The Many Change and Pass by R.P. Burnham
Luke Kimball’s hands trembled as he tried to roll a cigarette. He brought the paper with the partly rolled tobacco to his mouth to lick the glue, but his hand shook so much the paper opened and the tobacco spilled onto the floor. With a curse he slapped the worn and ratty cushion of the couch he was sitting on. Dust was raised and he sneezed. Then he got on his knees and collected the tobacco, and this time he was able to get it rolled the right way. He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. He felt better but still not calm. He had too many problems ever to feel calm. Mostly money worries burdened his days, and now his youngest son was sick and the money worries were magnified.
They lived in a tar-paper shack at the edge of his father’s land, near the wetlands and downhill from the former pastures back when it was a working farm. It was built with parts of the old collapsed barn, the chicken coop and scrap lumber found here and there—that was right before he married Suzy Godwin. His father, his uncle and his brother helped him. When the fourth of their five kids came along they built an addition to make another bedroom—likewise of recycled material. And the furniture was the same. A few items like the table were given to them by his parents, but most of the stuff was from Hoot Berry’s barn. Hoot’s business was junk collecting. He went around the streets of downtown Waska nine miles away and collected what rich folks threw away. He sold some of the stuff for scrap and the rest as secondhand merchandise. Sissy, Luke’s oldest daughter (she was seventeen, in high school now) scornfully called Hoot’s barn their Wal-Mart. Despite the smart mouth, the name fit. The couch he was on, the two chairs in the long space that was living room, dining room and kitchen all rolled into one, the TV, the stand it was on, a shelf by the stove with the pots and pans and dishes—all these things were from Hoot’s barn. Even the pictures of woods and fields and of a man fishing were originally lying in a gutter outside of some rich guy’s house downtown. Most of the stuff they paid for, but some stuff like their toaster and new frying pan Luke got by helping Hoot in his business. Hoot’s youngest son was getting too old to be interested in helping his old man, and that had led to an occasional job for Luke. During the last couple of months of this past winter and early spring, that was the only work he had done. The last time he got paid for a job was in early January when he got fifty dollars for helping a guy in a moving van unload furniture at one of the new houses the rich people were increasingly building up among the poor country folk. Pretty soon they’d be agitating to get rid of the eyesores his people lived in—and then where would they go? Even his father’s farmhouse was rundown and ratty. But that was looking for things to worry about, when already he had a full plate. Suzy was in the far bedroom with Mark now, and when she came out he knew what she was going to ask him. He sucked at the cigarette, getting all the nicotine he could before snubbing it out.
Sissy came out of the bathroom and frowned at him. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. She had a job at a fast-food place in Waska and was required to give ten dollars a week to the household. Malcolm, his second son, worked at a garage and gave twenty dollars a week. Suzy cleaned a house down the road every Friday for twenty dollars more. That fifty dollars was all the money the family had this winter, except for the fifty Luke made in January. He tried to maintain his status as the head of the household by ice fishing on Pleasant Pond down past the wetlands at the edge of his father’s property. The state stocked brown trout and small-mouthed bass in the Waska River every year, and some of them made their way up the little brook that emptied Pleasant Pond into the river and had been living there for years. At least twice a week the family had fish for dinner. But Sissy, instead of seeing she was contributing to the family, resented having part of her meager salary taken from her. She knew the can of tobacco he bought last week cost over ten dollars, and she regarded every cigarette he smoked as money robbed from her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Luke was adept at reading faces, and he saw all the hatred, contempt and bitterness she was thinking.
It was Saturday and she was getting all dolled up. She and her friend Tina Silcox were going boy hunting downtown like they did every Saturday. She spent as much time as possible away from the family. Like Leighton, his oldest son, she was ashamed of her background. He knew as soon as she could she would leave the family. Leighton had run away at sixteen and had never been heard from since, though there was a rumor about that he had joined the armed services. That wouldn’t be Sissy’s way. She was blond and pretty and shapely. She was going to find someone to marry as soon as she could. Malcolm, who was almost sixteen now, was the only one of their teenaged kids who was going to follow his old man’s example, but that was because he was slow in the head. As soon as he was sixteen he was going to drop out of school. He’d stayed back a few times, and when he went to high school he was just being passed along—he could hardly read. But he loved to hunt and fish with his father, and because of that and because Malcolm was like he was when he stuck to his family while his brothers and sister moved to town, he was Luke’s favorite child. He and Sharon were down at their grandparents’ house today. Suzy had shooed them out of the house as soon as they had had breakfast. Again, Luke knew why—it was part of the reason he was so nervous right now.
Suzy had been worrying all week about Mark. Three days ago she suggested they take him to the hospital, but he resisted. “Give him a few more days,” he said. The three days had now passed.
He was thinking of rolling another cigarette when she came out of the bedroom. She walked across the room looking at him all the time and saying nothing. She sat in the chair opposite to him, still looking at him silently. She had been showing her age lately. The golden hair of her youth was faded and lines were beginning to grip her face. She looked tired and as worn as the shapeless dress she wore.
At first she thought about what she wanted to say, but after a while she spoke—and spoke forcefully. She was going to get her way, but she was going to do it without forcing him to be defeated. She understood him, and that was why he still loved her.
“Okay, Luke. He’s no better. You know what I want you to do.”
He looked away and did not answer. It wouldn’t do to give up right off, but he knew that was what he was going to do eventually. He had to justify his behavior first.
“Why don’t you want to bring him to the hospital?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s not an answer. Come on, Luke. Mark is sick, real sick.”
“But he’ll get it over it. He’s had bad flu and colds before and got over ’em.”
She started shaking her head as he spoke. Frowning, she said, “This ain’t no cold. He’s skin and bones. We’ve got to do something.”
“We don’t have the money. We—”
“That doesn’t matter. They won’t turn away a sick boy because of that.”
“We should wait a little longer. He looked better to me this mornin’.”
“Luke! We have been waiting. I wanted to do this three days ago. Now it can’t wait.”
“But—”
Her eyes flashed. She wasn’t concerned about his feelings this time. He saw a different Suzy. “Luke, if you don’t take him, I’ll get Vernon and Jenny to help. And I’ll never forgive you.”
Vernon and Jenny were his parents. For a moment he debated letting her do that. Then he would be spared. But it wouldn’t be right. “We’re poor people. They’d just regard us as a nuisance. They wouldn’t want to help Mark.”
“Now you listen to me. I knew it was your damned pride. Who’s the one to get the surplus food and the food stamps? Your pride is all well and good, but when your children can’t eat right and a boy is so sick he can’t even eat—you hear that, he can’t even eat—you have to swallow your pride.”
She was right. He knew it. He knew it three days ago and was ready to be talked into going even then. But it wasn’t pride. It would have been better if she said he was shy. Because it was the way they treated him, the way they made him feel. He’d seen their liv
es on TV and even been in their houses sometimes as a worker. They looked like him. They had arms and legs and a head at the top of their necks, but they were so different from him they might as well have been from outer space. Rich people. Hoot hated them. Sometimes Luke thought Hoot wanted to kill them. But it was fear with him, even though he would never admit that to any living soul.
These people, these strange rich people who didn’t know what it was like to be poor, they would say sir to him with their tongues and call him scum with their eyes. They would make him self-conscious, nervous and tongue-tied. He’d become scared because of the violent urges they made him feel. They made him remember who he was and what he was. They showed him the reality of his life. He’d seen a comedian on TV who kept saying, “I’ll tell ya, I don’t get no respect,” but he never laughed at that guy. He could make jokes because it wasn’t true. He made lots of money. He lived in a swanky house. He drove a big car. When he went out into the public a thousand eyes didn’t tell him he was dirt. There was nothing funny about that guy.
But how could he tell Suzy of his feelings and still be the head of the household? He couldn’t. He knew she was right. He knew they had to get help for Mark. Now that it was happening he didn’t have to lie to himself anymore. The poor boy couldn’t hold much down. He had been puking for a week. He had always been the runt of the litter. Now he was seven but looked four. He was wasting away to skin and bones. He was very weak. He could hardly move his left arm. He got dizzy easily when he tried to walk. He complained of a pain in his back where his kidneys were. Sometimes Suzy thought he was not seeing very clearly.
So he looked at her. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded. Then she got her things together and got Mark dressed without saying another word to him. She didn’t have to. He didn’t want her to.
He had to carry Mark to the car. Picking him up told him more than seeing him. Suzy was right—he was worse. He was limp and sleepy and weighed no more than a baby. He waited for Suzy to get in. Then he carefully placed the sick child in her lap. His nervousness made him grind the engine of the twenty-year-old station wagon and pump the gas pedal too long, and he flooded the engine. Suzy looked at him anxiously and suggested he run up to the farmhouse and borrow Vernon’s pickup truck, but he knew his car. After it was flooded and cleared it would always start. It did, and he backed through the thick mud of their yard—the nearby wetlands expanded almost to their house in the spring—and got the car onto the rounded gravel road that led to Route 177. Mark was too sick to even notice where he was. He fretted and whimpered while Suzy tried to comfort him. Luke tried not to think of the people who would be at the hospital. He concentrated on being the man of the family—clung to the notion that in helping his son there could be no humiliation. But a heavy dread hung over him, and whether it was his concern for Mark, his growing guilt for having waited too long, or the anticipation of his trial with the rich people, he could not say. He was too nervous and dry-mouthed to even talk, and Suzy’s whole attention was on Mark, so they drove to Waska in silence.
