The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) (31 page)

The Cadillac rolled down a narrow dirt road between cultivated fields. Once they had to stop for a cart pulled by a donkey, and two laborers on the bench seat stared at the automobile in wonder. They passed farmhouses set back from the road, square, two-story affairs, surrounded by barns and sheds and kitchen gardens. Once or twice they saw a tractor grumbling along in a field, and along every stream or creek blackberry bushes flourished in great green rolls. The berries hadn’t come on yet, but Margot could smell the promise of their sweetness through her open window.

Following Sarah’s direction, Blake turned into a rutted, dusty lane that wound through fields planted with something Margot didn’t recognize. Frank thought it might be potatoes, but he wasn’t certain. “We only grew hay,” he said. “Timothy, alfalfa.”

The lane opened out, after a number of twists and turns, into a packed dirt yard littered with vehicles in various states of repair. There was a wood-sided wagon with its shafts resting on the ground, and a tangle of harness looped over the frame. There were a couple of rusting trucks, their tires gone, axles sitting on the ground. There was a van that had once been white, and looked as if it might still run. Beyond this bounty was a low-roofed house built in an L-shape, with a complex of laundry poles to one side and a wilting garden to the other. An outhouse with a tilting roof and a larger building Margot guessed to be a washhouse were at the far end of the garden.

In the field behind the buildings, curls of dust rose, and after Blake pulled the Cadillac into a clear spot, and turned off the motor, the sound of another motor carried clearly in the morning air. A woman peered from the door of the washhouse, and a moment later she and two children of perhaps eight made a dash for the back door, the children casting curious glances at the automobile now parked in front of their home. From the front windows, which were low and narrow, Margot saw the twitch of curtains. Someone was looking out at them.

They sat for a moment waiting for the swirling dust to settle, and staring at the motley assortment of structures. Margot couldn’t imagine a place more different from Benedict Hall. Sarah pointed to a slanted door that looked as if it was set into the earth. “I think that’s a root cellar,” she said.

“No electrical wires,” Frank said.

“None of these farms have electricity.”

Margot said, “Running water?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a well beside the washhouse,” Blake said. “I’d guess they use the creek, too.”

Dickson said, “Sounds like you have experience, Blake.”

“Oh, yes, sir. A very long time ago.”

Margot hadn’t thought, until that moment, of how familiar this place must be to Blake. In his youth, he had worked on the plantation where his parents had been slaves. He spoke of it very little, but she could guess it had been punishing work, and a terrible life, little better than his parents’ had been. He rarely spoke of them, either, except to say that his mama had wanted him to make something of himself. He had, of course, but it had taken a staggering amount of native intelligence, initiative, and discipline.

She said, “We’d better see if they’ll let us in.”

Dickson said, “Why wouldn’t they?”

“They don’t trust strangers, Mr. Benedict,” Sarah said. “Especially not ones who arrive in an expensive motorcar, wearing expensive clothes.”

“What do they think, that we’re the police?”

Margot said in a dry tone, “Very likely, Father. Try not to shout at them, all right?”

She saw the corner of Frank’s mouth twitch. He was the first out of the car, and the first to approach the door of the sprawling house. He used his artificial hand to knock firmly on the door, and as Margot moved up beside him on the cracked wooden stoop, he edged in front of her.

There were voices inside, mostly of women and children. They fell instantly silent upon Frank’s knock. Dickson had come up behind them, and he stood below the stoop, frowning. Sarah stepped up beside Frank, and said quietly, “I should speak to them first, Major Parrish.”

Margot watched Frank’s face as he considered this. He looked both fierce and worried, and the combination made him seem oddly youthful. Her champion. A rush of love for him warmed her heart.

She touched his arm, and said softly, “It should be all right, Frank. Why don’t you wait with Father, and let Sarah and me go in?”

“If anything looks wrong—” he began.

Sarah said, “We’ll call out, I promise.”

He looked unconvinced, but he stepped back, letting Margot and Sarah come between him and the door. It had once been blue, but the paint was peeling now, faded by sun and wind, and cracks ran crazily from top to bottom. Voices had begun to chatter again beyond it, voices in a wide range from high to low. Sarah raised her hand, and knocked again. A single, distinctly male voice rang out, and the other voices fell silent.

