The meeting with Serepta was this afternoon. Robert hadn’t returned home since William laid into him for shirking his responsibilities. The whole incident had left Louella without words. She’d been proud of William for finally seeing Robert for the irresponsible man he was, but the way Robert blamed his mother for his drinking had turned her stomach. She hoped he’d stay in Spartanburg and not attend the meeting today.
Whether Robert showed up or not, Louella needed to get out of bed and get organized. But as she woke, her five-year-old son, Waties, was jumping on the bed, shouting, “Breakfast, Mommy.”
She rubbed her eyes as she lifted and rested on her elbow, glancing around the room. William wasn’t in bed, but Joshua was sleeping next to her. He had snuggled into a ball. A smile crept across her face. She would love to stay home with them today, but there was too much to do in the kingdom.
“Didn’t Mama Sue fix your breakfast?”
Waties jumped on the bed again. “She won’t get up. I’m hungry.”
Last night Mama Sue had complained of tiredness and then gone to bed. Louella decided to let her grandmother rest. Joshua was still asleep, but Waties was ready for breakfast. Waties was always hungry.
“What’s for breakfast?” he asked.
“Grits and eggs this morning.” She put a finger under Waties’s chin, brought him close, and kissed his cheek. “And maybe a piece of salt meat if you’re good.”
“Yay!” Waties got off the bed and followed Louella into the keeping room while Joshua stayed rolled in a ball on her bed.
“Have a seat at the table, Waties. Let me check on Mama Sue, and then I’ll get your breakfast.”
It seemed a little too quiet in the house for Louella. Mama Sue was normally at the hearth working on her meals before Louella got out of bed. But the seasons were changing. It was warm during the day but cooler at night. She wondered if her grandmother had come down with a cold.
“Mama Sue,” Louella called as she walked toward the left side of the house where her grandmother’s bedroom was.
No answer.
Louella put her hand on the doorknob. “Mama Sue.” She opened the door. Her grandmother was lying in the bed, but she hadn’t stirred. Louella’s heartbeat pounded in her ears; blood pumped faster and faster.
She inched over to the bed.
From the way Mama Sue was lying on her side facing the wall, Louella couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. Fear clenched her heart as she reached out and touched her grandmother’s arm. She was hot—hot was a good sign. Too cold could mean death. But her grandmother was hot and clammy.
Louella shook her. “Mama Sue, wake up.”
Mama Sue’s eyes fluttered, but she could barely lift her head. “I’m feeling poorly this morning,” she said.
“You’re burning up, but don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” Louella backed out of the room. Concern etched her face. She went outside and picked some of the catnip plant that she grew on the side of the house. Started a fire to boil some water.
She poured some of the substance in a cup and took it to her grandmother. “I know you don’t want to get up, but I need to raise your head a bit so you can drink this tea.”
Mama Sue’s eyes were slitted. She didn’t respond.
Louella sat on the bed next to her grandmother. She adjusted her body so Mama Sue had her back against her chest and then she put the cup to her lips. “Sip on this for me.”
Mama Sue’s lips parted as Louella pressed the cup to her lips. She sipped a few drops but then fell back to sleep.
Louella stood. Sweat dripped off her grandmother like a waterfall. She would need to get that fever down before she could get as much catnip in her as she would need to break this sickness.
Rushing back into the keeping room, Louella saw Waties at the table. She touched his forehead to see if he had a fever. He wasn’t hot.
Joshua! He didn’t get up when she mentioned breakfast.
She went back to her bedroom. Joshua was still curled up in a ball. She touched him. He was hot. Why hadn’t she noticed that earlier?
Waties yelled for her. “Breakfast, Mommy!”
“I’m coming. I need to get your daddy.” Louella ran out of the house and into the church. She figured William had gone in there to get ready for his Sunday morning sermon, but he wasn’t inside the church.
Louella ran back outside and was getting ready to find someone to go into town for a block of ice when Femi pulled his wagon up to their door. Ambrose was riding up front with him.
Ambrose jumped down the moment the wagon stopped moving, then Femi got down. They both went to the back of the wagon. Things moved in slow motion as they hopped into the bed of the wagon and lifted William up.
It felt like she was wearing cement boots with each step she took toward that wagon. “What happened to him?”
Femi looked befuddled. He hunched his shoulders. “King William came to the gristmill this morning to check on our progress. I turned toward the mill to show him how that thing has been locking up again. The next thing I knew, he was on the ground.”
Louella touched William’s arm. He was hot and clammy like her grandmother. “Take him to our room and lay him down, then I need you boys to ride into town and get me a block of ice.”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away.” Femi and Ambrose laid William on the bed.
As they were leaving, Louella yelled, “Tell Abigail that I need her to come get Waties! He’s the only one not ill, and I need him to stay that way.”
Ambrose said, “Hand him to me. We’ll drop him at Abigail’s as we head into town.”