At the hospital Suzy looked for the sign that had EMERGENCY ROOM printed on it. She found it, but there was no place to park nearby. She said the signs warned that only official vehicles could park here. So they drove around to the other side of the big building to find a place. It was a nice spring day so there was no danger of Mark being chilled. Rich people passed by and made him feel self-conscious as he carried his sick boy. He saw in their eyes what they thought. His nervousness had not left him. Instead it grew worse. At the door a man in a blue uniform was coming out. Suzy asked him where they were to go to check in. She had no pride. She was a mother. He understood that. The man was in a hurry and just pointed down the hall. Then he ran to an ambulance. The hall was like a tunnel. It had pale brown tiled walls and was poorly lit. But through the door the light was very bright. The room was about thirty feet long and lined with chairs on three sides. Two televisions were bolted to walls for people to watch. The counter was at the far end. It had nurses and doctors walking behind it and one woman who watched them coming towards her.
Across the room he self-consciously walked, carrying Mark. He hoped that Suzy would do the talking. His heart was racing and his mouth was dry. He wasn’t sure he could talk even if he had to. Yet there was only one rich man there. Maybe he had a broken arm. He held his arm carefully, that’s for sure. The rest of the people were workers or poor people. They may have looked sickly, but that’s the way poor people always looked. He wasn’t sure if they were waiting for someone else or if they were the sick ones. They had sallow, sunken eyes, poor skin and were either too fat or too skinny. A woman with a little girl with thick black hair was sitting near the counter. Both were very quiet. Luke recognized in the woman’s face the same fear he felt. The rest of them had mean, selfish faces that were more common with poor people. The rich guy was in too much pain to feel contempt for poor people. He kept looking about, afraid of being jostled.
At the counter Mark started fussing, so Luke put him down so that he could cling to Suzy’s dress. The woman who had watched them cross the floor waited for them to speak. Suzy explained that their son was sick. “He can’t hold food down,” she said. “He’s been sick for over a week and not getting better. He gets dizzy. He has pains. I’m not sure he sees properly.” This and other things Suzy said. The woman just listened. She didn’t seem concerned. She hardly looked at Mark. When Suzy finished, all she said was, “Do you have health insurance?” Luke could tell she asked the question already knowing the answer.
Suzy shook her head. “No,” she said in a whisper.
The woman wrote something on the paper. She looked up and asked them their names. They gave them. She asked for Mark’s name. They told her. She wrote it down. Luke saw another nurse looking at them through narrowed eyes. It made him feel hurried and short of breath. His heart started pounding. “He’s been real sick,” he said to the woman in a low voice. “We tried to wait, but he’s not getting better.”
The woman continued writing without acknowledging his statement. Didn’t she understand what he was telling her? They hadn’t come here casually. They weren’t looking to bother people. It was an emergency for the emergency room. The anger he felt came as a relief. He remembered he was a man, the head of the household. He was doing his duty. “Look,” he said, speaking louder now, “what are we supposed to do? My son is very sick. If it was a cold or the grippe he’d be better now.”
The woman looked at him. The skin on her cheeks shone in the bright light. He wanted her to understand, to be kinder, but she merely nodded and said, “I see.” She turned and went into the inner office.
His confidence left him. He looked around to see if anyone was staring, but most of the people had blank, numb expressions on their faces.
“What’s she doing?” Suzy asked. She looked worried. Her arms held Mark and tried to support him. Standing all this time was making him feel faint.
The woman came back with another woman. This one didn’t wear a nurse’s uniform. She wore a skirt and a gray sweater. She was middle-aged, not pretty. Her nose was too big. But she didn’t look unkind.
“You’re the Kimballs, I assume,” she said. “I’m Edie McLaughlin from social services. Have you been here before?”
The question surprised Luke. He didn’t understand what she meant.
Suzy did. “I birthed my last baby here.” She patted Mark’s head. “He’s sick now. The rest were brought into the world by Molly Jenkins.”
“Molly Jenkins?” The woman, the Edie McLaughlin, said the name like a question.
“She’s the upcountry midwife. She delivers lots of the babies among our folk.”
The Edie McLaughlin woman smiled strangely. Her eyes asked a question, which again he didn’t understand but Suzy did.
“The folks who live near the river bottom and Scanlon’s Ridge area.”
“Up on Route 177 in Waska?”
Suzy nodded. “You’ll be able to help my
boy, I’m hoping.”
The Edie McLaughlin woman looked at Mark and her face softened. “Such pretty blue eyes he has. Are you feeling poorly?” she asked Mark.
But he hid his face in his mother’s faded dress. He was scared. Luke wasn’t anymore. The look on the Edie McLaughlin’s face was comforting and kind. She seemed to care. She wasn’t judgmental. She was respectful. He trusted her, and everything was going to be all right.
They went into a room where they could sit down. Luke carried Mark and then put him on Suzy’s lap as soon as she sat down. He curled up against her. She had her arms around him as she talked to the Edie McLaughlin woman. Luke stood and let Suzy answer the questions. Through the window he could see the waiting room. An ambulance crew brought in an old man. There was a lot of running around and yelling and doing things just like on TV, but the old man looked dead to Luke. Then he was wheeled away. After that he watched the people. The rich one was beginning to look angry and impatient, but the poor working folks merely waited passively and looked up hopefully every time a medical-looking person came into the room.
The Edie McLaughlin woman made them sign several documents. Luke didn’t know what they were and didn’t dare ask, but Suzy seemed to think everything was okay. Nervously he signed the documents the way he was taught. Suzy had to help him by pointing to the places he was to sign his name. The Edie McLaughlin woman had left the room to confer with the nurses, so he wasn’t embarrassed. When she returned a nurse with a wheelchair was with her. They were going to take Mark for some tests. Suzy had to repeat all the symptoms she had noticed to the nurse. Luke wanted to know how long it would take but didn’t dare ask.
They watched Mark being wheeled away. He was too sick to cry, but Suzy cried for him. She called his name several times, even when he was out of sight. Luke too felt sad, but menfolk didn’t cry. Then the Edie McLaughlin woman told them to go to the waiting room on the other side of the glass window. They sat down, and he tried to watch TV. Suzy just stared at the door they had wheeled Mark through. The TV show was boring, and after a while he began feeling restless. He decided to go outside for a smoke. He’d seen enough medical shows on TV to be pretty sure Mark would be gone for some time.
Outside he found a bench to sit on and took out his pouch of tobacco from his pants pocket and his cigarette paper from his shirt pocket. His hands were still trembling, and he had a lot of trouble getting the thing rolled. He had to rest his hands on the armrest of the bench and lean down to lick the paper to get it done. But it was worth the trouble. The tobacco soothed him, and he sucked hungrily at it, taking drag after drag.
He was about halfway through the cigarette when he felt eyes on him. He looked up to see Bill McCarthy. He was a big hulking fellow, bald now, but years ago he used to wear his hair long like a hippie. He took a lot of razzing because even though he was a big man he had a high voice. He was good-natured about the ribbings he took, though. He lived upcountry, but he wasn’t really one of Luke’s folks. His father was a truck driver who owned his own rig and used to make a lot of money. Bill when younger had gone all over the country with his old man, but the life was too tiring for his taste, and he became a builder. Luke had worked for him a few times, but mostly as a gofer and on lawn work at a site. He wasn’t much of a carpenter—at least not for rich people’s work. Last time he saw Bill was when he cleared some land with Wade Blackburn’s crew for a house Bill was building.
Bill was on the path leading to the main entrance. He waved when Luke looked over at him and was about to continue on his way. Then he thought of something and walked over.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Luke Kimball. What brings you here?”
“My son’s sick. Some kind of grippe he can’t shake. Suzy is real worried. So am I.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hope he’s fine soon. I’m visiting my dad. He just had prostate surgery.”
Luke tossed his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his boot. “Hope he’s doing okay.”
“Yeah, he should be.” He started to leave, but again he thought of something. “Oh, by the way, I mentioned your name to Wade Blackburn the other day. Did he get in touch with you?”
“No, not yet.” He felt embarrassed and didn’t want to say he didn’t have a telephone. He was also slow to realize what Bill was saying. When he did, a surge of excitement almost jolted him.
“Well, I’m building a couple of houses on Topping Road and asked him to clear the land for me. You should contact him. I’m pretty sure he could use you. It’s a big job.”
“I could use one. I haven’t worked much this past winter.” He tried to hide his excitement and speak casually. He saw Bill read his mind, but it was okay. Bill had known him since they rode the school bus together as boys. He might be bending towards being a rich guy, but he was a good guy first of all. He forgot that for a second. “I could really use the work,” he added, and this time he didn’t try to hide how much he wanted the job.
“Well,” Bill said, this time starting to walk away for real, “I’ve got to see my dad. Don’t forget. Get in touch with Wade.”