Sarah said, “Mrs. Jenks?” There was a long silence. Sarah cast a glance up at Margot, and shrugged.

Margot said, “I’ll try. Sometimes the title helps.” She knocked, two sharp raps, and said, “Mrs. Jenks? Mr. Jenks? This is Dr. Benedict, from the Women and Infants Clinic. Nurse Church and I need to talk to you.”

They waited another moment, listening to the sounds of scuffling and shushing beyond the door, until at last the knob turned, and with a screech of unplaned wood against curling linoleum, the door opened.

A man stood behind a fly-spotted zinc screen, a small man who peered suspiciously at them through a pair of smudged spectacles. He suffered from a nasty case of divergent strabismus, one eye looking directly at the stoop where they stood, the other seemingly fixed on some random point above their heads. Margot said, “Are you Mr. Jenks?”

He squinted up at her. She was at least a head taller and, she suspected, weighed twenty pounds more than he did. “Who’s askin’?” he demanded. His voice was as thin as he was, and hoarse, as if he were a heavy smoker. Or perhaps, she thought, he was hoarse from breathing farm dust all his life.

“As I said, I’m Dr. Benedict. This is Nurse Church. We’ve treated several of your—that is, several children from your farm.”

“Whaddya want?”

“May we come in?”

He shifted from foot to foot, and Sarah nudged Margot. It was then that she saw the shotgun he held in one hand. It was pointed at the floor, but that wasn’t reassuring. She heard Frank draw a warning breath from his position below the porch. Behind her back, she signaled with her hand for him to wait.

Mr. Jenks said, “We’re busy.”

Margot snapped, “So are we. We understand you have a number of children here who have never been vaccinated. The county doesn’t like such carelessness.”

“No law says they have to get them shots.”

“Do you still want us to care for them when they get ill? They come to our clinic and are treated at no charge. That’s a privilege that can be withdrawn.”

Mr. Jenks opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, a woman appeared at his shoulder. She was as thin as he, and Margot was sure she looked far older than her years. A bandana covered most of her hair, which was an indeterminate color. Her face was lined with the effects of sun and wind and, no doubt, endless work. She said, “Otis, please,” in a voice so timid Margot could barely hear her.

Mr. Jenks turned on her. “Get back where you belong, Tilly!” The woman took a step backward, but there she stopped. Her head hung low on her neck, like a dog expecting a whipping, but she held her ground.

“Mrs. Jenks,” Sarah said. “Dr. Benedict simply wants to see the children you have here.”

“Out workin’,” Mr. Jenks said sullenly.

“All of them?” Margot asked. “I understand you have some very young children in your—your home. Too young to be laboring in the fields.”

“Guv’mint should stay outta our business,” he muttered, which was so close to what Dickson had said earlier that Margot had to stop herself from throwing her father a speaking look.

“We just want to see the children,” Sarah said calmly. That voice, Margot knew, was the one she used to defuse tension, to soothe upset patients, to persuade children and women alike to allow her to examine them.

“Otis,” the thin woman began.

He didn’t bother to look at her. “Git back in the kitchen, Tilly.”

Margot peered through the screen, past the man’s shoulder. Three small faces looked back at her, huddled beneath a cramped staircase. Two of them were dark, one so dark she was sure he must be Indian.

The third, the smallest of all, was fair. In fact, he was more than fair. His hair was such a pale blond that it glowed in the dimness of the house, and his eyes . . .

She would know those eyes anywhere. Light, clear blue, blue as crystal, blue as lake water on a perfect day.

She pointed to the little clutch of children and said, “Open the door, Mr. Jenks, and put the shotgun down. If you don’t, we’ll have the police out here.”

“You cain’t do that. You got no reason.”

“I’m very good at finding reasons,” Margot said evenly. “Open the door. I’m going to examine that child whether you like it or not.”

C
HAPTER
30

The inside of the Jenks home was considerably bigger than some of those in the East Madison neighborhood where Margot so often treated impoverished families. It was also considerably dirtier. The smell of bacon grease and sour milk hung in the air like a fog. Mr. Jenks, seen without the filter of the zinc screen, had the faintly gray look of someone with a chronic lung ailment. His accent was that of the South, and Margot wondered if he had worked in a coal mine. He may even have been a child laborer himself. The mines were famous for using children, because they were small enough to fit into tunnels where full-grown men couldn’t go.

