by Bethany Browning
There’d been no doctor in Drybranch since all the men died. The illness ripped through like a dust devil, turning men and boys into writhing, sweating beasts whose yellow eyes sunk deep into their skulls before they croaked in a puddle of their own bloody piss. That doctor didn’t know what was wrong with anyone or how to stop it, and he, too, met his maker right after telling Ma she was a saint for dumping out his chamber pot.
Through it all, Ma was duty-bound to care for the incontinent, infirm, and unlikely to survive. She boiled water, delivered meals, and hand-fed the doomed long after their wives, daughters, and sisters had collapsed from exhaustion.
Still, the men died.
Ma was made of tougher stuff than most. She’d been a packhorse librarian who got stuck in Drybranch when her horse broke its leg crossing a parched riverbed. Pa shot her horse and married her, in that order. He promised she’d ride again but forgot all about it after he’d gotten what he wanted. Then, she had me.
“Tale as old as time,” she said to me. “Don’t let it happen to you.”
I knew by the spring in her step that she was secretly delighted that the good women of Drybranch no longer had to tolerate their husbands’ drinking, deception, gun-slinging, and gambling. She swooped into her new role as our leader like a Valkyrie, determined that we would not only survive, but thrive. She pulled out her old book satchel and scattered the reading material on our table for anyone, but me and her were the only ones interested.
“Fact is, I’m the most educated person in Drybranch because of these books,” she once said. “Smarter than your Pa, that’s for sure.”
I had nothing to add. The only memory I have of Pa was watching his front tooth shoot out of his mouth in a spurt of crimson vomit right before he was taken out of the house under a sheet. Ma hid the tooth, but I didn’t know where.
We never spoke about Pa.
The remaining mothers, daughters, aunts and grandmas marked the graves and mourned their men while Ma sold off the cattle to buy grain and seeds, filled in the old well, and dug a fresh one. She worked with herbs, potions, and homemade splints to bridge the gap the doctor’d left. But when Ma delivered the last baby we’d ever see in Drybranch—and he was lifeless and limp as a dishrag—the whispers whipped up swift as a sandstorm.
Even us younger ones had heard. Iris McCloud sent a letter to the authorities at the Central Office in the Big City. She’d asked for a doctor, and upon reading her heartfelt plea written in her flowing, practiced script, someone with a rubber stamp decided it’d be acceptable to send us one.
Some of the marrying-age girls were taken with the idea of a handsome doctor moving into the tidy, white cottage at the far end of town.
“Might be he’s already married,” Ma said when a few of them got their flutter up at our Sunday picnic.
“I requested an unmarried doctor,” Iris said, too smugly. She heard herself and shifted her tone. “We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Evangeline,” she said. “You work yourself to the bone. Help’s a blessing.”
I’m the only one who seemed to notice Ma’s eyes boring deep holes through our skulls. “A blessing, indeed,” she said.
Ma stood up, smoothed her dusty dress with her calloused, overworked hands, and picked up her picnic basket.
“Until the real doctor arrives, Iris, you can still come by when you have night terrors,” she said. Her eye twitched like finger on a trigger. “But I’m sure you won’t need my deep-sleep tea anymore. He’ll have buckets full of pills.”
She clutched my arm and dragged me home, as if it was my fault the whole town had conspired behind her back to order a secret doctor.
“What happens when he picks one?” she muttered under her breath as she yanked me along, stumbling to keep up. I didn’t know how to answer.
“They’re going to tear each other to pieces,” she continued. “And when our community has fractured, that new doctor is going to lord over us just like the men before him. I’m not hiding my books again.”
She didn’t show it to the others, but Ma’s mood was dark as an undertaker’s in the days leading up to the new doctor’s arrival. She talked to herself about “outsiders who seek to destroy” and the “immoral subjugation of women.” I had nothing to add, so I made myself scarce.
I was lonely, though. The other ladies and their daughters stopped coming by for patch-ups and remedies on account of not wanting to face Ma’s wounded feelings. I thought this was cowardly, especially when Jessamine needed stitches after she tore through her thigh with a flail.
