“That’s Ault Allen, Bob’s older brother, head of the clan now.”
The word “clan” seemed odd. After all, these were our own Appalachians, not the highlands of Scotland. But my attention was on what Dr. MacNeill was saying as he looked straight at the tightly huddled group before him, especially at the woman and bearded man, “Mary—Ault—I’d best speak plain.” There was a somber note in his voice. “Bob’s bad off—”
The lamplight on the woman Mary’s face illuminated a stolid person, accustomed to hardship, but rigid now with fear. “Be it a—mortalizing—wound, Doc?” Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper.
The doctor’s voice was gentle. “Don’t know the answer to that, Mary. But Bob’s pulse is real slow, breathin’ irregular, reflexes bad, one eye doesn’t respond to light.” His eyes, searching her face, told him that she still did not understand. “That means, Mary, it’s getting almost impossible for Bob to breathe.”
The woman was using all her strength to keep from sobbing. The effort of swallowing back her tears made the veins in her neck stand out like cords. “Is—Bob—a-hurtin’, Doc?”
“No, Mary. He’s not, for sure. He’s in a coma—like a deep sleep, getting deeper all the time. Listen to me now, you and Ault, listen carefully. Where the tree hit Bob’s head, there’s some bleeding inside his skull, probably pressing on his brain. If I leave the bleeding there, Bob will die.”
He paused, groping for words, and I thought I saw the glisten of tears in the doctor’s eyes. “There’s one chance of bringing Bob round though. That’s to bore a small hole in the skull to let the bad blood out and try to lift the pressure. Mary, I want to tell you true—I’ve never tried this operation. I saw this trephine, the burr hole, they call it, done once by an old professor of mine, Starr Gatlin. He told us then that it was a risky operation. You understand what I’m saying? It’s chancy either way. Mary, you’re Bob’s wife. It’s up to you to decide. Will you let me try the operation?”
In the stillness, it was now apparent how labored the breathing of the man on the bed was—gasps for air, irregular, painful to hear, rent the silence. Mary Allen rocked soundlessly on her heels, grappling with the stark alternative the doctor had handed her. Yet no whimper escaped her tight-set lips. Watching her, I felt a great compassion and thought how the grief of the inarticulate cuts so much deeper than the loud wailing of the self-pitying.
“I say ‘Naw.’ I stand against it,” the heavily bearded man exclaimed. “Life and death is in the hands of the Lord. We’ve no call to tamper with it.”
Then Mary spoke. “No, Ault, ye’re wrong.” Her voice was still low, but there was the resolution of iron and granite in it. “We’ve no cause to let go so long as there’s one livin’ breath left in Bob. Try, Doc! Don’t mind Ault. We’ve got six young’uns. Did anything happen to Bob, reckon we couldn’t stand it. Try, I want you to try. Will ye try, Doc?”
The doctor waited, looked at Ault. “Ault . . . ?”
“We-ll, we-ll—” Ault pulled at his beard. Obviously he was torn, though he seemed like a hard type, grim and cold. “Mary, you’re his woman,” he said at last. “Borin’ holes in a man’s skull don’t make no sense to me. But don’t reckon I’m called on to stop ye, if’n that’s what ye want. But I don’t mind tellin’ ye, I don’t like meddlin’ with the Lord’s business.” He looked at Dr. MacNeill and shrugged. “Hit’s up to you.”
The doctor himself wavered for another moment. I thought I understood the cruel dilemma. There was not much hope for Mr. Allen, with or without the operation. In spite of all the doctor’s attempts to explain the situation to Bob’s relatives, if the patient died during the operation Dr. MacNeill knew that some of these people would blame him. And he would have a mountain cabin for an operating theatre, no trained nurses, little light, not even proper surgical instruments. How does a doctor weigh his own limitations of knowledge and skill against a man’s only chance to live?
At last the doctor announced tersely, “We’ll go ahead. All of you in this room have heard that I’ve been given the family’s permission for this operation. Jeb Spencer, are you here? And John Holcomb? I need your help.”
At this, the crowd surged forward eagerly. Mixed with their desire to help was curiosity about every detail of the operation. They wanted to get close—and still closer—to see. There was that strange fascination that people have with blood and accidents and death, like children shivering deliciously at a horror story.
