Foxfire Page 5

  “My butter’s a fair price—” she snapped, closing the little butter jar with a thud. “Most folk are pleased I handle it at all, what with having to truck it in myself from Tucson when the road’s open. Most folk don’t expect luxuries, and are pleased when they find ’em.”

  “Oh” said Amanda, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean ... I’m not much of a housewife ... in fact,” she added with her quick and lovely smile, “I’m not any kind of a housewife at all, I’m just beginning to realize.”

  Pearl thawed a trifle. “You’ll learn—” she said. “We all have to.” But not with painted fingernails and baby-pink sweaters and gold wrist watches, she added to herself, much as Hugh had predicted. Pearl had a spinster daughter, Pearline, who gave music lessons in Globe, and the thought of that daughter’s pinched face and nervous eyes peering through thick lenses at an unresponsive world added maternal jealousy to the counts against Amanda.

  Unconscious of having offended but appalled at the task ahead of her, Amanda walked home, negligently accompanied by little Bobby Pottner to help carry her parcels. The noon sun poured liquid fire from a cloudless sky and her body inside the woolens which had been so comforting this morning now dripped and itched. She thought with passionate longing of a cool tiled shower bath.

  Bobby flung his parcels on the kitchen table, accepted the dime she fished from her nearly empty change purse, then he stared around at the two-room shack. “Jeez—” he said dispassionately. “What a mess. You goin’ to live here like this?”

  “Not like this, naturally!” she snapped with a sharpness not meant for him. “But I’ve got to have some help. Bobby, could you stay and help me for a while? I’ll be glad to pay you....” She paused, remembering the thirty-five cents remaining in her purse, but Dart would give her more tonight when he understood. “I’ll pay you a quarter.”

  Bobby’s alert face grew blank, then cleared. “Two bits,” he translated for her. “Nope. No soap. Mom’ll give me hell effen I don’t git right back to the store.” He turned to go, but he thought Amanda very pretty, and his eleven-year-old heart was not lacking in chivalry so he paused on the doorstep. “I don’t know who could help you,” he said, “except mebbe one of the crib girls. They don’t do nothin’ all day.”

  The crib girls. Amanda, despite her sophistication and college background of long theoretical discussion of sex, blushed a vivid red. She perceived, however, that to Bobby the crib girls were a sociological fact, no more interesting than the miners, trades people, or any other segment of Lodestone.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, smiling. “Maybe—I’ll see.”

  Bobby departed down the street whistling “Hallelujah, I’m a bum,” and pausing at the corner past the hospital to hurl his jackknife at the giant seven-branched saguaro cactus. The knife rebounded and fell in the dust. Bobby picked it up, a daily ritual performed, and continued around the corner. Amanda turned back into her shack, set her jaw and prepared to cope with the mess. She removed the woolen suit and sweater, and her satin and lace trousseau slip. She hunted through her suitcases until she found one cotton dress with short sleeves. Nobody at home had dreamed that it would be hot like this in January. The dress was a mass of wrinkles. Iron—she thought. Have to buy one. Then how did you heat it? She stared at the little kerosene stove. Courage, my girl, one thing at a time. Petit a petit, I’oiseau fait son nid.—“It’s dogged as does it.” My education will be useful for providing cheering maxims, if nothing else. She picked up the broom and began to sweep.

  After his encounter with Amanda that morning, Hugh Slater had stood for a moment watching her swing off towards town. Her shoulders were held high, her beautiful legs flashing in nude silk, her short golden hair blowing in the desert wind. Maybe she’s not so dumb, at that, he thought, without much interest. The mud-black depression which always accompanied emergence from the periodic binges settled down on him again. He flung the cigarette at a passing tomcat and re-entered the hospital.

  The three ground-floor rooms were deserted, office hours wouldn’t start until afternoon. From the second floor there came the methodical groans of a woman in labor, one of the Mex women. Usually they didn’t bother with the hospital, but she lived with a Bohunk miner she was terrified of, and when her pains started she’d run here for refuge. A good thing, too, Hugh thought with the corner of his mind which nothing, not even liquor, quite obscured. She’s going to have a breech. He went to the dispensary and mixed himself a stiff bromide, at the same time glancing at his wrist watch. The groans were still ten minutes apart; anyway, Maria was with her. Maria ... God, he thought, what a nurse! Miss whats-her-name, back at the Washington General, should have tried her infallible training methods on this one.

