The Reluctant Midwife Page 18

  The rest of the afternoon is slow and I have a chance to read about plantar warts. The illustrations are appalling, but none so bad as the wart I just saw. Debridement is the treatment of choice, but toward the end, salicylic acid is cited as an experimental cure.

  “Salicylic acid,” I say out loud to the four walls. Boodean has gone out to the waiting room to beg Mrs. Ross for two cups of coffee. Salicylic acid. Maybe Stenger could make me some in a Vaseline base at the pharmacy.

  As I leave, the sun is just setting and the camp is now full of overgrown boys, playing basketball, throwing horseshoes, smoking cigarettes, and shooting the bull. Even though there’s a chill in the air and they have to wear jackets, when the work is over, the fun begins.

  “Miss Myers?” Captain Wolfe approaches from the side as I’m putting my nurse’s bag in the backseat, and he salutes me as if I’m in the service. “I want to apologize about the conflict in the infirmary earlier. It shouldn’t have happened. Cross is a good worker, but a bit of a hothead.”

  “I figured that out,” I say pleasantly, eager to get back to the farm to make sure Patience is okay.

  “I have a favor to ask. I know I just met you, but I’ve been ordered to represent the White Rock Camp at a fundraiser for Eleanor Roosevelt’s community experiment, Arthurdale. It won’t happen for a few months and it’s at the Hotel Torrington, but I’m supposed to bring a wife or lady friend, and I don’t have one. Mrs. Roosevelt will actually be there. I wonder if you’d be my guest.” He flushes in embarrassment.

  “Arthurdale is the rural village that Mrs. Roosevelt is building in Preston County for the unemployed miners from Scotts Run, isn’t it? I worked at Scotts Run as a public health nurse when I first came to West Virginia. What’s the date again?” I ask this as if my social calendar is so full, I might be overbooked.

  “New Year’s Eve. It’s a banquet and a dance. All the other CCC senior officers, Dr. Crane from Laurel Camp, and Major Milliken have wives.”

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no dancing clothes, haven’t danced since I was at Walter Reed and one of the doctors took me out. It’s probably Wolfe’s shyness that makes me say yes . . . that and the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady and tireless social reformer, might be there.

  “Well, I guess I could. I don’t usually go out with colleagues.” (I don’t usually go out at all.) “But under the circumstances, I could make an exception.”

  “Thank you so much, Nurse Myers! I haven’t asked a woman out since my wife died four years ago.” He straightens and salutes as I get in the Pontiac. When I look back he is grinning from ear to ear.

  October 10, 1934

  Salicylic acid is made from willow bark and is the main ingredient in aspirin. Hippocrates, a physician in 5 BC used it as a treatment for fever and pain. Funny how such thoughts come to me. . . . Just because I’m mute, doesn’t mean my brain isn’t working. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like it, this new affinity with words.

  For so long there was comfort in silence.

  22

  Domestic Life

  Though I’m not really good at it, or particularly enjoy it like some women do, since we’ve moved to the Hesters’, I’ve put on an apron and become the chief cook. Patience gives me instructions and sometimes writes down recipes, which I keep on stiff cards in a little green box.

  In the morning after the men water the stock and milk the cows, the Hesters eat upstairs in their bedroom and Blum and I in the kitchen. I am amazed at the progress the doc’s made since we moved here. Except for his silence, he could be Daniel’s hired hand.

  All day, Daniel and Isaac are silently digging up the carrots and beets and storing them in the root cellar out back, or getting in hay, or insulating the barn for winter. Most of the time, they take Danny with them and let him play in the dirt, but sometimes he stays with Patience and plays on her bed. I know she feels isolated, so I try to visit often and bring her little jobs to do, like slicing apples or peeling potatoes.

  In the evening, around eight, we gather in the Hesters’ bedroom to eat popcorn made in a wire basket on the wood cookstove and listen to Patience read to us from her big book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales.

  The family sprawls on the bed, Danny between his father and mother. I sit on the hard-backed chair and Blum stands next to the closet. When Danny begins to fade, Hester carries him to his room and I lead Dr. Blum to bed.

