The Truest Pleasure (33 page)

Pa was coughing too. “Let's go,” he said.

He was right. We was going to have to get out of the smoke or choke on it. We stooped low as we could and started wading down the branch. I held Pa's hand. The smoke was so thick I couldn't see anything. The ground on both banks smoldered and the air was nothing but dry, bitter smoke. I tried to hold my breath, but couldn't. I had to cough and couldn't help it. My lungs was being tore in two all over again. I wanted to stop, but I knowed if we didn't get out of the smoke I would smother or strangle.

Everything was white and full of sparks and ashes. My eyes was burning and my nose running. My throat felt like it had been raked with a saw. A piece of burning brush fell in front of me. I wet my hand and pushed it aside, burning my fingers a little.

Pa and me must have walked all the way down the branch before we come out of the smoke. My lungs was so raw they couldn't feel the sweet air at first. I bent over coughing, and then I throwed up. I lost my stomach right there in the sunny pasture while Pa patted me on the back.

I was so tired and dizzy it seemed I was going to fall when I stood up. If I had stayed in the smoke another minute I probably would have smothered.

“Mama!” It was Jewel coming across the pasture. She carried the baby and Moody and Muir run behind her. Their faces looked so clean and fresh in the sunlight I could not scold them. “Mama, your face is all black,” Jewel said.

“How come you and Grandpa are all wet?” Moody said.

“You've got ashes in your hair,” Jewel said. Jewel never could stand to get anything on her face or hair. It bothered her to see somebody else untidy.

“Where is your daddy?” I said.

“We ain't seen him,” Jewel said.

“You ain't seen him at all?” I said.

“We heard somebody hollering up on the hill,” Moody said. “We thought it was outlaws.”

“We ain't seen nobody but you,” Jewel said.

“I bet he's digging a trench on the hill,” Pa said.

I looked around to see which was the fastest way to the top of the hill. The fire was burning to the right, in the thicket toward the old house place. I could try to run all the way around to the Schoolhouse Branch. Or I could go back to where the fire had already burned. I figured it was shorter to go to the left.

“Stay here with Grandpa,” I said to the younguns. I started running back around the hill toward the orchard. I couldn't remember what had happened to the mattock, but I wished I had a stick of some kind to knock limbs out of the way.

I run through the black smoking trees and then into the pasture. The open ground had been singed like a plucked chicken. The pasture looked gray as ashes. Fire was still burning near the top of the hill. Smoke lifted through the trees and beyond, streaming across the sky as sun sparkled on its top.

“Tom,” I hollered, and run on up the hill.

And then I saw two men throwing shovels of dirt on the fire. They worked fast as they could drive the shovels into the sod and fling their loads on the flame. They didn't resemble anybody I knowed. I wondered who had come to help us fight the fire.

When I got closer I saw it was Tom and Joe. Tom didn't look like hisself at all. His face was black and streaming sweat. He
had lost his hat and his clothes was wet and stuck with ash. He worked like he was angry, fighting some animal or person. I wished I had brought him a drink of water.

“You better rest,” I hollered.

“Ain't no use,” he said. But I couldn't tell if he meant it wasn't any use to rest, or to fight the blaze anymore. Him and Joe had been digging a trench over the top of the hill. They had raked a belt of dirt bare, about five feet wide. The ground was so dry it looked like they had been hacking at chalk.

“If the wind would just stop,” Joe said. He paused to lean on his shovel. Tom kept raking and pitching dirt on the flames.

“Is there another shovel?” I said.

“Ain't nothing but an ax,” Tom said.

I looked around and saw the ax in the weeds. But it wouldn't do any good to chop it into the ground or try to cut away the broomsedge. Tom stopped digging and leaned on his shovel. Under the soot and dirt his face was no longer red but pale. He had turned a dirty green color.

“You better rest,” I said. But he didn't answer. He looked too tired to speak. Black sweat run from his temples and down his neck, like he was crying all over his face.

“Better rest a while, Tom,” Joe said.

