Marge McCormack slowed her rusting Chevy to a stop beside the cornfield where Terry Haskin was working. His brown hair nudged above their tractor’s nearside back tire as he adjusted cultivator hydraulics. Doubtless, he was slathered in grease. Marge snatched up a manila envelope, slammed the car door and leapt the roadside ditch. “Terry!”

Short blonde hair, bare legs below a yellow sundress, her sandals filled with loose dirt in plowed cornrows. Balancing on one foot, then the other, she slipped off her shoes and waved the contract. “Terry, I got it!”

She saw his fierce, happy grin. “Marge, you only applied day before yesterday!”

She beamed as he approached, wiping his hands on an oil rag. “Lord, woman, I can see why you got the job.” He leaned close with hands tucked safely behind him. “Give you a job of work m’self.”

Marge threw down the contract pouch and clasped his face with both hands for an emphatic kiss. “Tonight, Sweetheart.”

#

At supper, Terry Haskin sat beside Mrs. McCormack, Marge’s mother. Mr. McCormack said grace, and after a round of ‘Amens,’ Marge and her two younger brothers brought celebratory platters of chicken-fried steak, cornbread and green beans to the farmhouse table. Marge settled on Terry’s right as the grinning youngsters slid into chairs opposite.

“You know this ain’t a proper nursing job,” Mr. McCormack told his daughter, “just Pokagon County politics, surveying wetbacks for communicable disease.”

“Heaven knows what she’ll pick up from those migrants,” Mrs. McCormack muttered. She blushed when her sons glanced to one another.

“What’s Marge gonna pick up?” one boy whispered. His brother shrugged.

“Daddy, they’re not wetbacks. They’re Texicans, Texas Americans.”

“Maybe some are, but not all. Not by a long shot.”

Teeth grinding, Marge held on to her temper. Dad tried again. “You and Terry have a lot of planning to do.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Terry cleared his throat. “Marge’s contract says she’ll work mornings, six to ten, Monday to Friday, till Labor Day.”

“Four fifty an hour, Dad; enough for senior year tuition and textbooks. I can help Terry in the fields afternoons and weekends until my nursing program starts up again.”

As the boys served wedges of lemon meringue pie, Terry reassured Mrs. McCormack. “Half the township’s booked us; cultivating, baling, combining, right through August.”

Mom nodded. “This year a nursing practicum is extra. Marge will need every dime.”

“We’ll be . . . she’ll be okay. We’ve been saving for the last three years.”

#

Fireflies pulsed in tall grass; purple martins swept mosquitoes from a reddening sky. At 9 P.M. the setting sun barely touched the treetops. Her parents glided, side by side on a suspended porch swing, powered by Dad’s long legs. Marge and Terry nestled nearby on the front steps while everyone listened to Harry Caray’s radio broadcast of White Sox baseball. When a Sox ninth inning reliever gave up the winning run, Marge stood with a snort of disgust. Terry grimaced, then smiled up at her. Hands cocked on hips, her eyes sparkled. “Sweetie, it’s time I took you home. Back in a jiffy.”

As she sprinted upstairs for her clean laundry, Mr. McCormack motioned Terry out onto the farm lane, to Marge’s old red Chevy. Dad folded his arms and shook his head slowly. “Son, I gave up trying to keep you two apart a long time ago. Maybe someday she’ll have enough sense to tell you ‘Yes’.”

Terry opened the coupe’s driver-side door. “I’m counting on it, Sir.”

“Too grown up, that girl don’t mind me, but she might pay attention to you. It ain’t safe, Marge wandering round migrant camps. Those people . . . well, she just don’t listen any more.”

It was only a short drive into Pokagon Village where, at sunset, street lights had begun to flicker. They climbed an iron staircase to a one bedroom apartment above Pokagon Gas and Oil. Terry managed the gas station from November until planting season, six days a week, dawn to Cronkite News. For two years, they’d plastered, painted and spruced; tried to make things presentable to their friends – to Marge mostly – and the apartment was rounding into shape. There was a tiny kitchen next to the television room, a toilet with shower and sink off the bedroom, and two chests of drawers, one Marge used for her things. She pecked his cheek, shed her cotton sundress and broke for the shower.

