The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  “Have you any relatives in the armed forces?” he asked, his voice somehow critical.

  “Jist cousins an in-laws an sich—now.”

  “Now?”

  “Since yesterday mornen—I had a brother till then.”

  “Oh.” His voice had changed, filled with a kind of proper sadness. “Let us hope he is only missing and that—”

  “Jesse—that’s my man’s brother—he’s th one that’s missen. Fer my brother th telegram said, ‘Kilt in action.’” The knife was still, and she sat a moment staring out across the hills, repeating slowly, tonelessly, “Kilt in action.” Then, still in the toneless talking-to-herself voice: “These same leaves was green when they took him—an he’d planted his corn. Some of it he saw come up.”

  “He was a farmer?” the man asked.

  The knife moved in the wood again as she said, “One a them little ones.” The knife fought the wood with sharp swift jabs, forming a hole the length of the short piece of poplar. The man, watching stiffly, uncomfortably, trying not to look at the child or the woman’s face, said, “You are very skillful with a knife.”

  “I’ve allus whittled.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, handles.”

  “Handles?”

  She looked down at the hand that held the poplar wood, the back brown and wrinkled, fingernails black and ragged, then at the palm, smooth with the look of yellowed leather. It was as if the hand were a page engraved with names while, she looking now at the poplar wood, repeated: “Hoe handles, saw handles, ax handles, corn-knife handles, broom handles, plow handles, grubben-hoe handles, churn-dasher handles, hammer handles, all kinds a handles—it takes a heap a handles. Sometimes I make em fer th neighbors.”

  He was silent, his glance fixed on her hands. “Handles,” he said at last. “There wouldn’t be much fun in handles.”

  Her face for an instant softened, and as she looked up something that might have been hatred was gone from her eyes. “I’ve never had much time fer whittlen foolishness. Oh, a few dolls. Cassie—that’s my least girl—she’s crazy over th dolls I whittle, but when I git all settled I’m aimen to work up a piece a wild cherry wood I’ve got. It’s big enough fer th head an shoulders uv a fair-sized man if”—her voice was low again, wandering as if she talked to herself—“if I can ever hit on th right face.” She glanced at the soldier struggling to keep the child’s hands from clawing at his neck. “Hold out a little minute longer. I’ve about got this hole through.”

  The older man stood so that if he looked straight in front of him he could see the woman but not the child. “What kind of face?” he asked.

  She shook the shavings out of the rapidly deepening hole, began on the other end. “I don’t know. I’ve thought on Christ—but somehow his face ain’t never clear er somethen. Maybe some other—old Amos, I liked, or Ecclesiastes or Judas.”

  “Judas?” And he gave her a sharp, suspicious-seeming glance.

  She looked again at the child, then nodded, her eyes on the knife blade as she talked. “Not Judas with his mouth all drooly, his hand held out fer th silver, but Judas given th thirty pieces away. I figger,” she went on after blowing the shavings out of the hole, “they’s many a one does meanness fer money—like Judas.” Her eyes were on the poplar as she spoke, “But they’s not many like him gives th money away an feels sorry onct they’ve got it.”

  She looked toward the child and met the eyes of the young soldier—there was a head nod in his eyes—but he was silent, for the other was saying, “You seem to be quite a student of the Bible.”

  She shook her head. “Th Bible’s about th only thing I’ve ever read—when I was a growen up my mother was sick a heap an my father hurt his leg in th log woods. I had to help him, an never got much schoolen but what he give me.”

  “And he had you study the Bible.”

  “He had me git things by heart th way they used to do in th old days—poetry an th Constitution an a heap a th Bible.” She rose, and still whittling walked toward the child. She stood above him, working swiftly until the hole in the tiny wooden pipe was to her liking, and then with the same gentle skill with which she had whittled she put the tube into the child’s neck. She then wrapped him swiftly in the blanket, and with no glance at either man walked quickly to the car.

