The Giant-Slayer (25 page)

“How come you only put in two reins?” asked Chip.

“I don’t know,” said Laurie. “It’s probably all wrong.”

“No. It’s true,” he told her. “You only need two reins for a team of oxen.”

Carolyn said, “How would
you
know?”

“’Cause I used to drive one.” Chip was looking right into his mirror, straight at Laurie. He had been watching her for
the last hour. “We only had four oxen. But it’s the same thing. Most people lead them. But we used to drive ours like horses.”

“When was that?” asked Carolyn.

“When I lived at the farm.”

“You never lived on a farm.”

“I did too.”

In their wheelchairs, on the treatment board, the children turned now to Carolyn and Chip. The two were facing each other, their heads tilted on their pillows.

To Laurie, it hardly seemed worth arguing if you had to do it in time with the iron lung. Their breaths were measured, timed to the pumping of the bellows.

“It was just when I was small,” said Chip. “Then my dad went to college on the GI Bill. And we moved into town so he could work.”

“At what?”

“The garage. He was a mechanic.”

“You said he was a fireman.”

“No, I never.”

“Boy, it doesn’t matter,” said Dickie. “Maybe he was both.”

That was good enough for Laurie, and good enough for Peter and Ruth, for James Miner on the floor. They all nodded and shrugged and looked away uncomfortably. But Carolyn kept at it.

“You did so say he was a fireman,” said Carolyn. “You said it lots.” The bellows wheezed below. “Ask Miss Freeman.”

“Oh, buzz off,” said Chip. “Why would I ask Miss Freeman … where my dad used to work?”

“’Cause I guess you forgot.” Carolyn turned her head toward the mirror. “Or you lied.”

“I did not!”

“Then ask Miss Freeman.”

As though summoned by a genie, the nurse was suddenly there, coming through the open doorway. It could have been that Carolyn saw her shadow in the hall or heard her footsteps coming nearer. But no one seemed more surprised than Carolyn when Miss Freeman breezed into the room with a newspaper in her hands.

“Ask me what?” she said, smiling as though she had brought the light in with her. Her eyes sparkled; her mouth shone with lipstick. No one answered, but she kept smiling. “Did you hear?” she said. “They’ve done it.”

She opened the newspaper and held up the front page. The headline was huge:

“Isn’t that swell?” said Miss Freeman.

From their iron lungs, from their wheelchairs and the treatment board, the children looked and smiled. All except for Carolyn. And all except for Carolyn, they let out a little cheer, as though they themselves had beaten the disease.

For Laurie, it seemed very sad. She looked at Dickie’s face hovering in the mirror, and wondered how he could be so happy for something that had come too late for him. She suddenly heard the words her father had spoken on a day that seemed long ago:
Can you imagine how it haunts them
that they got polio just because they went to a swimming pool, or something as frivolous as that?
She wished harder than she had ever wished for anything that she could turn back the clock to that afternoon at the creek and tell Dickie not to drink the water, or slap it from his hands as he cupped them to his lips. If they had never gone to the creek that day, he would be reading the headline at home, not caring about it at all.

Miss Freeman was still holding the newspaper. But her smile was fading. “Aren’t you happy, Carolyn?” she asked.

“Sure. Whoop-de-doo,” said Carolyn. “Doesn’t do me any good.”

“No, not directly.” Miss Freeman folded the paper. “But think of all the children who won’t go through what you’ve been through. All the parents who won’t have to worry anymore. Can’t you be happy for them?”

The girl’s head didn’t move on the pillow. Her body lay still in the iron lung. But, somehow, it seemed that she shrugged. “Were they sorry for me?”

“I’m sure a lot of them were,” said Miss Freeman. “We’ll talk about it later, if you like. For now I just wanted to pass on the news.”

She put the paper under her arm and turned toward the door. “Oh, and Laurie, your father’s on his way up. He just asked downstairs if you were here, so we told him to come to the fourth floor. He seems such a nice man.”

T
here was a party that evening in the polio ward, but Laurie wasn’t there. Nurses in white uniforms spooned cake with white icing into the mouths of the children in their iron lungs. Little girls in leg braces danced to phonograph records, tangling their crutches until everyone was laughing.

And Laurie Valentine sat in her living room, feeling as small as an ant on the big old sofa. As though she were still only six, her legs didn’t reach the floor, and her father loomed above her.

He spoke in his calm and quiet way. “I was very angry, you know,” he said. “I thought we had an understanding that you would stay away from Bishop’s.”

“I never really
promised,”
said Laurie.

“So I should have made you take an oath?” Mr. Valentine paced on the carpet, his tie swinging across his chest. “You’re not a little child anymore. We have to trust each other, Laurie.”

“If you trust me, why did you spy on me?” She was taking a chance, not sure even now if the man at the pond had been her father. But by the way he paused in his pacing she could see that she was right. “I saw you at Piper’s Pond that day,” she said.

“As I recall,” said Mr. Valentine, “you told me that you would be at the library.”

“And you didn’t trust me!” cried Laurie, as though she had won a huge victory. But even she could see that it was hollow. She didn’t look up at her father.