#

In pre-dawn light, Marge filled the coupe’s gas tank. Beneath a red striped, safety vest, she wore a beige shirt and matching work trousers. Her hair was wrapped in a paisley scarf. Elbow propped against a pump, Terry watched the gasoline meter roll. She told him, “Price keeps going up, it’ll break a dollar a gallon before long.”

“We’re still three cents cheaper than most.”

“Eight fifty. I don’t never want to pay more than that for a fill up.” She handed him a ten dollar bill. “When’s George opening this morning?”

“Be here any minute.” Terry unlocked the station office but turned back in the doorway. “Campbell place still needs a day’s cultivating. Meet me for lunch?”

On tip-toes, she kissed him slow until both needed a breath of air. “Sweetheart, I’ve got to leave.” She towed him outside, slid into the car and rolled down the window.

Terry smoothed two calloused fingers across her cheek. “You’ll be careful, right? Anything, anything at all, you know where I am. Yes?”

“You’re getting bad as Daddy.”

“No telling which of us loves you more.”

The engine started with a roar, and she gave him a wan smile and wave. “Bye.”

#

Six minutes north from the village stoplight, Marge tromped on the gas to climb Wrecker’s Hill. Atop was a level plain with some of the county’s best farmland. A migrant work camp appeared; scores of cabins in a thirty acre park of tall hickory and oak. A dirt lane led to the company parking lot behind the administration building. As day broke over the horizon, she entered the office and did her best to exude confidence. “I’m Marge McCormack, from Pokagon County Public Health.”

Chief Administrator Arthur Wheeler was an officer of the agri-business that sold vegetables grown on the thousand acre plantation. She’d seen their product labels in grocery stores all her life. Wheeler was a tall, middle aged man wearing black-rimmed glasses, a short sleeved shirt and narrow tie. “Our company’s eager to cooperate with Public Health, Miss McCormack, but as we submitted in hearings last spring, these folks are all strong and healthy. We wouldn’t bring ’em north otherwise.”

“So my job will be a snap.”

Administrator Wheeler blinked once, then grinned. “Well, absolutely, Miss McCormack. Dead easy.” Then, “Have you inspected our camp before, seen the facilities?”

“No, never.”

“Camp Director Alvarez will show you round this morning.”

Outside in the parking lot, Marge met Jorge Alvarez, a dark, portly man wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and denim vest. The older man bowed. A little embarrassed, she extended her hand. “Mucho gusto, Señor Alvarez.”

“Ah!” His eyes lit up. “Usted habla Español. Muy bien, Señora . . .”

 “Señorita McCormack. Marge McCormack.”

“Bienvenida!” he said as they shook hands.

#

Marge followed Camp Director Alvarez past rows of tiny cabins. “Hay más que un . . . hundred families this year,” he explained in Spanish as they strolled beneath century oaks. “Grandmothers, and grandfathers too, but older women don’t work the fields, only men and younger folk.”

“When I was still in high school, I saw your Spring trucks passing through town.”

“Two days and nights from Amarillo, we’re all tired after that.”

Beside them, chicas of nine or ten sauntered with buckets. Lining up at water spigots, barefoot in knee-high skirts, they giggled and chattered too quickly for Marge to follow, then ran home to mothers, some shouting “Hola, Jorge” after glancing suspiciously at the oddly dressed stranger.

“We begin work at seven, Señorita McCormack. No one expects to talk with you today, but I can introduce some of the leading families. They’ll want to know pay won’t be docked for spending time with you tomorrow.”

Half an hour later, Marge and Señor Alvarez rode in a tractor convoy to the fields. Cucumbers were first; one hundred acres of ground hugging vines, trained into rows, where already grandfathers hoed weeds that dripped morning dew. Beyond were vast plots of green beans, peas, beets and carrots. A cloudless sky overhead, he told her, “Late mornings will be cooler in the woods.”

“If I find somewhere shady, could families meet me there?”

“Por supuesto. Let’s line up some folks for you to interview tomorrow.”

Within a few minutes, Marge found a quiet glade. Families stood in a circle as she spoke with Señora Aquino, Señora Ramos, and a handful of others. “I’m not here to make trouble.”

