by Vicky Saari
*****
This was a worrisome time in Hogarth’s past. He remembered it well. He couldn’t help but think that having Moses come along was the hand of Providence for Caleb because the next several days were true tests for Jessie’s medical knowledge. To be quite honest, he didn’t think Caleb could have dealt with the situations quite so easily without Moses’s presence. Indeed, the next weeks were tough for everyone.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Charlie asked his brother.
“Who are you talkin’about?” queried George.
“The house! You know what I mean. Ain’t seen no water. Ain’t seen no more fallin’ rocks. Ain’t seen nothun’ fer days,” Charlie noted.
George looked across the roof at his younger brother, shrugged his shoulders, rolled his eyes, and went back to hammering. Hogarth hummed with contentment as the two men continued to crawl about his rooftop. Charlie paused in reaction to the vibrations beneath his knees. He glanced at his brother, saw his scowl, and went back to his own hammering with a smile.
Chapter 11
Martha Hodges had indeed been busy that morning. Jessie had just left the Maynards’ house when Martha arrived. She had brought eggs and bacon for the children and some old clothes that had once belonged to her own children to put on Todd and Mattie. She was pleased and surprised to find that Agnes Turner had washed and ironed Joe Junior’s only shirt and trousers. However, she was taken aback by Mrs. Maynard’s change in attitude. The children told her about the conversation that had transpired just before Jessie left. “Poor Jessie, she must be exhausted,” Martha said to herself as she began slicing bacon and cracking eggs. While the children ate, she left the mother to sleep and took the baby to clean as best she could. It’s only diaper was a mess and smelled terrible.
Soon after the older children left for school, Martha commenced picking up around the small house and trying to find a place to put things. As she scurried about the cramped living quarters, the mother began to stir. “What are you doing with my things?” She rose up and confronted Martha in much the same way she had Jessie only a few hours earlier. “Don’t you think I’m good enough to take care of my own kids? I don’t need some goody-goody comin’ in and messing up my house.”
Martha, like Jessie, was taken aback by the woman’s lack of appreciation for what she considered an act of kindness. “Mrs. Maynard, I am just trying to help you. Make things a little easier for you. It’s clear you aren’t able to do much on your own right now. How will you care for your family if you haven’t enough strength to get out of bed? What about your baby? Are you going to risk hurting it because of your pride?”
“Why didn’t you let me die? I was all ready to go. No, you and that Hogarth woman come pushing your way in and taking over my house and taking over my kids. I don’t need the likes of you here now!” she shouted weakly as she collapsed upon the wriggling infant still lying on the bed.
Hastily, Martha pushed the mother aside to free the child. She examined it carefully and decided it had not been harmed. She looked closely at the mother and realized her fever had returned, but then the smell hit her. The putrid odor was coming from the woman. She pulled back the covers and found pools of watery feces surrounding the woman. She dropped the blanket, grabbed the baby, and wondered where she should turn. Jessie was the only one who had the power to help. All the way to Jessie’s, she wondered how long Mrs. Maynard had been sick. As she hurried through the woods carrying the Maynard child in her arms, the realization of what was happening in Sethsburg struck her like a bolt of lightning. Martha nearly ran the rest of the distance to the Hogarths’ house.
At the one-room schoolhouse, Jasper Maynard raised his hand to go to the privy for the fourth time since class began. Lucy worried that all of the stress of the past days had created a problem for him. A short while later, his sister raised her hand and asked to be excused. She watched the children from the window, and when Jerusha did not return, she became alarmed.
Jessie slept fitfully. Her dream about her grandmother kept coming back to her in her sleep. Suddenly, she finally realized what was wrong with Sylvia Maynard—why she had become so agitated when she learned her children had been taken away. She also realized what that putrid smell had been. She hadn’t noticed it until just before she left. It was the smell that had frightened her. She had smelled that odor only once before. When she was a child, an epidemic of the “fever” had broken out in the small river town where they lived. That was when her grandma had told her about her trip to America and how the fever had taken hold of the people on their ship. By the time they reached America, more than half the people in steerage had died. Likewise, the village where they lived had lost nearly half its people. Was this going to happen in Sethsburg?
