Dunaway's Crossing (14 page)

C
hapter 14

D
octor’ll be here soon, Tilda. Hang on for me—just a little while longer.”

California wondered whether Matilda heard her. Boiling with fever, her sister had been talking nonsense for the past two days—when she talked at all. Usually Matilda lay on the bed in the front room of her salt-box house struggling for air, gurgling as if her lungs were fishbowls.

California removed the rag from Matilda’s forehead, then dunked it in a bucket of cold water. She wrung out the cloth and placed it back on Matilda’s head before wringing out a second one to rub down her arms and legs.

She’d done everything Dr. Arnold had told her—giving Matilda lots of water when she could drink it and keeping her cool with alcohol rubs, at least until she ran out of alcohol. But nothing brought the fever down. California cringed at her sister’s every breath, which sounded as if she were sucking air through a wet sponge. More frightening, though, was her skin, now all gray, as if her body were decomposing before it died.
Please, Lord, let her survive the night
. California wished she had pressured Dr. Arnold for more care.

“Don’t you got no medicine to give her?” she’d asked.

“I wish I did, Cal,” he’d replied, putting his stethoscope in his black bag. The circles under his eyes matched the gray fabric of his vest. “None of my elixirs work on this flu. It’s a stubborn thing, fierce too. Matilda’s best chance is for you to keep her temperature down. If she gets worse, send your nieces for Dr. Washington.”

But Dr. Washington was dead—succumbed to flu two days ago.

Matilda needed a hospital, but California couldn’t get her sister admitted. Her only hope was to fetch Dr. Arnold. She alternated her worried gaze from the street to the bed, then back. She knew the hospital was swamped with patients. All of Savannah was down with flu, and the white folks got Dr. Arnold’s attention first. Still, she had to hope there was something else he could try. But how could she get word to him? Where was the closest telephone? And should she leave her sister to use it? What if Matilda died while she was gone?

For the fiftieth time that day, California opened the door to her little white house and peered down the muddy street, hoping to see a motorcar rumbling toward her. But the potholed street was empty. Not even one person was hunched up against the chill, face covered with the gauze mask now required of everyone venturing out of doors. Cal saw few neighbors lately. Those not down with flu had departed with their white employers to keep house or mind children on Tybee Island, hoping the fresh air would protect them.

“Auntie? Auntie Cal?”

“Coming, baby.” Her nieces lay in the next room, having caught the flu from their mother. California closed the front door, picked up the bucket next to Matilda’s bed, and carried it into the children’s room. Sweat dampened her forehead, in spite of the October chill. Her head ached too, right behind her eyes. She knew she needed rest, but she didn’t dare go to sleep.

Poor babies. Lying side by side, they looked weak as newborn kittens. Their fever came on fast. Inez had just complained of a headache the previous night, and Agnes’s had started that morning. By noon, both were coughing to beat all, and they took to bed without eating any of the greens California had cooked. She couldn’t even get them to sip on some pot liquor.

She laid her palm on Inez’s forehead and whispered another plea to heaven, hoping her prayers hadn’t worn out her welcome with God. She couldn’t help it. Inez’s hot skin could melt an icebox. Agnes’s too. She put one rag on each girl’s head, but she had to rub them down also. How would she do that? She surveyed the room, then pulled open a bureau drawer, where she found her sister’s Sunday petticoat. She plunged it into the cold water and wrung it out before rubbing down Inez’s arms, then Agnes’s.

The room smelled of sickness and sweat, both hers and the girls’. It smelled of kerosene from the lamps and old, cooked turnip greens, still sitting in the pot on the stove. Who had time to wash dishes?

California’s eyes burned with fatigue, but she ignored her body’s yearning for sleep, forcing herself to tend her patients. They were all she had in the world. Them and Miss Bea Dot.

“My head hurt something awful,” Inez said.

“I know, baby doll. This cold cloth will help.”

Would it really?

