Fatherhood (5 page)

NAMELESS STONES

M
y father was a doctor in the northern foothills of Alabama. He was a large, mild-mannered man who took great care with his patients, carefully explaining everything he did to them before he did it. By Depression standards, he had a well-heeled town practice which rarely ventured out into the mountain regions above our town.

Most of his patients were local businessmen and professionals. Yet, for all that, my father still lived in what seemed to me a state of perpetual crisis. Night and day were pretty much indistinguishable in our house. Babies had to be born when they were ready, and people hurt or frightened came to him for help regardless of the hour.

There weren't many nurses in those days, and so after my mother died young, while attempting to have a second child, it was up to me to assist my father, to boil the water and arrange the instruments, to light the lanterns and put out the heavy cotton gauze and bandages, and at times to press down hard on someone's arm or leg or chest to keep him from injurying himself while he thrashed about in pain.

In those days medicine was a muscular profession—even for a nine-year-old boy.

From time to time people from the rural areas would wander in, bringing their various sufferings to our door. I remember them well: large women in flour-sack dresses and men in soiled gray shirts. Their children seemed to be hardly dressed at all. They were brought only when their parents had to bring them, when they had been sick so long or so terribly that their parents had finally become frightened for them.

Often too late.

Often they died.

Billie Withers died. He was a small, thin boy of four or five. His hands had a certain female delicacy to them, very soft and pale. Sometimes now when I reach over to take my wife's hands, I remember his.

The Withers were mountain people. And that is not to say they were stubborn or independent. It is not just to say they held to a code of silence or endurance.

They were mountain people in the sense that mountain life was the only life they knew. The ridges and granite cliffs were their cosmos. They could not imagine a world beyond them.

That in Istanbul muezzins called the people to prayer from lofty minarets or in Paris women danced barebreasted upon ornate revolving stages or in India people worshipped a god with an elephant's head—it was not that these things were unknown to the Withers and their neighbors; they simply did not exist for them.

What existed was the mountains, and they lived within their limited reaches like flowers captured in a vase. The farthest ridge was for them a beach, and all which lay beyond it an unknown, unknowable sea.

John Withers brought his son Billie to our house on a cold December night. When I opened the door, he snatched his hat from his head and held it reverently in his hand. “Is Doctor Franklin here?” he asked.

He was wearing a pair of denim overalls over a faded yellowish shirt with a frayed collar. His face was drawn, worried. He looked as though he had lost a good deal of sleep.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Mr. Withers nodded shyly at the small boy cradled in his arms. “Mah boy's in bad shape, I thank,” he said.

I stepped back and asked him to come in.

He hesitated, started to move, then drew back as if his boots had rooted to the porch. “I hate to trouble you so late.”

I opened the door a bit farther. “It's all right. I'll get my father. Come on in.”

Mr. Withers stepped through the door into the foyer and glanced timidly left and right. “I shore do hate to put you to this trouble.”

“Just stay here,” I said. “My father will be out in a minute.”

I walked quickly back to the kitchen where my father was having one of his hasty late-night snacks. He had gotten used to never going to bed before midnight during the early days of his practice and had never been able to readjust his hours.

“Who's at the door?” he asked.

“A man with a little kid.”

He pushed himself away from the table, still looking longingly at a half-eaten piece of chicken. “All right, go make sure my office is straightened up.”

I ran to my father's examining room and began putting things in their proper places. He never had been a neat man, and his proper material element seemed to be a kind of usable but ultimately incomprehensible chaos.

His medicine bottles were deposited randomly throughout the office, and his instruments lay about on table tops, shelves and chairs. It was as if the logic which science brought to his mind had been imposed upon some older and less ordered beast.

Billie was whimpering slightly when Mr. Withers brought him into the room.

“Just lay him down there,” my father said, and Mr. Withers gently placed Billie on the black cushioned table in the middle of the room.

My father stepped over to the table and began loosening the patchwork quilt covering Billie. “How long has he been sick?” he asked.