I knew that Dr. MacNeill had just made a courageous decision. But looking at him with his tousled hair and his rumpled shirtsleeves as he directed the preparations, ordering this, asking for that, I wondered if it was not a foolhardy choice. Certainly there had never been such a setting for a major operation: the wind whistling around a mountain cabin; dirty pots and pans by the hearth; a baby crying in its mother’s arms; the smell of chewing tobacco; all these people crowded into one room with the air getting fouler by the minute. It would be germ-laden. Surely the doctor was going to ask these staring people to leave.
But Dr. MacNeill was saying, “We’ll use that kitchen table. Fairlight, will you clear it off and let Lizzie help you scrub it? And Jeb, you have a razor, don’t you, and a straight awl and hammer?”
I wondered if the doctor was going to use the awl and hammer as part of his surgical instruments. Jeb Spencer looked at the doctor quizzically for a moment, then only nodded and went to fetch the tools.
“Need the razor strop too, Jeb. And Ben Pentland, are you here? Can you help? Need lots of boiling water. Will you and some of the other men get water from the spring? Better start a fire under the wash pot in the yard. And Fairlight, how many pans do you have?”
Slowly Mrs. Spencer answered, “Three big’uns and a small’un. But two are dirty.”
“Well, get them all cleaned up and filled with water and on the fire. And Jeb, you don’t have another table, do you?” As the man shook his head, Dr. MacNeill went on, “Then get me a couple of saw horses and two or three boards. That will have to do for an instrument table. And hurry.”
At last came the announcement I had been expecting. “The whole kit and caboodle of you’d best leave,” the doctor said gruffly. His eyes swept the room and stopped on me, noticing me for the first time since he had entered the cabin. An expression I could not read clouded his rugged features, an intense light seemed to burn suddenly in his deep-set eyes. He stared at me for a long time without speaking, fingers plucking the unkempt hair on his neck. I felt he was seeing me as the cause of the accident, that he wished none of them in the Cove had ever set eyes on me.
Finally the doctor turned to the others. “If you close-kin feel called on to stay, then you’ll have to stand off there now, clear to that side. And no crying or wailing.”
The people had respect for the doctor, I could see that. Yet after this ultimatum, only a few of them left. I wanted to slip out, but I was on the side of the room farthest from the door, penned in by the crowd.
From the saddlebags on his horse, the doctor had brought muslin bags containing bandages, sutures, and instruments. Mr. Spencer had found the awl and hammer, and the doctor had put these tools and all of his instruments into a pot of boiling water. After a time he began laying supplies out on a clean cloth spread on the sawhorse table.
As the doctor turned his back to tend to the sterilizing, an inquisitive girl with pigtails slipped up and began fingering some of the instruments already laid out on the table. Dr. MacNeill wheeled and caught her. “Confound! You little scamp—” She cringed, covered her face with her arm, as if she thought he was going to strike her. “I ought to tan you right enough, for fooling with those. Now you can just tear off for home—now. And no use blubbering either.” And he began sterilizing over again everything the girl had touched. Though I was impressed by this thoroughness, I couldn’t help wondering what good it would do in such an operating theatre. Why try to sterilize instruments when not six feet away stood an anything-but-sterile audience breathi
ng on the scene? One woman at the front of the group, who wore a kind of rusty-looking black cape, kept rocking on her heels so that the cape swayed back and forth, fanning the air. Several people were coughing. One man sneezed with no handkerchief in evidence.
As some of the men lifted Bob Allen onto the makeshift operating table, I heard a scuffle at the door and turned to see Bob’s wife rushing toward the still form with a double-bitted axe in her hands. As I saw her lift the axe over her shoulder and give a mighty heave, I clapped my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream. With a crash the axe bit deep into the floorboard under the table. Then with shaking hands the woman took a string and tied it around one of her husband’s wrists. I was too stunned to move. To my surprise, Dr. MacNeill took this wild behavior quite calmly. Quietly he said, “All right, Mary. That’s fine. That should be helpful. There’s not a solitary thing more that you can do for Bob. Will some of you take care of Mary until this is all over?” His voice was kind.