#

Later, midmorning heat shimmered over the crops, but the glade was still a hospitable retreat. While relaxing, Marge counted blank survey forms and realized she needed more from Public Health. If immunization was as spotty as she feared, she wondered whether county officials would provide financial support for inoculation.

After swatting a mosquito drilling inside her shirt collar, she noticed it was already a quarter to ten. Director Alvarez left a couple hours ago when workers had moved farther away. She heard water flowing somewhere behind her among rustling aspen. Wandering toward the stream, she searched for a clump of bushes in which to find relief. Unknowing, she stepped upon a recently dead red fox and stirred up a swarm of bot flies. Annoyed by her carelessness, she wiped slime from her boot before heading upwind. She found a boy of six or seven, too old or too impatient for a grandmother’s care, who was herding frogs with a willow tickler. He smiled and waved. Marge decided the office restroom was a better choice.

#

In early afternoon, dust devils swirled across the Campbell cornfields. Sheltered beneath an over-sized, tractor umbrella, Marge focused on the cultivator shovels below. Her left hand rested on the hydraulic control, her right foot poised to brake if stones knocked a spade out of line. Weeding corn was tedious, attention-demanding work that Marge had done since she was thirteen; a task she did now with effortless skill.

She saw a young woman approaching between corn rows in steel-toed boots and a straw hat. Marge slowed the tractor to a stop. At seventeen, Cheryl Campbell was filling out, no longer the skinny freshman who stalked Terry when he and Marge were still in high school.

Cheryl scanned the field, then called out, “Marge, I thought Terry was coming back this afternoon.”

“He’s mending a fence break at the Tompkins’ place. Sent me instead.”

“Oh.”

Marge shut down the tractor and twisted to face Cheryl, who’d lifted an arm against glaring light. “This week Terry’s been teaching me how to cultivate. Last spring, after my high school classes, he and I planted this field. The soybeans, too.”

Marge chuckled. “Really! Been teaching us right out of a job, has he?”

Cheryl stuffed one fist in a jeans pocket and set her jaw. Marge felt a little chagrined. “Sorry, Cheryl. I’m not real proud of what I said just now. How’s your dad doing these days?’

“He isn’t getting any stronger. Mornings, he goes out to the barn, but half an hour later, he’s sittin’ down someplace.”

“It’s been nearly a year since your dad’s accident. Is that right, Cheryl?’

“Corn picker took his arm, but that wasn’t the worst. It damned near crushed his chest.”

“Come on up here. Let’s try it out. You any good at this?”

#

That evening Marge waited, wet-haired in a bathrobe at Terry’s supper table.  Sipping beer from a glass, she listened as he climbed the stairs to their apartment. When the door opened, she saw he was covered in dust and fence wire scratches. He hung his baseball cap on the wall. “Hello, Honey.”

“Maybe.”

“You want us to fight about it now, or after I shower?”

“Need time to think what to tell me?”

“Maybe.”

She smiled, just a little. “Go ahead. I’m not dumping you quite yet.”

A bit later, with a bath towel wrapped round his middle, Terry sat at the table. Marge slid across a church key and bottled Lite. “I suppose you wanted me to see how Cheryl’s grown into a woman?”

“Well, she has done that.”

Below the table, Marge curled her toes and kicked his shin.

“Ow! Damn it woman. I ain’t never loved anyone but you.”

She hesitated; knew what he said was true. “Then don’t tease when I’m mad.”

“Are you, Marge? Really mad, I mean? Cause if you are, I won’t work for the Campbells anymore. But Honey, you ought to hear Mr. Campbell; he coughs and wheezes like a man with a three-pack habit.”

“A thoracic specialist should look at him.”

“Honey, how’s he gonna pay for that?”

 #

Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, by 6 A.M. Thursday, Marge found that Public Health medical surveying was definitely falling into a pattern. At dawn, when she arrived to arrange interviews, mothers and fathers completed survey forms, though no one would admit to less than perfect health. Appraising them unobtrusively, Marge often believed what they said.

