Blue (3 page)

June 1944

Twice that week Momma sent me to the Hinkle sisters' house to borrow newspapers. She wanted to keep up on the polio news.

Tuesday's paper said an eight-year-old boy had died of polio. And it told how there were nineteen cases in the county. Seven more just since Sunday!

In Thursday's paper we read that a camp in Hickory was going to become an emergency hospital for polio victims. We also read that three doctors from Yale University had come to Hickory to investigate our epidemic. Imagine that!

The next Tuesday, Bobby come down with a cold, which scared Momma half to death. He sneezed and she stopped sweeping the front porch. She pulled Daddy's big red hanky from her apron pocket and held it to Bobby's nose. “Blow, honey,” she said. Then she stuffed the hanky in Bobby's pocket, sat down on a rocking chair, and pulled him onto her lap.

She rested her chin on Bobby's head and I seen again how much that boy looked just like her. They had the same shiny brown curls and deep red lips. And both had brown eyes that squinted nearly shut when they laughed. But neither one of them was laughing now.

“I can't recall him being around anyone who had a
cold,” Momma said. Her rocking chair was making a fast, irritating sound on the wood porch floor, and it was making me edgy.

I knew exactly what she was thinking. “Stop worrying, Momma,” I said. “A cold ain't the same thing as polio. And he ain't been around nobody that has polio neither. So you can just put that outta your mind.”

Momma sighed. “I know,” she said. She used her toe to slow that rocking chair down. “You're right, of course.”

Bobby curled up on Momma's lap and snuggled into her like he was trying to crawl inside her heart. But Bobby had been in Momma's heart since before he was born. I can still remember how she'd walk around hugging her big tummy with her hands and getting so lost in her happy thoughts that she'd forget which scrubbing job she was working on. It seemed like she knew she was finally getting herself a man child.

But this week, what with taking care of Bobby, Momma didn't hardly scrub a thing. She smeared vapor rub on his chest and kept it covered with a warm, wet cloth. She made him stay in bed for two days, where she sung to him and told him Bible stories and played with him and his wooden farm animals.

And it seemed like Bobby's cold went away in no time. Thursday morning when I woke up, he was outside spinning the tire swing with Pete inside—and falling down laughing when Pete couldn't walk straight afterwards.

“Bobby looks like he's all better,” I said to Momma while I ate my gravy biscuit. She was pouring soap powders into the dishpan and fixing to scrub down the kitchen, but I could hear her sigh of relief all the way across the room.

“Yeah, he's back to pestering that dog again, so I reckon he'll be fine,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “Then he can help us bring in the potatoes.”

After breakfast, I give Ida, Ellie, and Bobby a warning. “We're turning into farmers in five minutes,” I said. “And I want you to be in the garden with a bushel basket in your hand.”

Ida was the first to whine. “I don't want to work in the garden. Me and Ellie was going to play paper dolls.”

“Yeah,” whined Ellie.

“No,” I said. “Not until we get this done. These potatoes are gonna rot if we don't get them out of the ground. And tomorrow we pick blackberries. Then we're gonna go buy sugar because the ration board said we can get our share for canning.” I figured if I mentioned a trip to town they might work harder.

“I can't work,” said Bobby. “I'm sick.” He was carrying Pete wrapped up like a baby in his blue striped blanket.

“You don't look sick to me,” I said.

“Pete's sick,” said Bobby. “He's blind in one eye and his legs is aching.”

“Pete's been blind in one eye ever since he tangled with that groundhog last year,” I said. “And if his legs is sore, then he don't have to work. But you do. Bring the wagon when you come.”

Bobby was the first to show up in the garden. He was pulling the wagon and Pete was inside on Bobby's blanket. That dog was getting plumb spoiled. Bobby hadn't let him out of his sight since Daddy went off to war.

I wished a little old dog could take Daddy's place for
me
.

I had to holler for the girls to get out to the garden, and
by then I had a whole row of potatoes dug and waiting to be put in baskets. Bobby didn't do a thing but mess with that dog until the girls got there.

Ida showed up with a bushel basket over her head so she couldn't half see where she was going. She had another basket in her hand. Ellie was empty-handed.

