The Truest Pleasure (36 page)

People come and went all that day. Dr. Johns stopped by and told me I had done all I could, but that I should give Tom more whiskey to stimulate his heart. “The next forty-eight hours will tell the tale,” he said. Dr. Johns had a talent for conferring dignity on sickness and a sickroom. Sometimes I think it was his best talent. He could talk of bowel movements and pus with such ease and confidence you always thought he had helped.

Florrie walked over before dinner and brought a pudding. She stood in the living room talking to Pa until I come out of the bedroom. “You have had a hard time, Ginny,” she said.

I looked her directly in the face before I went on to the kitchen. “The fever has got to break,” I said. “He can't go on like this much longer.”

I didn't want to encourage Florrie to stay, because I didn't mean to go too far in making up with her. Better go slow and just be nice, treat her like a neighbor. Let more time pass.

Joe come after dinner with a load of wood. He took the horse and drug several chestnut logs into the yard and sawed them with the crosscut. He split the pieces with a go-devil and wedge. Before he left he piled a week's supply of wood on the porch.

It was cold when I went to milk, but not windy. There was a sunset spread from the mountains in the south to the mountains in the north. The west was salmon color, and the sky got pink overhead and purple in the east. The sky was so bright it looked like the world was burning up. It felt like the end of an era. I don't know what all I thought as I stood at the barn with the buckets in my hands. I walked a ways toward the Sunset Rock.

The valley to the west was laid out in red light. The river shined in places like beat gold and the sky was the color of a great rose petal. I thought if I could just keep walking west I could put away from me all the sickness and crying children and dirty dishes, and the bitter quarrels. I was suddenly so tired of the long days and nights of waiting in the sickroom. People don't think women dream of wandering away just like men do.

I've never seen a painted picture as pretty as the mountains to the west. It was like I was looking at something dreamed. And it was almost under my feet. But I turned around with the buckets and started to the house. There was a lamp on in the kitchen. I knowed the fever would be coming back in Tom by now. It always woke up at dark. The fever was a demon of the night.

“Mama,” Jewel called as soon as I walked in, “Daddy's coughing.” I put the buckets down and run to the bedroom. What I heard was a groan and rattle. Tom was trying to cough but couldn't get his breath his chest was so tight. You've heard that grinding racket people make in their throat when they're struggling to cough. It was a terrible sound. I knowed he had got so weak with typhoid he had took pneumony.

First thing I did was pour whiskey in a cup and mix it with water. I held it to his lips, but most of it spilled. I run to get the honey jar. Sometimes honey will soothe a throat and stave off the next cough. I opened the sourwood honey and dug a spoon deep enough to raise a gob. “Take this,” I said to Tom.

“Is he worse?” Pa said, standing in the door of the bedroom.

“He is,” I said. Tom just barely opened his lips, and I put the honey on his tongue. Just then a cough rolled in his chest and shook in his throat. The honey run out the side of his mouth.

“That don't sound good,” Pa said. I could hear Jewel and Moody fighting in the living room and Muir crying. Fay had to be fed and the milk had to be strained and carried to the springhouse.

“Sounds like the death rattle,” Pa said, bending to the bed.

“It ain't the death rattle,” I said. I was suddenly so mad my voice was almost a hiss. “It's pneumony. Can't you hear the
wheeze and whistle? Don't bury him before he's dead.” I had not talked so sharp to Pa since before I was married.

Pa backed to the door and went out. I was astonished at myself, but not a bit sorry. I knowed I'd be sorry later, for Pa was old and got confused about things.

Tom tried to cough again. His chest sounded full of water. If something didn't help him he would drown. He was so weak he didn't have anything left to fight the pneumony with.

“Give me a nickel for the pumpkins,” he whispered.

I reckon he was thinking about the pumpkins scattered over the cornfield and shining like lanterns now the weeds was killed by frost. Before Halloween he had meant to carry a wagon-load to the village to sell. On a frosty morning the pumpkins shined like stars and planets rising among the dead stalks. His voice was just a hoarse mutter.

There was a knock at the door. It was Jewel who stuck her head into the dark room. “Mama, Fay is crying,” she said.

