Hattie Big Sky Part 22

I held my breath as the window gla.s.s in the door rattled, then stilled. I turned to Mr. Ebgard. "I can't thank you enough."

"Nor I you," he said. "Now you go home and do what you need to so I can give you that final certificate come November."

"Give?" I teased. "For thirty-seven seventy-five, you mean."

"I'll take great personal pleasure in taking your cash and in signing my name to your deed." He reached for his hat. "Would you do me the honor of joining me for dinner? My treat."

Where I couldn't have eaten a bite before coming in, I was suddenly starving! "I'd love to." I took his arm and we strolled over to Erickson's Hotel and ate the biggest dinner they served.

CHAPTER 21.

OCTOBER 1918.

THE ARLINGTON NEWS.

Honyocker's Homily ~ An Ill Wind The Spanish influenza epidemic has become more than a news item for us here. I will confess that until now, though I have prayed for the many stricken by this plague, the situation only touched me in a superficial way. After all, I don't know those Bostonians or San Franciscans or Kansans who have taken ill; the numbers, though alarming, held no personal arithmetic. But when I learned that Mr. Ballagh, a baker at Hanson's Cash Grocery and Bakery, had taken ill and died, my heart ached. It seems the misfortune of one can plow a deeper furrow in the heart than the misfortune of millions.

Rooster Jim brought the news back from one of his trips to Wolf Point. "The Spanish influenza," he said. "Mr. Hanson and his whole family are sick with it. Same for the Ebgards." And I'd heard that Mrs. Martin hadn't left Sarah's bedside in three days.

Leafie got busy and whipped up huge batches of sagebrush tea. "This is disgusting!" I spit out my first sip.

"Most stuff that's good for you is," she answered. She set a big gla.s.s jar of the murky tea on my kitchen table. "I want you to drink every drop of that," she ordered. "I don't know much about this influenza, but I know sagebrush tea's good for most of what ails." We shared supper together and then she left, headed for Perilee's to deliver a jar of tea there.

The next morning, I had two visitors, bright and early.

"Hey, Hattie!" Chase called out. "Guess where we're going?"

"To New York City?"

Chase laughed. "Even better. Karl's letting me ride along to Richey to pick up the part for the tractor." He hopped out of the wagon and handed me a strudel Perilee had sent over. "And don't tell Mama, but we're going to buy her a sideboard while we're there," he confided. "Karl put some money down on it last time he was to town." Chase smiled. "Now she'll have a proper place to put her silver and such."

After I saw them off, I did my ch.o.r.es, then walked over for supper with Perilee and the girls. We quilted awhile on a Flying Geese quilt we'd pieced. It was one of the nicest things we'd done; we planned to enter it in the Dawson County fair next year.

"My eyes are starting to get blurry." I finished up the last of my thread. "I've got to quit. I'll come back tomorrow and we can finish."

Perilee yawned. "I'm bushed myself. What with all the excitement of getting those men off, I think I've worn myself pure out." I kissed Mattie, Fern, and Lottie and walked home.

Plug was stubborn the next morning. I wondered aloud at his behavior. "What is galling you?" Finally I got him fed and turned out. But by the time my ch.o.r.es were done, it was well after noon dinner that I started off for Perilee's. Fall nipped at the air, sending a little shiver through me. I remembered all those days this past summer when I'd craved a fresh breeze. I wasn't going to fuss about a little chill now!

As I walked, I thought about a quilt I'd been wanting to make. I want to create a new pattern, I'd written to Charlie, after he wrote to thank me for the Charlie's Propeller quilt. Something no one has ever done before. One that captures this Montana country. I had my eye on a piece of soft blue chambray at Mr. Dye's store for the sky and I'd been saving sc.r.a.ps of brown gingham for the prairie. What would I call it? Montana Muddle? I smiled. That would've been a good name for some of the first quilts I made. But my st.i.tching was getting surer and my eye for color stronger. All the Red Cross ladies were asking my opinion now for color combinations for the patchworks they were making to send to the soldiers. Big Sky Star? That sounded real nice. Then it came to me: Hattie's Heartland. I smiled. That was it. I couldn't wait to tell Perilee what I'd cooked up.

As I crested the coulee by Perilee's, I glanced across the prairie. Something didn't look right. It only took a moment to realize what it was. There was no smoke coming out of Perilee's chimney. On this cool day. With a new baby.

My feet flew down the hill.

"Perilee? Mattie?" I pounded on the door. "It's me." There was no answer but a weak mewl, as if from a newborn kitten. I lifted the latch and stepped inside.

"Oh, sweet Jesus." My legs buckled beneath me. Perilee lay on her bed, the baby across her chest. Mattie and Fern were ashen heaps, feverish on the floor. I tossed my shawl aside and moved to the stove, talking all the while.

