Skip Rock Shallows (14 page)

Stanley James and Tern Still spent the better part of the morning assessing the damage to the coal camp. Though many homes were missing some shingles or sported busted windows, no lives had been lost.

“That’s a miracle in itself,” Stanley said as he and Tern watched men unroll tar paper atop what was left of Mrs. DeWitt’s boardinghouse.

Tern nodded. He knew what Stanley meant. There had been many anxious moments that morning as he and his crew searched the wreckage for survivors. At the Poors’ house in particular, he’d witnessed a true miracle. The house had pancaked, the roof sitting on the foundation. They heard Mrs. Poor screaming from what used to be her kitchen. It took six men to heft the roof so that she and Mr. Poor could scramble out.

A bone poked through Mrs. Poor’s arm, but she wouldn’t hear of going to the clinic until somebody found her baby. Elbows found the little fellow under the debris of the front porch. He was still in his crib—still sleeping and sucking his thumb. There wasn’t a scratch on him.

Ugly as the destruction was, a body couldn’t help but admire the finesse of the storm. At the boardinghouse, which had one wing ripped off, Tern found eight forks from Mrs. DeWitt’s silver service stuck in the wall over the mantel. He pulled them out one at a time as if from a tough piece of meat. Landis Blair had come and asked some men to help him get his cow off the roof of the barn. The very cow that had caused little Timmy such trouble. He said she was bawling her head off. Landis also reported the storm sucked all the water from his farm pond. And then a small thing, but telling: the house where Lilly boarded had no front door or roof. Mr. James said the storm left the screen door but took the other. It was hard to figure the strangeness of it all. It was like the storm had fingers that picked and chose what to demolish and what to leave alone.

Mr. James hadn’t needed to tell Tern about Lilly’s door. He’d seen it for himself. As soon as the wind allowed, he’d dressed and run out into the dark to check on her. He was thankful to see Mr. James was already there. As usual, Tern hung back, watching, making sure she was truly all right.

“Paul?” he heard her ask. “Mr. James, have you seen Paul?”

He could have answered the question easy enough. He could step right from behind the tree where he lurked and say, “I’ve seen him. He’s fine.” But he didn’t. It wasn’t his place.

Lilly spent the morning stitching and mending. One more gash and she’d be out of suture supplies. Somehow, Paul had commandeered the more interesting setting of bones and molding of casts, and he’d commandeered Ned to help him.

Her face flooded with shame. What difference did it make who did what as long as folks were taken care of?

“That’s it, then?” Paul strode to the door and looked out into the yard. “Everybody’s put back together?”

“Appears to be so,” Lilly said as she filled out a supply form for Ned to take to the pharmacy in town. She waved the paper to dry the ink. “It was wonderful to have your help today, Paul.”

“Glad to be of service,” he said with a droll smile. “Say, might we get away from here for a moment? I feel as if I haven’t had a minute with my girl.”

Lilly hesitated. She really didn’t have a second, much less a minute. She turned an amber vial of medication over and over. Her mind was miles away with Aunt Orie.

“Seriously,” Paul said, reaching out to her. “I didn’t come all this way just to practice medicine.” His clasp was sure and strong as he pulled her out of her chair and sang, “All work and no play makes Lilly a very dull girl.”

Lilly couldn’t help but laugh. “Let’s walk back to my place. I saved my kit and my Bible; everything else might have been blown away for all I know.”

“Does it really matter? You won’t be here much longer anyway.”

True enough,
Lilly thought.

Due to flooding, the mines were closed for the day, but the camp was still a beehive of activity. Men scampered across roofs with hammer and nails, pried broken glass from window frames, and hauled off trash. Women toiled over roiling tubs of water, arms bent like chicken wings, scrubbing the storm away on ribbed washboards. The clean smell of the lye soap they used perfumed the air. Raucous boys ran up and down the road, shouting and chasing each other as if a circus had come to town. Serious-faced girls kept to the shade of porches, corralling younger siblings, often as not with a fat baby brother or sister perched on their skinny hips. Lilly felt a stitch in her heart. When had it all become so achingly familiar?

