Amelia’s concerns eased upon seeing how skillfully Toby kept Al from suffering. Her fears had churned memories of the animal sound coming from Hermie while Dr. Stein sawed off his gangrenous leg. Dr. Stein had withheld morphine while Hermie’s leg healed out of fear that he would become addicted the way his father and his brother Paul had been destroyed by alcohol.
Over the next several days, she watched Toby monitor the doses of laudanum––thirty drops in a scoop of honey to mask the horrid taste. Despite her relief that Al was not suffering the agony that Hermie had endured, something felt out of place. She missed their teasing, back slaps, and open affection, which had been replaced by a doctor-patient courtesy. Al accepted his son’s supervision, and at his direction, he gritted his teeth, swung himself onto his crutches, and maneuvered about the house and into the yard. In the past, he would have joked and teased about his son bossing him around. And Toby would have gloated about being in charge.
The twins became Al’s most faithful visitors. Ezra always stationed himself in the corner of the room next to Hébert––soldiers at attention––watching in silence. Ella never failed to ask permission to check Al’s pulse––wrist and neck––her black eyes always seeking Toby’s nod.
When Al healed enough to endure the pain, they saved his first attempt to attach the prosthesis until the children got out of school. Toby had explained that it worked best to dress and then pull up the trouser leg to attach the prosthesis.
Al submitted in silence while his son adjusted the individual barrel staves and metal pieces around his thigh. He stared at his confined white nub. “Looks like a horse muzzle.”
Toby lifted Al into his arms and set the man on his feet. The fake foot as Al insisted on calling it squeaked like a frightened mouse when it touched squarely on the floor. The knee joint clinked into place.
Al stood for a minute, the muscles in his face twisting in pain. “It’s damn sensitive, like a rotten tooth. Shoots right up my....” He looked at Ella. “Feels like my foot’s throbbing.”
“It’s normal to feel the old limb. It’ll finally stop.” Toby moved close. “That’s enough for today.”
“Let me take one step. See how it feels.” Al’s face blanched white with sweat.
“It’ll hurt too much. You’ve got to ration it.” Toby did not wait for his patient to agree before he lifted him back onto the bed and unfastened the clattering slats.
By the end of August, cotton-picking stretched from daylight to dark, and Toby worked every day. After supper, he never failed to examine the leg and look over his patient before he headed upstairs to bed.
Al, a new man each morning after a dose of the laudanum, continued getting about on crutches. He leaned his prosthesis against the wagon seat when he started hauling cotton bales into Brenham. “I wish you could see all the attention it gets,” he crowed. “The loudest mouths at the Packerman trials, gather round to stare at my leg. It’s dandy advertising for Toby’s medical practice. Shows what he can do.” He performed for company by walking his new leg up and down the road. “Doesn’t hurt a damn bit.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “I can’t wait for winter to see if it’s like my old leg, hollering when a cold front’s coming.”
At bedtime, Amelia massaged oil into the swollen nub, mixed the reddish-brown liquid with honey, and watched Al shudder at its bitter taste––never too bad for him to refuse. And it always produced the same effect––almost instant sleep.
Amelia wrote running reports to Helga about the surgery and Al’s recovery. She told her sister about the garden’s late summer melons and her preparation of the soil for fall. She did not mention the distance she sensed between her husband and his son. And she did not mention the laudanum.
The afternoon before Toby’s departure, neighbor women arrived with food, and the men returned early from the fields. Hébert, still wearing his baggy overalls and a red sweat rag around his head, called for attention. “We didn’t want to miss a chance to send Tob off for his last year.”
Toby moved through the crowd and slapped his arm around Hébert. Standing so close, Amelia realized they shared the same square jaw, wide-apart eyes, and close-cropped hair dark as chocolate––Waters characteristics that Al could not claim.
“I’ve been wishing that I’d picked a medical school like Michigan that lasts only two years. But I’ve got to admit I’m eager to get back. I’ve a little gal in Boston I hope is still waiting for me.”
Amelia saw Ella’s face pinch into a frown. She’s claiming him as hers. Didn’t he notice her rapt attention, her constant vigil? Amelia eased past several in the crowd––all eyes on Toby––and put her arm around Ella’s slumping shoulders.
“Are you going to bring her back with you?” someone shouted.
“I aim to try. She’ll finish nursing school at the same time I graduate. Then I’ll pop the question.”
Al had worn his prosthesis to the celebration. “Seems like I ought to let everyone see what Toby can do,” he said when he strapped on the leg. By the time the party ended, his face looked drawn with pain, and he could not hide the limp. Stepping in from the back porch, he slumped in the nearest chair and began unfastening the staves. “How about giving me that laudanum now?”
“I’ll mix it up, Pop. You overdid it tonight. Really irritated that wound. I’m serious about you getting off this stuff.”
Al nodded in agreement, slugged down the last unpleasant drop, and shuddered. “If you’ll hand me those dandy crutches, I can make it up to bed.”
The next morning, Amelia was relieved to see Ella smiling and wearing a soft yellow dress and a sunbonnet with a matching bow tied under her chin that made her black skin glow—the picture of a beautiful young girl. Since Toby’s train left on Saturday, they had promised the twins they could ride to Brenham.
