Читать книгу Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night - Barbara J. Taylor - Страница 18

CHAPTER TEN

DUTY AND INDIAN SUMMER, two unlikely conspirators, coaxed Grace into the backyard for the first time since the tragedy. Violet wouldn’t be home from school for another two hours, so Grace decided to hang the wash herself. She dropped her basket next to the clothesline, shut her eyes, and tipped her face toward the sky, inviting the sun to warm her bones, to thaw her heart. The rays obliged, and for a moment, Grace convinced herself that a tonic of sun and sky might be enough.

“A little color in your cheeks. It makes all the difference.” Grief stood on the other side of the clothesline, examining Grace’s features. “At that angle,” he formed a frame with his thumbs and forefingers, cocked his head, and closed one eye, “you look like a young girl.”

Grace ignored his remarks and held onto the sun, absorbing its heat like the trees, the grass, and the flowers around her. Without opening her eyes, she pictured the spot where she was standing—the back half of her own yard and the beginning of Myrtle Evans’s patch of dirt. That’s what Owen always called it when he compared their properties. Like everyone else in the neighborhood, both families rented from George Sherman, owner of the Sherman Mine. The company houses looked forlorn, like rows of ragamuffins, some taller than others, but all uniform in their modesty. Soot from the mine and nearby culm bank fire dressed them in sober shades of gray and brown. Frost from the Pennsylvania winters kicked up the footers and bowed the boards, forcing porches to rest on their wooden haunches like old arthritic dogs. With no more than ten feet between them, huddled houses passed along the secrets contained inside. Mr. Harris, who lived to the right, used the Lord’s name in vain whenever he got his hands on whiskey. Louise Davies on the left watched for her husband each night in spite of his death four years earlier. Backyards ran into one another, and neighbors met in the middle to discuss weather or church or those out of earshot.

Yet, from late spring to early fall, Grace managed to color her house in pinks, reds, blues, peaches, and yellows. Sweet peas stretched up the back porch’s latticework, hiding the unpainted boards. Trellised roses craned their necks to view the scene below. Delphinium stood watch over the begonias as they fanned out across the soil. Snapdragons waited open-mouthed for lilies of the valley to breech their borders. Come summer, throaty toads from nearby Leggett’s Creek crooned from the shade of rocks.

At the slap of a screen door, Grace’s eyes popped open. Over on the Evanses’ back porch, Myrtle offered an armless rocker to a rather rotund woman. A missionary, if Grace’s recollection could be trusted.

“Good afternoon, Grace,” Myrtle called over from a second rocker. “So good to see you up and about.” She covered her mouth, and whispered something to her guest.

Grace waved a handful of clothespins that she’d retrieved from her apron pocket, peeled a sheet off the top of the basket, and hung it on the line.

“No one likes a busybody,” Grief said, pushing aside the sheet that separated him from Grace.

“She’s a fine Christian,” Grace murmured, smoothing the sheet back into place. “Not many like her who would open their homes to as many missionaries as she does.”

Grief walked the length of the clothesline and stepped around to Grace’s side. “She only puts them up long enough for the elders to take notice,” he said. “They’re someone else’s problem, soon enough.”

“I’ll not have—”

Grief put a finger to Grace’s lips, cupped his ear, and tilted his head toward the women on the porch.

“God as my witness,” Myrtle’s voice penetrated the sheetwall, “she threw that sparkler at her sister.”

“I told you!” Grief’s voice crackled with excitement as he slapped his knee.

“Don’t take my word for it. Ask my sister Mildred.” Myrtle started her rocker going. “She’ll back me up. We both saw the whole thing from this very porch.”

“Myrtle and Mildred. Two peas in a pod.” Grief shook his head good-naturedly. “Always have a bone to scratch between them.”

Eager to please her captive audience, Myrtle continued: “And then we heard poor Daisy accuse her sister. Violet! she yelled just before her dress went up in flames.”

