A Redbird Christmas (12 page)

The Assistant

A
S THE SUMMER
progressed, it seemed everything was looking up. Oswald continued to feel well, and the Dotted Swiss luncheon was a huge success. The Dotted Swiss ladies, who tended to lord it over the Polka Dots as far as their needlework was concerned, had been very impressed with the pot holders, and Frances could tell they were green with envy over the tomato aspic. Not only had the luncheon been a hit, Patsy was very happy. She had a brand-new job.

In the past, when asked, Roy had taken Jack out and done a few little shows with him for local schools or church bazaars to raise money. But the next time he and Jack were asked to do a show, Roy asked Frances if Patsy could come along. She said yes, she thought it was a fine idea. After that, whenever he and Jack did a show, he started taking Patsy along as his assistant. Frances even bought her a special red-striped dress to wear to match Roy’s red-and-white-striped jacket and straw hat. Oswald went with them and helped set up chairs for the performance. Roy would start the show with Patsy standing beside him and Jack perched on his finger.

“Come one, come all, come and see the Amazing Redbird of Baldwin County. He walks, he talks, he crawls on his belly like a snake. The only redbird in captivity that actually knows his own name! And now, my lovely assistant Miss Patsy and I will demonstrate. Is your name Jack?” The bird would bob up and down as if he were agreeing. “
Yes!
he says. Absolutely amazing. But wait. Now you might think a poor dumb bird would not know his right from his left. But observe the Amazing Redbird of Baldwin County.” At this point Patsy would hold out her right finger and Jack would land on it. “That is correct, sir! And now the left.” Jack would fly over to her left hand. “Absolutely amazing! The only redbird in America, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, that can tell me exactly what I have hidden here in my hand.” Then the bird would walk up her arm to her shoulder and nudge her ear. “And what did he say the object was, Miss Patsy?” He would lean down while Patsy whispered something to him. “The bird has said,
Sunflower seeds.
”

Roy then opened his hand to reveal about ten shiny black sunflower seeds. “He is absolutely correct yet again! Ladies and gentlemen! I can hardly believe it myself.” Then Patsy would pretend the bird said something else in her ear and tug on Roy’s jacket and Roy would hold up his hand and say, “Wait a moment, ladies and gentlemen, the bird has spoken again.” Then Patsy would whisper again to Roy. “Ah-ha!” said Roy. “The Amazing Redbird of Baldwin County says he would like to demonstrate his powers of detection. Very well. At this time I will hide certain objects and test his abilities. Please turn your back, Miss Patsy, while I hide the objects.” Patsy would turn away with Jack, as Roy would make a big show out of hiding seeds in all his pockets; later of course Jack, who was a glutton for sunflower seeds, amazed the audience as he crawled in and out of all Roy’s pockets and found every one.

After the shows children would come up and try to talk to Patsy, but Roy noticed that she seemed shy and afraid of other children.

Frances saw it too, and it worried her. She tried to invite a few children over to the house to play with Patsy, but it was no good. All Patsy wanted to do was play with Jack. Frances wondered if, in the past, children had been mean to her because of her leg. The first time she had bathed her she had been surprised to see how badly twisted her little body was. She just hoped, when Patsy went to school in the fall, that the other children would not make fun of her.

Two Men in a Boat

C
LAUDE HEARD THE
redfish were biting and had gone all the way up the river over to Perdido Bay. As he was coming home up the backside of the river late that afternoon, he heard somebody yelling, “Help! Help! Help!”

He saw two men standing up in a shiny brand-new blue-and-white twenty-two-foot boat in the middle of the river, frantically waving.

He throttled down his motor and pulled up alongside them. “Hey, fellows, what’s up?”

“Thank God you came along! We’ve been stranded out here all day,” one man said.

The other man said, “We must have hit something, because the motor just died and wouldn’t start again and we’ve been drifting around for hours. We must have drifted five miles.”

Claude asked, “Why didn’t you use your paddles?”

