Prayers the Devil Answers (7 page)

chapter three

T
he King's life is
drawing peacefully to a close.”
When we heard the news on the radio, I saw Albert's eyes fill with tears.

In the evenings after supper we usually listened to the news together, and though it made me no never mind what happened to some far-off king, Albert had to wipe his
eyes when he heard it. He always felt connected to the British royal family, mostly because he had been named for the Prince Consort, Queen Victoria's late husband, even though the prince had died in England more than thirty years before Albert was born in Tennessee. Maybe that's why he was so set on giving our sons the names of princes: Edward and George. Mama Robbins, Albert's mother, had spent her life miles from town on a mountain farm, but she had been a great one for reading, so in a way the world came to her. She always said she named one of her sons for a Roman poet, and the other two for English princes. Maybe she thought giving her boys such grand names would nudge them a little higher up in the world, but about the only result of it was that Albert took an interest in the royals, as if they were his long-lost kin. Otherwise, I couldn't see where his life and theirs crossed at any point . . . except possibly now.

A month ago in England old King George had died. The radio
newsreader talked about how the king had taken ill with some lung ailment, and finally in January, his majesty took to his bed where he finally slipped into a coma and passed away. Sitting at Albert's bedside made me think of the king's death. But the king was an old man, and his dying had taken place in a castle full of servants, with the best doctor in the land sitting by his bedside, doing all he could for the royal invalid, whereas my Albert, still in his prime, lay dying in the damp chill of a matchbox house with only his wife at his side. Only a few weeks apart, though, Albert and the king. That was something, anyhow.

Finally the doctor came to call. There was just the one physician in the whole valley, and, between tending to farm accidents and difficult childbirths, he never had much time to spare for ordinary aches and pains, or for fevers and winter ailments. He did his best, though. Anyone who worked all hours of the day and night, and as often as not got paid in vegetables and homemade jam, had to be dedicated to his calling. I'd heard that when he was still a young man he had attended some medical school down south, but you could tell why he chose to practice here just by looking at him. He had the wiry frame, the dark hair, and the cold blue eyes of those who were born and bred in the Tennessee mountains. He looked like a descendant of the pioneers who settled here back in the 1700s. Surely his coming to practice in a little railroad town with too many patients and too little money could only mean that he had grown up somewhere like here. Some people didn't want to leave the mountains, even if they had the education and the skills to go elsewhere. Anyhow, the community was lucky to have him.

He turned up late on a misty afternoon, carrying his black bag, and bundled to the gills in a scarf and greatcoat. I offered to hang it up for him, but he took a deep breath of the cold, still air inside the
house and said he'd just keep the overcoat on for a while, thanks all the same. I took him the few paces down the short hallway to the darkened room where his patient lay, cocooned in his fever dreams.

Albert did not stir when we came in, and when I called his name he did not respond.

The doctor stood there just watching him for a minute or two. “How long has he been like that?”

“A couple of days. At first I thought that a long sleep would be good for him, but now . . . Can't you wake him up?”

The only answer I got to my question was a slight shrug. For a while we just stood there, watching Albert sleep, and neither of us spoke.

He was buried under blankets, but there were still beads of sweat on his forehead. The doctor felt his pulse, took a stethoscope out of the leather Gladstone, and put it to Albert's chest. He leaned down, listening for a few moments to the ragged and labored breathing that had frightened me so much. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Rales,” he muttered to himself, and I could tell he was hoping that I hadn't overheard him, but it didn't matter, because I didn't understand the word anyhow.

When he finally looked up, he was careful not to show emotion. Maybe he had learned from long experience that a patient's loved ones will seize upon the slightest sign to figure out whether or not there was any hope. If the doctor's face didn't match his soothing words, the relatives would believe what they saw, not what they heard—and they'd be right. I could see from his expression that the news was not good. I reckon it seldom was.

