The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  “Try rocking out,” the officer said. “Pull up, then shift, quick, into reverse.”

  The soldier was silent, looking at the emptiness in front of him. With the bent young pines cut away, the bumper seemed to hang above the valley. He moved at last, a few inches forward, but slowly, while the woman pushed rocks behind the rear wheels, jumping from first one to the other as she tried to force the rocks into the earth with her heavy shoes. The car stopped. The driver shifted again into reverse. The woman stood waiting between the side of the car and the bluff, her long arms a little lifted, the big jointed fingers of her great hands wide spread, her eyes on the back fender, her shoulders hunched like those of an animal gathering itself for a spring.

  The motor roared again, the back wheels bit an inch or so into the rocks and mud, then spun. The woman plunged, flinging her two hard palms against the fender. Her body arched with the push like a too tightly strung bow; her eyes bulged; the muscles of her neck and face writhed under the thin brown skin; her big shoes dug holes in the mud in their efforts to keep still against the power of the pushing hands. The car hung, trembling, shivering, and one of the woman’s feet began to slide toward the bluff edge.

  Then her body seemed slowly to lengthen, for the car had moved. The woman’s hands stayed with the fender until it pulled away from them. She fell sideways by the bluff edge so that the front wheel scraped her hip and the bumper touched strands of the dark hair tumbled from the thick knob worn high on her head. She stayed a moment in the mud, her knees doubled under her, her hands dropped flat on the earth, her drooping head between her arms, her whole body heaving with great gasping breaths.

  She lifted her head, shook it as if to clear some dimness from her eyes, smoothed back her hair, then got slowly to her feet. Still gasping and staggering a little, she hurried to the car, stopped again but ready to start with its wheels on the hard-packed gravel by the road.

  She jerked the door open and started in, but with the awkwardness of one unused to cars she bumped her head against the doorframe. She was just getting her wide shoulders through, her eyes on the child’s face, when the officer, much smaller and more accustomed to cars than she, opened the door on his side, stepped partway in, and tried to pick up the child. It seemed heavier than he had thought, and instead of lifting it he jerked it quickly, a hand on either shoulder, across the seat and through the door, keeping it always at arm’s length as if it had been some vile and dirty animal.

  The woman snatched at the child but caught only the blanket. She tried to jump into the car, but her long loose coattail got under her feet and she squatted an instant, unable to rise, trapped by the coattail. Her long, mud-streaked hair had fallen over her face, and through it her eyes were big, unbelieving, as the man said, straightening from pulling the child into the road a few feet from the car, “You’ve helped undo a little of the damage you’ve done, but”—he drew a sharp quick breath—“I’ve no time for giving rides. I’m a part of the army, traveling on important business. If you must go with me, you’ll leave your child in the road. He isn’t so sick,” he went on, putting his foot through the door, even though the woman, still crouching, struggled through the other door. “He seemed quite active, kicking around,” and then to the driver, quietly now, with no trace of shrillness, “Go on.”

  The woman gave the driver a swift measuring glance, saw his stiff shoulders, his face turned straight ahead as if he were a part of the car to be stopped or started at the will of the other. The car moved slowly; the officer was in now, one hand on the back of the front seat, the other closing the door. She gave an awkward squatting lunge across the car, her hands flung palm outward as when she had flung herself against the fender. One hand caught the small man’s wrist above his pistol, the other caught his shoulder, high up, close to the neck, pushing, grasping more than striking, for she was still entangled in her coat.

  He half sat, half fell in the road, one foot across the child. She did not look at him, but reached from the doorway of the car for the child, and her voice came, a low breathless crying: “Cain’t you see my youngen’s choken tu death? I’ve got to git him to a doctor.”

  One of the child’s hands moved aimlessly, weakly knocking the blanket from its face. She gave a gasping cry, her voice shrilling, breaking, as if all the tightness and calmness that had carried her through the ride on the mule and the stopping and the starting of the car were worn away.

