Читать книгу Always October - C. E. Edmonson - Страница 10

The house was empty when I got home, as it had been for days. I was a child, of course, eight-years-old, and I’d never known an empty house before my mother and sister contracted the flu. Never, not for one day, not for one hour.

Our house was a typical wood-frame house in Louristan: two stories, a sloped roof, wooden shutters on the windows, a low porch that ran the width of the building. The house was painted white, the shutters and the front door a dark green the color of mid-summer leaves. Momma had been after Dad to add a little trim to the porch, a few scrolls in the corners, a pattern of vines and flowers across the front, but Dad hadn’t gotten around to it.

I walked through the unlocked front door—nobody locked their doors back then; I don’t even remember seeing a key—and into our living room. I don’t have to struggle to remember the living room because it didn’t change, not for years afterward. A camelback couch and two wing chairs ordered from the Montgomery Ward’s catalog; a worn rocker with red and gold cushions; a blue Persian carpet ordered from the Sears catalog; three small tables made by a local woodworker, a Pole named Pavel Kuriansky. Our radio, a Philco, rested on one of the tables.

A sampler hung on the pale-blue wall behind the couch, a piece of needlework executed by Momma when she was a young girl in high school. On either side of a stone house, a pair of indigo birds stood erect, their beaks pointed upward. There were clouds above the house, not so white anymore, and the sampler was edged with red hearts. Just beneath the hearts at the top, Momma had stitched a homily in capital letters: MAY THIS HOUSE BE A HOUSE OF PEACE. MAY ALL WHO DWELL HEREIN KNOW ITS COMFORTS.

A painting hung on the wall to my left, as though to illustrate the basic principle. Cows, black-and-white Holsteins, grazed on a broad hillside, white clouds above, a red barn in the background. According to my dad, the painting was done by the same itinerant artist who created the portrait on the opposite wall. The man in the portrait had piercing, blue eyes, a prominent nose, and a gray beard that began two inches below his eyes and fell to the top of his chest. His small, narrow mouth was completely dominated by his beard and mustache. This was Ezekiel Taylor, my great-great-grandfather.

I was on my way to the kitchen, but I lingered for a moment before the one piece of furniture my mother treasured: a mahogany sideboard inherited from an aunt. The sideboard was made in Philadelphia decades earlier, and the swirling grain of its veneer made the whole piece seem almost to be in motion. This effect was enhanced by the sideboard’s front feet, a pair of hand-carved paws that dug in to the carpet as though ready to spring forward. A photograph in a hickory hand-carved frame rested on the sideboard, taken at my parents’ wedding. The photograph showed the newlyweds, Momma in a white dress lent to her by her mother, Dad in a plain, black suit—standing before a trellis covered with white roses. Mom looked happy. Dad was suitably grave.

Of course, it’s much easier to describe furniture than human feelings. I felt uneasy, a stranger in my own home, as if I’d somehow wandered into the wrong house. There was loneliness, too, a loneliness that would haunt me over time, and more fear than a boy should have to handle on his own. I think I might have drowned in that fear if I hadn’t wandered into the kitchen and noticed a little stack of white masks on the table where we took our meals. I knew at that moment I would go to the courthouse and find my mother. I would disobey my father. I had to do something. I couldn’t just wait and wait all on my own, with nothing but my fear to keep me company.

And even as I made this decision, which surely violated the commandment about honoring my parents, my lips continued to move: “Please help Momma, please help Momma, please help Momma.”

* * *

I followed my dad out of the house the next morning, accepted a hug, and said goodbye. We couldn’t know what Dad would find when he got to the hospital, given the hours that had passed since he had left. I’d like to say I was more hopeful than afraid. After all, many flu patients recovered, and Momma could have improved overnight. But my thoughts were as dark as the sky was bright.

Dad turned around to wave as he stepped off the lawn and onto the road. Then I watched his back until he reached the courthouse only two hundred yards away. Two days earlier, I’d walked out onto a small woodlot owned by a farmer named Earl Wegner. The woodlot ran across a small rise and I was able to sit there, lost in the shadows, and watch the flag on the courthouse flagpole, lowered to half-mast, ripple in a light breeze. The Army tents that filled the Square were lined up in neat rows, and there were men dressed in robes sitting on benches outside. Others—women for the most part—moved between the tents, carrying water and towels, or buckets held at arm’s length. I didn’t know exactly what anyone was doing, but that glimpse had been enough for me before I’d run into Joe Anderson. Now I wanted more.