I noticed the smoke wasn't pouring in our faces anymore. The wind had died down. You could hear the fire crackling in the grass and on stumps back in the woods. Crows was calling further out the ridge in the big pines.

“The w-w-wind has stopped,” Joe said.

“Well thank the Lord,” I said.

“It's too late,” Tom said. “Won't make no difference now.”

“You don't want the whole country to burn,” I said.

“Nigh the whole place has burned,” Tom said. He spit in the smoldering grass like he was too disgusted to comment further.

I took his shovel and throwed dirt on a tuft of broomsedge that had flared up again. The fire had just got to the ditch when it turned back on itself and went out.

“Let's go to the house,” I said.

But Tom didn't answer. I turned and saw this odd look on his face. It was like he wasn't listening, but thinking of something different. Under the soot now his face was white as paper.

“Tom,” I said.

Joe come up closer to him. “How you f-f-feeling, old hoss?” Joe said.

But Tom looked like he had been hit in the belly and couldn't stand up straight.

“You need a drink of water,” I said.

“Better go set down,” Joe said.

“I'm going to the house,” Tom said. He started walking like his legs weighed a hundred pounds each. He stepped right through the smoldering brush and broomsedge as if he didn't see them.

When Tom got to the house he went right to the toilet. He stayed in the outhouse for half an hour. Pa come back to the house, and Jewel and the other younguns. Joe went to round up the cows and put them in the barn.

I washed my hands and face on the back porch. And then I set down on the porch and took Fay in my lap. My clothes smelled like smoke and my hair did have flecks of ash in it. When I touched a flake it melted to dust. I nursed Fay for several minutes, and when I was finished Tom still hadn't come out. I thought I had better go down and see about him. Maybe he had gone and I hadn't noticed it. I told Jewel to take Fay and put her in the cradle.

“Tom,” I hollered, but there wasn't any answer. Wind stirred high in the hemlocks and limbs swished on the roof of the toilet. “Tom,” I hollered again. It sounded like something stirred behind the door. “Are you there?” I said.

“I'm sick,” Tom said in a low voice.

“What's wrong?” I said, and opened the door of the outhouse. There he set in the dark with his overalls down over his knees.

“I've got cholly morbis,” he said. Under the soot he looked gray. He was sweating again.

“You better come to the house,” I said.

“I can't get up,” he said. He said it like he didn't care, like he wanted to be left alone.

“You can't stay here,” I said.

I run back to the porch and told Jewel to go to the barn and get Joe. When Joe come we had to pull Tom out of the toilet. That was hard because he was so weak and because we couldn't get inside the place. We had to first pull him over, to the right, in front of the door. After we got him lifted I pulled Tom's overalls up and buttoned them, and we got on either side of him.

Tom was heavier than I had dreamed. He had gained in the past two years, and was stout to start with. He could mostly support his own weight, but Joe and me had to keep him from falling.

“Cholly morbis killed my grandpa,” Tom whispered, “after he got hot pulling fodder.”

“Well it won't kill
you
,” I said.

It took us several minutes to climb the steps to the yard, and then to cross the yard. Tom walked like it was an awful strain to move. He was trembling, and too weak to hold his hands steady.

“Go put some water in the kettle,” I hollered to Jewel. I thought there might still be fire in the kitchen stove.

It must have took us ten minutes to get Tom into the bedroom. He had been sleeping in the attic for the past six or seven months, but there was no question we had to take him to the bedroom. We set him down on the bed, and I took off his boots. He laid down quick, too weak to hold his head up any longer.

When the water was hot I poured some in a pan and got soap and a washcloth. I figured Tom wouldn't feel any better till he was cleaned up. If the doctor come I didn't want him to find Tom all covered with soot and dirt. With the pan by the bed I washed Tom's face and neck, his throat and his chest. He had pieces of burned leaves and weeds stuck in his hair. His skin had broke out in splotches, white in places and red in others. Where he was tanned on his forehead, below the hat brim, the skin looked green again. I unbuttoned his overalls and pulled them off, jerking a little on one leg and then the other. He was shaking and looking at the ceiling. “You don't have to do this,” he said.