As they passed by the Jameses’ house, Myrtie waved them over. Lilly recognized several of her own dresses and shirtwaists flapping on the clothesline in Myrtie’s side yard. “Some men are a-working on the little house,” she said. “I took the liberty of moving your personal things outen the way.”

“Did you have any damage here?” Paul asked.

“No, ain’t it amazing? That storm cloud was playing hopscotch—a hit here, a miss there. Weren’t God good, though? Sparing everybody’s lives?” She gave a satisfied grin. “This’ll swell the church coffers come Sunday morning. Ain’t nothing like a good storm to set folks on the right path.”

Paul nodded.

Myrtie caught Lilly’s eye as if she needed a private word.

“Paul, would you excuse us for a moment?” Lilly asked.

“I’ll just walk over to your place—see if I can be of some service.”

“Thank you. I’ll be right there.” As soon as he was out of earshot, she turned to her landlady. “What is it, Myrtie?”

“You’ll be wondering about your unmentionables. Everything was soaked,” Myrtie said as she drew Lilly through the front door and out the back. “I washed them out and hung them here on my private line.” She indicated a wire clothesline strung between two posts on her back porch. “I couldn’t very well tell you that with your fellow standing right there.”

Lilly’s chemises, petticoats, knee-length pantalets, and cotton hose dried on the line. Truthfully, Lilly hadn’t given them a passing thought, but now Myrtie’s act of kindness made her eyes brim with tears. “Myrtie, this is so thoughtful.”

“I never liked to hang my drawers on the side-yard line for prying eyes to see. Stanley strung this up for me.” She rubbed the skirt of a petticoat between thumb and index finger. “Still a bit damp. I’ll have them done up in no time.”

Before Lilly could properly thank her, Myrtie was rushing through the door and heading for the cookstove. “Oh, my aching back, if I let these beans boil dry . . .” The pot of pintos steamed as she lifted the lid and stirred with a long-handled spoon. “Thank goodness. My head’s not on straight today.”

Myrtie looked over her shoulder as she poured water into the pan from a granite pitcher. “Your sundries are there on the table. I’ll put them in the back bedroom directly. You’ll be staying there until the little house is all fixed up.”

Lilly looked through the few things she’d brought with her from Lexington: some photos and her dresser set. She opened her writing desk, afraid of what she would find, but all was tidy and dry. Flipping through the stationery, she saw the letter from the night before. She took a moment to fold the pages with sharp creases and put it in the envelope. She could give it to Paul to post for her when he left to go back to Boston in a couple of days. It would be a rite of passage—marking the end of one part of her life and opening the door to another. She ran a ribbon of mucilage along the envelope’s flap and closed it—sealing her fate.

Unbidden, the perplexing Scripture stole into her thoughts.
“Thine own right hand can save thee.”
She supposed that meant she had saved herself through the writing of the letter—with her own right hand—but she needed time to think about it and time was in short supply.

“Myrtie, did you find my galoshes in the mess?”

“Yes, ma’am, you’ll find them on the front porch, setting in the sun.” Myrtie put her spoon on a cracked saucer and turned from the stove. “Whereabouts are you going?”

“I’m going to the Eldridges’. I’ve had Orie on my mind all morning. I’d really like to consult about her case with Dr. Hamilton while I have the opportunity.”

Myrtie poured cornmeal into a yellowware mixing bowl and cracked an egg in the center. “I heard tell that when Dr. Hamilton leaves, he’s taking Ned Tippen with him—heard he’s going to make Ned a new leg. Is that so?”

Goodness, Paul had seen Ned only yesterday. How did this get spread so quickly? “I don’t know what has been decided. I’m not sure what Ned wants to do.”

Myrtie plopped a dollop of bacon grease on the bottom of a cast-iron skillet, smeared it around, slid the heavy skillet onto the top rack of the oven, and closed the door. “Reckon what a body would make a leg outen? China would smash, and cast iron would be so heavy Ned couldn’t drag it around.” Myrtie shook her head ever so slightly as she stirred buttermilk into the bowl. “Seemed like he did fine with his peg.”

Lilly could imagine the chatter that had taken place over scrub boards and clotheslines this morning—as if the storm wasn’t fodder enough for gossip. “Are folks worrying about Ned?”

