The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover Read online

  We went back to the fire and I didn’t feel cold no more.

  “Let’s go unhitch the horse and milk the cow before we eat,” Papa said to Velmer.

  IT WAS ABOUT five years after we left Gap Creek when the typhoid epidemic come. Before that, after the big war in France was over, the awful Spanish flu swept through and killed people all over the country. They say pregnant women especially took the flu and many died. And them that didn’t die was sick a long time and weak for months after that. Mama told me some people was sick with the fever so long their hair all fell out, and because of the high fever some people’s minds never did recover. When the flu was raging Velmer remembers Papa give each of us a spoonful of whiskey every morning to fight it off, and I reckon it worked because none of us ever did catch it. We stayed at home and didn’t go to church when the flu was bad and that might have helped too.

  The second year we lived there Papa added to the house: he built a little kitchen in the back with a brick flue for the cookstove, and he added to the back porch a little shed to serve as a smokehouse; he strung a clothesline for Mama; he built a chicken coop for biddies; then he built a bigger chicken house enclosed in a wire fence; he made a toilet.

  But I think the prettiest things about the house was what Mama done, things you can still enjoy right now. She planted hollyhocks by the front of the porch and set out a rose of Sharon bush by the path to the back door and one by the path to the front door. She got rocks and made a path to the steps at the front porch. And she planted thrift on the bank along the road and her and Velmer set boxwoods along the bank every five or six feet. Beside the path to the back door she set a pink rosebush and she rooted periwinkles along the west side of the house under the spruce pine trees.

  The prettiest thing Mama done was buy a whole bunch of flowerpots, big terra-cotta things with thick rims, and put geraniums and other flowers in them. She set the flowerpots along the edge of the front porch and along the path to the front steps. When those red geraniums was in bloom they seemed to light up the yard and porch. When she bought the pots from a peddler Papa quarreled and said she was wasting money on knickknacks he couldn’t afford, but she didn’t say nothing. It was not Mama’s way to argue. She just went ahead and rooted her flowers in the potting soil and lined them up in the yard and on the porch. I never seen anybody more determined than Mama or less inclined to argue for herself. She just went ahead and done what she wanted to do and let Papa fuss all he would. I reckon that’s what she’d learned from living with Papa all them years.

  We first heard about the typhoid from somebody up the river. I think they said it was Sam Garnett’s wife that got the fever, and then two of her children. That was way up toward the head of the river where the river wasn’t no wider than a little creek. I’d only been up that far one time, when Papa took the wagon and we rode up to Long Rock to pick huckleberries.

  Now I heard Papa say many times that typhoid fever, whatever caused it, will get in a river valley and start at the top and work its way down the valley. Nobody knowed what really caused it. Something got into the water or air and went from house to house and community to community. Papa said it must be in the water because it started at the head of a valley and moved downstream and couldn’t be stopped. People that lived high up on the mountains usually didn’t get it.

  That should have scared me, but I was too young to be scared. I’d never heard of typhoid before, and when you’re young you don’t think nothing can harm you, especially something you never heard of. But then we learned about more cases, each one farther down the river valley, coming closer. I’d been told of plagues of locusts in the Bible, and it seemed the typhoid must be something like that, except it was too small to see.

  “Some people say you catch it from touching other people or being in the room with somebody that has the fever,” Mama said. “But I think you get it out of water. Why else would it go down the river valley the way water flows?”

  When we brought buckets of water from the spring across the field Mama put some in a pot on the stove and boiled it. And when that cooled she told us to only drink from that. Sometimes Papa put a drop of corn liquor in a dipper of water before he drunk it.

  In that terrible summer when the typhoid was advancing down the river valley toward us, and we took a tablespoon of whiskey every day again and drunk only boiled water, Effie and Velmer decided to visit their friends down on Gap Creek that they hadn’t seen in five years. Effie had got a letter from her friend Brenda Poole inviting her to come back for a visit.

