The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book)

by Robert Hough

  "Vat?" Leitzel exclaimed. "You call ziss sick? Belief me. Alfred is vorse after a night drinking tequila. Now. Let me light your paraffin stove and get ziss vater to bubbling. You need is a little vater and everything is fine."

  Slowly we moved from the star cars to the section of train carrying chorus performers and maintenance workers. Things got more crowded, generally four bunks to a room, and that made the work harder. We kept asking the sick which barrels they'd drunk from, though mostly they were too frothing with vileness to answer. For this reason, it was impossible to detect any rhyme or reason for the outbreak. In one car everyone would be healthy and in the next all four would be violently puking and in the next you'd have one or two just starting to come down with it. Yet it wasn't the stench or the sights that got us but the sheer amount of manual labour. Our fingers ached and our elbows got stiff and we all got the deflated feeling that comes from having work that doesn't seem to have any intention of ending. Plus Ella Bradna's back started complaining loudly; I could tell because she'd stop, put a hand on her lumbar and wince. Luckily, we picked up three spec girls who wanted to help so we started doing two cars at once, my dashing back and forth to give instruction.

  About an hour and a half in, we got to the workingmen part of the train. There we took a rest outside before the real fun started. By then it was totally dark outside, and the screeching winds had grown chilly; still, the healthy workingmen were all outside, huddled and passing bottles and bearing the weather as best they could. Ketchum was there as well, helping a group build bonfires so they could boil water over flames, the workingmen not having the benefit of stoves in their dorm cars. When he saw us he came running over. I don't know if it's possible for skin creases to deepen in a couple of hours, but it seemed to have happened to him.

  "GOT GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS!" he hollered over the weather.

  "GOOD NEWS FIRST!" I shouted back.

  "HEARD MAY WIRTH'S DOING A BIT BETTER. NOT MUCH, BUT A LITTLE AND I FIGURE IF IT WAS TYPHOID OR CHOLERA SHE'D BE DOING A LOT WORSE. IT'S DYSENTERY, MABEL, BAD DYSENTERY AND AMOEBIC SURE AS SHIT, BUT STILL JUST DYSENTERY."

  This news went a long way to reducing my numbed, achy-finger feeling. I let my voice rest a minute before yelling again into the wind.

  "THE BAD NEWS?"

  Here Ketchum gestured toward the workingmen's car, squinting against a whipping hair lock. "IT'S BAD IN THERE, MABEL. BAD."

  The rest of my nurses all heard this, so we each took a big breath and avoided looking at one another. Then we went in.

  In the workingmen's car they slept three to a bunk, the bunks piled three high. Even spread out, there was at least one sick body in every bed and in some cases two and in the odd one three. Every single man in that car was groaning and clutching himself and running torrents from both ends. The aisles ran with puke and diarrhea and urine gone rosy with blood. Though every window was open, the jetting winds outside were no match for the thickness of the stench inside the car; one of the spec girls started to sniffle, and we all stepped back outside feeling horrified.

  There couldn't've been less than four hours work in there. Course, there was little we could do without fresh bedding and given they were workingmen it was unlikely many of them would own a spare set. Hearing this, we all decided Ella Bradna would take the spec girls and go up and down the train begging people for spare sheets and drinking water, at the same time trying to recruit more nurses. That left me and Leitzel and Petra Christensen. Seeing as there was nothing left for us to do but roll up our sleeves and do what we could do in the meantime, I headed toward the door of the workingmen's car, which had been left open and was slamming over and over into the door frame.

  After taking a few steps, I noticed I wasn't being followed, so I turned. Petra Christensen was crying, I suppose from fatigue and shock, though it really didn't matter for I could tell she was done.

  "I viii take her back," Leitzel said, "und return as soon as I am able." They walked away, one stooped and one with her chin up, both with their clothes ruffling in the winds. I knew I wouldn't see Leitzel again, nursing fellow performers being one thing and nursing lowly workingmen being something altogether different.