Don’t forget! As if he would. He waited a few moments till Bill was out of sight and then quickly walked back to the waiting room. In an excited whisper he told Suzy the good news. But she was not interested. She gave him a strange look, hostile, angry, disappointed. Her eyes were still locked on to the door they’d brought Mark through. Probably she had never looked away. He knew why she was disappointed in him. He was thinking of himself, not Mark. But he didn’t understand why she would be angry. Work would help the whole family, not just him. He wasn’t just selfish. If he worked they wouldn’t have to keep the lights off and use candles anymore. They wouldn’t have to be afraid the juice would be cut off. There’d be money for food and clothes and necessities. So he brooded and didn’t think of Mark. Tomorrow he would drive to town and see Wade Blackburn. With any luck he’d be working in a few days. Let Sissy give him dirty looks then. He wouldn’t care. The first thing he was going to buy when he got some money was a pack of real cigarettes. Then he’d buy some ginger ale and candy. He hadn’t been able to indulge his sweet tooth for months and now he would. He had the bad and missing teeth to prove how much he loved candy and ginger ale. But at least he didn’t drink—just a couple of times a year he’d get lit celebrating something, then no booze the rest of the time. He grinned thinking about how good it was going to feel to have some money in his pocket. Then he glanced at Suzy’s serious, worried face and felt ashamed of himself. He had already forgotten that Mark was sick. He had forgotten the reason they were here.
He kept thinking about the good feeling of having money—he couldn’t help it—but he also thought about Mark. The poor wee thing had always been sickly. He had colds and grippe and maybe asthma—that’s what Suzy said when he wheezed trying to breathe. But the good feeling he got thinking about having money in his pocket made him an optimist. Mark was going to be okay. The Edie McLaughlin woman was kind, and the nurse who took him away was concerned and caring. He knew from TV doctor shows they performed miracles. Mark was going to be fine. He could taste the sweet ginger ale in his throat. He could feel the chewy sweetness of the caramel in the candy bar as his teeth worked it in his mouth. Winter was over and spring was here. The birds were singing back home. He was singing here in the hospital—singing in his heart.
But Suzy wasn’t. Suddenly her hand gripped his arm. The door had opened and she thought she saw Mark. “He’s here!” she said and then stopped. It was a false alarm. It was only the rich guy with the broken arm who came out. His arm was in a sling and had that white hard stuff on it. He went up to the desk and talked to the woman—the mean one who had checked them in. He signed something and left.
A few minutes passed. Suzy was growing restless and impatient. She started drumming her leg. Suddenly she asked, “What’s taking so long? It must be bad.”
He was self-conscious. People nearby had looked up at her sudden words. He just shrug
ged.
“I keep thinking, what if we brought him in too late? My boy, my poor boy.”
Luke looked around to see if anyone was listening. In a low voice he tried to comfort her. “Hospitals can do all sorts of things now. You’ve seen it on TV. They’ll fix Mark right up. You wait and see.”
She nodded and started thinking about what he said. Her leg stopped drumming. That was a good sign. A long time passed during which he sometimes thought of money, other times half watched the TV news show, and sometimes thought of Mark. He couldn’t really imagine what they would be doing in those rooms, though. Then a doctor came into the room, and he and Suzy joined everyone else in looking up expectantly. But the doctor passed through the room and went behind the counter to check some paperwork. Now, though, Luke had caught some of Suzy’s anxiety. He both wanted the doctor to come to them and dreaded it.
Then he overheard some people talking and found out in the emergency room they took people in order of the seriousness of their condition. He overheard a man complaining about how long he had waited. He was a big fat guy with mean black eyes. He had shortness of breath. Luke heard the man’s wife say so when she tried to calm him down. A lot of people had gone in front of him, she said, because their condition was more serious. When Luke heard that, the good mood he’d had thinking about a job and money entirely deserted him. He became as anxious as Suzy, probably more so because he heard this and she didn’t.
She was still concentrating on the door Mark had gone through with the nurse. He thought of all the times she patiently endured the hardships of their life. He thought she deserved peace, not this worry and dread. She was a good woman and a good mother. He was lucky and he knew it.
So he thought no more about ginger ale and candy and cigarettes and instead thought about Mark. If he died that would make their money go further—but the thought stopped right there. The tingling he’d been feeling in his fingers lately jumped to his spine and gave him a chill of horror. He had to be a bad person to have such an evil thought. But no. No, no, no. He wasn’t a bad man, and he didn’t know how such a thought could even enter his mind. He felt scared in a different way now. The only thing that would make him feel better was for Mark to come through the door cured.
For another half hour he didn’t feel better. He tried not to think his evil thought, but nothing worked. Ginger ale, store-bought cigarettes and candy tasted dull. Thinking of how little Mark weighed scared him. He didn’t dare go for another cigarette. He couldn’t hear the TV. The news pictures made no sense. Like Suzy’s, his eyes were locked on the door that Mark had gone through. And he thought the evil thought and slowly crumbled into dust.
Finally a nurse came through the door. She was the one who took Mark away. She surveyed the room and her eyes rested on him and Suzy. They exchanged an anxious glance, but before they could say anything the nurse came over to them. “The doctor wishes to speak to you,” she said.
Self-consciously—for everyone was looking at them—they followed her across the room and through the door. Too late, Luke wished he had worn his best clothes. His shirt had a hole in the elbow. The jacket he carried had a badly frayed collar and grease stains. The leather of his boots was worn bare. He was sure that he not only looked poor—he looked criminal, like one who had evil thoughts. He tried to banish the devils from his mind. He tried to think of something else. To Suzy he whispered, “Why wasn’t Mark brought back to us?” She frowned and didn’t answer. She knew it meant something bad. Here was Suzy who only thought of love. Her whole mind, love. He felt unworthy of her. He felt he was a bad, bad man.
At the end of a long corridor they were brought into a small room. It had a table, a few chairs, no windows, and a doctor. The nurse told him that here were the Kimballs. She left.
Dr. Arak was his name—at least that’s what it sounded like. Suzy looked at the name tag on his coat and said that sound. He was strangely dark, a foreigner in fact. He was short and his face was pockmarked, which was small comfort. He spoke English with a singsongy accent. Suzy asked him what he had found.
“The symptoms are of Minamata disease—mercury poisoning. Tell me, do you eat fish?”
Suzy said yes in a voice full of dread. “Is mercury poisoning bad?”
“Fish you’ve caught yourself?”
The dread grew on her face. She turned to Luke. “My husband fishes. We eat what he catches. But tell me, my boy?”
The doctor looked down at his clipboard and back at Suzy. “Yes, it can be. It’s too early to tell with your son.” Then he looked at Luke. “Where are you catching these fish? And how often do you eat it?”
“There’s a pond near our house. Pleasant Pond it’s called.”
Suzy answered the second question. “At least once or twice a week. Sometimes more. I even make chowder out of the leftovers.”
Dr. Arak nodded to her, but looked back at him. “What did you say the name of that pond was?”
“Pleasant Pond.”
He wrote it down and asked, “Where is it?”
“Near our house. Near the Waska River, up on Route 177.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“We have five,” Suzy said, “but one’s not living with us now. He ran away.”
Luke thought she shouldn’t have told the doctor that. He would think they were both bad people.
“And do the other children eat the fish?”
“Not Sharon. She’s a year older than Mark. She hates fish.”
“And the others?”
“They’re teenagers and don’t always eat at home. But they have eaten it.”
The doctor was writing down all she said. His pen scratching on the paper went on for a while and then he looked at Luke. “Have you felt any tingling in your extremities?”
Luke didn’t know what he meant. He began to feel scared and confused.
“Your fingers and toes? Do they ever tingle?”
Suzy shook her head. Luke said, “Maybe.” He remembered feeling something funny sometimes in both places. He remembered the trouble he had rolling a cigarette. He remembered now how he couldn’t quite feel the paper.
“Well, we’ll need to get blood samples from every member of your family. The nurse will start with you right now.” He started to leave, but Suzy had a question. At the door he turned and listened.
“We’ve been eating fish from that pond for years. I don’t understand why there’s poison in the fish now?”
“Well, the public health officials will have to investigate. Sometimes it’s factories, sometimes things people throw into the water. Somehow it has apparently gotten into your pond.”
They got the blood tests, and then they were allowed to see Mark. He was in intensive care and had tubes and such in him. He looked scared and confused but also very sick. The nurse told them they were giving him medication to clear the poison from his system. If their tests came back positive they were going to have to take the same medicine. Because Mark was little he was sicker, the nurse explained. Luke felt his fingers tingle. He took it as good news until he remembered that the doctor had also said it was too early to tell with Mark. Thinking of that he hung back, ashamed to be the cause of his little boy’s suffering and ashamed to have had evil thoughts. He wondered if the nurse thought he was a monster. He sure felt like one. He watched Suzy rubbing Mark’s cheek and kissing him on the forehead. She was talking to him in low murmurs, the way a mother does to her baby. He knew her littlest one was her favorite child. “Momma loves you,” he heard her murmur. He felt the nurse’s eyes on him and turned to her. He expected hostility, but she was kind. “Can I get you anything?” she asked in a soft voice. Moved, he shook his head. He felt tears wanting to come into the air and turned away. The others, Sissy, Malcolm and Sharon would have to be tested too. He knew Sissy would blame him, and he couldn’t call her wrong. It was worse to think Suzy would blame him, though. He wanted to justify himself, to say he only fished because the family needed food. Then he thought
that Suzy would understand that and he wouldn’t have to explain himself. But if the worst happened, he wasn’t sure what Suzy would do.
When they were driving home later in stunned silence, Suzy suddenly spoke. “Someone’s to blame for this.”
“What do you mean?” He spoke sharply and defensively. He thought she meant him.
“I mean that someone put that mercury in the water. Someone’s been poisoning us.”
He remembered seeing trucks come off the Tooley Road on the other side of the woods. The one building on the pond was where they went. Sometimes he heard trucks at night. “I’ve seen something,” he said, and when she looked at him he told her about the trucks.
