Authors: Robert Morgan
“It was right before Christmas,” I said.
Your Grandpa thought for a minute and said the day he come back from the settlement was five days before Christmas. And since Wallace was borned the night before, that would make his birthday the nineteenth.
“Wallace was borned after midnight,” I said.
Your Grandpa wrote in the Bible, “Wallace Realus Richards was borned December 20th, 1772.”
The very next time he returned to the settlement, your Grandpa bought an almanac that had a calendar in it. And after that we kept account of the days and months. It helped to have a record so we knowed when a hen was set or a cow would freshen. We had our own bull by the next year.
When each of the children come along your Grandpa wrote down in the big book the day they was borned. You can see them there still:
“Lewis Josephus Richards was borned April 26, 1774.”
“Eller Jarvis Richards was borned October 14, 1775.”
“Willa Elizabeth Richards was borned February 10, 1777.”
Them was hard years, but I was too busy nearly to worry about it. By the time Willa was borned, your Grandpa had near forty acres cleared along the creek. Besides the cows, we had at least ten sheep. One of the places we hadn't cleared was the holler back up the branch over there. It was dark and narrow in that draw, but the cows liked to go up there in early spring because it was warm in the holler and out of the wind, and some of the first green stuff come up in open spots below the spring.
We had no way of knowing they was milksick in that holler. They wasn't no warning when Little Eller took sick in the year she was two. It was early spring, before any leaves had come out on the trees. They was just little dabs of green along the branch and up the coves. Your Grandpa was helling off the fields along the creek and coming in smelling like brush fires and ashes. “Don't you burn no poison ash,” I said. The smoke of that will break you out all over in blisters.
Soon as he got all the stalks and stubble burned off he would start plowing. The first deadening we made had just a few rotten trunks standing in it, and them was falling down in storms and dropping all the big limbs. Some pine stumps caught fire when he burned the field off.
Wallace said one morning the milk tasted bad. He was always careful about his eating. “Mama, the milk is blinky,” he said.
“It can't be blinky,” Realus said. “It was milked last night and has set in the spring ever since.”
“It tastes funny,” Lewis said. He always mocked what Wallace said.
The boys wouldn't drink their milk. But Little Eller went right ahead and drunk a whole cupful. Willa was still nursing then. I didn't even try the milk because I knowed it was fresh. Milk over a day old I put in the churn to clabber. I give the younguns only fresh milk unless they was buttermilk.
It was Sunday, and Realus read some of the Bible to us. It was something he had took to doing after he bought the Bible. We was far away from churches, but he thought the young should hear the Bible read. And once he started, I could see he was right. Later we was going to teach them all to read it for theirselves.
“Mama, my head hurts,” Little Eller said when your Grandpa had finished. Wallace and Lewis run outside to play.
“What give you the headache?” I said. I was in a hurry to get things cleaned up around the house, for I wanted to go looking for creesie greens. It was time for them to be out in the fields along the creek. We'd been living on taters and bread and whatever meat your Grandpa brought in from the woods. I thought it would taste mighty good to have some fresh greens for dinner. I'd saved a piece of streaked bacon to cook with the greens.
“Go lay down,” I said to Little Eller. “That'll make your headache disappear.”
She laid down on the bed while I swept up the ashes and crumbs around the hearth. I had put branch sand on the floor the day before and I was going to sweep it off. Your Grandpa had put in a puncheon floor the year Wallace was born, the year he added the new room and the new loft to the house. Every month or two I polished the floor with sand.
“My head still hurts,” Eller said when I started to sweep.
“Go outside in the sweet wind,” I said. “It may be smoke inside giving you the headache.”
She drug herself out and I swept all the branch sand into the yard. Your Grandpa hadn't built a step yet so you could whisk the dirt right through the door. I wanted to get outside myself. You could tell it was going to warm up in protected places on the south side.
Little Eller stood in the yard shielding her eyes from the sunlight. After a while she come back to the door.
“I hurt all over,” she said.
When a youngun gets the all-overs, you know it has a fever. “Come here,” I said. I put my hand on her forehead, and sure enough, it was hot.
