by Helen Wells
Cherry and Dr. Hal looked at Jane with sympathy. There was not much to say in the face of such hardship. Dr. Hal asked what medical care Bill had had.
The past two years, Jane said, he had been at a TB sanitorium in upstate New York. Although Bill was better now, and no longer needed much medical care, he was a long way from full recovery. In fact, the doctors recently told him and Jane that his recovery depended on living quietly in the country, and of course doing no heavy work.
“That news was a blow,” Jane said. “We’d thought that after two years’ rest and care, he’d be much better than he is. We didn’t know what to do next.”
Neither Bill nor Jane could afford to keep him on at the sanitorium. The only alternative was for him to go to a free public, county hospital—where he was at present. This meant that he and Jane would be separated indefinitely. Before they could ever marry and be together, they had to get a home in the country—but there was no money.
“Then”—Jane’s face lighted up—” I received a letter from an attorney’s office, out of the blue. A great uncle of mine—I scarcely can remember him—my mother’s uncle—died and left me a small farm around here. About a mile from here.”
“Why, that’s wonderful!” Cherry exclaimed.
Jane smiled uncertainly. “We rejoiced, maybe too soon. That old farm could be the answer to our problem. But there’s an if. Wait—it’s not what you think. Here’s what I planned.”
Jane had figured she could, as a nutritionist, find a job in one of the many mills, canneries, or dairies in this farm area. Or she could apply in the thriving small towns around here at a large motel restaurant, school, or hospital. Jane was willing to buy an inexpensive used car and drive many miles to her job, if necessary, while her mother would keep house. Her husband-to-be would do whatever outdoor activity on the farm that his doctors would advise, perhaps none. Jane and her family did not plan to work the old farm, except for a vegetable patch.
“Living in the country can be inexpensive,” Jane said. “The main thing is a house! Once we have a house, the three of us could manage on my salary. Eventually Bill can find some gainful occupation he can do at home, once he grows stronger.”
“You’re a brave girl,” said Dr. Hal. “You said there’s an if—?”
Jane pushed back her soft brown hair. “Yes, another letter came. From Mrs. Barker, this time.”
She paused to explain that the Barkers were distant cousins of the deceased great uncle. They had been his neighbors until the old man had abandoned his farm and moved to California several years ago.
“I vaguely remember his farm,” Jane said. “My mother brought me West to see him once when I was very small. We were his nearest kin. Mother says it was during that visit that she and Emma Barker met and became friends, and they’ve exchanged Christmas cards and an occasional letter ever since. When I inherited the old place, Mother wrote Mrs. Barker the news. Well,” Jane said slowly, “Mrs. Barker wrote back—”
Mrs. Barker invited Jane to stay with her, while she decided what to do about the old farm. Mrs. Barker said in her letter that ever since the great uncle had abandoned the farm, it had become overgrown with weeds, and the old farmhouse was fire eaten and in bad disrepair. The possibility of moving in there might be hopeless.
“Oh, no!” said Cherry. “Not when it’s your only chance!” Dr. Hal murmured agreement.
“Well, Mrs. Barker thought I’d better see the old place before counting on it,” said Jane. She made an effort to be cheerful. “I hope the three of us can live there, anyway. I’m determined to, even though I haven’t seen it yet. We just have to make it livable.”
So Jane had obtained a leave of absence from her job in New York to come to Iowa, to inspect the farm. She had only three weeks in which to decide whether to keep or sell the old place, figure out whether she and her mother could make it livable, and find out what repairs would cost in money and time. Also, Jane had to explore job possibilities in this area.
“And now I’ve gone and broken my ankle! With poor Bill just existing from day to day in that hospital, and Mother waiting for word from me,” Jane said in despair, “I don’t know how I’ll ever do all these things in three weeks. I need help. But Mrs. Barker isn’t young, and she’s kind, just to take me in. Floyd is unreliable, so I can’t count on him. And I don’t know anyone else here.”
“You know us,” said Cherry. “And through our work we know people who know still others. I think you’ll find several persons who will be glad to help you, especially when they hear how urgent your business here is.” Jane looked encouraged.