“We should tell the doctor,” she said. “Or the police or whoever needs to know. Other people shouldn’t have to worry like this.”
He felt better hearing her say this. It meant she didn’t blame him.
When they got home the kids were waiting for them. Sharon was watching TV, though it wasn’t a children’s show. Probably she was bored, and Malcolm had told her not to bother him. He was sitting at the kitchen table working on his strange hobby of carving expensive cars in wood. He had taken his carving tools with him to his grandparents this morning. He’d done fifteen of them so far, and Vernon, who thought they were good enough to sell, told him he was going to buy him paint for his upcoming birthday so that he could finish them off proper.
Sharon jumped up the moment they came through the door. She had her mother’s blond hair, and it started flying as she raced across the room. She was looking for Mark, Luke knew. With eight years separating her from Malcolm, and with her big sister too interested in boys now to have any time for her, she and Mark were a world apart. “Where’s Mark?” she asked breathlessly.
When Suzy told her he was staying in the hospital, her face grew very serious. “Is he going to die?”
The question angered Luke. “Don’t you go using words like that, missy. He’s sick, that’s all.” He scowled at her, and she started whimpering.
Suzy put her arm around her shoulder. “He’s been poisoned by the fish we’ve been eating. It seems someone has been dumping stuff with mercury into the pond. You’ll have to be getting blood tests too.”
That last remark terrified Sharon. Her face crinkled up and she began crying in earnest.
From the kitchen table Malcolm looked up from his carving. “What kind of stuff?” he asked.
Luke frowned and glared at him. He had forgotten to ask the doctor that question and was ashamed he did not know. “Just stuff. That’s all you need to know.”
Malcolm’s face dropped. He wasn’t used to being rebuked by his father. That was because in almost every particular he was the spitting image of Luke at that age. He had the same hooked nose, pointed jaw, dark hair, protruding forehead and hazel eyes. He was about the same height—five foot seven inches. He was thin but sinewy like Luke. But the similarities didn’t end there. He was quiet and shy. Unlike Sissy and Leighton, he never gave any sass. Again like Luke, he was sensitive and touchy. The city boys teased him mercilessly.
Because of all that, Luke was protective of him. To snap at his boy was a very rare thing. Usually he could not stay mad at Malcolm for more than a minute, but his heart had none of the melting warmth of his usual self. So he said nothing, and Malcolm took his hurt to the boys’ bedroom to sulk.
Luke sat down and rolled a cigarette while he watched Sharon help Suzy make lunch. He noticed Suzy was strangely silent and not her usual self either. The kids had already eaten at their grandparents, so the late lunch of fried eggs and homemade bread was a quiet affair. Sharon wandered off outside, and Malcolm still sulked in the bedroom.
“I reckon we’d better take the kids to get them blood tests tomorrow,” Suzy said when the meal was half eaten.
“I reckon,” he replied.
“They seem okay.”
“Yeah, but Sharon never ate the fish. It might be different with Malcolm and Sissy.”
“They seem okay too.” Afraid, she spoke sharply. Not for the first time he realized pain took your humanity away. But this was the worst time. He still felt awful. He wasn’t hungry, though he ate all his food.
After lunch he went out to chop some firewood. It was an activity he loved. He had done many jobs in his life—gofer for a carpenter, plumber’s assistant for one summer, yard and lawn work, sweeper in a factory, painter, apple picker, farmhand, handyman, and for four years he even worked on the line at a factory that made soles for shoes and boots until he got fired for stealing two screwdrivers—but his best job and the one he felt most competent to do was lumberman. He could do amazing things with a chain saw and an ax. So sawing up some big logs with his chain saw and then splitting them with his ax made him forget his troubles for a while. He even started daydreaming again about the money he was going to make once he got in touch with Wade Blackburn tomorrow. But when his work was finished and he’d piled up the wood, the bad thoughts returned to him. He couldn’t face going inside, so instead—and without telling Suzy—he decided to walk down to the pond and think.
It was late afternoon and getting cool now that the sun was low. The world was moving towards the stillness of twilight, his favorite time outdoors. His old boots were already leaking as he walked across the squishy grass of the spring-extended wetlands. On a high bush two red-winged blackbirds were squabbling, probably over a nesting site. Ahead of him he saw a blue heron rise into the air and fly to the poplars on the other side of the pond. Here in low wetland the high grass and rushes hid from him a view of the pond itself. To get to its shore he turned left, following the well known path, and sought the high ground. Here sumac trees grew in abundance along with some spindly pines. He saw a screech owl on one of the branches last week. The owl froze and he did too. When he was a boy he would bedevil wildlife, but after a life of hardship he came to appreciate the life they lived. They too had to struggle to survive in a friendless world. He still killed deer and rabbits and an occasional bird—duck, grouse or snipe—but it was for food. He’d been told the Indians apologized to the souls of the creatures they killed. One time when a lucky shot brought down a wood duck and he examined its red eye gone glassy and its shiny greens and bright whites and spotted rusty reds he understood the Indians’ piety. After that he always whispered his sorrow for the food he took and the life lost. Other creatures, the muskrats and squirrels, the swamp sparrows and meadowlarks, were mute friends and comforting companions in the woods. He could be relaxed and at home with them.
Near the pond now, the memory of his evil thought at the hospital returned to him. He stepped between the thick leafless bushes to the shore. The high water confined him to a narrow rocky ledge. Just a few weeks ago it was still iced over and from this spot he would be watching for the red flag in the holes he had chopped. A band of chickadees calling to each other returned him to his thoughts. The birds were innocent and Mark was innocent. Unbidden, another memory replaced the evil one. Little Mark just learning to walk, tottering over to him on unsteady legs. His face with a look of great concentration and then breaking into a wide and happy grin as he falls into his daddy’s arms. That was the day he fell in love with his son.
He couldn’t understand where that love could have gone to make him have so evil a thought. He felt ashamed and remembered something his own father had told him once. He had been picking on a little neighboring boy when his father saw them. He was a quiet man and let Luke’s mother do most of the raising, but this time he interfered. “The only reason you’re picking on him is because you’re bigger. But let me tell you something. It’s mean and unmanly to hurt someone who is defenseless. To be a man is to protect the weak. Do you understand?” At the time he didn’t, but later when bullies at school beat him and called him a country hick, he saw it clear enough.
He tried to live after his father’s advice, and because of that he thought of himself as a good man. But nothing goes unnoticed or forgotten. He sat on the embankment,
hardly feeling the dampness of the ground. He sighed. There was a word ministers used. Retribution. He was pretty sure that was the one. God sees all and no sin goes unpunished. He wasn’t a religious man. He had hardly been inside a church since he was a boy. But he believed God was capable of retribution. God was like hope. He believed in him. But he was a man whose hopes had come to nothing, so he believed in retribution too.
Was it his pride? Suzy accused him of it. They waited too long because of his pride. Even the fish smelled of his pride. Catching them and providing for the family was one of the few things that made him feel good this winter. Now he knew that instead of being a man and head of the household he was killing his little boy. The Lord was smiting him. If his son died it would be his fault. But the retribution went even further. An eye for an eye. A boy for a boy. He knew now God was watching the day thirty years ago Barry Pendleton drowned in this very pond.
Everything happened step-by-step. It was a hot summer day, and throwing a taped-up baseball back and forth soon grew boring. One of them, he couldn’t remember which, suggested they go to the pond. It was a quarter of a mile away, and by the time they walked through the tall grass, across the wetlands and along the higher dry ground to get to the pond they were very hot. At first they just took off their canvas sneakers and walked into the shallows. They squealed and splashed each other for a while. Soon they were so wet Luke said they might as well jump in all the way. He did it first and swam about. He was proud that he could swim and yelled, “Look at me!” But Barry hesitated. He was not a good swimmer. Only after Luke teased him and called him a sissy did he jump in all the way and dog-paddle while Luke swam. Then Luke spotted the rocky outcropping seventy-five feet away and suggested they swim to it. Again Barry hesitated, and again he was called a sissy. “The pond is shallow,” he said. “We’ll never be over our heads.” Still Barry was afraid. “Come on,” Luke said. “Don’t be such a big baby. I’ll be right beside you.” So it happened. Halfway there they were over their heads, and when Barry got tired and tried to touch bottom to rest he panicked. He started screaming and thrashing away and went under, then came up. Luke tried to help him, but when he got to him Barry grabbed hold of him and started pulling him down. So Luke panicked and pushed him away. But he had to do something, so he swam quickly to shore to find a branch. But by the time he was back in the water Barry had gone under for good. He ran back home with his heart racing faster than his legs to get his mother and brother, and they retrieved the dead body. Luke never told anyone that Barry had gone into deeper water because of a dare. He lied and said Barry had foolishly gone too deep. For years afterwards he became scared every time he thought about that day. Finally he managed to convince himself that the lie he told was the truth. A time came when he could fish at the pond and not remember that he had caused a ten-year-old boy’s death. But retribution never forgot.
He looked up at the sky above where the sun was close to setting. Up there God watched. “Please, Lord, I didn’t mean to get Barry drowned. I’m sorry I thought about Mark dying too, Lord. I didn’t mean it. It was my pride because I have no money. Punish me, Lord, smite me down for my sins, but spare that poor boy. His momma would be brokenhearted if you took him from us, Lord. Punish me!”