  “Amos, Amos. It’s Mommie. Amos, honey, Amos?” She was whispering now, a questioning whisper, while the child’s head dangled over her arm. His unseeing eyes were rolled far back; the whites bulged out of his dark, purplish face, while mucus and saliva dribbled from his blue-lipped swollen mouth. She ran her finger down his throat, bringing up yellow-tinged mucus and ill-smelling vomit. He gave a short whispering breath that seemed to go no deeper than his choked-up throat. She blew in his mouth, shook him, turned him over, repeating the questioning whisper, “Amos, oh Amos?”

  The driver, who had leaped from his seat when she pushed the other through the car, was still, staring at the child, his hands under the older man’s elbows, though the latter was already up and straightening his cap. For the first time he really looked at the child. “Shake him by the heels—slap him on the back,” the young soldier said.

  “Yes, take him by the heels,” the other repeated. “Whatever is choking him might come loose.” And now he seemed more man than soldier, at once troubled and repelled by the sick child.

  The woman was looking about her, shaking the child cradled in her arms with quick jerky motions. “It’s a disease,” she said. “They’s no shaken it out.” She saw what she had apparently been hunting. A few feet up the road was a smooth wide shelf of sandstone, like a little porch hung above the valley. She ran there, laid the child on the stone, begging of the men, “Help me; help me,” meanwhile unbuttoning the little boy’s blue cotton jumper and under it his shirt, straightening him on the stone as one would straighten the dead. “Bring me a rock,” she said over her shoulder, “flat like fer a piller.”

  The young soldier gaped at her, looked around him, and at last picked up a squarish piece of sandrock. She slipped it high up under the child’s shoulders so that the swollen neck arched upward, stretched with the weight of the head, which had fallen backward.

  “Help me,” she repeated to the young soldier. “You’ll have to hold his head, tight.” She looked up at the other, who had stopped a few feet away, and now stared at her, wondering, but no longer afraid. “You hold his hands and keep his feet down.” She looked down at the blue swollen face, smoothed back the dark brown hair from a forehead high and full like her own. “He cain’t fight it much—I think—I guess he’s past feelen anything,” and there was a hopelessness in her voice that made the officer give her a sharp appraising glance as if he were thinking she could be crazy.

  “Wouldn’t it be better,” he said, “to go quickly to the nearest doctor? He’s not—he still has a pulse, hasn’t he?”

  She considered, nodding her head a little like one who understood such things. “I kept a tryen to feel it back there—I couldn’t on th mule—but his heart right now—it’s not good.” She looked at him, and said in a low voice: “I’ve seen youngens die. He ain’t hardly breathen,” then looked down again at the child. “Hold his hands an keep his feet down; they’s no use a talken a gitten to th doctor; th war got th closest; th next is better’n fifteen miles down th road—an mebbe out a his office.”

  “Oh,” the officer said, and hesitantly drew closer and stooped above the child, but made no move to touch him.

  “Hold him,” the woman repeated, “his hands,” her voice low again and tight, but with a shiver through it as if she were very cold. Her face looked cold, bluish like the child’s, with all the color drained away, leaving the tanned, weather-beaten skin of her high cheekbones and jutting nose and chin like a brown freckled mask painted on a cold and frightened face with wide, frightened eyes. She looked again at the child, st
ruggling feebly now with a sharp hoarse breath, all her eyes and her thoughts for him so that she seemed alone by the sloping sandrock with the mists below her in the valley and the little fog-darkened pines a wall between her and the road. She touched his forehead, whispering, “Amos, I cain’t let th war git you too.” Then her eyes were on his neck bowed up above the rock pillow, and they stayed there as she repeated, “Hold him tight now.”

