Foxfire (6 page)

Anxious to make a good impression on Lodestone, she dressed herself in a flecked mauve heather wool suit and a pink cashmere pullover, both products of the trip to Scotland last summer, and sallied forth onto the road. It was dusty and hard walking on the myriads of small stones, in her thin oxfords. And I thought there'd be sidewalks, she thought, laughing at herself.

As she passed the Company hospital she examined it with determined indulgence. What if it was only a rickety unpainted cottage reminding her of shacks along the railroad tracks outside of New Haven? They were lucky to have a “hospital” at all. And there were always the big towns, Phoenix or Tucson for anything serious, of course. Only seven hours drive to Tucson, Dart said, not much more to Phoenix. As she started on past the hospital, the door opened and a man came down the two wooden steps. He sauntered up to her. “Hello,” he said, without enthusiasm, “I suppose you're Dartland's bride.—I'm Hugh Slater.”

“The doctor?” she asked uncertainly, her eager smile dying as it met no response. His small, greenish eyes stared at her with disapproval. He was a stocky man in his late thirties—only an inch or two taller than Amanda. From his sandy hair, sharply receding at the temples, to his blunt-toed leather boots, he gave an impression of squareness. He wore a small clipped mustache, like an English subaltern, and it looked like dry straw against his freckled skin.

“Well, I've got a degree—” he said sourly, answering her question. “What I actually am here is a goddam combine of midwife, bonesetter, and veterinarian.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders and lit himself a cigarette without offering her one. As he did this she noticed his hands; square, freckled, and covered with coppery hairs. They shook with a faint tremor.

Hangover! she thought, enlightened. Of course. And she smiled vaguely, preparing to walk on.

“Lodestone society'll be charmed by all that lipstick and those bloody fingernails...” said Hugh. “Just like Big Ruby's, in No. 3 crib.”

Crib? thought Amanda, then she remembered the four little cabins with the red lamps. She raised her eyebrows and then she laughed. “You can't be true,” she said. “I've read you in a hundred stories; the surly woman-hater, the embittered doctor, drowning his troubles in bad temper and drink. Underneath there beats a heart of gold.” She saluted him and walked on.

Hugh opened his mouth and shut it again, staring after her.

Amanda continued down the road towards Pottner's Store, where she encountered more hostilities so foreign to her experience that she had trouble in recognizing them.

Her shopping expedition was unsatisfactory for several reasons. In the General Store, she was at once confused by the absence of brand names she knew, the scarcity of fresh vegetables and any meat but pork, uncertain what to buy and appalled by the high prices. The ten dollars, it soon developed, would cover only the dullest staples. And in all innocence she offended Mrs. Pottner, the owner, who was serving behind the counter in a white butcher apron. Amanda responded pleasantly to Mrs. Pottner's greeting, smiled at jocular remarks about newlyweds, but she treated the lady with no more warmth or intimacy than she would have one of the clerks in the corner grocery at home. Pearl Pottner, however, was one of Lodestone's social arbiters and instantly resentful. It was some time before Amanda came to understand, first, the democracy of a Western mining camp and, second, the wariness which the label “New Yorker” aroused in the female bosoms.

Amanda, intent on her difficult purchases, did not notice the disappearance of Mrs. Pottner's smiles, nor guessed that her exclamation “Heavens, I had no idea butter would be so dreadfully expensive” grated on her hearer in its entirety. The clipped Eastern voice, the “lah-di-dah” choice of words, the complete unconsciousness of Mrs. Pottner as a person, above all the implied criticism, induced a mottled purple to spread across Pearl's fat face.

“My butter's a fair price—” she snapped, closing the little butter jar with a thud. “Most folk are pleased I handle it at all, what with having to truck it in myself from Tucson when the road's open. Most folk don't expect luxuries, and are pleased when they find 'em.”

“Oh” said Amanda, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean ... I'm not much of a housewife ... in fact,” she added with her quick and lovely smile, “I'm not any kind of a housewife at all, I'm just beginning to realize.”

Pearl thawed a trifle. “You'll learn—” she said. “We all have to.” But not with painted fingernails and baby-pink sweaters and gold wrist watches, she added to herself, much as Hugh had predicted. Pearl had a spinster daughter, Pearline, who gave music lessons in Globe, and the thought of that daughter's pinched face and nervous eyes peering through thick lenses at an unresponsive world added maternal jealousy to the counts against Amanda.