“'Bout a week,” Mr. Withers said. “He ain't been no better in a while.”

My father brought one of the kerosene lanterns over to the table for light.

“Hi there,” he said brightly when Billie opened his eyes and stared languidly at the light.

“You're not feeling too well, I guess,” my father said, comfortingly.

Billie squinted and tried to answer.

“No, no,” my father said, “just rest still. We'll have you out playing ball in no time.”

Billie's eyes closed slowly. He had a small, beautiful face, a mountain boy's face, open and unvarnished as the day he was born. Beneath the glaze, his eyes seemed to be greenish with spots of brown. His hair was light brown streaked with blond. His skin was stretched tight against his cheek bones. In the lantern light it looked as smooth and shiny as unpainted porcelain.

“You treat him at all?” my father asked Mr. Withers.

“I dist wrapped 'im up and kep' 'im by the far,” Mr. Withers said. He thought a moment, then added: “Mah wife's people come over and prayed fer 'im.”

My father tugged gently at Billie's chin, slowly prying open his mouth. He peered in for a moment, delicately pressing down on Billie's tongue with a depressor. He sniffed his breath then listened to his heart.

I watched my father carefully and saw a slight wincing of his eyes. I had seen that look before, a tiny drawing together of the eyebrows and narrowing of the eyes. It was so subtle a gesture I doubted any but me had ever detected it.

It meant Billie Withers was most likely dying.

Mr. Withers watched my father closely. One of his hands nervously fingered the carpenter's loop in his overalls while the other rhythmically squeezed his crumpled gray hat.

Finally, my father turned to him. “Is your wife at home?”

“She's dead,” Mr. Withers said. He continued to stare at Billie.

“I didn't catch your name, I don't believe.”

“Withers. John Withers.”

My father walked over to the medicine chest and took out a bottle of dark-colored serum. He filled a hypodermic needle with a large dosage.

“Your boy has diphtheria, Mr. Withers,” he said. “Have you ever heard of that?”

Mr. Withers nodded. “Can you hep 'im?”

“Well, this medicine is supposed to do some good. Your boy has a pretty advanced bad case right now. This medicine sometimes has some bad things about it. Most of the time it's all right though. I think we'd better go ahead and use it.”

“Dist do what you can fer 'im,” Mr. Withers said. “I'd 'preciate it.”

Billie's body rustled gently on the table, and Mr. Withers' lips parted as if his own breath were tied to the boy's.

My father smiled. “Could be he'll be playing with his brothers and sisters in a couple of days,” he said.

“Naw,” Mr. Withers said. “He's mah onliest kid.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “He took sick all of a sudden.”

My father held up the hypodermic so Mr. Withers could see it clearly. “I'm going to give him the shot now. It won't hurt him.” He turned and quickly injected the antitoxin directly into Billie's veins.

“Can I take 'im home now?” Mr. Withers asked.

“No, I think you better not. He's pretty tired. He needs to rest. We'll let him sleep, see how he is in the morning. To tell you the truth, there's nothing to do but wait.”

Mr. Withers nodded. “Awright.”

My father turned back to Billie and ran his fingers through the boy's hair. “Fine boy.” He circled his index finger gently around Billie's ear as he sometimes did mine.

“Could I stay with 'im?” Mr. Withers asked.

My father bundled Billie up again and lifted him into his arms. “There's plenty of room for both of you.”

“I don't want to be no trouble.”

“Plenty of room,” my father repeated. “Come on, I'll show you.”

Mr. Withers seemed to smile, and I could see the jagged, brownish teeth his closed lips had hidden. His face seemed softer now, less lined and pitted. The lantern light gave it an orange hue, making it look as if it had been carved out of the reddish clay of the hill country.

“Eddie, go get me an extra blanket,” my father said to me.

I brought the blanket into the back bedroom and watched as my father laid Billie on the bed. He listened to his heart once again, then folded the blanket double and tucked it delicately around Billie's body.

“We'll keep him nice and warm,” he told Mr. Withers.

