The Truest Pleasure

by Robert Morgan

  I can’t remember any more about that night except the sound of wind pushing the side of the house. It was like the storm was grabbing the walls and squeezing them. The soreness in my breath got all mixed up with the wind pressing on the house and wheezing in the eaves. The wind was crushing my chest. The air was dark red, and burned when I breathed it in.

  Early next morning I knowed what was going on, even though I was far away from it all. “You go over and get Florrie,” Pa said to Tom. “You’re going to need help.”

  The younguns had gathered around the fireplace. I could hear Muir crying in the kitchen. “Bang, bang,” Moody shouted. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. It was all too far away. The air I breathed was full of broke glass and razor blades.

  “Drink this,” somebody said. It was Tom bent over me. I could smell the whiskey in the cup. Much as I wanted a sip I moved my lips away. It was too hard to breathe to drink anything. And yet I was all dried out. I was thirsty.

  “It’s sugar and whiskey in water,” Florrie said. Maybe it was later when she said it. “You always liked whiskey didn’t you?”

  “She needs whiskey to give her strength,” Pa said.

  I saw Jewel and Moody standing at the door of the room looking in. They had been sleeping on pallets on the floor.

  “Where is the baby?” I said.

  “The baby is fine,” Florrie said.

  Dr. Johns come by when it felt like the middle of the night. He took the bottle of whiskey and drunk some. As usual he was testing medicine whiskey to see if it was any good.

  “Drink this, Ginny,” he said.

  I took a swallow and it felt like my throat and chest was scalded, and I was sinking into a hot bath.

  “You’re doing all that can be done,” Dr. Johns said.

  Muir was crying in the kitchen. The house popped with cold, timbers shrinking on the north side. I knowed there was a big fire in the fireplace for I could hear the flames crackle.

  “Put hot bricks in the bed to warm her feet,” the doctor said. “And keep her wrapped up, even if she is sweating.”

  The doctor took another drink before he left. I didn’t know if it was day or night. It seemed the middle of the night. There was a light at the window, but it could have been moonlight. It was brighter than lamplight. It was like somebody was watching me from the window, even though the light come from way off.

  I knowed Tom and Pa and sometimes Florrie was keeping the fire going through cold days and nights. They took turns setting by the bed, putting damp cloths on my forehead, and changing the flannel on my chest.

  “Where is the baby?” I said.

  “The baby is fine,” Florrie said. “I fed him grits and he’s full as a tick.”

  The bedclothes got all soaked with sweat and she changed them, rolling me one way, and then the other, to take off the wet sheet and spread a fresh one under me. I could smell the clean sheet I had washed and dried by the fire. But mostly I smelled the fever. It was the smell of soreness and inflammation. It was the way an infected sore on your finger smells, except it was coming from inside me. The smell was in my breath.

  I don’t know how many days passed. It might have been five or six. My chest felt like it was full of dumplings and pie crusts when I breathed. My lungs whistled and gurgled. I wondered where the wheeze was coming from. There was kettles boiling somewhere.

  A cloth was throwed over my head. It was as if a sheet had been pulled across my face. Had I gone and died without knowing it? But it was a rough sheet with grains on it. It was a towel.

  “Breathe this,” Tom said. He put a bowl under my chin. It was full of steam, and under the towel there was nothing but steam. He had put salve in the hot water, from the can on the mantel that I rubbed on the younguns’ chests when they had colds. It was the smell of spruce resin and the far edge of the sky. There was something silver and spiritual in the scent that went up into my head and throat. But I couldn’t breathe it down into my chest.

  “Breathe deep,” Tom said.

  I tried to breathe, but it was too hard. My chest was sore and full. It was all I could do to take short little gasps.

  “Breathe deep,” he said. But I couldn’t inhale any deeper.

