“Will,” she heard Daniel Pelfrey say, “there’s a doctor over at Miss Lottie Boone’s. Do you want me to fetch him?”
“Might be good to have some help,” Daddy agreed. “I reckon you’d better hurry, Dan.”
A doctor,
Copper thought.
Daddy’s sending for a doctor! Is Daniel going to die?
“Copper,” Daddy told her, “go kill the fattest hen you can find. We need some unctuous flesh to draw out the poison.”
Copper gasped for air and waved at Willy, who came onto the porch with Mam. “Come and help me, little brother,” she urged. Willy looked like he might faint; she needed to distract him.
They hurried to the chicken yard. Copper knew she had to grab the first hen she saw, and she hoped it wouldn’t be Bertha or Big Momma. Thankfully, the bird that soon picked its way across her path was not a favorite and was fat and slow . . . an easy target. “You’re lucky a wily fox hasn’t eaten you already,” she told the hapless hen before turning to her brother. “Willy, grab the hatchet.”
The log they killed chickens on was at the side of the barn under a large-leafed catalpa tree. It was the end piece of a hardwood tree trunk about twelve inches in diameter. It sat upright and two large nails, spaced the width of a chicken’s neck apart, protruded from its surface. Copper laid the chicken across the log, its head hanging over the edge, its neck secured between the nails. She took the hatchet from Willy, raised it over her head, and without a blink severed the hen’s neck with a quick whack.
In her haste to release the chicken’s body from the log, Copper lost hold of it and watched as the headless bird staggered a few feet down the dusty lane and fell over in the dirt. Willy carried it back, holding it out from his side by the feet, leaving a trail of spattered blood. Copper quickly cut a chunk of marbled breast meat and handed it to him. “Run this to Daddy,” she told him. She had to have a moment with the Lord.
“Save them chicken feet,” he called over his shoulder as he tore down the path toward the cabin. “Me an’ Daniel will want to play with them.”
Copper watched him go and knelt in the bloodstained dirt.
Dear Lord,
she prayed,
please heal Daniel of the snakebite. Whatever would we do without him?
She shuddered, suddenly cold even as the waning sunlight bathed her in its golden glow. She knew God could perform miracles, could heal the sick, could move mountains if He had a mind to, but she also knew that sometimes God revealed His plan for His children through pain and suffering. He did not always say yes. As Mam often said, “God is not Santy Claus.”
Copper’s heart jerked in crazy rhythm a moment later when she heard Mam’s scream and saw one of the Pelfrey boys running toward the road.
He’s dead!
she thought.
He’s dead and I’m not with him.
Desperate in her haste to join them, she cried out in frustration and pain as her feet tangled in her skirts, pitching her face-first to the ground. “Please,” she whimpered. “Lord, please.”
CHAPTER 21
When Will took his eyes off Daniel to look out over the yard, it seemed like the whole neighborhood had assembled here. He saw Pelfreys of every size and description, several families from church, Mailman Bramble, Mr. Smithers, Oney Barlow, and even Aunt Ida Sizemore, who hadn’t moved in three months. Every eye was on Daniel and Will who still held him. Brother Isaac knelt beside them on the porch, reading Scripture from his open Bible and praying aloud.
Aunt Ida, who must have been a hundred if she was a day, worried the snuff in her upper lip with a slender frayed stick. Someone had fetched her a straight-backed chair, and she worked it like a throne. Slowly, she raised her arm and pointed a long, bony finger in Daniel’s direction. “That there boy’s done died, Will Brown,” she croaked. “Ye don’t come back once the rigor starts. Might as well set about the digging.”
“No he ain’t!” Willy looked fiercely in her direction. “No he ain’t. Is he, Daddy?” No one missed the quaver in Willy’s voice as he pleaded with his father.
Will didn’t know how to answer. Daniel lay across him like a piece of timber. His face had gone completely gray. A lacy reddish froth spilled from the corner of his mouth. Then it started—with a mighty twitch and jerk, Daniel folded like the blade of a jackknife, then snapped back open.
“Lord, help us,” Will murmured, his heart in his throat. “Where’s that doctor?”
“Lay him down,” Copper said. “Somebody get me a spoon.”