“It’s also urgent,” Dr. Hal said to Jane, “for you to get well as soon as possible. Your own good health is essential if you’re to work out three persons’ futures in the next weeks.’
“Yes, Doctor,” Jane said. She hesitated. “One more thing. Maybe it’s not worth mentioning. My mother told me this story as a child, and it haunts me.”
The old farm was reputed to hold a secret dating back a hundred years or more. If Jane’s great-uncle knew the secret, he never revealed it. Jane said she had asked Mrs. Barker about it, but she had laughed and explained that country folks love fanciful legends and ghost stories.
“Still, I don’t understand,” Jane said. “Why would there be this persistent family rumor of a secret, if it didn’t have some basis?”
Dr. Hal smiled. “Maybe a hundred years ago a cricket chirped all night and convinced your great great great-aunt that she heard a ghost. Maybe a freak animal was born on that farm, and legend called it the work of the devil.”
Jane looked half disappointed. Cherry said:
“I’ll tell you what. As soon as you feel able, we’ll drive over to the abandoned farm, and we’ll see what we can see.”
CHAPTER IV
All Kinds of Patients
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK TUESDAY MORNING CHERRY REPORTED to her office in the courthouse. Dr. Miller was already there for a conference with her, and was looking through mail from patients and health agencies.
As they exchanged “good mornings,” Cherry’s telephone rang. Doctors in the country were calling in to request that the county nurse visit certain of their patients and gave her orders for nursing and treatments. Cherry would see these doctors later on, to report to them. By the time she had answered several telephone calls, she had a long list of visits to be made that week. In addition, there were letters from county people requesting help.
“It’s going to be a short work week after the holiday,” Dr. Hal said to Cherry. “Today I want you to follow up on the Reed baby and old Mr. Bufford, and when you can, visit Mrs. Swaybill. Dr. Clark would like you to see his patient, Dickie Plant, sometime this week. I’ll take care of the three urgent calls needing medical consultation myself.”
Dr. Hal described the Swaybill and other cases and gave Cherry his orders. She then read records of families she would see today or tomorrow. Four or five thorough home visits was about maximum for a rural nurse in one day, as she had to spend some time driving to her various families.
The county health clerk stopped by to ask when their statistics on the number and types of their cardiac cases would be ready. Dr. Hal picked up his black leather bag, gave a few more instructions, jammed his hat on his head, and left. Five minutes later Cherry gathered up her own list of calls, her nursing kit, the sandwiches Aunt Cora had packed for her, and started off on her own.
She felt a lively sense of freedom, driving along in her small blue car, on her way to take care of patients by herself. She was even able to choose her own dark-blue cotton uniform, and carried in her bag a white coverall apron. A uniform of her own choice was a sign of her independence! Cherry felt as if she had burst out of the four walls of a hospital, with its rigid schedules and strict supervision. For although she had doctors’ orders, and also had the regulation “standing orders”—rules to follow in the unlikely event that she could not get in touch with a doctor—she now would rely heavily on her own
judgment. “And with no hospital, no clinic, few doctors, for miles around, I’d better do a good job!”
Cherry drove to the Reed farm first, with its small house and huge red barn. She had been here before with Miss Hudson, to teach nineteen-year-old Mrs. Reed prenatal care. Now Baby Reed had arrived, and young Dan Reed had brought mother and baby home from the hospital upstate. The new mother needed advice in caring for her baby.
Dot Reed was waiting for the nurse. She could hardly wait to show Cherry her bouncing baby girl. “We named her Ella after my mother. Don’t you think she’s a big baby? Do all babies cry so much? I’m not sure I’m doing all the right things, the way you taught me—”
Cherry admired Ella, and weighed her in the kitchen scales. “Yes, she’s a fine healthy baby,” Cherry encouraged the new mother. “Tell me about her crying.” Cherry asked other questions, too, checked over the baby and its mother. She explained away some of the worrisome ideas a neighbor had implanted in her. “Babies aren’t breakable, you know.” Cherry talked to Dot Reed about feeding Ella. Then she demonstrated to Mrs. Reed a simple, safe, and easy method of giving the baby a bath.
“That’s fun!” Dot Reed exclaimed as Cherry finished.
