said he was love-struck.
In those days most people didn’t bother to get a license, just bought a car and drove. Cars were like toys; nobody thought they were dangerous except people who couldn’t afford them. There had been a few wrecks in the town, but no one ever killed or hurt bad. Streets were wide. Seldom more than a few cars on any one at a time, and nobody went very fast by today’s standards. Reb and me would tow the mark in town anyway, because everyone was looking.
Machine Dreams Page 4