Unconscious of having offended but appalled at the task ahead of her, Amanda walked home, negligently accompanied by little Bobby Pottner to help carry her parcels. The noon sun poured liquid fire from a cloudless sky and her body inside the woolens which had been so comforting this morning now dripped and itched. She thought with passionate longing of a cool tiled shower bath.

Bobby flung his parcels on the kitchen table, accepted the dime she fished from her nearly empty change purse, then he stared around at the two-room shack. “Jeez—” he said dispassionately. “What a mess. You goin' to live here like this?”

“Not like this, naturally!” she snapped with a sharpness not meant for him. “But I've got to have some help. Bobby, could you stay and help me for a while? I'll be glad to pay you....” She paused, remembering the thirty-five cents remaining in her purse, but Dart would give her more tonight when he understood. “I'll pay you a quarter.”

Bobby's alert face grew blank, then cleared. “Two bits,” he translated for her. “Nope. No soap. Mom'll give me hell effen I don't git right back to the store.” He turned to go, but he thought Amanda very pretty, and his eleven-year-old heart was not lacking in chivalry so he paused on the doorstep. “I don't know who could help you,” he said, “except mebbe one of the crib girls. They don't do nothin' all day.”

The crib girls. Amanda, despite her sophistication and college background of long theoretical discussion of sex, blushed a vivid red. She perceived, however, that to Bobby the crib girls were a sociological fact, no more interesting than the miners, trades people, or any other segment of Lodestone.

“Well, thank you,” she said, smiling. “Maybe—I'll see.”

Bobby departed down the street whistling “Hallelujah, I'm a bum,” and pausing at the corner past the hospital to hurl his jackknife at the giant seven-branched saguaro cactus. The knife rebounded and fell in the dust. Bobby picked it up, a daily ritual performed, and continued around the corner. Amanda turned back into her shack, set her jaw and prepared to cope with the mess. She removed the woolen suit and sweater, and her satin and lace trousseau slip. She hunted through her suitcases until she found one cotton dress with short sleeves. Nobody at home had dreamed that it would be hot like this in January. The dress was a mass of wrinkles. Iron—she thought. Have to buy one. Then how did you heat it? She stared at the little kerosene stove. Courage, my girl, one thing at a time. Petit a petit, I'oiseau fait son nid.—“It's dogged as does it.” My education will be useful for providing cheering maxims, if nothing else. She picked up the broom and began to sweep.

 

After his encounter with Amanda that morning, Hugh Slater had stood for a moment watching her swing off towards town. Her shoulders were held high, her beautiful legs flashing in nude silk, her short golden hair blowing in the desert wind. Maybe she's not so dumb, at that, he thought, without much interest. The mud-black depression which always accompanied emergence from the periodic binges settled down on him again. He flung the cigarette at a passing tomcat and re-entered the hospital.

The three ground-floor rooms were deserted, office hours wouldn't start until afternoon. From the second floor there came the methodical groans of a woman in labor, one of the Mex women. Usually they didn't bother with the hospital, but she lived with a Bohunk miner she was terrified of, and when her pains started she'd run here for refuge. A good thing, too, Hugh thought with the corner of his mind which nothing, not even liquor, quite obscured. She's going to have a breech. He went to the dispensary and mixed himself a stiff bromide, at the same time glancing at his wrist watch. The groans were still ten minutes apart; anyway, Maria was with her. Maria ... God, he thought, what a nurse! Miss whats-her-name, back at the Washington General, should have tried her infallible training methods on
this
one.

He lit another cigarette, slumped down in the big chair in the waiting room, put his feet up on the rattan couch, and yelled for Maria. After the usual interval in which Maria adjusted herself to any new idea, he heard her scuffling down the wooden stairs in her huaraches. She appeared in the doorway wearing her usual look of sulky dishevelment. The stained white uniform had lost a button and been fastened together with a bent hairpin. The gap showed a patch of brown breast. The winged nurse's cap perched rootless on top of Maria's enormous bun of glossy blue-black hair. Maria was very proud of her uniform and wore it off duty whenever she dared. It was a badge of aristocracy, and set her far above the crib girls to whose number she had once belonged until Hugh, desperate for help and finding her moderately seductive, sent her to Phoenix for a three-months' course in practical nursing. Maria was a half-breed, half Mexican, half Pima Indian, and the mingling had proved esthetically successful. She was small and skinny, but with beautiful breasts and straight bronze features like Gauguin's Polynesian girls.

“Yes?” she said to Hugh. “You call?—You not drunk no more?” she added surveying him with mild surprise. “You want I fix some eggs, mebbe?” Her brown hands were adorned with several flashing rings from the five-and-dime store in Globe. She put her hands on her hips and, arms akimbo, leaned against the door jamb, waiting patiently.