  The officer pushed himself into a corner as far from the woman and child as possible. He sat stiffly, trying not to show his distaste for the big woman cluttering his speckless car, just as he tried not to look at the child or show that the inhuman gurgling cries it gave or the whispering bubbles of its breath nauseated him like the sight of the wooden tube beaded at times with pus and bloody mucus.

  The woman sensed this and sat, trying to make herself as small as possible, her muddy feet unmoving by the door, her great shoulders hunched over the child, and slightly sideways. The driver stared straight ahead at the road. The woman mostly watched the wooden pipe. The officer looked first at one side of the road, then the other, unable to keep his glance from the child.

  The road left the high pine ridges and followed the twisting course of a creek down into the valley of the Cumberland. Above them on the shoulder of the ridge lay a steep little clearing; stumpy first-year new ground it looked to be, not half tended. Even in the rainy twilight Gertie could see the leafless sprouts encircling the white oak stumps and the smallness of the fodder shocks—a woman’s fodder shocks. Held up against the hillside on long front legs like stilts was a little plank house with a tar-paper roof. Chickens were going to roost in a crooked dogwood tree near the door, and a white-headed child came around the house, stumbling under the sticks of stove wood hugged in its arms, while on the high porch steps two other children, one too small to walk, played with a spotted hound.

  Though it lay on the woman’s side of the road, both glanced at it—the first house after miles of Cumberland National Forest. Then both saw the service flag with one star—blue—in the one front window by the door.

  “What crops do they raise in this country?” the officer asked, as if he didn’t much care but wanted to make some sound above the child’s breathing.

  “A little uv everthing.”

  “But what is their main crop?” he insisted.

  “Youngens,” she said, holding the child’s hands that were continually wandering toward the hole in his neck. “Youngens fer th wars an them factories.”

  He turned his head sharply away, as if he wished to hear no more, but almost at once his unwilling glance was flicking the child’s face where the blueness was thinning, and the eyes, less bulging now, showed their dark coloring through the half open lids. “Your child needs a hospital,” he said, looking past her through the window. “You’d better go with us until we reach one.”

  “Th closest that ud take him with a disease like this is mebbe Lexington—an that’s nigh a hunnert miles away.” She wiped a trickle of yellowish saliva from one corner of his mouth. “He needs some drugs, like they give fer this, right now—he oughtn’t to wait.”

  “He needs oxygen,” the man said. They were silent again, and once more the sounds of the child’s battle for breath filled the quiet car. “Do you farm?” the officer asked in the same aimless, desperate, sound-making voice.

  “A little.”

  “I guess every family back in these hills has a little patch of land and keeps a cow or so and a few sheep.”

  The woman turned and looked at him, her quiet gray eyes questioning. She gave a slow headshake. “Not everybody has got a little piece a land.”

  “I suppose you have.”

  She shook her head again with a slowness that might have been weariness. “We’re renten,” she said, “on Old John Ballew’s place; he gits half—we git half.” She hesitated, then added slowly, in a low voice, as if not quite certain of her words. “Now, that is; but—we’re aimen—we’re buyen us a place—all our own.”

  “How nice,” he said, still making sound, giving a quick glance at the child. “A place fo
r you and your children to live while your husband is in service.”

  “Yes,” she said. A warm look came into her troubled eyes as when she had spoken of the block of wood. “Silas Tipton’s went off to Muncie to work in a factory. He wanted his wife an youngens with him, so he sold his place. It’s a good place—old, a long house—big an built good like they built in th old days. He sold it to Old John Ballew fer to git money to move on. Old John don’t want th place. His boys is all gone.”

  He nodded. “So you’ll buy it; farm it while your husband’s gone.”

  “Yes,” she said, speaking with more certainty than before, as if her words had made the land her own. “My biggest boy, Reuben, he’s twelve,” and her eyes were warm again. “He likes farm work an he’s a good hand.”

  “You like to farm,” he said, not asking, glancing at her wide shoulders and muscle-corded wrists showing beneath the too short coat sleeves.

  She nodded. “I’ve allus farmed. My father had a big farm—I hepped him when I was growen up. My brother is—” She stopped, went on again, but the words were a thick mumble. “Way younger than me.”