“I feel all shivery,” she said.
Children will run a fever. They's no way you can stop that. They'll get a chill and a sore throat or a bellyache. Especially around the changing time of year, the equinoxes.
“Go back to bed,” I said. “I'll put the quilt over you.” I made her some sassafras tea. Your Grandpa had dug yellowroot the week before to make spring tonic. I had me a little supply of herbs we'd collected. And we had a jug of liquor he had brought back from the settlement for making tinctures. And the year before we'd made some blackberry wine to drink for stomach trouble. I had sulfur to give the kids for worms.
I give Eller some sassafras tea, hoping she would sweat a little and cool off. It helped her drop off to sleep. Willa was sleeping in the cradle, and I figured I'd run down the creek and pick some creesies while I had a chance.
“Don't let Eller come outside,” I hollered to Wallace and Lewis in the yard. I thought Realus was out at the shed looking after the stock. But sometimes on a Sunday morning he would just walk in the woods, far down the creek and up on the ridge, and then around the place, looking for things that needed to be done the coming week. Mostly he held to the Sabbath, unless they was something that had to be done, like fixing up the fence around the garden to keep the deer out, or catching a swarm of bees. On a Sunday he might be out looking for arbutus to bring back to the house. Even then it was hard to find.
I hurried down the creek with my bucket. It was one of them days with sun and clouds passing quick. The clouds throwed shadows like big animals walking by. I did find some greens, but I got my feet awful muddy to reach them. The field dirt had been turned to cream by the freezing and thawing, and it stuck to my shoes. I cropped off my bucket full of greens and headed back, trying to stomp and wipe the mud off as I went. I was coming around the bend by the shed when I heard Wallace hollering. I started running.
“Mama, Eller's having fits,” he said. I run all the way to the house, and sure enough Eller was jerking on the bed and staring
up like she didn't see nothing. I took hold of her but she didn't stop jerking. They wasn't nothing else I could think of to do, and your Grandpa was nowhere around.
I'd heard of worms giving children fits, but Eller looked too healthy to be wormy. And things like typhoid fever would give people fits, but only near the crisis, after the fever had been bad for several days.
“Get me a wet rag,” I said to Wallace. The boys stood there staring. I couldn't hardly see after being out in the sunlight.
Wallace brought me a rag dipped in the water bucket and I put it on Eller's forehead. The twitching and shuddering in her limbs slowed down and finally her eyes blinked and shut. It was another few minutes before she seemed to know I was standing over her. She was hot as a stove and I seen the fever in her eyes. That's when I remembered the milk she had drunk.
Lord, let it not be milksick, I prayed. I kept a cold compress on her forehead, and built up the fire, and waited for your Grandpa to come back.
They's nothing makes you feel helpless as a sick child does. You're responsible, and if they's something wrong it must be your fault. You've got to do something quick but don't know what. You have to be in charge but don't know what to do next, for sickness in a child is mostly a mystery. I knowed they was a remedy, or was supposed to be a remedy, for milksickâif it was milksickâbut I couldn't recall it. My Daddy used to tell all kinds of cures, like tincture of lobelia for rattler bites, and tea made from willow bark for a fever. I wished I could ask him.
Realus didn't come back till near dinner time. He walked into the yard carrying arbutus and some spring beauties. He had that shy look men have when they have gathered flowers for a woman. No telling how far back in the mountains he had gone looking for
them flowers. The petals looked pure white. It pained me to have to tell him the bad news. But Wallace run up to him and said, “Pa, Eller's took sick.”
“How sick?”
“Bad sick, Pa.”
Realus put the flowers on the table and run to the bed. “She took sick after breakfast,” I said. “I think it was the milk.”
Your Grandpa run to the milk pitcher still on the shelf and smelled the spout. Then he come back to the bed and felt Little Eller's forehead. He opened her mouth to look at her tongue.
“She had some kind of fit,” I said.
“If it's milksick, you can tell by the color of her tongue,” he said. “Ain't but one treatment I know of; that's whiskey and honey. Hot whiskey and honey.”
