Chapter Four
I woke up the next morning with a start, wondering where I was. The sun was trying to shine through heavy clouds, and I could hear people moving around in the hall, ready for breakfast. I wasn’t in the motel in Enigma, I was right here in Mystic in my bed in the dorm. It was early and cold, and I wasn’t ready for a cafeteria breakfast, so I waited until everyone was gone to the Union and then got dressed and went for a walk.
It was cold and gray, leaves stuck wetly to the sidewalk. I left the campus and headed down Dockery Street, toward the main part of town, past the Baptist Church and the library. On the Main street were the movie theater, the jewelry store, a couple of nice clothing stores, a drugstore and a cafe, The Dew Drop Inn Cafe, run by the Jowers family. I walked up the wooden steps and opened the door, and smelled fresh coffee and biscuits. I really liked this cafe, not just for the food but for the learning.
I only started coming here around Christmas, about a month ago. It was off the beaten path for students, so it had a very different atmosphere than the campus. It was part of the old town of Mystic, the town that had been at the hub of a trading wheel around 1920. It had a much bigger population then, it was the county seat, and a political power. Not any more, of course, but memories lingered here like the smell of Mrs. Jowers pies and honeysuckle around the door.
On a walk one day I smelled hot biscuits and apple cake and sort of followed my nose into the old place and came back at least once a week. It felt like one of the neighborhood places I remembered from Chicago, meeting place, newspaper, gossip column and kitchen all at once. No one knew me. I didn’t know anyone except from some of the old pictures on the walls, but it seemed a good place to learn about small Southern towns. Yessir, I certainly did learn a lot about small Southern towns at that place.
I always brought a magazine or a book and sat way off in the corner at a little rickety table. Depending on the time of day, I knew exactly who would be sitting at the other five tables. Early, it would be some of the farmers having their breakfast before going back home. They had been up and done chores and come into town to swap gossip and listen to the farm report on the radio. I guess a long time ago, maybe forty years ago, this cafe had the only radio in town and became the gathering place. Now everybody had a radio and a TV but the habit remained. Later on in the day the local lawyers and businessmen would meet here, the older ones. There was a new restaurant down the street, had only been there since 1946. It was called the Towne House, where some of the younger Chamber of Commerce types would meet. The Rotary met there, and the Lions. But the Dew Drop, was the seat of real power. The judge came here. He was the foremost citizen of Mystic, Mr. Judge Eli Touchton. He didn’t judge any more, but he was the pillar of the Democratic Party and the Baptist Church.
There was a bakery counter at the front of the cafe with fresh things from the clever hands of Mrs. Jowers. She put them out on china plates with signs about what each confection was. There was a big coffeepot with mugs on the counter; some of the mugs had names but everyone knew whose was whose. There were three or four jars of jelly and jam, homemade, on the counter near the napkins. On the wall was a calendar from last year from the bank, with a picture of a pecan farm on it.
I sat and watched old Mr. Purvis come in, bent over and bowed from the weight of his years. He wore the blue overalls that all the farmers wore, and a cap with a John Deere logo. He sat down at the table nearest the bakery counter and peered inside. The door slammed and Billy Dean Burkett walked in. He was a younger man than Old Mr. Purvis, he was about sixty, gray hair in a brush cut, same overalls.
“Too early for pecan pie, Jeb.” He folded his jacket and put it over the top of the chair.
Mr. Purvis grunted and looked over his glasses at the younger man.
“Never too early for pecan pie, that’s for sure.”
They debated this for a while, and then the waitress turned the radio up and they listened to the farm report, and talked about last fall’s tobacco auction. I read my book and chewed my biscuit. The door slammed again and Dwayne Jardine walked in. Mr. Jardine had been the local football coach for the high school, now retired. He got his mug, the one with the University of Georgia emblem on it, poured himself some coffee and picked up a piece of the blueberry pie. Sat down heavily in the chair, looking to stay a while.
“Going over to Willacoochee this afternoon.” Billy Dean murmured, to no one in particular. Silence, no comment.
“Why Willacoochee?” Old Mr. Purvis pushed the sugar bowl closer to Mr. Jardine.
“Rattlesnake skins. Got some fine ones at the roundup last summer, going to pick one out.”
Nods. Lots of rattlesnake festivals in this part of the world. I got a chill thinking about it, rounding up and killing a lot of snakes for fun.