  The older man, with the air of one humoring a forlorn and helpless creature, took the child’s hands in one of his and put the other about its ankles. The young soldier, gripping the child’s head, drew a sharp, surprised breath, but the other, staring down at patched overall knees, saw nothing until when he looked up there was the long bright knife drawing swiftly away from the swollen neck, leaving behind it a thin line that for an instant seemed no cut at all, hardly a mark, until the blood seeped out, thickening the line, distorting it.

  The woman did not look away from the reddening line, but was still like a stone woman, not breathing, her face frozen, the lips bloodless, gripped together, the large drops of sweat on her forehead unmoving, hanging as she squatted head bent above the child. The officer cried: “You can’t do that! You’re—you’re killing. You can’t do that!”

  He might have been wind stirring fog in the valley for all she heard. The fingers of her left hand moved quickly over the cut skin, feeling, pulling the skin apart, holding it, thumb on one side, finger on the other, shaping a red bowed mouth grinning up from the child’s neck. “Please,” the man was begging, his voice choked as if from nausea.

  The knife moved again, and in the silence there came a little hissing. A red filmed bubble streaked with pus grew on the red dripping wound, rose higher, burst; the child struggled, gave a hoarse, inhuman whistling cry. The woman wiped the knife blade on her shoe top with one hand while with the other she lifted the child’s neck higher, and then swiftly, using only the one hand, closed the knife, dropped it into her pocket, and drew out a clean folded handkerchief.

  She gently but quickly wiped the blood and pus from the gaping hole, whispering to the child as it struggled, giving its little hoarse, inhuman cries. “Save yer breath, honey; thet little ole cut ain’t nothen fer a big boy like you nigh four years old.” She spoke in a low jerky voice like one who has run a long way or lifted a heavy weight and has no breath to speak. She laid down the handkerchief, hunted with her free hand an instant in her back hair, brought out a hairpin, wiped it on the handkerchief, inserted the bent end in the cut, and then slowly, watching the hole carefully, drew her hand from under the child’s neck, all the while holding the hole open with the hairpin.

  The young soldier, who had never loosened his grip on the child’s head, drew a long shivering breath and looked with admiration at the woman, searching for her eyes; but finding them still on the child, he looked toward the officer, and at once gave an angry, whispering, “Jee-sus.”

  The woman looked around and saw the officer who had collapsed all in a heap, his head on Amos’s feet, one hand still clutching the child’s hands. “He’s chicken-hearted,” she said, turning back to the child, saying over her shoulder, “You’d better stretch him out. Loosen his collar—he’s too tight in his clothes enyhow. Go on, I can manage.”

  The young soldier got up, smiling a secret, pleased sort of smile, and the woman, glancing quickly away from the child, gave him an uneasy glance. “Don’t you be a letten him roll off the bluff edge.”

  “No?” the other said, smiling down at Amos, breathing hoarsely and quickly, but breathing, his face less darkly blue. The soldier looked past the officer crumpled on the stone down to the wide valley, then up and across to the rows of hills breaking at times through shreds and banks of the low-hanging fog, at other places hidden so that the low hills, seen through the fog, seemed vast and mysterious, like mountains rising into the clouds. He waved his hand toward the hills. “I’ll bet hunting there is good.”

  The woman nodded without looking up. “Mighty good—now. They ain’t hardly left us a man able to carry a gun er listen to a hound dog.”

  “Where is—” the soldier began, then stopped, for the officer’s head was slowly lifting, and at once it was as if the other had never looked at the hills or spoken to her. He straightened his shoulders, pulled down his coat, watched an instant longer. As the head continued to lift, he stepped closer, and after a moment’s hesitation, and with a swift glance at Gertie, put his hands under the other’s arms, standing in front of him so that the officer was between him and the bluff.

  The woman gave the two a quick, worried glance. “It’s high there; watch out.”

  “I’m quite all right,” the officer said, shaking the other’s hands away. He lifted a greenish, watery-eyed face that seemed no soldier’s face at all, only an old man’s face. “How’s the little one?” he asked, getting slowly to his feet.