He stood and started beating himself on the arms and chest as he made his prayer. “Me, Lord, me. Smite me.” Then when the pain made him feel better and a pang of fear shuddered through him, he added, “If you spare me, Lord, and spare Mark, I swear I’ll be a good man. I’ll get a permanent job. I’ll pay for the hospital. Please help me, Lord.”
He remembered the feel of Mark’s wasted body as light as a newborn babe. He remembered his father’s advice about protecting the weak and the innocent. He hoped God was a father. He hoped God had heard that advice. Suddenly he felt as tiny and defenseless as his sick little boy. He sank back onto the damp bank. He looked at the rocks at his feet and the poisoned water and whispered, “Please, please, please…”
Other People
They lived in a tar-paper shack at the edge of his father’s land, near the wetlands and downhill from the former pastures back when it was a working farm. It was built with parts of the old collapsed barn, the chicken coop and scrap lumber found here and there—that was right before he married Suzy Godwin. His father, his uncle and his brother helped him. When the fourth of their five kids came along they built an addition to make another bedroom—likewise of recycled material. And the furniture was the same. A few items like the table were given to them by his parents, but most of the stuff was from Hoot Berry’s barn. Hoot’s business was junk collecting. He went around the streets of downtown Waska nine miles away and collected what rich folks threw away. He sold some of the stuff for scrap and the rest as secondhand merchandise. Sissy, Luke’s oldest daughter (she was seventeen, in high school now) scornfully called Hoot’s barn their Wal-Mart. Despite the smart mouth, the name fit. The couch he was on, the two chairs in the long space that was living room, dining room and kitchen all rolled into one, the TV, the stand it was on, a shelf by the stove with the pots and pans and dishes—all these things were from Hoot’s barn. Even the pictures of woods and fields and of a man fishing were originally lying in a gutter outside of some rich guy’s house downtown. Most of the stuff they paid for, but some stuff like their toaster and new frying pan Luke got by helping Hoot in his business. Hoot’s youngest son was getting too old to be interested in helping his old man, and that had led to an occasional job for Luke. During the last couple of months of this past winter and early spring, that was the only work he had done. The last time he got paid for a job was in early January when he got fifty dollars for helping a guy in a moving van unload furniture at one of the new houses the rich people were increasingly building up among the poor country folk. Pretty soon they’d be agitating to get rid of the eyesores his people lived in—and then where would they go? Even his father’s farmhouse was rundown and ratty. But that was looking for things to worry about, when already he had a full plate. Suzy was in the far bedroom with Mark now, and when she came out he knew what she was going to ask him. He sucked at the cigarette, getting all the nicotine he could before snubbing it out.
Sissy came out of the bathroom and frowned at him. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. She had a job at a fast-food place in Waska and was required to give ten dollars a week to the household. Malcolm, his second son, worked at a garage and gave twenty dollars a week. Suzy cleaned a house down the road every Friday for twenty dollars more. That fifty dollars was all the money the family had this winter, except for the fifty Luke made in January. He tried to maintain his status as the head of the household by ice fishing on Pleasant Pond down past the wetlands at the edge of his father’s property. The state stocked brown trout and small-mouthed bass in the Waska River every year, and some of them made their way up the little brook that emptied Pleasant Pond into the river and had been living there for years. At least twice a week the family had fish for dinner. But Sissy, instead of seeing she was contributing to the family, resented having part of her meager salary taken from her. She knew the can of tobacco he bought last week cost over ten dollars, and she regarded every cigarette he smoked as money robbed from her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Luke was adept at reading faces, and he saw all the hatred, contempt and bitterness she was thinking.
It was Saturday and she was getting all dolled up. She and her friend Tina Silcox were going boy hunting downtown like they did every Saturday. She spent as much time as possible away from the family. Like Leighton, his oldest son, she was ashamed of her background. He knew as soon as she could she would leave the family. Leighton had run away at sixteen and had never been heard from since, though there was a rumor about that he had joined the armed services. That wouldn’t be Sissy’s way. She was blond and pretty and shapely. She was going to find someone to marry as soon as she could. Malcolm, who was almost sixteen now, was the only one of their teenaged kids who was going to follow his old man’s example, but that was because he was slow in the head. As soon as he was sixteen he was going to drop out of school. He’d stayed back a few times, and when he went to high school he was just being passed along—he could hardly read. But he loved to hunt and fish with his father, and because of that and because Malcolm was like he was when he stuck to his family while his brothers and sister moved to town, he was Luke’s favorite child. He and Sharon were down at their grandparents’ house today. Suzy had shooed them out of the house as soon as they had had breakfast. Again, Luke knew why—it was part of the reason he was so nervous right now.
Suzy had been worrying all week about Mark. Three days ago she suggested they take him to the hospital, but he resisted. “Give him a few more days,” he said. The three days had now passed.
He was thinking of rolling another cigarette when she came out of the bedroom. She walked across the room looking at him all the time and saying nothing. She sat in the chair opposite to him, still looking at him silently. She had been showing her age lately. The golden hair of her youth was faded and lines were beginning to grip her face. She looked tired and as worn as the shapeless dress she wore.
At first she thought about what she wanted to say, but after a while she spoke—and spoke forcefully. She was going to get her way, but she was going to do it without forcing him to be defeated. She understood him, and that was why he still loved her.
“Okay, Luke. He’s no better. You know what I want you to do.”
He looked away and did not answer. It wouldn’t do to give up right off, but he knew that was what he was going to do eventually. He had to justify his behavior first.
“Why don’t you want to bring him to the hospital?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“That’s not an answer. Come on, Luke. Mark is sick, real sick.”
“But he’ll get it over it. He’s had bad flu and colds before and got over ’em.”
She started shaking her head as he spoke. Frowning, she said, “This ain’t no cold. He’s skin and bones. We’ve got to do something.”
“We don’t have the money. We—”
“That doesn’t matter. They won’t turn away a sick boy because of that.”
“We should wait a little longer. He looked better to me this mornin’.”
“Luke! We have been waiting. I wanted to do this three days ago. Now it can’t wait.”
“But—”
Her eyes flashed. She wasn’t concerned about his feelings this time. He saw a different Suzy. “Luke, if you don’t take him, I’ll get Vernon and Jenny to help. And I’ll never forgive you.”
Vernon and Jenny were his parents. For a moment he debated letting her do that. Then he would be spared. But it wouldn’t be right. “We’re poor people. They’d just regard us as a nuisance. They wouldn’t want to help Mark.”
“Now you listen to me. I knew it was your damned pride. Who’s the one to get the surplus food and the food stamps? Your pride is all well and good, but when your children can’t eat right and a boy is so sick he can’t even eat—you hear that, he can’t even eat—you have to swallow your pride.”
She was right. He knew it. He knew it three days ago and was ready to be talked into going even then. But it wasn’t pride. It would have been better if she said he was shy. Because it was the way they treated him, the way they made him feel. He’d seen their liv
These people, these strange rich people who didn’t know what it was like to be poor, they would say sir to him with their tongues and call him scum with their eyes. They would make him self-conscious, nervous and tongue-tied. He’d become scared because of the violent urges they made him feel. They made him remember who he was and what he was. They showed him the reality of his life. He’d seen a comedian on TV who kept saying, “I’ll tell ya, I don’t get no respect,” but he never laughed at that guy. He could make jokes because it wasn’t true. He made lots of money. He lived in a swanky house. He drove a big car. When he went out into the public a thousand eyes didn’t tell him he was dirt. There was nothing funny about that guy.
But how could he tell Suzy of his feelings and still be the head of the household? He couldn’t. He knew she was right. He knew they had to get help for Mark. Now that it was happening he didn’t have to lie to himself anymore. The poor boy couldn’t hold much down. He had been puking for a week. He had always been the runt of the litter. Now he was seven but looked four. He was wasting away to skin and bones. He was very weak. He could hardly move his left arm. He got dizzy easily when he tried to walk. He complained of a pain in his back where his kidneys were. Sometimes Suzy thought he was not seeing very clearly.
So he looked at her. He didn’t say anything. He just nodded. Then she got her things together and got Mark dressed without saying another word to him. She didn’t have to. He didn’t want her to.
He had to carry Mark to the car. Picking him up told him more than seeing him. Suzy was right—he was worse. He was limp and sleepy and weighed no more than a baby. He waited for Suzy to get in. Then he carefully placed the sick child in her lap. His nervousness made him grind the engine of the twenty-year-old station wagon and pump the gas pedal too long, and he flooded the engine. Suzy looked at him anxiously and suggested he run up to the farmhouse and borrow Vernon’s pickup truck, but he knew his car. After it was flooded and cleared it would always start. It did, and he backed through the thick mud of their yard—the nearby wetlands expanded almost to their house in the spring—and got the car onto the rounded gravel road that led to Route 177. Mark was too sick to even notice where he was. He fretted and whimpered while Suzy tried to comfort him. Luke tried not to think of the people who would be at the hospital. He concentrated on being the man of the family—clung to the notion that in helping his son there could be no humiliation. But a heavy dread hung over him, and whether it was his concern for Mark, his growing guilt for having waited too long, or the anticipation of his trial with the rich people, he could not say. He was too nervous and dry-mouthed to even talk, and Suzy’s whole attention was on Mark, so they drove to Waska in silence.