She rubbed sweat from her forehead and neck before plunging the petticoat back into the water, which stung her raw, cracked knuckles. She’d lit no fire in the stove, trying to keep her patients cool, but the room still grew warmer. What else could she do? Kissing both girls on the forehead felt like kissing a loaf of bread right out of the oven.

“I’ll be right back. Just gone check your mama.”

The bucket grew heavier every time she carried it from one room to the next. Her back ached from leaning and lugging water. Shuffling to the front room, she ran into the doorsill and sloshed water on the floor and in her boots. Paying it no mind, she kept moving. “I wear a rut in this floor toting this thing back and forth.”

A knock shot joy to her heart.

“Hallelujah,” she said, eyes to the ceiling. She put the bucket down in the middle of the floor and huffed on aching feet to the door. “Coming.”

On the stoop, Penny hugged her crocheted wrap around her shoulders. Her breath puffed out in clouds of steam from the sides of her gauze mask, and her eyes brimmed with worry. She held out a cloth-covered plate. “You all right, Cal?” she asked. “Ain’t seen you all week. Miss Lavinia send you some biscuits.”

“Penny, go get Dr. Arnold,” Cal replied, ignoring the biscuits. “I need him fast.” She looked past Penny into the street. The sun had already set, and everything had turned black and dark blue, except for the yellow balls of light from the streetlamps.

“Dr. Arnold?” Penny’s eyes widened over her mask. “He been at the hospital the past two or three days straight. Miss Lavinia say he up to his ears in sick folk.”

“He already been here once.” California felt a stone growing in her gut. “He got to come back. Now Inez and Agnes sick too.”

Penny placed the plate of biscuits on the stoop, then stepped into the street—right into a puddle.

“I need Dr. Arnold to put Tilda in the hospital. Maybe Inez and Agnes with her.” California leaned on the doorframe. All that talking left her winded, and her head pounded.

“Don’t think you oughta count on that, Cal,” Penny said sadly. “Even some a the white folks being turned away on the hospital front steps.”

Fear gripped California so tightly now, she almost couldn’t breathe. “I can’t lose Tilda and the girls, Penny.”

Penny shook her head in sympathy, but she didn’t seem to understand what California was telling her. So Cal stepped out into the damp and clutched Penny’s arm. “You the only person come by in two days. You got to talk to Dr. Arnold for me.”

“He ain’t gone listen to me.” Penny tried to pull away, but Cal kept her grip.

“I can’t go myself because I can’t leave my girls. Please, Penny. Talk to him. Or stay here while I go fetch him.”

Penny arched her spine backward, as if California were exhaling poison. Finally, she wrenched free of Cal’s grip. “I’ll see what I can do.”

California’s fear dropped away then, and the relief made her light-headed. “Thank you.”

Leaving Penny in the street, she went back into the house, leaving the biscuits on the stoop for stray cats to find. Matilda lay still in her bed, and California relaxed somewhat, seeing her sister sleeping soundly. But after a second she realized why. The gurgling had stopped. California rushed to her sister’s bedside and laid her hand on Matilda’s chest. Nothing. No heartbeat, no rising and falling of trembling breath. Matilda was gone. California dropped to her knees and wailed, sobbing so hard that she fell to her side and lay on the floor like a baby, hating herself for talking to Penny so long, hating Dr. Washington for dying, hating Dr. Arnold for being white, hating the influenza for robbing her of her beloved sister.

She cried and moaned, making her throat raw, provoking a cough. She curled on the floor, coughs interrupting her sobs, until a moment when she paused to take in some air, and a puny voice called to her.

“Auntie.”

California pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then made herself stand. Her weeping had made her head pound heavier, but she forced herself to shuffle into the other room.

“Coming.”

C
hapter 15

N
etta shuffled on socked feet to the kitchen and absently reached into the cupboard for a teacup. Startled by a tickle on the top of her hand, she yanked the cup out and found a spiderweb spreading over her knuckles and onto the cup’s lip. Shuddering in disgust, she said, “Leave it to a bachelor to store dishes in a dirty cabinet.”