  After a little space of level road, they were going down again, and the rainy autumn dark came swiftly down like a settling bird. There were sharp steep curves where the dripping limestone cliffs above gave back the sound of the car’s horn, and below them lay a narrow black plain pricked with lights. A train blew high above them somewhere in the limestone walls. The child started at the strange sound, and the woman whispered, “Nothen’s goen tu hurt you, honey.”

  On the low road in the village by the Cumberland, the lighted windows of homes were squares of brightness behind the shadows of the leafless, dripping trees. Then came sidewalks with store windows bright above them, and the driver went more slowly, looking first this way and that. The woman looked at the windows filled with many different things, and on them all were pasted white or red or blue or yellow sheets of paper that bore pictures of Uncle Sam, of soldiers, of sailors, of airmen, of pretty girl soldiers with neat hair; but all held big black words like the red sign on the pine tree: “GIVE, RED CROSS—JOIN THE WACS—GIVE BLOOD—WORK AT WILLOW RUN.”

  The car stopped in a wash of light from a broad window, while high above the road more lights made a brightness on the wet leaf-plastered sidewalks that lay on either side the street. The woman, as if unaccustomed to so much brightness, squinched her eyes and twisted her head about as she drew the blanket more closely about the child.

  “Wait,” the officer said. “Hatcher, make certain there is a doctor’s office close by and that he is in.”

  The woman watched the soldier go across the street, then glanced at the officer, who was looking out his window as he rolled it down. A door had opened on the street, and through it came a burst of jukebox music. The woman looked toward the sound, a shadow of girlish interest in her troubled eyes, then her glance went swiftly back to the officer’s head, and not taking her eyes from him, she lifted the child on one arm, and with a quick and furtive movement reached into her coat pocket, her hand going down into the lining, searching. The man turned a little, glancing at her in his quick, impatient way, and her hand at once became still, and did not search again until he had turned away.

  The hand was still again when the young soldier opened the door, saying, “The doctor’s in his office right across the street.”

  The woman hesitated, moving toward the opened door, but looking at the officer, her hand, folded into a fist, coming slowly out of the bottom of her coat. She flushed, opening the fist, showing a worn and limp bill. “I want tu pay you fer th ride,” she said, “but I can’t find th right change.”

  The officer looked at the outstretched five-dollar bill, surprise and disgust reddening his face. “I wouldn’t think of charging,” he said, staring at the bill, so worn, so wrinkled, the five was hardly legible.

  “But I aimed tu pay,” she said, touching his hand with the money.

  He reached quickly for the money like one suddenly changing his mind. “I can change it,” he said, and turning away from her drew out a wallet; but it was only after she was out of the car that he put bills, folded closely together, into her hand, saying. “A dollar’s fair enough, I guess.” And then, “Good luck. Help her across the street, Hatcher.”

  “I can manage,” she said, dropping the money into her apron pocket.

  The young soldier stooped quickly and picked up a small bright thing fallen from the folds of the child’s blanket. He handed it to her as they walked across the highway. “Keep it for the baby,” he said. “Stars like that are kind of scarce.”

  “Oh,” she said, “th man’s star—I didn’t mean to tear it off. You’d better give it back to him; somebody’ull git him fer losen it. I’ve heared they’re mighty hard on soldiers if their clothes don’t look right.”

  “Not on the likes of him,” the other said. They had gone a little distance down the sidewalk when the man pointed to a lighted doorway a few steps back from the street. “There’s the doctor’s,” he said.

  She glanced timidly toward the door. “I ain’t never been to a doctor before. Clovis, my husband, he’s allus took th youngens th few times it was somethen Sue Annie couldn’t cure.”

  His flat, absent-minded eyes opened wide in astonishment. “Lady, you can’t be afraid of nothing. Just walk in.”

