I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (42 page)

“You know that no one would accept us with the flu, and if the health department discovered you’d forced us to leave this house after Mr. Richardson came down with the flu, you might be in trouble with the law.” Bettie could tell by Mrs. Anderson’s expression that her words hit home. “Please, I barely know Mr. Richardson. I’m only trying to help him.”

Mrs. Anderson shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I assure you nothing immoral will take place. Even if either of us should wish it, which we don’t, he is far too ill to engage in such behavior.”

The older woman’s lips tightened. “I guess that’s so. I’ll bring porridge by in the morning and make some chicken soup tomorrow, for the both of you.”

“Thank you. May I trouble you for some cinnamon and honey tonight, and some aspirin powders?”

“I’ll bring the cinnamon and honey, but I’ve no aspirin powders.” She turned and then looked back. “You can’t be wandering around the building, you know.”

“I won’t, though I will need some things from my own room, and to use the water closet.”

“I’ll tell the others on this floor to use there the whole time.. d fas the water closet on the floor below.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

The landlady left then, a self-righteous lift to her chin and determined step to her walk.

Bettie picked up the pail and closed the door behind her.

“You should leave.”Carl’s cracked whisper greeted her.

“We’ve already had that discussion.”

“I heard what the old battle-axe said. She’s right. People might talk.”

“The only people who know I’m here are Mr. and Mrs. Anderson and the boarders, and they all know the truth of the situation.”

“People don’t always care about the truth. Starting rumors is more fun for some folk.”

“No one can stop people like that from saying what they will. You and I know there’s no foundation to” — she searched for an appropriate word, one that didn’t actually say the awful things Mrs. Anderson had hinted at earlier — “to unkind allegations.”

Carl tugged the quilt closer about his shoulders. “Go back to your room, Miss Bettie Watts. Thanks for getting me up here, but I’ll be all right now.”

I hope so, but probably not,
she thought as she poured a glass of water. “Drink this before you go back to sleep.”

He struggled to sit up far enough to drink.

Bettie touched the back of her hand to his forehead. Was her imagination playing with the news reports of terrible flu cases, or was he warmer than before? Spanish flu fevers often rose quickly to dangerous temperatures.

“You don’t have to tell me, Nurse Watts. I know I have a fever.”

“I wish I had a thermometer, but only real nurses have them.”

“You aren’t leaving, are you?”

She smiled at his accusatory tone. “I might go to my room and take a nap later.”

“See that you do. Don’t want a sick young lady on my conscience.” He rolled onto his back and winced. “Besides, my legs and hip joints hurt something fierce, and a fellow can’t swear proper with a lady in the room.”

Aspirin powders might help him. She should have thought to request Mrs. Anderson ask the boarders if they had any. Lack of freedom to ask them herself frustrated her. “You don’t strike me as the type of gentleman who swears.”

Carl didn’t answer. He was asleep again.

The warm, homey scent of an oil lamp burning greeted Carl next time he awoke, bringing him back to the farmhouse in which he grew up. The scent made him feel safe and secure, like a sick child in his own bed, with his parents nearby watching over him. Then he opened his eyes.

He was still in his barren room in the boarding house, but things didn’t look as orderly as usual. The lamp he’d smelled stood on the chest of drawers, casting a mellow light against night’s darkness. The curta there the whole time.. d fasin that normally hid his few shirts, trousers and two suit coats was pushed back. The clothing lay in a pile against the wall a few feet away. Was it a blanket that hung over the clothes rod? Bettie knelt on the floor, her back to him. Steam rose from in front of her and he heard water boiling.

“What are you doing?” The words didn’t come out nearly as loud as he intended, but she must have heard him, for she came to stand by his bed.

“I’m steaming a blanket. The warmth might help your muscle aches.”

“Is that pail sitting on a hot plate? And where did you get the blanket and oil lamp?”

“I brought them from my room.”

He picked at his red and yellow quilt. “My m-mother made this. Insisted I take it along when I moved to the city. Usually that and the wool blanket beneath it keep me toasty, but right now, I wouldn’t mind a dozen more quilts.” He reached behind his neck and pulled out a cold, damp towel. “What’s th-this?”