She didn’t offer to shake his hand, and she noted that Sarah didn’t, either. No doubt Sarah knew he would refuse to touch her. Tilly, as they came into the house, retreated to the kitchen door, her arms wrapped tightly around her gaunt figure. The little clutch of children disappeared the moment Jenks turned around and glared at them. Margot heard other voices from the kitchen, a woman and one or two more children. She asked again, “How many children do you have here, Mr. Jenks?”

“I don’t have to tell you nothing, missy.”

“Doctor,” Sarah corrected him. “This is Dr. Benedict.”

He didn’t bother looking at Sarah, but addressed Margot again, fixing her with the one eye he could control. “We got three families here,” he said. “Big families.”

She gazed steadily at him. “I’m not blind, Mr. Jenks. It’s perfectly obvious the children I’ve seen are not all yours.”

“How’d ya know that?”

“It’s genetics. You’re dark-haired and so is Mrs. Jenks, but you have pale skin. You have at least one Indian child, and you have one so fair he couldn’t possibly be yours. Do you have a blond brother?”

He shrugged. “We foster some kids. Give ’em a good home.”

Margot held up her medical bag in her right hand. “Just the same. Mrs. Jenks—” She turned to face the cowering woman in the doorway. “Will you bring the children to this room? May I go in?” Without waiting for a response, she turned to her left, into a space that was probably meant to be the front room, but was being used as a bedroom. There was one cot, with a quilt and a worn pillow. There were piles of blankets and pillows here and there, but no other furniture. As she drew close to the cot, she caught a glimpse of something in the corner of her eye, something that leaped and disappeared.

Lice. Damn. She and Sarah would both need to deal with that once they escaped this noisome place. They had done it before, but she hated the smell of the delphinium soap, and it always meant scrubbing the bathtub with extra care after using it.

She didn’t realize Frank had approached the front door until she heard his voice through the screen. “Mr. Jenks, if you don’t put that gun somewhere else, I’ll be coming in there.”

Jenks, evidently feeling outnumbered at last, grumbled something rude, but retreated down the shadowy hallway, where a door opened and closed. Margot hoped he had gone outside, perhaps into the fields, and would leave them in peace. She said in a low voice, “Frank, it’s better you don’t come in. Or Father, either. I’m not sure what that man will do.”

“What about you?”

“Sarah and I will manage.”

“Mrs. Jenks,” Sarah said, seizing the opportunity, “could you bring the children now? Dr. Benedict is waiting.”

As Mrs. Jenks scurried to gather up the children and herd them toward the front of the house, another woman appeared in the kitchen door. She could have been the twin of the first, a dried-up, undernourished creature in a stained apron. She half hid behind the doorjamb, as if afraid of being seen. A big-eyed toddler in dire need of a haircut and a clean diaper peered around her knees, and she absently shoved him away with her foot, as if he were a dog who had gotten in her way.

Margot’s jaw began to ache, and she forced herself to unclench her teeth. One problem at a time, she told herself. But she would have a hard word with Olive Ryther about investigating foster homes before placing children in them.

Mrs. Jenks returned, dragging two small children by the hand, with a third bigger one trailing behind her. “Hurry up,” she hissed at him. “Afore Jenks is back.”

The bigger child, a boy of perhaps six, was obviously Indian. His hair was black and lank, his skin and eyes dark. Like everyone in that house, he was painfully thin, and he had a rash on his neck. She pulled gloves out of her bag before she unbuttoned the ragged shirt he wore. As she had suspected, the rash extended down his chest and into his too-large trousers.

Sarah said, “I’ll get some ointment for that, Doctor.”

“Thank you, Nurse. Sweet almond, I think, and follow with some talcum. There’s some in my bag. And a clean shirt, if someone can find it. Mrs. Jenks, are you giving this child cow’s milk?”

Mrs. Jenks, still gripping the hands of the two littlest children, nodded wordlessly.

“Most of our Indian patients can’t tolerate it. It’s probably the cause of this rash.”