Look at her, thought Hugh, a very caricature of a nurse. And I'm a very caricature of a doctor, according to Dartland's wench. Yes ... Well...

He scowled furiously at Maria. “Stand up straight, can't you, and sew a button on that thing you're wearing. No, I'll fix my own eggs, later. I want you to boil up my instruments, the ones from the delivery kit.”

Maria stood up a fraction straighter and raised her eyebrows.

“De-livery kit,” she repeated and stared around the waiting room. Her limpid eyes returned to Hugh.

“Oh, Christ!” he said through his teeth. “I've showed you a hundred times. The black bag in the dispensary. It's labeled ‘Delivery Kit.' You
can
read, can't you?”

“Sure, I can. You know it.” She thrust her underlip out, her pride hurt.

“Then take out all the instruments and boil them for twenty minutes in the white enamel pot.
Now!”
he shouted. “And leave them in the pot.
Don't
touch them afterward. Then come up to me and the patient.”

“Sure—” said Maria. Suddenly she ran across the room and rubbed her cheek against Hugh's. “You no want to make love some more? You better have another drink.”

“Oh, for God's sake—” He jerked his head away and shoved her violently. Her cap fell off and she picked it up, holding it tight against her breast like a baby. Then she hunched her thin shoulders and walked towards the kitchen.

Hugh went upstairs to the laboring woman. She gave him a look of animal terror and moaned, shutting her eyes.

“You're okay,” said Hugh sitting down by the iron cot. “Pretty soon I'm going to put you to sleep.” Where's that damn rubber sheet? he thought, and saw it lying crumpled by the window. He made a noise in his throat, picked it up and smoothed it under the woman's haunches. So much for Lister, Semmelweiss, etc., he thought, “scrupulous antisepsis in the Delivery Room—Doctor Slater's certainly a stickler for that, Miss Burns—a regular martinet.”

His head throbbed and he leaned it back against the whitewashed plank wall. That Dartland girl's maybe brighter than she looks, he thought morosely. But you wouldn't think a guy like Dart'd fall for a smooth little Eastern job with a Park Avenue accent. She won't stick it two months in Lodestone. Then she'll go high-tailing it off for greener pastures. Like Viola. Funny—still pain at the thought of Viola. That's one from the books too, isn't it, my dear? Besides the heart of gold, the surly embittered frustrated doctor has a broken heart. Broken golden heart.

He looked down at the woman on the bed. The contractions were getting stronger, but not ready to put her under yet. A tiny louse ran out from her matted sticky hair and scuttled across the pillow. Hugh pinched it between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. He shouted down to Maria to hurry with the instruments, received in return a vague “pronto, pronto.” He lit another cigarette and sat down again, and began to think quite dispassionately about himself.

Hugh Slater, born thirty-eight years ago into a pretty good Virginia family. Not F.F.V. but good enough. Wanted to be a surgeon ever since he could remember. Why? Sensitive hands—mechanical ability ■—■ flair for drama—sublimated sadism they'd call it nowadays, no doubt. But was there more than that once? Had there been a period of high dedication, the thrill of alleviating suffering? A thrill, even, out of the old Hippocratic oath? Anyway, that thrill hadn't carried through the war. France, 1917—1919, and an undedicated shambles of gas and gangrene and mutilations and expendable human life. He had returned to Johns Hopkins for his diploma. In-terneship next year at the Washington General, going to specialize in surgery, poor as Job, but it didn't matter—until Viola turned up one day as a patient in the West ward. She had had an appendectomy, and even as she struggled damply out of the ether, her extraordinary beauty was little dimmed. She had soft hair with auburn lights in it, and it curled all around her heart-shaped face. Really heart-shaped, because a widow's peak cleft the white forehead. The face was still childish in its porcelain skin and delicacy of bone, but her eyes were woman's eyes, large and slumberous and aware, golden-hazel between curling black lashes. Viola had never for a moment doubted her destiny and even then, besotted with love as he was, Hugh had wondered that she could envision marriage with him instead of any one of her other innumerable suitors. Perhaps she had really loved him for a while; certainly the first months of their marriage had been ecstatic. But he had seen so little of her, enslaved as he was by the hospital, and their poverty had been grinding. She had not complained, that was not her way. But he later discovered she had been preparing herself all the time, taking secret lessons from an infatuated drama teacher, and sending her photographs to the various studios. He had felt the change in her before he knew any cause except their ghastly poverty. It had frightened him into his first mistake.