Compromise with Sin

by Leanna Englert

  Doc took a pad and pencil from his bag and talked as he wrote. “Wipe her eyes with a clean rag and flush them with boric acid at least once every hour. Follow the treatments with ice packs. She won’t like it, but it’s very important as germs tend to thrive at higher temperatures. Wash your hands before and after handling her, and give her fresh bedding twice a day. Keep her swaddled so she doesn’t touch her eyes.”

  Marie continued to cry, softly, and her arms flailed about. Frank wrapped the blanket about her.

  Doc picked up his bag. “Direct me to the woman caring for your wife and baby.”

  Frank pointed. “That would be Henryetta.”

  Doc seemed to ignore him. He was looking at the baby and setting down his bag. “Newborns need proper swaddling. It comforts them, makes them feel safe like they did in the womb.” He picked Marie up and held her to his chest. With one hand he smoothed wrinkles from the blanket, then placed her on it, held down her arms and wrapped the blanket snugly around her. Her cries subsided. He patted her gently. “There, there, now. That’s better.”

  Once again Frank waited as Doc went through the ritual of washing his hands, then directed Doc to the kitchen. “You’ll find Henryetta there. Thank you for coming. She’ll see you out. I’m going to be with my wife.”

  For the rest of the day Louise either slept or wrestled with hot and cold fits. During the night she awakened, sufficiently lucid to notice the clammy sheets and nightgown and to remember throwing off the covers earlier in a feverish spell. Exhausted, but calm and coherent, she felt better than she had in days. She vaguely recalled having nursed Marie. A longing washed over her, a desire to be fully aware of her precious daughter, to cuddle her, caress her silky skin, and smell her baby breath.

  Miraculously absent was the self-loathing that had consumed her in the months leading up to Marie’s birth. Never mind that Marie had been conceived illicitly. This baby was God’s mercy made manifest, the fulfillment of an abandoned dream.

  In the morning, with Frank’s coaxing, Louise took tea and a few bites of toast. As he was removing the bed tray, she asked him to bring her the baby.

  As she reached for Marie she said, “How are her eyes today?”

  Frank’s hesitation alarmed her. She looked at Marie’s eyes and gasped at seeing how much worse the swollen eyelids had become. She lifted first one reddened lid, then the other. A thick, yellow secretion coated the eyeballs. “Call Dr. Harrison.”

  Frank attempted to straighten the tangled sheet dragging the floor. “Doc Foster says they’re infected.”

  Frank’s words—Doc Foster, infection—played tricks with her mind. Perhaps they were remnants of her delirium. “How would Dr. Foster know?”

  “I had him look at you and the baby. She’s very sick, Louise. She may lose her sight.”

  “No, no. It can’t be.” With one finger Louise wiped matter from the corner of Marie’s right eye. “It’s just a cold in her eyes.” Holding Marie’s eye open, she reached for her breast and squirted milk in it.

  Frank patted her arm. “We’re following the doctor’s orders to a T, Louise.”

  She shifted away from him, as though to distance herself might make his news less real. “Please, I need time alone with her.” Dismissing him deepened the anguish in his eyes and made her look away.

  He left.

  She settled Marie to nurse, which she did fitfully, alternately suckling and making pitiful mewing sounds. Louise found herself clutching the baby close and swaying, murmuring over and over, “Take my strength. Take my strength.” Perhaps the incantation would work this time.

  Louise had been six years old when one afternoon she heard Ma screaming from behind the curtain that hid her and Pa’s bed. Screaming for no apparent reason―Pa was at work. From that mysterious dark place came a wet, homely little creature Ma named Malachi Jacob.

  At first Louise resented the extra chores that fell to her, especially having to clean the baby’s stinky bottom. But the first time he reached out his arms for her to take him, she surrendered her heart, and when he took his first steps, she swelled with pride. Loving him as completely as she did, she sometimes fell blissfully to sleep at night without fearing what the next day would bring.