"I'm here, Perilee. It's Hattie. Everything's going to be all right." I got a fire lit and set a kettle on to boil. They were all burning up with fever, so there was no point in boiling water, but it gave me time to gather my thoughts to figure out what to do. No time to go for Leafie. I was afraid of what might happen while I was gone.

"Baby." Perilee whispered the word and handed Lottie to me. She couldn't have felt hotter if I'd picked her up out of the oven.

"We better get her cooled down," I said. Perilee nodded weakly. She started to say something else, but the effort launched her into a coughing fit. She turned away, but not before I saw she was coughing up awful stuff.

While I drew water for Lottie's bath, I saw the still-full jar of sagebrush tea. "Darn you, Perilee," I said under my breath. It was wretched, but it might have helped. No use fussing now. I poured the tea into a saucepan and set it to warm over the stove.

I stripped the baby out of her sweat-soaked dress and diaper. She cried-hers was the little mewl I'd heard from outside the door. Her tongue was coated white, and her eyelids drooped. "There, there," I cooed, and gently bathed her with the cool well water. It seemed to ease her some. After the bath, I diapered her but left her otherwise bare. I broke some bread into a bowl, poured milk mixed with sagebrush tea over it, and fed her tiny bits. Then I laid her in her bed and ministered to Mattie and Fern.

Fern seemed to perk up some after her bath and nourishment, but not Mattie. A wave of nausea swept over me at the sight of her head lolling this way and that when I put her back to bed.

Perilee fought with me when it was her turn for the treatment. "The girls," she protested hoa.r.s.ely.

"They've had their turn and now it's yours." I bathed her face and arms and legs with the cool water. Only three small bites of food pa.s.sed between her lips before she fell into a fitful sleep. She woke only to cough, a miserable gut-wrenching cough, as if she was trying to turn herself inside out. In the kitchen, I took two onions and sliced them thin and began to fry them on the stove. When they were soft and transparent, I mixed them with flour to make a poultice and put the whole mess on Perilee's chest. Aunt Ivy had always said onions were the best thing for drawing out the bad vapors of a cough. I didn't know what else to do.

That poultice brought some quiet. Perilee seemed to sleep, truly sleep, for several hours. During that time, I kept bathing the girls, forcing tea or water or graveyard stew into them.

Fern whimpered at my every ministration, but Mattie didn't say a word. It was as if it took all of her strength to draw in breath after grating breath. No matter how many times I bathed her, her face was hot and flushed.

This was my pattern all through the day and the night and into the next morning. I moved from one to the next, bathing, coaxing, petting, soothing. I was too busy to even pray.

I had finished bathing Mattie once again. She was as limp as Mulie when I nestled her back in her bed.

"Sleep well, Mattie." I stroked her damp hair. "When you get to feeling perkier, I promise to buy you any flavor soda you want!"

A tiny smile flickered across her gray face. I squeezed her hand one-two-three in our secret code. She didn't squeeze back.

"Hattie," Perilee called softly from the bedroom. I dragged myself in and helped her use the chamber pot. It was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. But it was time to change Lottie and Fern and bathe them again. This time, Fern ate ten bites of toast and milk.

"Good girl!" Funny how such a small thing can cause complete elation. Yawning, I rinsed out the bowl. I had to sit. Just for a minute. The rocker was right there. Oh, it was heaven to be off my feet. For a minute.

I jerked awake. Heart pounding, I flew to check on my charges. Lottie was cooler and sleeping quietly. Fern's color seemed improved, and Perilee was still sound asleep. When I got to Mattie, her lips were as purple as the spring crocus, her skin the color of wet ashes. She was mumbling, calling for Mulie.

"Here she is, sweet, right here." I placed the rag doll in her arms. But she didn't seem to see it. She kept reaching, kept crying out.

"Mama!" she said. And then she was quiet. I picked her up to rock her, her hot tiny body spooned next to mine. I rocked her for several minutes before I realized the awful grating sound had stopped.

"Mattie?" No response. I took her warm hand and squeezed it, one-two-three. Nothing.

"Mattie, honey. Wake up." I held her close. Oh G.o.d, don't take this child. Please don't take this child.

I kept rocking for quite some time. If I kept rocking, it wouldn't be real. Mattie would wake up from this sleep, calling for Mulie and chattering away about the wonderful dreams she'd had. She'd wiggle off my lap and want to play nurse to Mulie, as I'd played nurse to her. She'd sing a warbly lullaby to Fern and Lottie. She'd pat her mother's cheek. She'd do all those things and more if only I kept rocking. Then she'd wake up.

Fern stirred. "Mama," she moaned.

"Shh, shh," I quieted her. "I'm with Mattie now."

