“Mighty fine breakfast, Mother.”
“Thank you, JA. Compliments are always appreciated at my house.”
He reached for one loose suspender, flipped it over his shoulder, and buttoned it. JA, as he was called by most everyone, strode across the pine board floor and out the kitchen door of the farm house, built by his father, to their well they themselves dug under the old mulberry tree. He drew a galvanized tin bucket full of cool water, got down the dipper hanging on a post hook, and dipped it full. He rinsed out his mouth, spat on the ground, and took a long cooling drink. Everybody agreed JA’s well water was the best tasting water in all of Augusta County. Returning the dipper to its peg, the old man turned to go, when suddenly he had an excruciating headache and a blinding searing pain over his left eye. He felt dizzy. “Ain’t no place to sit dow…” Then the old man fell to his knees on the hard-packed red Virginia dirt and crumpled over on his left side.
“Papa!” yelled his only son, Thomas, who’d just come out of the smoke house door, as he ran to his father. The old man was already dead, something had busted loose in his head.
“A stroke,” Dr. Bass later said of the old man. “From too much sun and too much hard work, that’s what kills us Virginians,” added the good doctor. Jeffery Adam Nelson was an old man at fifty-five. He was buried on Saturday afternoon in the Buffalo Gap Cemetery. His forty-seven acres of prime Virginia farmland in Augusta County, the old man had willed to his only son, Thomas.
Young Thomas Abraham Nelson was a mighty good farmer, all who knew him said so. He and young Emma Anne Johnson were both born and raised Virginians, and they’d been married in the Methodist church in Buffalo Gap in ’43. They’d started their family when Thomas inherited and began farming the Nelson family home place. His daddy, Jeffery Adam Nelson, had passed on to that big fertile farm in the sky and left young Thomas and his mama still living on their farm.
When young Thomas married Emma, Grandma stayed and kept on making crackling cornbread for her son and helped his bride Emma keep the house. Little Jeffery was born in ’44, and Grandma eagerly began helping his mama raise him. Jeff, by ten years of age, had become a dang good farmer like his daddy, already able to plow arrow straight, cotton-planting rows from sunup to sundown behind either of their two gray mules.
Jeff Nelson wasn’t a tall boy for his age. His mama reckoned he was gonna be a slender man, clearing six feet in height like his papa. His mother, Emma, had birthed two children after Jeff was born. Emily, born in 1845, and Edith, born in 1846. Poor little baby Emily had been stillborn, and her sister Edith only lived to be age three. An epidemic of diphtheria swept through Augusta County in ’49 claiming the lives of a dozen children; Emma’s sweet little Edith was one of them.
After baby Edith, Dr. Bass told Emma she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. Something had broken deep down inside her, he said. Sure enough, even though she and Thomas tried again and again for years to have more children, Emma never became pregnant again. She and Thomas were heartbroken, for they’d both wanted lots of sons and daughters. Mama Nelson eventually joined Thomas’s father, JA, in death, and then there were just Thomas, Emma, and ten-year-old Jeffery on their farm. The farm kept them busy, and it provided the Nelsons a good livelihood year after year.
It’d been raining off and on since before daylight. Now it was raining harder. Jeff could hear it pounding on their roof’s cedar shingles. He was wondering when his papa would return. No outside work would be done by them today; their fields would be too muddy. Jeffery guessed he’d go out to the barn and find something to keep him busy until his papa got back. Some harnesses needed mending as he remembered.
Fourteen-year-old Jeff Nelson padded barefoot from across the kitchen’s cold pine board floors to his mama’s sleeping room. Emma was awakened by the creaking wood floor, and she smiled at Jeff when she saw him as he opened the door. Stepping over to her side, Jeff leaned over and kissed his mama on her cheek.
“Morning, Mama, how are you feeling today?” Emma had been feeling poorly for two weeks; now she felt bad sick this morning. The dull pain deep down in her belly came and went. Sometimes the pain doubled her over, and most times Emma was able to bear it. Right this minute, she’d just felt a discomforting “makes me want to vomit” sickness that had lingered most all the morning.
“Was feeling poorly, but seeing your sweet face, sonny boy, makes your mama feel so much better.”
“I’m glad, Mama. Papa went for Dr. Bass while you were sleeping, and I think I heard ’em ride up in Doc Bass’s buggy.”
“Give the good doctor the respect he’s entitled to, sonny. Call him Dr. Bass, and never Doc Bass. Doc sounds so common, and he is not common. He’s an educated man, and a member of the medical profession, you understand, sonny?”
“Yes, Mama, I understand. Oh, I hear them coming in the front door now.”
Chapter Two
Thomas Nelson, along with Dr. Bass, took off their raincoats and preceded at once to Emma’s sleeping room.
Thomas had gone for the doctor before daybreak. They’d returned in the rain and now Jeff was told by his papa to leave his mama’s room. Jeff, with an ear turned toward the partially closed door, was listening as his mama was answering the old doctor.
“Does this hurt, Emma?”
“Not so much.”
“How about here?”
“Not much.”
“Can you feel it when I press on you here?”
“Not so much, Doctor. I don’t feel so much pain right now. It just feels kinda numb.”
“Why can’t she feel all them presses and mashes, Doctor?” Thomas asked.
“Yes, why can’t I?”
“Thomas,” the old doctor croaked, and as he lowered his voice, he moved over and pulled the door completely shut, “you sit there on the bed beside Emma. I have my opinion what’s ailing Emma, and it’s gonna bad hurt you both.”
Jeff’s parents quickly looked at one another and waited for their old doctor to speak. He slowly folded his stethoscope and put it in his black bag. They kept watching his face as he pulled up a straight-backed chair, sat down in it, crossed his legs, and faced them. He’d diagnosed in his mind Emma’s apparent ailment.
“Emma, Thomas, there’s times like right now, I surely wish I’d become a schoolteacher like my mama or a minister of the cloth like my old pappy wanted me to be.”
“Whatever are you tryin’ to tell us, Dr. Bass?” Thomas managed to say as he felt Emma grip his arm muscle tightly.
“Emma, my child, you have a growth, and it’s way down deep inside you where your womanhood is. That’s why you’re losing some blood from where you let go of your water.”
“Can you make her well, Doctor? Can’t you make the blood stop?”
“I don’t know how to do that, Thomas. I wished I did. Her sickness is inside her. I suspect that growth is way deep down in her body where her babies have nested. And I fear it is a bad growth, one that won’t go away. Maybe if we were in a big city, with the right kind of medicine and knowledgeable medical help, we might remove that thing before it grows worse.”
“So