At the hospital Suzy looked for the sign that had EMERGENCY ROOM printed on it. She found it, but there was no place to park nearby. She said the signs warned that only official vehicles could park here. So they drove around to the other side of the big building to find a place. It was a nice spring day so there was no danger of Mark being chilled. Rich people passed by and made him feel self-conscious as he carried his sick boy. He saw in their eyes what they thought. His nervousness had not left him. Instead it grew worse. At the door a man in a blue uniform was coming out. Suzy asked him where they were to go to check in. She had no pride. She was a mother. He understood that. The man was in a hurry and just pointed down the hall. Then he ran to an ambulance. The hall was like a tunnel. It had pale brown tiled walls and was poorly lit. But through the door the light was very bright. The room was about thirty feet long and lined with chairs on three sides. Two televisions were bolted to walls for people to watch. The counter was at the far end. It had nurses and doctors walking behind it and one woman who watched them coming towards her.
Across the room he self-consciously walked, carrying Mark. He hoped that Suzy would do the talking. His heart was racing and his mouth was dry. He wasn’t sure he could talk even if he had to. Yet there was only one rich man there. Maybe he had a broken arm. He held his arm carefully, that’s for sure. The rest of the people were workers or poor people. They may have looked sickly, but that’s the way poor people always looked. He wasn’t sure if they were waiting for someone else or if they were the sick ones. They had sallow, sunken eyes, poor skin and were either too fat or too skinny. A woman with a little girl with thick black hair was sitting near the counter. Both were very quiet. Luke recognized in the woman’s face the same fear he felt. The rest of them had mean, selfish faces that were more common with poor people. The rich guy was in too much pain to feel contempt for poor people. He kept looking about, afraid of being jostled.
At the counter Mark started fussing, so Luke put him down so that he could cling to Suzy’s dress. The woman who had watched them cross the floor waited for them to speak. Suzy explained that their son was sick. “He can’t hold food down,” she said. “He’s been sick for over a week and not getting better. He gets dizzy. He has pains. I’m not sure he sees properly.” This and other things Suzy said. The woman just listened. She didn’t seem concerned. She hardly looked at Mark. When Suzy finished, all she said was, “Do you have health insurance?” Luke could tell she asked the question already knowing the answer.
Suzy shook her head. “No,” she said in a whisper.
The woman wrote something on the paper. She looked up and asked them their names. They gave them. She asked for Mark’s name. They told her. She wrote it down. Luke saw another nurse looking at them through narrowed eyes. It made him feel hurried and short of breath. His heart started pounding. “He’s been real sick,” he said to the woman in a low voice. “We tried to wait, but he’s not getting better.”
The woman continued writing without acknowledging his statement. Didn’t she understand what he was telling her? They hadn’t come here casually. They weren’t looking to bother people. It was an emergency for the emergency room. The anger he felt came as a relief. He remembered he was a man, the head of the household. He was doing his duty. “Look,” he said, speaking louder now, “what are we supposed to do? My son is very sick. If it was a cold or the grippe he’d be better now.”
The woman looked at him. The skin on her cheeks shone in the bright light. He wanted her to understand, to be kinder, but she merely nodded and said, “I see.” She turned and went into the inner office.
His confidence left him. He looked around to see if anyone was staring, but most of the people had blank, numb expressions on their faces.
“What’s she doing?” Suzy asked. She looked worried. Her arms held Mark and tried to support him. Standing all this time was making him feel faint.
The woman came back with another woman. This one didn’t wear a nurse’s uniform. She wore a skirt and a gray sweater. She was middle-aged, not pretty. Her nose was too big. But she didn’t look unkind.
“You’re the Kimballs, I assume,” she said. “I’m Edie McLaughlin from social services. Have you been here before?”
The question surprised Luke. He didn’t understand what she meant.
Suzy did. “I birthed my last baby here.” She patted Mark’s head. “He’s sick now. The rest were brought into the world by Molly Jenkins.”
“Molly Jenkins?” The woman, the Edie McLaughlin, said the name like a question.
“She’s the upcountry midwife. She delivers lots of the babies among our folk.”
The Edie McLaughlin woman smiled strangely. Her eyes asked a question, which again he didn’t understand but Suzy did.
“The folks who live near the river bottom and Scanlon’s Ridge area.”
“Up on Route 177 in Waska?”
Suzy nodded. “You’ll be able to help my
The Edie McLaughlin woman looked at Mark and her face softened. “Such pretty blue eyes he has. Are you feeling poorly?” she asked Mark.
But he hid his face in his mother’s faded dress. He was scared. Luke wasn’t anymore. The look on the Edie McLaughlin’s face was comforting and kind. She seemed to care. She wasn’t judgmental. She was respectful. He trusted her, and everything was going to be all right.
They went into a room where they could sit down. Luke carried Mark and then put him on Suzy’s lap as soon as she sat down. He curled up against her. She had her arms around him as she talked to the Edie McLaughlin woman. Luke stood and let Suzy answer the questions. Through the window he could see the waiting room. An ambulance crew brought in an old man. There was a lot of running around and yelling and doing things just like on TV, but the old man looked dead to Luke. Then he was wheeled away. After that he watched the people. The rich one was beginning to look angry and impatient, but the poor working folks merely waited passively and looked up hopefully every time a medical-looking person came into the room.
The Edie McLaughlin woman made them sign several documents. Luke didn’t know what they were and didn’t dare ask, but Suzy seemed to think everything was okay. Nervously he signed the documents the way he was taught. Suzy had to help him by pointing to the places he was to sign his name. The Edie McLaughlin woman had left the room to confer with the nurses, so he wasn’t embarrassed. When she returned a nurse with a wheelchair was with her. They were going to take Mark for some tests. Suzy had to repeat all the symptoms she had noticed to the nurse. Luke wanted to know how long it would take but didn’t dare ask.
They watched Mark being wheeled away. He was too sick to cry, but Suzy cried for him. She called his name several times, even when he was out of sight. Luke too felt sad, but menfolk didn’t cry. Then the Edie McLaughlin woman told them to go to the waiting room on the other side of the glass window. They sat down, and he tried to watch TV. Suzy just stared at the door they had wheeled Mark through. The TV show was boring, and after a while he began feeling restless. He decided to go outside for a smoke. He’d seen enough medical shows on TV to be pretty sure Mark would be gone for some time.
Outside he found a bench to sit on and took out his pouch of tobacco from his pants pocket and his cigarette paper from his shirt pocket. His hands were still trembling, and he had a lot of trouble getting the thing rolled. He had to rest his hands on the armrest of the bench and lean down to lick the paper to get it done. But it was worth the trouble. The tobacco soothed him, and he sucked hungrily at it, taking drag after drag.
He was about halfway through the cigarette when he felt eyes on him. He looked up to see Bill McCarthy. He was a big hulking fellow, bald now, but years ago he used to wear his hair long like a hippie. He took a lot of razzing because even though he was a big man he had a high voice. He was good-natured about the ribbings he took, though. He lived upcountry, but he wasn’t really one of Luke’s folks. His father was a truck driver who owned his own rig and used to make a lot of money. Bill when younger had gone all over the country with his old man, but the life was too tiring for his taste, and he became a builder. Luke had worked for him a few times, but mostly as a gofer and on lawn work at a site. He wasn’t much of a carpenter—at least not for rich people’s work. Last time he saw Bill was when he cleared some land with Wade Blackburn’s crew for a house Bill was building.
Bill was on the path leading to the main entrance. He waved when Luke looked over at him and was about to continue on his way. Then he thought of something and walked over.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Luke Kimball. What brings you here?”
“My son’s sick. Some kind of grippe he can’t shake. Suzy is real worried. So am I.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hope he’s fine soon. I’m visiting my dad. He just had prostate surgery.”
Luke tossed his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his boot. “Hope he’s doing okay.”
“Yeah, he should be.” He started to leave, but again he thought of something. “Oh, by the way, I mentioned your name to Wade Blackburn the other day. Did he get in touch with you?”
“No, not yet.” He felt embarrassed and didn’t want to say he didn’t have a telephone. He was also slow to realize what Bill was saying. When he did, a surge of excitement almost jolted him.
“Well, I’m building a couple of houses on Topping Road and asked him to clear the land for me. You should contact him. I’m pretty sure he could use you. It’s a big job.”
“I could use one. I haven’t worked much this past winter.” He tried to hide his excitement and speak casually. He saw Bill read his mind, but it was okay. Bill had known him since they rode the school bus together as boys. He might be bending towards being a rich guy, but he was a good guy first of all. He forgot that for a second. “I could really use the work,” he added, and this time he didn’t try to hide how much he wanted the job.
“Well,” Bill said, this time starting to walk away for real, “I’ve got to see my dad. Don’t forget. Get in touch with Wade.”
Don’t forget! As if he would. He waited a few moments till Bill was out of sight and then quickly walked back to the waiting room. In an excited whisper he told Suzy the good news. But she was not interested. She gave him a strange look, hostile, angry, disappointed. Her eyes were still locked on to the door they’d brought Mark through. Probably she had never looked away. He knew why she was disappointed in him. He was thinking of himself, not Mark. But he didn’t understand why she would be angry. Work would help the whole family, not just him. He wasn’t just selfish. If he worked they wouldn’t have to keep the lights off and use candles anymore. They wouldn’t have to be afraid the juice would be cut off. There’d be money for food and clothes and necessities. So he brooded and didn’t think of Mark. Tomorrow he would drive to town and see Wade Blackburn. With any luck he’d be working in a few days. Let Sissy give him dirty looks then. He wouldn’t care. The first thing he was going to buy when he got some money was a pack of real cigarettes. Then he’d buy some ginger ale and candy. He hadn’t been able to indulge his sweet tooth for months and now he would. He had the bad and missing teeth to prove how much he loved candy and ginger ale. But at least he didn’t drink—just a couple of times a year he’d get lit celebrating something, then no booze the rest of the time. He grinned thinking about how good it was going to feel to have some money in his pocket. Then he glanced at Suzy’s serious, worried face and felt ashamed of himself. He had already forgotten that Mark was sick. He had forgotten the reason they were here.
