The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  Maybe there weren’t anything a Blue should like better than becoming normal like that, but the pain and fear left me shaken and crowded out those possibilities.

  “It would be safer, my dear. When you’re white, you’ll never have to worry about the likes of Fraziers, or others who might want to do you serious harm or worse because of your looks.”

  The words lay cold in my cramping belly. If I didn’t let Doc have his way, there would be worse pains coming for me and Pa. Many a colored have been hanged for less looped in my brain and left a fear in the pit of my belly.

  From the front seat, Doc rummaged inside his medical bag and pulled out a small bottle and a brown dropper and handed them to me. “Take one drop now and two drops of the laudanum before retiring to bed tonight.”

  It seemed like I had barely touched the dropper to my tongue, tasted, when my aches began easing. I inspected my arms more closely. The pokes and scratches weren’t nothing more than a nuisance.

  Curious, and then surprised that I was okay, I corked Doc’s little brown bottle with the tiny plug and tucked it into my dress pocket while something bigger took hold in me.

  “I need something to heal these scrapes,” I hinted.

  “Oh, yes, yes you do.” He dug deeper into his satchel. “We wouldn’t want you ill.”

  “No, sir,” I agreed. “And we ain’t had much food lately, and I get weak-kneed some—”

  “Here, take this pear and cheese, and I’ll bring more soon—see that you get some blocks of cheese and bread.”

  Blocks of cheese and bread! I almost clapped out a cheer.

  “And here’s a bottle of rubbing alcohol, dear.” He handed me the bag and a larger bottle of the clear liquid. “And you can always use honey to dress the wound after you clean it with the alcohol,” he added, reached in again and pulled out a full bottle of honey. “I want you to be comfortable, to have everything you need.”

  Any Kentucky woman know’d the worth of honey, that it was good for all sorts of ailments. It was just getting your hands on some that proved difficult.

  Nearly forgetting the hospital and the harshness of the day, I clutched the prized bottles to my chest and managed to smile back before tossing it all into the soft belly of my bonnet. Soon, I grew drowsy and curled back down onto the seat.

  Eighteen

  We arrived back in Troublesome just before dark. The old mountain doc toted me back through the woods on his horse, seeing me safely to my cabin.

  Before he left, I caught him staring at my crumpled clothes, unkempt hair, and fallen braids.

  He dug into his coat. “I almost forget, Bluet. I picked these up for you in the commissary.” He handed me two satin ribbons. “Uh, yes… Your hair ribbons were lost during the exam.” He reddened.

  Weren’t no ribbons in my plaits, just twine. But I marveled at the lovely new white garlands, murmured a thank you that surprised me despite the intent in his wise eyes that the gifts were meant to bribe me into more testing. Generous, but it would all change if I refused.

  My eyes searched the yard, landing over past Junia’s stall where the preacher lay in his shallow grave. A shiver latched hold and rolled violently across my shoulders.

  Alarmed, Doc said, “You’re cold. Let me get a blanket from the pannier.”

  Instantly, I took a step back, wanting to take my leave. “I’m okay, sir.”

  The doc pushed up his slipping spectacles and leaned in closer to make sure of just that. “I can make you better than okay. Dr. Mills and I believe we can cure you. There’s a good chance, Bluet.”

  It seemed far-fetched.

  “Well, good evening. Rest well. I’ll get a basket of food to you soon, and then I’ll be back for you within the month, about the third week in June,” he promised and mounted his horse, not waiting for my reply.

  Pa was asleep inside. He fluttered his lids, and I whispered, “Go back to sleep. I’m just getting my reading material together for next week, then going to tend to Junia.”

  I set down my heavy bonnet beside the door, peeking inside at the gifts. Pa mumbled faintly and coughed, and I could see he’d gone to bed bone-tired, covered in the coal dust, though it looked like he’d at least given his face and arms a half-hearted swipe with a clean cloth.

  “Shh, rest another hour,” I said and covered him with his sheet.

  Squinting, he groped for my arm. “You… Are you well, Daughter? He take care of you?”

  “Yes, sir. Close your eyes now.” I hurried to tuck the coarse muslin over him, not wanting to alarm or disturb him with the worries of the day, hoping he’d rest a little more—hoping he wouldn’t see what they’d done to me in my eyes.