When Ma heard, she strode up to Jessamine, yanked her skirt up in front of everyone and declared, “A mess. Looks like Dr. Frankenstein sewed you up.”
“Who?” Jessamine asked, snatching her skirt out of Ma’s hands. Her eyes brightened. “That our new doctor’s name?”
Ma released a sigh so loud I thought she might blow a house down. “Smells infected,” she said. “Come by later and I’ll see to it properly.”
“No, thank you,” Jessamine said, and she limped off toward the General Store.
On the day Dr. Bingen’s carriage arrived, Ma’s feelings of betrayal were weighing her down like a soaked blanket. The rest of us dashed to the doctor’s house like children who’d been promised sweets, but she took her time. Many of the ladies had brought salt, honey, vinegar — all the things he’d need for his pantry. Ma came with empty arms and a dour face.
The door creaked open, and I felt a surge of excitement. As I drew myself up onto the balls of my feet for a better look, I caught Ma’s narrowed eyes and came down just as quick.
A woman emerged in a swish of skirts followed by the gentle clasping of two bird-boned hands. A placid expression on her face. Keen eyes. A tidy bun atop her head.
“Is that a wife?” I heard someone say in a way that signaled doom.
“What a pleasant gathering,” the woman said, her voice like a song. “I can’t wait to meet you all. I’m Dr. Bingen, and I’ve been assigned by the Central Office to be the physician here in Drybranch. I have university training in general medicine, childbirth, and surgery.” She looked out at the crowd, expecting—something.
I could feel the silence settle in my chest, like a haunting. One by one, the ladies of the town marched to Dr. Bingen’s porch, left their offerings, and wordlessly walked away, as if they were all overcome by a disappointing prayer. Ma’s eyes twinkled with an intensity I was not yet familiar with, and her lips turned up at the edges. She turned, slipped out of the crowd, and slowly, deliberately made her way home.
“The ladies speak highly of you, Evangeline,” Dr. Bingen said to Ma at the following Sunday picnic.
“Do they?”
“Say you’ve been keeping them safe since the sickness.”
Ma stared at Dr. Bingen so hard I thought she might be casting a spell. Dr. Bingen must’ve felt it, too because she took a step back. “Strange, seeing as they ordered you,” she said.
“You’re welcome to work alongside me,” Dr. Bingen continued, bravely. Whenever Ma gave me that look, I scurried toward the tumbleweeds.
“Am I?” Ma asked, blinking. “I’m sure the other ladies will be delighted for me to learn real medicine from a real doctor. Shall I start tomorrow?”
“Y-yes. Of course.” Dr. Bingen seemed surprised that she accepted.
So was I.
Could this be the end of Ma’s bad humor? Perhaps if she’d been included in the arrangements from the beginning, this unnecessary tension could have been avoided, I thought.
“You happy about the doctor now?” I asked.
“I’ve never been happy about anything,” she said. “Dr. Bingen won’t be, either.”
That night, Ma and I ate a fine meal, baked a squash pie, and read aloud from a penny dreadful I liked about Stingy Jack who tricked the Devil and was cursed to walk the forest with a lantern. Despite my fear of curses — and my suspicions about Ma’s sudden conviviality — I allowed a small ember of hope to flare in my heart. Maybe Ma could learn to share her burdens. And her power.
A gnashing pain gripped my guts in the early hours of the following morning. I cried out for Ma, but she was already over me with a cool cloth.
“Fever,” Ma said.
“Feels like a curse,” I replied.
She placed the cloth on my forehead. “No one tricked the devil here,” she said.
Shortly after dawn, Ma carried all sixty pounds of me — cradling the squash pie on my belly — to Dr. Bingen’s.
Voices entered my ears and left no impression or memory. Awake. Asleep. I couldn’t discern what was what, only that my body felt pulled tight as a rope and I was both drenched in sweat and freezing.
The doctor peeked, poked, and furrowed her brow.