“Laurie, it was wrong of you to go to Bishop’s,” he said. “But it was wrong of me as well to stop you. I see that now, and I apologize.”

Laurie could hardly believe that her father was apologizing. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said generously.

Mr. Valentine stopped pacing, took out his pipe, and lit it. He tossed his match into the fireplace and watched the smoke curl from his pipe. “Mrs. Espinosa called me today. She wanted to say how kind it was of me to let you visit Dickie. You’re the only one who does, apparently.”

“I’m his only friend,” said Laurie.

“It’s good you have convictions,” said Mr. Valentine. “I didn’t want you to go, but you weighed my advice and took the high road. You took it by yourself; I’m proud of you. It’s sometimes a lonely road, the high road.”

Laurie thought of Dickie, who had said that she was the Woman in the story. It was strange that Jimmy’s mother had also set off on the High Road.

Mr. Valentine puffed a ball of gray smoke. “So how
is
your little friend?”

The “little” stung her. “Well, he’s still in an iron lung,” she said, a bit snootily, “so I don’t think he’s all that great.”

Mr. Valentine winced. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He pulled a shred of tobacco from his lips. “I imagine you saw the headline today?”

She nodded.

“The vaccine’s ready; it’s finished. It hasn’t proven to be quite the miracle the papers have made out, but it’s better than expected.” Mr. Valentine looked proud, as though he brewed the vaccine himself. “The Foundation intends to vaccinate nine million people before summer. I’ve been pulling some strings, Laurie, and I’ve seen to it that you’ll be one of the first. If you’re going to hang around polio wards, I think I owe you that.”

The announcement pleased Laurie. “When will that happen?” she asked.

“As soon as possible,” said Mr. Valentine. “I believe you’re getting the first batch from the Cutter lab.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Laurie. She stood up and hugged him, then reached a bit higher and kissed his neck.

He blushed and said, “Is it too much to ask that you stay away from Bishop’s until you’ve had the shot?”

“No, that’s okay,” said Laurie. “I will.”

And she did.

It was nine days later when Laurie got the first of her two vaccinations. A photographer took her picture for the weekend paper. “Wince, please,” he said, which made her smile. So he took another.

That was on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, she was back at Bishop’s.

The front page with the polio headline was taped to the wall in the respirator room. James Miner rolled his treatment board right across the room to show it to Laurie. He had put up the page himself, so it was just six inches above the floor.

“Miss Freeman, she says I helped to beat polio,” he said. “A little bit of the vaccine, that’s on account of me.”

“Really?” said Laurie.

“I guess so.” He smiled and nodded. “I was a Polio Pioneer.”

“Were you?” Laurie had wanted to be a Pioneer herself but was a year too old when the doctors and nurses had come around to her school with the test vaccine. She remembered how she had envied the little kids with their buttons and candy and membership cards.

“I got the fake vaccine,” said James. “So I wasn’t protected.”

“That’s awful,” said Laurie.

“Yeah. My dad felt really cheated,” said James. “Besides, he thought you got money if you were a Pioneer. That’s why I was in it.”

Across the room, in his iron lung, Chip laughed.

“It’s true,” said James. “My dad’s always looking for ways to make money. In his store, he sells all this junk, like—”

“What kind of store?” asked Dickie.

“Kind of like a grocery store.” James was turning his board back and forth to try to look at everybody. “Its real name is Miner’s, but everyone calls it Miser’s, on account of my dad’s so cheap. I started working there when I was four. That’s where I was when I got polio.”

“What happened?” asked Laurie.

He turned toward
her
. “My job was sweeping—and stocking the bottom shelves. ’Cause I couldn’t reach the ones any higher. One day I was filling up the jam shelf, and I kind of fell down, and all the jars of jam started rolling off the shelf. There was strawberry jam and blueberry jam and blackberry jam and gooseberry jam and all these different kinds of jam, and they were all bursting when they hit the floor.” He laughed at the memory. “I couldn’t stop them, ’cause it hurt so much to move. Oh, my dad was so angry! He made me get the mop and bucket and clean it all up. And I could hardly even stand, so he said, ‘You shiftless bugger, you’re not leaving till you finish.’ So I just kept working until I kind of fainted in all that jam. When the doctor came and saw the red jam all over me, he thought my guts had fallen out.”

James laughed again. But nobody else did. When he stopped, there was just the hum and whoosh of the iron lungs. Then Carolyn, looking straight up into her mirror, asked, “Where was your mother?”

“Oh, she was long gone by then,” said James, turning his
board again. “She went away when I was little. I don’t know where she went, not really.”

Dickie said, “That’s funny. It’s just like Jimmy the giant-slayer.”

“No fooling?” said James, who had missed the first part of the story.

“Cross my heart. His mother ran away from Fingal,” said Dickie. “And he worked for his dad.”

“I don’t remember where the giant-slayer is just now,” said James. “Did they get the big wagon going?”

Laurie nodded. “Yes, they did.” She took her place at the window, hopping up to the broad sill. She poked her glasses on her nose and started again with the story. “But the teamster, Finnegan Flanders, he was scared to drive it.”