When Grief turned around, he seemed to notice Grace’s wracked expression for the first time. “You really didn’t know?” He studied her for a minute before changing his tack. “I’m not saying it’s all her fault. That husband of yours played a part in this little drama.” His brow furrowed as he tried to get the words right. “No telling what might happen when you put trouble in a child’s hands. Isn’t that what you told him when he brought those sparklers home?”

“What harm can come?” Grace parroted Owen’s response, the last words he delivered on the subject. Somehow this detail, of all the details, this snippet of conversation between a husband and wife—for that’s what it was and nothing more, or was it?—destroyed her. She leaned forward, her hands trembling, her eyes glazed with tears, picked up a damp shirt from the basket, and pinned it to the line.

Nothing to be done about it now, she thought. You can relive a moment again and again and again. But you can’t change it. That’s the tragedy of time.

“See? All better.” Grief absently stroked the back of Grace’s neck. “A little truth,” he said. “A bit of a shock at first, but good for the soul in the end.”

Grace opened her mouth to speak, though she couldn’t imagine what words she would say.

“Hush.” Grief smiled broadly, exposing his yellow teeth, and turned back toward the women. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”

Grace didn’t need to hear the story. She’d lived it that day and every day since. Daisy’s screams, raw, feral, fractured, had compelled everyone within earshot to rush outside and bear witness. Grace, clad only in her slip, flew out the door and into the yard.

As Daisy ran toward the house, fire swallowed her dress and seared the flesh beneath.

“Lord Jesus. No!” Grace had screamed, wrapping Daisy’s flaming body in a rag rug she hadn’t remembered grabbing. She pushed the child to the ground, rolled her over several times, and dropped on top of her, smothering the last of the fire with her own body.

Owen reached the yard on Grace’s heels. Burned flesh saturated their senses. Thick, sweet, biting. Heat rose off Daisy’s body as he opened the rug. A leathery patchwork of red, black, and mahogany reared up and settled itself where the dress had once been. Owen gingerly lifted the afflicted child, carried her toward the house, and whispered, “Be brave, little lady. Daddy’s here.”

Owen, Grace, and Daisy entered the kitchen as one.

Violet remained behind, feet rooted to the desecrated soil.

Being the closest neighbors, Louise Davies and Alice Harris showed up immediately. Doc Rodham arrived at the house not ten minutes later. One of the local children had run to get him, though Grace never knew which one. As with any calamity, so many people, including the young ones, claimed to have played a role that day.

Once Owen placed Daisy on the girls’ bed, Grace pulled a rocker up and studied what parts of her were still whole. Eyes, lashes, brows, nose, mouth, ears—the head in its entirety, untouched. She struggled to find comfort where she could. A disfigured body could be hidden under clothes; a disfigured face was another matter. It drew any manner of unwanted attention, and that would prove difficult for a girl. Grace’s eyes skirted past the worst of it in search of hope. The right hand seemed intact, though the same could not be said of the arm. Still, Daisy was right-handed. Feet, ankles, calves, unimpaired enough for boots. So she won’t be a cripple.

Grace held onto the promise of a mouth that could speak, feet that would carry, and a hand to be used in the service of the Lord. “Mother’s here,” she whispered, confident her daughter could hear her words. Daisy lay still but with eyes open, conscious and alert on the cotton sheet. Another good sign.

Doc Rodham entered the bedroom carrying his medical bag and the piano stool from the parlor. He placed the seat on the floor, cleared a small table, opened his case, and lined up his medicines. “I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said, extending his hand to Owen. He draped a stethoscope around his neck and rolled his seat over to his patient. The fire had ravaged the front of her little body, thighs, torso, most of her right arm, and the whole of the left. He discarded the stethoscope, placed two fingers on the pulse at her neck, and looked into her eyes, so blue.

“Hello, young lady,” Doc Rodham said to his patient.

