The Truest Pleasure (24 page)

“It's too cold for you to be out here,” Tom said.

“But it's not too cold for Florrie?” I said. I had learned a trick in arguing with Tom that always worked. Instead of acting mad I would be calm and cheerful. He couldn't stand to see me smile when he was mad. He depended on me getting angry too.

“I'd be ashamed,” he said. “A woman with a nursing baby has to take care of herself.”

“But you don't mind if Florrie gets sick?” I said, and smiled.

“I'd be ashamed,” he said.

“I'll be fine,” I said with as much cheer as I could muster.

I was going back to the porch for the diapers, but he stalked ahead and grabbed the basket. I thought at first he was going to take them out of my reach, but he hurried with the load to the wash table. He dropped the basket on the planks and walked away without another word. The snow was coming so fast it fell in my eyes like gnats, and I had to keep brushing snow off my cheeks.

All morning the sky fell like pollen and big crumbs of sugar. I fed the fire under the washpot and smoke pushed its way up through the snow. Sometimes a breeze would sway the smoke into my face and then jerk it away again. I scrubbed diapers and clothes in the steaming tubs until my hands and arms was pink. I figured if I worked hard enough I would stay warm.

The snow come straight down, not reaching under the hemlocks. But the clothes I had hung on the line was beginning to freeze. First they got stiff like they had a lot of starch, then they got hard as boards. Fins of snow built up on top of the clothesline.

I dumped another basket of stinking diapers into the hot water, and thought, This is one load Florrie won't touch. She
has got into my house, into my kitchen, into my clothes, but this is one day she won't need to cross the hill. As I stirred the boiling diapers with the troubling stick I felt a child's delight in getting my way. And I guess I was thrilled by the snow too, and the feeling of closed-in-ness inside the falling snow.

With the white world descending over me it seemed my troubles was being buried and smoothed over, just like gullies and stubble and muddy roads and the manure pile in front of the barn got covered and made clean by new flakes. After hanging most of the diapers on the line I took a few inside to stretch by the fire. If it kept snowing all would have to be brought in to thaw and dry, a dozen at a time, by the fireplace and kitchen stove.

It felt too hot in the house. After the flush of the morning's work the house was smoky and dark. I needed to nurse Muir soon, but I was happy to get back outside after a few minutes, into the pure whiteness of the storm.

At sundown I went out again to get more clothes. The sky was clear and wind off the hill was smoking cold. Snow tossed around devils and tall sails in the pasture. The air was filled with crystals that glittered and swirled in the late sun. Everything in sight was turning gold. I felt giddy in the light and wind.

Soon as I put the clothes inside I went out to gather eggs. The ground from barn to chickenhouse was pure untracked snow. The manure pile steamed with inner heat, and in a day would melt away the snow on its sides. The low roof of the chickenhouse was piled like a layer cake with last week's snow and the new snow.

It was awful dark in the crib as I shelled corn into a basket. The smell of shucks and cobs was sweet in the air that cut through cracks. I felt weakness in my bones, and tightness in my throat. I hurried to the chickenhouse with the corn.

I scattered corn on the floor and gathered eggs into the basket. Reaching into the nests was like searching for secrets. Where a hen was setting you had to reach under her and feel which of the warm eggs was just a china egg. Real eggs was heavy.

Suddenly I sneezed and the hens started cackling and flapping. There was dust in the air, and the more they fluttered the worse the dust would be. I tried to hold my breath, but found it was short. I imagined mites and lice in the air that got stirred up. A chickenhouse smells so sweet it makes you sick. And chickens are so hot-blooded they warm it up in all but the coldest weather. I gathered nineteen eggs in the basket and hurried out.

As I walked to the house I was suddenly dizzy and my legs and arms hurt. It's the low temperature, I told myself. When it gets this cold strength drains away. I held a sleeve to my mouth, but couldn't see that way and had to inhale the ether-cold wind. I almost slipped on the snow, and kept losing my balance.

Even while I put on supper I felt hot and flustered. The cold had tired me more than I realized. I would start to do something and then forget what I meant to do. I would begin to speak, then wonder later if I really said it. Halfway through the meal there was an ache in my bones and I wished I could go to bed.

