The Reluctant Midwife Read online

  “How you doing, old buddy?” Daniel says to him. “Hold on, Becky, I’ll give you a hand.” He crawls up the ladder. “Looks like you’ll need a new window too. I might have an old one out in my barn.”

  When the work is done, Patience brings a basket of sandwiches out of their auto and I bring out Sarah Maddock’s baked beans. We sit on the porch eating companionably as the sun drops behind the green leaves and a V of geese overhead honks as they fly southward. Daniel offers the doctor a sip from his hip flask, but I put out my hand to stop him.

  “You don’t give a mentally handicapped person alcohol,” I inform him, as if I’m the matron at a Rehabilitation Hospital for Disabled Soldiers. The vet looks puzzled and a little hurt, because he’s been doing it all along, but Patience breaks the awkward silence.

  “So it must have been scary. The worst storms always come from the west. Being on the east side of Spruce Mountain, we were spared. The hail was rough though. A stone the size of a baseball cracked Daniel’s back windshield.”

  “It’s okay.” Daniel laughs, regaining his footing. “That rattletrap has seen better days and it didn’t break all the way through. I just need the glass to stay together until the economy turns around.”

  “The hail was bad here too. Stones not so big, just the size of marbles, but they covered the ground like snow and the temperature must have dropped forty degrees in fifteen minutes. I was afraid the house might blow down. Was it a hurricane or a tornado?”

  “Radio out of Wheeling says it was a freak tornado, only touched down in a few counties, but it did some damage.”

  Daniel stands. “Come on, old man,” he says to Blum. “Let’s drag those fallen branches under the porch. We may as well store the wood where it can get dry.” He takes Blum’s arm and guides him away.

  I don’t tell Patience about Isaac’s heroic action when he carried me through the tornado to the shelter. It seems too unreal, as if I imagined it. I don’t tell her that he actually seemed to understand that we were in danger. I don’t her tell her that for a moment Dr. Blum seemed to be present, to be with me, to be back.

  First Day

  It’s Tuesday, my first day to work in the infirmary at Camp White Rock, a blazing-hot morning, and as usual I’m in a rush. I assist Dr. Blum with his grooming. Shave him, brush his teeth, clean his fingernails, and check to be sure his trousers are buttoned. I want him to look nice because Lilly is watching him.

  “You’re going to stay at the store again this afternoon. Do you understand? The camp is the only opportunity I have to earn cash money. Please don’t mess this up. Just sit where they tell you and try to be sociable.”

  I say this last part with a small grin, knowing sociable was not one of Blum’s character traits, even when he was in his right mind. That’s probably why his wife ran around on him. She was fun-loving in the extreme. Opposites attract, they say, and in this case it seems true.

  I remember seeing her with a man at a restaurant in Charlottesville once, a handsome fellow with a new short haircut and sporting a seersucker blazer and white pants. It was summer and Priscilla wore a low-cut rose-colored dress, and he was touching her hand. I never told the doc about it.

  When I get to Liberty, I drop Blum off at the grocery, and then stop at the pharmacy to pick up the supplies. When I hand Mr. Stenger the list, he reads it out loud.

  “1 combination hot water bag and enema syringe

  1 male urinal

  1 pair adjustable crutches

  2 pair rubber gloves that can be sterilized

  3 boxes adhesive plaster for making casts

  4 rolls gauze bandage

  1 glass thermometer

  6 packs of Lifebuoy soap

  1 box of lice powder

  4 bottles of mercurochrome

  1 jar Blue Itch Cream

  1 large tube of Ben-Gay liniment

  1 tin of milk of magnesia tablets

  1 large bottle of Bayer aspirin

  2 bottles of hydrogen peroxide

  2 bottles of isopropyl alcohol

  1 50cc bottle of morphine”

  He stops and raises his eyebrows

  “You preparing for the Battle of Gallipoli, Miss Becky?”

  “You mean the narcotic? I may need it if there’s a dislocated shoulder or a broken limb. When I was at the camp interviewing for the job, a boy came in with a deep laceration that had to be stitched, an accident at the sawmill.”