  “Fly’s in the buttermilk. Shoo, fly, shoo. Fly’s in the buttermilk. Shoo, fly, shoo,” Daniel sings to Danny as if it’s a lullaby. “Fly’s in the buttermilk. Shoo, fly, shoo . . .”

  Afterward, I retire downstairs to my room to read a novel or sometimes the verses of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

  As I turn off the light and snuggle under the quilts, I can hear Daniel and Patience in their room above me talking softly, sometimes laughing. And then silence.

  Skip to my Lou, my darlin’.

  October 17, 1934

  Life has settled down at the Hesters’ now that we have a routine. At 7 A.M. the vet gets up and lights the fire. It’s the sound of the iron poker that wakes me. We rise about 7:30. I can dress myself fine, but I let Becky check my buttons and brush my teeth because I like her to touch me.

  After the vet and I tend the animals and while he’s busy straining the milk and Becky is making breakfast, I care for little Danny. He’s an easy child to entertain, a bright little boy, who asks me to draw pictures for him in this sketchbook (my journal).

  “Draw a cat,” he orders. “Draw a dog. Draw a house. Draw a tractor.” Simple enough. I would like to teach him his letters but that would require language, and though I have words in my head, I’m missing the connection to my tongue. Only rarely do I utter a sound. Dead men don’t talk and I died the day my wife drove into the river.

  Test

  “Goddam!” The vet slams the telephone receiver down in its holder and Blum and I look up from the kitchen table where we’ve been finishing our coffee. (The doctor is able to eat on his own now, though sometimes I have to wipe his chin.)

  “It’s the Bishop brothers. They have a herd of cattle that needs to be tuberculin tested and want me out there this week.”

  “Who’re the Bishop brothers?” I ask.

  “You remember them. They’re part of that crowd that jumped Blum and me at the Fourth of July picnic. A hard bunch, stingy with their animals, sour and unfriendly. They used to be in the moonshine business, until the G-men from D.C. shut them down. Five years ago or so, I had a run-in with them when their stallion, Devil, died.” He pulls out a wooden chair and sits back down with us.

  “The Bishops waited too long to call about a case of severe colic, and when the beautiful black Arabian died, they blamed his death on me and things got ugly. The three brothers were half drunk and it ended in a knock-down fistfight. I barely got out of there alive. They also dressed up like Klansmen and gave Patience and Bitsy a scare. A rotten crew if there ever was one.”

  “Can’t you say no?”

  “Nah, I’m the only vet around, and everyone is required by the state of West Virginia to get their herd tested. It’s important. Fifteen years ago, one in twenty cattle had bovine tuberculosis. It was a big economic loss to the farmers, not to mention a threat to human health.”

  He reaches for his cup of coffee. “I was wondering when the Bishops would get around to calling me. Dreaded it! On the other hand, they don’t really have a choice and neither do I. I took on the state contract. It’s good cash money.”

  “Hey, Isaac, want to come with me?” he says, grinning. “Be my backup in case things get ugly?”

  “I could come, too.”

  “You?”

  “I mean, if a woman was there, they wouldn’t get rough, would they?”

  “Probably not. They aren’t that crude. One of them, the oldest, Aran, has a common-law wife. The one I hate is Beef, a violent bastard. . . . I suppose you could help by writing down the test numbers in my ledger. If a cow
tests positive, it’s the end of it. It has to be killed right away and then the carcass burned.”

  I look at Dr. Blum sitting there in the wooden kitchen chair, staring into space, and imagine he and Daniel getting into another fistfight. “I’d better come.”

  The Bishops

  Two days later, just as the sun is peeking over the mountains, Daniel, Blum, and I leave Patience with her breakfast on a tray and a pile of toys on her bed for Danny and head in the Model T toward Burnt Town. Hester explains that the little village was built along Crockers Creek a century ago and was completely destroyed by a forest fire, thus the name, Burnt Town.

  “No one wanted to build there again. Superstitious, I guess. Too many people died. They say in these hollows, when a fire gets started, it roars up the mountains. The narrow valleys work like chimneys, just suck up the flames.”