  The strangest thoughts come to me in the wet dark under the towel. It was like I was in a tent. I thought how it was only rubbing things together that made them work. If men and women touched each other that was one thing, but if the touch become a caress that was another. It was the rubbing that made the spark of desire. The roughness was important as the smoothness. It was the caress, and resistance to the caress, and resistance overcome, that made the pleasure. I had never thought of that before. In the muggy dark it seemed like the secret of things.

  “The road is buried,” I said to Tom.

  “What did you say?” He lifted the towel and I felt cold air.

  “The new road is buried,” I said. But he couldn’t hear. It was like I was trying to talk in water instead of air. Nothing I said come out right. But I was thinking about how wind and snow was burying his work. The wind was rubbing on snow; snow was rubbing on the ground. Everything was resisting everything else.

  When he took the towel off my face sweat stood on my forehead big as berries. It rolled into my eyes and down my temples. I was still breathing in little gasps. There wasn’t any air to breathe.

  “It will take onions,” Pa said somewhere way off.

  “Onions?” Tom said.

  “I saw it when I was a boy,” Pa said. “Only thing that will break pneumony fever is an onion pack.”

  Later I could smell the frying onions. I wondered if Florrie was fixing liver and onions. It was something Pa liked, but I never fixed because it stunk up the house. It smelled like they was burning. I thought I could hear the crackle and snap of the grease in the pan, but it was the rasp of my breath. The whole house was full of the smell of greasy fried onions.

  “Put this on,” Tom said. He pulled back the covers and lifted my gown. What he put on my chest was like a bag heavy with hot applesauce. It was flattened out, steaming, and looked wet and greasy. It was so hot it scalded me. I shivered like you do in a hot bath. I guess bad cold and heat are almost the same thing. They make you jerk and shudder the way the Spirit does.

  And then the smell hit my face. It was as if a bushel of crawling slivers of onions had been put under my nose. I’ve heard they once used onions to scare away the Devil. I don’t think any demon could stand the smell of greasy half-cooked onions. The stink of the grease, and the feel of the grease on my chest, was worse than the smell of the onions itself.

  “Drink some of this,” Florrie said. It was whiskey and warm lemon juice in a cup. I drunk some just to take away the smell of the onions for a little. And then I drunk some more.

  I could feel the grease in the poultice sink into my chest. My skin was opening and soaking up the taste of the onions. It felt my chest was melting in the heat and foul stench.

  Suddenly the room was stretching out to ten times its size. The air was like rubber, stretching and rushing back. “Hold the bed still,” I said.

  The room was rocking back and forth, not just from side to side, but whirling and rocking at the same time. The walls spun and squeezed, then bulged away. It felt as if the bed was falling down a mountain. There was a roar and a gray flame in the air.

  “Hold the bed still,” I said. The bed was on rollers and shooting down a tilted floor. The room got long as a hallway, and I was flying toward the end of it.

  Then something exploded. My chest and throat busted open and whiskey shot into my mouth and nose. I could taste lemon juice, sourer than before. My nose burned like I had been slapped and pushed underwater. My mouth was full of water and sour whiskey.

  Before I knowed what was happening my mouth opened and I spewed over my chin and on the pillows. The hot clabber sprayed on the sheets and quilts. I retched over the poultice and on myself. The stuff come out so hard it shot up in the air and splashed my face before I
could turn sideways. The puke burned my nose and eyes like lemon juice.

  Suddenly it stopped and I felt cold sweat over me. I was so weak I couldn’t hold my head up. I was wet all over my front with fried onions and throw-up.

  “Let me change your sheets,” Florrie said.

  “Oh,” I said. And then it started again. The seizure hit like a crushing weight that pushed from below. It was like I was being squeezed to death. I had read they killed witches in the old days by crushing them with rocks, “pressing” it was called. That’s what I felt, that I was being pressed to death.

  There was nothing else to throw up, but I kept heaving and gagging on little bits of sour water, strings and yellow gobs of bile. It felt like the marrow of my bones was trying to come up.

  Florrie put a cool hand on my forehead. It was what Mama used to do when I was a girl. It’s what I did for my younguns when they was sick. It was the only thing that made me feel better. Her hand on my forehead steadied me and quieted my heaving.