  I told Papa I wanted to go, but he said I didn’t have no friends on Gap Creek because I was too little when we left there. He said I could help him clear the newground by bringing boiled water to him and holding the other end of the saw. Papa let me hold the far end of the crosscut saw while he cut the timber in the newground. He told me to pull it back after he pulled it to him. I had to pull as hard as I could to bring the saw back to me.

  A few days later I was helping Mama sweep the yard when I glanced down the road and seen Effie and Velmer coming back. They looked tired from walking so far in the summer heat. Effie told us Velmer had got so parched on the road he dropped to his knees and drunk from a ditch that run along the road.

  “It was a spring branch,” Velmer said, and went on into the house.

  The next few days Velmer acted sluggish and held back when he was working. Papa said he’d wore hisself out walking down to Gap Creek and back in the hottest part of summer. It was along in the summer when the katydids started chattering at night and the jar flies sung by day, after the dog days had started. Velmer was setting at the table one evening looking red in the face, like he’d been sunburned. He didn’t seem interested in eating nothing, which was real unusual. It was one of those nights when all we had was corn bread and milk, cause we’d had a big dinner of roastnears and beans and new taters and fresh sliced tomatoes. Mama said eating a light supper was good for you when you was tired, for it would help you sleep. We crumbled up corn bread in our glasses of milk and eat it with a spoon. Troy was eating corn bread with his own little spoon.

  Suddenly there was a bang on the table and Velmer fell over and hit his head on the edge of the table before he rolled over into the floor. Papa jumped up and bent over Velmer. “What’s wrong with you?” Papa said. Papa ever did show his concern for them he loved with a rough tone of voice. Velmer started to push hisself up and Papa didn’t help him but let him get hisself up. But Velmer was all trembly. Mama put her hand to Velmer’s forehead and said he was blazing hot.

  We was so scared of the typhoid nobody said a word. I thought maybe if we didn’t say it was typhoid, it wouldn’t be. But I remembered that Velmer had drunk from that spring branch on the side of the road from Gap Creek. Mama led Velmer to the bedroom and put him to bed. When she come out she told Effie and me we’d have to sleep in the living room. She made us pallets on the floor. Papa said he would go after Locke Peace in the morning.

  That night before we went to bed, we washed our feet in cold water from the spring as usual, but nobody said hardly a thing. Papa had us kneel down beside our chairs and he prayed for Velmer not to get typhoid. I’d never heard Papa pray so humble. After we blowed out the lamps and went to bed I couldn’t get to sleep but laid there on the floor thinking I could feel the fever coming on.

  LOOKING BACK, IT’S interesting that Papa went after Locke Peace the next morning because we was living in the house that had been built by Locke. After his wife died Locke had give his daughter Helen to his sister Florrie and rejoined the army as an army nurse. He’d served before as a nurse in the Spanish American War, and when he rejoined he was sent to California and the Philippines. After he got out of the army for good Locke kept working as a nurse and was called a fever nurse. When a person got typhoid or the terrible flu Locke would come and stay with the family and nurse the patient for weeks or even months if necessary.

  I’d never seen Locke Peace before, and when he come back in the bugg
y with Papa that morning I was surprised. He was smaller than I expected, shorter than Papa. His hair was straight and black and he had dark skin like he might be part Indian. Mama had said he charged a dollar a day and his board for nursing.

  Locke Peace carried his little bag into the back bedroom and the rest of us waited outside in the new dining room Papa had built the year before. When he finally come out of the bedroom Locke said to Mama she’d done exactly the right thing. The room must be kept dark and the house kept absolutely quiet. Locke told Papa he’d have to report the fever to county officials and be quarantined. There was a telephone at the store on the highway, but I don’t think Papa had ever used it before.

  That afternoon a shiny black car drove down the road and stopped in front of the house. We wasn’t used to seeing many cars and everybody except Locke went out on the porch to see who it was. As soon as the car stopped you could smell its smoke and hot oil. Two men got out and walked up to the porch. They had sheets of green paper with printing on them and a signature, and they tacked one on the post beside the front porch steps and one on the post beside the back porch steps. They was signs to tell people not to come in because we had typhoid.