Louella brought Waties out of the house and sat him between Femi and Ambrose. “Tell Abigail that he hasn’t eaten yet, so he might be a little cranky.”
The oxen pulled the wagon up the hill. She went back in the house, poured catnip tea in two more cups. She woke Joshua and had him sip some tea.
Joshua didn’t seem as out of it as her grandmother and husband, nor was his skin clammy. She took him to his room and put him back in his bed.
Joshua whined, “Mommy.” He held out his hands to her.
Louella wrapped her son in her arms. She kissed his neck. “Mommy will be right back. Lay here like a good boy for me.”
“My lips hurt.”
“They’re cracked.” She had some beeswax, so she put that on Joshua’s lips, then she went to her grandmother’s room and put some on her cracked lips as well. She had her grandmother sit up and drink a little more tea. “I’ll have an ice block here in a little while, and I’ll be able to cool you off.”
Her grandmother lay back down and moaned. Louella didn’t know if Mama Sue understood what she was saying to her. But she had three sick ones to deal with, so she couldn’t stay.
She went back to her bedroom, helped William sit up, and pressed the cup of catnip tea against his lips. “Drink this, my darling. This will fix you up in no time.”
But William couldn’t open his mouth to receive the tea. She had never seen her husband so helpless . . . so weak. She needed to bring his fever down. She grabbed several rags and wet them, put one on Mama Sue’s head, another on Joshua’s head, and the third on William’s head. As the cloth took on the heat from their bodies, she added cool water to the rags and placed them back on their foreheads.
On her third trip of replacing hot cloths with cool cloths, she looked to heaven. “Dear Lord, I need You. Nothing I’m doing is working.”
When she finished praying, there was a knock at the door. Clara and Rachel were standing on her porch. She opened the door and the ladies came in.
“We heard you got a house full of sickness on your hands,” Rachel said.
“We came to help,” Clara added.
“Oh, praise God.” Louella hugged the women and then set them to work taking care of Joshua and her grandmother. “Once the ice gets here, we’ll be able to cool them off faster, but for now, we have to keep a cool, wet cloth to their heads.”
“We might need more than one ice block,” Rachel told her. “A few other families have come down with fevers.”
This thing was spreading through the kingdom? “I’ll have Femi and Ambrose check other homes when they get back.” Louella went back into the room with William. His sweat had drenched the bed. She climbed in behind him and pressed another cool cloth to his head. He mumbled something that she couldn’t understand.
“Are you coming around?” She picked the cup of tea off the table next to the bed, pressed it to his lips again. This time he took a few sips. “Oh, praise God.”
Then she remembered how William encouraged her to believe for good things. She declared to him, “You’re doing good, darling. I don’t know what happened to y’all, but you’ll survive. Do you hear me?”
William coughed and spit out some of the tea.
“There’s more where that came from. Soon as I get this fever down, you’ll be ready to sip on that tea.”
She laid his head on her chest as she kept saying, “God will come see ’bout you. You believe so thoroughly in our Savior. He won’t let you down.”
After what seemed like hours, Femi and Ambrose returned with the block of ice. As they were bringing it into the house, Robert came in behind them. “What is this I’m hearing about William taking ill?”
Louella instructed Femi and Ambrose to break the ice so she could share it with all three of her patients, then she turned to Robert. “I don’t have time to talk to you now. Please come back later.”
“But we got a meeting with Serepta. William’s sick, and you’re stuck taking care of him. What we gon’ do?”
Hands went to her hips. “I’m not stuck doing nothing. I want to be right here with my family.”
Louella pointed to the remaining block of ice, then asked Ambrose and Femi, “Can you check with others to see how many families might need some ice to bring down a fever? You might need to get another block of ice as well.”
“Will do,” Femi said as he and Ambrose left the house.
Robert wouldn’t let up. “You’re a queen. You shouldn’t be taking care of the sick. We have people in the Happy Land that can do this for you.”
She folded her arms and leaned back as she challenged him. “Who are you to come in here telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing? Go back to Spartanburg.”
Robert sputtered, “Y-you don’t tell me what to do. I came back for this meeting, and you need to be there with me.”
“Reschedule the meeting or take it yourself!” Louella shouted at Robert. “Leave us be.”
Louella didn’t care what Robert did at that point. She wasn’t concerned about being the queen of the Happy Land today. She was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a granddaughter, and that was all that mattered.
Her shirt was drenched as if she’d jumped in a tub with her clothes on. Her hair was braided on one side while the braid on the other side had unraveled.
“You’re in no shape to take a meeting now anyway.” Robert huffed and then stormed out of the house.
She took a few pieces of ice and wrapped a rag around them; Clara and Rachel did the same. Then each of them went back to ministering to the sick. Louella prayed hard that night. She was counting on God to come through for her.