“I wouldn’t like to be putting words in other people’s mouths, but you know what they say ’bout them big-city hospitals.”

“No, what do they say?”

Myrtie looked around. She answered in a low voice. “They experiment on people—especially poor people. Ned might go away and come back with no legs—or four legs. A body never knows.”

Lilly shook her head. Experimentation—that old saw again. “Now, Myrtie, you know folks said the same thing about me when I first came here. They said I would experiment on Darrell, remember?”

“Yeah, but that was before we knew you was kin.” She wrapped her hand in the tail of her apron, using it as a potholder to pull the smoking skillet from the oven. The bacon grease popped when she poured the cornmeal mix in. “You can’t trust nobody but your kin unless they’s somebody else’s close kin.” The oven door slapped shut on the unbaked corn bread. “And that’s the Lord’s truth.”

Myrtie handed Lilly a brown paper sack with a folded-over top. “You better take this if you’re heading to Orie’s. And you’d best stop at the shed and get Stanley’s hip boots for your doctor friend. That old Swampy Creek’s liable to be fractious.”

Lilly sat on the top porch step and pulled sheets of rolled newsprint from her galoshes. They were nice and dry. She put them in her carryall along with the sack of food and the quart jar of tea Myrtie had provided. She’d get the waders and Paul, return to the office for Orie’s medicine, and hope to find Ned there.

The screen door squeaked open. “You all try and get back in time for the fish fry tonight.”

“Fish fry?”

“Yeah, over to the schoolhouse. Landis Blair’s supplying the fish. There were hundreds of them flopping in the mud of his pond that got sucked dry. I’m taking beans and corn bread and maybe a couple apple pies.”

“I might be bringing Mrs. Eldridge back with me.”

“That so? Is she that bad off?”

“Yes, she is. But this is the perfect opportunity to try a new treatment, while Dr. Hamilton is here.” Lilly stood and slung the linen carryall over her shoulder. “Something just occurred to me, Myrtie. If Mrs. Eldridge comes, it’s likely her niece will come also—along with two little ones. They’ll need someplace to stay.”

“Bring them babies to me. Orie Eldridge is a fine Christian woman. I’d be tickled to help out any way I can.”

Swampy was indeed fractious, although not too deep to cross on horseback. Clumps of tattered cattails, tangles of poison ivy, felled decomposing tree trunks oozing slime mold, and no telling what else dotted the sloping banks. The beating sun reflected prisms of dull color from circles of oily slicks. A heavy, rank odor exuded from the water.

The party—comprised of Lilly, Ned, Paul, and three other men—paused on the banks of the creek, waiting for Ned’s direction.

“It’s already gone down, praise the Lord,” Ned said as he nudged the horse pulling a wagon out into the creek. “Watch for snakes.”

Lilly was amazed at how well Ned was doing despite the loss of his peg. He had pitched his crutches into the wagon bed and pulled himself onto the bench seat as if he did it every day. She needed to talk to him about accepting Paul’s offer as soon as she could. She was praying he would say yes.

Soon after they crossed, they caught Armina coming out of the henhouse, a woven basket on one arm and Bubby in the other. A rusty black bonnet protected her face from the sun and a long feed-sack apron covered her dress. She was barefoot.

“Let me go up first,” Lilly said. Nudging her horse forward, she raised her hand in greeting. “Armina—hello. We’ve come to check on you all. I see you made it through the storm.”

“And I see you brung an army with you.” Armina stared at the entourage of men and horses.

Lilly dismounted and wrapped her mount’s reins around the low-hanging branch of an apple tree. “I only brought folks who already know Aunt Orie. They’ve come to help us get her to Skip Rock for that treatment we talked about.”

Armina lifted one freckled arm to point at Paul. The egg basket scooted down to rest in the crook of her elbow. “That ain’t the teetotal truth. For certain sure, he ain’t from these parts.”

Lilly backtracked. “You’re right, of course. I wasn’t thinking. That’s Dr. Paul Hamilton. I’ve asked him to consult on this case.”

“Aunt Orie ain’t a case. If you was in the need of a consult, whatever that is, ye should have asked me first.”