  He hitched his thumb to the stool where he’d laid a coal-blackened envelope addressed to R.C. Cole. “Beck passed that to me for the fire-watcher boy,” Pa said sleepily.

  Outside, I picked up my book satchel and carefully packed Doc’s bottles, the honey, and R.C.’s letter into it, then went to see Junia.

  The mule bobbed her head, blowing, whinnying in loud brays, eager to see me. I unlatched the gate and led her out of the shed. She nuzzled my chin, stretched her neck for a scratch, then dropped beside me to roll in the grass.

  Junia romped for a good while before I rounded her back into the stall to feed her. The gate wobbled and I fussed with it, sneaking glimpses to the grave. Pa’d tried to fix the door the day he’d buried the preacher, but the old stall guard needed a new post and stronger latch. After I’d finally secured it, I leaned back over to grab the soap, towel, and an old hand mirror of Mama’s from the bin, then picked up my lantern and headed over to the creek to bathe, the warm spring day dropping behind the hills, a cooling curtain quivering on its tail.

  Wary, I inspected my arms and searched all over. I’d read about medicine and what doctors do. But it was unsettling that it had been done to me. My parents and other folks in the hills cured themselves with nature—tonics, roots, barks, and herbs—unless some stubborn ailment didn’t right itself from the homemade potions. They rarely called upon Doc.

  I held the mirror up to my face. No matter how many times I’d looked, it always hurt like seeing something horrible for the first time. My skin was still darkened from the hard day, bruised a deep blue. How could the doctors ever change it? I was sure even the strongest potion couldn’t do that.

  Moving the angle of the looking glass to my backside, I checked my shoulders, calves, and bottom. Satisfied I wasn’t permanently harmed and had scratches mostly on my pride, I dried myself with a towel.

  When I got back to the cabin, Pa was rambling about, dressing for the mine.

  “Pa, it’s Saturday, do you have to go? Let me fix you some supper—”

  “There’s no time, Daughter. There’s a special meeting tonight before work.”

  He meant secret and a union meeting at that. Those type of gatherings were as dangerous as cave-ins, explosions, and the miner’s lung, and what the Company feared and fought fiercely against. The men clamoring for safer working conditions and more pay were the greatest danger to a mining company. And if the Company got word, they’d shut the meetings down with threats and violence, burn a miner’s house or two, or make the leader of those talks disappear.

  Pa plowed his socked feet into his boots by the door. “You do okay in the city, Cussy?” He glanced at me.

  I wanted to fuss at him like Mama’d done when he had those meetings, beg him not to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to argue with him or worry him none about my day. He had enough of that already.

  Pulling the dirty sheets off his bed, I said, “Yes, sir. They took themselves blood and skin samples is all.” Bent to the mattress, I balled up his linens and glimpsed over my shoulder. Seeing his alarm, I added, “Didn’t hurt none. Just some scratches.”

  “Put some salve on it. And that reminds me. I mean to rent Murphy’s horse thi
s week and take the sickle and clean up some of your trails. Thin it all and cut back the briars for you.”

  “Much obliged.” I appreciated he would do that for me and Junia. I picked up his lunch bucket and packed Doc’s pear and cheese inside, adding a biscuit from the stove.

  He grunted something I couldn’t understand, grabbed his coat and bucket, then slipped out the door with a good night trailing over his shoulder, his hat lit and leading him onto a soft, wide path that disappeared into the fog, the tall silent pines soldiering him.

  My belly rumbled, and starved, I gobbled down the rest of the cold, stale biscuits I’d baked this morning. Full, I put on fresh bedsheets, boiled Pa’s dirty ones, hauled in his bath, and hurried through my chores. Last, I gathered strips of old fabric and scrubbed them with lye, boiled and rinsed and hung them to dry by the woodstove.

  Soon, my mind returned to the hospital, and I went over to the mirror and stared and ran a light hand over myself, my face darkening as I tried to imagine what the doctors had done, how much of me they’d taken.

  Exhausted in the bone but fully awake in my mind, I looked around for something, anything, to scrub, to wash away the soils of the day. Up in the loft, I shrugged off my clothing and necessaries, changed, and carried the clothes downstairs. When I had washed and rinsed the garments, scoured and scrubbed them again and then once again, until the fires sparked from my raw, bleeding hands and cleansed the day’s muddle, my troubled thoughts, only then did I stop.