“What’m I gonna feed ’im, then?”

“Anything else. Surely you’re giving the children meat and fish, fruit, vegetables?”

“Mostly taters.”

“Potatoes are fine. Not mashed with milk, though.”

On it went. Margot examined one of the toddlers, and found her mostly healthy, although all the children were infested with lice. When it was the little blond boy’s turn, he began to cry the moment she touched him. He looked at Sarah with round, terrified eyes, as if she were an ogre from a nightmare. When Margot tried to press the bell of her stethoscope to his chest, he screamed as if he were being carved into pieces. Mrs. Jenks stood mutely by, doing nothing, saying nothing.

Margot said, “Nurse, will you take Mrs. Jenks and the other children into the kitchen? Show her—and the other woman who’s in there—how to use a lice comb, and instruct her on the use of delphinium soap.” As Sarah nodded, and picked up her own bag of supplies, Margot added, “See if you can get a look at that other child, too.”

When she was alone with the screaming toddler, Margot crouched to look directly into his fiery red face. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the little boy she and Blake had spotted weeks before, but he was dirty now, and thin. It was hard to know whether he was well, with his nose streaming and his cheeks burning. It wasn’t hard to see that he was a Benedict.

She pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, and wiped his face with gentle movements. She murmured to him, the sorts of endearments she used for Louisa when she was in tears, and she pulled off one glove to stroke his sweat-dampened hair. It was much too long, tangled and greasy looking. In fact, if she hadn’t been expecting, hoping, to find him here, she might not have known.

But she did know. He looked so much like Preston it was uncanny. As his sobs began to ease, and he could hear her voice and her calming words, his features ceased screwing themselves into tortured positions. She saw the straight, aquiline nose, the narrow jaw that would one day match Edith’s clear profile. His hair was so fair it was all but transparent, and his skin, beneath the grime and mucus, was pink and white, the Nordic look only Preston, of the Benedict children, had inherited from their mother.

Genetics. Pray God Preston hadn’t passed on his greatest weakness.

It took several minutes for her to soothe the little boy’s fears. When his sobs had reduced to hiccups, she set him on the rickety cot, and knelt in front of him so she could look into his face. She said, “What’s your name?” but he only blinked at her, as if he didn’t understand. She wanted to clean him, and to wash his hair. She checked his scalp with her fingers. Several lice leaped away from her touch, but she didn’t find any nits, which was a small blessing.

From the door, Frank spoke. “Is it him, Margot?”

“Oh! I didn’t know you were still there.”

“Not leaving you alone, I told you.”

“Good.” She sat back on her heels, regarding the tearstained face of the boy who was undoubtedly her nephew. “Yes, Frank, I’m quite sure this is the one. I’m not sure how to proceed, but I will
not
leave him.”

“Your father’s pacing out here. I’ll let him know. Back in a moment.”

“Thanks, Frank.” Margot saw movement from the kitchen, and looked up to see Mrs. Jenks standing in the doorway again. The woman cast a fearful glance toward the back of the house, and Margot was sure she was worried about Jenks returning. “Do you have a change of clothes for this child?” Margot said.

She heard the edge in her voice, but she didn’t care. She had attended countless patients in poor homes, where there was no money for the doctor, where food and clothing were sparse. This place was somehow beyond that. Living out here, with fruit and vegetables growing all around them, it seemed particularly offensive that the house itself—and these grimy children—shouldn’t be better kept.

“Why?”

“We’re going to take him away,” Margot said flatly. “I’d rather not take him in this.” She fingered the filthy shirt that was all the little boy had on.

“You cain’t take ’im. Jenks won’t like it,” the woman whined.

A spasm of pity briefly overrode Margot’s anger. Mrs. Jenks looked as if she had hung her head for so long she could no longer lift it. Her housedress wasn’t in much better shape than the child’s garment, and her eyes were dull, without the slightest gleam of hope.

“Mrs. Jenks, why do you and your husband take these children in?”

“Had another one, but it died. Got two to replace it.”

Margot decided to ignore the “it.” Choose your battles, she told herself. In as even a tone as she could muster, she said, “Surely the children are too young—especially this one—to work in the fields?”

“Weedin’ taters,” Mrs. Jenks said. “Them little hands can get right in under.”

