Maude Page 15

  Mom Foley was dipping the stew out of the pot and putting the plates on the table. She sat my plate down last. I gave the old woman a challenging look and picked up the plate and exchanged it with George’s. He gave me a puzzled look, then caught the expression that went between me and his mother. He ate without saying anything about it, and I acted as if nothing had happened.

  When he came to bed that night, he turned out the lamp, put his back to me, and yawned as if he were sleepy. I lay in a shaft of moonlight, “Aren’t you going to ask me about it?”

  George sighed. “Ask about what?”

  “Your mother pushed me down the stairs this morning and told me right out she’s going to kill me.”

  George finally said, “What can I do about it, Maude? She’s my mother, and she’s an old woman. You can’t expect me to put her in jail. You’ll just have to be careful around her.”

  “That’s pretty much what I thought you’d say.”

  After that, I was as careful as I could be, looking around me before I went down the stairs, eating only the same food that George ate, being as careful as I could. I knew that, if it happened, it would be something that looked like an accident or something natural, like bad mushrooms. The old woman didn’t want to go to jail. She just wanted George and the house and the children to herself, and she would do anything she could think of to get rid of me.

  Chapter 22

  There was talk everywhere of the war in Europe, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Once in a while, I would get my hands on a real newspaper, not just our little hometown one, and read it from front to back. I would have liked to have a newspaper every day, but the big one was printed in St. Louis and cost too much money.

  I didn’t see what the war had to do with me. I was fighting my own war right in my home. Sometimes I would catch George’s mother looking at me in that way she had, and it would give me a chill. I could tell she was trying to think of a way to get rid of me without getting caught.

  In April of 1917, America got in on the fighting. President Wilson, who’d been saying all along that America was staying out of it, finally declared war on Germany. He started up the draft, and we sent 10,000 men a day to go fight over there.

  Almost every one of the young men from the town joined the army without waiting to be drafted and went off to what they were sure would be a great adventure. They were saying it was the war to make the world safe for Democracy, or the war to end all wars. I didn’t know what to think about that. I knew that the Bible said there would always be war and rumors of war.

  A few of the young men never came home at all. Some were buried in cemeteries across the ocean, some at a place called Flander’s Field, and some at Arlington in Virginia, where I read they were laying a lot of our boys to rest. Some died in the forests of France, and they never did find them. Some came home without arms or legs, or blind from the mustard gas. The war finally ended on November 11, 1918, and the rest of those who could, came home. One of them, Johnny Parker, came home with the Spanish Influenza.

  I read later that it swept around the world twice in two years, killing between ten and twenty million people, changing as it went. Many people died within hours of coming down with the symptoms. With so many doctors away at war, those on the home front made do with nurses, or medical students. Some had no one to help them. It didn’t matter much. There was no treatment except prayer. If a person got the flu, he either lived or died.

  As the sheriff, George closed public places, and everyone stayed home as much as possible. When it came to the Parker house, Johnny Parker died, his mother lived, and his father lived. One of the marks of the terrible disease was that it was more likely to take the young and strong than the old or infirm. No one group was spared.

  Toward the end of the outbreak in Kennett, there were no coffins left in the town. No one who knew how to make them was well enough to do the work. They wrapped the flu victims in canvas or bedding and buried them as fast as they could. With a shortage of workers, family members who were able, dug the graves in the cemetery themselves, and put up wooden markers that would have to do until they could get a proper stone.

  Influenza ran through the town, killing one out of four. The preacher at the Holiness church visited as many sick as he could and then caught the flu himself and died. There had once been three doctors in town. One was away to the hospitals for the soldiers, one was still working twenty hours a day, and one died from the flu.

  George was the first in my house to get sick. I kept cold compresses on his head to ease the fever and washed him all over several times a day with cool cloths. In a week he was over the worst of it, but still weak and bedridden.

  At three years old, Bud had outgrown his cradle, but still slept on a mattress on the floor in his grandmother’s room. She was the next one to get sick, and he was sick right along with her. I tended both of them as I had George, stroking them with the cool cloths and changing the soiled bed linens. Mom Foley was so weak she could barely move, but as I cleaned the vomit and the runny stool from her body and washed her, she looked hard at me, her eyes shining with hatred. It was pitiful, and I pretended not to notice. I talked to her as I worked, “I’m praying for you, Mom Foley, praying that you’ll accept the gift of Jesus’s salvation for your soul. I don’t think Wakondah would hold it against you. I think Wakondah is just a different name for God.”

  Bud’s fever finally broke, and after a few days, he grew stronger, but George’s mother slipped away one night. I tried to comfort George and Lulu, but they were both grief stricken and would not be consoled.

  I hoped my prayers for the old woman’s soul had been answered. George sent a telegram to his sister Bessie, but he knew she couldn’t make the trip home. He wrapped his mother in a blanket, and Lulu tended to her little brother at home while I rode with George in the wagon to the cemetery. He had to dig the grave himself, and I read some verses and prayed over it.

  Clara’s family got sick next. Maggie was the first, but Clara nursed her hand and foot, and she made it through.

