Wickett's Remedy (30 page)
Authors: Myla Goldberg
“You’ll have to excuse Patrick,” offered another as he passed. He was too broad-shouldered for his gray uniform. “It’s been months since he’s seen a lady and you really do look two parts angel.” This man’s voice was not Irish, but something in the way he carried himself struck Lydia as familiar.
Lydia Wickett’s generally angelic appearance was helped along that day by the halo of sunlight in her hair. Frank Bentley was not the sort to speak to unknown women and his forwardness that day shocked him.
“Ignore them,” Foley counseled. In response, the broad-shouldered man doffed an invisible hat in Lydia’s direction, inspiring several men after him to do the same. Once the arrivals had cleared the dock, the rest of the staff trailed behind them over the gravel path. Lydia was only vaguely aware of her movements. She felt warm despite the wind and could feel her pulse in her neck.
“Nurse Foley,” she entreated, “please tell me what is going to happen to these men.”
Maybe the clink changed him, but Seaman Ned Frommer remembers Frankie plenty ready to chat up the girls in Scollay Square the night that got him into all that trouble.
The nurse turned toward her. “Didn’t you hear Dr. Gold’s speech?”
“Yes, and it was lovely, but he didn’t really explain what we’d be doing.”
Foley considered her for a moment. “Well, surely Mr. Cory provided you with some information.”
“I wish I’d had sense enough to ask him!” Lydia exclaimed. She dug her fingernails into her palms, hoping to abort her growing sense of dread.
“Lydia,” Nurse Foley began. “I can see that you’re upset, but to study the transmission of any disease requires healthy subjects, and Dr. Gold was quite deluged by prisoners wishing to take part. You ought to think of these men as lucky. For every one of them there are at least three prisoners wishing to be in their shoes. Perhaps you would feel better if you thought of their service here as penance.”
If Lydia had ever doubted Cynthia Foley’s religious affiliation, she could now be certain that the nurse was not a Catholic. No priest would ever prescribe a penance so cruel.
When Lydia reached the hospital, she learned that for the first five days the men would live in the rear barrack to confirm they had not brought flu with them to Gallups. Alone with Nurse Foley in the ward, Lydia’s training resumed where it had left off before the boat’s arrival, but now it was she who found it difficult to concentrate. Though her eyes attended her tutor, her thoughts inhabited the barrack behind the hospital.
When Lydia arrived at the dining hall that evening, the room’s eight extra tables had been pushed together to form two long rectangles. She was cheered by the thought of the volunteers filling up those empty chairs—but when she asked one of her dining companions when the other men would be joining them, she was informed that meals were to be served in two shifts, the first being reserved for the medical staff. Her dining companions were Warner, Worth, Killington,
and Vanderhuff, four junior medical personnel who wore wire spectacles like Dr. Gold’s and reminded Lydia of little boys clomping about in their fathers’ shoes.
“If you ask me,” Warner announced as he gestured with his fork, “it’s indecent those jailbirds coming here after what they did. It steams me up just thinking about it! They hardly deserve what they’re getting.” Whenever Warner’s speech became emphatic, his front forelock flopped back and forth like a horse’s tail swatting flies.
“The flu isn’t exactly a vacation,” observed Killington, who was primarily distinguishable from Warner in that his forelock was blond.
Warner unleashed an eyebrow-raising technique similar to the one Foley had employed with Lydia earlier that morning. “If I was given the choice between the flu or a Rheims trench I’d take the flu in a New York instant,” he cracked.
“Let’s face it, boys,” agreed Vanderhuff who, wanting to emphasize the special merit of what he was about to say, removed his spectacles and dangled them between thumb and forefinger. “The only difference between ourselves and those graybacks is that we’re a hell of a lot smarter.” The four men laughed.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia demurred, “but I’m afraid I don’t get the joke.”
“You’ve got brothers?” Vanderhuff asked.
“Sure,” she answered.
“Then you know as well as the rest of us!” Worth insisted. “Once Wilson started this show anyone with half a brain either got himself an exemption or an assignment somewhere far from the action. Your brothers
didn’t wait like dumb bunnies to be drafted, now did they?”
Lydia felt as if she had been spoon-fed sand.
“Now you’ve done it,” Warner admonished.
“What?” Worth protested. “What did I do?”
Worth’s voice thrummed dully beneath the blood that pounded in Lydia’s ears. Though her feet felt unsteady, she pushed herself away from the table.