  “No, I didn’t mean the morphine. I’m not questioning your credentials to give it, but all this is going to be expensive. . . .”

  “That’s fine. Colonel Milliken said to put it on the camp’s account.”

  Stenger shrugs, rubbing his one lazy eye. “I guess the government’s good for it, but the way the White House is spending, I wonder for how long.” He moves into the back room to get some of the items off the shelf, but keeps up a running patter as I pet the orange cat on the counter.

  “You know, some of the folks around are pretty riled up about the CCC camp. Say the men will bring trouble into Union County, but I think the Conservation Corps is all that’s keeping this town alive. You know . . . Bittman’s Grocery, not to mention Gooski’s Tavern. Marion Archer got on as a reading teacher out at the camp, and I hear Reverend Goody is teaching elocution. Half the lads, they say, have never been to school, or at least not for long.”

  “Loonie Tinkshell works out there too.”

  “Real glad you found a position, Miss Becky, and I’m very happy to have your business.” He wraps my supplies in brown paper as his lazy eye wanders toward the door, hoping, I imagine, to see another customer coming in. “Anything else?”

  “This will do for a while.”

  “See the headlines?” Stenger offers just to keep me in the store.

  I glance at the newspapers in the rack next to the counter. WAR CLOUDS DARKEN EUROPE and underneath, TESLA DISCOVERS NEW DEATH BEAM.

  “What do you think of that?” Stenger questions.

  “I don’t know. It sounds dangerous.” I glance at my watch. “What if it got in the wrong hands?”

  “Well, you know, Europe’s a mess again. That Adolf Hitler’s in power and it doesn’t look good for the Jews. I guess Tesla is just thinking he could save a lot of lives, not have another Great War. One way or another the U.S. is going to get involved, mark my words.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. We Americans have enough trouble of our own. . . . I have to go,” I say, excusing myself. “Don’t want to be late for my new job.” I throw him a smile and back out the door.

  I wasn’t honest with Mr. Stenger, didn’t say what I really feel. I hate war. Like a dust cloud rolling across Oklahoma, it has taken almost everything I loved: my brothers and my shell-shocked husband, even my father, who died of a broken heart after his soldier sons died, one by a bomb, one by the Spanish flu that ran through the barracks like a mad fox in a henhouse.

  It’s no wonder I’m always waiting for the next calamity. Patience once called me Henny Penny, the chicken who runs around yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

  If it didn’t take so much courage to be a pacifist, I’d wear the white feather. I’d wear it proudly in my best hat or on my lapel, but in the last Great War, to be a pacifist was to be a traitor, and I couldn’t have taken the ostracism.

  Blum probably could take it. He didn’t really care what people thought of him, but he was a physician at Walter Reed during the war, and even though he never saw combat, he saw the results . . . broken men whom he had to patch up and send back to their shattered lives.

  It’s funny, now that I think of it, how all the males I’ve cared about have been broken men, broken healers; my father who was addicted to booze, David who returned from the war but never left the horror behind him, and now Dr. Blum.

  Linus

  “Sorry, I’m late.” I rush into the infirmary with the box of supplies, close the door, and pull on the white nurse uniform lying over the chair. I’ve brought my own starch
ed nurse hat that I wore at Dr. Blum’s office, but decide it looks silly and toss it in my bag. This is my first day in the clinic and together, Boodean and I (he’s also dressed in white) look quite official when I come out into the waiting room and he leads the first patient in.

  “Private Linus Boggs,” he introduces the man. I sit down at a small desk in the corner.

  “Welcome, Linus. I’m Nurse Rebecca Myers. What seems to be the problem?” The pale, blond twenty-year-old hides under his bushy white eyebrows, his oversized jaw clenched tight.

  “It’s his pecker, miss.” Boodean doesn’t have to consult his clipboard.

  I nod toward the door to indicate that I need some privacy with the patient and he should leave, but my new medic doesn’t get it. “It’s crotch rot, is what he tells me. Needs some salve or something.”

  I take a big breath. “Ordinarily, Boodean, I’d like a private moment with the patients so they can explain their problem to me, then you can come in when I do the exam, but now that you’ve already offered your diagnosis . . .”