I made the young'uns put the potatoes in the baskets. Then we put the baskets in the wagon and pulled it to the dirt cellar under the back of the house.

When the potatoes was unloaded, Bobby put Pete in the wagon and climbed in with him. “Giddyup, horse,” he said. “Me and Pete wants a ride.”

So I pulled the two of them back to the garden. But I didn't get much work out of him after that first trip. He whined and fussed and said he hurt all over.

The girls fussed too, and Ida said I was meaner than the devil himself.

“Listen here!” I yelled. “I reckon you think I'm doing this for fun. Well, I'm not! I'm doing it on account of there's a war on and Daddy can't be here to look after his family. So stop bellyaching and do your part.”

The girls started picking up potatoes, but Bobby was collecting fluffy pink mimosa blossoms from the tree by the edge of the garden. “I'm sick,” he said when I called him back to the garden. He tickled Pete's nose with a mimosa flower. Pete sneezed and Bobby giggled. “See?” he said. “Me and Pete has got a cold.”

If Daddy was there, he would've found a way to make working fun. But I was hot and had blisters on my hands, so I was irritable.

“Bobby Leroy Honeycutt, if you don't get to work, I'm gonna write Daddy a letter. And I'll say a lot more than
‘Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.' I'll tell him you're a spoiled little brat that won't do nothing but play with the dog.”

Bobby started crying then, but he got up and put a few potatoes in a basket. It didn't last long. By the time the next load of potatoes was ready, he was back sitting in the dirt and scooping dry dust over Pete's tail and watching it fly around when Pete wagged it off. I didn't even bother calling him to help. He was way more trouble than he was worth.

After all, he was only four years old, and the last thing Daddy told him was to play some every day. So I guessed I shouldn't be so hard on him, even if picking up potatoes wasn't really that much work.

By the time we got halfway to the cellar, Bobby was screaming for us to come back and get him. I just kept right on pulling that wagon.

Ida stopped.

“Don't you dare go after him,” I said. “Bobby's got two good legs the same as the rest of us.” But she didn't pay me no mind.

Of course, Ellie followed right after her. Soon they was all three screaming. Momma come out on the porch to see what all the clamor was about, so I let her take over while I laid the potatoes out in the root cellar. Next thing I knew, Momma was hollering too.

I run down there to see what was the matter. Momma was trying to get Bobby to stand up. But his legs was just crumpling underneath him and his arms was floppy too. I didn't need no doctor to tell me what was wrong.

Momma picked Bobby up and took him inside, and the three of us girls was right behind her. She turned to me and
said, “Jump on the bicycle and go get Junior to bring the truck. He's got to take us to the emergency hospital.”

I pedaled that bicycle fast as I could, and my heart was bumpier than that dirt road. All I could think of was how mean I was, making Bobby work when he was really sick.

But he didn't seem sick at the beginning. Momma checked his forehead in the morning and he didn't have no fever. And he was giggling and playing and he didn't seem sick at all. But still, I knew it was my fault for yelling at him like that. And using that threat about Daddy to shame him into working when he didn't feel up to it.

I preached myself a sermon all the way to Junior's.

When I got there, Junior was laying under the truck in the driveway. Wrenches and car parts was scattered on the ground by his legs. I started yelling the minute I seen him. “Junior, I need you right this minute! And the truck too. You got to take Bobby to the doctor's.”

Junior come sliding out from under the truck and said, “What's the matter? Can it wait? I got to put this thing back together or we ain't going nowhere.”

“Junior Bledsoe, why are you taking Daddy's truck apart? He said you could use it so you could take Momma places—not take it apart.” I started beating on his chest.

“Whoa, girl! What has got into you?” Junior grabbed my hands and held me back from him.

“Bobby's got polio,” I said. “He has to get to the emergency hospital in Hickory.”

“Oh, Lordy,” said Junior. “This truck ain't going nowhere for a while. We better see if the Hinkle sisters can take you.” He run and got his bicycle then. I could hardly keep up with him going up the dirt road to the Hinkles'.

I knew we was in trouble the minute we got there
because the Hinkle sisters' car was not in the garage behind their brick house. “They're not home,” I said.

I just knew Bobby was going to die while we rode around looking for someone to take him to the hospital.

“Then we'll use their telephone,” said Junior.

