The Measure of Katie Calloway,: A Novel (24 page)

He had just turned to make certain Ernie and Cletus were standing by to chop off the limbs when he heard a sound that sent a chill up his spine.

“Papa?” Betsy’s voice called. “Where are you, Papa?”

He whirled, searching for his daughter.
Please, God, not in the path of the descending tree!

And then he saw a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Skypilot was running, faster than Robert had ever seen a man run, directly in line with the tree. The preacher who wasn’t a preacher anymore must have spotted the child before she even called out.

Robert had never felt so helpless in his life. Even Gettysburg had not left him feeling as useless. His heart pounded as he watched Skypilot race to save Betsy’s life.

Skypilot did not hesitate when he reached the little girl. He scooped her up without breaking stride while tons of pine plummeted toward earth.

And then it was over.

A tangle of limbs obscured Skypilot and Betsy. He didn’t know if either of them were alive. He grabbed his axe and began to run.

Years ago, while still a child, he had seen a man crushed by a falling tree at his father’s camp. It was, at that moment, deep in the Maine forests, far from any medical help, that he had decided to become a doctor.

He knew exactly the kind of damage a falling tree could do to the human body.

The other men were running too. Robert had prayed many times in his life but never as fervently or as desperately as he prayed now—that his daughter would be unharmed and alive and the man who had risked his life to save her would be spared.

Then he heard Betsy’s screams. No words, just screams that went on and on echoing throughout the forest.

He had to crawl over the tree trunk to get to them. Skypilot was pinned to the earth, a broken limb across his chest, another limb across his legs. He couldn’t see Betsy, but her screams were coming from beneath some pine boughs about ten feet from Skypilot. As Ernie and Cletus began to chop at the butt of the limb that was pinning Skypilot to the ground, Robert waded through the branches, oblivious to scratches and scrapes, frantically digging his way through the green boughs covering his daughter.

“Betsy! Lay still. I’m coming!”

Other hands parted limbs. When he saw his daughter, she was curled into a ball. At the sound of his voice, she stopped screaming and started sobbing so hard her body shook.

As he ran his hands over her tiny body, he found no broken bones, no puncture wounds. Only a multitude of scratches and one scraped knee.

“He threw me,” Betsy sobbed. “Skypilot
threw
me!”

“He saved your life, honey.” Robert gathered her up in his arms. “Skypilot threw you as far away from the tree as he could to save you.”

“Boss!” Ernie shouted from behind him. “You’d better come here.”

Betsy was clinging to him.

“Let go, sweetheart.” He tried to pull her arms from around his neck. “I have to see to Skypilot now. I’ll come back for you as fast as I can.”

“No!” She fought and kicked at Klaas, who gently pulled her away from him. It broke Robert’s heart to see her so upset, but he had to go to the injured man.

“Boss!”

“I’m coming.”

Robert fought his way back through the limbs to where Skypilot lay. His time spent getting to Betsy had taken less than three minutes, but it was three minutes Skypilot couldn’t spare.

Ernie had managed to saw through the two limbs that had crashed into Skypilot’s body, and now Cletus and two others were gently lifting them off him.

It was bad.

Robert’s heart sank as he took in the full extent of Skypilot’s injuries. One leg was twisted at a horrible angle. More than a few ribs were broken. He’d sustained a head wound. But the worst thing of all—the thing that made Robert’s gut twist in sympathy—was the large splinter of broken limb that had punctured Skypilot’s stomach like a dull knife.

Abdominal wounds were notorious for becoming infected. During the worst battles, when the injured were too numerous to be removed quickly from the battlefield, those soldiers who had stomach wounds were frequently left behind to die—the chances of a doctor being able to save them was too remote to be a medical priority.

But he had to try.

“Let’s get him back to camp,” he instructed the men who were helplessly standing around.

“Is he gonna make it, boss?” Ernie asked.

“God only knows.”