He kept thinking about the good feeling of having money—he couldn’t help it—but he also thought about Mark. The poor wee thing had always been sickly. He had colds and grippe and maybe asthma—that’s what Suzy said when he wheezed trying to breathe. But the good feeling he got thinking about having money in his pocket made him an optimist. Mark was going to be okay. The Edie McLaughlin woman was kind, and the nurse who took him away was concerned and caring. He knew from TV doctor shows they performed miracles. Mark was going to be fine. He could taste the sweet ginger ale in his throat. He could feel the chewy sweetness of the caramel in the candy bar as his teeth worked it in his mouth. Winter was over and spring was here. The birds were singing back home. He was singing here in the hospital—singing in his heart.
But Suzy wasn’t. Suddenly her hand gripped his arm. The door had opened and she thought she saw Mark. “He’s here!” she said and then stopped. It was a false alarm. It was only the rich guy with the broken arm who came out. His arm was in a sling and had that white hard stuff on it. He went up to the desk and talked to the woman—the mean one who had checked them in. He signed something and left.
A few minutes passed. Suzy was growing restless and impatient. She started drumming her leg. Suddenly she asked, “What’s taking so long? It must be bad.”
He was self-conscious. People nearby had looked up at her sudden words. He just shrug
“I keep thinking, what if we brought him in too late? My boy, my poor boy.”
Luke looked around to see if anyone was listening. In a low voice he tried to comfort her. “Hospitals can do all sorts of things now. You’ve seen it on TV. They’ll fix Mark right up. You wait and see.”
She nodded and started thinking about what he said. Her leg stopped drumming. That was a good sign. A long time passed during which he sometimes thought of money, other times half watched the TV news show, and sometimes thought of Mark. He couldn’t really imagine what they would be doing in those rooms, though. Then a doctor came into the room, and he and Suzy joined everyone else in looking up expectantly. But the doctor passed through the room and went behind the counter to check some paperwork. Now, though, Luke had caught some of Suzy’s anxiety. He both wanted the doctor to come to them and dreaded it.
Then he overheard some people talking and found out in the emergency room they took people in order of the seriousness of their condition. He overheard a man complaining about how long he had waited. He was a big fat guy with mean black eyes. He had shortness of breath. Luke heard the man’s wife say so when she tried to calm him down. A lot of people had gone in front of him, she said, because their condition was more serious. When Luke heard that, the good mood he’d had thinking about a job and money entirely deserted him. He became as anxious as Suzy, probably more so because he heard this and she didn’t.
She was still concentrating on the door Mark had gone through with the nurse. He thought of all the times she patiently endured the hardships of their life. He thought she deserved peace, not this worry and dread. She was a good woman and a good mother. He was lucky and he knew it.
So he thought no more about ginger ale and candy and cigarettes and instead thought about Mark. If he died that would make their money go further—but the thought stopped right there. The tingling he’d been feeling in his fingers lately jumped to his spine and gave him a chill of horror. He had to be a bad person to have such an evil thought. But no. No, no, no. He wasn’t a bad man, and he didn’t know how such a thought could even enter his mind. He felt scared in a different way now. The only thing that would make him feel better was for Mark to come through the door cured.
For another half hour he didn’t feel better. He tried not to think his evil thought, but nothing worked. Ginger ale, store-bought cigarettes and candy tasted dull. Thinking of how little Mark weighed scared him. He didn’t dare go for another cigarette. He couldn’t hear the TV. The news pictures made no sense. Like Suzy’s, his eyes were locked on the door that Mark had gone through. And he thought the evil thought and slowly crumbled into dust.
Finally a nurse came through the door. She was the one who took Mark away. She surveyed the room and her eyes rested on him and Suzy. They exchanged an anxious glance, but before they could say anything the nurse came over to them. “The doctor wishes to speak to you,” she said.
Self-consciously—for everyone was looking at them—they followed her across the room and through the door. Too late, Luke wished he had worn his best clothes. His shirt had a hole in the elbow. The jacket he carried had a badly frayed collar and grease stains. The leather of his boots was worn bare. He was sure that he not only looked poor—he looked criminal, like one who had evil thoughts. He tried to banish the devils from his mind. He tried to think of something else. To Suzy he whispered, “Why wasn’t Mark brought back to us?” She frowned and didn’t answer. She knew it meant something bad. Here was Suzy who only thought of love. Her whole mind, love. He felt unworthy of her. He felt he was a bad, bad man.
At the end of a long corridor they were brought into a small room. It had a table, a few chairs, no windows, and a doctor. The nurse told him that here were the Kimballs. She left.
Dr. Arak was his name—at least that’s what it sounded like. Suzy looked at the name tag on his coat and said that sound. He was strangely dark, a foreigner in fact. He was short and his face was pockmarked, which was small comfort. He spoke English with a singsongy accent. Suzy asked him what he had found.
“The symptoms are of Minamata disease—mercury poisoning. Tell me, do you eat fish?”
Suzy said yes in a voice full of dread. “Is mercury poisoning bad?”
“Fish you’ve caught yourself?”
The dread grew on her face. She turned to Luke. “My husband fishes. We eat what he catches. But tell me, my boy?”
The doctor looked down at his clipboard and back at Suzy. “Yes, it can be. It’s too early to tell with your son.” Then he looked at Luke. “Where are you catching these fish? And how often do you eat it?”
“There’s a pond near our house. Pleasant Pond it’s called.”
Suzy answered the second question. “At least once or twice a week. Sometimes more. I even make chowder out of the leftovers.”
Dr. Arak nodded to her, but looked back at him. “What did you say the name of that pond was?”
“Pleasant Pond.”
He wrote it down and asked, “Where is it?”
“Near our house. Near the Waska River, up on Route 177.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“We have five,” Suzy said, “but one’s not living with us now. He ran away.”
Luke thought she shouldn’t have told the doctor that. He would think they were both bad people.
“And do the other children eat the fish?”
“Not Sharon. She’s a year older than Mark. She hates fish.”
“And the others?”
“They’re teenagers and don’t always eat at home. But they have eaten it.”
The doctor was writing down all she said. His pen scratching on the paper went on for a while and then he looked at Luke. “Have you felt any tingling in your extremities?”
Luke didn’t know what he meant. He began to feel scared and confused.
“Your fingers and toes? Do they ever tingle?”
Suzy shook her head. Luke said, “Maybe.” He remembered feeling something funny sometimes in both places. He remembered the trouble he had rolling a cigarette. He remembered now how he couldn’t quite feel the paper.
“Well, we’ll need to get blood samples from every member of your family. The nurse will start with you right now.” He started to leave, but Suzy had a question. At the door he turned and listened.
“We’ve been eating fish from that pond for years. I don’t understand why there’s poison in the fish now?”
“Well, the public health officials will have to investigate. Sometimes it’s factories, sometimes things people throw into the water. Somehow it has apparently gotten into your pond.”
They got the blood tests, and then they were allowed to see Mark. He was in intensive care and had tubes and such in him. He looked scared and confused but also very sick. The nurse told them they were giving him medication to clear the poison from his system. If their tests came back positive they were going to have to take the same medicine. Because Mark was little he was sicker, the nurse explained. Luke felt his fingers tingle. He took it as good news until he remembered that the doctor had also said it was too early to tell with Mark. Thinking of that he hung back, ashamed to be the cause of his little boy’s suffering and ashamed to have had evil thoughts. He wondered if the nurse thought he was a monster. He sure felt like one. He watched Suzy rubbing Mark’s cheek and kissing him on the forehead. She was talking to him in low murmurs, the way a mother does to her baby. He knew her littlest one was her favorite child. “Momma loves you,” he heard her murmur. He felt the nurse’s eyes on him and turned to her. He expected hostility, but she was kind. “Can I get you anything?” she asked in a soft voice. Moved, he shook his head. He felt tears wanting to come into the air and turned away. The others, Sissy, Malcolm and Sharon would have to be tested too. He knew Sissy would blame him, and he couldn’t call her wrong. It was worse to think Suzy would blame him, though. He wanted to justify himself, to say he only fished because the family needed food. Then he thought
When they were driving home later in stunned silence, Suzy suddenly spoke. “Someone’s to blame for this.”
“What do you mean?” He spoke sharply and defensively. He thought she meant him.
“I mean that someone put that mercury in the water. Someone’s been poisoning us.”
He remembered seeing trucks come off the Tooley Road on the other side of the woods. The one building on the pond was where they went. Sometimes he heard trucks at night. “I’ve seen something,” he said, and when she looked at him he told her about the trucks.
“We should tell the doctor,” she said. “Or the police or whoever needs to know. Other people shouldn’t have to worry like this.”
He felt better hearing her say this. It meant she didn’t blame him.