“Wickett,” coaxed Killington, “don’t go. Cecil’s a dope. Whatever he said, he didn’t mean it. Stay and finish dinner with us. Looking at you makes the food taste better.”
“Excuse me,” she whispered and turned toward the door.
“Cecil, you idiot,” muttered one of them, indistinguishable from the others now that her back was turned. “Quick, apologize before she’s gone.”
Cecil Worth found Wickett awfully uptight for an Irish girl. She would have been a lot happier on Gallups if she’d had a better sense of humor.
“How can I apologize when I don’t even know what I did?” Worth whined, but she did not hear the answer because by then she had closed the door behind her.
RAPID SPREAD OF DISEASE IN STATE
The death rate for the city was the largest yesterday of any of the days since the ailment became prevalent. Physicians who have been attending to influenza patients are puzzled as to the exact nature of the disease. They cannot follow its symptoms coherently enough to make an intelligent diagnosis of the cases which come under their notice. As a result two bacteriologists from Harvard University have been called
upon to assist in studying the situation and make a report on their conclusion so that local physicians may know exactly what they are dealing with.
Watch Milk Stations
Believing that milk which is not up to the standard might in a measure be responsible for the present condition, the health commissioner had sworn in as his agents a number of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company’s guards to stand watch over two milk stations which the authorities have under suspicion.
So this gob is milking a cow when a patriotic dame walks up and says: “Young man, why aren’t you at the Front?” And then so the gob, he says—
Aw quit it, you told that one a million times.
I don’t know that one, Georgie. What’d he say?
You do too know it! You was there with me the last time.
No I wasn’t neither, or else I’d know it too.
Who’s up for Twenty-One?
Already? Those cards ain’t lost their sea legs yet.
Count me in. I got a feeling the change in scenery changed my luck. What about you, Tommo?
Count me out.
He’s still shaky from the boat ride. Ain’t ya, Tommo?
Yeah, I s’pose so.
Aw look at him, he’s still green around the gills!
I’ll play, but not ’til Soapy tells the rest.
Have you got soup for brains? He told that one just the other day!
Not to me he didn’t, Georgie.
And I’m telling you he did! You was standing right beside me in the yard!
Well then maybe it was too windy for me to hear.
You laughed, ya knucklehead!
Then it’s somebody else you’re thinking of ’cause I’m tellin’ ya I ain’t never heard it.
Yeah, you’re right, it must of been that other gob I’m always stuck with in the yard.
Hey, when was they letting you in the yard and not me?
Chucklehead, you are so dim that when a doctor looks in your ear it’s like looking through a peephole.
And so the gob, he says, “Because the milk is at this end, lady.”
That one went right over his head.
Naw it didn’t neither! It’s one of them scientific jokes, ain’t it? Cows don’t even practic’ly exist over in France, am I right, Soapy?
Sure you’re right, Chucklehead. Deal him in, Lucky.
February 11, 1924
Dear Mr. Driscoll,
It has been almost six years since you asked my permission to sell Wickett’s Remedy. I always supposed you had no luck with Wickett’s or, even worse, that you were killed in the war. Then, last week, I happened to try QD Soda for the first time. You can imagine my surprise when it tasted just like the Remedy, only with bubbles! After that it did not take
me long to learn that the same young man I once met was now the president of QD Soda. I am glad for your success. When I met you I thought you were a person who would make his own way in the world.
Mr. Driscoll, I know that you would not have forgotten our agreement. Perhaps you sent me a letter that I never received, or perhaps you lost my address. It does not matter. Here is my present address and a phone number where I can be reached. Please contact me however you like.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Henry Wickett (former)
Ralph Finnister
QD Soda Headquarters
162 B Street
Boston, MA 02127
June 7, 1993
The Honorable Mayor Raymond Flynn
Mayor’s Office
1 City Hall Plaza
Boston, MA 02201
Dear Mayor Flynn:
On behalf of everyone at QD Soda, I would like to congratulate you. Your nomination by President Clinton to the United States Ambassadorship to the Vatican brings pride to every citizen of Boston.
Although we are losing a mayor, it is both humbling and soul-stirring to think that in some small but tangible way we are all gaining a place in the house of His Holiness!
I imagine the demands on your increasingly limited time are impressive, but we at QD Soda sincerely hope that in the final days of your mayorship you will choose to honor us with your presence at the QD Soda block-renaming ceremony, which remains the cornerstone of our 75th Anniversary Jubilee celebration. If by the time of our festivities you have already been confirmed, we hope that you will attend in your capacity as the United States Ambassador to the Vatican.