Her thoughts were then drawn to those who had survived. Not everyone came down with the “fever,” including her family. “What made the difference?” she wondered. She racked her brain to try and recall her grandmother’s words.
Water, sugar, salt, and fruit. These words kept coming to her mind. Was this why some survived and others didn’t? She remembered her grandmother sending her sisters and her brothers out to collect berries while the epidemic was under way. Then came her next worry. How many other people besides herself had already been exposed? Were they in danger as well?
“Jessie! Jessie!” cried a voice from the woods. Jessie looked out her upstairs window and saw Martha staggering toward the house carrying a baby. Fortunately, Jessie still wore her one and only day dress. She hurried down the stairs to meet Martha at the front door. “It’s the fever! Mrs. Maynard has the fever, doesn’t she?” cried Martha as she dropped onto her friend’s stoop. “Do you think this baby will survive?” she pleaded with Jessie. “What can we do to keep it from spreading?”
“I need to talk to Minnie and ask her advice. I don’t know if she’s ever had to deal with anything like this,” Jessie said. “The trouble is, since we’ve both been exposed, neither of us can go to their house. We need to get to the village and separate anyone with the symptoms from those who haven’t developed them yet.” She went on to tell Martha about her grandmother and the epidemic she had seen as a child, and the only words that came to her mind were water, sugar, salt, and fresh fruit. “I think we all need to cover our faces while we work, too. Grandma said we had to boil our water and keep everything clean. We also need to burn everything that any of the victims have touched.”
“What about Mrs. Maynard? What kind of chance does she have? What about this child?” Martha looked down at the babe in her arms.
“I’m not sure. Offhand I’d say it’s not very good at the moment,” said Jessie tersely. “You and I must stay away from everyone else in the village. Where are the other children?” she asked.
“Oh my God! I sent them all to school today, and the families that were keeping them are all exposed!” Martha exclaimed.
It had been many years since Jessie had seen her old neighbor so harried and at odds with herself. She remembered when frivolous, flighty Martha first arrived in the wilderness and marveled at how much she had changed. “You go into town and tell everyone what is happening. Tell them to send anyone with diarrhea to the Maynards’ house. I’ll take care of them from there. Then send everybody who is able-bodied out to gather as much fresh fruit as possible. Berries, early apples, wild strawberries, whatever they can find. Also, don’t use any water from the well unless you boil it first. I’ll tell Caleb and Moses to bring fresh water from our spring. We’ll need sugar and salt if you have any in the store. Oh! And take the baby back to its mother until we know what is going to happen to it,” Jessie commanded. “Oh! I forgot about the stagecoach. Ain’t it due today? Don’t let the driver or any passengers get off. Tell them to change horses and go on to the next town.”
Martha looked toward the sky and noted that the sun was nearly a quarter overhead. She had completely forgotten a
bout her store and the stage. She hurried down the lane toward the road that Jed and Jacob had built many years before. Suddenly, she began to worry about her own daughters. She had sent two of the children home with Lucy last night. Now they were all with her at the school. Then there was Agnes and the Hamburgs. They had all been exposed, all because of her. How could she have been so foolish?
As Martha scurried away, Jessie went in search of Caleb and Mittens. She found them near the trail leading to Jed’s house. Little Jessie was going to check on Sarah, and her father was going to talk to Abner. Moses had been about to accompany them, but his leg was still too tender. “Caleb! Jessie!” she called in a tone that commanded their attention. She hurried toward them but stopped while she was still a few feet away. “Don’t come close to me, and don’t go near Sarah or the kids,” she yelled.
Curious, Caleb turned to ask why. “Mrs. Maynard has the fever,” she called. Caleb winced and turned to Moses and Mittens. “I guess we need to keep to ourselves for a while,” he said.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Moses called out.