Lilly’s temper flared. Armina was like dealing with a distempered dog, all growl with a bite. “Shouldn’t whether she sees Dr. Hamilton or not be Aunt Orie’s decision?”

Armina’s shoulders slumped. She barely caught the egg basket before it slid off her hand. Suddenly she looked like the vulnerable girl she was. “She’s real sick, Doc. She took a bad turn last night. I was just going to fix her some custard.”

Lilly touched Armina’s arm ever so gently. “Let us help you.”

“Don’t be bringing in all them men.”

“No, just Dr. Hamilton and me.”

“All right then. They’s a water trough beside the barn if the horses need water.” Armina gave Lilly the egg basket, then looked toward the riders. “That’un knows where the well house is if the men need refreshment.”

Lilly caught the ghost of a smile on Armina’s face. She couldn’t resist a tease. “You mean Ned? I’m surprised you even recall him.”

“Humph. It ain’t every day you come across a one-legged man.”

Heading back, Ned halted the party at the near edge of Swampy. It was upstream from their previous crossing. Ned was looking for the flattest, least rocky of places. They’d decided Aunt Orie would have to be carried down the mountain on a canvas litter. They’d brought a wagon in hopes, but it proved too jolting for a body in her condition.

Instead, Armina and the babies rode in the back of the wagon that Ned drove. Lilly stayed on horseback while Paul insisted on helping the other men carry the litter.

Ned hopped down and walked to the sloping bank of Swampy. He poked the ground in various places with one crutch. Ahead of his probing, bullfrogs plopped off the bank and a sunning water snake slithered away. Ned seemed to be studying the way the holes filled with water, but Lilly couldn’t figure why.

Paul took advantage of the wait to pull on the hip-length rubber waders Myrtie had provided.

“Looks safe,” Ned said. “I’ll go across first.”

After the wagon crossed, the stretcher bearers chose to traverse a sandbar where the footing was shifty but the water level low. Standing in the stirrups, Lilly watched her patient for any sign of distress. The men struggled to keep the bulging stretcher higher than the level of the stagnant water. Flat on her back, Aunt Orie held on so tightly that her knuckles were white.

The party was nearly onshore when Paul lost hold. He seemed to be struggling against the current, although Swampy was anything but fast flowing. The other men heaved the litter up the low bank.

Lilly directed her horse toward Paul, but Ned turned in the wagon seat and yelled to her, “Get out. Get that horse out of the water!”

Despite her instinct to assist Paul, Lilly did as she was bid, leaving him fighting an unseen force. “Paul! What is wrong?” Was he having a heart attack brought on by the exertion of carrying the three-hundred-pound patient over uneven ground and slippery creek rock? Was he being attacked by a turtle or bitten by a snake? She slid off her horse. She had to go to him.

One of the men jerked her back before she got a foot in the creek. “You’ll make it worse, ma’am,” he said.

The scene burned into her brain with the intensity of a bad dream: The bleached-white stretcher on the ground, Aunt Orie propped in a sitting position against a wagon wheel, her head and shoulders protected by a blanket roll. Ned racing to the bank, his crutches flying across the ground. The two babies peeping over the gate of the wagon with round, frightened eyes. A single high-flying crow cawing a raspy warning.

Paul was trapped by something unseen, already up to his lower chest in the dirty water. “I can’t breathe,” he wheezed.

“Quicksand!” Ned yelled. “Don’t move a muscle, Dr. Hamilton.”

“Somebody fetch a stick,” Armina hollered.

One of the men found a barren poplar branch and stood on the bank with it, not sure what to do next.

“I’m the slightest,” Armina said. “I’ll take it.”

“Easy . . . easy,” Ned instructed as Armina removed her shoes and apron and cautiously waded into the slimy pool. Leaning forward, she propelled one end of the long pole Paul’s way. “Don’t lose hold of your end,” Ned said.

Armina paused and shot Ned a look. “Do I look like I ain’t did this before?”