Calculation was new to me, as I said, but when I fell into it, I fell all the way. First thing, I decided not to approach the hospital from the front. I’d follow the creek to the back of the courthouse, where I’d wait until nobody was looking before I crossed the lawn. Once I got between the rows of tents, I’d act like I belonged there. If anyone asked, I’d tell them I was visiting my mother and that my father was waiting for me.

I don’t exactly know how I came upon this plan. It just seemed to settle in, like I’d opened a door to find a secret room already furnished. But I’m not claiming I wasn’t scared. My heart was pounding away in my chest by the time I found a spot behind the hospital shielded by a clump of aspens.

The smell claimed me first, an ugly reek of slop buckets in need of emptying and unwashed bodies and something else I didn’t recognize but now know was blood coughed out by dying men and women. I felt these mingled odors as a solid force, like a wall that had to be climbed, and I was overwhelmed for a minute or two. Then, slowly, I became aware of people’s coughing, moaning, crying. The delirious screamed.

Something inside told me to run for home even faster than Max Flack had circled the bases in Chicago. But I stood my ground. I wanted to see for myself, wanted to see my momma alive and breathing. This was something I just had to do.

I took a mask from my pocket and pulled it over my nose and mouth, then stepped out into the Square. Once I got started, I didn’t hesitate. No, sir. I walked up and onto a pathway of brown, trampled grass that separated the tents, my heart only stopping once or twice along the way. But Joe Anderson was right. Though adults moved about, some volunteers and some family, I went unnoticed. Then I saw other children, older than me and accompanied by adults. They’d come to say their last goodbyes to those they loved every bit as much as I loved my momma. I didn’t know at the time, but their presence encouraged me. Now all I had to do was keep one eye out for my father while I searched.

I didn’t get ten feet before someone called out to me. Not one of the adults in charge, but a patient—a boy I already knew.

“Who’re ya lookin’ for, Lucas?” Petey Aberg asked.

I didn’t recognize Petey at first. He’d lost weight, a lot of weight, and his face was tinged with gray.

“I’m gettin’ better,” he told me before I said anything. “I can breathe now.”

“That’s swell, Petey. I’m trying to find my momma.”

“Did you get the flu this spring?”

“Yes, in June.”

“They’re sayin’ you can’t catch it twice.” He smiled, revealing teeth as gray as his face. Then he began to cough and didn’t stop until his hand was stained with blood. I waited until he could draw breath again, wishing I could do something for him. Finally he pointed to the courthouse. “The ladies’ ward is inside.”

Built at a time when public works were meant to speak for a community’s pride, the courthouse, which also served as the county seat, was much too grand for little Louristan. Three stories high and topped with a dome, you had to walk up two flights of concrete steps and pass between a row of columns to reach the front doors. A mural covered the interior of the dome, a history of Bear County that included Indians, pioneer farmers, grazing Holsteins, and a ferocious, black bear raised up on its hind legs. Marble columns, emerald green and streaked with gold, supported an upstairs balcony that circled the dome. A pair of winding staircases led to the second floor, their wrought-iron banisters an intricate marvel of flowers and vines.

I’d been in the courthouse before, accompanied by my father, and been suitably impressed with its grandeur. But not on that day. Now I hesitated at the edge of the rotunda, which was covered with beds, so scared I could barely think. What if, what if, what if? I was too frightened to answer the question, so I reverted to my only defense and began to pray.

“Please help Momma, please help Momma, please help Momma.”

Though every window was raised, the smell was much worse inside the courthouse—a mix of blood and death, of incontinence and vomit, of a community overwhelmed, of people who could no longer care for their own. The moaning and crying were louder too, and not all of the crying came from the sick. I saw men and women, healthy in every respect, bent over the fallen, weeping rivers of tears.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to get my bearings. The interior beneath the dome was jammed with cots, the passageways between the cots narrow and congested. I could see women on the cots closest to me, but Momma wasn’t among them. I didn’t see my dad either, which encouraged and frightened me at the same time.