  But it was she who awakened one night to hold him as a coughing fit wracked his little body. The next night, desperate to relieve his suffering, she cooed, “Take my strength. Take my strength.” And she imagined a transfer of healing spirit from her body to his. When he died of the croup, something inside Louise died, and when Joshua David was born she vowed she would not lose her heart. But he stole it nevertheless before succumbing to scarlet fever. A third baby was simply called “Baby” because he was born sickly and Ma had already wasted two favorite names. Louise had grown wiser. She bargained with God: give Baby my strength and I shall be your righteous servant forevermore. Baby died in Louise’s arms without a name.

  Now holding her own frail infant, all Louise knew to do was to rock back and forth and murmur, “Take my strength.” Louise spoke softly so as not to disturb Marie Alouette who was sleeping now. The years of longing for a baby had come to this. All her fears about the possible consequences of her infidelity had been misplaced. If Marie went blind, such retribution would be cruel beyond imagining.

  A phrase lodged in Louise’s mind. It came from a long poem she’d memorized in school: “They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.” Marie, the little innocent, paying for my sin.

  Self-loathing rose as did her fever. She called to Frank. He came and scooped Marie from her arms. Louise hovered at the threshold of delirium, grateful for its asylum.

  The next night a stiff, cool breeze from the den’s window fluttered the house plans Frank had unrolled with the best intentions. Time to build the house he had promised Louise. But after a cursory review, he yielded to the beckoning of his Whirlwind Maid. There was nothing more irresistible than a design problem.

  Late June was Frank’s favorite time of year, when hot days gave way to pleasant nights. He was lost in his work in the den when he looked up to see Henryetta standing quietly in the doorway.

  “Look at this.” Frank jumped up, weaved his way through the clutter, and thrust the schematic at her. “No one wants a vacuum sweeper that trails great lengths of electrical cord. A woman has to keep gathering up the cord so as not to trip over it. So I’ve got this recoiling device that will let out as much cord as you need when you push forward and take up the slack when you pull backward.”

  Henryetta looked blankly at the drawing. “Mr. Morrissey, it’s going on midnight. I got to get home to my family.”

  In the moments after Henryetta left, Frank took stock and realized how inconsiderate he had been. The faithful housekeeper had cared for Louise and Marie for nearly a week without complaint.

  Beginning the next day, he adopted a routine of sending Henryetta home after supper to her husband, a railroad worker, and daughter in Cindertown and tending his wife and baby himself. When Louise broke out in a sweat, Frank removed the bed covers, mopped her brow, and turned on the electric fan he had bought to keep her comfortable. When she shuddered with chills, he filled hot water bottles, placed them all around her, and piled on blankets.

  He faithfully treated Marie’s eyes with boric acid and ice packs. And when she finished nursing, he held her in Louise’s rocking chair. Grasping her little hand, he sang to her the only song he knew, softly and off-key, “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes, she’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes . . .”

  He prayed for the first time in years.

  4

  May 1904

  Riverbend’s Main Street was a north-south thoroughfare on a modern macadam highway that ran parallel to the Missouri River, leading up to Omaha and down to Kansas City and points beyond. Missouri Avenue was the principal east-west street. Outside of town the dirt country roads criss-crossed in near-perfect grids. These roads were traveled mostly by farmers who
hauled wagonloads of grain and livestock to market and swapped lies at Anderson’s Seed and Feed while their womenfolk and daughters shopped and their sons sneaked off to the livery stable to play mumbledy-peg, shoot at mice with slingshots, and pick up other rough habits from boys who never went to Sunday school. Since the turn of the new century, it was not uncommon for the quiet of a country drive to be broken by engine racket that signaled the presence of a horseless carriage moving at several times the speed of a wagon. Voluminous dust clouds hovered long after the intruder had passed.

  Such an encounter took place on an otherwise tranquil Saturday morning when a Buick Model B touring car, a flashy open-air vehicle with an indigo blue body and bright yellow wheels, shattered the fragile peace and caused a pair of horses pulling an oncoming buckboard wagon to shy. The buckboard driver jerked his team to a halt. His passengers gripped seats and one another to keep from pitching forward. The driver cried out, “Lord, help us! That blind Morrissey child is driving!”