  So I headed into the workingmen's car alone. Now that I'd arrived, they were calling out and holding on to me and saying my name, which was spooky because a lot of them had gone delusional with fever and were calling out the names of wives or girlfriends while others were moaning, "Help me, Ma." Others were panicking, whimpering they didn't want to die a poor circus razorback in debt to the blue car for drinking. I dampened a few lips and foreheads and pulled up a few blankets, which'd get thrown off immediately due to the patient being hot with fever. After a few minutes, I realized there was precious little I could do on my own, so I made a decision: I'd go to the menage, check on Rajah and by the time I got back there'd be help and water boiled and hopefully fresh linen.

  So I left. Had to dodge outstretched hands and avoid faces gone slack with dryness. I stepped into the bitter weather and, hunched against the wind, hustled to the other end of the train, which in those days was practically a mile long and travelled in four sections with four locomotives. I half walked and half ran the whole way, reaching the menage cars out of breath but amazed at my own energy. There I saw Art, sitting in a cage, tending to an elephant with a river of green muckiness spilling from a butthole dilated to the size of a basin; it flowed from the cage over the wash-out gutter and into the earth, making a puddle of awfulness I practically stepped in.

  "ART!" I hollered.

  He waved and yelled back something I couldn't quite make out because of the wind, though I think he said some of his bulls were sick but he'd see me later. I moved on, taking a bit of water Art had boiled next to the bull pens. As I hurried, I ignored the sounds of sick animals: was yaks lowing and camels spitting and gorillas chest-thumping and hippos crying and lions rumbling and a whole lot of healthy animals gone vocal for fear of what was happening. A big crowd had formed around the prize Ringling akapi, for she was the only akapi in America and had cost almost as much as the albino elephant and if she died someone would have to deal with John Ringling and his temper. I got to the cat section of the train and started hoisting up sidings. Checked every one of my kitties. They were all more or less fine, only Pasha and Boston looking a little peaked and drippy but not too bad, considering. I gave each a little fresh water with a promise of more later. Then I cranked up the siding on Rajah.

  I took a look, and it was a case of forcing myself not to fall to pieces.

  "Oh baby," I purred, "oh, you poor little baby."

  Rajah lifted his head and growled, and as he growled a stream of sick ran between his molars and onto the cage floor. I knew I had to be careful, for a sick cat is a scared cat and a scared cat is always dangerous, no matter how well he knows you. "Oh sweet kitty," I kept saying as I slowly lifted the big metal latch and let the door swing upward. "Mommy's here, darling little kitty," and I took a step inside, offering fresh water, when Rajah mustered all his strength and lunged. Landed his paws on my shoulders and pushed me back up against the bars, and for a moment there was a murderousness in his eyes that made me think I was done for. Then his eyes focused and he seemed to realize who he'd pinned. A softness returned to his look, and his muscles lost their tension. He arfed and laid his head on my shoulder and drew me toward him.

  So I put my arms around Rajah and got them messed with vomit. His breath smelled like a sewer and his fur was crusted with awfulness. I just held him tight and told him no way he was going to die, not with me around, it being then I decided there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to care for a $10,000 wrestling Bengal in a filthy cold menage cage. So I wiped him off as best as I was able and gave him some clean water and rubbed his pleasure spot. Then I took him out of his cage, Rajah shaky and arfing from his aches but not nearly so far gone as a lot of the humans I'd seen that day. Still, it was obvious he was too weak to make it to the performer train, and I was wondering
what I was going to do when I saw one of the workingmen driving a gilly loaded with barrels of just-boiled water from the pie car. I hailed him and he dropped Rajah and me in front of my stateroom.

  I took Rajah inside and made up a pallet from sofa cushions. I covered it all with a spare sheet and laid him down. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I gave him sips of water and cleaned him with a warm sponge and told him over and over how he was my baby and my best kitty and how he was going to get better and get better soon. When he was breathing evenly and asleep, I left him, glad he was in the warmth and quiet of my stateroom. Already he was looking a little better: as he slept he kept licking his lips, which in my experience means a cat's dreaming of something agreeable-hippo steaks, maybe, or tearing apart an impala.