“Hear about James Lee Strickland?” Old Mr. Purvis asked slowly. He moved his fork and ate the last of the pecan pie, with relish.
“What about James Lee Strickland?”
“Gettin’ married.”
There was a silence. I made myself smaller in the corner. Billy Dean Burkett got up and poured himself some coffee and took a long time choosing what kind of jelly he was going to put on his biscuit.
“Been married,” he said. He chose the grape jelly and sat down, arranging his napkin over his lap and prying the cover carefully off the jam jar.
“Five times.” Mr. Purvis opened the paper and peered at the headline over his glasses. “Been to Fernandina every year, right before the Florida game. Lots of folks get drunk down to Fernandina, but Jimmy Lee’s the only fool gets married every damn time. Gonna get it right this time, maybe.” Dry, raspy chuckle as he turned the pages of the local weekly paper.
Peaceful silence, until I got up and scraped my chair against the wooden floor. Old Mr. Purvis looked up at me and nodded in a courtly way. I paid my bill and as I walked towards the door I heard him say, “Student, over to the college.” He turned and looked at me with a thin sort of smile and whispered just loud enough for me to hear him, “Yankee.” Everyone knew where and who and what everyone else was; it made things smoother here. This was not a town that liked surprises, or strangers. Or maybe Yankees.
I walked back to the school the long way, around the side street by the Baptist church. It was a big church, biggest in town. The Episcopal church was on another side street, smaller and farther back from the road as if to apologize for being there. This Baptist church sat big and proud and took up half the block. I walked around it, feeling the cool moist air on my face, thinking about school, and clinicals, and Yankees.
When I walked into the classroom everyone was there, in their places, and Mr. Wallace hadn’t come in yet. I sat down in my seat in front of Lucas and pulled out my notebook. Lucas leaned forward and grinned at me.
“What did you think of the clinical?”
I was about to answer when Mr. Wallace walked in, and stood on his little step behind the podium. We all settled down and got quiet. He passed the quiz around and for about an hour there was silence in the room, disturbed only by the scraping of pencils and the sighs of students. As we finished we got up and went into the hall for a drink of water or a stretch. When we collected back in the room a few minutes later, and the quiz was picked up, Wallace told us we had the afternoon off for finishing medication cards and looking at a video in the library that would be a part of the next exam.
“It shows some of the interactions of psychologists with the same kinds of patients you saw in Enigma.” He looked around the room and then at his watch, and asked, “what did you all think of the clinical?”
I wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, or if it was something he was supposed to ask at this point. Curriculum was big with Mr. Wallace. Elaine, the redhead, put her hand up.
“It’s confusing, that’s what it is. New strange people, and a new area of medicine to get to know, new ways of writing charts, nothing predictable.” She wasn’t complaining, just stating a fact.
“I agree.” Another student raised a hand. “We’ll need time to get to know this place, it’s so different from the regular hospital.”
Wallace nodded. “Put that in your journals, how you feel. You’ll get the hang of it, don’t worry.” He looked at his watch again, picked up his papers and stood poised for flight out the door. “Any questions?”
Of course not. We were students, not fools. We sat and watched him bustle out the door, carrying our quizzes and the grade book. There was a collective sigh, and we straggled out the door, looking at the rainy sidewalk covered with wet pine cones.
“He doesn’t like us.” Elaine had a stubborn set look on her face, framed in red curly hair.
“I don’t guess he likes anyone. Except maybe Mrs. Wallace.” Eunice sighed.
“The second Mrs. Wallace. Not the first.” Nellie opened a bag of salted peanuts and looked smug.
“Don’t do to tell tales out of school.” Lucas shot back at her, with a warning look on his face. Nellie put her chin up and poured the rest of the peanuts into her mouth.
“I know a secret, I know a secret!” Nellie whispered loud, as she walked away, Sweets behind her, asking about this secret.
“Won’t be a secret long, if she knows it.” Lucas had a disgusted look on his face, and shook his head when Eunice asked.
We walked quietly out of the building, standing at the door debating whether to run and get wet or walk and get wetter. Lucas ran for his car, waving. Eunice and I walked to the library through the puddles and the wet pine needles, holding her umbrella over our heads. Eunice always remembered things like umbrellas and alarm clocks.
“I have a daughter your age,” she said, as we walked into the library and put our wet coats up. Eunice grinned at me and gave me a hug. “She’s a good kid, too, but she doesn’t remember umbrellas either.”