  That’s when I saw what I had throwed up. It wasn’t just bile and juice, whiskey and lemon juice mixed with spit. There was clots and chunks of mucous, yellow and hard, throwed from my chest. There was strings, and big drops of congestion and corruption. Tom and Florrie took away the poultice and changed the sheets, but I was dropping into a cool dead sleep.

  I don’t recall much of the next few days. All my memories of the week are vague and out of order. But everything I do remember has to do with the light at the window. It come in and stood at the foot of the bed tall as a man. It stood there hours and went away. It was gone for a while and then returned and stood a long time in front of me. It was so close I could almost touch it with my foot, and then it backed to the window. I watched it by the window for hours, and then I saw it had slipped behind the snow drifted on the sash and the ferns of frost on the glass. The light was watching me, but further away. And I thought it was an angel guarding over me. It was a messenger from the Spirit telling me I would be well. The angel was looking right at me and I felt as though I was speaking in tongues. I knowed it would be there whether I saw it or not. And I felt guilty that I had not prayed once while I was sick. I had not called on the Lord even when I was out of my head. I whispered a prayer of thanksgiving.

  One day I felt an itch all over. It was not like the itch when your foot is asleep and begins to wake, twinkling and seething. It was more like the itch where a bee sting or cut begins to heal. My whole body had been sore with fever and was beginning to get well. Feeling was coming back and my skin was itching.

  But there was a deep weakness in me too, like I had been froze and was thawing out. I was attracted to warmth, to the fit of quilts and blankets around me. The heat had gone out of me, and I was pulling together to recover what warmth was left. I thought if I had somebody to lay against maybe I would feel better. The warmth had seeped out of the world. There was just a tiny flame somewhere in me, like a candle that had not gone out.

  One morning I saw the white at the window was ice, and I remembered the snow and extreme cold. I wondered about the washing, and about the cows in the pasture. What about the wood supply? And how had the chickens fared? I wondered, and yet it was no real concern to me. I was curious about what was happening outside, and I could feel the wind shove against the house from time to time. But I was too weak to worry, and too cold to care.

  There was a smell about me of fever and sickness, a sweet smell of flesh slightly cooked and drying on the skin. I brought a hand to my nose and sniffed. It was the scent of dead skin. But I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t smelling my breath. For my lungs was full of loose matter that rattled around like dumplings floating and bumping when I breathed. I started to cough. My chest was still sore, but not tight as it was before.

  Tom got a handkerchief and said, “Here, cough in this.” I spit clots and gobs in the cloth. Some was hard as crumbs of bread.

  Jewel and Moody stood in the door watching.

  “Jewel pushed me,” Moody said.

  “I did not,” Jewel said.

  I was going to speak to them, but I started coughing again. When I stopped they had gone.

  You was in a fever five days,” Florrie said when I got my strength back a little. “It was only when you throwed up the bile and congestion that it broke.” She brought me warm broth.

  “Where is Muir?” I said.

  “That baby is fine,” Florrie said. “He’s eating like a hog.”

  “He ain’t nursed,” I said. My breasts was sore and shrunk.

  “He’s been weaned since Thursday,” Florrie said. It seemed she was bragging, pleased that Muir had been weaned. I turned away on the pillow. I told myself I should be grateful for all her help.

  “This is the coldest spell on record,” Pa said when he come in later. “This country has never seen such a winter.”

  “How cold did it get?” I said.

  “Twenty-two below for three mornings, below zero for a week.”

  They had kept the fire going day and night, and put heated rocks in pans under my bed. It had been too cold to snow, but when it warmed up a little after a week it snowed again. The river had froze, and even the pools in the branch. The spring smoked like it was on fire, Pa said. Where snow melted a little the thaw turned to a sheet of ice and sealed the snow under it. Joe had walked across the hill twice to help bring in wood. Tom and the children had been sleeping in the living room by the fire, Jewel and Moody on a pallet, Muir in his cradle.