Nevertheless, inoculation to prevent common diseases was as problematic as she’d supposed. Worse, only a few adults had a single smallpox scar upon an upper arm, and no one seemed to have heard of Sabin polio vaccine. Mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, youngsters old enough to work the fields had already endured these diseases, but babies and toddlers at the camp required vaccination. Still, who would pay for serum when farm workers earned less than a dollar an hour? The County Board of Health? Marge was skeptical, though surely these were the ailments she was hired to learn about. But above all, a smallpox or polio outbreak would be horrifying, a danger to any unprotected person in the county.

At Friday’s supper table, Marge admitted her father was right – it was all politics. Pokagon County, she’d learned, was willing to survey migrant health, but profoundly reluctant to make any financial contribution for immunization. Maybe in next year’s budget, she was told.

Dad scoffed. “Don’t hold your breath. Them that wanted this survey are looking for reasons to keep wetbacks out, not ways to make ’em healthy.” 

Marge was about to explode, but held her peace when she glanced at her younger brothers. Terry scowled at his untouched pork chop; he’d heard his own parents express similar views.

“Darling,” Mom said, “I know you don’t hold with it much anymore, but there’s a Women’s Auxiliary at church Saturday. Maybe we can organize a fundraiser.”

Marge took her mother’s hand. “That’d be wonderful. I’ll see Doctor Hansard about how to start a vaccination program.”

#

Next morning, Marge left Terry asleep at their apartment, then drove into Doc Hansard’s parking lot. In an empty waiting room, she chatted with his receptionist until white-haired Doc emerged carrying a stack of patient records. “Well, if it isn’t Marge McCormack!” He shook her hand, then led her to his office and closed the door. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine, Doc, but did you hear? I got that Board job surveying migrant health.”

“Well, sure. I told them they couldn’t find anyone better . . . not at four fifty an hour.”

She laughed and pulled him close for a hug. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Sure glad to see you. Been thinking about you a lot.” He motioned her out into the office hallway. “Come along, Nurse McCormack.”

She wondered what he was on about. “Doc, I still got a year till graduation.”

“Over in a flash, My Dear. Meantime, we’ve got plans to make.” He drew the examination room curtain aside. “Remember how there’s a door from my office, straight into here?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I’m thinking to have another door cut from here into the supply room.” He led Marge next door.

“To get supplies?”

“No, a door to a new medical office. We’ll knock out that wall,” he said, pointing to storage racks on the parking lot side, “and enlarge this room. Put in windows, air conditioning, examination table and cabinets, anything you want. It’ll be ready for you next Spring.”

Flabbergasted, she could hardly believe her ears.

“Marge, have you thought of a nursing speciality?”

She threw up her hands. “Pediatrics, or maybe Obstetrics. I can’t decide,”

“Either’s fine by me.”

“Goodness, Doc, I never thought . . . Do you really want a nurse? Wouldn’t a doctor be better . . . you know, to take over your practice some day?” Watching for his reaction, she wondered if she’d put her foot in it.

“Still got a few good years left in me, young lady. No, mostly I’m thinking about high school dropouts. Every year, three, four girls get pregnant, cause they don’t know . . . how to be careful. But they won’t talk to an old fogy like me. Now you, that’d be different! School Board tells me they want you to teach a girls’ health unit in junior high – introduce yourself before they really need you.”

Overwhelmed, visions of a life-long career glimmered before her.

“Marge, don’t you know how much this town needs you? Now, why’d you come to see me this morning?”

#

Second Sunday in July, Marge sat beside Terry in Main Street Congregational Church. Around them were Mom, Dad and her little brothers, the Haskin and Campbell families, Doctor Hansard and scores of others. Reverend Vanderleuck stood at the pulpit as ushers readied offertory baskets.

“Before we take up this morning’s collection, there’s something I would ask everyone to consider. We all know the ways of this world, endless war, countless refugees, fear everywhere. Well, there’s something useful, something good you and I can do, right here at home. It’s a task for people seeking to do the Lord’s work in this, our own back yard. I’m going to ask a beloved daughter of this congregation to speak to us. Marge, come on up here.”