“They didn’t give us any,” the man said.

Claude calmly pointed over at the right side of the boat. “Look in that compartment down there. There should be a couple.”

The larger man opened the long side panel and saw two paddles. “Oh.”

“Where did you fellows come from?”

“We started out at the Grand Hotel at Point Clear. Where are we now?”

“You’re all the way to Lost River, about fifteen miles south.”

“How are we going to get all the way back?”

“Well, let me take a look at this thing.” Claude maneuvered around the back of the boat and quickly assessed the situation. “You got your motor all twisted up with silt and mud.”

“Can it be fixed?”

“Oh, sure, but we’ve got to pull it out of the water to do it.” He threw them a rope and towed them back to his house. When they pulled up to the dock, Claude looked at the setting sun and said, “It’ll be too dark to get you to the hotel by boat tonight, but I’ll get Butch to drive you back and the hotel can send somebody to get your boat tomorrow.”

As the two men gathered up their expensive fishing gear and heavy rods and reels, Claude chuckled. “What were you boys aiming to catch out there today?”

Embarrassed that they had to be towed in, they tried to sound like they knew what they were doing. “Oh, speckled trout, redfish. I hear they’re running pretty good this time of year.”

“Uh-huh,” said Claude. “About the only thing you’re liable to catch with that stuff you got there is a shark—or a whale, maybe.”

He opened a box and pulled out a string of the biggest bass, redfish, and speckled trout they had ever seen.

“Come on up to the house and I’ll call Butch.”

“Thanks, that’s mighty nice of you.”

“By the way,” said the larger one, “my name is Tom and this is Richard.”

“I’m Claude Underwood. Nice to meet you.”

As the three of them headed up the yard, Claude said, “You boys down here on a vacation?”

“No,” said Tom, “we’re attending a medical convention at the hotel, but we thought we might try to get a little fishing in while we’re here.”

When they got to the house Sybil fixed them some coffee and a few minutes later Butch came in the door whistling. He was used to being called to take amateur fishermen back home. It gave him a chance to have some fun. “Hey, guys, I hear you got lost. That’s why we call it Lost River, ’cause if you’re up this far, you must be lost.” And as always he laughed at his own joke, thinking it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

When they were leaving, Claude said, “How long are you here for?”

Tom said, “Just three more days. Unfortunately this one was shot to hell.” He looked over at Sybil. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Sybil laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m married to a fisherman so I’ve heard that kind of language before.”

Claude, who felt sorry for them, said, “If you want to do some more fishing, come back tomorrow and I’ll take you out and show you a few good spots.”

Later, when Butch was driving them back to the hotel, he said, “You might not know it, but you just met the best fisherman in the state. If he’s offered to take you out, you need to take him up on it.”

“Thanks! We will,” they said.

The next afternoon Butch picked them up and drove them back down to the river to where Claude was waiting for them at the dock.

“Hey, boys, get in,” he said. They climbed into his old green fourteen-foot flat-bottom boat powered by a small five-horse Johnson motor and headed out. Claude handed them both a simple rod and reel and explained his method. “I only use this little guy here.” He held up a red and white Heddon vamp spook. “Now I modify it a bit, I take the front lip off and it runs deeper for you. Or else I just use a little lead head jig, but that’s all you really need.”

Before the day was over, the two men were so excited they could hardly believe it. They had caught more fish and learned more about fishing in one day than they had all their lives. They thought Claude must have some sort of secret knowledge about fish. Claude, always philosophical, said, “Naw, there’s no secret to it. Either they’re biting or they ain’t.”

The men came down the next two afternoons and had a wonderful time going up and down the river with Claude, and he got a kick out of the two who were obviously city boys, full of enthusiasm and excitement every time they caught something. On the last day they were to be there, they tried to pay him for being their guide, but Claude said, “No. You don’t owe me a thing.”

Tom said, “We’d love to pay you for your time.”

“Thank you, but no, it was my pleasure.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You fellows don’t owe me a dime. But I am going to ask you to do me a favor.”

