Stella by Starlight (26 page)

Stella first poured the cold water on the wound, watching as the oozing blood turned pale pink. Mama's eyes opened wide, registering shock, but Stella just kept rinsing the holes in her mother's leg.

“The next thing I'm gonna pour might hurt a little more,” she whispered, “but I got to clean it best I can.” Stella had no idea if she was doing the right thing or not. She was pulling from a gut instinct she didn't know she had.

She opened the bottle of whiskey, and as she sloshed most of it on her mother's ankle, her mother cried out in pain. Stella simply said, “Sh-sh-sh. It's gonna be all right.” Mama stilled.

Stella held the pale-blue dress up to her face. Mama had made it for her when she was six. The cotton had been worn soft from dozens of wearings and washings. Without a second thought, Stella ripped it into wide strips, which she wrapped loosely round and round her mother's leg. She secured the bandage with her father's necktie, then bundled her mother in the blankets.

Stella soaked a piece of the torn dress with the last of the water and placed it gently on her mother's forehead.

There was nothing else she could do. So she snuggled under the blanket, wrapped her body close to her mother's, and held her tightly. It would be dark soon.
Where was the doctor? Where was Papa?

She began to pray.

43

“Oh God, Georgia!” her father exclaimed as he raced toward them at last. Jojo was not far behind, his face tight with worry. It was almost dusk.

Stella scrambled to her feet. “Papa! Mama's been bit. It's really bad.” She looked around. “Where's Dr. Hawkins?”

“He ain't here,” her father said, desperation in his voice. “He had to go out to Raleigh—medical conference. He's not due back for three days.” Even as he spoke, he lifted his semiconscious wife into his arms, blankets and all, and strode back toward the house.

Stella grabbed the water bucket and hurried after him.

“Musta been a rattler,” her father declared, moving
faster than Stella ever dreamed possible for someone carrying another full-grown person. “Canebrakes like to hide under wet wood in the fall.”

“Mama wasn't positive,” Stella told him, worry making her mouth dry. “I didn't see it. But maybe it
was
a copperhead,” she added hopefully. “They're not so poisonous, right?”

“Still very, very dangerous,” her father replied as he bounded onto the porch. Rather than try to carry her to the loft, he gently laid his wife on Stella's bed. Jojo ran to stoke the fire without being told.

“I didn't know what to do, Papa,” Stella said, feeling her calm disappear and frenzy setting in.

“Girl, you done
so
good,” her father said as he checked Stella's makeshift bandage. “I couldn't have fixed her up better myself!”

Stella hoped she'd done enough.

“Water,” her mother whispered. “Water.”

Jojo grabbed the bucket from Stella, ran to pump fresh water, and hustled it right back in. Stella carefully held a dipperful to her mother's parched lips, again and again, until Mama fell asleep.

“Jojo,” Papa called out. “Run tell Mrs. Bates and
Mrs. Winston what happened. They'll know more than us what to do about snakebite.”

Once Jojo rushed off, Stella turned to her father. “What are we gonna do, Papa?”

“I been thinking on exactly that. Your mother needs antivenom. Doc Hawkins is not gonna get back in time. I don't want to risk taking the wagon to Raleigh—you gotta keep a snakebite real still. The bumps and thumps could kill her, I believe.” He stared at his work-worn hands. “I can build or fix anything with these hands,” he said, his voice breaking. “But I can't fix this. Lord, I hate to say this, but we need Dr. Packard.”

“Oh, Papa! There's no way he will come . . . is there?”

“Well, I doubt he would even answer the door if I knocked,” her father said. “But you, he might just possibly listen to you. He's got a daughter about your age, don't he?”

Stella bit her lip, hard. “Yes, but he might be head of the Ku Klux Klan. Why would he help
us
?”

Papa dug his fingers deep into his hair. “He's got a wife he cares about. He's got a child he surely loves.
He's gotta know what it feels like to be crazy with worry for them.” He placed his hands on Stella's shoulders. “Will you go, child? Will you try? Your mama's got maybe twenty, twenty-four hours.”

Stella had never seen such desperation on her father's face. “Papa, I'll go. Don't worry. I'll go get Dr. Packard to come here and tend to Mama.”

She headed up the road. That mile and a half to town never seemed so far away. She didn't run. Nobody would listen to a sweaty girl, she figured. The town square, almost deserted this late, looked very different at night. Buildings cast long shadows, and familiar shops looked foreign. She gazed up at the moon, which hung like a fingernail in the night sky. Light against dark. A sliver. A sliver of hope?

