Comes a Time for Burning (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

From yards away, Thomas could smell the illness. Half a dozen men milled about, and two were tending a roaring fire in the pit, an enormous iron cauldron suspended over the flames. He recognized Jake Tate, the young sawyer who had masterminded the renovations to the clinic while on loan from Schmidt.

“It’s bad, Doc. Just real bad,” Tate called as Thomas dismounted. He had a mound of blankets clamped between two sticks, and with a fearful grimace, deposited the blankets in the cauldron, poking them down into the boiling water. As the physician approached, Tate added, “Don’t guess that you really want to go in there.” He nodded at the nearest large tent-shack.

“All five?”

“Four,” Tate replied. “Dick Bonner up and crapped out on us. Three hours ago he was riggin’ a spar line just over the hill.” He shook his head in wonder. “Shat all the way down the tree, and then couldn’t walk a straight line once on the ground.”

“He’s dead? Just like that? In three hours?”

“Deader’n shit,” Jake said. “He felt the shits comin’ again, made for the trees, and wouldn’t you know, he slipped and fell under one of the freight wagons. Popped his skull like a punkin.” It sounded casual and logger-tough, but Thomas could see the fear in the young man’s eyes. “We got three of ’em in here.” He pointed off into the timber with one of the sticks. “Sitzberger’s about two hundred yards that way. They found him lyin’ out there. Girl’s about to go crazy. You need to fetch her out of here, Doc.”

“The Stephens girl?”

“She’s with him.” But he nodded toward the timber, not at any of the shacks. “Mr. Schmidt and Deaton’s over there, too. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it, Doc. Sitsy, he’s in a bad way. But one of the boys saw the Stephens girl headin’ in toward the camp, and he went and told Sitsy. ‘Don’t want her to see me like this,’ he says, and off he goes.”

“It’s a desperate illness, Jake.”

“You ain’t lyin’ there. How long we got to boil the blankets?”

“Fifteen minutes. Then to dry in the sun. When you’re finished, you’ll clean your hands thoroughly. I have alcohol.”

“Believe me, Doc, I ain’t touched
nothing
inside there.” He nodded at the nearest shack.

“You’ll still wash,” Thomas said, and strode toward the cabins, both the crudest construction with bark-covered slab wood hammered together for walls, with canvas stretched over slender rafters of spruce limb wood. The slab wood door was a scant five feet high, held in the frame with leather hinges not quite stout enough to properly hold the door’s weight. That was all right, since the cabin would be used for only a few months, and then abandoned as the crews moved on. Thomas turned up the two lanterns that hung from the ceiling.

“My God,” he muttered. The cabin included four bunks, just slab wood with rounds of spruce for legs. A small table jutted out from the wall opposite the door, and the cheap sheet metal pot-bellied stove that Lindeman’s mercantile sold by the schooner-load at $4.70 each stood in the small space dead center in the room. A washbasin rested on the table, full of water that no doubt Hardy could culture in the incubator.

The physician stepped past the shipping chest at the end of one cot. The logger, young, pale, hollow-eyed, and unfocused, stared up at him.

“You got somethin’ for me?” the man whispered. “God, it hurts all to beat hell.”

“In the gut?”

In reply, the man lifted his hand just enough to lay it down again on his belly.

Thomas turned at the sound of a thud on the ground behind him. One of the enormous medical bags rested there, and Howard Deaton nodded at him gratefully. “Good to see you, Doc.” He limped back toward the ambulance for the other bags.

“Let’s ease the pain first,” Thomas said, and quickly prepared a large syringe of morphine. “What’s your name, son?”

“That’s Herb Bonner,” Tate said behind him. “Dick’s little brother.”

“That going to hurt more?” the man asked piteously, and Thomas wondered if the logger even knew that his brother had expired.

“Yes. But then you’ll feel better. How long since your last bowel movement? Since the last bout?”

“Five minutes, maybe,” Bonner said, and heaved his head back. “God, that hurts.” A glance at the rough board floor under the bed was sufficient to explain where the bulk of the effluent had gone, flooding through the cracks to the earth underneath.

“When did you take ill, son?”

The young man closed his eyes while he pondered that. “Hit me yesterday afternoon.”