  The automobile slowed to a crawl, and a grinning Frank Morrissey, wearing driving goggles, popped up like a Jack-in-the-box and waved.

  He dropped into the passenger seat and shouted over the engine racket. “That was the Sawyers, probably headed to the tent revival. You should have seen their faces, Junior. They were so scared their pants will never get dry.”

  His humor hit the mark with Marie, who was now nearly nine. She squealed with laughter.

  Yonder LaFontaine sat in the back seat grinning. “Seeing us probably did them more good than a revival meeting.”

  Frank took the steering wheel, and Marie pleaded, “One more time.”

  “Not now, Junior. Your mother told us to kill time, not annihilate it.”

  “What’s ‘an eye—’”

  “Never mind. Get in the back seat. We need to pick up your mother and then take you to your piano lesson.”

  “Okay, but please tell me what you see.” Holding her beloved Dolly close, Marie climbed over the front seat and settled in the back next to Yonder.

  Marie was totally blind in her right eye but, under ideal conditions, could make out shadowy images with her left. Infection had left her right eye looking like a fried egg white shot with blood and the left eye similarly but only partially occluded. Both eyes jerked from side to side. Their appearance caused most observers to recoil and look away.

  Frank said, “Now here’s a picture for you. There’s a little brown calf grazing in the buttercups, and its mama is lying there chewing her cud.” Frank continued a running description of the scenery for Marie. “And here’s something you don’t see every day. A coyote running into the trees by the river.”

  “Tell me if he turns into a man,” Marie said.

  “Indian folklore?” Frank asked.

  “Coyote often appears as a man in Sioux stories,” Yonder said.

  “Coyote is clever and smart,” Marie said, “but he makes a big mess of everything he does. Uncle Yonder’s stories always end, ‘Don’t be like Coyote.’“

  Louise had changed back into her everyday clothes after a fitting for the new dress she would wear for The Twister Tenth Anniversary Observance. From a shelf in the dressmaker’s sewing room, she selected silk ribbons in pink, yellow, and mint green with which to decorate the collar and peplum of the dress she had ordered for Marie. She had taught herself ribbon embroidery for Marie’s benefit. “A yard of each, please, Sylvia.”

  The dressmaker held the spool of pink ribbon up to her face and reeled off a length of ribbon from her nose to the end of her extended arm. Then she coiled the ribbon and secured it with a straight pin. She did the same with the remaining colors.

  Louise followed Sylvia from the sewing room to the kitchen, where the dressmaker ignored the wailing of her three-year-old getting pummeled by his older brother and gestured for Louise to take a seat at the kitchen table to wait for Frank.

  The boys’ faces were smeared with prune filling from kolaches that Louise had brought. The small room reeked from a pile of rotting potato peels that should have been thrown to the pigs days ago. Louise considered that the dressmaker’s childhood had probably been no worse than her own, so what twists of fate had condemned Sylvia to this gritty existence and favored Louise with relative luxury?

  The dressmaker set her Coleman iron and its protective plate on an ironing board that stood near a wall where several scorched areas attested to probably more than one occasion when flames flared from her iron. She lifted the iron, gave it a shake, and seemed satisfied there was fuel in its attached tank. She struck a match, adjusted the air and gasoline mix, and lit the iron, jerking her hand away from the hissing flames.

  Louise flinched. Flaming irons had become the stuff of nightmares when she was a young housekeeper tasked with caring for her employer’s clothes. Marrying Frank had freed her from washing and ironing, chores that were handled by the Inn’s hired girls.

  She held her breath while Sylvia lowered the setting. The flame backed down and settled into a quiet hiss, and the iron was ready to press the diaphanous pastel aqua fabric Louise had chosen.

  The dressmaker removed straight pins from a temporary hem and held them in a row between her teeth. Then she adjusted the hem where she’d marked it with chalk, pressed it, and repinned it. She talked while her teeth held the pins. “Wait till you get a look-see of Mrs. Henkleman’s dress. The neckline’s cut all the way down to here.” She pointed to her bosom.

  “She is nothing if not bold,” Louise said.

  “Well, if you ask me, a lady ought to dress modestly, like you. Look too provocative and you never know what can happen.”

