2. Outside the Sick Room

Download: 2A.1933%2COctober1%2COutsidetheSickRoom.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1

October 1, 1933:
Outside the Sick Room

Absently,
As if it were a clock,
Thomas wound the wick up in the lamp.
He sat, watched it burn,
Wound it again.
When the doctor’d come—
How many hours back?—
He’d asked Thomas,
“No electric lights?”
Tom said, “Maybe next year.
And a phone.”
He wished now he’d bought them—
This year, last year—
Riah getting quieter,
Quieter,
Here on the farm alone.

Kerosene—can’t smell it.
Sitting in the kitchen, he
Couldn’t smell the beans he’d cooked
For James. Because of that stifling
Sickroom odor.
Tom had helped birth calves,
Up to his shoulder in the cow—
Wetness and blood. Being in
Where no one was to be.
He wished he could leave, but he
Would not. He heard
Riah breathe.

Doctor’d tied a rope onto the bedpost,
Gave her it to pull when she got bad—
Tom saw her quick seize it,
Not to yell. He had
Heard the doctor in there saying,
“Whoa, now.
Hold on, Missus. Don’t do that,”
In the musing, thinking-out-loud voice
Tom used with busted tractors.
Tom went to her door—
He couldn’t help it—
And he’d seen a dark stain
On the wall. It had exploded
From her?—Commotion,
Riah’s noises fast and high.
Doctor brought out something,
Wrapped in paper, to his car.

Now, from what Tom saw
When he peeked in,
Red was seeping,
Slow as oil from a can,
On the mattress—
Patching folks up could be hard—
How long since she spoke?
Ten, twenty hours?
Tom picked up a spoon
And stirred James’ plate.
Boy hadn’t eaten.
Patty’d took him with her,
To her house. James was not
This hard! No doctor, either.
Tom leaned on his hand.
Yes, James was hard.
Thomas had forgot.
Turned out all right.
He held his ears,
Recalling that rope jerking—
The bedpost, how it squealed.

Bang!—Thomas jumped.
A banging at the door—the doctor’d said
He’d sent for someone,
To sit in and help.
Tom opened up.
Behind the screen,
A woman—big, not fat,
Arms folded—
Dressed in bright green print,
Too tight across.
Her hair drooped,
A red frizz at her ears—
Green smears on her eyelids,
And the reddest mouth
That Tom had ever seen.
It left thick prints
On her cigarette,
Held to the side.

She looked Tom in the eye:
“Good day.”
She tapped an ash off
With a fingernail.
“I’m the nurse.”