  He lit another cigarette, slumped down in the big chair in the waiting room, put his feet up on the rattan couch, and yelled for Maria. After the usual interval in which Maria adjusted herself to any new idea, he heard her scuffling down the wooden stairs in her huaraches. She appeared in the doorway wearing her usual look of sulky dishevelment. The stained white uniform had lost a button and been fastened together with a bent hairpin. The gap showed a patch of brown breast. The winged nurse’s cap perched rootless on top of Maria’s enormous bun of glossy blue-black hair. Maria was very proud of her uniform and wore it off duty whenever she dared. It was a badge of aristocracy, and set her far above the crib girls to whose number she had once belonged until Hugh, desperate for help and finding her moderately seductive, sent her to Phoenix for a three-months’ course in practical nursing. Maria was a half-breed, half Mexican, half Pima Indian, and the mingling had proved esthetically successful. She was small and skinny, but with beautiful breasts and straight bronze features like Gauguin’s Polynesian girls.

  “Yes?” she said to Hugh. “You call?—You not drunk no more?” she added surveying him with mild surprise. “You want I fix some eggs, mebbe?” Her brown hands were adorned with several flashing rings from the five-and-dime store in Globe. She put her hands on her hips and, arms akimbo, leaned against the door jamb, waiting patiently.

  Look at her, thought Hugh, a very caricature of a nurse. And I’m a very caricature of a doctor, according to Dartland’s wench. Yes ... Well...

  He scowled furiously at Maria. “Stand up straight, can’t you, and sew a button on that thing you’re wearing. No, I’ll fix my own eggs, later. I want you to boil up my instruments, the ones from the delivery kit.”

  Maria stood up a fraction straighter and raised her eyebrows.

  “De-livery kit,” she repeated and stared around the waiting room. Her limpid eyes returned to Hugh.

  “Oh, Christ!” he said through his teeth. “I’ve showed you a hundred times. The black bag in the dispensary. It’s labeled ‘Delivery Kit.’ You can read, can’t you?”

  “Sure, I can. You know it.” She thrust her underlip out, her pride hurt.

  “Then take out all the instruments and boil them for twenty minutes in the white enamel pot. Now!” he shouted. “And leave them in the pot. Don’t touch them afterward. Then come up to me and the patient.”

  “Sure—” said Maria. Suddenly she ran across the room and rubbed her cheek against Hugh’s. “You no want to make love some more? You better have another drink.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake—” He jerked his head away and shoved her violently. Her cap fell off and she picked it up, holding it tight against her breast like a baby. Then she hunched her thin shoulders and walked towards the kitchen.

  Hugh went upstairs to the laboring woman. She gave him a look of animal terror and moaned, shutting her eyes.

  “You’re okay,” said Hugh sitting down by the iron cot. “Pretty soon I’m going to put you to sleep.” Where’s that damn rubber sheet? he thought, and saw it lying crumpled by the window. He made a noise in his throat, picked it up and smoothed it under the woman’s haunches. So much for Lister, Semmelweiss, etc., he thought, “scrupulous antisepsis in the Delivery Room—Doctor Slater’s certainly a stickler for that, Miss
Burns—a regular martinet.”

  His head throbbed and he leaned it back against the whitewashed plank wall. That Dartland girl’s maybe brighter than she looks, he thought morosely. But you wouldn’t think a guy like Dart’d fall for a smooth little Eastern job with a Park Avenue accent. She won’t stick it two months in Lodestone. Then she’ll go high-tailing it off for greener pastures. Like Viola. Funny—still pain at the thought of Viola. That’s one from the books too, isn’t it, my dear? Besides the heart of gold, the surly embittered frustrated doctor has a broken heart. Broken golden heart.