She pumped water into a teapot, then heated it on the stove. Next, she filled a bucket halfway with cold water and waited for the teapot to boil. If she had known about the cobwebs, she’d have never eaten from Will’s dishes. Why hadn’t Bea Dot noticed?

Probably because she crowded her head with thoughts of Will Dunaway. Just yesterday Netta had gone looking for her cousin and found her in Will’s back storage room sniffing his pillow. Oh, she’d tried to lie her way out of the embarrassing situation, saying “I came in here for more coffee, and I thought I smelled something rotten.” Bea Dot had always been transparent.

Lately, she’d become quite the little merchant as well as a postmistress, now that the mailman, in Will’s absence, left a bag of letters at the storefront each day. Bea Dot dutifully sorted envelopes and handed out letters to the neighboring farmers who came to pick them up. Still, Netta couldn’t help wondering if the store had been owned by a toothless old man, would Bea Dot have been as enthusiastic about minding it?

Netta removed the dishes, cutlery, and pots from the cupboard and laid them out on the table. She found dead bugs on some, and cobwebs stuck to others. Mrs. Dunaway would have been horrified to see the state of Will’s kitchenware. When the teapot sang, Netta poured the hot water into the bucket of cold water before adding soap powder. Then she plunged an old rag into the suds and began scrubbing. She’d been at it fifteen minutes when Bea Dot found her.

“Netta, what in the world are you doing?”

What does it look like I’m doing, teaching Sunday school?
Netta held up her rag for Bea Dot to see. “Look at the dirt on this rag,” she said. “Will’s drawers and cupboards have cobwebs in them. I can’t believe we eat off the dishes in there.”

She returned to her cleaning while Bea Dot watched with mouth agape, as if she’d never seen soap and water before. Of course, lately she’d been so immersed in her storekeeping that she’d all but abandoned housework. It was all Netta could do to get Bea Dot to wash the supper dishes or do the laundry.

“Are you feeling all right?” Bea Dot asked.

“Of course,” Netta said. What a silly question. A wisp of hair tickled her forehead, so she pushed it back with her wrist.

“Aren’t you cold? Where are your shoes?”

Netta stopped her scrubbing and eyed her feet. She hadn’t seen her anklebones in weeks. “I can’t get my shoes on,” she replied. “My feet are too fat.” She held up her hand. “Look at my fingers.” She curled them into claws and said, “I can hardly bend them. They tingle just from doing that.”

She plunged the rag into the bucket again and went back to her scrubbing. The cabinet’s interior smelled like dust and soap.

“Are you sure you should be working so hard?”

With her head inside the cupboard, Netta couldn’t help rolling her eyes and screwing up her face. Who else was going to clean this mess? She ignored the question and continued her attack on the compartment’s interior.

“Are you angry about something?”

Netta stopped, sighed, and pulled her head out of the cabinet. Bea Dot’s question reminded her of the many times Ralph checked the irritable bite of her. The discomfort of her pregnancy hardly helped matters.

“No, dear. I’m not angry,” she replied in a softer tone. “Just uncomfortable. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

“If you’d like, I can bring your rocker into the kitchen, where it’s warmer.”

Netta shook her head and swished the rag in the water to rinse off the dirt; then she wrung it out again. “I can’t fit into that chair anymore,” she said. “Besides, I can’t sit still while this kitchen is a filthy mess.”

Bea Dot’s eyebrows came together, and Netta understood the look of confusion. She couldn’t explain her behavior either. All she knew was that she had a compulsion to clean up the wreck of a kitchen.

A bell rang in the store, and Bea Dot turned her head toward the doorway, calling, “Be right there.”

“That was a good idea to hang a bell on the front door,” Netta said. “Better go tend to your customer.” Just as Bea Dot turned to go, Netta called out, “When you’re finished, though, I could use some help with this floor. It’s a pitiful sight.”

