tonic and taking charge around their little cabin.
When he opened the door to the shanty, he hesitated momentarily at the sight of his mother. Her eyes were closed, her hair was plastered across her sweating face, and her blankets kicked helter-skelter, showing the dirty canvas fabric covering the thin cornhusk mattress. There was a heavy sweat smell mixed with a sour smell like spoiled milk. When did she lose so much weight, he wondered. At the sound of the scraping door she pulled the bedclothes up in front of her chest and called, “What? Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Ma. You sent me to church.”
“Would you ask Lucie if I can have some warm milk, or maybe some coffee? My throat hurts, I don’t want nothing more.” She paused before she said, “Speed, I’m sorry I don’t feel good just now. You take care of things until I feel better.” Speed felt a jolt of fear at his mother’s injunction. Never at any time in their journey had she asked him to take complete responsibility. He threw another few sticks in the stove to restore the flame, then ran to the kitchen.
Madame Roundhouse was holding a beef roast on a large platter with a fork so that Lucie could stack boiled potatoes and carrots around it. “Speed, you and your mother will have to wait a while until this platter comes back to the kitchen. Can you do that?” asked Mrs. Roundhouse. Before Speed could say anything, she triumphantly bore her bounty through the dining room door.
Immediately Lucie asked, “Is your ma still sick? She didn’t come over this morning. She ain’t been right this whole week.”
“Ma’s feeling pretty poorly. She asked for some warm milk or coffee, Lucie. Can you help?”
“Now that woman’s out of the kitchen I can,” squeaked Lucie. “You take this coffee and I bring the milk soon as I can.”
Speed took the steaming coffee out to their shack to find that his mother had put the bed in better order and had combed her hair. She sipped once from the cup, set it beside the cot on the floor, and watched as Speed put another piece of oak in the stove. When Lucie came, she brought a saucer holding a soft fried egg.
“You get some food and drink in you,” piped the tiny woman. “You going to be just fine, Mrs. Joycie. You going to be just fine. I tell the mayor that you feeling poorly and maybe he should call the doctor.” Speed was surprised that the diminutive slave was willing to confront the mayor on his mother’s behalf. Who gave the little woman the imperative to act?
“Don’t trouble the doctor on Sunday, Lucie. Maybe if I don’t feel better tomorrow I will find him,” said Joycie. She took a tentative sip of the warm milk, then lay back on the cot, closing her eyes. The tiny cook motioned for Speed to follow her out of the door.
“Boy, you keep that cabin warm all night. You wake up and feed that fire. You feed it until morning, you hear? You come tell me and Missus Roundhouse if she still so sick in the morning. You take care of her, you hear? She sick. She real sick.”
It was only midafternoon, yet the sky was darkening as the winter solstice approached. A brisk wind slapped snow flurries against his face and snapped the oiled paper windows. As he looked down at the tiny Negro, her hair tied up in multiple little bunches, he felt a rush of gratitude and comradeship. “Thank you, Lucie.” He looked straight into her black eyes. “Thank you for the egg and coffee. Thank you for helping.” She turned, waved dismissively at him, then entered the back of the mayor’s substantial home.
Speed brought wood from the woodpile and stacked it outside the door of the shack. Inside the room that had served as his bedroom, living room, and dining room for the two of them, and was now Joycie’s sick room, he felt all of the cracks. Where the stream of cold air was particularly strong he stuffed wadded strips of a newspaper broadside, bits of bark and even splinters from the firewood. After about forty-five minutes, when his fingers were quite raw from his efforts, he concluded that he had made the room as tight as he could.
As he lay on the bed that normally was his mother’s, he heard the first deep rasping cough. He turned to cover one of his ears, hoping that the sound was an illusion, denying that there had been any indication that her conditioning was worsening. He must have napped through the late afternoon, because there were lights on in the big house when he awoke to step out to fetch wood. He stoked the stove and felt his mother’s feverish head. Should he wake her up, should he pound on the door of the mayor’s house and ask them to summon a doctor? He listened to the sound of her breathing. It was rapid and shallow, but there was no rasping. He decided she wouldn’t want to bother the madam and the mayor. He called to her softly but she did not respond. He sat on the foot of the bed and waited until the fire in the stove was at full strength.
He remembered waking one more time, seeing the big house dark as he went to the woodpile outside the door, then stoking the stove. As he went back to bed, he had every intention of waking several more times in the depth of the night to feed the fire. But the next thing he saw was the pale light of winter morning through the paper window. The first thing he heard was a repeated deep rasping cough, followed by ferocious gasps for air. He was by her bedside immediately and pulled her upright by her shoulders. He was amazed at how light she had become. “Ma, Ma, you okay? You want your coffee?” When she looked at him he saw the flecks of blood on the foam in the corner of her mouth.
“Get...the…doctor...sorry…” she gasped one word at a time.
He fairly dropped her shoulders and ran sobbing to the back door. “Mr. Mayor, Lucie, Mrs. Roundhouse,” he cried as he pounded on the door. “She’s sick. Ma’s very sick. Get a doctor. Please get a doctor.” It was as if the entire household sprung into action to expiate their complicity in neglecting his mother. Madame Roundhouse bustled from the kitchen in her nightclothes and robe, while Speed saw the mayor shuffle down the street without socks in untied shoes, his suspenders over underwear barely concealed by his flapping greatcoat.
Lucie shot an accusatory glance at Speed as she motioned him out of what had been his room in the little cabin. It was completely filled by Madame, the Mayor, and the Doctor. Speed waited in the adjacent room, hardly able to catch the snatches of the conversation. “Pneumonia in extremis,”...“immediate succor of an interior room,”….“perhaps before evening today.” The mayor carried Speed’s mother, draped over his arms, from the little cabin.
“Let’s bring her inside, m’ boy,” the Mayor said over his shoulder. “The vapors are more salutary toward recovery.” Speed followed to find himself where he had never been permitted previously. He was sitting on a linen chest outside a door of the second floor bedroom where his mother lay. Suddenly everyone was very solicitous of his welfare. Lucie brought him coffee. When Matilda sat briefly beside him, inquired about his welfare, and asked if he wished one of her dolls, Speed could feel the fabric of the girl’s skirt but could not look her in the face. While he stared blankly at the porcelain-headed toy as the morning passed, waiting for the doctor to return, Lucie’s words stayed in his head. “Boy, you keep that cabin warm all night. You feed that fire until morning.” He had failed. He had slept when he could have kept his mother alive. He prayed over and over again, “Let her live. I’ll be good. I won’t fail next time. Let her live.” Finally, as evening came on, he heard Lucie’s voice at the front door below, followed by the doctor’s greeting and the mayor’s basso salutation. The two men came up, opened the door solicitously, and closed it quickly. Speed stood and tried to see his mother, but the mayor’s great bulk was interposed.
Shortly the mayor came out and said, “I’m sorry, Speed, I truly am sorry. You may come in now.”
Speed looked inquiringly at the mayor’s face and then entered the bedroom. His mother’s body was lying on the bed, her head turned away from him and her mouth