We hurried to the back door and went inside. “Anybody home?” yelled Junior as he run through the kitchen. The Hinkle sisters' kitchen was just like always. The countertops and stove was spotless. The plants on the windowsill was cheerful. Everything was in its place and quiet as midnight.

We kept going into the dining room. Junior grabbed the heavy black telephone off the little table so fast the cord drug the white lace doily onto the floor. I sunk into the chair beside the telephone table.

Junior dialed the operator. “I need Dr. Johnson,” he said.

A clock on the wall tick-tick-ticked, bragging on how much precious time was slipping by.

Finally Junior handed me the telephone. A lady asked how could she help me. I told her about Bobby collapsing in the garden. But it seemed like she couldn't understand.

“Slow down, honey,” she said.

But I knew we didn't have no time to waste. I told her what happened to Bobby and how we didn't have a car to take him to the doctor's. She put Dr. Johnson on the telephone and I had to tell it all over again. He said he would send an ambulance. I give the receiver to Junior so he could give directions.

I put my head down on the telephone and my tears run down over the numbers on the dial. “He's only four years old,” I moaned. “And I made him work even when he said
he was sick. Oh, Daddy, I should've let him play.”

The next thing I knew, Junior was pushing a glass of water to me. “Here, Ann Fay,” he said. “Drink this water and calm down. Everything will be all right.”

But I knew he was just saying that to get me through. I knew nothing was ever going to be all right again.

June 1944

We crowded around Bobby while we waited for the ambulance. He was laying on the couch with his head on Momma's lap, still as a stop sign. Not even his eyes was moving.

“He's dead,” wailed Ida.

“No,” said Momma. “He's still breathing—and feel how warm he is.”

I grabbed ahold of his hand and it was hot. But I was cold—shivering and shaking and my teeth wouldn't stop chattering. It seemed like we was all shivering and huddling up to Bobby like he was a woodstove in the middle of winter. I forgot all about how it was a hot day.

Junior kept walking to the window to look for the ambulance and then coming back to offer us a drink of water. Or to touch Momma on the shoulder like he wanted to take Daddy's place but didn't know how.

And I for sure didn't feel like the man of the house.

Finally we heard a car. Junior run to the window and said, “Somebody's here. But it's sure not an ambulance.”

Momma picked Bobby up and carried him out on the porch, and we all followed. Then I seen what Junior meant. It wasn't an ambulance. It was a hearse.

Momma cried, “No! Oh, dear God, no.” She turned to go back in the house.

By that time the driver had backed up to the steps and was climbing out of the hearse. “Don't let it scare you, ma'am,” he said. “There's a shortage of ambulances, what with the war taking so many and now the epidemic. Sometimes this is the only way we can get a child to the polio hospital. But it can save your boy's life just as good as an ambulance.” He opened the doors in the back, and inside was a low bed.

Junior put his hands on Momma's shoulders and turned her around. “It's okay,” he said.

The driver come and tried to take Bobby from Momma, but she held on tight. “Ma'am, you can come along with him. Is there anything you want to get, in case you need to stay a few days?”

Momma shook her head and I knew she wasn't thinking straight. If she was, she wouldn't want to be seen in her everyday dress and apron. So I run and got her pocketbook. And I grabbed her nightgown and housecoat from the nail on the back of her bedroom door. Daddy had took our suitcase off to the war, so I pulled the pillowcase off her pillow and stuffed her nightgown in it. And I threw in some underclothes and her Sunday dress and run outside.

When I got there, Momma was kneeling by Bobby in the back of that hearse, hanging on to his limp hands. I threw the pillowcase bundle to her right before the driver closed the door.

It all happened so fast that none of us said goodbye to Bobby. And even though Momma said he wasn't dead, it sure made us feel like he was, him riding away in that hearse like that.

Junior stayed with us the rest of the day and helped us dig the potatoes. I would've let them rot in the ground if he hadn't been there to nag at me. Then he hoed weeds.

I couldn't force myself to cook supper, so I just poured a bowl of corn flakes for everybody. Nobody but Junior had an appetite. He tried to cheer us up by playing a game of pretend.

“Let's pretend we're going to Hollywood,” he said.