Bettie took it from him. “I put it there to help lower your fever. You were so hot — ”

“Guess it brought it d-down.” He pressed his lips together to keep his teeth from chattering and stuck his arm back under the covers.

Bettie shook her head. “No.”

“How can I have a fever and f-freeze at the same time?”

“That’s how fever works sometimes.” She folded a dry towel. “Can you lift your head? Your pillow and sheet are wet where the towel laid.”

It felt like a great effort to move, but he couldn’t refuse to when she was going to so much trouble to help him. Even that little movement increased the throbbing inside his head and face, where congestion pushed for release. He laid his head back slowly and closed his eyes. They felt swollen. His legs and lower back felt like his bones were melting from pain.

Bettie began removing the blankets and he grabbed for them. “No.”

“I can’t put the steamed blanket on if I don’t move these.”

He could hear the apology in her voice, but she couldn’t possibly realize how hard it was for him to let her take their warmth away even for a moment.

She moved the pail and hot plate before dragging the blanket from the rod. Steam rose from it even as she laid it over him. She pulled the other blanket and quilt back over the steaming blanket to keep the heat in.

“It feels w-wonderful.” He pulled the covers up under his chin. “Reminds me of when I was a kid. Mother let me curl up in a blanket on the floor in front of the parlor stove.” He rolled onto his side, pulled his knees up and balled his hands into fists up close to his chin beneath the blanket, trying to stop the shivers that ran continuously through his body. “D-did you ever do that?”

Bettie sat down on the chair. “Yes. I love watching the fire dance behind the isinglass.”

“Tell me a little about what you were like as a little girl, Bettie Watts. I’m too c- cold to sleep and listening to you might keep my mind off how lousy I feel.”">
Sam drew a long, slow breath”d

She looked at the wall above him and took a deep breath. “I was born and raised in a small prairie town in western Minnesota, maybe a hundred fifty miles from St. Paul. My father works as a clerk in the town’s general store, and my mother sometimes helps out in one of the two cafes. There isn’t a lot more to the town: a blacksmith shop, a leather and boot shop, a butcher shop, a law office whose owner sells insurance and real estate when he hasn’t enough law cases to keep him busy, a school and two churches — one Lutheran and one Catholic.”

“Which did your family attend?”

“The Lutheran church.”

“Mine, too. Did you like school?”

“Yes, I did. I like to find out why things work as they do, especially the God-made things, like people and animals and plants.”

He could picture her growing up, her nose in a book while other kids played hide-and-seek or more boisterous games.

“Mrs. Anderson brought the cinnamon I asked for. I’ll make you some cinnamon tea. My mother swears it brings fevers down.”

He watched her place two brown sticks of cinnamon in a porcelain cup with roses painted on the side and pour boiling water over the sticks. She carried the cup on a saucer back to the chair and sat down. “We’ll let it steep to bring out more of the medicine from the sticks while it cools.”

He was too congested to smell the spice. He wished she’d remove her mask so he could enjoy watching her entire face, and hated that she wore it to protect herself from him. “Did you wear your hair in b-braids as a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Did some boy who was sweet on you dunk them in an inkwell at school?”

Her laugh was sweet and filled with surprise. “The boy who inked my braids wasn’t sweet on me. He was a holy terror.”

“He was sweet on you.”

“Did you dunk the braid of a girl you were sweet on growing up?”

“Of c-course, how else does a fellow let a girl know he likes her when he’s eight years old?”

“Perhaps doing something nice for her, like carrying her books home from school?”

“That comes later. First comes dunking braids and dropping garden snakes down the back of the girl’s dress.”

Her shudder made him smile. He watched light and shadows from the oil lamp play over her mask-covered face, and wondered whether there was a special young man in her life now, but didn’t ask. The question seemed too personal, together alone as they were in his room. He shifted to a safer subject. “Did you have b-brothers and sisters?”

“One brother, Gerald. He’s in France with the Rainbow Division. Maybe he and your brother Peter met.”

“Maybe,”
and fought beside each other
, his thought continued.

She took the coat she’d hung over the back of the chair and slipped it over her shoulders. Her move made him realize the ste in Chicago or New York sGramed blanket was helping the aches but hadn’t warmed the chill away. “Where did you learn what to do for people when they’re sick?”