“Yeah! We’re gonna need fresh water, and I need all the fruit you can find. Check the baskets in the cabin for dried apples, peaches, and berries. You need to eat a lot of it, put some sugar and salt on it too,” Jessie commanded. “Also, tell Abner that Jed won’t be home for a while. Tell him to pass the word to Minnie and Opal. I might need some advice from Minnie.” With that, she turned toward the village.
As Martha neared the school, she saw a commotion out near one of the privies. It looked like the girls’ privy. A sickening feeling gnawed at her innards because she already had an idea what was happening. Jed had a young girl in his arms and was about to take her into the inn when Martha screeched at the top of her lungs, “Don’t take her in there; take her to her home!”
By the time she reached the cluster of people in the middle of the street, Martha’s hysteria was reaching fever pitch. It took several minutes for her to catch her breath before she could speak again. Jed, Zeke, Jonathan, Lucinda, Lucille, and the children stared at her questioningly. “What’s the matter, Momma?” asked Lucille.
“The mother didn’t just have milk fever,” she stammered. “She has cholera. I doubt she will still be with us when we get back to the house,” she blurted out, forgetting about the children standing around them. The moment the Maynard children heard her speak, they took off running toward home and their mother.
Jed twitched immediately and realized it was already too late for him. He clung to the child, whose clothes were already covered with her own dung. “Jessie said we need lots of salt, sugar, and fresh fruit. She said everyone who was able should go scouting for berries and whatever fruit is available now. Don’t drink any water from the town well; she’s sending Caleb and Moses to town with fresh water shortly,” Martha passed on Jessie’s instructions. “She said not to let the stagecoach stop here and for everyone to keep away from the house. But if you go in, you will need to wear a mask and burn your clothes when you come out.”
Jed looked at the young girl in his arms and wondered what he was supposed to do. He only had one set of clothes, as did most all the rest of them. Jonathan looked around at his wife and said, “I guess we’ll need to burn all those bedclothes the kids used last night.”
“John, can you and Zeke go into the store and see how much sugar and salt we have on hand?” Martha continued. “Jessie says we are going to need it.” With that said, Martha turned toward the Maynard house with the baby. “Lucille and Lucinda, you’ll need to let your pa know what is going on, but don’t go near him, and don’t let him come to town until we know how things are going to go,” she commanded over her shoulder. Then, with a start, she asked herself, “Who is this Moses?” Oh well, she didn’t have time to worry about it right now, as she hurried on. She needed to speak to Agnes and the Hamburgs.
At the Maynard house, Sylvia was still alone and in a delirium. Jed had been afraid to carry the child into the house, so he had laid her on the grass under a tree. Martha carried out two thin blankets, and they laid the girl and the baby out in the open a short way from each other. The other children were gathered at the front door staring in at their mother. She was still breathing, but was talking funny, and a terrible smell kept them outside. Martha remembered the masks that Jessie had said they should wear and was trying to decide what she could use to make such a thing. With nothing else at hand, she ripped a wide strip of cloth from the hem of her dress and wrapped it around her face, covering her mouth and nose.
By the time the sun was high overhead and the stage from Louisville to Vincennes and St. Louis rolled into town, the people of Sethsburg had established a self-imposed quarantine. John met the driver in front of the livery and explained the situation. He said he may have been exposed and asked that the driver take care of changing his own horses. The three male passengers excused themselves to the bushes behind the livery and hastily reboarded their carriage. As the driver quickly changed teams, he spoke at a distance with John. “They say this sickness is comin’ from the east. It’s all over along the river. I’ll send word at the next station to see if there is any kind of help available from the state,” the driver told him. “I’ll be back through next week.”