Hollywood is the last place I'd expect Junior Bledsoe to want to go. But I reckon he thought us girls would like the idea.

“Let's pretend we can see anybody famous that we want to,” he said. “Who do you want to see, Ida?”

Ida twirled her spoon through her cereal. “Bobby,” she said. “I wanna see Bobby.”

“Oh,” said Junior. “But what about a movie star? Which movie star do you want to see?”

Ida just stared. “I don't wanna see no movie stars.”

“Sure you do,” said Junior with an extra helping of cheer in his voice. “Oh, I know—you want to see Shirley Temple, don't you?”

Ida picked up her spoon and held it out in front of her. She turned the spoon sideways and watched as the corn flakes and milk dribbled off and plopped into her bowl.

Junior give up on Ida then and turned to Ellie. “What about you? Let's pretend Shirley Temple is standing there with her head full of curls, cute as anything, right in front of you. What would you say to her?”

Ellie slumped back in her chair and folded her arms. She didn't say a word.

“Well,” said Junior, “I see I'm on my own here. Okay then, let's pretend we all go to Hollywood and suddenly, right there in front us, is James Cagney. Now wouldn't
that
be a Yankee Doodle Dandy?”

For some reason Junior is real keen on James Cagney.
And he knew me and Peggy Sue seen him in the movie
Yankee Doodle Dandy
. But Junior was wrong if he thought a movie star could take my mind off of Bobby and what I done to him.

I got up and put my bowl of cereal in the refrigerator. “Let's pretend Bobby's not sick,” I said. “Let's pretend you ain't sitting there acting like everything is all hunky-dory dandy. If we pretend, will that make it true?”

Junior dropped his spoon in his bowl and said, “I'm sorry, Ann Fay. I was just trying to help.”

“Well, don't,” I said. “On account of it ain't working.”

I went outside on the back steps and stared at the johnny house, wishing a miracle would step out that door.

Instead, Junior come to the screen door behind me. “I reckon I'll be getting on home,” he said. “But I'll be back in the morning.”

“Don't worry about us,” I said. “We'll be fine.” Which was a lie if I ever told one.

Of course, there was no point in telling Junior not to come back. The next morning he was on our front porch, calling my name. I was drawing water from the well and wondering how in the world my momma and Bobby was doing. “I'm out back,” I yelled.

He come around the side of the house with a small crock in his hand. “Momma sent you some bread pudding,” he said. “She's sorry it's not sweeter, but we're out of sugar till we pick it up at the ration board today. I got the starter fixed, so the truck is ready whenever you are.” He handed me the crock and finished cranking the water bucket up out of the well.

I took the bread pudding inside and let the screen door slam behind me. “I don't think I'll go for sugar,” I said. “I might not can blackberries after all.”

Junior followed me inside and poured the bucket of water into our water crock on the kitchen cabinet. “Don't start talking like that,” he said. “According to the papers, this is our last allotment of sugar for canning this year. I'd pick it up for you except you have to be there in person with your ration book. I'll help you pick them berries, but you gotta do your part. You can't just stop living.”

“I don't wanna pick blackberries,” I said. “I don't wanna can them and I don't wanna buy sugar. I just wanna go to the emergency hospital and see Bobby.”

“Well, Ann Fay, I know how you must feel. But according to the radio they got the police over there keeping people away from that hospital. The best thing you can do for Bobby is pick those berries and fix him some blackberry cobbler the minute he comes home. So get your overalls on.”

He just had to mention them overalls.

I knew if it wasn't for Junior I would just run off through the woods and stay out of the garden and the blackberry patch too. But there was work to do and I was the man of the house. So I put on my overalls.

Just then I heard a car pull up outside, and both me and Junior went running to see if it was Momma and Bobby back from the hospital. But two women got out of the shiny black car. The tall woman in the plaid dress spoke up. “I'm Dr. Dorothy Horstmann.” Then she nodded toward the other woman. “And this is Frances Allen, your public health nurse.”

“Hey,” I said. “I'm Ann Fay Honeycutt.”

“Ann Fay, I'm an epidemiologist from Yale Medical School,” Dr. Horstmann said. “I study diseases, especially polio.”

“I know,” I said. “I seen you in the papers.”