John Pelfrey knelt beside Copper on the porch and handed her the spoon. “Tell me what to do,” he said.
“Just hold his head while I—” Deftly she slipped the handle between Daniel’s clenched teeth. “This will keep him from biting his tongue.” She sat back on her heels.
“They’re coming!” one of the Pelfrey boys yelled as he ran into the yard. “I seen ’em coming up the road.”
John ran out to take the horses from his father and a stranger.
“See to Pard, won’t you?” Will heard the man say as he dismounted. “He’s worked himself into a lather, racing down the mountain.”
John took the reins. “They’re yonder,” he directed, as if there was any doubt, “yonder on the porch.”
Will watched the well-dressed stranger make his way through the crowd. “Mr. Brown?” The doctor set his black leather medical bag down and extended his hand. “I’m Simon Corbett. I hear there’s been an accident.”
Will shook the doctor’s hand. “This young’un’s been snake bit. He’s in a right precarious way. We’d appreciate any help you could give us.”
The doctor squatted beside Daniel and removed the fatty poultice from above the boy’s right ankle. The people in the yard drew closer to the porch. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, other than Aunt Ida’s chair scraping across the ground. A scalpel blade flashed as Dr. Corbett ripped the seam of Daniel’s overalls and did a cursory exam. Everyone could see the swollen limb as well as the red streaks spreading up the leg almost to the groin. He rummaged through his bag and retrieved his stethoscope, which he placed on Daniel’s chest.
He looked at Will. “Do you know what type of snake bit your boy? I have a treatment for a rattlesnake strike, but it’s potent. The side effects could make him very sick. I don’t want to give that to him if it’s not necessary. If, on the other hand, it was a cottonmouth moccasin, there is nothing we can do but keep him comfortable and pray for a miracle.” Dr. Corbett scanned the crowd. “Did anyone see what happened?”
“His brother was with him,” Will answered. “Willy, come over here and tell the doctor what you saw.”
“I wish I had seen the low-down varmint that bit Daniel,” Willy choked, his face screwed tight against his tears, “but the snakes had left when I got there.”
“Just tell us what happened the best that you can, young man,” the doctor prompted. “Tell us anything you can remember.”
“It’s like this.” Willy leaned against Copper for support.
“Daniel would of never been in this predicament if he’d of listened to me.” His words rushed out, a veritable torrent of speech. “We’d just turned over a big old rock up there under the cliff above the creek. There must of been a million fishin’ worms all wriggling around. Daniel asked me, ‘Don’t this remind you of the camp meeting, Willy? Remember those men and the snakes? I bet I could do that.’ ‘Daniel,’ I told him, ‘you must be tetched in the head. That’s even dumber than the time you thought you could walk on water an’ you nearly drowned afore I throwed you that branch, an’ you nearly drowned again ’cause it hit you in the head, an’ I had to jump in and fish you out. Now you think you can be a snake handler? Don’t you never learn, boy?’ Then Daniel says to me, ‘I want to be like that dancing preacher.’
“And here’s the worst thing—the really bad thing,” Willy told his hushed audience. “I said, ‘Go on then, Daniel. Go find you a snake an’ see what happens. I’ll just have to go fishin’ by myself while you’re off gettin’ snake bit.’ And so he did. I was busy puttin’ the worms in the coffee tin that Mam gave us when I heard him holler, ‘Come and look, Willy!’ But I didn’t go right away ’cause I had dropped the can, an’ worms were going every which way.”
Willy stopped to take a deep breath, then rattled on. “All of a sudden it seemed awful quiet, seemed like even the birds hushed singing, an’ I sneaked up the hill to where Daniel had gone, an’ I didn’t see no snakes, but I seen my brother layin’ there all still-like. Just layin’ there in the quiet. The air was real funny, just glowin’ and smellin’ real strong of cucumbers. An’ the next thing I remember is seeing Sissy on the porch.”
Finally Willy stopped and took a long breath, pausing as if he might have more to say. “That’s all there is, Doc.”
Copper grabbed Willy and exclaimed, “Cucumbers, Willy—cucumbers! Oh, how wonderful.” Copper kissed the squirming Willy on his dirty cheek. “That means copperheads, right, Daddy? A copperhead’s den smells like cucumbers.”