The men cut two straight poles from limbs and fashioned a makeshift stretcher out of their own coats. With a sober and frightened Betsy now quiet in Klaas’s arms, Robert directed the lifting and carrying of the wounded man. The shanty boys were as tender and solicitous as women as they carried their fallen comrade away.

Robert walked by Skypilot’s side, helping to keep the stretcher steady, as he tried to prepare himself, once again, to perform surgery under primitive conditions. He had sworn he would never touch those instruments again. He doubted he could do so now. The last time he had tried, his hands had trembled so badly he knew it was impossible.

There was a term coined, while he was a doctor in the Union army, for an emotional condition that made a soldier unfit for duty. Too many battles, too many fallen comrades, too many gunshots took a toll on a man. The government called it “soldier’s heart,” and some men never recovered from the tremors and nervous condition.

For him, it had been a different sort of hand-to-hand combat. He had been in charge of too many tents filled with dying and wounded. Too many men he couldn’t save.

When he had dealt with patients who had this disorder, he, too, called it “soldier’s heart.” But when it came to himself, he called it cowardice. It was a sin to take his God-given talent and medical training and bury it because he wasn’t man enough to deal with what he had experienced in the war. He knew this. He was ashamed of this. But he was incapable of ever operating again.

Except now—he had no choice.

The man who had saved his daughter’s life was dying, and Robert knew that he was Skypilot’s only hope.

21

We have sawmills all o’er the land;

they saw the lumber with a band;

they’ll take your leg or take your hand

and leave you crippled in Michigan.

“Don’t Come to Michigan”
—1800s shanty song

Katie had just finished a masterpiece. The cake had turned out even lovelier than she had hoped, and she was certain it was going to astonish Robert. It was worthy, in her estimation, of a fancy wedding.

It had been nice to have Jigger gone while she worked on it. No doubt he would have poked fun at her fancy white icing and the rosettes she had so painstakingly created. She had been forced to be extremely creative in finding the right-sized pans in which to bake the cake. A couple of skillets had been brought into play, and several cake edges trimmed to make the shape she wanted—but it had all been worth it.

What better than a beautiful birthday cake to remind them all of the traditional date for the celebration of the birth of Christ? There was little enough religion in this camp.

“What do you think?” she asked Moon Song, who was nursing her baby.

“Taste?” Moon Song asked. It was one of the words she had learned recently and used often. Sometimes Katie wondered if Moon Song would ever get filled. In some ways, she was as bad as the men.

Katie gave her a spoon with leftover icing on it. Like Ned, Moon Song loved anything sweet. Then she proudly carried the cake to the table and set it smack dab in the middle where it would be the first thing the men and Robert would see when they came in this evening. She could already imagine the compliments she would get.

Humming, she went back to the kitchen area to finish supper preparations. She would make an oyster stew tonight, and would infuse it with plenty of good, fresh cream and sweet butter, thanks to her lovely cow.

She was so engrossed in her work that she didn’t hear the shouts at first—not until Moon Song jumped up and ran to the window. When she did look out, what she saw made no sense.

The men were coming back in the early afternoon. The sun was still shining and several more hours of work could be accomplished. This had never happened before.

Klaas was in the forefront of the group, carrying Betsy, and the two boys and Jigger were trailing him. The others were all clustered around something they were carrying.

Her hand flew to her mouth as she realized what she was seeing. Someone had been hurt!

Frantically, she scanned the crowd and nearly wept with relief when she saw Robert walking beside the stretcher. She couldn’t tell who the person was on the stretcher, but at least it wasn’t Robert. They were heading straight toward the cook shanty.

Robert was the first through the door. “Clear this out of here!” He swept the carefully washed tin place settings off the table with his arm.

She leapt to grab the cake before he could send it crashing to the floor as well. Carefully, she moved it to the worktable.

Then she saw Skypilot—and the cake over which she had so lovingly labored lost all meaning.

She did not have to ask what had happened. This was a lumber camp. Men got hurt.

