Christy

by Catherine Marshall

  The rest of the children were standing without moving, looking at me gravely. What shall I do now? Fear was a lump in my throat. Fear was a weight on my chest. A fog in my brain. I could not think. But I have to think. I have to do something. Blindly, I struck out. “Zady, I need your help.”

  “Yes’m?”

  “Would you bring me a pailful of cold water from the spring?”

  The girl was as eager to get into action as I was. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Lulu, do you think you could find me some rags? Any rags will do.”

  Lulu ran off and was soon back, thrusting at me some of her mother’s best quilt pieces. Fairlight would not want me to use these, but this was no time to be choosy.

  Then Zady was setting the brimming bucket on the floor by me. I dropped the cotton scraps in the water and wrung out two of them for cold compresses for Fairlight’s forehead and wrists. Somehow, we had to bring down her fever. But it was impossible to keep the compresses on her wrists; she kept waving her hands in the air, grasping at something invisible. Or she would pluck at the quilt over her, her lips moving all the while.

  I dared not put cold compresses on her chest, for if this was pneumonia, that might be the wrong treatment. I pulled a chair close to the bed and kept changing the cloth on her forehead every few minutes, but she was so hot that in no time at all the compress would be warm from body heat.

  Zady stood close to me, watching. Once she said hesitantly, “Teacher, Mama kept a-wakin’ us up, talkin’ last night. Couldn’t make no sense out’n some of it.”

  Then Clara came rushing back in to report breathlessly, “Mr. Holcombe’s gone to fotch the Doc. Said he was certain-sure to search him out somewhars. Mistress Holcombe’s not thar. Gone to kinfolks over the far holler. Her cousin, onct-removed, belongs to birth a baby soon.”

  “Thank you, Clara. Let’s hope Doctor MacNeill gets here soon.” I wrung out another rag and gently sponged the rest of Fairlight’s face. It was then that I saw through her open lips some brown fuzz on her teeth and her tongue. I stared, trying to understand what this could be. I thought feverish tongues got white, not brown. The muttering went on. Most of it was not intelligible.

  Then Fairlight reached for my hand and clung to it, looking directly at me, the fog lifting from her mind, love and longing in her eyes. “Christy, my time’s come. I know it. But Christy, I don’t want to die. Don’t want to leave my young’uns.” She half-raised herself in bed, her grasp on my hand like a vise. “Why do I have to die? Holp me. Christy, will you holp me?”

  “Fairlight, you’re not going to die. Sure, you’re sick, plenty sick. But Doctor MacNeill is on his way to you right now. He’ll know exactly what to do. Try to rest now. And please don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. I know it is.” Desperately, I was trying to put conviction into my voice.

  But she appeared not to have heard me. Slow tears coursed down her cheeks. “It’s no use. I’ve knowed this for days. Hold my hand, Christy. Stay with me. Please don’t leave me. Jeb—I don’t want to leave Jeb—or the least’un. Baby Guy needs me. Why do I have to leave? I’m not old enough to die.”

  “Fairlight, don’t talk that way. It’s wrong for you to talk that way! The doctor will be here any minute.”

  “Can’t you holp me, Christy? A body shouldn’t have to die when she don’t want—to—die.” She faded back into the delirium. Her eyes were open, but now there was no recognition in them.

  The room was electric with tension. Lulu was crying softly. Zady was standing rigid, the back of one hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes pools of despair. Fairlight had flung off the compresses, so I picked them up from the bed, wrung one out again and put it on her forehead. My own face was wet with perspiration. I dipped my hand in the chilly water and rubbed it over my eyelids and cheeks, grateful for the cooling touch.

  Then the lines of Fairlight’s face softened and into her voice came the lilt of a young girl’s exuberance. “Race ye to the branch yonder . . . What ye got to do that’s so blessed important? See that sycamore a-hangin’ out over the water? Bet I can skin-the-cat afore you.”

  Fascinated at the change in their mother’s tone, the children gathered closer, the three youngest thinking that she was telling them a story, “Oh-h-h,” she shrieked, “fell in. Scared me fitified. Water’s cold, so-o-o cold.” And the children laughed delightedly.