When they got home the kids were waiting for them. Sharon was watching TV, though it wasn’t a children’s show. Probably she was bored, and Malcolm had told her not to bother him. He was sitting at the kitchen table working on his strange hobby of carving expensive cars in wood. He had taken his carving tools with him to his grandparents this morning. He’d done fifteen of them so far, and Vernon, who thought they were good enough to sell, told him he was going to buy him paint for his upcoming birthday so that he could finish them off proper.
Sharon jumped up the moment they came through the door. She had her mother’s blond hair, and it started flying as she raced across the room. She was looking for Mark, Luke knew. With eight years separating her from Malcolm, and with her big sister too interested in boys now to have any time for her, she and Mark were a world apart. “Where’s Mark?” she asked breathlessly.
When Suzy told her he was staying in the hospital, her face grew very serious. “Is he going to die?”
The question angered Luke. “Don’t you go using words like that, missy. He’s sick, that’s all.” He scowled at her, and she started whimpering.
Suzy put her arm around her shoulder. “He’s been poisoned by the fish we’ve been eating. It seems someone has been dumping stuff with mercury into the pond. You’ll have to be getting blood tests too.”
That last remark terrified Sharon. Her face crinkled up and she began crying in earnest.
From the kitchen table Malcolm looked up from his carving. “What kind of stuff?” he asked.
Luke frowned and glared at him. He had forgotten to ask the doctor that question and was ashamed he did not know. “Just stuff. That’s all you need to know.”
Malcolm’s face dropped. He wasn’t used to being rebuked by his father. That was because in almost every particular he was the spitting image of Luke at that age. He had the same hooked nose, pointed jaw, dark hair, protruding forehead and hazel eyes. He was about the same height—five foot seven inches. He was thin but sinewy like Luke. But the similarities didn’t end there. He was quiet and shy. Unlike Sissy and Leighton, he never gave any sass. Again like Luke, he was sensitive and touchy. The city boys teased him mercilessly.
Because of all that, Luke was protective of him. To snap at his boy was a very rare thing. Usually he could not stay mad at Malcolm for more than a minute, but his heart had none of the melting warmth of his usual self. So he said nothing, and Malcolm took his hurt to the boys’ bedroom to sulk.
Luke sat down and rolled a cigarette while he watched Sharon help Suzy make lunch. He noticed Suzy was strangely silent and not her usual self either. The kids had already eaten at their grandparents, so the late lunch of fried eggs and homemade bread was a quiet affair. Sharon wandered off outside, and Malcolm still sulked in the bedroom.
“I reckon we’d better take the kids to get them blood tests tomorrow,” Suzy said when the meal was half eaten.
“I reckon,” he replied.
“They seem okay.”
“Yeah, but Sharon never ate the fish. It might be different with Malcolm and Sissy.”
“They seem okay too.” Afraid, she spoke sharply. Not for the first time he realized pain took your humanity away. But this was the worst time. He still felt awful. He wasn’t hungry, though he ate all his food.
After lunch he went out to chop some firewood. It was an activity he loved. He had done many jobs in his life—gofer for a carpenter, plumber’s assistant for one summer, yard and lawn work, sweeper in a factory, painter, apple picker, farmhand, handyman, and for four years he even worked on the line at a factory that made soles for shoes and boots until he got fired for stealing two screwdrivers—but his best job and the one he felt most competent to do was lumberman. He could do amazing things with a chain saw and an ax. So sawing up some big logs with his chain saw and then splitting them with his ax made him forget his troubles for a while. He even started daydreaming again about the money he was going to make once he got in touch with Wade Blackburn tomorrow. But when his work was finished and he’d piled up the wood, the bad thoughts returned to him. He couldn’t face going inside, so instead—and without telling Suzy—he decided to walk down to the pond and think.
It was late afternoon and getting cool now that the sun was low. The world was moving towards the stillness of twilight, his favorite time outdoors. His old boots were already leaking as he walked across the squishy grass of the spring-extended wetlands. On a high bush two red-winged blackbirds were squabbling, probably over a nesting site. Ahead of him he saw a blue heron rise into the air and fly to the poplars on the other side of the pond. Here in low wetland the high grass and rushes hid from him a view of the pond itself. To get to its shore he turned left, following the well known path, and sought the high ground. Here sumac trees grew in abundance along with some spindly pines. He saw a screech owl on one of the branches last week. The owl froze and he did too. When he was a boy he would bedevil wildlife, but after a life of hardship he came to appreciate the life they lived. They too had to struggle to survive in a friendless world. He still killed deer and rabbits and an occasional bird—duck, grouse or snipe—but it was for food. He’d been told the Indians apologized to the souls of the creatures they killed. One time when a lucky shot brought down a wood duck and he examined its red eye gone glassy and its shiny greens and bright whites and spotted rusty reds he understood the Indians’ piety. After that he always whispered his sorrow for the food he took and the life lost. Other creatures, the muskrats and squirrels, the swamp sparrows and meadowlarks, were mute friends and comforting companions in the woods. He could be relaxed and at home with them.
Near the pond now, the memory of his evil thought at the hospital returned to him. He stepped between the thick leafless bushes to the shore. The high water confined him to a narrow rocky ledge. Just a few weeks ago it was still iced over and from this spot he would be watching for the red flag in the holes he had chopped. A band of chickadees calling to each other returned him to his thoughts. The birds were innocent and Mark was innocent. Unbidden, another memory replaced the evil one. Little Mark just learning to walk, tottering over to him on unsteady legs. His face with a look of great concentration and then breaking into a wide and happy grin as he falls into his daddy’s arms. That was the day he fell in love with his son.
He couldn’t understand where that love could have gone to make him have so evil a thought. He felt ashamed and remembered something his own father had told him once. He had been picking on a little neighboring boy when his father saw them. He was a quiet man and let Luke’s mother do most of the raising, but this time he interfered. “The only reason you’re picking on him is because you’re bigger. But let me tell you something. It’s mean and unmanly to hurt someone who is defenseless. To be a man is to protect the weak. Do you understand?” At the time he didn’t, but later when bullies at school beat him and called him a country hick, he saw it clear enough.
He tried to live after his father’s advice, and because of that he thought of himself as a good man. But nothing goes unnoticed or forgotten. He sat on the embankment,
Was it his pride? Suzy accused him of it. They waited too long because of his pride. Even the fish smelled of his pride. Catching them and providing for the family was one of the few things that made him feel good this winter. Now he knew that instead of being a man and head of the household he was killing his little boy. The Lord was smiting him. If his son died it would be his fault. But the retribution went even further. An eye for an eye. A boy for a boy. He knew now God was watching the day thirty years ago Barry Pendleton drowned in this very pond.
Everything happened step-by-step. It was a hot summer day, and throwing a taped-up baseball back and forth soon grew boring. One of them, he couldn’t remember which, suggested they go to the pond. It was a quarter of a mile away, and by the time they walked through the tall grass, across the wetlands and along the higher dry ground to get to the pond they were very hot. At first they just took off their canvas sneakers and walked into the shallows. They squealed and splashed each other for a while. Soon they were so wet Luke said they might as well jump in all the way. He did it first and swam about. He was proud that he could swim and yelled, “Look at me!” But Barry hesitated. He was not a good swimmer. Only after Luke teased him and called him a sissy did he jump in all the way and dog-paddle while Luke swam. Then Luke spotted the rocky outcropping seventy-five feet away and suggested they swim to it. Again Barry hesitated, and again he was called a sissy. “The pond is shallow,” he said. “We’ll never be over our heads.” Still Barry was afraid. “Come on,” Luke said. “Don’t be such a big baby. I’ll be right beside you.” So it happened. Halfway there they were over their heads, and when Barry got tired and tried to touch bottom to rest he panicked. He started screaming and thrashing away and went under, then came up. Luke tried to help him, but when he got to him Barry grabbed hold of him and started pulling him down. So Luke panicked and pushed him away. But he had to do something, so he swam quickly to shore to find a branch. But by the time he was back in the water Barry had gone under for good. He ran back home with his heart racing faster than his legs to get his mother and brother, and they retrieved the dead body. Luke never told anyone that Barry had gone into deeper water because of a dare. He lied and said Barry had foolishly gone too deep. For years afterwards he became scared every time he thought about that day. Finally he managed to convince himself that the lie he told was the truth. A time came when he could fish at the pond and not remember that he had caused a ten-year-old boy’s death. But retribution never forgot.
He looked up at the sky above where the sun was close to setting. Up there God watched. “Please, Lord, I didn’t mean to get Barry drowned. I’m sorry I thought about Mark dying too, Lord. I didn’t mean it. It was my pride because I have no money. Punish me, Lord, smite me down for my sins, but spare that poor boy. His momma would be brokenhearted if you took him from us, Lord. Punish me!”
He stood and started beating himself on the arms and chest as he made his prayer. “Me, Lord, me. Smite me.” Then when the pain made him feel better and a pang of fear shuddered through him, he added, “If you spare me, Lord, and spare Mark, I swear I’ll be a good man. I’ll get a permanent job. I’ll pay for the hospital. Please help me, Lord.”
He remembered the feel of Mark’s wasted body as light as a newborn babe. He remembered his father’s advice about protecting the weak and the innocent. He hoped God was a father. He hoped God had heard that advice. Suddenly he felt as tiny and defenseless as his sick little boy. He sank back onto the damp bank. He looked at the rocks at his feet and the poisoned water and whispered, “Please, please, please…”
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