  He looked down at the woman on the bed. The contractions were getting stronger, but not ready to put her under yet. A tiny louse ran out from her matted sticky hair and scuttled across the pillow. Hugh pinched it between thumb and forefinger and dropped it on the floor. He shouted down to Maria to hurry with the instruments, received in return a vague “pronto, pronto.” He lit another cigarette and sat down again, and began to think quite dispassionately about himself.

  Hugh Slater, born thirty-eight years ago into a pretty good Virginia family. Not F.F.V. but good enough. Wanted to be a surgeon ever since he could remember. Why? Sensitive hands—mechanical ability ■—■ flair for drama—sublimated sadism they’d call it nowadays, no doubt. But was there more than that once? Had there been a period of high dedication, the thrill of alleviating suffering? A thrill, even, out of the old Hippocratic oath? Anyway, that thrill hadn’t carried through the war. France, 1917—1919, and an undedicated shambles of gas and gangrene and mutilations and expendable human life. He had returned to Johns Hopkins for his diploma. In-terneship next year at the Washington General, going to specialize in surgery, poor as Job, but it didn’t matter—until Viola turned up one day as a patient in the West ward. She had had an appendectomy, and even as she struggled damply out of the ether, her extraordinary beauty was little dimmed. She had soft hair with auburn lights in it, and it curled all around her heart-shaped face. Really heart-shaped, because a widow’s peak cleft the white forehead. The face was still childish in its porcelain skin and delicacy of bone, but her eyes were woman’s eyes, large and slumberous and aware, golden-hazel between curling black lashes. Viola had never for a moment doubted her destiny and even then, besotted with love as he was, Hugh had wondered that she could envision marriage with him instead of any one of her other innumerable suitors. Perhaps she had really loved him for a while; certainly the first months of their marriage had been ecstatic. But he had seen so little of her, enslaved as he was by the hospital, and their poverty had been grinding. She had not complained, that was not her way. But he later discovered she had been preparing herself all the time, taking secret lessons from an infatuated drama teacher, and sending her photographs to the various studios. He had felt the change in her before he knew any cause except their ghastly poverty. It had frightened him into his first mistake.

  He had done some minor surgery for a Greek restaurant owner in the latter’s home and accepted a fat fee for it. Fortunately, the head surgeon, who found out, kept his mouth shut, for it was a penal offense to practice medicine unlicensed. Viola had accepted the three hundred dollars he brought her with a sad little smile. At her suggestion they blew part of it on a superb week-end in New York. A farewell week-end, it turned out, for she took the rest of the money and went off to Hollywood with it, leaving a little note. “I love you, Hugh, but I know I am a great actress, and I must do it. I don’t mean just the movies. More than that. Forgive me.”

  And she was right. Viola was the one in ten thousand who makes the grade in Hollywood. In three years she had become a star, and long before that she had divorced Hugh, who never communicated with her in any way. Two years ago she had tried her luck on Broadway and met with unusual indulgence from the critics, though the play had only a moderate run. And at thirty-two, her beauty was richer and deeper than it had ever been, judging from her pictures. She had not married again.

  Hugh’s disintegration had not come fast, after Viola left. He had managed to wall off the memory of her and concentrate on work. He moved to New York State when he was ready to practice, because the doctor who had shielded him had nevertheless not forgotten and kept a watchful eye on him. He had spoken to Hugh one night over a beer in a speakeasy near the hospital.

  “Watch your step, young man, you’re a good doctor but you’ve got some sort of queer streak in you. I overlooked that business with the Greek because of your war record, but there’ve been other things. I know about that extra shot of morphine you sneaked old Billings. He bribed you for it—didn’t he?”

  “He needed it,” said Hugh sullenly.

  “I don’t agree. Anyway, he’s my patient—and my orders were plain on his chart. Look, Slater, you’re too brilliant a medico for shady ethics.”

  Hugh was both grateful and resentful, and he got away from the older man as fast as possible. In the New York suburb where he started practice he had bad luck. Jealousy from the already entrenched surgeons, and then a rich patient died on the table through no fault of Hugh’s. His practice fell off, and one day he admitted an hysterical woman to his office at eleven at night. She wanted an abortion which Hugh refused from prudent, not moral, reasons, and he referred her to a man on West End Avenue in New York. Here the woman had the abortion and hemorrhaged after getting home. Terrified by her condition and also by the threats of the actual abortionist, she called another local doctor and accused Hugh of performing the operation against her will.