“Jake, there’s a clean copper bucket in the first ambulance,” Thomas said. “Get it, and then half-fill with fresh water from
above
the camp. And then brought here.” Making his way around the cabin, Thomas quickly assessed each patient. Bonner was the only one of the three conscious enough to be coherent. The physician turned to an angular man standing just inside the door.

“Who is this?”

“Gunnar Bloedel. The other fella there is Carl, his brother. He’s been in the timber a week.”

“Family is common out in the timber,” Thomas said, more to himself than the logger.

“Sure enough. Hell, over on the east side of the Dutch, all five Bohannon brothers are workin’, right along with the old man.”

“Where are the blankets coming from?”

“Well, sick as they are, we all chipped in. Loaned one here and there. Been boilin’ the ones we could save.”

Thomas grimaced on hearing that. “Shared blankets,” he muttered. “That’s bloody wonderful. Now listen…there’s nothing I can do here for these men. But back at the clinic, we can tend them and get them through this. Who has been working here with them?”

“Oh, we got a couple nurse maids,” the logger said. “You know.”

“I need them here, right now. Anyone who has been in this cabin, or who has helped to tend the men.”

“They going to get sick?”

“We would hope not.” He looked toward the empty bunk. “Where is this man?”

“That’s Dick’s. He got crushed.”

“Ah, the corpse outside. Your name, sir?”

“Name’s Pope. Dud Pope.”

“Where do
you
stay?”

“My digs is across the way a little.” The man gestured vaguely.

“Well, Mr. Pope, this is what is going to happen.” And in short order, Thomas gathered together the five men who would admit to being in the cabin with the stricken loggers. Jake Tate returned with the bucket, and Thomas emptied a box of corrosive-sublimate into the water. “First, wash your hands, each one of you. Thoroughly. Then clean clothes.” He saw the look of astonishment on their faces. “Sleeves up to the elbow, and wash. If you have no clean clothes, then borrow some. Then wash again. Jake, you’re first, because you’re going to help me.” He started off toward the ambulance, and the men stood stock still, staring after him. Thomas spun around and glared at them. “You have one dead already, gentlemen. How many do you want?”

“Hell, Doc, we ain’t sick,” Pope replied.

Thomas laughed humorlessly. “But you
will
be, if you don’t follow my instructions. And believe me, cholera isn’t the way you want to choose to go.”

“Cholera?” the logger gasped.

“So do as I say, and things will turn out all right. Wash first, then change your clothes, then wash again. If you have alcohol, rinse with that when you’re finished. It will calm the sublimate a bit.”

“Rather drink it.”

“As you choose.” Thomas gathered four clean blankets from the ambulance. “Let me,” Howard Deaton said, reaching for the blankets. “The kid and the girl are right over there?” He pointed at the timber. “Head for that rock outcrop. They’re just past that.”

“Sitzberger’s?” Thomas pointed at the second structure.

“Yep. And Delaney and Huckla are out at the flume,” Deaton added.

“That’s a good place for them to be,” Thomas said. “But someone needs to fetch them. This very instant.” He pulled the floppy door to one side and peered in.

“The girl is sick?” He turned back to Deaton.

“Just up here,” Deaton said, tapping his own skull. “If he ain’t yet, Sitzberger is near dead. Damnedest thing
I’ve
ever seen, I’ll tell you that.”

“We need all the sick in the ambulances, Howard. If you’ll help me with that. You and Jake? And Mr. Pope. He seems to know what he’s doing. And then we’ll tend to the girl.”

Eleanor Stephens
, Thomas whispered to himself, his thoughts in a whirl. What did the girl think she was doing?

Only one of the sick men cried out as he was moved. The others were like sacks of flour. One by one, the four were transferred to the two ambulances. When he was satisfied that he’d done all he could, Thomas regarded the cabin and the wash-up operation.

“They must be burned,” he said. “When you’re finished, burn them both.” He looked across at Dick Bonner’s corpse, wrapped in a woolen blanket. “And you might as well put him inside and let him go with it. It’s the safest thing to do.”

A large man with deeply lined face turned to confront Thomas. “Now see here. Bertram sees us settin’ fire here in the timber, we’ll be skinned alive. And that’s if the old man don’t do it first. You’d better talk to Mr. Schmidt about that.”

“Then I shall. But make preparations, because it
will
burn, gentlemen. If you don’t do it, I shall.”

“It ain’t proper,” the big man said.

“Your name, sir?”