“The baby seems to think so, too,” Cherry said.
She reminded the new mother to keep a written record of her baby’s development, to show to her doctor and also to the nurse on subsequent visits. Then Cherry cleansed her nursing equipment, packed it away in the bag, and said goodbye to her two young patients. A good part of the morning had been spent here, but tiny Ella Reed was an important person and getting her off to a healthy start in life was too important a matter to be hurried.
Further down the road was Bufford’s dairy farm. The Buffords were a large, vigorous, hard-working family, Cherry discovered, and at the moment they felt a little impatient with Grandpa. The old man had fallen down the cellar stairs and while, miraculously, he had not broken any bones, he was laid up with cuts and the aftereffects of shock. No one in this busy household had much spare time to spend with him. Besides, his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Sally Bufford, told Cherry in the driveway:
“I tell you, Grandpa is a handful! He won’t let me or my girls nurse him—insists the menfolk of the family do it. Well, now, Miss Ames, my husband and boys can’t stop their work just to humor him!”
“Maybe we can find other ways to humor him,” Cherry said. Dr. Boudineau, who was the Buffords’ family doctor, had instructed Cherry on the telephone this morning to see what she could do for the old man’s morale.
Mrs. Bufford led her into the house to see the stubborn old man who refused to stay in bed. Cherry got no response from Grandpa until she found he considered himself an expert at raising chickens. Cherry knew as little about chicken farming as she did about astrophysics, but she could and did ask Grandpa’s advice on raising chickens. His attitude thawed out considerably. After that, it was a matter of giving a very old person some of the attention he was hungry for. Cherry managed at the same time to check his temperature, examine the cuts on his leg and arm, make sure there was no infection, and apply fresh sterile bandages. He told Cherry he had fallen down the cellar stairs when he was “tryin’ to help Sally.”
Cherry decided to talk to Mrs. Bufford about those hazardous stairs, and how the family could prevent accidents there and elsewhere on the farm. She urged Grandpa to take life easier, to help chiefly by cooperating—“with the women of the family, too, sir.” He grumbled but promised. He even crawled back into bed.
To Sally Bufford, Cherry tactfully suggested: “Can’t you find light tasks to keep Grandpa occupied? And can’t the men and the youngsters of the family spend a little more time visiting with him? It would help him a great deal. What about a game of cards, or between-meals refreshments, or a radio of his own?” Cherry did not venture to suggest raising chicks in his bedroom, which probably was what Grandpa would have enjoyed most.
By now it was noon. Cherry voted time out for lunch, found a place to turn off the road, and sat down in the grass under a shade tree. While she ate Aunt Cora’s sandwiches, she reviewed the morning’s visits. A few cars and farm trucks, loaded with produce or cattle, drove past. She was interested to see the Watkins Company door-to-door salesman pass by in his station wagon. The man was well dressed; the car looked trim and professional. Cherry remembered Phoebe Grisbee’s saying that farm people were in the habit of buying from door-to-door salesmen. She thought she’d like to do her shopping that way herself.
“Shopping!” Cherry thought. “I shouldn’t even think about shopping with all the calls I have to make this week!”
On Wednesday Cherry found time to visit Jane Fraser. As Cherry entered the Barker cottage, the parrot in its cage was squawking: “None of your business! None of your business!”
“Mike! Quiet!” Mrs. Barker threw a cover over the cage. The parrot continued to mutter darkly.
“That bird! Repeats everything we say, especially arguments! Just because my son Floyd talked back to me—Sit down, Miss Cherry.”
Mrs. Barker sat down, too, and fanned herself. She seemed upset. Jane, she said, was napping.
“I hope the argument Floyd and I had a little while ago didn’t disturb her. Honestly, that Floyd! I’m so exasperated with him that if I don’t talk to somebody, I’ll blow up.”
“Talk to me,” Cherry said. She was glad to sit and rest for a few minutes, and she did take an interest in Jane Fraser’s friend.
“Well, Miss Cherry, you can see for yourself that I work hard around this poverty-stricken place, and I can barely make ends meet. Now wouldn’t you think an ablebodied, grown man would do more to help his mother? Or even to help himself? Not Floyd! No, sir, not that lazy hunk.” Mrs. Barker fanned herself furiously, then relented. “I don’t mean to sound mean toward my only child, but—!”