  Satisfied, I rubbed my cramped hands with horse liniment, then sat down and pored through reading material, the newest loans and newsprint. The Louisville Times had an article about a fire in the Jefferson Memorial Forest that rangers had battled bravely. Excited for the find, I folded the newspaper to save for R.C.

  I put aside a health pamphlet on baby care for Angeline, then went over and pulled one of Mama’s novels from the bookshelf. It had been her favorite and mine too, and I clutched it to my chest, suddenly deciding just what I’d do with it. That it would be the boldest thing I’d ever done didn’t matter after the hardness of today. Feeling giddy, I packed it with the others.

  I remembered Winnie’s student asking about the pie recipe and wrote out two different ones for her sister on a scrap of paper and tucked it in my bag.

  Pleased, I settled back into the chair to read my other favorite, the National Geographic, slowly picking up every word, soaking up all the articles of peoples and faraway places, searching the smart magazine for others like me.

  Hours later, I rolled up the dried strips of fabric, got my book satchel, and pulled out the medicine. My hands shook a little holding the precious bottles of laudanum, honey, and alcohol.

  I moved over to the stove, reached above to the shelf for Loretta’s willow bark. Filled with renewed strength and gratitude, I carefully wrapped it and Doc’s gifts and tucked them into my bags.

  Worth more than gold, more than chickens, it was exactly what Mr. Moffit needed to live, and what the Moffit family couldn’t live without.

  Nineteen

  Under the quivering fog, Angeline labored in her garden, hilling a row of potatoes, a melody whisking from her lips, the May air tossing her loose hair. Beyond, gusts of spring winds brushed tips of a mustard patch and the waist-high stickweed beyond. Near the porch, a sagging clothesline hung limp between a tall post and a thick tree. Another breeze skittered past the dingy soaked sheets and raggedy clothing, dipping low and sweeping the laundry across the raw earth.

  She stood and wiped stained hands on her skirts when she heard Junia’s greeting.

  “Bluet!” Angeline ran to us, nearly tripping over her long, muddied skirts, splashing barefoot through puddles and kicking up muck. “Junia,” she cried and planted a kiss on the mule’s velvet muzzle, pulled a small carrot from her pocket, and gave it to her.

  I dropped to the ground and handed the straps to Angeline. She tethered Junia to the post.

  “Is the doc comin’? We’s been looking for him every day.” Angeline asked with a rise in her voice on the coming, slipping her hand into her pockets and plucking out a homemade doll. “Look what I’ve made for baby Honey.”

  It was a tiny, faceless doll made from corn husks, its dress a scrap of orchid fabric Angeline had torn from her own skirts.

  “It’s mighty pretty.” I pulled out her seeds I’d wrapped in cheesecloth. “Doc’s really busy, Angeline. I’m sorry.”

  She took them and stared at the package for the longest time, a fright piling onto her pale sweaty face. “But Willie’s got the bad fever now,” she barely whispered, stuffing Honey’s new doll back into her own pocket, her eyes shimmering. “I hain’t been able to cool it none.”

  I fetched her The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse and the health pamphlet. “Angeline, I’ve got something else—”

  “A bad fever,” she said and walked away, shaking her head. At the bottom of the rickety porch, she dropped the seeds in the mud and disappeared inside the cabin.

  “Angeline,” I called after her, fishing inside my bags for the medicines. I hurried up the wobbly stones and high-stepped over the tall, scratchy weeds poking through the rotted planks. Pushing open the door, I peeked inside and softly said her name. Steam rose from a pot atop the stove. Scents of simmering wild grasses hung thick in the shanty.

  Angeline knelt on the floor next to the bed, face buried in the covers atop Mr. Moffit, sobbing quietly, her tiny shoulders racked with grief and heartbreak. At the head of the bed, a homemade calendar that Angeline had fashioned from a worm-eaten board dangled against the bedpost. She’d carved out HONEY at the top. A scratch of berry-inked X’s marked down the days until her baby’s arrival.

  “Angeline,” I called quietly again, going over to her side. “Don’t worry none. I brought medicine. Look.”