  Alfred came home one morning just a few hours after going in to work at his feed store. The last thing he said to Clara was that, sick or not, people had to have feed for their animals, and he felt it was his duty to provide it. When he came home, he left his horse tied to the front door and staggered inside. Clara ran to meet him. His weight was more than she could support, and he keeled over in the living room, a red foam running out of his mouth. Clara ran next door to us to get George to help her get him in the bed, but by the time they reached the house, he was dead--that fast. He’d looked fine when he left that morning.

  George went into town and got Doug Graham and another man to help him. They rolled Alfred up in a bedspread and loaded him in the back of the wagon. Leaving Lulu home to see to Bud, Clara and I sat in the back of the wagon and rode to the cemetery.

  Maggie’s bedroom was upstairs in the front of their house. She was still too weak to go to the cemetery, but sat up in her bed and watched as the wagon with her daddy’s body disappeared down the street.

  Clara woke with a fever the next day. Still weak herself, Maggie dragged out of bed and came to get me. Clara tried to wave me away. “You’ll get sick yourself, Maude. You go on home, I’ll be all right.”

  I paid no attention. I bathed her and sang to her and prayed over her. “Remember how you took care of me when Bud was born? This is my time to take care of you.”

  After a few days, Clara was over the sickness, and Maggie was strong enough to help.

  Then I got sick. Clara and Lulu nursed me until I was better. Except for Lulu, everyone in both houses had battled the flu and either won or lost.

  Lulu went to bed healthy that night. The next morning when I called, she didn’t come downstairs.

  Chapter 23

  When his mother died, George had taken to cooking his own breakfast and stood at the stove, turning the bacon.

  I called Lulu again, but she still didn’t answer. As I
recall, it seemed as if it all happened in slow motion. George turned to look at me. I met his eyes. Panic flooded through me, and then my insides went cold. I walked out of the kitchen and to the stairs, willing myself to climb them. I pulled myself up the bannister one step at a time. When I reached the landing, I was shaking all over. I stopped and called Lulu’s name again and waited for an answer. No answer came.

  I kept on, finally reaching the top. George stood in the kitchen doorway, looking up at me. I pushed myself forward one foot at a time to Lulu’s room and opened the door.

  My beautiful blonde girl lay there, her hair curling down her shoulders, one hand thrown up over her head. Except for a thin trickle of bloody foam running from her mouth and down the side of her face, she looked for all the world as if she were asleep.

  George came in the room carrying Bud. I stood there, staring at my precious daughter. I was frozen, and made no sound. George stood next to me, and I looked down at Lulu for a long time. George didn’t say anything. It was like he knew nothing he could say that would console me, any more than he could be comforted when his mother died. Bud sensed something wrong. He leaned his head against his father’s chest and whimpered.

  Finally, George wrapped his arm around my shoulder and patted my back. “I’ll take Bud over to Clara’s, and we’ll see to burying her.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off Lulu. “I want her buried in a coffin, George. I won’t have her put into the ground in a blanket.”

  “Maude, you know there aren’t any coffins to be had. We’ll have to do what we can.”

  With my head lowered like a charging bull, I turned to look at him. Grabbing his shirt with one hand, I pushed my face into his and almost growled, “You’ll make her a proper coffin if you have to take the planks off the side of the barn, and you’ll start it right now, and you won’t stop until it’s finished, do you understand me?”

  George drew back as far as my grip on his shirt would let him. “All right, Maude,” he said, and he handed Bud to me and left the room. I pulled the chair up to the bed and sat there with Bud on my lap.

  I could hear the sound of sawing and then hammering coming from the barn. The noise didn’t matter to Bud, and he fell asleep. After a few hours, George came back. “It’s ready, Maude.”

  I held Bud out to him. “Take him over to Clara and tell her about Lulu. I’ll get her ready.” George didn’t answer me, just lifted the sleeping baby out of my arms and left.

  I washed Lulu and combed her hair. I looked through Lulu’s dresses and then went to my own room and came back with the embroidered dress I’d worn when I married James and his plaid shirt I’d brought with me from Tennessee. I dressed Lulu in the dress, put her father’s shirt around her shoulders, and waited.

  After a few minutes, George came back. “Clara wanted to go with us, Maude, but I told her she wasn’t well enough yet. The best thing she could do is to look after Bud. Is that all right?”

  I nodded. George lifted Lulu and carried her out of the room. I pulled the white quilt Bessie made off of the bed, picked up Lulu’s Bible from the table, and followed him down the stairs. The coffin sat on the end of the wagon. Clara waited on the back porch. Bud slept in her arms. Maggie stood by her side, both were sobbing.

  George went to lift Lulu’s body into the coffin, but I called out, “Wait.” George stepped back. I spread out the white quilt in the coffin with the edges folded over the sides and nodded at George. “Go ahead.”

  He laid Lulu’s body in the coffin, folded the quilt over her, put on the lid, and nailed it shut.

  George helped me up onto the wagon seat. We made the trip to the cemetery without a word. I waited in the wagon while George found an empty space and dug the grave. He lowered the coffin as gently as he could.