Of course, Bea Dot met that request with a shake of her head and a chuckle before she went back into the store. “Good afternoon, can I help you?”

Netta returned to her work and listened to Bea Dot chatting with customers. She always made such a production of how busy she was with the mail, the telephone, and her “inventory,” as she liked to call it. She could call it inventory all day long, but her interest in commerce lay in one particular item, which at the moment was building coffins in Pineview.

Netta couldn’t shake her concern about Bea Dot’s fondness for Will. Not that she resented the friendship. Of all people, Bea Dot deserved a man who respected her and loved her. If Ben Ferguson didn’t exist, Bea Dot and Will would make a good pair.

But Ben did exist. And that complicated matters.

True, she had invited Bea Dot to Pineview for a respite from Ben’s hostility, but she hadn’t intended her cousin to fall for someone else. What would Ben do if he found out? Netta chewed her lip as she considered the possibilities. She’d have to talk to Bea Dot about her attraction to Will—before he returned to the crossing.

Netta finished scrubbing the cabinet and started on a drawer, wishing Will had at least lined it with paper. With her fingernail she scraped out the dirt in the corners.

Bea Dot entered again, this time holding a newspaper. “Netta, could you help me? Mr. Ellis Floyd is here with his
Macon Telegraph
, and I’m trying to find some paraffin for Mr. Anderson. Can you read to Mr. Floyd please?”

Netta examined her loaded kitchen table and sighed.
Why of course, Bea Dot. I was just sitting around waiting for something to do.
She inhaled deeply as she searched for her patience. She gestured toward her soiled apron and worn stockings and she replied, “I’m hardly prepared to receive guests.”

“Oh, please, Netta,” Bea Dot persisted. “You can stand behind the counter so he won’t see your feet.”

Netta opened her mouth in protest, but Bea Dot stopped her, holding up her palm. “I know, I know. I made the deal with him to read the articles in exchange for the paper, but I don’t think I’m the only one around here who pores over the news when it comes.”

Netta’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, all right. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

Bea Dot smiled and returned to the store. Netta plunked the balled rag into the water, which splashed up and left a gray splotch on her apron. She followed Bea Dot into the store and stood behind the counter, though her face burned with shame about her looks. Mr. Floyd’s pale blue eyes watered from the outside chill, and his cheeks and nose glowed a bright pink, although Netta believed the weather accounted for their color less so than his homemade alcohol. He handed his newspaper to Netta with a shy greeting and word of thanks. Netta unfolded it and browsed the front-page stories. From the back room, Bea Dot’s voice floated in as she spoke to Mr. Anderson.

“Let’s see, Mr. Floyd. What’s happening in the world today? Oh, this article says that President Wilson telegraphed the Democratic convention delegates meeting in Macon this week.”

Mr. Floyd nodded with a quiet “Hmm.” Apparently he wasn’t much interested in politics.

“And in this article,” Netta continued, “there’s a report about a woman named Jeannette Rankin, who’s running for US Senate.”

“Why that’s ridiculous.” Mr. Floyd lifted his chin and his eyes glowed like the blue of a gaslight flame. “First women want to vote. Now they even want to run for office?” He slapped his palm on the store counter. “This world’s going straight to hell on a runaway train. You know last week, the paper said that down in Waycross, they let women vote in city elections.”

“I do declare,” Netta muttered. She wished Bea Dot would finish up with Mr. Anderson. The cupboard was waiting. “Here’s some news of the war,” she said, pointing to another article. “This is good news too. It says that Arab and British forces have captured Damascus from the Turks. Arabia has been liberated under the leadership of an officer T. E. Lawrence. The British now refer to him as Lawrence of Arabia.”

“Enough of that.” Mr. Floyd’s breath smelled like tobacco. “What does it say about the flu?”

Bea Dot and Mr. Anderson returned from the storage room. “As soon as I speak to Mr. Dunaway again, I’ll ask him to restock on paraffin,” she told him. She handed him his mail and called a good-bye to him as he left. Then she turned to Netta and Mr. Floyd. “Any news about influenza? Is it subsiding at all?”