Margot’s brief moment of sympathy burned away under a fresh surge of temper. She pushed herself to her feet, and put her hands on her hips. “This child is not even three years old,” she snapped. “Do you send your own children into the fields that young?”

“Don’t have any,” Mrs. Jenks said, without regret or emotion. “Always miscarry. Anyways, I worked in a mill when I was little. Jenks went down the pit when he was no more’n eight. ’S no different.”

“This is 1923. Children don’t do adult work anymore.”

Mrs. Jenks only stared at her, mute and stolid. Margot repeated, “Do you have clothes for this boy?”

“Jenks won’t let ’im go.”

“What will he do? Does he use that gun on people?”

Mrs. Jenks’s mouth quivered. She said, with a faint note of satisfaction, “Don’t got to worry about that, Doctor. He ain’t got no shells for that gun. He jist likes to carry it around.”

“Very well. A shirt, then, or at least a clean blanket.”

Mrs. Jenks came farther into the room, and bent to one of the piles of blankets that dotted the bare wood floor. She straightened with something in her hand that might have been a shirt. At the same time, Jenks appeared from the dim hallway, the shotgun still in his hand. “Whatcha think yer doin’?” he demanded.

The little boy whimpered at the sound of his voice, and clutched at Margot’s thigh. She felt the trembling of his hands through her skirt. Mrs. Jenks cringed, clutching the piece of fabric to her.

Margot said, “This child is coming with me, Mr. Jenks.”

“No, he ain’t. He’s mine.”

“He is not
yours,
Mr. Jenks. Not in any legal sense. Unless you can produce some sort of paperwork?”

The man’s eyes narrowed until his pinched face resembled a weasel’s more than a man’s. “Bin feedin’ him, clothin’ him, all that. I’m keepin’ him. It’s my right.”

Margot bent, and swept the little boy up in her arms. He seemed to weigh nothing at all, or maybe it was that her fury at this man, at this place, made her strong. “Get out of my way, Mr. Jenks.”

He didn’t budge, except to swing the shotgun up. He didn’t precisely point it at her, but it wavered in the air in her general direction.

Margot called, “Frank?”

But he was already inside, slamming the screen door open with unnecessary force. Jenks flinched, and spun to face him. Before he could speak again, Frank had the barrel of the shotgun firmly gripped in his prosthetic hand, which Margot knew had a grip of iron. He twisted it out of Jenks’s hand with almost no effort. He slid the stock beneath his arm, where Jenks would have to fight for it.

“Let’s go, Margot,” Frank said, his voice low and hard.

Jenks said, “Whatcha think yer doin’? You cain’t—” He took a step toward Margot, but Frank stepped into his path. He didn’t speak again, but he looked tall and fierce. Jenks stopped, but he yipped, “Tilly! Git that child!”

Mrs. Jenks was hunched over the bundled cloth in her arms, clutching it to her solar plexus. She didn’t lift her head, but she said in a voice that trembled, “Jenks. Let ’im go. You got them others.”

Her husband threw up his head, and shouted at the cowering woman, “Who’re you to be givin’ orders? Do as you’re told!”

The child in Margot’s arms flinched at the raised voice, and began to cry again, but softly, hopelessly. She pulled him close to her, tucking his little head under her chin, lice and grease and stains be damned.

She moved past the bulwark of Frank without so much as a glance at Jenks. She pushed open the screen door and strode across the littered yard to the Cadillac.

Dickson was pacing the weedy lane, and he spun to face her. “Is that him? Is that my—” His voice caught, and she saw his eyes redden. “Is that my grandson, Margot?”

“It is. I don’t think there’s any question.”

He came toward her, his hands lifting toward the little boy, but she shook her head. “Father, he’s lousy and dirty. Might as well let me be the one to get infected, though we’ll all need to bathe when we get home. Blake, do you have a blanket somewhere?”

While Blake moved around the motorcar to open the back and rummage under his supplies, Margot turned around to look at the ramshackle house. Frank appeared on the splintered stoop, the shotgun broken over his arm and his hat pulled low over his brow. He walked at a deliberate pace across the yard to one of the rusting trucks, and tossed the shotgun into its cab.