“If we can, sure, what is it?”

“I know you fellows are both doctors, and I wondered if you would take a look at a little girl for me and tell me what you think.”

In the past few days Claude had found out that the two men were at the hotel for the southeastern convention of elbow and shoulder surgeons. He did not know if they could help Patsy but he thought it might be worth a try, so he told Frances to have Patsy up at his house that afternoon just in case they agreed to see her.

Frances dressed Patsy in her best dress and brought her over, and they sat in the living room with Sybil and Butch and waited for them. When the two men walked in with Claude, he introduced them to Frances and then to Patsy. Tom leaned down and shook her hand. “Hi, Patsy, how are you?” Then he said, “Honey, could you do me a big favor? Would you walk across the room for me?” Patsy looked at Frances, who smiled and motioned for her to do it. Patsy walked across the room and stopped. Tom whispered something to his friend and said, “Now come on back for me.” She did. “That’s fine, thank you, honey,” he said. After a few more minutes of small talk, they said their goodbyes and walked out the door.

Claude and Butch followed them out, and they stood in the yard and talked. Tom said, “Mr. Underwood, unfortunately that sort of birth injury is not our specialty. We deal mostly with sports injuries. I wish we could help, but that girl needs a specialist.”

“What kind of specialist?”

“She needs a pediatric orthopedic surgeon,” said Richard. “Kids’ bones are tricky, and you need someone with a lot of skill and expertise in that area.”

Tom looked at his friend and said a name: “Sam Glickman.”

Richard nodded. “Yeah.”

Later that night the phone rang. “Mr. Underwood, this is Tom. Listen. If you can get that little girl up here to the hotel before eight o’clock in the morning, Sam says he will take a quick look at her before he has to catch his plane back to Atlanta.”

Claude called Frances and told her to have Patsy ready and that Butch would pick them up at six-thirty and drive them over to the hotel. When Frances told Patsy that they were going for a ride in the morning, she asked if Mr. Campbell could go with them.

“Well, if you want him to, I’ll call and see.”

When she phoned and asked, Oswald said, “If Patsy wants me to come, I’ll be there.”

When he hung up he was so pleased that Patsy had wanted him to go along, he felt like a million bucks. Would he go? Why, he would have gone to the moon and back if she had asked.

The next morning Butch drove the three of them all the way over to Point Clear, to the Grand Hotel on the Mobile Bay. At seven-thirty, wearing only her underwear and her Dr Pepper hat, Patsy was lying on a banquet table in the main dining room being examined by Dr. Samuel Glickman. Frances and Oswald both cringed as they watched the doctor push and pull her leg back and forth, up and down. Then he turned her over and felt all the way up her spine, talking to her the whole time he was examining her. “You know, Patsy,” he said, “I have a little granddaughter about your age named Colbi, and do you know what she told me? Does that hurt?” Patsy made a face like it did but said, “No, sir.” Then he turned her back over. “She said, ‘Granddaddy, I already have two boyfriends.’ Can you imagine that?” As he sat her up and had her bend over to the left as far as she could and then to the right, he asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, sir,” she said.

“Yes, you do, Patsy,” Frances said. “You told me the other day that Jack was your boyfriend. Tell the doctor about Jack, honey.”

After it was all over, the doctor looked at his watch, picked up his suitcase, and said to Frances, “Come walk to the car with me, Mrs. Cleverdon.” Then he turned and smiled and waved. “Goodbye, Patsy.”

He talked as they walked through the lobby.

“Mrs. Cleverdon, I would need to do X-rays, of course, but from what I felt I would say that her pelvis and right hip were broken in four, maybe five places, and whoever did it never bothered to set the bones straight. Does she complain much about pain?”

Frances, running to keep up with him, said, “No, Doctor, she’s never said a word about pain.”

“Well, I don’t know why she hasn’t, because I know it has to hurt. Those bones are pressing on the nerves in her hip and spine, and the more she grows the worse it will get.”