The doctor sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, Mrs. Robbins, I suppose I ought to say that you should have called me sooner, but the plain truth is I doubt if it would have made any difference one way or the other. Your husband has pneumonia. Perhaps you know that.”

“I hoped it wasn't. I feared as much, but I was praying that it was just a chest cold.”

“It may have started out that way, but it turned into pneumonia. At this point there's not much anybody can do to help him.”

Seeing that I was dismayed by this grim pronouncement, the doctor seemed to cast about for something to say to give me hope. There was always a chance he could be wrong. I'm sure he hoped so. “Well, your husband's not old yet. He may yet have the reserves of strength needed to pull him through. Sometimes I think the patient has more to do with healing than the doctor does. Have you tried putting a mustard plaster on his chest?”

“I think my mama may have known how to do that, but I never had to tend to this kind of sickness before, sir.”

He looked at Albert and then back at me and sighed. “Well, you might as well try it. Unlike some of those absurd folk remedies, it does work, if the patient isn't too far gone.”

“How do you make one?”

“A mustard plaster? It's a poultice, but don't you go putting it on his bare chest, or else you'll draw blisters the size of quarters. Spread the mixture on a clean piece of flannel. And if you can't find a neighbor who has fresh mustard from a plant in the garden, then go and buy some—they'll have ground mustard at the drugstore. It costs a couple of pennies, I believe. I'd give you some if I had any with me. You mix two tablespoons of the mustard powder with a handful of flour and the white of an egg. Do you keep chickens?”

“No, sir. We couldn't let them out to run on account of the railroad tracks. But I reckon one of the ladies from church will trade me an egg for some of my canned pickles or a quart of apple butter. Just the one egg, then?”

“That's right. One egg will do.” He smiled a little. “Being churchgoing folks, surely one of the ladies would give you one egg for nothing.”

“Well, I expect they would, but we don't like to be beholden to anybody. We'd rather pay what we owe.”

I'm sure he had heard that said often enough. “Well, Mrs. Robbins, think it over. Sometimes it's a kindness to let folks do you a favor. Makes them feel good about themselves. But one way or another get you that egg, and mix it up with flour and the mustard. It should make a sticky yellow paste. If it's too thick to spread, then add a little warm water. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes sir, I am following you. Go ahead.”

“Well, once you've made the paste, you want to spoon the mixture onto the clean flannel cloth, fold it over, and put it down directly on your husband's chest, right over the lungs. But remember—not on his bare skin. Put a sheet or an old shirt over his chest and set the mustard plaster on that. That's all there is to it. Just don't leave it on for more than half an hour—any longer and it might give him blisters anyhow. Can you remember all that?”

“Flannel, flour, egg white, powdered mustard. I won't forget. But why does it work?”

He shrugged. “The herb doctors around here say it pulls the toxins out of the lungs so the invalid can breathe easier. Well, they don't phrase it that way, but that's the gist of it. When I was in medical school, one of my professors, whose hobby was folk medicine, told me that mustard paste enlarges the blood vessels, which helps the patient to breathe better. I also recommend it to patients with rheumatism, because it gets some heat to their aching joints. Who knows for sure how it works? All I need to know is that mustard plasters are not an old wives' tale. They do work. I've seen it time and again.”

I looked up at him, eyes shining with tears and hope. “So, Doctor, you're saying that if I put that poultice on Albert's chest, he'll start to get better?”

“I hope so.” He sighed again. “To tell you the truth, there's not much else you can do. Keep him warm, and try to get some broth in
him if he should wake up. Keep putting water on his lips. But aside from that, about all you can do is wait and hope he can fight this off on his own. Keep an eye on him. Send your boy for me if anything changes.”

“Thank you. I will.”

As he stood up to leave, he seemed to make up his mind about something. With his hand on the doorknob he looked back at me. “One more thing, Mrs. Robbins: When I came in, I saw two boys playing outside in the yard. The older one is the boy who came to fetch me here. The little one is yours too?”