Ezra squeezed on the seat between the men and Amelia sat with Ella on the extra bench. She watched the child’s face brighten each time Toby looked back in her direction.
The talk centered around Toby’s studies, his work at Mass General with Doctor Bigelow.
“When you get back, why don’t you stay in the apartment and clear out one of our upstairs storerooms for an office?” Al looked at the boy for his reaction. “Until you get enough paying patients to open your own place.”
“I’d appreciate it. May take me a spell to get folks to trust me.”
Al held his tongue and was relieved when Ella broke the awkward silence by leaning forward. “I’m going to be a nurse. I could help you...if you like.”
Toby looked back at Ella. “Really? She’ll make a good nurse, won’t she?”
“You bet. You could study with the Sisters of Charity. They operate the Charity Hospital in Galveston and the Santa Rosa Infirmary in San Antonio.”
Ella shook her head. “Sisters don’t get married. Besides, I can learn from Mama. She’s the best midwife around. I help her when I don’t have school.”
“I bet Mama Zoé could teach my classes in obstetrics.” Toby grinned again at Ella.
Since Ella showed no interest in becoming a nun, Amelia noticed that the men’s conversation drifted to Ezra’s plans to enroll in the new Agriculture and Mechanical College at the Alta Vista Plantation. “Miss Regina says I’m ready to go there. Hébert said the train goes all the way to Prairie View.” Ezra pulled his shoulders up toward his ears. “I hope to help Hébert manage all the farms.”
Ella said no more until they reached the store. She pulled a valise from behind the bench. “I have another dress for Miss Cora. Do we have time to take it in?”
“We’re all going in.” Toby helped Amelia step from the wagon bed onto the porch, and then he held his hand out to Ella.
“I can manage.” She stepped quickly past him.
Al felt his blood rising when Toby bought a second-class ticket. The train arrived on time, and after loading his trunks, Toby threw his arms around Al. “Take care of yourself, Pop. I mean it. Get off that laudanum.” He hesitated, “And I hope you can stop stewing about having a colored son.”
Al nodded. Embarrassed that it showed, he blinked back tears. “Yep. Will do.”
Then Toby pulled Amelia into a big hug. “Thanks for taking care of him. Get him off that laudanum.”
“How?” Amelia clenched her jaw, then forced her attention on Toby as he placed both hands on Ezra’s shoulders. “You learn fast. You’ll do well at Alta Vista.”
Ezra stared at the looming locomotive hissing steam. “I’ve never ridden a train.”
“You go to school, and you’ll do lots of new things.” Toby hugged Ezra for an extra-long time. Then he turned and kissed Ella’s forehead. “Keep learning all you can from Mama Zoé. Someday, there’ll be a school where you can study nursing.”
Tears glistened on Ella’s upturned face. Her lips puckered, and she threw her arms around him. “I love you, Toby Waters.” She turned from the startled young man and ran toward the wagon.
“What caused that?” Toby whispered.
“Can’t you see she’s in love with you?” Amelia glared at him. “She’s an innocent girl, and you’re her Asclepius.”
“God of medicine?” He gazed after the retreating girl. “She’s a child. I never thought....” The bell clanged, steam belched a wet haze, and the engine began grinding forward. He turned and swung himself onto the step.
Letters came regularly from Boston with news of school, babies saved and lost. He included litanies of the therapeutic use of drugs and symptoms of prolonged use. He always ended by asking if Al had stopped the laudanum, which Al ignored. Instead, he responded with long accounts of milk cows and the co-op’s decision to expand into raising beef cattle.
Amelia added more local news, including Ella’s uncanny eye for seeing a picture in Godey’s Lady’s Book and constructing a garment. She also answered Toby’s question. No, Al continued the laudanum. He started taking it again first thing each morning. Claimed he couldn’t get about on his fake leg without something to relieve the pain.
Letters from Helga recounted plans for the holidays, how Hermie’s mercantile store prospered and hoped that Al had recovered from the amputation. Amelia always wrote that her husband’s leg continued to heal. She did not say that she wondered if Dr. Stein may have been wise to see that Hermie did not get addicted to morphine.
Winter wrapped like a wet shroud around Amelia, and no amount of firewood took away the chill in her fingers when she counted fewer and fewer drops of the laudanum into each scoop of honey. Al appeared content in his euphoria, imagining life when Toby returned, eager to demonstrate his new leg even for the stagecoach passengers clattering past on the way to Independence.
The sun stayed hidden behind low clouds that hovered gray and listless, even dulling the school’s Christmas caroling. The children came down the road, their voices echoing in the fog, their candles dim as though wrapped in gauze. Al stood at the door leaning on his crutches while Amelia passed a large tray of Lebkuchen, the spicy cookie tradition from her childhood that proved so popular with all the Waters families.
New Year’s Eve, Amelia carried a fresh pitcher of water upstairs, found Al in their bedroom, slumped on the settee. She built a blazing fire to dull the chill before bedtime. She felt his eyes watching her mix his laudanum. Was he counting the number of drops?