Floyd, she said, had never worked steadily at anything, never married, never undertaken the least responsibility. What he liked to do was to hunt and fish and wander around the countryside. “He aims to enjoy himself.” He usually earned just enough cash money to buy gasoline for his jalopy.
“There’s no harm in Floyd,” his mother said. “It’s just that it don’t bother him a bit to live in my house and eat his meals here at my expense and leave me with most of the work.”
“No, that isn’t fair to you,” Cherry murmured.
“Precisely! Oh, dear.” Mrs. Barker took a long breath. “I told Floyd he’s lazy, selfish, shiftless, and not growing any younger. What will become of him when I’m gone? I don’t like to nag but I had to tell him—”
Outside, a car screeched to a stop. Mrs. Barker sat up straighter in her chair. Mutters of “None of your business!” issued from the covered cage. Then the screen door slammed open and Floyd sauntered in.
He was a lanky, sallow, loose jointed man in blue jeans and open necked shirt, in need of a shave, with an amiable and rather blank expression. He was carrying an armful of yellow squash which he set down on the table beside his mother.
“Peace offering, Ma,” he said. “Neighbor gave ’em to me for helping him mend his hayrack.” He nodded at Cherry and stood waiting to be introduced.
His mother looked scornfully at the squash, as if Floyd ought to contribute more than a few vegetables. Cherry thought Floyd was not much of a man. She heard Mrs. Barker say: “—the new county nurse.”
Cherry said hello to Floyd, and decided she must not be prejudiced against him. He probably couldn’t help being a weakling. Part of the fault might be his mother’s overindulgence. He grinned at Cherry.
“I’ll bet from the glint in Ma’s eyes that she’s been telling you about how I have a gift for avoiding work,” he said. His homely face gleamed with humor. “I hope she told you, ma’am, how I’m doing better now.”
Mrs. Barker looked slightly ashamed of herself, but said tartly, “A little better, son. Only a little.”
“It’s a good horse that never stumbles, Ma.”
“You’ve been
stumbling much of your life,” his mother said sadly.
“I don’t like work,” he said with a wink at Cherry. “Work tires me, Ma.”
His mother retorted, “Some men acquire that tired feeling from looking for an easy job.”
“Ah, come on, Ma! You know that if I had the time, I’d build us a roadside stand, and you could sell your apples and zinnias to the city folks that drive past. The way a lot of our neighbors do.”
“That’s all I need!” Mrs. Barker was indignant. “To tend a roadside stand, on top of all else I have to do!”
Floyd shrugged. “Well, if you don’t like the idea—” He helped himself from a dish of hickory nuts, and held out the dish to Cherry. “Have some. I gathered ’em last fall, still tasty.”
Cherry said, “No, thanks.”
Floyd moved good naturedly toward the door. “Well, nice to meet you. I’ll be home in time for supper, Ma.”
The screen door slammed again, and Floyd was gone.
Mrs. Barker sighed and then listened. Jane had not been wakened by the racket. “It’s a wonder,” Mrs. Barker said. “Jane’s worn out, that’s why. Well, Miss Nurse, I’m glad that at last you’ve met my son.”
The older woman waited for her to make some comment. Cherry did not wish to say anything unkind—she kept to herself her unpleasant impression of Floyd. She thought him shrewder and harder than the bumpkin he appeared to be. She did say that Floyd seemed to have a cheerful disposition.
“Yes, he does.” Mrs. Barker looked gratified. “Provided he can be outdoors. He loves the countryside and all living, growing things. I taught my boy all the nature lore I know. And, if I say it as shouldn’t, that’s considerable. But that’s no excuse for him not working, and idling in the woods year in and year out. I told Floyd so. Finally!
“To tell you the truth,” Mrs. Barker said, “I never could bring myself to turn my son out of the house. I’d miss him. But recently, Floyd’s been so selfish, so irresponsible—just at a time when we need cash money for supplies, and to repair the roof against the winter! Finally, a month or two ago, I told Floyd either he had to earn some money and pay for his keep, or else get out of my house.”