Fern's voice woke Lottie and she began to cry. I slowed the rocker. The others needed me. I had to get up again.

Even though she could no longer feel it, I stroked Mattie's forehead. My heart unraveled as I bent to kiss her. Why this sweet child? Oh, why? I stopped the rocker and sat for several minutes more, tears pooling in my eyes, holding that precious body.

"Mama," Fern whimpered.

I stood up and carried Mattie to the parlor. I gently laid our little magpie down on the sofa, Mulie across her chest. Slowly I slid a quilt up over her pudgy toes, over those hands I'd held in mine so many times, and lastly over the top of her brown curls.

"Hattie?" Perilee's weak voice straggled out of the bedroom.

"Coming." I wiped my eyes with my ap.r.o.n. As much as I wanted to have someone share this pain, I knew I could not tell Perilee. Not yet. Not till she was out of the woods herself.

The day pa.s.sed in a blur of bathing, cleaning, feeding, and forcing that vile tea into Fern, Lottie, and Perilee. I didn't dare sleep. I would not sleep. Only by staying awake could I keep death from visiting this house again.

At breakfast the third day, Leafie came. "I was by your place and the chickens were cussing up a storm to be fed," she said. "Figured you were here."

"It's bad, Leafie." I wanted to fall into her arms and be comforted, as I hadn't been able to comfort Perilee.

Leafie took in the quilt-shrouded body I had placed in the parlor.

"Ah, no. Not our magpie. Our Mattie." She knelt by the sofa for several minutes. "Does Perilee know?"

I nodded, aching with the rawness of that memory. Perilee had been so strangely quiet when I'd told her the bad news. It was as if she'd known it all along, even in her fevered state.

Leafie closed her eyes. I handed her a handkerchief and we stood together, arms around each other's waist, weeping for the senseless loss.

She dabbed her eyes. "We need to bathe her. Dress her." Her voice caught. "What does Perilee want her to wear?" That question started a fresh new flood of tears. But we composed ourselves, and Leafie went to talk with Perilee. She brought back Mattie's Sunday school dress. Then we bathed and dressed her one last time.

As we were finishing, I heard horses. Karl and Chase! I stopped them at the door. "Don't come in. This house is full of the influenza." I could not meet Karl's eyes. "You'd best stay at my place for a while."

Karl nodded. He sent Chase on a pointless errand to the barn. "There is bad news," he said.

I pulled my shawl tighter. "Mattie." It was all I could manage.

Karl covered his eyes with his hands. Then he nodded again and turned away.

The next day, Karl came back with a small, sound coffin he had built himself. October 28, the day I turned seventeen, was now a funeral day.

Perilee was still too ill to move, so Karl, Leafie, Chase, and I would bury our girl.

I had asked Karl to bring my navy dress. And something else. "My flowers are all withered," I said. "Go to Uncle Chester's trunk in the barn. Bring me the crepe paper flowers you'll find there."

The morning of the funeral, I melted paraffin on the stove and then carefully dipped each crepe paper flower. I carried the waxy bouquet carefully as I joined the others. Before Karl closed the coffin lid, I took one last look, pleased to see Mulie tucked by Mattie's side.

"I did that," said Chase. "I didn't want her to be lonely."

I pressed my fingertips to my lips, not wanting to cry in front of Chase. After a moment, I felt composed enough to put my arm through his and we followed Leafie and Karl out beyond the house.

"Perilee wants her here," said Karl.

Karl, Chase, Leafie, and I stood by the freshly dug grave, on the top of the coulee east of the house. "She can see the sunrise each morning," said Karl.

"You gonna say some words?" asked Leafie.

"Me?"

Leafie gave me a look. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. I didn't know what words to say. I began anyway.

"Lord, it may take you some time to get used to our Mattie. She can talk your ear off."

Chase and Karl both nodded.

"But you'll soon come to see that knowing her is like having sunshine and strawberries every day. We ask you to take very good care of our little magpie. And help us, Lord..." Here my voice wobbled. "Help us get used to the quiet s.p.a.ces she used to fill up."

Leafie blew her nose. "Amen."

Chase wrapped his arms around my waist, and I held him close. Karl lifted shovel-after shovelful of dirt onto the fine wooden box he'd built. We stayed until the hole was filled. Then I planted the three waxed flowers I'd brought. I felt as if I might crack in two as we all carried our sorrow back to the house.

Ours was not the only loss on that prairie. The Nefzgers lost their Leta, Mr. Ebgard his wife. Not even the wealth of the Martins could save them from grief: the youngest boy, Lon, survived his bout, as did Sarah, but their mother, who was a faithful nurse to both, did not.

Mr. Dye sold far too many black armbands for mourning and kept selling them right into November.