We sat down and arranged our books and read for about an hour when Eunice got up and went to talk to the librarian about some of the tapes we needed to see and check off on our assignment sheet. Eunice came back with a tape in her hands and a smile on her face.
“Look what I found,” she said. “We’ve got to watch this.”
It was a tape that a nursing teacher at the college had made a couple of years ago. The nurse had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and had made the tape about six months before she died to tell the nursing students about how it felt to be a patient, and what procedures she went through. We had heard about it, but never seen it.
It started off like any other teaching tape, a nurse talking to students. She told about sneaking looks at her chart under the doctor’s nose, and then how she felt isolated and alone because people figured she was a nurse and didn’t need the comforts regular patients did. She talked about listening to the whispers of nurses and wishing they would talk out loud, so she would know if they were whispering about her or something else. She talked about fear and pain and loss with wide clear eyes and a steady voice.
It was a brave and committed thing to do, to use herself as a patient but it really worked, because she was a good nurse, too. She knew both sides and could tell us on the tape without sounding maudlin or weepy. Just real, just facts. Eunice had gone to high school with this nurse and she smiled at the end when the nurse told us all to go out in the world and do good work, and not whisper around patients.
“How can we not do good work, with her telling us like that?” Eunice said, and wiped her eyes and put the tape away. We learned quite a lot about breast cancer from that tape, and about courage, too.
Eunice left to drive home to Broxton and I sat in my solitary corner in the study carrel and doodled and thought about the future and the past and Chicago and piney woods and small towns and nurses and courage. It was mixed up into a mighty stew I can tell you. My journal helped, not Wallace’s but the one I kept for myself, and I was writing away when I heard a voice that sounded very familiar. Nellie was on the other side of the shelf of books, talking to Sweets.
“So she delivered this really weird baby; this kid had cat eyes and there wasn’t any top of his head. He was huge, too, bigger than a two year old.”
That got my attention and I wondered idly what horror movie Nellie had seen. She loved to talk about deformities and misshapen things of any kind, and obstetrical horrors gave her all kinds of delicious shivers.
“It was the first Miz Wallace, I know because my aunt was a nurse in Labor and Delivery when she had the baby. Everybody in the delivery room fainted.” Nellie said smugly, and I could just see her chins quiver. Everybody fainted? Everybody?
“Everybody!” she said, and Sweets sighed. I didn’t move; they didn’t know I was there and I was torn between covering my ears and hearing this nonsense out.
“So the baby was sent off somewheres; he’s still alive. No telling what he looks like now. And the mother died, a few days later, raving mad. Just raving. It was delivering that monster that took her mind.” Nellie scrabbled around in her big satchel and I could hear the crackle of a Fritos bag. “So Wallace left for a while, and came back to marry this Miz Wallace, the rich one. I’ll bet she doesn’t know anything about that child or the first wife, who was crazy and foaming at the mouth.”
I put my head down on the desk, almost feeling sorry for Wallace. Something, maybe, some sad thing had happened a long time ago that was best left alone, but that Nellie was digging up and passing around with relish. Who knew what had happened, what stories got changed many times in the telling? I thought of that dying nursing instructor and how convenient it would be to have tapes of such things so rumors wouldn’t get so out of hand. Of course then Nellie wouldn’t have the fun of repeating something her aunt had no business telling her, if that’s what actually happened. Gossip and rumors and prejudice. I had seen and felt my fill today. I waited until the crackling from the Frito bag stopped, and the whispers were still, and stood up and walked out of the library. I wished I had been somewhere else at that point. I didn’t want to know that about Wallace, true or not. Wasn’t any of my business. But where was the truth?
Cara Innocenza,
Sounds like you are enjoying yourself in the school, but why go to a cafe with only old men? Aren’t there any young men around? We may come and visit you soon and we’ll find some.
What is this question about secrets? Everybody has secrets. This is nothing new. Some secrets you need to know and some you don’t. The trouble is, you don’t know until after it’s too late. But find out this secret, it’s important. Anything to do with the instructor is important, because he gives the grades. Besides, it’s interesting. What’s the now Mrs. Wallace like? Pretty? Some are rich and pretty, some just rich. Men don’t seem to care. Barney never says which he wants, he just likes to come to dinner. Maybe you’ll find a young man who can cook? Some do, now.
Love and kisses,