Eyes low, she walked the aisle, handwritten notes fluttering as she placed them on the lectern. Momentarily speechless, she looked to faces in the pews, to Doc Hansard watching her with confidence, Terry with such commitment. With a deep breath, she hoped for their forgiveness should she ever disappointment them. With a smile to Dad, she told the story of people who’d traveled to Pokagon County for decades, but were excluded from its community.

More than a few parishioners folded their arms and inspected the sanctuary floor, but others did not and reached for wallets. Two weeks later, with Doc’s help, there was a tiny clinic in a migrant cabin that Terry refurbished. It was there Marge counseled families, offered first aid and inexpensive vaccines to young and old.

#

*          *          *

#

“Señorita McCormack!”

In late August, a chica stood in the clinic doorway. With the sun high overhead, Marge was already late helping Terry cut silage at the Whitley farm. Impatient, she glanced at her watch. No time for lunch either.

“Señorita McCormack!”

“Si, Juanita?’

“Es mi hermano, Pedro.”

Sighing, Marge walked to the clinic door and watched Juanita Lopez sprint down a camp pathway. Marge glanced toward the administrative office thinking she should phone Terry, but the girl beckoned frantically, then raced into a lane leading home. Marge ran after her and found Juanita midway along a row of shacks. The girl had crouched in dirt beneath her cabin and was calling to her brother. “Pedro, come out. Papa will spank!”

“No! You can’t make me. A wasp, it hurts so much.”

Marge dropped to her knees. Among cobwebs and piles of desiccated leaves was the six-year-old she’d seen playing in the woods.

“Pedro, I’m Señorita McCormack. Do you remember me?”

“Sí.”

“Come to me.”

As Marge carried him inside, Pedro babbled constantly. He wrapped arms round her neck, then suddenly pushed himself away. She caught him in midair; felt heat from a intense fever on his forehead and cheeks. As he fought to escape, his sister was wide-eyed.

“Where are your mother and father?” Marge asked her. “Did they take lunch to the fields?”

“Sí, Señorita.”

“Run. Find them. Tell them to hurry.”

Marge lay Pedro on his cot beside a window. A wasp he said. It must be an allergic reaction.

“Señorita, it hurts. I want Mama.”

“Juanita’s fetching her. Papa too. Where were you stung?”

“Here, here.” He rolled to expose his left side, pulled his T-shirt from his collar bone. “I’m burning.”

“Sit up. Let’s take off your shirt.”

The boy whimpered. His thin shoulder and neck were unmarked, no welt, no abrasion, but he was bathed in perspiration. His body radiated heat. She stretched out her hand, but before her fingertips brushed his skin, he screamed with pain. “Mama!”

“Hush. Hush, muchacho. I won’t hurt you.”

Abuelas, grandmothers with grandbabies in arms, gathered on the Lopez front steps. “Señorita McCormack, qué pasa?”

Pedro lurched to break away, but at the door he was corralled in one grandmother’s arms. As he howled, Marge told his captor, “He says he was stung, but I can’t find a welt.”

“Ice,” Abuela shouted and another grannie scurried for the refrigerator in Administrator Wheeler’s office. Carefully, inch by inch, they examined him, searched everywhere for a mark, a puncture.

Nothing.

If he wasn’t stung, what could it be? Marge realized he shouldn’t be in this much pain, not even from a yellow jacket. And such fever, what could that mean? As he writhed to escape, she tried to swaddle him in a blanket. In only minutes, Administrator Wheeler brought ice, but at the doorway, the sight of Pedro’s struggles stopped Wheeler from closer approach. When Marge slid an ice cube over the boy’s unmarked collar bone, his shrieks were terrifying.

Panic stricken by cries heard from afar, his parents arrived and Abuela explained what had happened. Señora Lopez jostled Marge aside. Gripped by confusion and dread, Marge stumbled towards Wheeler. “I’m calling for an ambulance. This isn’t an insect sting.”

#

The voice on the phone was exasperated. “Young woman, if it isn’t a bee, a wasp, something like that, what ’n hell is it?”

“I don’t know,” Marge told Doctor Thornton, Director of Treatment at Pokagon Community Hospital. “I’m a third year, student nurse.”