Then the doctor began vigorously wielding the razor back and forth on the strop, up and down. Carefully he washed his own hands in one of the basins, then began shaving Mr. Allen’s head. After all the patient’s hair was in the basin, Dr. MacNeill began wiping the shaved head with what was unmistakably ether. The sickly sweet odor hung heavily in the close air. Hastily I slipped through and behind the people and out the door just as the doctor was ready to make the first incision.
Outside I breathed deeply of the cold air, trying to get the smell of the ether out of my nostrils and shake off the effect of the nightmare scene. The three hounds were no longer baying. The smallest of them came and nibbled my hand. I patted the little dog’s head, feeling a kinship with this small black and white animal. Once again there poured through me the feeling of being where I did not belong. Here people still believed in omens and witchcraft. I had been born a century later. I wondered if anything but evil could come of this meeting of two worlds—evil that had already begun.
I came out of my black reverie to see that the ether had driven several other people into the yard including Mrs. Spencer, who was standing only a few feet away. I moved closer to her. “Mrs. Spencer,” I began, “did the doctor call you ‘Fairlight’?”
“Aye—”
“That’s a lovely name.”
She nodded, but seemed preoccupied. Her eyes were focused on the sun setting behind the tall pinnacle opposite. I looked from her face to the peak. Rugged scenery certainly—majestic—but I did not understand her intense concentration on it. Then suddenly, the sun dipped and the shadow of the mountain fell across us, lying like a dark hand across the top of the ridge where we stood. I felt the woman beside me cringe, draw into herself, go rigid. I said to lighten the moment, “The sun sinks in a hurry here, doesn’t it?” She had not heard me. “Mrs. Spencer—?”
But the eyes in her lovely face were glazed, turned toward that peak across the valley, seeing not the mountain that had shut out the sun, but some specter I could not glimpse. I stood there ill at ease, not knowing what to say.
In the silence I could hear the sound of shuffling feet as the little knot of people in the yard moved about, trying to keep warm. My hands and feet were numb with the cold; Mrs. Spencer’s must be too. I wondered how she could stand there barefoot, so stiff, so unmoving, not speaking. But the fire under the water pot in the yard had long since gone out, not even embers glowing now.
A long time passed, I had no idea how long. Finally a voice spoke from the shadows: my friend, Mr. Pentland. “You must be real tired,” he said kindly. “Why don’t I take you on out to the mission? It’s not far now—”
“But Mr. Allen—How is he? Is he—”
“Still livin’ and breathin’,” he announced to the group in the yard. “Operation’s all done with. Doc MacNeill found the blood clots all right. Says Bob has a fightin’ chance now, if the bleedin’ in his head don’t start up again.”
“Oh, I’m glad, so glad.” I laughed weakly with relief. Mr. Pentland had my valise in his hand and was already starting. I had had all the walking I wanted for one day, but there was no alternative except to follow him and hope that his “not far” was true this time.
Mostly Mr. Pentland walked in silence, not seeming to want to talk, and I was too tired for conversation. I had not realized what a physical and emotional toll the day had taken until we were within sight of the mission house—a large square frame building set in a big yard with the dark bulk of a mountain rising sheer behind it. Now that we were almost to our destination, I could feel tears of exhaustion just under the surface. I stumbled once just as we reached the gate and Mr. Pentland held me up.
Someone holding a lamp opened the front door. Through a haze of fatigue I saw a tall young man with black hair, warm brown eyes, a wide smile, heard a deep voice. A firm hand welcomed me.
Then an older woman, tall, almost gaunt, with angular features, led me up the stairs. “Now this will be your room. I’m hanging your coat here to dry. Wet as water it is.” She seemed to be bustling about a great deal. Or was it just that I was so tired? “Are you hungry?”
“No. Thank you. No, I’m fine.” I wished that the jumpy woman would leave.
She hovered about awhile longer. When she finally left me, I fell across the bed too weary even to undress. The last thing I remembered was the sound of a mountain stream somewhere close—flowing—flowing into the night.