Mr. Withers took the edge of the blanket and pulled it over Billie's chin. “When he gits in bed, he goes all the way under the covers. Even covers up his head.”

“Smart boy,” my father said lightly. “That heats the bed faster.”

“Dist all of a sudden took sick,” Mr. Withers muttered. “Dist clumb in mah lap and took sick.”

“I'll bring a cot in for you,” my father said.

Mr. Withers rubbed his eyes. “Naw, that's awright. I couldn't git no sleep. I'll dist set in that chair there.”

“You ought to get some rest.”

Mr. Withers shook his head. “Naw, thank you.”

“Well, I'll sit up with you awhile,” my father said. “I haven't been sleeping very well lately, anyway.”

“Now don't go to no more trouble on 'count of me,” Mr. Withers said insistently, drawing back from this last courtesy as if too much generosity could never be repaid.

My father pulled another chair up and sat down near Billie's bed. “No trouble,” he said. “Have a seat yourself, Mr. Withers.”

“Can I sit up, too?” I asked.

“For a while,” my father said.

Billie moved gently under the covers and drew his small fist up near his lips. “Wife's people prayed fer 'im,” Mr. Withers muttered. He paused, thinking. “I ain't a churchgoer.”

My father tilted back in the oak rocker. “You know, they'll come a time when all of these childhood diseases will be gone. Little boys like your son here'll never have to worry about them. Tremendous progress is being made.” He shook his head with wonderment. “Tremendous progress.”

Mr. Withers continued to stare at Billie. “Bible says that the sins of the father are visited on the son,” he said after a moment.

My father leaned forward and looked intently at Mr. Withers. “It's just a disease. Nothing else.”

Mr. Withers took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. “I never was a churchgoer.”

“Believe me,” my father said, “that has nothing to do with it. Don't worry yourself about it.”

“My sister-in-law said that one time her uncle worked on Sunday and his little girl got sick. Crippled her. For life.”

Billie's eyes fluttered open for a moment then closed. My father got up and listened to his heart. He glanced at Mr. Withers then at me. “Eddie, maybe you'd better get on to bed now,” he said softly.

I stood up. “Good night, Mr. Withers.”

“Thank you for your hep, boy,” Mr. Withers said. He moved to tip his hat, realized it was squeezed tight in his hand and simply nodded. “I 'preciate it.”

In the room next door I could hear my father and Mr. Withers talking quietly, but it was hard to make out exactly what they were discussing. At times I could hear words individually spoken—a yes here, a no there, Billie's name. Food and drink were offered and refused. I expected my father to leave after a while, but he never did. When the first morning light filtered through my window, I could still hear the slow, heavy tone of his voice. It sounded like a distant horn struggling through the fog.

Sometime during the night, Billie Withers died. I saw Mr. Withers out my window when I woke up. He was leaning against a tree, one leg gently pawing at the ground. He was facing away from me, but I could tell by the slump of his shoulders, by the way that his head hung forward, that the worst had happened.

“The boy died,” my father said when I walked into the kitchen.

“I thought so,” I said. “I saw Mr. Withers out in the yard.”

“He needs some time to be alone. We'll be taking the body home this morning.”

“Us?”

“Yes. Mr. Withers was on foot. He walked down here last night.”

“All the way from up the mountain?”

My father broke an egg into the fry pan. “Only way he had.”

After breakfast Mr. Withers gathered Billie in his arms, and we drove them up the mountain road to home. Except for giving a few directions, Mr. Withers did not say much. He sat in the back seat, sometimes staring out the window, sometimes watching Billie's face as if he were hoping for some sudden sign of life, a tremble in the lips or a pulse beneath the eyes.

For the whole noisy, jostling trip, he cradled Billie in his arms, supporting the back of his head like you would a newborn infant's.

The scene in the back of our Model A has always been to me the real
Pietá
, stark and beautiful as brown, wind-severed corn, unsoftened by blue light, unadorned, unsanctified, unknown.