I thought, If I don't, who will? But I didn't say anything. I had never washed a grown man before, and I sponged him off like he was a baby. I washed him all over, where he was smeared with diarrhea, and where his legs and feet was crusted with dust and soot that stuck to the sweat. As I washed him he kept jerking, his teeth chattering. I wrapped him in a blanket. I was sweating in the hot room, but he was shivering like it was below zero.

“Do you want something to drink?” I said.

“No,” he said, and closed his eyes.

I tried to remember what you give for cholly morbis. It was usually something that babies had in hot weather. It would kill them in a day if it wasn't stopped.

Joe was standing at the door when I come out of the bedroom. “Burnt l-l-liquor is what the old folks used,” he said.

I went to the medicine shelf and got the jug. I poured a full cup of corn whiskey and set it afire. It was the scorching that was supposed to stop the cholly morbis. The flames leaped
from the cup like it was a torch. I let it burn ten seconds before blowing it out. The liquor was warm when I took it into the bedroom. “Here, drink this,” I said to Tom.

“Ain't thirsty,” he said.

“This will help,” I said. “This is the only thing that will.”

His forehead was hot as a stove. It was like the fire he had fought had gone into him. I raised his head and put the cup to his lips. I reckon the liquor burned him, for he jerked away. “You've got to drink it,” I said, “or you won't get better.”

He took a sip, and then another. As the liquor went down the jerking stopped a little. I held the cup to his lips the best I could and he drunk most of it.

“Give me some more of that blessed good medicine,” he said as the liquor took effect. He didn't sound like hisself.

But the liquor didn't make him cool off. As he laid in bed he felt hotter and hotter. I was scared the fire in him was fed by the liquor. I set by the bed and put my hand on his forehead. He just laid there burning like a coal.

Later, after I fixed supper and washed the dishes, I asked Pa what else you could do for cholly morbis. Pa had tired hisself and didn't even read the paper as he set in the living room.

“You could try blackberry juice,” he said.

“I thought that's for ordinary diarrhea,” I said.

“Might help,” Pa said.

I took a lamp down to the cellar and got a quart of blackberry juice. It was the color of wine, but thicker, thick almost as ink. I give Tom half a cup of the cold juice, and it made his lips and tongue black. He seemed to be getting hotter still.

Sometime that night I must have put the children to bed. I guess Jewel helped, and I nursed the baby before she went to sleep. But I don't remember. All I can recall is setting by the bed and watching Tom get hotter. Late at night was supposed to be the worst time for the fever and it wasn't even midnight yet.

Pa looked in before he went to bed. “You better get some sleep,” he said.

“I can't,” I said.

Pa was wore out from the day's excitement. His shoulders slumped more than I had ever seen them, and his face looked hollow. “Joe done the milking,” he said.

After the house was quiet Tom drifted to sleep for a while. Then he woke and looked around. “Are the cows all in?” he said.

“Joe got the cows in,” I said.

“I didn't pull no tops for them,” he said.

“You don't need to,” I said. “The cows are done fed.”

He drifted off after that and I started getting drowsy. I was thinking about fighting fire and running through the thicket looking for Pa. It seemed the faster I run the quicker the flames burned behind me. It was like my running fanned the flames.

“Stomp on it,” Tom said. He appeared to be talking to me. He was hollering a warning. “Stomp on it,” he yelled.

I woke and saw Tom was talking in his sleep. He was twisting, with a terrible look on his face. “Throw dirt on it,” he said.

Tom moved his head from side to side as if he was trying to get loose from something. He was straining in an awful way.

“Tom,” I said, “you're just dreaming.”

“I won't let you burn it down,” he said, like he was talking to hisself. “I won't let you burn down all I have done.”

“Wake up,” I said.

“You won't destroy me,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“This is the baptism of fire,” he said, and chuckled. His eyes was closed but rolling around. His hand reached out and fell back on his chest.

“Tom, you are dreaming,” I said.

“You and Pa will not destroy what I've worked for,” he said.