“Dad-blamed trees!” Jigger was practically in tears. “Ever last one of ’em is out to kill a fellow.”

“Do you have any boiling water?” Robert asked. “Please say that you do.”

By the grace of God, she did have water boiling. With the rare occurrence of all the men and children gone for the afternoon, she had finished her cake early, so that she and Moon Song could indulge in the luxury of a bath while they had the warm cook shanty all to themselves. It was such a bother carrying buckets of hot water from the kitchen to the cabin. She had already hung up a couple sheets for privacy just in case someone
did
wander in.

“Plenty,” she said.

“Good.” He yanked down one of the clean sheets she had just hung up. “Has this been slept on?”

“No.” She was puzzled why that would be important. “I took it off the clothesline only yesterday.”

“If it’s been dried in the sun, it will do.” He spread the sheet over the table and instructed the men to lay Skypilot upon it. The big logger was deathly pale and his clothes were saturated with blood. She could hardly believe the damage that had been done.

“Henri, there’s a black medical bag beneath my bunk. Go get it,” he said. “Katie, run and get my surgical tools from the cabin.”

She hesitated, trying to process the fact that Robert was actually going to do surgery.

“Now!” he barked.

She bolted through the door and ran to the cabin. Scooting the chair over to the wall, she dug the surgeon’s box out from beneath the eaves and hurried back. When she returned, Robert had cut off much of Skypilot’s clothing. Jigger was holding the baby, and Moon Song was washing the blood off the injured man’s face.

The three children were cowering in a corner. Thomas was wide-eyed, Ned looked pale, Betsy was sucking her thumb.

Robert seemed to notice their presence about the same time Katie did. “Somebody get these children out of here!”

Ernie quickly ushered them out of the cookhouse, glancing worriedly over his shoulder as he did so.

“Katie,” Robert said, “put all those instruments in the water. Then build up the fire as hot as you can get it. They need to boil hard.”

She had no idea why he wanted her to do this. The instruments looked just fine to her as she removed them from the case.

“Why am I doing this?”

“Just trust me, Katie!”

She did as he said. Trusting him was becoming a habit. “Is he conscious?”

“No, he passed out from pain on the trip here,” Robert said. “Put a cup of your saleratus in as well.”

Katie measured out a cup of the ingredient she used to make her biscuits rise and dumped it in the water. Like everyone there, she desperately wanted Skypilot to survive, but Robert’s instructions were getting stranger and stranger.

“Found it!” Henri came running in with a black bag in his hand.

“Dip out a washbasin of boiled water,” Robert commanded. “And bring it here.”

Even with all the people crowding the room, there was little sound except for Skypilot’s labored breathing and the sound of her dipping water into the pan.

As she placed the basin on the table, Robert pulled out a bottle of white powder and sprinkled it into the water.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Carbolic acid.” Robert placed a bundle of silken-looking thread and a curved needle into the water.

And then he did the strangest thing of all. After being in such a hurry, he took the time to clean his nails with the point of a knife. While Moon Song washed as much blood as she could from Skypilot’s broken body, Robert stood there meticulously paring his nails.

“What are you doing?” Blackie lunged forward to grasp the large splinter of wood from Skypilot’s stomach. “At least take that pine stick out of him before you pretty up your nails. What’s the matter with you, man?”

“Don’t.” Robert grabbed Blackie’s dirt-encrusted hand before it could grab hold of the wicked-looking piece of wood. “If he gets gangrene, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

“What do you know? You ain’t a doctor,” Sam said. “You’re not much more than a shanty boy like the rest of us. I’m gonna hitch up my mules right this minute and take him to Bay City to a
real
doctor.”

The other men began to murmur about the length of time it was taking Robert to help Skypilot.

“He won’t make it to Bay City.” Robert clicked his pocketknife shut and slid it into his pocket.

“Well, he won’t make it here neither. Not without a doctor. Bay City’s the only chance he’s got,” Tinker said.

“Ah, shaddup!” Jigger cried. “Every one of you!”