  Just before I left, I looked around for a piece of paper. Course, I couldn't find one, so I took some paper towelling and with a stubby pencil wrote, "Art. Rajah inside. Careful!" After tacking it to the door, I locked up and started making my way back to the workingmen's cars.

  The wind was still howling and the jet-black clouds above were spitting up huge fat raindrops that chilled the skull and made you wish for a hat. I made it to the workingmen's car out of breath and found things had gotten both better and worse. On the better side, there was water ready and more volunteers and some offered-up sheets that despite having seen better days would do the trick. On the worse side, the stench had worsened and the nursing crew was in a terrible confusion, everyone except Ella Bradna bickering and grabbing at sheets and generally showing the effects of fatigue and disorganization. When they spotted me they stopped, and something that hadn't occurred to me before became clear: nothing but nothing was going to get done without me being there.

  It was basically triage, this, the sort of rough nursing that gets done after battles and bombings. Only problem was, I'd never had wartime experience, and had about as much of an idea as to how to proceed as the others. Still, it was more than plain there was only one thing to do; everyone else just needed to hear it from someone they figured knew what she was doing.

  "LADIES," I yelled, "WE'RE ABOUT TO GET OUR HANDS DIRTY!"

  We went into that groaning reeking hell and waded through bodily muck and did what we could. At first, I thought a panic was going to break out, for every ailing workingman was calling out to be helped first-thankfully, most were too weak to stand. We figured our first job was to hand out the clean water, as most of the men were now coming down with dehydration and suffering mightily because of it. We cautioned them against gulping though of course most ignored us, seeing as their thirsts were raging, so the liquid would come back up, having gained a glutinous texture from being in their stomachs. This would leave them more dehydrated than before, so we'd give them more water along with another no-gulping lecture, finding they were quicker to listen the second time around.

  Was slow, patient work, getting water into them. Some of the men were so dazed they could barely lift their heads, and the ones with a little fight left in them pleaded to have the barf and shit cleaned off them before we moved on. We made a long, slow sweep of the cars, hydrating everyone we could, and when we got to the end we went back again, handing out another series of sips, Ketchum's biggest concern being that dehydration would start killing the older ones and the liver-damaged ones. When this was finally done, we tried cleaning the floor: it'd turned into a quagmire of shittiness, ankle-high and practically seething, and if something wasn't done cholera really would break out. It was a task involving a lot of mopping and helping men outside to either puke or piss blood. Unfortunately, there were men still far too weak to get up, help or no help, and for them we handed out plastic bowls and metal bowls and porcelain bowls and pretty much any kind of bowl brought to the car. This helped, though still there were men who didn't make it to their bowls, and there were men who'd fill their bowls in seconds, the sick overflowing and covering bedclothes and sheets. In other words, there was only so much we could do, though after an hour there were stretches of floor showing between shallow puddles of sick. Around this time I noticed Ella Bradna, barely able to push her mop, her face gone slack with exhaustion. "Go home," I told her, and when she didn't respond I put my hands on her shoulders and leaned close and said, "please."

  Finally, we'd got so we could concentrate on cleaning the men themselves. Was difficult, for much of the vomit had dried, their bedclothes sticking to their bodies with a paste of their own making. Plus it was hard to get at the men writhing on the second-level bunks and near impossible to get at the men on the top bunks. In other words we mostly couldn't change them in bed, as we'd been able to do in the performer and maintenance cars; we had to rotate them and get them to jump down, the movement itself often making them retch. Once they were down and in the aisle, we'd strip them and throw the fouled clothes outside, where the healthy workingmen were helping by boiling water and running laundry. As the man stood shivery and naked, and in some cases needing support, we'd sponge him down and put him in whatever clean clothes he had, which in some cases wasn't much. Then we'd throw down a clean sheet, not even bothering to tuck it in, and put him back to bed and give him more sips of water. Before moving on to the next, we'd tell him it was critical he puked and shat outside, and to call for help if he didn't think he could manage.