She did pick up speed as she passed the bench near the general store, even if no one was in it.

Dr. Packard's office, just around the corner, stood between the undertaker's office and the bank. Stella smacked her forehead.
What if he's gone for the day?
She hadn't considered that most shops closed up around four o'clock. She wondered if she dared go to his house. But then she saw with relief a light in
the front window. An older white woman Stella didn't recognize, walking heavily on a cane, was just leaving the building.

“Thank you, doctor,” she was saying. “I'm feelin' better already!”

Stella hurried to the door before it could close. “Good evenin', M'am,” she said to the woman as she passed her.

“Humph,” was all Stella heard in reply as the woman hobbled off.

Stella looked down and tried to smooth her wrinkled dress, suddenly regretting that she had not taken the time to change her clothes. She smelled of leaves and dirt and. . . she sniffed . . . and whiskey!

She had no choice. Just as Dr. Packard was closing the door, Stella pressed her hand up against it. “Uh, excuse me, sir,” she began.

“What you want, gal?” the doctor said.

Stella hesitated. The doctor's eyes were such an odd color green—cold like fish scales. He was the only person she'd ever encountered with eyes just that color. She remembered those eyes peering from behind that hood on the day of the Spencer fire. She remembered
those eyes from that afternoon so long ago when she'd been only five.

Stella blinked fast and shook her head. Then she blurted out, “My mother has been bitten by a rattlesnake! Copperhead, we think. . . .”

“So?”

“Please, sir, she needs a doctor. She needs antivenom. And she needs it fast.”

“Y'all got a colored doctor down there. Don't be bringin' all this botheration to me.”

“Dr. Hawkins is in Raleigh, sir.”

“So go to Raleigh.”

Stella bit her lip to quell her rising panic. “Mama can't be moved, sir. Papa says it would make the venom travel faster in her bloodstream.”

“So now your pappy's a doctor? You don't need me.” He laughed.

“Oh, yes, we surely do. I have a daddy and a little brother who love her very much. She's my
mother
, sir.”

He shrugged. “She ain't
my
mama, so I don't rightly care.”

Stella thought quickly, then dared. “I know your daughter, sir. We're the same age.”

“Paulette don't know nobody the likes of you!” he sneered.

“But what if . . . what if it was Paulette or your wife that got snake-bit?” Stella asked, trying to reason with him.

He leaned toward her. “They got better sense than to get bit by a snake. Only stupid people let snakes bite them.”

“Please sir.
Please
. Her leg is swelling. It's hard for her to breathe. She's barely conscious. Won't you be kind enough to come take a look at her? Please?” Stella implored.

“No! Now leave my property before I call the sheriff!”

Stella was stunned.

“But she might die!” she pleaded, blinking back tears.

“I told you—
I don't care
.”

“Please,” Stella whispered once more.

“Read my sign!” Dr. Packard said. Then he slammed the door in Stella's face.

Tacked on his door was a wooden plaque, neatly painted in red block letters. It said
WHITE PATIENTS ONLY
.

44

When Stella got back home, she ran immediately to her mother, her eyes meeting her father's. She shook her head, and he bowed his. They'd known it would be a long shot. Neither of them had really expected Dr. Packard to come.

But Mrs. Winston
had
come. She called to Stella to get some vittles. “You must be starvin', girl.”

Hot soup and warm biscuits appeared on the table. Stella hadn't realized how hungry she was. She ate it all. “Thank you, Mrs. Winston,” she said gratefully. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Hawkins began wiping Mama's brow with cold compresses. “I brought a pot of the same kind of elderberry-willow tea your mama fixed for my Tony,”
she said. “We been getting her to sip little bits.”

“Is it helping?” Stella asked.

“Well, her fever ain't spiking, and the swelling hasn't gotten any worse, so that's a good sign,” Mrs. Hawkins replied. But Stella could read the fear on her face.

Stella squatted by Jojo at the fire, where he was rolling two marbles between his palms, and pulled him close. Jojo rolled the marbles faster, and faster, and faster, and faster.

Finally he whispered, “Is Mama gonna die, Stella?”

“I don't really know for sure,” Stella told him. “It looks pretty bad right now, but Mama is the strongest woman in Bumblebee, maybe in all of North Carolina.”

“Uh-huh,” Jojo replied. But he didn't sound convinced.

Papa knelt down beside them. “I'm gonna be honest with you two. If it was a rattler that bit her, that venom can be fatal. Depends on the type of rattlesnake, where the bite is, and the type of toxin it carries. We really don't know what bit your mama. But if it had been the most serious type, she'd already be gone.”