“Yes sir. That would be Edward and George. We had two more before them, but they died as babies.”

“How old is the younger boy?”

“Georgie is going on four. Why? Is there a chance that they might catch this too?”

“No. It isn't that. It's just that I think you should call the children in to say good-bye to their daddy. You know—just in case worse comes to worst.” He hesitated before he said quietly, “But, ma'am, don't wait too long.” He hurried away then so that he wouldn't hear me weeping.

LONNIE VARDEN

Lonnie Varden would not have chosen to come back to the Tennessee mountains, but he didn't have any say in the matter, not unless he wanted to give up art and look for an ordinary job. He didn't want to do that, so perhaps it was fortunate that there were no jobs to be had on account of the stock market crash, making the federal government decide to invent some. He knew he was lucky to be hired as an artist, no matter where they sent him.

He had left the mountains before he was eighteen for a stint in the army, half a dozen years too late for the European war. He had hoped to get sent overseas—all artists yearned to see Paris, didn't they?—but he never got any farther than a stateside army camp. At least he traveled through more of the world than any of his ancestors had seen in the past two hundred years, although he had seen most of it from the window of a train. Somewhere along the way he figured out that he liked drawing almost as much as he hated farming.

Where he came from in the Southern mountains families were supposed to be close, but his kin must have been the exception. They seemed no more attached to one another than a flock of chickens. When he first went away his mother wrote him every now and again, but the letters came fewer and farther apart until finally they stopped altogether. He scarcely noticed. The one thing he had learned from his family—or perhaps inherited through the bloodline—was his
father's locked-in reserve, so absolute that no one ever knew what he thought or felt about anything. He thought that might explain why he took up drawing—because he couldn't express his feelings any other way.

Close-knit family or not, after the army it had seemed natural for him to head home to the farm, but when he was within a hundred miles of it the train stopped in Knoxville, and suddenly he knew he couldn't face going back. He decided to stay in Knoxville, and take a chance on learning to be an artist. Perhaps there would have been greater opportunities in Philadelphia or New York, but to an uneducated kid from the back of beyond, Knoxville seemed a more manageable sort of place. If he did well there, maybe he could aim for bigger things. And if he failed miserably, he wasn't too far from home: he could always go back, if he had to.

He worked at laborer's jobs, saving up for art lessons, and managed to take a few classes at the university. When he told people in the art community that he wanted to paint, they all said the same thing: what a pity you didn't get here a couple of years earlier. Lloyd Branson, a master of historical paintings, lived in Knoxville, and had taken pupils at his studio on Gay Street. He was widely hailed for his two frontier paintings:
Gathering of the Overmountain Men at Sycamore Shoals
and
The Battle of King's Mountain
. The latter had been lost ten years earlier when the Hotel Imperial, which owned it, had burned to the ground, taking the painting with it. But Mr. Branson had passed away in 1925, and no one else measured up to him.

Lonnie made do with the teachers he could find and afford, and he earned his keep by preparing gesso and doing other odd jobs for working artists. That in itself had been an education, but it didn't pay as much as laborer's jobs. Still, he scraped along for four years, thinking that sooner or later he'd make enough contacts to get some well-paying commissions, or at least enough jobs to allow him to buy meat for supper every now and then.

Even if the Depression hadn't happened, he doubted he would ever have been able to support himself with his art. Very few painters ever did. One of his friends joked that the best preparation for being an artist was to be born into a wealthy family. Or perhaps he hadn't been joking. Failing that, he said, the best alternative was to ingratiate yourself to the rich and tedious, until you found someone willing to keep an artist as a pet. It had worked for Michelangelo. There weren't any Medicis around these days, and the pope wasn't hiring, but America was sufficiently endowed with steel barons and railroad tycoons to make the idea seem possible.