  Which is what happened. We'd be halfway through dressing a man when a man we'd just been to would call out, and one of the recruits would have to half carry him outside where it was raining. Thankfully, the healthy workingmen were starting to help in this detail, so I had the satisfaction of seeing it actually get done. It did, however, mean both men would come back in damp. Steam started coming off bedclothes, adding a haze to the confusion. Pretty soon we were all either damp or wringing wet and talking loud because it was hard to tell where anyone was.

  I started to ache. I was beyond tired, my head so weighty I swore any minute it'd start playing tricks, though by the same token I hadn't felt so valuable since John Ringling killed the cat acts in 1925 so there was an exhilaration mixed in. We were about two-thirds of the way down the second workingmen's car when I decided to step outside and have some of the coffee the cookhouse staff were handing around.

  I don't think I'd ever seen such rain. Those fat splattering drops had transformed into sheets so thick it was hard to pick out individual drops. I stood in the alcove of the door to the workingmen's car; for a moment I stuck my arm into the deluge and then brought it back in, stinging. The worst thing was the winds were still terrific, so the rain didn't even seem to be falling. Instead, it was everywhere, as much hitting the ground as ricocheting back up in an upside-down rain and a sideways rain and a diagonal beating rain. Waves of it battered the sides of the rail cars, no rhyme or reason to the way it moved except for every once in a while when the wind would pick up and surge for a few seconds in a specific direction and the rain would follow. Then the surge would end and the rain'd no longer be rain again but water, coming from everywhere.

  A soaked workingman spotted me and brought me coffee. As I sipped, I watched lightning light up the rail yards: people were running up and down the trains, ferrying water and towels and bedpans and men needing to empty their stomachs. Then it would all go dark. About twenty feet away Ketchum was trying to co-ordinate everything happening outside; he'd found himself a slicker and a rain hat, water pouring off him and hitting the earth in sheets. He was yelling for more water and coffee and towels and-best news I'd heard all day-cups of broth for those feeling better.

  When I heard this, my exhaustion made itself known. It wasn't even so much that my muscles hurt, though they all did, but more that everything hurt. The whole of me ached, and until that happens you don't really think about this thing called your body. My eyes had sunk to half mast. My brain had slowed. Maybe this was the problem. I just sipped coffee, watching the storm and feeling proud and happy and bone-weary when it happened.

  I was standing there, enjoying the way the heat from the cup was passing through my hands to
my arms and then to my doused body, when I got a strange feeling. It made me feel uncomfortable and tense, though I had no idea exactly why, though maybe it had something to do with all this rain meaning something. Like maybe this rain ought to indicate something. Was a curious thought, this, and though I figured it was just exhaustion talking, I didn't dismiss it outright. I just kept looking at the rain, splashing dirt and hitting workingmen in the face and battering the tops and sides of the Pullman in front of me. The whole time my legs tingled with an unnerved sensation, like all this rain really was trying to tell me something.

  Throughout, the wind was howling, and in that howling I was sure I could hear a voice, screaming something at me, though no matter how hard I strained I couldn't quite make out what that something was. Mabel, I said to myself, you're going bonkers again, tuckering yourself out like this isn't a good idea, better watch it in the future. I even smiled at the prospect of treating myself better when this was all over. Then it hit me. I dropped my coffee and felt it heat the tops of my boots.

  Oh, God, I yelled inside myself.

  Rain.

  So I was running. Was like one of those dreams when you're trying to get someplace but you can't because your feet have gone heavy as cement blocks or they're sticking to the ground or you've forgotten how to run. In this case, my boots kept getting stuck in the mud, and because they were boots borrowed from Art and they were too big my feet kept lifting out. Finally, I kicked them both off and ran in stocking feet, though when you're that scared, believe me, it's the intensity of your fear makes you humiliated and not the fact your feet are without shoes and caked in mud.