Prayers the Devil Answers Read online

  Another job? That puzzled me. “But who else is hiring in this town? The railroad all but owns the place. And who but the railroad could afford to take on new help in times like these? You aren’t thinking to leave town, are you?” I had never been anywhere else, so I don’t know why I expected things to be worse in some other place, but the idea of going into flatlands among strangers frightened me more than staying here and going hungry. The only thing worse would be if Albert decided to go elsewhere to work, leaving me and the boys behind. I knew that some of the men who went to work in the car factories up in Michigan did that. Some might save up their pay and send for their families to join them. But some of them wouldn’t. Grass widows was what people called women whose husbands took off and abandoned them. I didn’t intend to be one.

  I took a deep breath to keep from crying. “Are you fixing to go then?”

  “No, Ellie. I am not. We’re all staying put. And as for ‘who but the railroad could afford to take on new help,’ the answer is the same as always: the government.”

  “What government? Washington?”

  “ ’Course not. I mean the county.”

  I stared at him while I took it in. What jobs does the county have to give? “Tax collector?”

  Albert chuckled. “Well, no, hon, I ain’t stooped that low. And I wouldn’t know how to get blood out of a turnip anyhow, which is what tax collecting must be like nowadays. No thank you. I have applied to be hired on as a deputy sheriff. The job would give me a lot of work outdoors, which I’d like, and it would be a step up in the eyes of the community, which would be good for both of us.”

  I stabbed at the sock with the darning needle. “Well, I suppose it would be, if you call having folks scared of you a step up. I don’t believe I do.”

  CELIA

  By the time Celia Pasten had completed her two years of college and then a year of teaching in a little county school, the memory of her mishap at the Dumb Supper had faded from her mind. The other girls might still be preoccupied with thoughts of love and marriage, but she was satisfied with the path she had chosen, and that choice had nothing to do with any possible curse arising out of the Dumb Supper. When people asked why she didn’t get married, she told them that working for a living wasn’t any harder than cooking and scrubbing floors for free. It might even be safer: even aside from the risk of dying in childbirth, there was the fact that more than one woman had settled for marriage and then found herself widowed or abandoned with no means of support. Celia thought she might marry someday—if she felt like it—but if so, she had no intention of being completely dependent on a husband for support. She never mentioned the fact that she had received no offers of marriage anyhow. And, sometimes at church, without quite knowing why, she prayed that someone would choose her.

  Most of the other girls had been spoken for.

  Shortly after high school graduation, golden Aurelia, and cunning Sarah, the minister’s daughter, married their sweethearts—those same young men who had attended the Dumb Supper to make their intentions known. Their weddings took place in the little community church on consecutive Saturdays in June. Once married, both brides settled into complacent domesticity, one in a wood and cinderblock cottage on a parcel of her in-laws’ farm, and the other into a small town in Georgia, close to the army base where her new husband was stationed.

  The childhood circle of friends didn’t see much of one another after that. With little in common anymore, the girls drifted apart, going their separate ways. Celia, who was more diligent than gifted, received a scholarship to nearby Milligan College, where she studied education so that she could get a teaching certificate.

  The Greer sisters, still spinsters and likely to remain so, stayed at home, tending to their ailing mother and taking on most of the farm chores. They turned up at the others’ weddings, though, throwing handfuls of rice; one of them elbowing the guests aside, trying to catch the bride’s bouquet, while her sister scowled at such foolishness.

  Another of the Dumb Supper girls, Ann Durner, married in August. Some of her girlhood friends served as bridesmaids, but Celia was not among them. Nevertheless, she went to the wedding, partly to wish Ann well and mostly to show that she was not bitter or envious of the bride.

  At the reception afterward the dour Greer sister, who was in charge of the punch bowl, beckoned to Celia. She smiled as she handed Celia a cup of apple juice and fizzy water, but there was more sneer than happiness in that smile. “Well, Celia Pasten, remember that Dumb Supper we put on when we were foolish girls? It seems to have worked for some of us anyway.” She nodded toward the bride, who had just finished cutting the wedding cake.

  Celia smiled to show she didn’t mind being slighted by fate. “Perhaps it did. Unless it’s just coincidence.”

  “Do you think so?” The Greer sister raised her bushy eyebrows. “Have you noticed that we three are the only old maids left of the supper party? Me—and I don’t care a bit for all the nonsense of romance; my sister, who is homely and desperate, a fatal combination for a spinster; and you. Now I find that interesting. I have given up expecting the two of us Greers to ever marry; by the time Mother passes away, we will be too old to try. We don’t care much for the selection around here, anyhow, but we did think that you would have settled for somebody after all this time. You’re not unattractive for your type, and some men aren’t overly particular about looks.”

  Celia blushed. None of the community’s young men had ever shown more than a passing interest in her, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit that to the mocking keeper of the punch bowl. “It doesn’t worry me one bit,” she said. “Haven’t you realized why I’ve stayed single? I can’t be thinking about courting because I’m studying to be a teacher. The state won’t allow lady schoolteachers to be married, so I guess it’s no use for me to try to find somebody, unless I’m willing to give up my job and waste all that education.”