I tried to feed Muir some mashed potatoes, but my hand trembled as I held the little spoon.

“Are you sick?” Pa said.

“Mama, your face is red,” Jewel said.

Moody come over and pulled my sleeve. “Are you sick, Mama?”

“No, I ain't sick,” I said.

“You look like the outlaws shot you,” Moody said.

But things was spinning around, and I couldn't even clear up the dishes. It was as though things started swelling and shrinking wherever I looked. The lamplight got brighter, then dim. At some point Tom led me to the bed.

I can't remember any more about that night except the sound of wind pushing the side of the house. It was like the storm was grabbing the walls and squeezing them. The soreness in my breath got all mixed up with the wind pressing on the house and wheezing in the eaves. The wind was crushing my chest. The air was dark red, and burned when I breathed it in.

Early next morning I knowed what was going on, even though I was far away from it all. “You go over and get Florrie,” Pa said to Tom. “You're going to need help.”

The younguns had gathered around the fireplace. I could hear Muir crying in the kitchen. “Bang, bang,” Moody shouted. I wanted to get up, but I couldn't. It was all too far away. The air I breathed was full of broke glass and razor blades.

“Drink this,” somebody said. It was Tom bent over me. I could smell the whiskey in the cup. Much as I wanted a sip I moved my lips away. It was too hard to breathe to drink anything. And yet I was all dried out. I was thirsty.

“It's sugar and whiskey in water,” Florrie said. Maybe it was later when she said it. “You always liked whiskey didn't you?”

“She needs whiskey to give her strength,” Pa said.

I saw Jewel and Moody standing at the door of the room looking in. They had been sleeping on pallets on the floor.

“Where is the baby?” I said.

“The baby is fine,” Florrie said.

Dr. Johns come by when it felt like the middle of the night. He took the bottle of whiskey and drunk some. As usual he was testing medicine whiskey to see if it was any good.

“Drink this, Ginny,” he said.

I took a swallow and it felt like my throat and chest was scalded, and I was sinking into a hot bath.

“You're doing all that can be done,” Dr. Johns said.

Muir was crying in the kitchen. The house popped with cold, timbers shrinking on the north side. I knowed there was a big fire in the fireplace for I could hear the flames crackle.

“Put hot bricks in the bed to warm her feet,” the doctor said. “And keep her wrapped up, even if she is sweating.”

The doctor took another drink before he left. I didn't know if it was day or night. It seemed the middle of the night. There was a light at the window, but it could have been moonlight. It was brighter than lamplight. It was like somebody was watching me from the window, even though the light come from way off.

I knowed Tom and Pa and sometimes Florrie was keeping the fire going through cold days and nights. They took turns setting by the bed, putting damp cloths on my forehead, and changing the flannel on my chest.

“Where is the baby?” I said.

“The baby is fine,” Florrie said. “I fed him grits and he's full as a tick.”

The bedclothes got all soaked with sweat and she changed them, rolling me one way, and then the other, to take off the wet sheet and spread a fresh one under me. I could smell the clean sheet I had washed and dried by the fire. But mostly I smelled the fever. It was the smell of soreness and inflammation. It was the way an infected sore on your finger smells, except it was coming from inside me. The smell was in my breath.

I don't know how many days passed. It might have been five or six. My chest felt like it was full of dumplings and pie crusts when I breathed. My lungs whistled and gurgled. I wondered where the wheeze was coming from. There was kettles boiling somewhere.

A cloth was throwed over my head. It was as if a sheet had been pulled across my face. Had I gone and died without knowing it? But it was a rough sheet with grains on it. It was a towel.

“Breathe this,” Tom said. He put a bowl under my chin. It was full of steam, and under the towel there was nothing but steam. He had put salve in the hot water, from the can on the mantel that I rubbed on the younguns' chests when they had colds. It was the smell of spruce resin and the far edge of the sky. There was something silver and spiritual in the scent that went up into my head and throat. But I couldn't breathe it down into my chest.

“Breathe deep,” Tom said.