With an indifferent education and no skills aside from his art, Lonnie Varden faced the fact that he hadn't much chance of finding better employment to support his vocation. The Depression hadn't made any difference to him at first. He wasn't particularly fazed by the poverty that the economic disaster had spawned; as far as he could tell, for an artist, being poor was a way of life. There wasn't much call for artists even at the best of times, and as the country's hard times dragged on, people no longer had money to spend on portraits of their children, or for acquiring pretty lake and cottage scenes to hang above the parlor mantelpiece. There was another world of art out there, too—people whose work hung in museums and sold for great sums to discerning collectors—but he had none of the qualifications to join that group, least of all the ability to ingratiate himself to rich and influential people.

Despite his ardor, Lonnie wasn't a natural talent as an artist, if the opinions of his teachers and fellow painters were anything to go by. At first, he could make a portrait resemble the person who posed for it, albeit without imbuing any life or personality into the image, and his attempts at landscapes, which he intended to appear as real as a photograph, showed no particular talent for composition or theme. He worked hard at it, though, and finally he learned how to put what he felt into the work so that other people could see it too.

Before times became really hard, people had liked his early efforts well enough to shell out a couple of dollars to own one, usually to be given as a gift, but, as he learned more about the social side of art, he finally resigned himself to the fact that his work would never hang in museums or sell for fabulous sums in galleries. What he lacked was not technical precision but style. His carefully wrought paintings showed no originality; no distinctive touches set his work apart from that of anyone else. He was not bad as a draftsman—as a human camera, perhaps—but in terms of creativity he was at best mediocre, and finally he learned enough about art to realize that. Charm and social connections might have made up for that deficit, but he had found them even more difficult than learning to paint.

For a while he paid thirty cents a lesson to be taught painting by an Austrian drawing master from the university. He learned about composition, perspective, and
drawing the light
, but he was also given an assessment of his worth. Despite his doubts about his talent, he had grieved for a bit when the tutor had confirmed his fears: “In the world of art, Varden, you are not an architect, but simply a carpenter. But, as you draw passably well, you can probably offload your paintings to middlebrow persons with aspirations to culture.”

Even at the loss of the thirty-cent fees, he knew the instructor had meant to discourage him with that assessment of his work, but Lonnie was not particularly ambitious, and he thought that if he could manage to eke out a living from family portraits and scenes of meadows and cottages, he would not have to take any more jobs that required a great deal of effort, like ditch-digging or selling neckties. He had left his family long ago, and he had no desire to go back. They'd had no money to give him anyhow. Even if he could have afforded a university education, he doubted he could have qualified as an engineer or a doctor. Talented or not, he enjoyed making paintings, and if he could manage to keep body and soul together by selling his work for a couple of bucks, he would settle for that. He was just past
twenty; if he tired of the struggle of being an artist, there was plenty of time to choose another path.

Once after a couple of whiskies at the bar where they usually ended up after the art lessons, the drawing master had confided that there was one other benefit from being an artist that Lonnie might not have considered: it was an excellent way to meet likely-looking women, single and sometimes otherwise. It was a rare young lady who could resist the charm of an earnest and attentive gentleman who pronounced her beautiful and asked permission to paint her portrait. The drawing master advised him to take as long as possible to finish that sort of painting, gaining by that a few good dinners and sometimes, if the woman was the adventurous type, a temporary bedmate. “You will seldom make any money from those portraits, but the other benefits make up for it, eh?” said the drawing master. But that lesson, too, was lost upon Lonnie Varden. He was too shy to try it, even once.

Over time he became rather good at dog portraits, and sometimes their fond owners would give him a few dinners as well as his fee, but romantic encounters with beautiful female models never materialized. He did not live well, and, to his surprise, he began to grow tired of the city, and to find himself thinking about those mountains he came from. He was making a living after a fashion, though, and he stayed where he was. In the early thirties, when the “middlebrow persons with aspirations to culture”
fell on hard times and stopped buying paintings, Lonnie heard from some of the other local artists about a new government program aimed at preserving the arts by providing jobs for writers and artists. He didn't think much of his chances, but he applied anyhow.