The old cook handed the baby over to Cletus and forced his scrawny body between Robert and the mutinous men. His arm had healed, but Katie knew how fragile that bad arm was. The scrappy little man held up both fists and positioned himself in a fighting stance, ready to take on anyone who tried to interfere with Robert.

“You don’t none of you know a blamed thing! This man here
is
a doctor, a Harvard ed-u-cated surgeon! Leave him alone.”

Sam looked from Jigger, to Robert, and back to Jigger again. “Then what in tarnation is he doing running a lumber camp?”

“Givin’ your sorry self a job, for one thing.” Jigger jutted his chin toward the teamster, his fists in front of his face. “Leave him be!”

For the first time, Katie understood why Robert had put up with the old man for so long.

Ignoring the drama swirling around him, Robert laid a clean dish towel flat upon the top of the hot stove. Just before it scorched, he placed it across a metal tray and, using tongs, removed each surgical tool from the boiling water and placed it on the towel.

While Jigger backed the men away, Robert rolled up his sleeves and scrubbed his hands and forearms. Then, and only then, was he ready to operate.

Except to her horror, she saw that he was
not
ready.

He picked up a scalpel and his hand started trembling. He tried to steady the hand with his other, but the shaking wouldn’t stop.

There was dead silence in the room as all who were watching realized that Robert—and Skypilot—were in deep trouble.

He laid the instrument down, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried again. Katie’s heart sank as she saw the trembling begin again.

Katie’s father’s church had been undemonstrative. The people had a deep faith, they lived righteous lives, but their prayers were private. Praying aloud was not something they did unless it was in a formal church setting. Before today, it would never have occurred to Katie to do what she was about to do.

Whether it was the Holy Spirit whispering to her, complete desperation, or a woman’s instinct, Katie put one arm around Robert’s waist and grasped his arm with her right hand.

“You can do this, my friend,” she said.

Their hands were so different. He had long, strong fingers, hers were short and stubby. His were tanned and brown. Hers were white, freckled, and still puckered from washing all her cake-making utensils. But her hand was the one that was steady and strong, and she willed that strength into him now.

“You can do this because I’m going to stand right here beside you and I’m going to pray for you as long and hard as it takes for you to get through this.”

She put both of her palms flat against his broad back and began to pray aloud.

“Give him strength, Father. Give him heart. Give him confidence. Make his hands steady and sure. Help him save the life of this good man, your servant. Give us a miracle, Father. Please give us a miracle.”

The trembling in Robert’s hand ceased.

She continued praying aloud, her hands flat against his back, asking God to give power and strength to Robert as he began to fight for Skypilot’s life.

“I’m fine now, Katie.” Robert’s voice was strong. She opened her eyes and saw that the hand holding the scalpel was as steady as a rock. “But I need more clean cloths and this basin of water needs to be thrown out and refilled.”

With enormous gratitude, Katie fetched more boiled water, found more clean cloths, and helped Moon Song empty pan after pan of bloodied water. She watched as he removed the pieces of bark and wood. She cringed as he cleansed Skypilot’s deepest wounds with the carbolic acid solution, and bit her lip as he began to stitch Skypilot back together.

One of the shanty boys fainted and was ignored until he came to on his own and wandered off. Two others left the cook shanty to throw up and never returned. By the grace of God, Skypilot remained unconscious.

At least he remained unconscious until Robert secured the last thread, bandaged his wound, and began to set the leg. And then Skypilot screamed.

The scream of a man, she thought, was so much more frightening than that of a woman. There was something primal and terrifying in Skypilot’s soul-wrenching scream.

The blessed unconsciousness was gone, and the big man, disoriented and crazed with pain, tried to fight his way off the table.

“Grab him!” Robert struggled to hold him down. “Keep him still!”

Katie was grateful that so many of the men had stayed. The remaining loggers rushed to grab whatever part of Skypilot they could reach without injuring him, as the big man began to fight in earnest.