  Barking dogs announced the automobile’s arrival, and Louise stood. She placed the ribbons in her handbag, then put on her hat and tied it down.

  “Stay inside,” Sylvia said. “Some fool turned the dogs loose.” She grabbed a stick propped by the door and ran out.

  But hearing screams that could only come from Marie, Louise dashed outside and ran toward the automobile where three dogs were jumping. One came face-to-face with Marie. Frank twisted around from the driver’s seat and punched its nose, which sent it reeling so fast its landing raised a dust cloud. Yonder leaped from the automobile and charged, shouting, his arms flailing, to drive off the remaining dogs.

  Marie kept screaming and crouched down on the floor. No wonder, Louise thought, trying to imagine facing danger as a blind child. Even though Marie no longer felt the dog’s hot breath on her face, no longer smelled its rancid breath, she couldn’t know the beast had been driven off. From the fainter, more distant barking, she could tell the pack had run away, but for all she knew they might turn to charge again

  The dressmaker yelled and waved her stick, and the dogs retreated under the porch.

  “You’re safe, Marie.” Louise gestured to Yonder to take the front seat. “I shall join Marie in the back.”

  With Yonder’s hand to steady her, she stepped onto the running board and into the car. His touch brought the warmth of a blush, something she hoped Frank wouldn’t turn and see. She took pains to avoid the slightest appearance of impropriety─pretending not to notice the butcher’s generous weighing of beef, the taciturn bank teller’s nervous smile, Yonder’s helpful hand on her arm. Such actions broke the calm surface she strived to maintain.

  For nearly ten years she had endeavored to live her life beyond reproach. Sometimes she went for long periods of time feeling secure in the role as devoted wife and loving mother. But the coming of The Twister anniversary nudged her off balance and heightened her sense that the past was out there somewhere gathering strength in the shadows.

  Sitting in the back seat behind Yonder as the four of them drove from the dressmaker’s, Louise recalled that when he’d showed up in town a dozen years earlier his presence had initially brought out the best in Frank and the worst in her. The man she judged to be about five years older than she had been dressed well enough. He wore a working man’s shirt, pressed trousers, and expensive pigskin boots.
And his hair was cut in the fashion of up-to-date white men. Although his calloused hands hinted at hard work, his speech was that of an educated man. But fresh facial cuts and bruises suggested a barroom fight. He had come to Riverbend from St. Deroin, located forty miles south on the edge of the vanishing Halfbreed Tract, the place where his mother and he had gone after his father moved on.

  Louise had objected when Frank agreed to let a room to this stranger who handed over a full month’s rent in cash. Why not direct the man downtown to the Whistle Stop Hotel instead of jeopardizing the Inn’s reputation? Lodging a halfbreed would drive away Inn patrons, and she would not be able to hold her head up in town. Her position seemed too obvious to need an explanation, and Frank’s failure to understand exasperated her no end. Everyone knew that Indians and halfbreeds were not to be trusted. Even so, she stirred up a mixture of lard and salt in a small glass jar that had once held solid fragrance and gave it to Frank. “Tell him to apply this to the bruises but avoid the cuts because it has salt in it.”

  It wasn’t long before Louise warmed to Yonder’s polite manner and serene good looks. Most endearing were his dark brown eyes, framed by high cheekbones and crow’s feet that made them always appear to be smiling. He had the dark skin and coal black hair from his Santee Sioux mother and almost delicate facial structure which she presumed came from his father, who had been among the last of the French fur trappers. He had left Yonder’s mother while she was pregnant with her only child. Louise had heard that trappers married Indian women to gain favor with a tribe so they could trap game on tribal lands. But often their offspring ended up outcasts, shunned by whites and Indians alike.

  Turned out Yonder was an ardent “assimilationist,” whose views on helping Indians adapt to white society awakened Louise to a neglected social problem in her own back yard. He believed that so-called “blanket Indians” must change their ways or get left behind, and he spent most of his time writing tracts and articles for the assimilation movement and traveling to conferences and meetings with the movement’s tribal and white leaders.