“That’s right,” Will said, his voice a rush of relief. “Only one I ever heard of dying from a copperhead bite was that little Hawkins baby. Daniel should be old enough to survive a copperhead’s bite, don’t you think, Doc?”
“I think his chances are good, but—”
A jerking started in Daniel’s legs and moved up his body. The spoon dropped from his mouth and clattered across the porch. His hands fisted and beat at the air.
The doctor listened with his stethoscope again. After what seemed an eternity, he took out one earpiece and asked, “Has he done this before?”
“Just the once,” Will replied, “but it was a golly whopper. He folded up like a closed book a few minutes before you come.”
The doctor’s brow furrowed as he nodded. “Let’s take your boy in the house and make him comfortable. Willy, you can bring my bag.”
Will scooped Daniel up. Willy grabbed the doctor’s bag, Copper hastened to open the screen door, and Grace passed out cold, hitting the porch floor with a sickening thud.
“Oh!” the forgotten audience exhaled.
“Mrs. Brown?” Dr. Corbett pulled out his pocket watch and reached for her wrist. His long fingers rested on her pulse. Next he snapped a tiny glass ampoule and waved it under her nose.
She coughed and sputtered, looking wildly about the porch. “Will?”
“Right here, darlin’,” he replied from the open door where he paused with Daniel.
Grace was shaky but got to her feet, her knees wobbling dangerously. Quickly Copper slipped her arm around her waist and helped her inside and to bed. Will stood by the bedroom door, Daniel still in his arms, as the doctor took his bag from Willy and Copper lit the coal-oil lamp.
Dr. Corbett withdrew a vial of clear tincture from his kit and administered a few drops to Grace. “Valerian,” he said to Will. “She’s had a swooning spell. It’s just the shock of everything. She’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.” The doctor took Daniel from Will’s arms. “You stay with your wife, and I’ll see to Daniel.”
Copper wet a rag and placed it on her mother’s pale face. “Rest, Mam. I’ll watch over Daniel tonight.”
Tears leaked from the corners of Grace’s eyes when she grasped Copper’s hand. “You’ll call me if . . .”
Copper knelt for a moment at the bed. “He’s going to be fine, Mam,” she said as Grace’s eyelids drooped. “He’s going to be fine.”
CHAPTER 22
Past midnight, the house was finally quiet as Copper put another pot of coffee on the stove. Brother Isaac had stayed way past bedtime, and some of the deacons from church had come to pray and anoint Daniel with oil. All the commotion had Copper so keyed up she doubted that she’d ever sleep again.
Daddy was asleep in a chair beside Mam’s bed with the bedroom door ajar. Willy slept on the floor, the yellow-clawed chicken feet clutched in his hand. He refused to leave Daniel, who was propped up on the settee with a bolster. “He’ll be scared if he wakes up and I’m not here,” he’d pleaded. So Copper had made Willy a pallet, and he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
The doctor was spending the night. Every so often he took out a vial of sassafras oil and, very precisely, dropped exactly fifteen drops down Daniel’s throat. Copper watched him measure the medicine. He told her it was an effectual antidote against the venom of a copperhead.
He sat at the kitchen table, his head resting on his folded arms. He’d asked for coffee just a minute before, but now his faint snores were the only noise in the house.
Copper was in a quandary. The coffee was ready, but the doctor was asleep. Should she pour a cup and wake him? It wouldn’t be seemly to touch him while he was sleeping, but what if Daniel needed him? Maybe she should drop a pan—that’d make enough racket to stir him up, but then she’d wake everyone else also. She just stood there, holding an empty cup, feeling out of place in her own kitchen.
Seconds later Daniel coughed, and the doctor was instantly on his feet. He quickly took a brown suction bulb and sucked frothy sputum from Daniel’s mouth.
“Bring the light closer, please,” he instructed. He pulled up Daniel’s eyelids and peered intently, then hung Daniel’s left leg over his own arm and pecked at it with a little rubber hammer. Daniel’s leg swung out and nearly hit Copper on the chin, she’d bent over so close.