CHAPTER 19

Granddaddy and those dang crab apples and rabbits were right about winter. January was the coldest, snowiest month I could remember. The only good thing about it was that school was canceled for weeks at a time when snow shut down the roads.

Before I lived here, I thought winter would be easier on a farm, with no crops growing, but winter makes chores even harder. Eggs still have to be gathered in the freezing cold, and the animals’ water needs to be changed constantly, to keep it from turning into a giant piece of ice.

Granddaddy doesn’t have a ton of animals, but they all still need feeding and tending. There’s Molly, the milking cow; the horse we call Horse; and some pigs who don’t have names, since they’re raised to go to market. There used to be a mule for helping in the fields—but he died and Granddaddy didn’t replace him. And Molly had a calf a while back, but Granddaddy sold it, even though Daddy says the farm needs more livestock. Since the animals are inside the barn most of the winter, it needs raking out every day.

Trips to the outhouse in the frosty weather were awful. At least I had a bedpan to use at night so I didn’t have to go out in the dark when, as Granddaddy said, “nature called.”

Big-Mouth Berta brags about having an indoor bathroom at her house. I can’t imagine an outhouse in the middle of a house, but I guess it’d sure be nice not to have to do your business outside in the winter.

One of the worst parts of it being cold and snowy was that we couldn’t even plan on visiting Charlotte, with the roads being so bad.

Guess I surprised myself when I came to realize another reason I was mad at winter was that Ricky needed to stay at his house on the really bad days. Guess I was kinda getting used to him coming around.

One cold stretch kept him home for six days straight. On his first day back, I felt like I hadn’t seen him in a month. We did our chores and then thawed out by the fire. Since Ricky had showed me his letter from his brother, I decided to share my latest one with him.

He read the letter like there would be a test on it afterward. I watched his eyes go back and forth, moving over each new line. When he was done, he put the letter down and asked, “Why ya think you gave your sissy the polio?”

This was something I’d never told a soul, other than Charlotte in the letters. But now I took a deep breath and said, “Last summer, Grandma told us over and over that someone in Centerville got polio and that they’d closed the movie theater and swimming pool just to be safe. She also heard on the news report that polio might get you if you swam in water that was really warm. Same guy on the radio said it was ’specially bad during the dog days of August and we should never swim then.”

“Huh? What’s the guy on the radio have to do with Charlotte catching the polio?”

“I’m getting to that,” I said. “So it was the hottest day of the year. Grandma had us delivering the eggs to the grocer all summer long. Usually, we’d walk home along Elm Street, but that day it was so stinking hot we took a shortcut home through Mill Creek. Most of the creek was dried up that time of year, but there was one spot that ran deep. Oh, it looked invitin’ and cool, and the sun was beatin’ down so hard on me, I couldn’t resist. I took off my shoes and started to wade in the water. All I was gonna do was wade. ’Course, Charlotte, since she never broke a rule in her life, scolded me plenty about being in the creek in the dog days of August like the radio guy warned about.”

I looked at Ricky to see if he understood how awful I was. His expression didn’t show anything but interest in what I was saying, so I continued. “I really was just plannin’ on wadin’ for a minute—you can’t get sick from getting your feet wet, can you? But Charlotte wasn’t allowing that. She came to grab me out of the water, but must have slipped on a rock or something and fell facedown.”

Ricky gasped. “In the bad water? Was it bad water?”

“It felt like regular creek water, but all Charlotte and me could think of was the warnings. We shot out of there as fast as we could and swore we wouldn’t tell what happened. Two weeks later, she got the fever. So you see, it’s all my fault Charlotte got polio.”

“But you can’t be sure.”

Except I was as sure of that as I was sure of the fact that I was staring at a blazing fire right then. I stared so long it must’ve burned my eyes, ’cause all of a sudden, tears fell down my cheeks. Then I got to shivering so bad my whole body shook.

“Are you cold?” Ricky asked. “It’s nice and warm right here. Kinda too warm.”

I shivered again.

Come to find out my burning eyes and shivering were the start of a fever.

And just like that, I knew polio finally got me too.