I tried to breathe, but it was too hard. My chest was sore and full. It was all I could do to take short little gasps.

“Breathe deep,” he said. But I couldn't inhale any deeper.

The strangest thoughts come to me in the wet dark under the towel. It was like I was in a tent. I thought how it was only rubbing things together that made them work. If men and women touched each other that was one thing, but if the touch become a caress that was another. It was the rubbing that made the spark of desire. The roughness was important as the smoothness. It was the caress, and resistance to the caress, and resistance overcome, that made the pleasure. I had never thought of that before. In the muggy dark it seemed like the secret of things.

“The road is buried,” I said to Tom.

“What did you say?” He lifted the towel and I felt cold air.

“The new road is buried,” I said. But he couldn't hear. It was like I was trying to talk in water instead of air. Nothing I said come out right. But I was thinking about how wind and snow was burying his work. The wind was rubbing on snow; snow was rubbing on the ground. Everything was resisting everything else.

When he took the towel off my face sweat stood on my forehead big as berries. It rolled into my eyes and down my temples. I was still breathing in little gasps. There wasn't any air to breathe.

“It will take onions,” Pa said somewhere way off.

“Onions?” Tom said.

“I saw it when I was a boy,” Pa said. “Only thing that will break pneumony fever is an onion pack.”

Later I could smell the frying onions. I wondered if Florrie was fixing liver and onions. It was something Pa liked, but I
never fixed because it stunk up the house. It smelled like they was burning. I thought I could hear the crackle and snap of the grease in the pan, but it was the rasp of my breath. The whole house was full of the smell of greasy fried onions.

“Put this on,” Tom said. He pulled back the covers and lifted my gown. What he put on my chest was like a bag heavy with hot applesauce. It was flattened out, steaming, and looked wet and greasy. It was so hot it scalded me. I shivered like you do in a hot bath. I guess bad cold and heat are almost the same thing. They make you jerk and shudder the way the Spirit does.

And then the smell hit my face. It was as if a bushel of crawling slivers of onions had been put under my nose. I've heard they once used onions to scare away the Devil. I don't think any demon could stand the smell of greasy half-cooked onions. The stink of the grease, and the feel of the grease on my chest, was worse than the smell of the onions itself.

“Drink some of this,” Florrie said. It was whiskey and warm lemon juice in a cup. I drunk some just to take away the smell of the onions for a little. And then I drunk some more.

I could feel the grease in the poultice sink into my chest. My skin was opening and soaking up the taste of the onions. It felt my chest was melting in the heat and foul stench.

Suddenly the room was stretching out to ten times its size. The air was like rubber, stretching and rushing back. “Hold the bed still,” I said.

The room was rocking back and forth, not just from side to side, but whirling and rocking at the same time. The walls
spun and squeezed, then bulged away. It felt as if the bed was falling down a mountain. There was a roar and a gray flame in the air.

“Hold the bed still,” I said. The bed was on rollers and shooting down a tilted floor. The room got long as a hallway, and I was flying toward the end of it.

Then something exploded. My chest and throat busted open and whiskey shot into my mouth and nose. I could taste lemon juice, sourer than before. My nose burned like I had been slapped and pushed underwater. My mouth was full of water and sour whiskey.

Before I knowed what was happening my mouth opened and I spewed over my chin and on the pillows. The hot clabber sprayed on the sheets and quilts. I retched over the poultice and on myself. The stuff come out so hard it shot up in the air and splashed my face before I could turn sideways. The puke burned my nose and eyes like lemon juice.

Suddenly it stopped and I felt cold sweat over me. I was so weak I couldn't hold my head up. I was wet all over my front with fried onions and throw-up.

“Let me change your sheets,” Florrie said.

“Oh,” I said. And then it started again. The seizure hit like a crushing weight that pushed from below. It was like I was being squeezed to death. I had read they killed witches in the old days by crushing them with rocks, “pressing” it was called. That's what I felt, that I was being pressed to death.

There was nothing else to throw up, but I kept heaving and gagging on little bits of sour water, strings and yellow gobs of bile. It felt like the marrow of my bones was trying to come up.