  Her comments were so graphic that we could see the fun . . . One moment she was picking wild strawberries in Pleasant Valley. Then she and her sister were making necklaces of scarlet haws and crowns of oak leaves . . . They were running to climb a persimmon tree laden with heavy yellow fruit. “Not hardly a leaf left on this-here tree. So many persimmons. I’ll throw one down to you, ye little wildcat . . . Ugh! I bit one that wasn’t ripe.” Her lips, cracked and flaked from the fever, puckered as she relived the moment.

  Or Grandsir and Granny Spencer were alive, and all the family were rollicking through a molasses stir-off. “Prettiest yellow foam ye ever did see. No, Web, don’t! That green foam’ll give ye a stummick ache, sure. Aye, right smart patch we had this year. Oh, I can taste this ’lasses now on hot crusty corn pone.”

  Then it was night before the fire and Granny was telling stories. The voice from the bed was hoarse now, racked by the cough and the compulsion to talk and talk. From her parched lips came the verse that she must have known as far back as she could remember, part of the story Granny was telling, it seemed:

  “Three drops of blood I’ve shed for thee!

  Three little babies I’ve born for thee!

  Whitebear Whittington, turn to me . . .”

  I sat there weak from emotion, wondering which was the more frightening—the imploring “Why? Why? Why?” of the more lucid moments, or the mind’s wide wanderings. Then Little Guy crept close to me and crawled onto my lap. I found myself cuddling him close, stroking his short, sturdy legs, cradling his grimy little fingers in mine.

  At last the voice from the bed fell silent. Fairlight was slipping into a sleep or a coma, I could not tell which. Once again, her features changed. She was a girl no longer. The tired lines came back. The color was slowly ebbing from her cheeks.

  The children were around my chair now, watching first their mother, then me, not understanding, not knowing what to expect. Over and over, Clara went to the door or to the edge of the yard, her eyes searching for the approaching figure of Dr. MacNeill.

  Fairlight was peaceful now, her face quiet, her hands still, though her breathing sounded shallow. Perhaps the cold compresses had helped. She had worn herself out talking; a good sleep would help. I smoothed her covers and then sank back into the chair, Guy still sprawled across me. The little fellow was asleep.

  Suddenly, there was such a violent movement of the bed-clothes that I jumped, almost dumping Little Guy off my lap. Fairlight screamed, “Oh, no!” hysteria in her voice. “The shadder! The shadder’s a-comin’ for me!”

  The strength of her voice startled me. Then I realized that she was throwing off her covers. Frantically, I set Guy on the floor and reached for her. But she was already out of bed, several steps across the floor. “Christy, holp me . . . Hide me! The shadder’s after me. Help me git away.”

  Even as she sank dizzily to her knees, I saw that she was right: the shadow’s time of day had come. Though the late afternoon sun was still streaming through the open door, lighting the room and illuminating Fairlight’s distorted face, even as I reached her and she flung herself at me, grasping me around the legs, the slanting shadows were crawling across the floor toward us. How had she known, lying there in bed with her eyes closed?

  “Christy!” It was a wild shriek now, terrible to hear. “The shadder o’ death—push hit away. Hide me! Oh, holp me—!” Her head was upraised, her eyes only for that peak across the way, her arms before her face as if to ward off a blow.

  I was on my knees beside her, trying to take her in my arms—but her body was rigid. I began crooning to her, not knowin
g what I was saying, all my love pouring into torrents of words: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me . . . For Thou art with me . . . For He is with us, Fairlight. Oh, Fairlight, do you hear me? I will fear no evil—for He is with us—” Sitting there on the floor, I hugged her, stroked her face with my hands.

  Suddenly the rigidity went out of her and she relaxed in my arms. Still holding her tightly, I looked up. The giant’s hand was upraised now, the light in the cabin all but extinguished. And as I glanced down again at the beloved face in my lap, quiet now, the blackness of the shadow fell directly across her face.

  Her features were too composed. “Oh, no! Oh, dear God, no!” I stared in disbelief. It could not be. But it was. There was no breath. Her eyes were still staring, but no breath escaped her sagging jaws.