“Remembering what my mother did when Gerald and I were sick, and from reading the newspaper articles about the Spanish flu.” She shifted her position, folding her arms over her chest. “Where did you grow up?”

“On a farm about fifty miles south of here. My three brothers and I went to a one-room school house. We could see it across the fields from our kitchen window.” He closed his eyes to relieve the burning, but kept talking. “Since it was so c-close we had to help the teacher get the wood stove going in the morning. It made me feel grown up at first. Later it j-just seemed like work, but I always suspected the teachers gave me a few extra points because of it when needed to keep my grades respectable.”

Bettie laughed again, and Carl wondered that it gave him so much pleasure to cause that bit of joy. She held the cup toward him. “I think the tea is cool enough to drink now.”

He pushed himself up on one elbow and took the delicate cup. His hand shook so from the chills that he could barely bring the cup to his lips without spilling, and she helped him steady it. The tea felt good, spreading warmth down his throat and into his chest. He could smell the spice now. It reminded him of Christmas.

“So you have two brothers besides the one at Fort Snelling?” Bettie asked.

“Only one left. The youngest, Thomas, was thrown from a horse when he was thirteen and broke his neck.”

She looked stricken. “I’m sorry.”

So was he, but he didn’t want to talk about sad times right now. “My brother Andrew is in the navy.”

“It must have been difficult for your parents to send two sons off to war.”

He hadn’t thought of it that way; only that he’d wanted to join his brothers.

“What brought you to St. Paul?” she asked.

He closed his eyes. Talking was wearing him out. “Harvest was over. I figured with so many men in the service it would be easy to find work in the city. I’m a clerk in a men’s store. It doesn’t pay as well as I’d hoped, but I like not wearing manure-covered boots every day. I’ve been thinking about taking a bookkeeping class. Seems there are plenty of jobs for bookkeepers and the pay is better than I make.”

“What kind of work did you hope for when you moved here?”

He stared over her shoulder, where the glow from the streetlight lit the window glass. “Nothing special. I just wanted to get away from the farm. I wanted to fight the Kaiser with my brothers and schoolmates, but the army didn’t want me, or the navy, either.” He held out his right hand. “I lost my trigger finger helping Dad and my brothers clear a field when I was ten. Thomas and I were working a large rock out of the ground, when it toppled back and landed on my hand. I jerked it out, but my finger stayed behind. The military powers that be seem to think a man can’t fight without his trigger finger. I told the recruiting agent they were wrong, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Bitterness tasted sharp in his throat. He didn eventuallyedvo’t want to look her in the face and see sympathy there, and that angered him so he looked anyway.

“Obviously you’ve continued to help your father with work around the farm, so I expect you’re capable of shooting a gun, too.”

“Should probably have stayed on the farm in any case. There’s no one left to help Dad but Mother.”

Bettie took his empty cup. He rubbed his eyes. They felt swollen and burned. Right now the only thing that seemed important was to feel warm again and stop hurting.

Sunday morning, Bettie wiped perspiration from her face and used the long-handled wooden spoon to pull two bowls and spoons from the water boiling in the pail. She set them on the linen towel spread on the floor beside the hot plate. Mrs. Anderson would likely re-boil the items; Bettie would do so herself in the landlady’s position. True to her word, Mrs. Anderson had brought porridge for their breakfast. Bettie had been ravenous, but she hadn’t convinced Carl to take more than a couple spoonfuls.

At Carl’s moan, worry etched itself through her chest. The cinnamon tea had seemed to help at first. He’d slept so soundly that she’d allowed herself to nap in her own bed. After only a couple of hours, she’d checked on him. He was covered in sweat, and awoke while she wiped the sweat from his face with a cool damp cloth. She’d insisted he drink more water before going back to sleep. Then she’d taken twenty minutes to freshen up in the water closet, change into a gray flannel house dress and return to his room.

He’d slept fitfully the rest of the night, tossing and turning, moaning all too often in a manner that made her heart hurt. His obvious pain, fever and restlessness kept her from anything but catnaps on the uncomfortable chair. She’d given him more cinnamon tea about three, but still his fever climbed. Sweat would soak his clothes and sheets, and before long he’d shake with cold again. At the moment, he thrashed his legs to free them of covers, even while she steamed his blanket.