“Not much use, are you? Well . . . I’m not bringing a wetback into this hospital to be treated for God-Knows-What.”

“The boy’s in trouble, Doctor Thornton.”

“Yes. Yes, Nurse McCormack. I’m coming myself. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it there.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

“Just hang on, we’ll hurry. I don’t suppose you have infectious disease gear; masks, gloves, anything like that?”

Realizing she might need a more sympathetic ear, Marge’s next call was to her father, who she woke from his after lunch nap. “Daddy, I need Doc Hansard. Something terrible is happening here. A child is really sick.”

“Get outta there, Girl. Right now!”

“No, Daddy, you got to find Doc. His receptionist stays home Fridays when he’s making house calls.”

“Phone the dang-blasted hospital and get the hell out!’

“I just called Pokagon Community and I’m not leaving. Terry’s at the Whitley place.”

#

Raking her memory for a diagnosis, Marge trudged back to the Lopez cabin. Administrator Wheeler and Camp Director Alvarez waited outside in a shaded lane where grandparents and little ones listened anxiously to desperate screams. 

“Nurse McCormack,” Wheeler asked, “what is it? What’s wrong with Pedro?”

“I don’t know. Doctor Thornton is coming here.”

From a growing crowd, Director Alvarez shouted, “Señorita McCormack, should we move everyone farther back?”

“Probably. Yes. Do that.”

Alvarez spread out his arms as he cautioned onlookers.

Marge heard Pedro gagging inside the cabin. Slowly, she climbed the steps, paused, seized what courage she could muster, then plunged inside. Pedro’s father, mother and Abuela surrounded his cot. Abuela said, “He begs for water, but can’t swallow.”

“Por favor,” Marge whispered and took the cup from Señora Lopez. Her hand touched Mama’s shoulder. “Could you raise him a little? That might help.” She edged onto the cot, brought water to his lips, but gagging, he coughed violently and threw out his arms. He thrashed from side to side, twisting away as far as he was able. She bent closer. His throat was distended, swollen from jaw to chest. Using a wet cloth to mop his perspiration-coated body, Marge could swear it must be an allergic reaction, to something, but together with a raging fever, that didn’t make sense either.

Pedro moaned, then asked Mama, “Cinnamon? Where’s Cinnamon?”

“At home in Amarillo, My Darling.”

“No. No. She’s here. I saw her.”

Marge raised an eyebrow to Papa.

“The boy’s cat. A fuzzy tabby with reddish-brown fur.”

“Juanita, bring Cinnamon. Maybe she’s under my bed.”

Papa knelt beside the cot. “My son, Juanita is next door with Señora Ramos.”

“No, she isn’t. She’s there,” he said, pointing to an empty doorway. “Juanita, bring our cat.”

As the sun slid towards afternoon, Marge heard approaching sirens and rushed outside. Dust flying, four police cars skidded along the camp road, followed by an ambulance. Old Doc Hansard was close behind; his sedan roof now sporting a rotating emergency light. Marge watched Doctors Thornton and Hansard lead the charge from the parking lot.

“Nurse McCormack, are you all right?” Thornton frowned at Hansard who’d beaten him to the punch.

“Pedro’s hallucinating. Shouldn’t everyone stay back?” Marge, herself, then ran into the shack.

As the doctors donned breathing masks and plastic gowns, county police strung yellow, caution tape. From behind this perimeter, Director Alvarez called to Pedro’s parents, urging them to wait with Abuela and Juanita in a hurriedly designated quarantine hut. Inside the cabin, Marge held the wriggling boy firmly, and when doctors entered wearing hazard gear, he buried his face against her. Thornton untangled him from Marge, then gave her a mask. Pedro strained to tear at his choking throat and again tried to escape, but Thornton used padded, leather straps to bind his arms and legs to the bedframe.

Bound immobile, the boy was wracked with pain and soon began to convulse. Aching to run for safety, Marge bent low to cuddle him, whispered entreaties for courage. Only once did she hear a coherent reply, “Madre de Dios. Ayuadame!”