Joe Anderson’s words came back to me as I began my search. The patient lying on the first cot was covered with a sheet from head to toe, all except for her right foot, which hung over the bed and was, indeed, black. The sight scared me, as if I weren’t already frightened enough, but I kept on going. The visitors I slid around spoke German and Swedish and Norwegian. The patients moaned and cried and mumbled to themselves. The ones still alive anyway. There were also those, like the first woman I passed, who were covered with sheets, and some part of me knew Momma could be underneath any one of them.

I could have asked one of the volunteers if they knew where to find Mrs. Winnie Lee Taylor. I thought of doing just that, but I lacked the courage, and my steps eventually carried me up the stairs to the second floor. Everyone referred to our county seat as “the courthouse,” but it housed the office of our board of commissioners and the sheriff’s office as well as our tiny jail. These offices ran in two wings on either side of the rotunda, and there were cots everywhere in the offices and in the halls. Folks moved about, all masked, and there were bodies here too, covered with sheets.

I walked down the first corridor, trying my best not to look too hard at the women who struggled for life, trying to ignore the awful gurgling as they fought for air. A few reached out to me as I passed, calling me by someone else’s name. I’m ashamed to admit I shied away, not afraid of catching the flu but driven by something more primitive. Or so I’ve come to believe, though I wasn’t weighing my reactions at that moment. I knew I had to find my momma and I remembered to pray. There wasn’t room for anything else.

I’d come almost to the end of the corridor when I finally saw my momma and rushed forward. Momma’s eyes were open and her lips were moving, but she didn’t turn her head to look at me. She was pitifully thin and her face was gray and the air bubbled in her lungs as she fought for breath. But she was clean, her sheet and blanket recently washed. Instinctively I looked at her feet, but they were covered.

“Momma? It’s me, Lucas.” I hesitated as though searching for the magic words, an abracadabra to conjure the rabbit from the empty hat. “I’m your boy, remember?”

Her lips continued to move, though no words came out. I told her the pig was fed and the chicken coop cleaned and school was closed but I expected go back soon. Still nothing. Her eyes seemed to look right through the back of my head.

An immense sorrow washed through me, dark as the inside of a cave, a place of utter loneliness. I stood as though rooted, as though my feet were bolted to the courthouse floor. There had to be something I could do. There had to be. I folded my hands and began to pray. “Please help Momma, please help Momma, please help Momma.”

“Lucas?” The voice belonged to my dad.

“Momma doesn’t know me anymore,” I whispered.

Dad’s arms came around me and I was hoisted from the floor and hugged to his chest. In an instant, no longer defiant, much less calculating, I became an eight-year-old boy again. I started to bawl, and once my tears began to flow there was no stopping them. I think I might have cried until the end of time if Momma hadn’t finally spoken my name.

“Lucas.” The single word emerged from her mouth, thick and liquid, but her eyes, when I flew to her, were alert. I laid my head on her chest and felt her arm come over my back, her weakened touch light as a feather.

“Momma, Momma, Momma.”

Momma said nothing for a moment, and I have to suppose she was gathering her strength. I felt her hand rise from my back to stroke my hair.

“Are you taking care…of your father?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m trying.”

“That’s good, Lucas. I’m proud of you son.”

She brushed my hair a bit, just a single, slow stroke of her palm, and I closed my eyes, savoring the familiar feeling. Then, just as slowly, her hand dropped back to the bed. I watched it move in slow motion, watched as her fingers settled onto the white sheet as limp with sickness as she was. Looking back up to her face I could see she was asleep, or perhaps unconscious. All I knew was she was no longer looking at me, and no longer knew who I was. Tears again welled in my eyes.

“Hush now,” Dad said, bending down to scoop me up, and just like that he carried me home. Like I was a baby, a lost child—and in a way I was. I knew now what was happening, now I had seen it for myself. I knew the flu was bad. It had hit Momma hard. And now I knew she wasn’t coming home.

The next day bore my fear out. I didn’t go back to the hospital, but Dad did, and when he came home he told me Momma had passed from this earth. As I heard the words, the church bells were ringing, calling all the mourners to another funeral. Those bells continued to toll day and night for what seemed like forever, reminding me every time of what we had lost. A reminder that nothing else would ever be the same.