  TWO

  SHE STEPPED INTO A small square hallway and stood an instant hesitant before its two closed doors, then opened the one that looked most used. She walked into the room behind the door, then stopped suddenly, blinded by the unaccustomed lights and confusedly aware that what seemed to be a whole roomful of people sitting on chairs and sofas and standing by the walls had looked up at her coming. They now turned to her with the quick, interested glances of people so long hemmed together with their pains and troubles that any occurrence, no matter how trivial, is a welcome diversion. They looked more intently now, for she was large beyond any woman most had ever seen, and there was from the rough clothing, disheveled hair, and mud-streaked face the crying need for help.

  A thin hump-shouldered woman with a sleeping baby across her knees pressed herself into a corner of a small sofa to make room between herself and a teen-age boy in overalls with blood-stained bandages over most of his head and half his face.

  Gertie backed swiftly away. “Your baby might git this bad disease—an mine cain’t wait.” She hurried back into the hall, knocked on the other door. A woman from the waiting room called in a sharp, city-like voice: “Th doctor’s busy sewing up a man’s leg. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

  Gertie knocked more loudly. When no one came she opened the door, and went into a small room furnished with a desk, two chairs, and books on open shelves. She saw another door, and was opening it when a woman all in white came quickly through it. “You must wait outside—or better, come back. Th doctor’s—”

  “I cain’t,” Gertie interrupted. She pulled back the blanket, held Amos toward the woman.

  The nurse looked down at Amos, studied his face an instant before she saw the blood-streaked neck set with the wooden pipe. She turned swiftly away, opening the door behind her. She was halfway across the next room before her voice came even and smooth, “This way, please.”

  Gertie followed through another small room lined with shelves filled with bottles and jars, past an open door through which she saw a man stretched under a bright light on a high bed-like table while over him a tall man worked. She heard groans and smelled something that made her think of whisky.

  The nurse left her in a tiny room that held nothing but a high iron bed, one chair, and a bright white light in the ceiling. Near the foot of the bed was a window, and Gertie saw just past the glass, clear in the white light, the limb of a maple tree to which still clung a few pale rain-dripping leaves. “Put the baby on the bed and undress him—if you can without hurting his neck,” the nurse said, and was gone. She was back with the doctor before Gertie had Amos out of his overalls.<
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  He was a tall thin man with pale skin and pale hair, though his eyes, set in crinkles now, were the kind of bright quick blue that might once have gone with red hair. He considered Amos briefly, but unlike the nurse he let his eyes stop and stay on the wooden pipe. His mouth opened, then closed, opened again as he said to the nurse in a slow, seemingly unconcerned voice that he might have used to discuss the weather, “I believe you’d better set up the oxygen tent.” And to Gertie, “I believe we’d better use a different kind of tube.” And over his shoulder to the nurse, now tap-tapping away, “We’d better rig up an IV, put what drugs we can in it. Break out that new box of serum—I used the last on that case in Hidalgo. Better bring it first.” And back to Gertie as he fitted a stethoscope to his ears, “Been sick long?”

  She flushed and said in a low voice, “Three days.” Her voice grew even lower, more guilty-seeming, “Ole Dave Sexton’s hawgs got in our corn. Th fodder’s stripped, but th corn ain’t gethered, an me an th boys, we worked all day a tryen to save it—messed up it was, down on the muddy ground. I ought …”

  She stopped, uncertain of whether or no the doctor heard. He had plugs in his ears and was listening to Amos. She stood pulling the knuckles of her left hand with her right, studying the doctor’s face as though it were a page of writing in an unfamiliar hand.

  He finished and looked at her. “Diphtheria out your way?”

  She nodded above her wringing, pulling hands. “But I didn’t know—till down in the evenen today. Sue Annie come an told me. Will he—” She looked toward the wooden pipe. “Did I do—wrong? I couldn’t jist stand an watch him.”

  He took the hypodermic needle the nurse handed him, and shot stuff into Amos’s hip. “I believe you’ve done all right,” he said, but still she couldn’t read his eyes or his voice, could only comfort herself with the realization that Amos was now more able to fight the needle than her knife. Still, when the nurse came in rolling an iron tube of a thing on wheels with one hand, the other holding a tray covered with a towel, and he told her to wait outside, she was more afraid than ever.