Losing all control of arms and legs, he jerked against the restraints in a helpless frenzy. During the futility of his exertions, white froth began to coat his lips. Doctor Hansard then loosened his own breathing mask and glanced at Thornton, who did the same. Hansard grasped Marge’s shoulders and turned her to face him. “It’s rabies.”

Inhaling slowly, again Marge strove to beat down her fear. “All right, Doc. What do we do for rabies?”

“Try to make him comfortable.”

Her face crumpled.

“Nurse McCormack, there is no treatment. He’s past help when these symptoms appear.”

Marge reeled outside to the line guarded by police. Beyond were scores of migrant families, and from that throng, Dad, Mom and Terry ducked below the yellow tape.

Weeping, she plunged into their arms.

#

It was long past midnight. A priest had come and gone. Final prayers for health and salvation were concluded. The little boy, prostrate in his battle for life, was silent. Marge knew the injection Doc prepared was morphine. She took each parent’s hand. “Pedro has slipped into a coma. He will not wake in this world.”

 “How long?” Papa asked as his son’s body trembled.

“A few hours, I think,” Doc Hansard said. “A day at most.”

“It is a sin, but let it end now. God calls him.”

After many tears, Mama agreed.

“Give me the syringe,” Marge said. 

#

*          *          *

#

Marge was profoundly troubled following Pedro’s death. Terry worried as she withdrew from life, from himself, and he asked Doctor Hansard to speak with her about what’d happened that night. At the end of August, they sat on Doc’s couch; Marge’s hands folded, eyes downcast.

“Doc, I’m not fit to be a nurse. I nearly left camp to let him die alone.”

“During his convulsions? I saw him. It was shocking.”

“Yes, then for sure. It was all I could do not to run away. But I mean earlier when Juanita first came to me. I was this close,” she said, rubbing first finger and thumb together, “to telling her, Mañana.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to be that kind of nurse. I didn’t think I was.”

Doc propped both elbows on the paper-strewn desk and wrung his hands. “Your first instinct was a mistake. I follow a routine, everyone does, and if the routine says it’s time to go, you go. But somehow you knew to stay, and through his greatest suffering, you held him in your arms.”

“I was useless and so afraid. Wasn’t there something I should have done to help him?”

“Please, Marge, you must understand the disease. Once late symptoms appear, the infection has run its course and medical science cannot prevent death. If initially untreated, rabies lies sleeping in the nervous system, secretly growing, spreading for days, even months, and then bursts loose to kill inexorably, with ferocious torment.”

She looked to Doc, spread her hands and implored, “How can life be like that? He was a child, an innocent little boy! Why did he have to die in such agony?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think there is an answer.”

“You can’t believe that – believe an innocent can be destroyed for no reason at all!”

“Marge, you already know that seems to happen, all too often.”

#

Labor Day’s parade came to an end and the high school marching band exited onto Maple Street.  On the bank corner, American Legion Veterans and Boy Scouts saluted Old Glory. Following receding strains of Semper Fidelis, the village’s police car and fire truck crawled past with sirens clacking.

Marge and Terry climbed stairs to their apartment and sat facing one another, cross-legged on the bed. In years past, they would have clung together in devotion, on this, her last night before returning to university. For this night, they expected only tears.

“Marge?” She could barely hear his voice. “Will you come home at Thanksgiving?”

She hesitated “Sweetheart, I always do.”

“Then you’ll come back to me?”

She began to cry. “I love you, Terry. I’ll always love you.”

“We could marry in the Spring. Buy a farm of our own. You can teach and be Doc’s nurse.”

She tried to smile. “It’s all there, right in front of me. Isn’t it?”

“If you want it.”

#

The Chevy’s back seat was packed with nursing textbooks and her suitcase. Terry waved as she drove away from town.

North along the highway, migrant families were at work and she slowed to park on the berm. Leaving the car, she looked towards people scattered over fields of black earth. Doc was right, she thought, any life can be snatched away. We balance on a knife edge of destruction.

Marge leaned against the car and wondered what she should do next Spring.

---

The author won the Carleton University Creative Writing Contest, Passages, for 2015 and his debut historical novel ‘1812 The Land Between Flowing Waters,’ was published by Fireship Press. Nine of the author’s short stories have been published in various reviews and anthologies. 

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