“Name’s William Farley,” the logger said, and Thomas saw none of the flippancy toward injury or illness that some of the younger men embraced—men like Buddy Huckla with his hideously smashed fingers. Farley was older, perhaps even forty, and Thomas saw the muscles of his jaw clench with anger. “Those of us here ain’t in the timber cuttin’ today because there’s God-fearin’ men sick in camp. But we ain’t about to just burn Dick Bonner to ashes without proper services. He deserves better’n that.”

“Maybe he does,” Thomas said. “If you know a few words, I’m sure that will make his passing easier. What you must understand, Mr. Farley, is that the longer that corpse lingers as it is, the more risk there is that others will be taken as well. And then you’ll have a grave big enough to fit this whole camp.”

“Burnin’ just ain’t right.”

“Just don’t stand in the smoke, sir,” Thomas said, and immediately regretted the off-hand remark. He saw Farley’s eyes narrow. “Look, Mr. Farley, if you want to drive into town and fetch quick lime and coffins while others are digging proper graves, then that’s up to you. I’m telling you how to protect the
living
… and quickly.”

Farley didn’t reply, and Thomas turned back to the others. “Gentleman, if you suffer
any
symptoms of illness—the slightest cough, the slightest sniffle, the least belly ache, or pain when you piss, you must come to the clinic immediately. Is that understood? Not tomorrow morning, or tomorrow after work, because you’ll be dead by then.” The men gazed at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “And keep yourselves so clean that you’d think you were on your way to Sunday Mass.”

Voices drifted down from the timber and Thomas hefted his medical bag. “I must see about Sitzberger.” He set out through the rank grass and the berry bushes that tore at his trousers. The mystery still gnawed at him. The Clarissa was filthy enough, and even though Port McKinney was no metropolis of international trade, ships from anywhere in the world visited port on a regular basis. It was not unlikely that a passenger might have brought the bacillus to land in clothing, even on his person. Thomas had read of cases when a person might actually carry a disease such as typhoid or typhus without suffering from it himself—happy only to pass it on. He understood no reason why cholera might be different.

He reached the timber and saw a large mound of soil and roots from a dead fall. Bert Schmidt appeared, hands on his hips, and when he saw Thomas he beckoned impatiently.

“You tell me what to do with
this
one,” he whispered. On the other side of the root mound in a small clearing ringed by spruce and fir saplings, curled up on the duff, was Ben Sitzberger. The young man lay on his right side in a tight fetal position. Within easy reach, Eleanor Stephens sat with her back to a smaller stump, legs drawn up under her skirt, head resting on her arms. She ignored all, and for a moment, Thomas thought that she might either be asleep, or expired where she sat.

Captain Jacques Beaumont knelt near the young couple, and Thomas could see that the sailor was talking urgently to Eleanor—who offered no response.

Thomas placed his medical bag down gently, as if loath to make any sudden noises. Beaumont glanced up at him, said something else to Eleanor, and patted her shoulder. That small display of sympathy also drew no response.

“Eleanor? It’s Dr. Parks.” Thomas placed a hand on her forehead, feeling the flush on her velvet skin. He let his hand slip down until he could find the carotid. Her pulse was strong but so fast he had to count twice to be sure. The flutter of beats reminded him of what he had felt once when holding a stunned bird that had crashed against a window.

But about Ben Sitzberger, there was no question. His eyes were half-lidded, staring blindly at the earth, the surfaces gone dry and dull. Thomas reached across and felt the already cooling skin. Not a trace of pulse echoed in the arteries. Once a hale, hearty, and amorous fellow, all that remained of Ben Sitzberger was the drained husk, so dehydrated that his joints thrust at his soiled clothing, his face a grim mask of gray skin stretched over the facial bones.

“Eleanor,” Thomas whispered directly in her left ear. “You must come away now. He’s gone.”

“He’s
not
dead,” she cried. Her voice was muffled in the folds of her dress.

Thomas looked up at Schmidt. “How long has she been here?”

“Don’t know. A couple of the men say that she came out early this morning. Been here all this time.”

Thomas reached across and lifted the corpse’s hand. Rigor had already begun.

“He sleeps now,” Eleanor said, her voice muffled. “So tired.”

“Then you should come away,” Thomas tried to ease her left shoulder back so that she would look at him, but her muscles were tight as steel bands. “Let him sleep, girl. I need to talk with you.”