DOC MOO STOOD BELOW the Lick Creek tent colony, rubbing his hands together as he waited for the inspectors to arrive. Winter came fast to the Tug. Skeletal trees stretched from the snow-clad hills, clawing skyward, while colonists bent toward crude metal stoves, as if worshiping the meager warmth they emanated. They were long-jawed, angular with hunger. The tents were slopped with mud; some had collapsed. The camp could be traversed only on narrow duckboards laid helter-skelter across the mire. Dawn found the earth broken-mirrored, glazed hard with ice.
Doc Moo was waiting for the chief inspector of the state health department and a major of the Army Medical Corps. They were making an investigation into the hygiene conditions of the tent colonies inside the strike zone. He’d been writing letters to state health officials and politicians for weeks. He didn’t know if one of his letters had triggered a response, but a survey had been ordered by the state health commissioner.
The inspectors arrived at the Lick Creek colony in a mud-splattered Ford sedan, standing dumb-faced on the running boards a moment before stepping down into the cold slop of the holler. The major wore a pair of heavy trench boots and canvas leggings, while the civilian inspector had donned a set of rubber waders like a fly fisherman might wear.
“Doctors,” said Doc Moo, extending his hand. “I am Doctor Domit Muhanna. Welcome to Lick Creek.”
“Muhammad?” asked the inspector.
“Muhanna.”
The inspector and the major introduced themselves in turn, but their eyes remained on the frigid squalor of the camp before them. A pair of barefoot boys—one Black, one Spanish or Italian—chased each other between the tents, making gun noises with long sticks as they leapt across the half-frozen creek that squiggled through the middle of the colony—a rocky ditch riddled with trash and offal, chicken guts and tin cans and broken glass bottles.
The inspector’s mouth hung agape. “Insanitary,” he said. “Unsuitable for habitation.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to express to the authorities,” said Doc Moo.
The man said nothing, pulling a clipboard from his briefcase. He took off through the colony, shaking his head, holding the case in the crook of his arm as he scratched down notes. Doc Moo and the military doctor fell in behind him, watching the man mutter and scribble, jabbing the dots of exclamation points.
The Army physician crossed his arms behind his back, looking out at the place. “I was on the Western Front in the winter of ’17. I used to think those conditions were poor.”
“I’ve been trying to tell someone,” said Doc Moo. “Sending letters every week. The few replies I’ve received have suggested the inhabitants simply vacate to more suitable premises.” He looked around at the steep snowy hills in every direction. “But to where?”
The same pair of boys darted across their path again. They leapt the frosty creek and looped around the nearest tent, ducking their heads around the outer flap to look at the strange men. The state inspector stared at them a moment, then turned to Doc Moo and the major.
“People are going to die here,” he said. “Women and children are going to die.”
Before they could reply, the man turned on his heel and set back off through the camp, his head swiveling this way and that, his hand constantly scribbling, cataloguing the number of tents and residents, their ages and ethnicities, the multitude and depth of the sanitation issues.
“A perfect breeding ground for epidemics,” he said. “Pyrexias. Bacterial, viral, parasitic. Typhoid, influenza, pneumonia.” He turned to Doc Moo. “Where are the privies, Doctor?”
“There’s a trench latrine dug behind those tents.”
The inspector shook his head, making more notes. “Diarrhea, helminthiasis, hookworm, roundworm.” He looked at Doc Moo. “Doctor Muhammad, why didn’t you report these conditions to the authorities earlier?”
Doc Moo felt his nostrils flare wide. He inhaled slowly, trying to control the Old Country blood firing beneath his skin, curling his hands into fists. The Muhannas couldn’t trace their bloodline in an unbroken line back to the twelfth century without some pride in their name and the weight of their word.
The major stepped forward. “I believe it’s Doctor Muhanna,” he said. “And the doctor was just telling me he has been reporting it.”
“Well, this is the first I have heard of it.”
Ahead, Doc Moo saw Miss Beulah sitting in front of her tent in her rocking chair, her shoulders wrapped in a large quilt as she worked with a pair of knitting needles. She looked up as they approached, smiling.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” she said. “I see we got some company today.”
The inspector stopped in front of her. “What is your age?”
Miss Beulah stopped knitting. She was still smiling, but her eyes had narrowed, creased like firing slits. Doc Moo had seen the same look on Sid’s face, staring at Baldwins or company men. “Been a few years since a man asked me that.” She raised an eyebrow toward Doc Moo, curling it like a question mark.
“This is Doctor Taylor with the state health department,” Moo told her. “And Major Drake. They’re making an assessment of the health conditions in the tent colonies. They’re here to help.”
“Your age, ma’am?” asked the inspector again.
“Hmm,” said Miss Beulah. She sniffed. “My best guess is seventy-two.”
“Your best guess?”
“That’s right.”
“What year were you born?”
“Long about eighteen and forty-seven. If I knew for sure, I wouldn’t be needing to guess how old I was, would I?”
“You really should not be sitting outside given the air temperature, not at your age.”
Miss Beulah kept smiling, a vicious little light in her eyes. “You want to come in my tent and warm me up?”
Doc Moo coughed into his fist, tears in his eyes. The inspector stood slack-mouthed, his pen paused for the first time since they’d entered the camp. Finally the major stepped forward and thumped him on the back. “We better keep it moving, Doctor. Lot of ground to cover today. Don’t want you losing your waders before noon.” He winked at Miss Beulah and ushered the inspector down the road.
Doc Moo shook his head. “You are bad, Miss B.”
“Bad is what I’d do to that there inspection man. Break him in half, I would. They don’t make menfolk like they used to.” She scraped her knitting needles together like knives. “Do they look the same on the inside as they used to, Doctor Moo?”
Moo started to say that human physiology evolved much more slowly than the world around them, but he could hear a train crawling along the river and cinder from the engine’s stack had begun falling around them, floating down like hellish snowflakes, crackling on the tents and top of his hat. Around them, the hills looked heaped with ash instead of snow—smoke-stained by the coke ovens and collieries. He thought of how Miss Beulah’s husband had died, his lungs clogged with black dust, and the lungs of the people in the mills and factory towns.
“I’m not so sure they do look the same,” he said. “On the inside. Speaking of menfolk, how’s Big Frank mending? Hadn’t seen him in the last couple weeks.”
Miss Beulah sucked her teeth. “Sometimes I think you done fixed him up too good, Doctor. I might should of let you cap him just a little. Keep some of that plaster on him.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s out at all hours, seems like.”
“Whiskey?”
Miss Beulah rolled her lips inside her mouth a moment. “No, sir, not whiskey, nor women neither. You know how you said a man’s broke bones, they heal stronger at the breaks? Well, I fear his spirit might of done the same.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
Miss Beulah squinted out at the ashen hills. “Just seems that anything with too much spirit in this valley has a way of ending up in a pine box.”