World Made by Hand

Twenty

Jerry Copeland had a small infirmary in the second story above his office and lab where people too sick to be home sometimes stayed so he could keep an eye on them. That’s where I woke up. I was in a fog. My lungs felt heavy. A big bandage like a mitten was swaddled on my left hand. I had a similar bandage around my head. I began to recall what had happened the night before in odd documentary detail, without emotion. I lay there for quite a while in a strange carefree exhausted state of mind, hearing the muffled sounds of Jerry padding around down below, doing whatever he was doing, seeing patients or cooking up medicines. After a while, he came in with a tray of food for me.

“How are you feeling?”

“Pretty stoned.”

“That’s the laudanum.”

“It’s wicked strong.”

“I had to put a few stitches in your head.”

“What happened to my hand?” I said, holding up the mittenlike bandage.

“I’d say you burned it on a doorknob.”

“Where?”

“The Watling house.”

“No, where on my hand?”

“The palm mostly.”

“I need those pads on the tips to play my fiddle, you know.”

“I think they’re okay. Try to sit up.”

As I did, I noticed an impressive pain in my shoulder, but felt detached from it, like it was somebody else’s pain and I was only a casual observer of it. I must have made a face, though.

“You came down pretty hard on that side,” Jerry said. “Nothing’s broken, in my judgment. There would be more swelling. No reason why you can’t go home.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to imagine how I might hold the fiddle with a bum shoulder. I had fiddling on what was left of my brain.

“Eat some,” he said. “It’ll help clear your head.”

The tray had legs on it so a person could eat comfortably in bed without having to balance it on their lap. On it was a plate of scrambled eggs, two squares of corn bread, a little dish of creamed spinach, and a mug of rose-hip tea. I must have been staring at the tray.

“This is beautiful. Your wife makes a lovely breakfast.”

“You’re a hero now, Robert.”

“Huh?”

“Saving those two.”

“Oh.”

“Eat something.”

I picked up a fork. “I don’t think she wanted to be rescued.”

Jerry sat down at the end of the bed.

“What makes you say that?”

“She tried to run back into the fire. I had to catch her and shove her out the window.”

“Maybe she was confused.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

I lifted a forkful of scrambled eggs, golden and buttery. Jeanette had panfried the corn bread in butter too.

“It’s a good thing we all work as hard as we do around here,” I said. “All the butter and cream we eat.”

“Do you suppose she set that fire herself?” Jerry said.

“Huh?”

“You think Britney Watling torched her own house?”

“It hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Well, now I wonder,” Jerry said. “At first I figured lightning. But now I’m not so sure.”

“I don’t know either. The storms kept me up a long time but they were far off. I fell asleep sometime before the fire broke out.”

“Lightning can strike far from the center of a storm cell,” Jerry said.

“Maybe. I hope she didn’t try to harm herself and her kid. I stopped in on her two days ago with some cornmeal. She seemed mighty glum.”

“She’ll have to put in with someone,” Jerry said. “Sooner rather than later. Maybe with your neighbor Lucy Myles. Lucy could help with the child.”

“Who are they staying with now?”

“Allisons. I think.”

I finished the eggs and turned to the creamed spinach and finally the corn bread. Sandy used to think it was funny that I ate things in sequence off a plate. Never some of this and some of that. One item at a time. Who knows, maybe it was what made me a good organizer in the old days on the job. My head was clearing.

“Last night, before all this happened, I was thinking.”

“About Britney and the girl?”

“No. About the town. We really have to get our act together around here.”

“Yeah? How are we going to do that.”

“I’m calling a meeting of the trustees tonight,” I said after a while. Any of us on the town board could call a meeting. We just hadn’t done it in at least a year. “Can you help get the word out? Ask Loren to send for the farmers, and make sure Dale Murray is there.”

“All right,” Jerry said. “Any particular purpose?”

“For one thing, the water pressure used to be much higher than it is now. We really have to fix it.”

“I doubt it would have mattered last night.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“I suppose.”

“You see how we give in? It’s some kind of reflex negativity.”

“We’re conditioned by adversity.”

“We don’t have to surrender to conditioning. Brother Jobe says we’re demoralized. I think it’s true.”

“Since when are you tight with him?”

“I took him over to see Bullock. He’s a cheeky bastard. He put it right to Stephen about taking up his duties as magistrate.”

“Stephen’s a proud man. I don’t imagine he rolled over for him.”

“He got Stephen to agree to help fix our water system. He can cast some concrete pipe for us, he says.”

“Maybe we should all take turns falling out a window,” Jerry said. “It seems to have pepped you up.”

“I’m just sick of sleepwalking through life. Can you take this tray up off me?”

“Of course.”

I got up and out of the bed. Everything felt wobbly, but I stayed on my feet. Sun streamed through the windows. It felt like a new day.

“Also, ask Loren to get Brother Jobe to the board meeting tonight. That new bunch has to be in on this.”

“All right,” Jerry said.

“Tell them eight o’clock at the old town hall, upstairs.”