“Then you know we work at the emergency hospital,” she continued. “We looked in on your brother this morning. He's breathing easily with the help of an iron lung.”

An iron lung! All of a sudden I couldn't catch my breath.

I think that Frances Allen woman seen it too. “Oh, don't let the iron lung worry you,” she said. “Right now, it's keeping him alive until he can breathe for himself again.”

That give me some hope, so I asked, “Is he gonna get better?”

She squeezed my shoulder and said, “He has good doctors, some of the best in the country. Even one of the doctors from the president's Warm Springs polio rehabilitation center is at the hospital.”

Dr. Horstmann give me a letter from my momma. She waited while I read it.

Thursday morning! It was just Friday now. How could I wait till Thursday? It almost killed me to think Momma could be gone that long.

Dr. Horstmann didn't give me no time to worry about seeing Momma or Bobby. She told me she and Nurse Allen was going to examine our house and ask lots of questions. They needed to find out how Bobby caught the disease.

I spent the morning answering questions for them strangers. They wanted to know what kind of milk we drunk and where our toilet facilities was. They asked me who Bobby had seen or touched or played with in the last couple of weeks. They went through every room in the house taking notes.

I hadn't washed a single dish since yesterday morning, and the chamber pot hadn't been emptied either. Not only that—one of the girls had left the lid off of the chamber pot and there was flies crawling over it like ants on a jelly biscuit.

I put the lid on quick, hoping those women wouldn't notice. But they did. They even set up a trap to catch them flies. Dr. Horstmann explained to me how the poliovirus had been found on flies and trapping them would help her research.

The twins was both awake by now and hanging on to Junior like he was their daddy.

“Which one of you left the lid off of the chamber pot?” I
asked. I wasn't expecting either one of them to admit to it. I just wanted them women to know we don't make it a habit to live like that.

But how could I make them understand? When your baby brother gets hauled off in a hearse with the most dreaded disease in the country, all on account of you making him work till he dropped, you just can't make yourself do all the things you do any other day.

Before those women inspected our johnny house, I told them, “Don't worry. It's clean. My momma takes disinfectant and a broom to it once a week. She scrubs it top to bottom.” I felt bad that these women wasn't getting a true impression of my momma's housekeeping. And I was sure glad Momma wasn't there to see how I had let it go.

As soon as them women was gone, a health officer come and hammered a sign on the front door.

INFANTILE PARALYSIS
IN QUARANTINE

I tell you what's the truth. When I looked at that polio sign next to the blue star flag Momma hung up there for Daddy being a soldier, I felt like I was looking down a doublebarrel shotgun—and fixing to get blowed all to pieces.

“How many people live here?” the health officer asked.

“Just me and my two sisters,” I said. “Momma went to the hospital with my brother. My daddy's off fighting in the war.”

The health officer looked at Junior. “You a neighbor?”

“Yes, sir,” said Junior. “You passed right by my house coming in.”

“Well,” said the man, “I'm afraid you'll have to leave. Only family members are allowed in this house.”

Well, I could tell Junior Bledsoe wasn't going to take that sitting down. He stuck his thumbs under the clasps on his overalls and said, “Sir, these girls' momma and daddy didn't have no choice in the matter. But I'll be dad-gummed if I'm going to run off and leave them too.”

The officer said, “Well, it's the law. So you really don't have any choice either. I'll drop you off at your house on the way out.”

Junior started to argue, but I jumped in. “Aw, go on, Junior,” I said. “I can take care of the girls and you know it. What do you think my daddy give me these overalls for? I'm the man of the house now.”

I winked at Junior when the man wasn't looking, so he could see I knew him well enough to realize he'd be back—as soon as that man was out of sight.

Before they left, the man turned to me and said, “I can see you're a strong young woman. That's good, because I'm going to ask you to do one of the hardest things you've ever done.”

He took my arm and pulled me aside—away from Ida and Ellie—and spoke real low so they couldn't hear what he was saying. “I need you to wash every blanket and towel in the house. And all of your brother's clothes. Scrub the house. Anything your brother touched could have the germs.”

The man took a deep breath and lowered his voice even more. “And here's the hard part. Your brother's toys must be destroyed. I want you to burn them. It's the only way to get rid of the germs. It's the only way to protect your little sisters. Understand?”