I slept late the next morning. Sometime during the night I must have awakened enough to creep beneath the covers. My body was stiff and sore from the walk over the mountains. Gingerly I tested out this muscle and that, meanwhile letting my mind roam over the events of the day before. Already the day just past had an illusory quality like a dream. But if a dream, what was I doing in this strange little room? There was no luxury here: a washstand with a white china pitcher and bowl; an old dresser with a cracked mirror above it; two straight chairs; the plainest kind of white net curtains; two cotton rag rugs on the bare floor.
Curious to know what this Cutter Gap looked like, I slid out of bed and hobbled stiffly over to one of the windows. Nothing had prepared me for what met my eyes. Mountain ranges were folded one behind the other, in the foreground snow-covered; behind that, patches of emerald green showing through; on beyond, deeper green. Then the blues began. On the smoky blue of the far summits fluffy white clouds rested like wisps of cotton. I counted the mountain ranges, eleven of them rising up and up toward the vault of the sky. The Great Smokies . . . now I understood. That peculiar smoky-blue color and the adjective “great”—so right for these towering heights.
As I lifted my eyes to those summits, involuntarily I took a deep breath. The night before, as I had stood outside the Spencer cabin knowing that because of me a man was undergoing a brain operation, probably dying, I had believed that accepting this teaching job had been a dreadful mistake. I wondered about this now, less sure. Had Mr. Allen survived the night? I still did not know. But meanwhile in the face of tragedy and almost because of it, these mountains were whispering to me a different message. I did not realize it then, but from that moment this became my view, a source of peace and strength, a stabilizing energy that entered into me to quiet the mind and satisfy the heart.
Just below my window a double plank wall cleared of snow led from the door of the house to the gate. At the edge of the yard was a stand of fir trees. I could see smoke rising from the chimney of a cabin just beyond the firs.
Someone downstairs had heard me and was knocking on my door. It turned out to be the woman who had helped me up the stairs the night before. “I’m Ida Grantland, David’s sister,” she said. “You were so tired last night—Don’t think you quite took in what we were saying.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, everything was hazy. Still is, a little.”
She was solicitous. “You did sleep well—I hope?”
“Just fine, thank you.”
Miss Grantland was a plain woman with sparse graying hair drawn straight back into a meager bun so t
hat her scalp showed through in several places, and with a nose too large for her narrow face. Already I could see that she was a tense person. Restive habits betrayed it: the way she often sucked in her thin lower lip, and restlessly worked her thumbs in and out, back and forth against the other fingers.
“Oh, Miss Grantland, tell me—I’ve got to know. Mr. Allen, how is he? Is he—?” I couldn’t quite say it.
“Alive? Oh, yes. Dr. MacNeill spent the night there. Miss Alice Henderson too. She got back from Big Lick Spring after sundown. Went right to the Spencers soon as she heard about the operation. She’s catching a wink of sleep now.”
“Then Mr. Allen’s out of danger?”
“Not yet, I take it, or the doctor wouldn’t still be there.
Now about breakfast—everybody else has eaten. When you get, ah—changed”—and she looked pointedly at the crumpled dress I had slept in—“come on down to the dining room. I’ll see you get something.”
I wondered who “everybody” was, how many lived in this house.
Miss Grantland went on, “Miss Henderson would like to see you later today.” She crossed the room to the window and pointed. “See that smoke? That’s her cabin—just there, beyond the spruce trees.”
“Oh—yes, I see. She lives by herself?”
“Yes. She said to tell you maybe late this morning.” The woman smiled at me as she turned to leave the room, but the smile seemed like an afterthought: it trailed behind Miss Ida and lingered with me as I dressed. It was as if her brain had ordered, “Now smile.” So her facial muscles had obediently jerked the lips back showing teeth, but producing a wooden effect with no warmth at all.
The dining room turned out to be an unadorned square room at the back of the house with unplastered tongue-and-groove walls, a round golden oak table in the center. As I ate the abundant breakfast Miss Grantland served me—hot oatmeal followed by buckwheat cakes and maple syrup—she delivered a message: “David’s at the Low Gap School. Had to leave early this morning. He said to tell you he was sorry not to be here when you woke up.”