  “I want to see him,” I said. Tom come back with the baby and put him in my arms. Muir had been growing. He was heavier than I expected. Weaning hadn’t made him lose weight, but he smelled different. I guess a baby that’s not nursing does smell different. A mother smells her own milk on the baby’s breath.

  I held him to me and he went right for my breast. I guess he wasn’t completely weaned. But there wasn’t any milk for him and I pulled him up to my chin and he only whimpered a little.

  Now while I was holding Muir I saw the strangest thing. I was thrilled and warmed to have his body against me. It was like a pleasure and a touch I had forgot in my fever. When you’re sick you become a child again yourself. And now I felt like a mother again. Thankfulness flooded through me. I rubbed Muir’s little bottom through his gown and it was round as two apples. I felt I was holding all of humanity and the world in his little form. I could feel his heart fluttering like a tiny animal, and his breath was sweet against my neck. He had been eating grits.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” I said. And I thought again how in my fever I had not prayed, or if I did I couldn’t remember it. But now that I was cool I felt gratefulness pour through me. Gratitude rose and brought tears to my eyes. “Thank you, Jesus,” I said again. It come to me that the light at the window while I had the fever, and at the foot of my bed, had indeed been the Spirit watching over me. I had never been deserted, however thoughtless and forgetful I had been. The love had been there, and the grace had been there, all the time. I held Muir closer to my chin.

  While I was holding him I could see through the door down the hall to the living room and a little bit into the kitchen. Tom and Florrie stood talking. They was just out of sight of the fireplace where Pa set. What I noticed was how close they stood. Wasn’t any need for grownup people to stand that close. There’s a distance people keep when they are talking. But they looked just a few inches apart. They wasn’t touching far as I could see, just standing close. And then I saw Florrie’s hand come up and touch Tom on the arm. It lingered there for several seconds.

  It don’t mean a thing, I said to myself. They’ve worked hard together while I was sick. They’ve set up nights and Florrie has changed my bed. They’ve had a hard time looking after me.

  I held the baby closer. I have always hated the sin of jealousy. I’ve seen it make people crazy. It will begin with a little hurt vanity, when somebody else gets more attention, or somebody is a little prettier, and next thing you know it turns to hate and sinful spite. I had alway
s thought I would not be jealous. After the way Tom and me had quarreled it didn’t seem possible I could be jealous of a look, a touch.

  But the fact was I was suddenly stiff with anger. I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I was too weak to get hold of myself. If I had been well I would have seen what to do. I think now I had always been jealous of Florrie, that she was prettier than me, and littler than me, that boys liked her more, and that she drunk a lot of liquor on the sly and got away with it.

  I told myself again it didn’t mean a thing. After all, two people working in the same house are bound to stand close and talk. But in my heart I felt Florrie was taking advantage. She was profiting from my quarrel with Tom, from our differences over religion. While I was sick she had took charge of the children and the house.

  It was twenty minutes later Florrie come busting into the bedroom. “Well, Mrs. Powell, are you feeling fit?” she said. She opened the curtains a little and sunlight leapt into the room. I did not answer, but kept playing with the baby.

  “We thought you was going to leave us,” Florrie said, picking up cups and dishes on the nightstand. She stopped at the bed.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said. It come out; it was too late to not say it.

  “What do you mean?” she said. She cradled the dirty cups and saucers in her apron. She was always great at playing innocent.

  “I’ve seen you buttering up Tom,” I said. She looked down at me like I was a little kid that needed a diaper changed.

  “You are still sick,” she said. “You are out of your head.”

  Just then Muir started to cry. I guess he felt the anger and it scared him. Babies can tell when their mothers get mad.

  My throat was suddenly tight, and I started coughing. It was a cough that seemed to come from deep in a well. The rattle in my throat was way down and heavy.

  Florrie took the cups and saucers out of her apron and put them back on the nightstand. “I’ll take Muir,” she said.