  The first man asked where the spring was and Papa pointed to the trail along the edge of the field across the road. The men got a leather case from the car and started toward the spring. In a few minutes they come back and put the case in the car, then drove away.

  That evening Locke set at the table with us just like he was one of the family. He’d worked all day to clean up the back bedroom and to keep Velmer clean. Everything around Locke was neat and tidy. He told Mama to wash all the sheets and pillowcases from the sickroom and even to scald the pee pot. He said you had to be careful with the stool of somebody that had typhoid. I figured out that by stool he meant dookie, which sounded awfully funny to me.

  Since Locke was sleeping on the other bed in the back bedroom where he could keep an eye on Velmer, and Mama and Papa was sleeping in the front bedroom, where Troy slept on a little cot, Effie and me had the living room all to ourselves at night. It was cooler laying on the floor than laying in bed. After a hot day in the sun it felt good to lay close to the floor and feel the fresh coolness. The smell of ashes in the fireplace was stronger there. Sometimes we could hear mice whispering on their feet in the ceiling above and in the walls.

  It was in the second week Locke was staying with us when I woke up and heard Papa and Locke talking in low voices. “Hank, I’m afraid your boy is gone,” Locke said.

  “I don’t think so,” Papa said.

  They must have gone into the bedroom then for I heard a door close. When the door opened again Locke said, “His temperature is a hundred and six degrees and we’ve got to do something.”

  Locke said they would rub Velmer with alcohol.

  “While you rub him with alcohol I’ll fan him,” Mama said. I didn’t know she was up because she hadn’t said anything till then. I couldn’t stay on the pallet any longer. I got up holding my night shift close to me and tiptoed as quiet as I could through the kitchen and the new dining room. The door to the back bedroom was open a crack and I peeped in.

  The covers on Velmer’s bed was pulled back and he had on nothing but his drawers. His face looked red as a sunburn. Locke rubbed his neck and chest with a cloth. He rubbed his shoulders, arms, and belly like he was washing him. Then he rubbed his legs, first one, and then the other.

  The alcohol rubbing must have helped because Velmer was still alive the next morning. The fever had went down as it always did in the morning. But it would rise later in the day and into the night.

  TWO DAYS LATER the black car from town drove into the yard and the same two men got out. I seen them coming up the steps and hid behind the door while Mama met them.

  “Your spring is contaminated with typhoid,” the first man said. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this. You are forbidden by law to drink from it.” He tipped his hat and the two men went back down the steps. Papa met them in the yard and they talked for a little while.

  After the two men drove away Papa come into the house and hit the living room wall so hard Locke come out of the sickroom to see what happened. Papa told Locke he had to drill an artesian well in the yard, but he didn’t know where he would find the money.

  “I think our boy is approaching the crisis,” Locke said. “His fever has already started rising, and it’s only ten in the morning.”

  Papa took the wagon to the store and come back with a block of ice wrapped in tow sacks. He put the ice in a tub in the shade of the spruce pine in the backyard, where the breeze would help keep it cool.

  That evening Locke didn’t come to the table for supper but stayed in the back bedroom with Velmer. When the clock pointed to nine Mama said it was time to blow out the lamp on the mantel and for me and Effie to go to bed. “Time to wind up the cat and throw out the clock,” Papa said, as he often did at bedtime. I laid down on the pallet but couldn’t sleep. Effie was sound asleep and I finally got up from the pallet and tiptoed to the dining room door. The sickroom door was open a little, and Mama and Locke come out.

  “Julie, you must prepare yourself,” Locke said in a low voice. “The angel of death hovers over this valley.”