“Pick her up and rock her,” I said.

“She won't shut up,” Jewel said.

“Carry her around,” I said, and waved her away. The door closed and I set in the dark with the lamp turned low. I had to think what to do. There wasn't anybody to help. If I sent for Dr. Johns he would just come and tell me to give Tom whiskey and honey. That's all he had to prescribe. Didn't anybody know what to do for typhoid, or pneumony.

I set there thinking. Tom had been sick too long to have any fight left in him. Didn't seem anything I could do for him, or about anything. Things just happened as they did. It come to me how little I had prayed. During the past week I had prayed
only once. All the feelings from the meetings and brush arbors didn't seem to have anything to do with this pain and trouble. I had hardly thought about prayer. I saw how strange that was, and felt ashamed. I said a quick prayer, and I said the secret name Dr. Match had give me. I said the name over and over.

I pressed Tom's pulse and it was so low you couldn't hardly tell it was there. He was breathing in little gasps, as if there wasn't room in his chest to take in air. It was a pain to listen to the short intakes, one after another. He was trying to get air, and there wasn't any place to take it in.

All through the week I had tried to cool him. Now it seemed the only hope was to make him sweat. If he was too weak to sweat there wasn't anything I could do. I run to the door and called Pa and Jewel. “Put all the rocks and bricks in the fire,” I said.

The house was filled with the crying of Muir and Fay. Moody had knocked Muir down. Fay was screaming in Jewel's arms.

“She's hungry,” Jewel said, holding the baby out to me.

“I'll take her in a minute,” I said. I tried to think where there was some more rocks. I grabbed the lamp off the mantel and run out on the porch. My flowerbeds and herb garden in the yard was lined with rocks Tom had hauled from the river. Tearing the weedstalks and grass away I carried about ten to the porch. The rocks was cold as great balls of ice. One by one I toted them in and set them in the fireplace. When I had finished, the hearth and sides of the fireplace was covered with rocks and bricks.

“You'll put the fire out,” Pa said.

“Put more wood on,” I said.

I nursed Fay a little bit and then give her back to Jewel. I was afraid to leave Tom any longer, and I was almost afraid to go back and look at him. Those little gasps made me shudder. The room was getting cold. I put another blanket on the bed, then I run back to the kitchen and put on the kettle to boil.

As I worked things got clearer. I saw I had to stimulate Tom's chest. I had to get his heart and blood moving faster. I had to put something in him to make him fight. I wrapped some warm salve in a cloth and took it to the bedroom. It felt like hot jelly in my hands and smelled brighter than any pine resin. I thought of the gifts of the Wise Men, and pulled back the covers to place the cloth on Tom's chest. He jerked with the shock, but I knowed the salve wouldn't burn him since I had been holding it. Hands are tougher than other skin, but I thought the shock of the heat might stir his lungs and heart. Soon as the poultice begun to cool I put a towel over it and pulled the covers up again.

Next I lifted Tom's head and poured whiskey into his mouth. “No,” he whispered.

“You've got to drink this,” I said.

“No,” he muttered.

He needed something hot inside him. I should have thought of that before. I run back to the kitchen and poured hot water into a cup and mixed in sassafras bark and whiskey and lemon juice. I tasted the drink and my face broke out in sweat from the steam.

“No,” Tom whispered when I lifted his head up again.

“You drink this,” I said, like I was talking to a child. He turned his head away slightly, but with my fingers I pulled it
back. I held his head in the crook of my wrist, and poured the hot drink into his mouth. He swallowed some and coughed. I waited a few seconds and poured in more. The hot whiskey and lemon juice and sassafras was loosening his throat a little.

After he had five or six drinks I put the cup down and run to get the rocks. They was so hot I was afraid they would burn a towel. I had to lift them into pans with the tongs and shovel. Pa had built up the fire something terrible with hickory wood.

I carried the rocks one at a time in pans and canners and put them under Tom's bed. The rocks was so hot they burned my face just to get near them. I hoped they wouldn't set the bed on fire. “Get out of the way,” I yelled to Moody when he come toward me. “Don't touch the rock.”

