And Angels to Guide Me
The twins were barely a year old when I thought I was gonna lose them. Not only them but their momma as well. It was ironic, since I was the one that was sick all the time when I was growin' up, that this was the one time I stayed healthy while the three ladies that I loved most in my life tried their best to slip away from me.
It all started when I went to see Simon Petry about a hand that I thought was broken. I manage Maude's, the biggest saloon within two hundred or more miles of Little Bend, Texas, and we'd been shorthanded the day the latest liquor delivery arrived. Naturally, I pitched in to help unload the wagon, and we were almost finished when one of the mules pulling the darn thing moved. A box of whiskey bottles slipped and caught my left hand just as I was to pick it up, and it's been a long time since I felt that much pain. Willie and Douglas, our delivery man, both raced to grab the box and in seconds I was freed, but not before the damage had been done. I was sure I'd broken the hand, and I silently cursed myself as I hurried up to Simon Petry's to have him confirm my suspicions.
On my way into Doc's offices I passed by Larry Wilson and his mother; they were on their way out. Larry was sniffling and sneezing, blowing his nose into a handkerchief he'd pulled from his back pocket. Simon took me in right away and poked and prodded to his heart's content before delivering the news.
"I don't think it's broken, Bart. It's a bad sprain, and it's about as close as you can get without actually breaking it. I'm going to wrap it and put you in a sling, and I want to see you tomorrow morning once some of the swelling has gone down. And don't try to use it, because if it's not broken you'll only do more damage to it. And then you will be in a cast, and that could be for weeks. Understood?"
Normally I probably would have ignored Simon's directions, but there was enough pain in my hand that I had no desire to risk aggravating it any further. Working the rest of the day was difficult at best, and when I finally gave up and went home early, Doralice was there to console me. It was painful to try and sleep but I finally managed, and I have to admit that by the time I was dressed the next morning, the swelling had lessened considerably. So had the pain.
It was later in the morning before I could get in to see Simon, but he seemed pleased when he unwrapped the hand and took a good look at it. He even had a bit of a smile on his face when he gave me the news. "I was right yesterday. It's not broken. I'm going to rewrap it, and I want you to come back again tomorrow. Then we'll figure out how long to keep it immobile. Don't forget, use the sling."
"Yes, sir," I agreed as I nodded. I considered myself damn lucky the hand wasn't broken, and I wasn't about to do anything that would jeopardize it healing sooner rather than later. The sprain improved day by day and within a few short weeks felt almost as good as new. By the time it was healed we had another problem in town, a bigger one as it turned out. Maybe Larry Wilson had started it all, maybe not. But it didn't take long before it was my turn to get the twins fed at breakfast, and I noticed Isabelle seemed to have little or no interest in food. Try as I might, her appetite was virtually non-existent. I was doing my best to attract her attention with a bite of scrambled egg when I touched her forehead and almost combusted.
"Doralice, honey," I called in my best 'there's nothing wrong but please hurry' voice. "Can you come in here?"
My beautiful wife hurried into the kitchen, just in time to watch Maudie licking scrambled egg from her fingers, while Belle once again refused my offer of breakfast. "Bart!"
"Maude's fine. Come feel Belle's forehead. She won't eat, and she feels like she's running a fever."
Doralice did as asked and it only took seconds for her eyes to widen and a worried look to appear on her face. "You're right. She does feel hot." Picking up our youngest twin, she turned Belle around to face her. "What's the matter, baby? Doesn't mama's girl feel well?"
Belle closed her eyes and shook her head gently. "No, no, no, mama."
Swept up into her mother's arms, my littlest angel disappeared back into her bedroom. I turned my attention to Maudie, who'd stopped eating temporarily to watch the scene unfold in front of her. I wiped the egg off her hands and tried to feed her a forkful instead, but she no longer seemed interested. "No more egg, Maudie?" I questioned, and she shook her head, slipped down from her chair, and followed her twin back into the bedroom. I cleaned up what was left of breakfast and eventually did the same, arriving in the bedroom just as Doralice was finished tucking Belle in. "How is she?"
"She's definitely got a fever," came the expected reply. "Nothing else, so far. I'll keep her in bed and keep an eye on her. It might not be anything serious. I can send Ana Sofia down to Simon's when she gets here. Aren't you supposed to be someplace this morning?"
"It'll wait. I'll go down to Simon's and see what he's got to say. Maybe there's something he can give her." I leaned over to kiss Doralice on the cheek and noticed that Isabelle wasn't the only one that felt warmer than she should have. I pulled back and looked at my wife. "You feel warm, too. Are you alright?"
Doralice felt her forehead with the back of her hand. "Yes, I feel perfectly normal. Are you sure? I can't afford to get sick right now."