  “Breathen,” the woman said.

  “You’ve done a thing many doctors would be afraid to do without an operating room or anything,” he said, all his need for haste somehow dropped away. The other had handed him his cap, but he stood holding it, looking at the woman as if there were something he would like to say but could not.

  The woman dabbed at the blood and mucus and pus bubbling through the hole. “If that stuff runs down his windpipe an into his lungs, it’ll be bad,” she said, as if talking to herself more than to the men. “You can give a sheep pneumonie if when you’re a drenchen it water gits down into its lungs.”

  She looked about her: at the little pine trees, at the tops of the black gum and poplar rising by the bluff, then away across the road as if searching for something. “Once I saved a cow that was choked—an in her windpipe I put a piece a cane.”

  “What is it?” he asked, careful not to look at the child. “It doesn’t seem like plain choking.”

  “It’s—” She rubbed her bent arm up her forehead, back across her stringing hair. “I disremember what they call it now; used to be they said membranous croup. I thought it was jist plain croup, bad hard croup like he’s had afore, till Aunt Sue Annie come. She told me word come in th mail last night Mealie Sexton’s baby was dead. We thought it had th croup when she come a visiten my mother when she come in frum Cincinnati—her baby an him, they was together.” She looked toward the young soldier, who stood in respectful silence a few feet behind the other. “Could you hold this open and watch him; I’ll have to git somethin to put in it. It’ll take jist a minnit. They’s a little poplar right acrost th road.”

  He glanced as if for permission at the officer, but the other had turned away, looking greenish and sick again; and after a moment’s hesitation the young one came with a fresh clean handkerchief of his own and took the hairpin and the woman’s place by the child. She hurried across the road to a little poplar, and with one swift stroke cut a bough about the thickness of her middle finger, cut again; the bough with its yellow leaves unflecked with red or brown dropped away. Then, working as she walked back across the road, she stripped the gray bark from the short length of limb, glancing between each knife stroke at the child. She had crossed the road, when she stopped, knife lifted, to look at a red card lettered in black, tacked to a fair-sized pine tree. Most of the print was small, but large enough for men in passing cars to read were the words: MEN, WOMEN, WILLOW RUN, UNCLE SAM, LIVING QUARTERS. Her knife lifted, came down in one long thrust against the card. It fell and she walked on, the knife working now with swift, twisting cuts, forming a hole in one end of the wood.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” the older man said, nodding toward the card at the foot of the pine. “They need workers badly—as much as soldiers almost.”

  She nodded, glancing again toward the child. “But in our settlement they ain’t nobody else they can git,” she said.

  “Is your husband in the armed forces?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “His examinen date is still about three weeks off.”

  “Does he work in a factory?”

/>   “He hauls coal in his own truck—when he can git gas—an th miners can git dynamite an caps an stuff to work in th coal.”

  “The big mines are more efficient,” he said. “They need materials worse.”

  “Th only miners they left us is two cripples an one real old.”

  “But a good miner back here in these little mines—I’ve seen them by the road—would be a waste of man power, working without machinery,” he said.

  She studied the cut in the child’s neck, listened, frowning, to his short whistling breaths. She nodded to the man’s words at last, but grudgingly, as if she had heard the words many times but could not or would not understand, and her face was expressionless, watching now the knife in the soft wood, now glancing at the child.

  “It’s like the farmers,” the officer went on, his voice slightly apologetic as he glanced toward the child, struggling again so that the soldier must lay down the handkerchief and hold his hands while the strain of holding the hairpin steady in the windpipe was bringing sweat to his forehead. “They can’t exempt every little one-horse farmer who has little to sell. A man has to produce a lot of what the country needs.”

  She did not nod, but her lips tightened so that, as when she had cut the child’s neck, her mouth was a pale straight slit below the long straight upper lip and the jutting nose. “They warn’t a farmer in all our settlement big enough,” she said, and her voice was low and sullen.