As he got in the waiting car, Frances blurted out the one question they all wanted answered. “Can anything be done?”

Dr. Glickman looked up. “Mrs. Cleverdon, it’s not a question of can anything be done. Something has to be done.” He handed her a card. “Call my office and set up an appointment,” he said, and the car drove away.

Frances went back inside and found them all waiting in the lobby for her. “He wants to see her in his office,” she said.

Two weeks later they were swerving in and out of Atlanta traffic while Frances and Oswald reached back and forth over Patsy trying to read the map. Finally, they found the medical building and made it on time.

Frances said, “How anybody can find their way in or out of this town is a mystery to me.”

After a series of X-rays were looked at and all the tests were done, Dr. Glickman called Frances and Oswald into his office while a nurse took Patsy down to the cafeteria for something to eat.

“With a malformation as severe as this,” he said, “if we let it go uncorrected any longer, what will happen is that she will begin to lose mobility and eventually she won’t be able to walk at all.”

Frances grabbed Oswald’s hand for support. “Oh, dear.”

“And as she continues to grow it will begin to affect her central nervous system as well. The sooner we can reset those bones and relieve her skeletal and muscular area from all the stress and strain the better. But we are talking about two—maybe three—separate surgeries. With a child that young and frail it’s a pretty serious undertaking, and it’s going to require a lot of strength and stamina on her part to get through it.”

Frances was alarmed. “You don’t mean she could die, do you?”

“With any major surgery there’s always that possibility, of course, but from what I have seen she seems like a pretty happy little girl with a lot to live for. But let me be clear. She will need a lot of emotional support from all of us for the long haul, and even after going through it all there are still no guarantees she will heal properly.”

“Oh, dear,” said Frances again.

“Having said all that, in my opinion it has to be done. I just want you to know up front that it is going to be a long hard process, no matter what the results.”

Oswald asked, “Will it be expensive?”

“I wish I could say no, Mr. Campbell, but yes. It will be terribly expensive.” He glanced down at the picture of his granddaughter on his desk. And then he flipped through his calendar and looked over his glasses. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll waive my surgical fees. That ought to help some. If you promise to have her here with a few more pounds on her by the end of July, we can do her first operation the morning of August second.”

Frances told the doctor that they would be there and that Patsy would have more pounds on her if she had to feed her twenty times a day. How they would get the rest of the money was another question, but she did not tell him that.

For the next month everybody up and down the street plied Patsy with cookies and candies and as much ice cream as she could eat. They were determined to get those extra pounds on her by the end of July. But the main problem was going to be the money. Even without the doctor’s fees it was estimated that the long hospital stay plus the following months of therapy would run over a hundred thousand dollars. Frances and Mildred had a little saved, but it was not nearly enough. The Lost River Community Association had several fund-raisers, and a large jar that said
THE PATSY FUND
sat by the cash register in the grocery store. Pretty soon, as more people found out about it, other organizations began to help them as well. When Elizabeth, their friend over in Lillian who was president of their sister group, the Mystic Order of the Royal Dotted Swiss, heard about it, her group held a bake and rummage sale. Lost River had a huge fish fry at the community hall every Saturday, thanks to Claude Underwood, and people came from all over the county for that. As word spread, and courtesy of Butch’s friends, the Elks Club over in Elberta decided to have a fund-raiser. They planned a barbecue, and everybody in Lost River attended, along with hundreds of other people from all over the county. When Oswald got there he was in for a surprise. The members of the Alabama Accordion Association had donated their services and were giving a free concert in the park to raise money. They were up on the bandstand, dressed in lederhosen. Mr. Krause spotted Oswald and waved while playing “The Beer Barrel Polka.” Frances and Mildred and Patsy joined him, and they sat in the wooden chairs and listened along with the rest of the people. Patsy was on her second cotton candy when suddenly Oswald saw something that made his blood run cold. He had just spotted Brent Boone, the government man, sitting in the front row across from them, and he was looking right at Patsy.