"Maybe you oughtta spend some time in bed, too. Whatever you've got on the agenda for today will wait."
She shook her head. "I'm gonna stay here and watch Belle. You go see what Simon has to say."
What Simon had to say was not encouraging. "There's something very unpleasant going around, Bart. It starts out with a fever and progresses from there. Cough, congestion, headaches, chills, they all seem to show up at one time or another. They call it influenza. You said Belle had the fever?"
"She does, Simon. What do we do for her?"
"Wait here, I've got something I want you to take with you." Simon ducked into the back room and in a few minutes came back with a small container filled with something he called aconite. I looked at what he'd handed me carefully . . . it was little blue and purple leaves, almost resembling flowers. "Doralice needs to grind up just a few of the leaves at a time . . . and add them to sassafras tea. Remember, just two or three leaves at once. Make sure the baby drinks this three or four times a day. You can add honey to the tea to counterbalance the taste. Keep a real close watch on the fever, and if it seems to rise than I want somebody to come get me at once. And keep Maudie away from her as much as you can. It's highly contagious."
"How long before the fever breaks, Doc?"
I got a puzzled look for that question. "That could be a problem. Nobody seems to know. If she still has it on Monday, come and get me." Today was Thursday.
I hurried back to the house with the aconite and told Doralice everything that Simon had told me; especially the part about keeping Belle and Maudie apart. That, of course, would be easier said than done.
Into the bedroom I went and closed the door behind me while Doralice ground the aconite and brewed the tea for Belle; when both were finished she added the ground up herb and honey to the hot beverage and brought it in. It hadn't been any trouble to keep Belle amused while we waited for the tea, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep. My poor little angel; she looked so tiny and fragile just lying there. I kept rewetting the cloth with fresh cool water and wiping her face and neck down. I'm not sure it did a whole lot of good, but it kept me busy, and I felt better for it.
When blue-eyes came in with the tea, I left and took Maudie outside. I hadn't seen Lucy in quite a while and was surprised at how big she'd gotten, but she went straight to the corner of the yard with the most sunlight and lay down. Half a dozen little yellow and white chicks gathered around her and snuggled up against her, making themselves at home in the nest of fur she provided for them. The cat sighed and closed her eyes; Maudie watched them and giggled. I reached over and felt her forehead; it seemed warmer than normal to me, too. Was it too late? Had Maudie already caught this nasty thing from Belle? I wondered where it had come from, and then I remembered Larry Wilson. Was this my fault? Could I have brought it home with me?
We tried keeping Maudie entertained and away from her sister, but it seemed to do no good. Of course, by the time we endeavored to keep this disease from spreading, it was no doubt too late. Our normally sweet-natured child became cranky and difficult to take care of. She seemed congested in the chest; we tried the same kind of poultice that Simon used on Pappy all those years ago. It gave her some relief, but not a lot. She coughed and her throat hurt; she cried all night, then proceeded to cry all day. And just when it seemed it might have taken a turn towards loosening its hold on her, Maudie came down with it.
Simon visited and cautiously increased the dose of aconite in the tea, but the fever continued to linger. Now both of my girls were miserable; when Maudie got sick it just seemed to make Belle feel awful all over again. And poor Doralice was worn down to practically nothing; she had no appetite, and when I tried to get her to go take a nap she just shook her head and refused. I sent Ana Sofia home and told her not to come back to work until I gave her the okay; the last thing we needed to do was spread it to another family. Why I didn't get it I'll never know . . . I kept waiting and waiting, but I didn't cough or even feel like I was going to. Simon theorized that perhaps I'd had whatever this was when I was young and developed immunity to it. I hope he was right because I was the only one in the house that was still standing; Doralice had joined the ranks of the infected.
For two days and nights I did nothing but grind aconite and brew tea; no one could eat anything, and I couldn't stay away from them long enough to get any food down myself. When I wasn't making tea, I was sitting by one or the other's side, trying to cool them down with a wet facecloth. I fell asleep twice at Belle's bedside and once at my wife's.
Simon must have gone to Maude and told her the desperate straits I was in because she turned up on the morning of the third day and refused to leave. "You look like death warmed over yourself, Bart. I'm here so you can get some rest and I'm not leavin' until you've had a good, long sleep. And don't try makin' those eyes at me, sonny boy, because it won't do no good. Now, give 'em their tea while I make you some food; come out here to the kitchen when you're done, and I'll sit with 'em while you lie down. Simon's gonna come by later and check over everybody, and I want him to have a look at you while he's here. What did I tell you about those eyes?"