“Hello,” Daisy answered.

“Thank you, Jesus.” Grace added speech to her list of blessings.

“Am I going to die?”

Her directness seemed to momentarily unnerve Doc Rodham, but reassurance of a kind quickly fixed itself on his expression. “Not on my watch.” He smiled. “Now, tell me where it hurts.”

“My feet,” she said. “They’re so cold.”

“Mrs. Harris!” Doc Rodham yelled loud enough to be heard in the kitchen.

A moment later she poked her head through the door, stole a glance at Daisy, and winced in spite of her best intentions.

“I’ll need hot water bottles.”

She nodded and ran off down the hall.

Grace found it strange that Alice Harris happened to be waiting for instructions and wondered who else might be milling about her house. The notion unsettled her. Had she even finished cleaning up the spilled pie? And could that have really just happened this morning? Concentrate, she thought, and scolded herself for thinking such things mattered.

“Any other pain?” the doctor asked as he removed the stopper from a bottle marked, Laudanum.

Daisy shook her head slightly.

“Thank God,” Owen said, “Thank God.”

“An ounce of prevention,” Doc Rodham said. “Open up.” He placed several drops of medicine onto her waiting tongue. “And four drops every two hours,” he said to Grace, who nodded.

“What about the hospital?” Owen asked.

Grace whirled around, looked directly at her husband, and said, “We’ll not go there again, Owen Morgan. Not after Rose. Not ever.” She turned back and looked to Doc Rodham for confirmation.

Doc Rodham shook his head. “No use,” he murmured, “she’d not survive the . . .” He glanced at his patient. “Home is the best place for her just now.”

Although most of Daisy’s clothing had either burned or fallen off, here and there, flecks of fabric cleaved to the skin. Had the doctor not treated his share of miners over the years, whose bodies were burned in explosions, he might have mistaken the remnants for seared flesh, but as he later explained, he could tell the difference between the two. Charred cotton curled up at the ends. Burned skin pursed beneath the surface. Doc Rodham soaked a piece of linen in saline solution, wiped the affected areas, and peeled the fabric off with tweezers.

“Now let’s see.” He worked at a particularly stubborn section on her torso. “How long have we known each other?”

“Nine years,” Daisy said.

“That so?” He picked the loosened material away.

“You delivered me,” she said, as if surprised he’d forgotten such an important fact. She eyed her father, but he was turned toward the window.

“You don’t say.” Doc Rodham spun around to his work table, palmed a syringe, and swung back toward his patient. “You sure have a good memory.” He pricked only the largest blisters, the ones stretched to the point of breaking.

Grace grimaced at the sight of the needle, but Daisy seemed not to notice. “Tell me a story.”

The doctor gently patted the pierced blisters with cotton batting, soaking up the fluid. “Which one would you like to hear?”

“About the day I was born,” she said.

“Now that’s a good story,” he replied, saturating several linen strips in carron oil. “March 1, 1904. Bet you thought I wouldn’t remember.” He placed the bandages on top of skin that was only burned, not broken. “You weren’t in any hurry to come. Kept your mother waiting all day. When you finally got here, we knew right away that you were special. Most babies squall when they’re born, but you came to us singing like an angel.” He turned, measured out a portion of boric acid, and mixed it into a jar of Vaseline.

“You’re teasing. Babies don’t sing.”

“My point exactly.” He spread the ointment onto the remaining pieces of linen and placed them on the areas where the wounds were open. “Never heard a singing baby before or since.” Once all of the burned areas had been treated, Doc Rodham layered cotton over the linen cloths and wrapped bandages over the batting. “That’s how I knew you were special.”

Alice Harris called from the doorway, and the doctor excused himself. “I don’t want to push myself on anyone,” she said softly, handing him two hot water bottles. “A sick room’s no place for folks that ain’t family, excepting you, of course, and the preacher when he comes. Holler if you need.” She disappeared down the hallway.