At the inn, Minnie had showed up and had put Lucy and Cindy to work preparing bowls of sweet berry cobbler to feed to the children. While they were busy mixing the fruit, she pulled a bag of white powder from her medicine bag and added pinches of it to the cobbler dough. “This will make it fluffy,” she told them. She then began boiling all water and straining it through several layers of the cloth she normally used to make cheese.
As soon as Jessie had arrived, Jed stripped off his outer clothes and donned a pair of Zeke’s buckskins and an old shirt. John added his clothes to the bonfire that he had built of the bedding that the children had slept on the night before. In the midst of the confusion, eight-year-old Jasper collapsed and was placed beside his sister on the blanket under the tree. Martha tended the baby using what she called a “sugar tit,” which was simply a cloth bag of sugar and boiled water, which she encouraged the baby to suckle.
Jed gathered the older children together and began a search for wild fruit. “I’d think the fruit would make things worse,” Martha confided to Jessie. But Jessie remained adamant that fruit had been the main medicine her grandmother had used.
As the day progressed and everyone had found a place and purpose for themselves, a lone teamster on an empty freight wagon came lumbering up the road. Behind him was a second empty freighter that had belonged to Joe Maynard. As Ellison Turner pulled the two wagons abreast of the livery stable, John went out to warn him away. When he explained about the cholera, Turner didn’t look surprised. Instead, he said, “I ain’t surprised. This is Joe Maynard’s wagon behind me. He took sick and died on me before we were half-way home from New Albany. I didn’t know what else to do so I buried him in a grave alongside the road,” Turner said as he unhitched the teams. “I think he got it from some people on one of the boats we were unloading last week. Several people were sick, and I’m not sure what happened to them. I guess I gotta go tell the Missus about her man.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna be necessary,” said John, who went on to explain the situation. Turner then asked about his wife. Was she all right? John told him about one of the children staying with her last night but also pointed out that they have been asking everyone to stay away from others if they could help it. Turner stopped for a moment, looked at his shoes, and then shook his head. He’d already been exposed when he buried Joe Maynard. He headed toward his house and hoped all would be well.
At the inn, John, Zeke, and Jed began to talk among themselves about what kind of burial arrangements they should begin making. Jed pointed out they would need lumber for burial boxes. He wasn’t sure if Sarah would object to burying others on the hill where her first husband,
Brad, was buried. When Minnie came into the village to help, she brought a message from Sarah telling him not to worry, they were doing well. Abner and Opal were taking care of things for them. His dad and some guy named Moses had brought barrels of water to the inn and left them for everyone to use. It was agreed that the next morning, the young men would open the mill and saw lumber for making coffins. It was a good decision. Shortly after sunset, Sylvia took her last breath.
Jessie covered her patient with the only blanket left. It was the first time she had lost a patient since Brad’s father died. Exhausted from lack of sleep and being on her feet for nearly two days, she sank down in the doorway to the Maynards’ hut and braced her head against the doorway. Martha hadn’t told her about the baby. Its diarrhea had begun about noon, and it refused to suckle the “sugar tit” she’d made. It died shortly before the mother did. She looked at the twins fighting against the delirium on the blanket beneath the tree. There was nothing more to be done for them either.
Agnes had come near the Maynard house to tell Martha the news about Mr. Maynard. She wondered what would happen to the other children now that both their parents were gone. Martha reassured her that they would be cared for before she returned to the inn to check on the others. Jessie was about to drift off to sleep again when Hans Hamburg strolled across the yard carrying two-year-old Tolbert. “He’s got it, too!” he cried. “What about my Greta? Will she die because of her goodness? What about the child she carries?”
Saddened and exhausted, Jessie could not offer the man any words of comfort. “We are all in the same boat right now,” she reminded him. “It is this child today. Which of us will it be tomorrow?” It was the kind of question that Hans could not answer himself. He laid the dying child beside his older brother and sister, and Jessie stepped inside the cabin to place the baby beside its mother. As he turned toward his house, she asked, “Did you and Greta eat your cobbler? What about the other child? Is she sick?”