  “It’s not my diagnosis, ma’am. It’s just what he told me. Right, Linus?”

  The patient’s face is by this time mottled red and I see tears in his eyes. “Mr. Boggs? Can you describe your symptoms to me? When did you first notice the problem?”

  Linus turns to Boodean as if to say, “Is this horrible woman really going to make me explain all this?” My assistant looks at the ceiling.

  The private clears his throat. “The problem came on last week, ma’am, but it’s getting worse.”

  “Itching? Burning when you void?” I realize by his blank expression he doesn’t understand the word void. “Does it burn when you pee . . . piss?”

  “Nah, miss. Nothing like that! That’s the clap, VD. This is more like an itch. I thought maybe it was crotch rot or crotch critters.” (Lordy, I was expecting health problems like chicken pox, earaches, and infected wounds, not venereal disease and crotch critters. Maybe people in town were right and this isn’t the place for me!)

  “Well, Private, I’ll need to examine you, either way. Can you lie down on the cot and unbutton your work pants. This won’t take a minute.”

  I turn and begin to scrutinize the old blue, brown, and clear bottles of liquids in the cupboard behind me while the young man gets undressed. There’s Cocaine Tooth Ache Drops, Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Liniment, and Estonia Seed Oil. Estonia Seed Oil? Now what could that be for?

  “Ready.” That’s Boodean. When I turn around, I find Linus lying on his back, pants pulled down, face turned to the wall . . . and the biggest penis I have ever seen pointing right up at the ceiling. Boodean takes a chair in the corner and looks down at the floor.

  It’s not that I’ve never seen an erection. I’ve been married, had a few lovers while at school, and I worked at Walter Reed, but this is enormous!

  I take a deep breath, pull on my red rubber gloves, and approach my patient, looking first at his protuberance and then at his testicles and groin with my magnifying glass, the Sherlock Holmes of penises. It doesn’t take long to figure it out. There are no creepy crawlies, just a bright red irritated rash on his testicles and inner thighs, so bad he looks like he’s been scalded and I’m actually happy, because now I know what’s wrong.

  “It’s nothing bad, Linus, just a simple skin fungus. Luckily, I bought a jar of Blue Itch Cream at the pharmacy and there’s a can of Gold Bond Medicated powder in the closet.

  “You’ll need to keep the area clean and dry and I’m going to give you some of the powder. Use it two times a day, sparingly. I have a jar of the salve too, but it’s all I have for the whole camp, so we have to keep it in the clinic.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Linus mutters, buttoning his work uniform khakis. “I’m greatly relieved.”

  “I apologize for having to examine you. I know it was embarrassing.”

  “Truly sorry you had to.”

  I laugh. “As a CCC camp nurse with all male patients, I imagine I’ll have to do things like that from time to time. It’s just part of the job.” For the first time the patient actually looks at me and I see that he has a full set of teeth and a nice smile.

  “Come to the clinic next Friday so I can see how you’re doing. If you’re not better, come sooner. The physician from Camp Laurel will be here on Thursday, if you’d rather see him.”

  “No, that’s fine, ma’am. The worst is over. No woman’s ever stared at my pecker except my mom and that was ten years ago.”

  The rest of the morning is less eventful. Boodean and I see cuts and burns, coughs and bellyaches, but nothing serious and no malingerers, as far as I can tell.

  Finally the dinner bell rings. There’s the smell of homemade bread drifting across the compound and just as Boodean and I are getting ready to go to the cookhouse there’s a knock at the infirmary door.

  A young man in a CCC uniform, with the motor pool insignia on the arm, walks in.

  “Ma’am?” he says, standing at attention. “I’m Drake Trustler from the motor pool.”

  I recognize the low voice immediately. Gravel in a stream bed. Who does he think he’s kidding?

  Drake

  “Nurse, I’m Drake Trustler from the motor pool and I’ve hurt my shoulder. Wanted to see about getting some Bayers.”