  “Safer, too, don’t you think?” The Greer sister’s sour smile stayed in place, but now her eyes narrowed, completing the spiteful image. She picked up a knife from the refreshment table and, still smiling, let it fall from her hand. It clattered on the floor and spun once, ending with the blade pointing toward Celia.

  Celia glanced at it and looked away as if she had not understood the gesture. “What do you mean, safer? Safer on account of not having to go through childbirth, you mean?”

  “Oh, no.” The Greer sister shook her head. “There’s some that go through that without ever getting married, and, wedded or not, most women manage to live through it, though I wouldn’t care to risk it myself.” Leaning in close she whispered in Celia’s ear, “You know what I really mean, don’t you? It’s on account of the Dumb Supper. Remember that night?”

  “What about it? It was ages ago.”

  “Well, I haven’t forgotten any of it. You told me afterward that you had dropped your table knife on the floor, and then, when you were putting it back, you looked straight at the table. So I reckon you’re cursed on account of that.”

  Celia shrugged. “It was only a silly game.”

  “That’s as may be, but you can’t deny that it came true for Aurelia and Sarah. Both of them married the boys who showed up for them that night at the Dumb Supper. Of course, Sarah was in the family way when she was wed, so I suppose the Fates had a little help in getting her to the altar.”

  “And Aurelia is beautiful. She would never lack for suitors anyhow.”

  “Well, those chocolate-box blondes fade early, so I think it was best for her to marry while her looks lasted. But you are another matter altogether. There’s many a girl plainer than you who went to the altar at seventeen, and here you are past twenty.”

  “I wanted an education.”

  “Even so, I still think you were wise to keep clear of love and marriage. You broke the ritual. If you were to get married, there’s no telling what might happen.” The Greer sister l
ooked especially pleased about that, perhaps because she was red-faced and stout, with little hope of being a bride herself, while Celia, although timid and bashful, was slender and striking.

  “Nothing would happen. It was all nonsense.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t chance it if I were you, Celia. You go on and be a spinster schoolmarm and keep out of harm’s way.”

  Because she could not manage a smile, Celia gave her a blank stare and backed away. As more wedding guests began to hover around the table asking for punch, she murmured something and slipped through the crowd as quickly as she decently could. For the remainder of the reception Celia went on embracing the old friends who insisted on it. She listened to news about their lives, without saying much about herself. But she remembered very little of the occasion after that.

  If someday she had a husband she would tell him about that silly courting tradition.

  Someday.

  chapter three

  The King’s life is drawing peacefully to a close.” When we heard the news on the radio, I saw Albert’s eyes fill with tears.

  In the evenings after supper we usually listened to the news together, and though it made me no never mind what happened to some far-off king, Albert had to wipe his eyes when he heard it. He always felt connected to the British royal family, mostly because he had been named for the Prince Consort, Queen Victoria’s late husband, even though the prince had died in England more than thirty years before Albert was born in Tennessee. Maybe that’s why he was so set on giving our sons the names of princes: Edward and George. Mama Robbins, Albert’s mother, had spent her life miles from town on a mountain farm, but she had been a great one for reading, so in a way the world came to her. She always said she named one of her sons for a Roman poet, and the other two for English princes. Maybe she thought giving her boys such grand names would nudge them a little higher up in the world, but about the only result of it was that Albert took an interest in the royals, as if they were his long-lost kin. Otherwise, I couldn’t see where his life and theirs crossed at any point . . . except possibly now.

  A month ago in England old King George had died. The radio newsreader talked about how the king had taken ill with some lung ailment, and finally in January, his majesty took to his bed where he finally slipped into a coma and passed away. Sitting at Albert’s bedside made me think of the king’s death. But the king was an old man, and his dying had taken place in a castle full of servants, with the best doctor in the land sitting by his bedside, doing all he could for the royal invalid, whereas my Albert, still in his prime, lay dying in the damp chill of a matchbox house with only his wife at his side. Only a few weeks apart, though, Albert and the king. That was something, anyhow.

  Finally the doctor came to call. There was just the one physician in the whole valley, and, between tending to farm accidents and difficult childbirths, he never had much time to spare for ordinary aches and pains, or for fevers and winter ailments. He did his best, though. Anyone who worked all hours of the day and night, and as often as not got paid in vegetables and homemade jam, had to be dedicated to his calling. I’d heard that when he was still a young man he had attended some medical school down south, but you could tell why he chose to practice here just by looking at him. He had the wiry frame, the dark hair, and the cold blue eyes of those who were born and bred in the Tennessee mountains. He looked like a descendant of the pioneers who settled here back in the 1700s. Surely his coming to practice in a little railroad town with too many patients and too little money could only mean that he had grown up somewhere like here. Some people didn’t want to leave the mountains, even if they had the education and the skills to go elsewhere. Anyhow, the community was lucky to have him.