I almost laughed; I'd listened to my father complain my whole life about me makin' 'puppy-dog eyes' at him, but they seemed to have no effect on Maude. I wasn't about to argue with her, she was too formidable an opponent. I merely followed her instructions – went to the kitchen and made tea for my poor sick girls. Then I took a cup into Doralice and left it with her, and the remaining two went to Belle and Maudie. By the time I was finished I was too tired to eat, but I knew my mother-in-law wouldn't accept that as an excuse.
I sat at the table and picked up my fork. I have no idea what Maude had cooked for me; I remember putting one forkful of whatever it was in my mouth, chewing and swallowing, and I remember nothing after that. Maude says when she turned around to ask me if it was alright, I was face down on the table, with my fork on the floor where I'd dropped it. I avoided landing on my plate of food by about an inch. She swears she woke me up, got me on my feet and managed to maneuver me to one of the spare bedrooms; I remember none of it. I slept straight through until almost ten o'clock that night, but I have to admit to feeling a whole lot better.
Simon was present when I woke up; he was concerned about Belle, who seemed to be trying so hard to hold onto her fever. "She's so little, I'm worried about her body just giving up if we can't get that fever down. We've got a fight on our hands, Bart. Now Maudie, she seems to be faring better. There's every indication that her fever will break."
"What about Doralice?"
He'd stopped and not told me anything about my wife, and that made me nervous. Very nervous.
"I haven't said anything about Doralice because I'm not sure what's happening. Her fever went up to a certain point and just stopped there. It doesn't seem to move. If we can get it to come down . . . we're alright. If not . . . "
Maude stayed with me all night, while we fought to bring both her daughter's and her granddaughter's fever down. We pumped cool water into a washtub and kept immersing Belle in it. She'd stopped fussing and let us do practically anything we saw fit; we both wondered if she knew we were trying to help her, or had simply given up.
Doralice was proving to be more difficult, since we weren't able to do the same with her. Me and Maude took turns wiping her down with wet facecloths. Sometimes she knew what we were doing and sometimes she didn't. I'm not sure if Maude did any prayin', but I spent a lot of time askin' God not to take my girls. There was no way I could exist in the darkness that would be my life if I didn't have them.
Once when I was just a little guy, I went to town with momma and got lost while she was in the Emporium. I can remember looking for her frantically, terrified that I'd never find her again, and the sense of joy and relief when I finally saw her. "Always ask the angels to guide you, Bartley, and you'll never be lost. You might not know exactly where you are, but the angels will."
That's all I could think of while we worked on Doralice and Belle. Without them I was lost; I needed the angels to guide me. And sometime around sunrise my first prayer was answered when I heard Maude calling my name . . . she was in the babies' room and I came running, panicked beyond belief that we'd lost Belle. Instead I found our little one sleeping peacefully, her fever having finally broken. I grabbed my mother-in-law and planted the biggest kiss I could manage on her.
It was more than twelve hours later before there was a change in Doralice. I'd just finished wiping her face when I saw movement of some kind – it took me a full minute to pinpoint it as the fluttering of her eyelashes . . . and in another minute I was staring into the most beautiful aqua-blue eyes I'd seen open in quite a while. "Doralice?" I whispered softly, and an ever-so-slight nod of the head confirmed my suspicions . . . she was awake, and her fever had receded considerably. Now it was my turn. "MAUDE!" I yelled as loud as I could manage. I was rewarded less than a minute later with the same kiss of thanks that I'd given her earlier in the day.
"Belle?" My beautiful wife murmured.
"Her fever broke this mornin'," I replied, just as Maude came hurrying back into the room, carrying the small bundle of joy we'd been discussing.
"Here's your baby, sweetheart," Maude exclaimed as she handed the little one to her mother. "And we don't know exactly when, but Maudie's fever is almost gone, too." Doralice took Belle and tucked her in the crook of her arm, and in just minutes the two of them were fast asleep again. I let Maude have my chair and went to check on my oldest daughter. She, too, was sleeping. So quiet and peaceful, she resembled nothing as much as one of those angels I had begged guidance of earlier in the day.
"Thank you," I murmured softly, and at the sound of my voice Maudie opened her big brown eyes and looked up.
"Poppy."
I adored my daughters, from the moment they were born, but it was at that exact moment that I understood for the first time what it meant to be a father. So many things that never made sense regarding my own father and the relationship I had with him were clear to me, and I realized how hard it must have been for him to raise two little boys all on his own. And how much he must have loved them.
"Poppy."
"Yes, buttercup, poppy's here."
"Hungry, Poppy."
This one wasn't gonna be hard. I'd followed the angels when I needed them, but my daughter was hungry, and I could find the kitchen all by myself. "I can fix that, sweetheart." I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, and that's when I saw Maude standing in the doorway watching me. She had the biggest smile on her face, and I had the feeling I'd passed some sort of a test. I'll have to ask Pappy about that . . . he'll know.