  I climbed down from the wagon and stood next to him. I held the Bible in my hand, my mind searching for the right words. Finally, I opened it and leafed through several pages until I found the verses I wanted in First Thessalonians. I read it in a voice so loud, George jumped.

  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

  I closed the Bible and nodded at George. He picked up the shovel and filled the grave. He took a wooden cross from the back of the wagon with the name he’d painted on it, Lulu Connor Foley, and used the hammer to pound it into the dirt.

  I said a prayer, and he helped me back onto the wagon. When he climbed up onto the seat, I asked, “Where did you get the wood?”

  “I took apart a stall. We only needed one anyway.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Thank you for that.”

  He nodded and shook the reins. I gripped the Bible in my lap so hard, my knuckles were white and, after a while, my hands were numb. We made the return trip the way we came, without speaking.

  Chapter 24

  I let myself get to where I didn’t feel much of anything and slipped into a separate world. The war in Europe officially ended, but I heard the news as something apart from my life. I went about my daily routine in a trance. I cleaned, and I cooked, and I did the laundry. I tended to Bud and saw that he had what he needed. Without his sister and grandmother to pamper him, he clung to me, but instead of finding comfort in the child I still had, I kept my distance. Bud went to George for affection, and George gave it to him. Couldn’t anyone say he didn’t love his son.

  When Bud heard the clip-clop of his father’s horse coming home in the evening, he would run to the back porch, yelling, “Daddy, Daddy.”

  George poured all the love he had into the boy, who was a copy of himself. Bud grew taller and slimmer by the day, his baby fat melting away into the same form as his father’s.

  George found very little comfort in my arms. There was still no warmth in his touch when he turned to me in the night. Aware of my duty, I submitted. Submission and duty were all I had left to give to him.

  Clara tried to get me to come out of my sorrow, but was unable to make a dent in the thick cloud of grief that hung over me. I stopped visiting her and stayed in my own house. I had George bring home what I needed from the stores in town. I’d never missed a Sunday service since the day I was born, but I even stopped going to church. I lived my life on the five acres that were George’s property.

  Usually up with the first rooster’s crow, I took to sleeping late. George didn’t say anything. He would fry his bacon and make the coffee for himself. When I put Bud down for his nap, I would lie down myself, and let sleep take me away from my pain until my son woke me.

  When Clara came over to see me, I talked in short, sharp answers to Clara’s questions. After a few weeks of being hurt by the way I was acting, Clara said, “Maude, I love you but I know you’re still grieving. When you need someone, you know where I am.”

  One morning, about six months after the epidemic was over, it occurred to me that I hadn’t the faintest idea how Clara had been getting along. She’d lost her husband, and I didn’t even know how she was providing for herself.

  I stirred myself and knocked at Clara’s back door. She looked so happy to see me there. She threw open the door and grabbed me in a big hug. “Let me pour us some coffee, Maude. I’m so glad to see you.”

  We sat at the familiar table, and I said, “I feel bad that I haven’t been to see you. How have you been getting by without Alfred?”

  Clara shrugged. “I hired Billy Simmons and Gregory Hawthorne from the church to help run the store. They’re doing all right. I go in and place the orders and do the bookwork once a week.”

  “Who’s going to take care of the man’s work around the house for you?”

  Clara’s place was almost a mirror image of George’s, set on the outskirts of town, five acres, a large two-story house and a big barn that housed a cow, two goats, and the horse. Nex
t to the barn was a henhouse.

  “I’ve been doing what I always did. I made a big garden, and I can feed the livestock, but it is a handful, really. It’s too much. I’m worn out from all of it. Maggie helps, but I don’t want to take away her childhood having her work around here. If something falls apart, I guess I’ll hire it done. I’ve got enough money coming in from the store to pay someone. Alfred was always careful with money. It used to make me mad sometimes when he wouldn’t get a new suit or something new for the house, but I guess he knew best. I’ve been thinking about getting a regular hired hand. He could fix up the shed out back in exchange for a place to live and take care of the livestock for me. Do you think that would be all right? You know how people are to talk about someone.”

  “I know better than most how people talk, Clara. It’s how I wound up being married to George. I wouldn’t give them any shadow of reason to gossip about me if I were you.”

  “You’re right. Maybe I’ll ask the pastor what to do.”

  “Pastor? Did we get a new pastor?”

  “About a month ago. We got Brother Aimes to come out from St. Louis. He’s young and new to preaching, but he’s doing fine.”

  “What did we do for a preacher before that?”

  “We all just met and the men would take turns reading scripture and then we would sing and pray. There’s not one family in the church that didn’t lose someone, Maude. It was terrible.”

  I had to look away. “I’m ashamed of myself, Clara. I didn’t give a thought to what anyone else was going through. Losing Lulu took the life right out of me. I guess I haven’t been a very good Christian, not to think of the others.”

  “Come back to church, Maude. We all need each other.”

  “I will. How have you been getting there? Do you walk all the way?”

  Clara laughed. “I learned how to hitch up a wagon when I was a little girl. Maggie helps me with it. We’ve done all right.”