  He turned up late on a misty afternoon, carrying his black bag, and bundled to the gills in a scarf and greatcoat. I offered to hang it up for him, but he took a deep breath of the cold, still air inside the house and said he’d just keep the overcoat on for a while, thanks all the same. I took him the few paces down the short hallway to the darkened room where his patient lay, cocooned in his fever dreams.

  Albert did not stir when we came in, and when I called his name he did not respond.

  The doctor stood there just watching him for a minute or two. “How long has he been like that?”

  “A couple of days. At first I thought that a long sleep would be good for him, but now . . . Can’t you wake him up?”

  The only answer I got to my question was a slight shrug. For a while we just stood there, watching Albert sleep, and neither of us spoke.

  He was buried under blankets, but there were still beads of sweat on his forehead. The doctor felt his pulse, took a stethoscope out of the leather Gladstone, and put it to Albert’s chest. He leaned down, listening for a few moments to the ragged and labored breathing that had frightened me so much. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Rales,” he muttered to himself, and I could tell he was hoping that I hadn’t overheard him, but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t understand the word anyhow.

  When he finally looked up, he was careful not to show emotion. Maybe he had learned from long experience that a patient’s loved ones will seize upon the slightest sign to figure out whether or not there was any hope. If the doctor’s face didn’t match his soothing words, the relatives would believe what they saw, not what they heard—and they’d be right. I could see from his expression that the news was not good. I reckon it seldom was.

  The doctor sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, Mrs. Robbins, I suppose I ought to say that you should have called me sooner, but the plain truth is I doubt if it would have made any difference one way or the other. Your husband has pneumonia. Perhaps you know that.”

  “I hoped it wasn’t. I feared as much, but I was praying that it was just a chest cold.”

  “It may have started out that way, but it turned into pneumonia. At this point there’s not much anybody can do to help him.”

  Seeing that I was dismayed by this grim pronouncement, the doctor seemed to cast about for something to say to give me hope. There was always a chance he could be wrong. I’m sure he hoped so. “Well, your husband’s not old yet. He may yet have the reserves of strength needed to pull him through. Sometimes I think the patient has more to do with healing than the doctor does. Have you tried putting a mustard plaster on his chest?”

  “I think my mama may have known how to do that, but I never had to tend to this kind of sickness before, sir.”

  He looked at Albert and then back at me and sighed. “Well, you might as well try it. Unlike some of those absurd folk remedies, it does work, if the patient isn’t too far gone.”

  “How do you make one?”

  “A mustard plaster? It’s a poultice, but don’t you go putting it on his bare chest, or else you’ll draw blisters the size of quarters. Spread the mixture on a clean piece of flannel. And if you can’t find a neighbor who has fresh mustard from a plant in the garden, then go and buy some—they’ll have ground mustard at the drugstore. It costs a couple of pennies, I believe. I’d give you some if I had any with me. You mix two tablespoons of the mustard powder with a handful of flour and the white of an egg. Do you keep chickens?”

  “No, sir. We couldn’t let them out to run on account of the railroad tracks. But I reckon one of the ladies from church will trade me an egg for some of my canned pickles or a quart of apple butter. Just the one egg, then?”

  “That’s right. One egg will do.” He smiled a little. “Being churchgoing folks, surely one of the ladies would give you one egg for nothing.”

  “Well, I expect they would, but we don’t like to be beholden to anybody. We’d rather pay what we owe.”

  I’m sure he had heard that said often enough. “Well, Mrs. Robbins, think it over. Sometimes it’s a kindness to let folks do you a favor. Makes them feel good about themselves. But one way or another get you that egg, and mix it up with
flour and the mustard. It should make a sticky yellow paste. If it’s too thick to spread, then add a little warm water. Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes sir, I am following you. Go ahead.”

  “Well, once you’ve made the paste, you want to spoon the mixture onto the clean flannel cloth, fold it over, and put it down directly on your husband’s chest, right over the lungs. But remember—not on his bare skin. Put a sheet or an old shirt over his chest and set the mustard plaster on that. That’s all there is to it. Just don’t leave it on for more than half an hour—any longer and it might give him blisters anyhow. Can you remember all that?”

  “Flannel, flour, egg white, powdered mustard. I won’t forget. But why does it work?”

  He shrugged. “The herb doctors around here say it pulls the toxins out of the lungs so the invalid can breathe easier. Well, they don’t phrase it that way, but that’s the gist of it. When I was in medical school, one of my professors, whose hobby was folk medicine, told me that mustard paste enlarges the blood vessels, which helps the patient to breathe better. I also recommend it to patients with rheumatism, because it gets some heat to their aching joints. Who knows for sure how it works? All I need to know is that mustard plasters are not an old wives’ tale. They do work. I’ve seen it time and again.”

  I looked up at him, eyes shining with tears and hope. “So, Doctor, you’re saying that if I put that poultice on Albert’s chest, he’ll start to get better?”

  “I hope so.” He sighed again. “To tell you the truth, there’s not much else you can do. Keep him warm, and try to get some broth in him if he should wake up. Keep putting water on his lips. But aside from that, about all you can do is wait and hope he can fight this off on his own. Keep an eye on him. Send your boy for me if anything changes.”