“Stop. Throw it in the fire.” His voice sounded hoarse.
Amelia held the vial of liquid and looked at her husband bent forward, his arms wrapped around himself like a man in extreme pain.
“Get rid of it all.” He lifted his arms toward her. “Then come to me.”
Amelia watched the bottle––so small and so powerful––crash against the brick hearth. A fireball of red and yellow flames exploded against the metal screen and blazed white-hot over the logs. “Hell must look like that,” she whispered. She faced Al. “It’s gone.” She walked toward him, each step unsteady, unsure. She knelt, her arms resting on his thighs. “What made you decide?”
“You. I love you more than what’s in that bottle. Tonight, I couldn’t concentrate on supper for counting how much longer until I could take that stuff. When you were mixing it just now, I wanted to snatch it from your hands. You took too long. I thought I would explode.” He cupped her face between cold palms. “Then you looked at me like I was a stranger. You weren’t mine anymore.” He pulled her between his legs, crushed her against his body. “It scared me, Amelia.”
She held onto him, felt the weeks of tension melting away. “I’m sorry that Toby took off your leg. You’ve turned into a different man.”
“I want our life back. I want to hold you again at night. I want to see you laugh again.”
Amelia nuzzled his whiskery neck. Let’s start by crawling in that cold bed and keeping each other warm.”
Al did not sleep that night and for most of the nights that followed. He tossed and grew more agitated by the hour. Finally, he would get up and clump about the room on his crutches. “I feel like puking, and I hurt all over.” He often slumped on the settee staring at the dying embers. “Toby tried to tell me,” became his mantra.
Amelia rubbed his aching muscles, wrapped him in more quilts when he grew so cold that goose bumps covered his body, and she held the chamber pot when he heaved strings of bile. When he quieted for a while, she fell into a restless sleep, dreamed of Helga discovering her lies.
Days marked a ritual pattern––meals prepared and thrown to the hogs, washing stretched across the kitchen to dry, brief and awkward visits with the children. Hébert and Mama Zoé coming by with vague offers of help. And in the midst of it all the endless rounds of Al’s agitated circling through the house and along the road. She felt torn between relief at seeing Mama Zoé slip like a shadow in the back door with gumbo or cakes and shame for pretending that gloom did not hover over them. Hébert and Ezra made trips to Brenham and Independence and always returned with a collection of Al’s prized newspapers that stacked up––unread on the back porch.
In late February, Hébert dropped by early in the morning to see what they needed in Brenham. Amelia noticed that Al followed him out to the wagon and then spent the rest of the day pacing and looking toward the barn for Hébert’s return.
It was dark when they heard the jangle of the team pulling around to the back porch. Al went out to meet Hébert and hurried back with the Boston Herald tucked under his arm. “I’m going upstairs by the fire to read the paper.”
Amelia watched him disappear into the parlor, listened to the uneven step of his prosthesis on the stairs. She stepped onto the back porch while Hébert unloaded their supplies. She wrapped her arms around herself to ease the tension gripping her shoulders and tightening her throat. She could barely form the words. “Did he ask you to bring more laudanum?”
The yellowing lantern light cast deep lines in Hébert’s face. “Afraid so. I thought he had quit the stuff.”
“I’m going to talk to him.” She touched her way through the dark. The kitchen they decided to christen on the first day they moved in by making love on the floor; the cold cast-iron stove that Al insisted he must be the one each day to empty of ashes and refill. Her fingers traced the edge of the sink where they washed supper dishes together; the hand pump he installed; and the polished surface of the table that became their shared work space. A rug they measured and cut from the big house softened the parlor floor. Her hand gripped the newel post they saved from the grand staircase and then clutched the smooth banister to pull her body toward the dim light coming from their bedroom door.
Al stood beside the washstand lifting the tiny bottle to his lips.
Was he willing to drink the vile stuff without honey? Amelia gripped the door facing to steady herself, stunned to hear the anger in her voice. “If you drink that, I am leaving.”
His hands folded around the bottle as though holding a chalice, a frown twisted his face as he stared into its contents. Then he lifted his gaze to Amelia.
“I’ve tried for months to help you. You’re getting better. I am not willing to start over again.” She did not move––a marble figure devoid of blood and breath.
“I wanted a little to help when the pain gets too bad.”
“Your leg is healed. The pain is your need for that drug. Decide which one you want––me or the laudanum. I will ask Hébert to take me to the train tomorrow. When I get to Galveston, I can get a steamer back to Indianola.” She willed herself to breathe deep––to not cry.
He began slowly shaking his head, and like an eagle drifting on a wind current his arm rose and the bottle sailed into the flames, shattering against the brick fireplace. He stared at the broken glass exploding its contents over the red-hot logs. He did not move even as the fire flashed wildly, lighting the room in an explosion of white hell.
He turned toward her. “I would never trade you.”
“I will not share you with laudanum.” She reached for his hand, pulled it to her lips, tasted the bitter liquid staining his knuckles. They sank to the settee, clasped together, sharing tears of relief over what they both had escaped.