  Drake Trustler, my eye! It’s Nick Rioli, Mrs. Bonazzo’s driver. Baby-faced Nick with the kind eyes, the wide chest, and the gravelly voice. How dumb does he think I am? It’s been months since I’ve seen him, but I don’t forget.

  “Boodean, you want to go on to the mess hall and get us some food? Get me some of everything, even dessert.”

  “You sure, Nurse Myers? I don’t mind missing a meal now and then.”

  “You don’t understand, I mind missing a meal! Now shoo.” The medic backs out the door. “Get lots of everything!” I yell after him.

  “So what’s the scoop?” I challenge my patient. “You call yourself Drake Trustler now? Don’t try any funny business with me, Nick. Here sit on this stool. Did you really hurt your arm?”

  “Sort of. I wanted to talk to you before you saw me somewhere in the camp and called me Nick. I’m not Nick anymore. I broke with the Bazzano bunch. It was never for me. The only way I could ditch them was to disappear.”

  “So you just walked away?”

  “Exactly. Once I got the missus and the children to White Sulfur Springs, I started planning my escape. You can’t just quit the mob like it’s a regular job; the mob is everywhere. We spent a few weeks at the Greenbrier and then went on to Roanoke, where she has family. The first night we were there, I left the keys in the Packard, loaded up a rucksack, and hit the road. It broke me to leave Joey, but I couldn’t take him with me. Mrs. Bozzano would have hunted me down and had me killed like a dog.

  “I didn’t know where to go, but I caught the first ride that came along. Thought I might head to California, but everyone and his brother is trying to get there.

  “I couldn’t go north or south. There are mobsters all along the East Coast, and in the Midwest the thugs have taken over Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago. I decided the mountains of West Virginia would be a good place to hide and started hitching this way.” He paces the floor while I open my package from Stenger’s and look for the Bayer.

  “The third night out, I was camped behind a billboard outside of Hagerstown and I heard singing. It was coming from a truck full of CCC recruits broken down in the ditch.

  “Fan belt was snapped. They’d fixed it, but the dummy that was driving had flooded the engine. Most of the fellows, a couple dozen, were pretty well liquored up, including the driver, so I got in and took over. Before he passed out, he told me they were headed for Union County. . . .

  “Next morning, at dawn, when they all woke, cold and sick, the sergeant saw me behind the wheel and concluded I was one of the boys and a teetotaler. I introduced myself as Drake Trustler from Ohio. He was a kid I once knew in Meigs County who drowned when he was ten.r />
  “Everything went fine until we got to the camp and they couldn’t find Drake Trustler’s paperwork. Mrs. Ross gave the driver hell for losing it and fixed me up somehow. I used my grandma’s address in Ohio as my home. You have to have some sort of residence and kin to send your twenty-five dollars to or you can’t be part of the CCC. Too bad for the fellows without family. This is a good place, plenty to eat, and work to do that matters. I’ve been here for three months now and I’m second in command of the motor pool.”

  He tells me his story while I make him a sling, get out two aspirin, and pour some Sloan’s Liniment into a small vial.

  “I’m sorry about Joey,” I say when I’m done. “But I’m glad you got free of them. My friends told me later who the Bazzanos were. The mother didn’t seem so bad.”

  “She’s not ruthless like the rest of them, but she thinks she’s entitled to whatever she wants. Johnny Bazzano spoiled her.”

  “Will Anthony and Frankie still try to find you?”

  There are footsteps on the porch and I can smell the food before the door opens.

  “You won’t tell, will you?” Drake Trustler whispers.

  19

  Distraught

  As I’m bumping home along Salt Lick, after my fourth day at White Rock, I see a strange sight and pull over on the edge of the road.

  “Wait here,” I tell Blum. “It’s Daniel Hester. He looks upset. I’ll see if I can help him.” Blum stares ahead, as if he’s not heard me, stares at the squished katydid on the windshield. “Sit. Stay,” I command just because he irritates me.

  “Daniel! What’s wrong? Have you lost something?” The man is stalking back and forth along the road, staring down at the dirt and pulling his hair. Can I help?” I yell from the back of the auto. “Daniel?” When he finally looks over, I can see he’s been crying. What the hell?