  I could imagine a giant angel hovering in the air over them. And if it was an angel of death it would have black wings. Tears come to my eyes and I closed my eyes and prayed that Velmer would live through the night. I meant to stay up all night while Velmer reached the crisis, but I must have dropped off to sleep dreaming of the death angel, for the next thing I knowed Mama was waking me and asking what I was doing on the dining room floor. The linoleum was cold on my cheek and there was gray light at the window.

  “The fever has broke,” Mama said.

  It was the best news I could hope for. When I heard Velmer had passed the crisis I was suddenly hungry. I wanted some grits so bad my cheeks ached. When I told Mama I was hungry she said she’d make some grits right then.

  WHILE VELMER WAS getting better Mr. McCrary the well digger come. Papa said he lived over near Penrose, everwhere that was, and that he charged a dollar a foot for digging a well. Him and his men come early one morning in August with one little black truck and a big blue truck with a tower laid over the top reaching out beyond the cab. It was the biggest truck I’d ever seen and they backed it right up to the edge of the house.

  Me and Troy, who was six then, watched them jack the truck up so it set level and raise the tower on the back so it stood straight up higher than the top of the house. There was a wheel at the top of the tower and a steel rope went over the wheel with a pole at the end. I was so busy watching the pole dig into the dirt and listening to the clang of the machine that echoed off the Cicero Mountain that I didn’t see Velmer come to the back door to watch what was happening. But when I turned I seen him there, dressed in overalls and shirt for the first time in weeks. He was pale and thin but couldn’t take his eyes off the big truck and the long pole going up and down.

  Velmer was so weak he soon had to go set down. He set in the living room eating a piece of cake on a saucer. Because his insides was so thin after the fever, he couldn’t eat nothing hard or raw. Locke had said recovering fever patients crave sweet things like cake, so Mama made cakes for him to eat whenever he felt like it. The week the well diggers come Mama made an extra cake that was supposed to be for Sunday dinner. It was a coconut cake, which she set on the table under a glass cake cover. And she killed a chicken and fried it.

  With the typhoid over and the well almost dug, Papa was feeling good for the first time in weeks. He was deeper in debt than ever, but he’d got a job helping to build a house down by the lake near the cotton mill. He had one hammer and one saw, but he said that was enough to get started with. As soon as we eat the chicken and rice, Mama opened a can of peaches to go with the cake. The cake had set there for a day looking clean and frosty under the glass.

  We all watched Mama press the knife into the gi
ant cake, but almost as soon as she touched the middle of the cake it collapsed. The cake sunk like a thick balloon that busted. I never saw Mama so surprised. Her fine cake had dropped into itself. It didn’t make sense that a large cake would be empty inside like it was only a shell.

  With the knife Mama lifted a piece off the top of the cake and we could see where the insides had been scooped out by somebody’s fingers. She looked around the table and said, “Now who done this?” She looked at Papa and he must have nodded or winked or something because she didn’t say no more. But as Mama cut the outside of the cake in pieces and put them on plates we all, except maybe Troy, knowed what had happened. Velmer was so hungry for something extra sweet he’d managed to lift off the top layer of the cake and dig out the heart of it and somehow fit the top layer back on so nobody would notice it. The fact that Velmer was so hungry showed how quick he was recovering from the fever.

  When Mr. McCrary finished the well the next week the well diggers fitted an iron pump on the top of the well pipe. By lifting the long arm of the pump you could make the pipe below gurgle and cough and water splash out of the spigot. It was cold water from deep in the ground, and when I tasted it I could tell it had a special flavor from the rock it had passed through far below.

  Five

  Troy was always good at building things and when Old Pat was about four months old he made her a house that he set on the porch out of the wind, where it would be warmer. It was around Christmastime and he said the house was a Christmas present for his police dog. By then Old Pat come up to his knees and she went everywhere Troy went. When him and me climbed the hill across the pasture looking for Christmas greens she went with us. We pulled up some turkey’s paw under the pines on the west side of the hill. And then we broke a few limbs of holly from a tree in an old growed-up pasture. The pine thicket there was full of rabbits and Old Pat started chasing one rabbit and then another.