  Mr. Moffit groaned in his sleep, and the bedcovers slipped from his leg, showing his wound. The foot was angry red, pocked with yellowish-green pus, a festering sore that seemed to swallow most of his foot. The stink of infection wafted up, watering my eyes, roiling sickly in my belly.

  Angeline stood and swept a hard hand across her damp cheekbones.

  “I have willow bark for his fever”—I showed her—“and we can clean his foot with this alcohol wash.” I pushed the bottles into her hand. “Then you can dress it twice a day with a layer of honey and bandage it with this roll. Here’s some laudanum for his rest.”

  Angeline laid them gently at the foot of the bed, studying the treasures, gliding her dirty fingers over the bottles, while tears streamed from her eyes. She took a shaky breath, suddenly gasped, and clutched my hand to her belly.

  “Oh, oh. Feel that? Honey’s happy she’ll have herself a pa,” she exclaimed, her bright eyes widening.

  I felt the baby’s strong rolling kick and then released Angeline’s hold. “Let’s get that busted foot fixed,” I said. Together we went to work, Angeline happily chattering about the baby, the future, and the town’s Fourth of July picnic Mr. Moffit promised to take her to.

  I boiled the willow and made a tea, then took a pan of water with a rag over to the bed to begin cleaning the wound. But when I lifted Mr. Moffit’s leg, he roused awake and cursed me.

  “Dammit, don’t touch me,” he bit, raising his head before collapsing back onto the bed.

  “Willie, shush,” Angeline said. “Bluet is going to make you better.”

  “No, no.” He coughed. “Ain’t having a colored touch me an’ bring more infection.”

  “Willie!” Angeline said sharply. “Don’t be ornery!”

  I backed away and shifted my eyes to the floor.

  “Bluet,” Angeline said, “he don’t mean it none. It’s the fever—”

  “Ain’t having it.” Mr. Moffit barked me back farther, and I stumbled over a boot.

  I glanced at him and saw the fear on his face. His fear looked a lot like hatred, or so
mething ugly that had rooted in him and his kin long before me. I turned my head. “Be well, Mr. Moffit.”

  “Oh, Bluet, he hain’t hisself—” Angeline cried out with an outstretched hand.

  “Don’t forget to clean it with the alcohol before you put on the dressing,” I whispered and quickly took my leave.

  Twenty

  Several hours later, I’d finished my drop-offs at the three cabins and rode into Jackson Lovett’s yard, the smells of fresh rain, wild onion, and turned dirt rising into the breeze. Above, fat thunderclouds sailed off to the east, the sheets of rain curtaining layered grandfather ridges that rose beyond.

  Jackson worked on a late-spring garden, taking a hoe to one of the many rows he’d cut.

  Junia brayed and whinnied, a warning clinging to her last haw. Jackson pulled his shoulders up, laid down his hoe, and walked over to us.

  “Easy, girl,” I said as Junia snapped a leg frontward, cautioning him not to come any closer.

  Jackson pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his neck. “Whoa, old girl. I plumb forgot it was Monday. But I’m happy to see you too.”

  I slid down the prancing mule, tapped her foreleg, pushed her back to try to right myself from a wriggling mess she was causing. Finally, I was able to stand and give a proper greeting, get Jackson’s loan out of the saddlebag, and pass it to him.

  He wrinkled his brow. “What’s this?”

  “It’s your new loan. Well, not an official library loan. It’s my mama’s, and I’m loaning it out.” It was a fairly decent copy of Brave New World.

  Surprised, he inspected the dust jacket and thumbed through the pages.

  It was a banned book here, but Pa’d saved up for six months and paid his foreman to fetch it from the city for him one Christmas years ago to surprise Mama with it. I searched Jackson’s eyes, a worry gathering in mine.

  “It’s clean enough,” I said with a challenge in my voice, but still buckling under a rising peacock-blue blush. I tucked my hands behind my back. The book was clean and less soiled than the real-life stories taking place in these dirty hills. In Aldous Huxley’s fable of a future world where everyone was safe, no one suffered illness, starved, or did without, and there were no more wars. One of my favorite parts was when the law broke up an ugly riot. They didn’t use guns, arrows, sticks, or fists. Instead, they sprayed a strange misty drug over the crowd that made everyone happy.