  My cry had told the children. Clara rushed to her mother, felt her breast in a knowledge beyond her years, then straightened up, tears flowing down her cheeks. Zady threw herself on Fairlight, sobbing inconsolably, then collapsed into a heap on the floor. Lulu crawled up and began hugging her mother’s feet. I was too stunned to think—or to move—or to know what to do next.

  I don’t know how long the children and I sat there in a tightly huddled group on the floor. Still, I could not believe it. This was crazy superstition. It could not be true. Things like this did not happen. I was dreaming. Any moment now I would wake up and find this a bad dream.

  I did not hear Dr. MacNeill enter the cabin. Gently, he took me by the arm, got me to my feet. He spoke, but I did not hear what he said. Then he and Mr. Holcombe picked up Fairlight and carried her to the bed.

  At last when Dr. MacNeill had finished examining her, slowly, almost tenderly, he pulled the quilt over the beautiful face. His eyes sought mine. “She’s had it for a good ten days. When it’s not caught and the patient keeps going, death can come in the second week.”

  “ ‘It’? Pneumonia?”

  He hesitated, as if reluctant to answer me. “Typhoid, Christy. It’s typhoid.”

  A blessed numbness carried me through Fairlight’s funeral. Shock? Some special dispensation from above? No matter. Like an anesthetic, it served its purpose, enabled me to get through the days, to speak words of comfort to the Spencer children who clung to me now in place of their mother. Mr. Spencer was obviously relieved when I suggested that I take Guy, Lulu, and Zady down to the mission for a time. Between Miss Ida and me, we could at least take care of the littlest Spencers.

  But their questions—how could we answer these: “Where is my mother now?” . . . “What is she doing?” . . . “When will I see her again?” And Little Guy, over and over in his high-pitched tremolo, “I want my mama. I want my mama—” I could only gather him in my arms and let him cling to me. Many a night he cried himself to sleep.

  Often during these days I would hear my own voice as from a distance reassuring Lulu or Zady, mouthing platitudes to Jeb Spencer or to John or Clara, dispensing comfort as a doctor dispenses pills. But for me there was an air of unreality about it all. I was still treading air, walking a foot above the earth.

  It must have been about the eighth day after the funeral that the world came back into focus, the soles of my feet again touched the soil of the commonplace. Then I knew how sorely I had been wounded by Fairlight’s death. This was no ache but a wild, searing pain boring into my vitals, piercing every thought.

  I doubt that my torment was altruistic. Probably most grief contains a large measure of self-reference; mine no exception. Clawing questions gave me no peace. What if I? . . . Why hadn’t I? . . . If only I . . . If only I had not failed my friend. Fairlight’s superstitious terror of the shadow, for instance. How great a part had this abnormal fear played in her death? Could fear actually have paralyzed her body’s defenses against the typhoid? And with the hours upon hours that Fairlight and I had spent together through the spring and summer, why had I not found a way to help her see that the shadow cast by a mountain had no power over her of any kind?

  Beyond that, however, my resentment was directed at God Almighty Himself. I wondered why Fairlight had been taken by typhoid rather than someone not quite bright or someone old and crippled, whose children were grown and whose life was almost over anyway? Why were the good and the beautiful so ruthlessly plucked?

  Then the scene at the graveside festered in my mind: that pathetic cemetery against the background of the titan peaks, as though to mock life’s fragility: the stem of the flower broken, and no man can mend it; the soaring bird felled so suddenly that the tiny body is warm in death, the unfinished song still in his throat; the invisible germ that cuts us down; the heartbeat stilled so easily.

  In my ears still rang the plaintive melodies of the hymns echoing back from the wall of mountains, wafted on the whimpering wind:

  Soon we’ll cross the border line,

  To that land of love divine . . .

  And they had sung “We Have Mothers up in Heaven,” but it was on earth that the little Spencers needed a mother.