“Is that what the old folks used?” I said.
“That's the only treatment I've heard of.”
I got the whiskey jug down from the shelf and poured some into a saucepan to heat on the fire. We still had a little honey left over from the fall, and I scraped around the jar with a spoon trying to get pure sourwood without any comb. It wouldn't do Eller no good to pour beeswax into her.
“How much honey do you put?” I said.
“I don't know no formula,” he said. “Four or five big spoons to the drink I guess.” He was as scared as I was. It makes a big strong man feel feeble not to be able to help his youngun.
I poured some of the syrup in a cup and Realus held Little Eller up. She was almost asleep with the fever and we tried to wake her. Her face was swelled and red, but her skin was dry.
“Wake up, wake up,” Realus said, cradling her head in his big hand.
“Drink this,” I said, holding the warm cup to her mouth. I
poured the syrup in slowly, and I think some of it went down. A lot spilled around the corners of her mouth and dripped on the pillow. But they wasn't nothing we could do. I poured about a third of the cup in her and put her back down.
Wallace and Lewis stood in the door watching us. Willa had started crying in the cradle.
“Is Eller going to get well?” Wallace said, and swallowed.
“Shhhh,” I said. Fever patients was supposed to have quiet.
That was the longest Sunday evening and night. Your Grandpa and me took turns warming the syrup and pouring some in Eller's mouth. But I don't think she ever knowed what we was doing. She was so fevered and sleepy. In her sleep she fretted and mumbled. I hated to think what kind of dreams she was having.
The children had never had no dinner, so along in the evening I baked some cornbread and washed the creesie greens. I boiled some eggs and we had eggs and creesie greens and bread. We set down at the table, but me and your Grandpa didn't feel like eating, though we nibbled a little at the bread. It showed how worried Realus was. Creesie greens was one of his favoritest things, especially cooked with streaked bacon and a little vinegar sprinkled in.
Finally your Grandpa went out to milk, but he throwed the milk away. He was afraid to give the milk even to the hogs till he knowed for sure it didn't have milksick. “I'll fence off that holler so the cows won't ever go back,” he said.
I had made some candles the winter before and I put one on the stand by the bed. I wanted to be able to see Eller, and to give her more syrup. She still hadn't begun to sweat, and she felt hotter than ever. After the other younguns had gone to bed, and Realus had dropped off to sleep in his chair, I heard Eller talking in her fever. I listened to see what she was saying.
At first I didn't know if it was the candle sputtering or her voice. Then I leaned close and seen her lips move.
“Get away, get away from me,” she was saying. And it was like she was talking to somebody in the room. “Get back, get away.”
And I had this awful feeling, like they was some evil presence in her dream that was there in the room.
“Don't sting me, don't sting me,” she said. She was dreaming about the bee that stung her the summer before. She was playing on the bank not too far from the beegums, and one stung her finger. I squeezed the juice of a ragweed on the sting, but her hand still swelled up. And she scratched it for days afterward because it itched so bad.
I felt a little better, knowing she was just dreaming about the bee. It made her seem not quite as sick. My Mama used to say that somebody, when they got awful sick, could feel the shadow of death getting near them. And the strange thing was, the shadow of death was comforting, it was welcome. People in their right mind didn't seem afraid. It was only fevered people, them out of their head, that hollered and took on.
Little Eller stirred and rolled her head side to side like she was trying to dodge the bee. I wondered if I should wake her up and give her more of the syrup. I couldn't do it without Realus to hold her, and I hated to wake him too. If the fever didn't break I should sponge her off with a damp rag. If a fever goes too long it will stop a child's growth, or bake their brain.
I got up to warm the syrup and heard this scratching by the door. It sounded like a puppy clawing to get in, except it was too high on the door. It was just a little sound, nothing big or scary. Your Grandpa's gun was there in the corner.
The scratching stopped, and then continued. I figured if I held the gun when I opened the door, they wouldn't be no danger.
Such a little noise must be made by something small. It sounded like a mouse scratching at the door post, or maybe in the eave.