  I look over the fields as we bump along in the Model T. The countryside is white with frost, our first really hard one, and everything is covered with little ice crystals. In the ditches the goldenrod stalks droop with their white fur, and red maple leaves are rimmed with white. Even the spider webs are covered with miniature beads of ice and shine in the morning light.

  Finally, we turn off the main gravel road and bump down a rocky grade, across a branch of Crockers Creek and into a spacious farmyard.

  There’s a white farmhouse with a long front porch, a neat fenced-in vegetable garden, and something that looks like a chicken coop to the side. From Daniel’s description of the Bishop brothers, I’d expected something more roughshod.

  A dark-haired woman wearing a flour-sack print dress and a heavy green sweater is carrying a basket of potatoes across the yard. She stops to stare, and three hounds, chained to their dog-houses, bark viciously.

  “’Bout time you showed up, you old son of a gun,” a stocky farmer on the porch calls out, then grins, saunters over, and reaches out his hand. “How you doin’? Ain’t seen you much lately.” I have a hard time reconciling Hester’s story of the knockdown, drag-out physical fight after the Arabian stallion died with this sociable gent.

  “Aran,” Daniel responds with reserve. “I brought Nurse Myers to help with the record keeping, and Dr. Blum, you remember him? He can hold the steers while I do the testing. Are your brothers available to round up the cattle?” He scans the yard and I remember that it’s the one called Beef he most dislikes.

  “Yeah.” Aran Bishop motions to our left where a short, thick man wearing hitched-up trousers and a red plaid flannel shirt moves slowly across the plowed field. A green John Deere sits in the distance. “Here comes Beef now.”

  The man called Beef strides up to Daniel and, bold as anything, shakes his hand, acting as if nothing has ever happened between them.

  “Doc,” he addresses him in a nasal voice. “Thought you were coming yesterday! Had them cows all penned up and you never showed. Let them loose for the night. They’re all up at the back forty now.”

  “I told your brother, today, November 17. I was clear on that.”

  “Well, no matter.” The older brother tries to smooth things out. “You’re here now. Let’s round them back up and get to work.”

  “Who’s the skirt?” Beef jerks his head my way.

  Daniel tightens his jaw. “Miss Myers. Nurse Becky Myers. She’s going to write down the numbers while I do the testing. Dr. Blum can hold the cattles’ heads.”

  “Yeah, and I get the butt-end where I can get kicked. Sounds fair.”

  Isaac steps forward and folds his arms across his chest. I almost laugh, wondering if he makes the tough pose on purpose or if it’s just by accident.

  Thirty minutes of drinking coffee in silence on the porch with Aran’s common-law wife and I spy the men and dogs across the field driving a stream of cattle toward the barn. Dr. Blum is walking along with them, waving his arms back and forth like a windmill.

  “Thanks,” I say to my quiet companion. “It was very neighborly of you to keep me company.” She must be in late thirties, a tough-looking lady with a lined face and dishwater hair that she keeps twisting in ropes. She responds with a stiff smile, but still doesn’t speak.

  It’s quite an operation going on down at the barnyard. The men are driving the livestock into a pen. There’s shouting and swearing as the big animals occasionally step on someone’s foot. Once, a cow forces Daniel up against the fence, almost crushing him, but Aran pulls it away.

  “Cocksucker!” says the vet, shocking the pants off me. My woman companion laughs. The man called Beef herds the cows into a long chute, three at a time, using a whip, and he smiles when the leather hits the animals’ backs.

  “Must be time for me to get to work.” I set my heavy blue-and-white mug on the porch. “Thanks again. . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Cora.”

  “Thanks again, Cora.”

  One by one, Daniel injects each animal with a small amount of purified tuberculin antigen just under the skin. He reads the cow’s number from a clip behind its ear and I write it down. In three days we will return. If the animal has TB, a welt will appear where the needle went in, and the cow will have to be slaughtered.

  We work together, becoming more efficient as time goes on, and finally the yard clears and the animals run off. The whole thing takes about two hours, and by the time we’re done, the men are exhausted so I offer to drive home.