  Snatches of the comments I had heard at the funeral hovered around my mind like those darting black ravens Mr. Pentland had told me about . . . “I knowed her time had come. Dreamt about her a-gallopin’ into the day-down on a black yearling horse” . . . “ ’Tis the fairest flowers wilt the soonest. Too good for this world, she was . . .”

  Too good to stand gazing in delight at the plum trees in riotous bloom? Too good to tell hilarious stories to Little Guy? Too good to pull taffy with her girls? Or to sing the beautiful old ballads while she churned? No, it made no sense to me. Justice was justice. And fair was fair. Apparently we could count on no justice in this life; heaven’s ways are surely not our ways. In my rebellion I was not certain that I wanted any part of such a heaven—that is, if there is any life after this one, for doubts now gnawed like rats at the fabric of my faith.

  Dr. MacNeill too was coming by the mission more often than before, watching me closely, for I was now a prime suspect to come down with the disease. But what happened to my body was not my chief concern now. I could live to be an old lady, but if I never knew final truth about life and death and God, what good would life be? With a mind often far off the work at hand, I would sometimes jump guiltily when spoken to, or else not hear at all.

  Each night sleep came only with exhaustion. And even then I tossed—hot and restless—pursued by dreams that had a nightmarish quality. Often I would awaken with a throbbing head and aching legs. After one such night, feeling I could not live another day if I did not get answers to the questions that tormented me, I turned for help to David. I found him at the side of the house putting new screening on the porch door. “David,” I plunged in, “what happens at death? I mean, can Fairlight still see Jeb and her children and us?”

  He stopped pounding in the brads and straightened up to look at me, almost blankly at first. My questions kept coming, spilling over themselves. “David, I have to know that life goes on, that this isn’t the end for Fairlight. How are ministers so sure there’s a heaven? What proof do you have? And don’t give me book answer like you tried to do with Aunt Polly. I mean, what do you believe yourself?”

  David looked down at the hammer in his hand, turning it over as though he had never seen such an object before. “I believe it’s a tremendously big subject. But I believe in immortality.”

  “Why do you believe in it? I mean, how can you be sure that when we die, we don’t just die—and that’s it?”

  “Because man’s a part of the natural order, and dying each winter and being resurrected each spring is part of the rhythm, the normal ebb and flow of life. Surely, if it happens to mere flowers and trees, it happens to us.”

  David turned back to stretch taut another edge of the screening. “Sure, David. I know about spring, and everything. I know I’m supposed to believe. But what do you do when suddenly you find you can’t believe?”

  “Believing is never easy, Christy. And right now you’re t
ired and upset.” He put down his tack hammer and drew me into his arms, cradling my head against his chest. “The way you feel now, words aren’t going to help you. That’s not what you need.”

  He tilted my head back and kissed first one eyelid and then the other and then my mouth. “Foolish girl . . . Do you think you can solve all the philosophic problems of the universe?”

  “But David—”

  “No buts—just don’t think about it.”

  “But I can’t help thinking about it!”

  David was beginning to use the same tone he took with a very little child, almost crooning. “I’m sorry about Fairlight, Christy. Really sorry. I know what she meant to you. But you will get over this, you know.”

  “You still don’t understand. I have to know that Fairlight isn’t just gone, vanished forever—or I’ll go crazy. I need to know that she’s close to us somehow. Maybe that she can hear us talking right now, that she’s trying to tell us that everything is all right. Can’t you understand the need to be sure, David?”

  “Of course, I’d like to be sure too. But death is a very great mystery. Maybe it’s always supposed to be.”

  “What are you sure of, David?”

  He looked at me oddly. There was a spot of pink in each cheek. He shifted the weight on his feet. “Christy, it’s a lot easier to ask these questions than to answer them. I can give you good theological answers to your questions, but knowing you, that won’t be enough.”

  Suddenly, Aunt Polly’s face rose before me, the old lady’s hurt and disbelieving eyes as she was being offered school-boy answers instead of the reality she needed. I did not want to be back there in Aunt Polly’s cabin, but I was there. And David was holding words like a screen in front of human nakedness and need.

  All at once I had a yearning I had not known for a long time—to cry, with my head in mother’s lap. I wanted to feel her patting my head.