By the time I got all the rocks under the bed I was dripping with sweat. The bedroom had heated up like there was a stove in it. I closed the door and pulled the covers back.

Tom was gasping now in such short breaths you couldn't hardly hear them. His eyes was closed, his skin hot and dry. I poured whiskey into hot water and begun to wash him with it. I washed his face and neck and throat. I washed his arms, first one and then the other. I lifted the poultice and washed his chest with hot whiskey. And then I rubbed his legs and thighs. His legs looked like he hadn't walked in months.

Where the heated whiskey touched him the skin got red, and then turned pale again. His mouth was a little blue. All the time I worked a sentence kept running through my head. “Service is also praise,” a voice said. It was a sentence so sweet, and an idea so sweet, I kept saying it. The words shined in my
ears. “Service is also praise,” the voice repeated. I guess it was my voice. It sounded clear and helpful.

After I had washed Tom all over with the heated whiskey I got so hot I had to rest. The room was warm as summer, and smelled strong of lemon juice and sassafras and whiskey. The dark air was lit with the smell of salve and liquor. I filled the cup again and poured some more of the mixture in Tom's mouth. His breath was so low you couldn't hardly tell he was taking in any air.

There wasn't anything else I could do. I covered him up with the blankets and set down by the bed. Another sentence run through my mind. I don't know where it come from. I just heard the voice saying it. It was repeated several times before I listened. The voice said, “Human things are all we know.”

I couldn't think what it meant. I wondered if Pa and Jewel had put the children to bed, for the house was quiet. I didn't know how late it was, for I had been working too hard to listen to the clock. The wind in the hemlocks sounded cold. But the room was warm as a stove. “Human things are all we know,” the voice said.

And then the same voice said, as though from right inside my head, “The tabernacle is with men.” The sentence was from the Revelation. And it meant the same as the other sentence. It was my voice, even though it sounded like silver. “The tabernacle is with men; former things are passed away,” it said. It was the most beautiful sentence I had ever heard. In all the years since I have never heard one more beautiful. And I knowed partly what it meant. That's why I was saying it to myself over and over.

I was drowsing and hearing the sentence again and again. When I woke I looked at Tom and his forehead was damp. In the lamplight it looked like dew had settled on his skin. His face glistened in the weak light. Was he was beginning to sweat? I reached out to touch his forehead and it was cold. I took his hand from under the covers and it was even colder. There was no painful breath coming from his chest.

When I saw Tom was still I thought of laying right down on the bed beside him. I wanted to get close to him and be a part of him. I wanted to lay on top of him and mix my flesh with his. I put my hand on his chest and it seemed impossible that his heart was absolutely stopped.

The touch was gone. All the years of our marriage the connection had been there when we got close and met flesh to flesh. The room was warm from the rocks and bricks under the bed, and all the heat was in the air. It did not seem possible he wouldn't respond. I wanted to get under the covers and warm his body with mine. But the touch now told me he was not there.

I got down on my knees beside the bed. The heat from the rocks come right out from under the springs like a breath of summer raising in my face. I thought what a waste all that work of carrying the rocks had been. But the floor was cold even through my dress. The boards was slick with cold. “Lord,” I prayed, “if it is your will to bring Tom back I beg that you will. Though we have quarreled and been bitter I don't know how to go ahead without him on the place, and I don't know how to raise the younguns on my own. I don't know any longer how to be myself without him to lean on. I don't know
how I can face the next hour or the next day on my own, and the years coming one after the other. In all my joy of meetings and all my pleasure in worship I never thought I would have to bear this.”

I stopped and pushed myself up and set in the chair. I felt Tom's neck for a pulse, but it was colder now. I took his hand and placed my fingers on the wrist. The skin was smooth and cool as ivory. I lifted the covers and placed my hand on his chest again.

Now the awfullest thing come over me. I can't explain it and I've never heard of anything like it. Of course if other people have had such happen they probably wouldn't tell. You don't know what things go on that people never talk about. But this anger poured into me suddenly. It just seemed to shoot up through the floor, out of the ground and all the way from hell.