  “So we’ll see you in three days? What time? We’ll try to have the animals rounded up,” Aran offers.

  “About nine,” the vet answers.

  “Better be here when you say you will,” threatens Beef.

  Or what? You’ll beat us all up?

  23

  Visitor

  I take another sip of spearmint tea, made from Patience’s dried herbs, and stare out the kitchen window. There’s a wind coming in from the north and it’s cold. The sky is pale blue and the trees are all bare, all except the spruce on the mountain.

  The experience at the Bishop brothers’ farm yesterday intrigues me, and I can’t help thinking about how functional Dr. Blum seemed, almost like one of the guys. I must remember to keep on challenging him, to not let him get away with being an invalid. Like a child, he needs new activities to build up his skills. That’s why I asked Daniel for a pocketknife.

  Now, Dr. Blum sits in the rocker near the Hesters’ wood heater stove, whittling a stick. There’s a pile of shavings in a basket at his feet that I plan to keep for starting fires. At Walter Reed they called it “occupational therapy,” and it seemed to do the disabled vets good.

  The sound of a motor whining down Salt Lick Road pulls me out of my reverie and a truck bumps across the bridge. It’s Mr. Maddock, and all I can think is it must be some emergency. He starts out the minute I open the door. “Ma’am,” he blurts out. “Ma’am, I wonder if I could trouble you . . .”

  “Come in. Come in. Please.” The frigid air explodes through the doorway and I watch as he pulls off his black hat, then steps out of his work boots. I have never seen him without his hat before, and his hair is thick and peppered gray. “Can I offer you some tea?”

  The farmer stares at Blum. “No. No, thanks. Is he okay with that knife?”

  I smile. “Yes. He’s not cut himself once or done anything inappropriate. Dr. Blum used to be a surgeon, you know, and was handy with scalpels.” I say this last part with a smile, but Maddock doesn’t get the humor. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s Mrs. Maddock. She’s in the family way . . . and I’m worried.” Here he looks down at his wool socks, green with brown toes, probably knitted by his disabled wife. Patience knits too, but I’ve never learned.

  I picture his wife, a polio victim of about fifty, who’s been paralyzed from the waist down since she was in her early thirties. “Are you sure? Some women miss their monthlies when they’re close to the change.” I can see he’s embarrassed.

  “Yes, Sarah thought the same thing, but yesterday we both felt it move. I wonder if you could make
a home visit. Mr. Stenger at the pharmacy said you’d be the one, since the midwife had to take to bed.”

  “How old is your wife?”

  “Just forty-seven.”

  “Certainly, I’ll come. Do you want me right now?”

  “If you’re not too busy . . . I could drive you and bring you back.”

  “I need to get a coat and hat, and I guess I have to bring Dr. Blum. Dr. Hester is away.”

  “You have to bring the doctor?”

  “Yes, I can’t leave him here alone,” I explain. “There’s no one to watch him. Mrs. Hester must stay upstairs resting.”

  “Well, I guess . . .” Maddock hedges and I remember how protective he is of his wife. He steps back in his boots, but he stops and turns before he goes outside.

  “I know you aren’t a fortune-teller, Miss Myers. You can’t predict the future, but I can’t lose Sarah. Childbirth can be hard on an older woman, and we both know there can be trouble with the baby. Just tell us what you think. That’s all we want.”

  The man looks at me for a long time, and I can’t be sure, but I think there are tears in his watery blue eyes.

  Sarah

  “Sarah,” Maddock yells at the door of the two-story white clapboard farmhouse on Wild Rose Road. “Are you in the bedroom? I’m bringing Miss Myers in to see you. Dr. Blum is here too.” He stands blocking Isaac, as if the sight of him would cause his wife to faint.

  In truth my charge has become quite handsome. He stands tall and straight, has good teeth, and though his hair is receding, it’s dark and curly. He has a strong jaw and beautiful eyes, or they used to be, before the light went out in them.

  “Yes, I’m in here, honey, lying down.”

  We enter a cool, dark interior, furnished with a leather settee and matching chairs, a fringed blue lamp, the kind David and I had in our little house in Brattleboro, and a flowered blue carpet.