Lilly sank to the ground. Ragweed prickled her nose and rye grass cushioned her knees. As a child she’d heard stories of people who were forever lost to unexpected swirls of quicksand that sucked the life from its hapless victims. It was well known that once it caught you in its bizarre vise, any movement made the situation worse. She could barely stand the look of fear on Paul’s face. And to think he was here because of her.

Without taking her eyes off Paul, she began to pray. “Heavenly Father,” she bartered, “please save Paul. I’ll do whatever You want, go wherever You want—just please, please, save him from the quicksand.”

While Lilly prayed, the men clasped hands and formed a chain, linking the last hand with Armina’s. Armina pushed the slim poplar branch forward until it brushed Paul’s fingertips. Frantic, he lunged for it. With an obscene slurp, the deep mass of mixed loose sand and water swallowed his body up to the armpits. Thankfully, he had managed to keep one arm free.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!” people yelled.

“Them waders has filled up and got him trapped,” one man said.

“I once saw a pool of quicksand take down a heifer—like it was nothing more than a soda cracker,” another commented.

“Cheese and crackers,” the first replied.

Lilly sucked in her breath and held it. Her sweetheart was going to drown before her eyes, but for the life of her, she couldn’t turn away.

Armina strained against the murky water, nearly losing her slippery grasp on the living chain that kept her safe.

After several thwarted attempts, Paul clutched the branch and hung on. The chain began to inch him forward. Emitting a huge glop of a sound, the quicksand gave up its prey. Paul was hauled to the bank. His lungs heaved for air as his body rested on a matted carpet of prickly catbrier and creeping three-toothed cinquefoil. Tattered and torn, he’d lost the waders, his socks, and his glasses, but he was alive.

Tears of thankfulness shimmered in Lilly’s eyes as she hurried to his side. Gathering her skirts around her, she knelt beside Paul and wiped grit from his face with the embroidered hankie from her pocket. His eyes were even greener when seen without his spectacles.

Her heart shifted for the barest moment as a pair of mesmerizing blue eyes replaced the green ones before her. She shook her head to clear her vision. Why would she be thinking of another man, a veritable stranger, at a time like this?

“Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry.”

Stunned, he lay there for a long moment, gasping and spitting up brackish fluid. Finally he found his voice. “Darling Lilly, Boston is looking really good right now.”

It was nearly suppertime before Lilly had Aunt Orie settled in the clinic’s back room. The poor old woman sounded worse than Paul had when he coughed up sand and creek water. Armina flitted around like a bird out of the nest. She rearranged the pillows behind her aunt’s back, raised, then lowered the window, added a blanket, then decided it wasn’t needed. The two babies slept at Aunt Orie’s feet, exhausted from the excitement of the day.

“After a night to get acclimated, we’ll start her treatment,” Paul said, peering nearsightedly at the patient. He was dapper as always, having found a change of clothes and dry shoes among his things in the undamaged wing of the boardinghouse. All he lacked was his prescription spectacles.

A light knock at the door caused them all to turn. Myrtie and two ladies Lilly recognized from church stood at the threshold.

Aunt Orie raised a trembling hand in greeting. “Myrtie,” she said, “it’s been ages.”

Myrtie went to the bedside. She smoothed wispy strands of hair from Orie’s forehead. “Tell us what you need. We’re here for you.”

“Rest,” Orie managed to say. “Just rest.”

“How about us ladies stay with Orie for a while?” Myrtie asked, looking first at Lilly and Paul and then at Armina. “Ain’t no reason you young folks shouldn’t go to the fish fry. After the happenings around here today, you all could use a little fun.”

Lilly watched Armina closely. She wondered how long it had been since the girl had had anything resembling fun.

“I wish you’d go, Mina,” Aunt Orie whispered. “It’d do me good to think on it. These ladies are my friends from long ago.”

Confusion clouded Armina’s features. “I could take the babies.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Myrtie said. “We’ll watch these young’uns.”

“We could go for just a minute maybe,” Armina agreed.

Myrtie removed her bonnet and unpacked the valise she’d brought along. She put a stack of cotton fleece diapers, a shaker of talcum powder, and a small tub of Vaseline on a side table. Matter-of-factly, she shook out an apron and tied it around her waist. “That’s settled then. You young folks go along. We’ll be fine.”