“There’s an article here.” Netta had opened the paper’s wide pages. “Odd how they put it on page five.” The headline read, “Spanish Influenza Crosses State.” She skimmed the article before summarizing it for Mr. Floyd. “In Macon, two hundred fifty new cases have been reported this week.”

“How far away is Macon?” Bea Dot asked as she absently shuffled envelopes from the mailbag.

“I’d say about fifty miles,” Netta replied. She looked to Mr. Floyd for confirmation, and he nodded his white-haired head.

Bea Dot chewed her lip as Netta scanned the rest of the article. “It says that flu masks are now in use in Macon, but that Atlanta has taken even stronger measures. ‘The state capital reports only eight deaths this week,’ it says, ‘with one hundred five new cases reported. As a precautionary measure, the Atlanta city council has declared all public gatherings closed for the next two months.’ ” Netta lifted her eyes and alternated her gaze from Bea Dot to Mr. Floyd and back. “That includes libraries, churches, and theaters. It also says that streetcars are to keep all windows open except in rainy weather.”

“My heavens,” Bea Dot murmured with her hand to her chest. “Well, Atlanta’s a big city. If only eight people have died, that’s good, isn’t it?”

Netta shook her head slowly, unable to see how eight deaths could possibly be considered good news. Besides, the article was several days old. No telling how many people had died since it was published. Her thoughts, as usual, turned to Ralph working tirelessly to keep Pineview alive. She prayed silently, probably for the hundredth time, for Ralph’s wellness. Then she sighed.

“I’m sorry, but this talk of the flu has me a bit troubled. Would you mind if I stopped?” Netta folded the paper before placing it on the countertop.

Mr. Floyd patted her fat hand and smiled for the first time since she’d begun reading. Brown stains had settled at the crevices of his teeth. “You’ve been kind to read to me, Mrs. Coolidge. If you could just tell me what Mutt and Jeff are up to, I’ll leave you two ladies alone and be on my way.”

Bea Dot took the paper from Netta and said, “I’ll do that, Mr. Floyd. Netta, thank you for your help. Why don’t you go back and rest?”

Netta said her good-byes to Mr. Floyd and returned to the kitchen. The pots, pans, and dishes taunted her from the tabletop. Reading the paper had drained her energy, and she no longer cared for cleaning Will’s cupboards. Still, she had to finish what she started, so she went back to sorting and replacing the dishes. Once she’d finished with the plates and cups, she straightened her back and rubbed it. Then she sat in a chair and rubbed her feet.

Bea Dot’s voice startled her. “I’m sure we have something in here you can use.”

At once Bea Dot stood at the table with Terrence Taylor behind her, holding a string of wet, dripping fish.

“Oh, my gracious, Bea Dot.” Her facing went blazing hot as she stood. “You should have warned me. I look a fright. Excuse me, Terrence.” She lumbered out of the kitchen, bumping into the table and making the cutlery clink as she did so. From behind the bedroom door, she heard Bea Dot’s and Terrence’s voices.

“This’ll do,” he said. “I’ll clean these fish on the dock and bring ’em back to you. I won’t take but a minute.”

“Thank you, Terrence,” Bea Dot replied.

Netta waited for the door to open and close. Instead, Terrence’s comment turned up the flame behind her cheeks. “You know what, Miss Bea Dot?” he asked. “My mama done the same thing before she had her baby.”

“What do you mean?” Bea Dot replied.

“All this scrubbing and sorting and what not,” Terrence explained. “She done the same thing just a day or two before little Troy come along. You think Miss Netta’s baby’s coming?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough.”

Netta heard in Bea Dot’s voice the same touch of worry she felt in her own chest. She sat on the bed, and her round stomach moved, like a puppy trying to crawl out of a burlap sack. Netta rubbed over the moving lumps as she spoke to her unborn infant. “Please, baby, just stay put a little while longer.”