  This case came into court, and though Hugh was eventually cleared, his reputation was irretrievably damaged. He moved out West, drifted from town to town finding increasing difficulty in getting practice, since he also became a periodic drinker. The last solution was the mining camps. Isolated mining camps with scant funds and facilities must often content themselves with the dregs of the profession, and ask no questions. So Hugh landed a year ago at Lodestone where the population of six hundred apathetically accepted his ministrations when he applied them, and did without when he was drunk.

  The woman on the bed gave a convulsive heave and a shriek. Hugh started, opened his eyes, jumped up and applied the ether cone in one swift motion. He poured the first drops from the can and said, “You’re okay. Just let go, and breathe in.” Her frantic thrashings stilled a little. She stared up at him with terrified appeal and her fingers fastened on his arm. “All right, all right,” he repeated, “Take it easy.... ” Her eyelids drooped, her breathing slowed under the white cone.

  Maria shuffled in with the potful of instruments, looking scared. She obeyed his curt instructions and took his place at the head of the bed, pouring a drop of ether when he told her to. Hugh pulled on sterile gloves, fished out the instruments, and in five minutes started a delivery which managed before it was accomplished to present him with most of the standard textbook complications.

  An hour later he oiled the squalling purplish baby and put it down beside its mother, who still slept heavily. Saved ’em both, now let’s wave the flag for Doctor Slater, the wonder boy of Lodestone. The sanctified surgeon of Shamrock Mine.

  “They okay?” asked Maria importantly, “or shall I get Padre?” She had twice performed this interesting errand, running down the main street of Lodestone to the corrugated iron chapel on the edge of town.

  “They won’t need the Padre—” said Hugh peeling off his gloves. “But they need a hell of a lot of other things they aren’t going to get.” Aside from the probability that that Bohunk, the brat’s father, would kill them both in one of his psychopathic rages.

  They’d both have died here and now and painlessly, if I’d let ’em, Hugh thought, and everyone would have been happier.

  “I’m going to get out of this blasted shack for a while—” he said to Maria. “If anybody shows up for office hours tell ’em to wait. You stay right here”—he indicated the sleeping woman—“until I get back.”

  “You goin’ to the ‘Laundry’?” asked Maria wistfully, referring to Lodestone’s most popular speak
easy and gambling hall, and so affectionately named because its patrons always emerged “cleaned.”

  “Nope,” said Hugh. “And neither are you!” He gave her a look from under his bushy blond eyebrows, which effectively quelled Maria’s tentative plans. She thrust out her lower lip and sat down. The Doc was a lot more fun when he was drunk, even when he called her names and hit her. Most men did like that. But when he was sober he was cold and sharp like a knife. Always picking in a mean biting way you couldn’t answer back.... And what’s he want to keep a magazine picture of that movie star for? thought Maria, reverting to a problem which had given her some hours of jealous pondering. In between his only two good shirts he kept this torn picture of Viola Vinton. She was sitting on a chair and staring at some books, a kind of goofy look on her face. And Viola Vinton wasn’t so much, either, her pictures never came to the Miner’s Hall in Lodestone, and you hardly ever saw anything about her in the movie magazines. Maria herself had a picture of Ramon Novarro up on the wall of her room at the Garcias’, but that was different, besides it wasn’t hid like she was ashamed of it.

  She’d asked the Doc about the picture once and he’d got awful mad, called her a goddam nosy bitch, yelled at her never to open his drawers or touch his things again.

  Maria rested her chin on her hand, morosely contemplating her quiet patients on the cot. I wish I didn’t got this lousy job, she thought, but without real conviction. The Garcias’ where she boarded and even the Padre kept telling her how lucky she was to have it. Though the Padre kept bawling her out, too, and giving her penances for living in sin, so now she didn’t go to confession....I wish I had a real nice lover, she thought, would show me a good time, take me to California maybe; un rico, she thought, reverting to the language of her childhood, muy elegante y amoroso.... She sighed, her head fell forward and slipped down until it rested on the pillow beside the woman and the baby. Maria slept too.