By the afternoon I was sitting up and conversing some. I watched through blurred vision as little Daisy Jo and her momma talked with the doctor about a rash. They walked out with a slice of pie and Ma decided it was time to take me home. Dr. Bingen thanked Ma for her help.
“Extra hands make light work,” Dr. Bingen said.
The next night was worse. The pain came on earlier and with greater intensity. We returned to Dr. Bingen who tried to ask me questions about my symptoms. I’d been struck dumb with distress.
I emerged from the darkness to find Daisy Jo on a cot next to mine. Dr. Bingen’s hair had come undone from her bun and she looked like Ma did after a long day of mending rabbit fences. I didn’t know how much time had passed. Couple hours. Days.
Ma bustled around in the background, assisting the doctor with checking pulses and taking temperatures. Daisy Jo arched her back in pain, and her momma demanded the doctor do something.
“Tell everyone to boil their water,” Dr. Bingen said as she popped some kind of pill into Daisy Jo’s maw. And everyone did. Just like before.
My affliction continued unabated. So did Daisy Jo’s. Then sweet Susan, a young girl with impossibly dark eyes, succumbed. Lily Mayhew. Ivy Tremble.
Jessamine appeared, too, moaning and delirious. Ma’d been right about that gash. The stench nearly caused me to retch.
“Have you been taking the medicines?” Dr. Bingen looked panicked. Jessamine’s leg was the angriest wound I’d ever seen. “I sent Evangeline with the medicines.”
“She’s taken everything I’ve given her, haven’t you Jessamine? Everything provided by the real doctor?” Ma’s brow arched ever so slightly.
Jessamine struggled to nod.
“What do you suggest we do, Doctor?” Ma’s voice was too loud, too urgent.
Dr. Bingen took a deep breath. “Evangeline, have you ever done surgery?”
I languished on Dr. Bingen’s cot day after day in the kind of stupor that found me wondering about God and obsessing about where Ma had hidden Jessamine’s detached leg. I watched as the frail doctor ministered to all of us, sending the healthiest home and keeping Ma busy checking in and reporting back. Ma was energized; Dr. Bingen was bone-weary, judging by her sweat-stained armpits and sunken cheeks.
“I thank God for you, Evangeline,” Dr. Bingen said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Ma flinched before she spoke. “Frontier diseases are their own animal,” she said. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about city maladies. But out here? Everything’s trying to kill everything. That ‘god’ you thank? Got lost on his way here.”
There wasn’t much else for me to do but eavesdrop on the others who came and went, shapeshifting around my cot like ghouls. Fear was pumping through the veins of Drybranch. When you witness a hundred men and boys give up the ghost in such a violent and grisly manner it changes you. Makes a person twitchy. Irrational.
Ma made rounds to all the houses. Not with books like she did in her life before Drybranch, but with pies and broth — another thing Dr. Bingen praised her for. “They don’t teach us about the importance of caring for each other in the medical profession,” she said. “They teach us to treat. Not heal. You heal, Evangeline.”
If I hadn’t been a child who was out of her mind with fever, I might have realized that Ma’s house calls weren’t about medicine, and she wasn’t looking to heal. I might’ve warned someone.
Three months passed, and I’d traveled the peaks and valleys of illness. Nothing Dr. Bingen did helped any of us. No one died, mercifully, but dozens of Drybranch women were feeling low, suffering night sweats, having trouble keeping food down. We were weakened and suggestible. Jessamine refused to leave her house
Ma remained stalwart. Made midnight runs to provide relief to coughing girls and cramping women. Dr. Bingen hemmed, hawed, and administered bitter tablets. She tried doing house calls like Ma, but she lacked the frontier fortitude. Her tiny hands were chafed red. Her voice, raw and thin.
I heard doubts among the residents of Drybranch.
“You didn’t bring it with you, did you?” They’d ask Dr. Bingen, the skepticism dripping from their lips like honey. “Is the Central Office behind this?”
Whatever Ma was filling their heads with was spilling out all over the place. The sickness started to loosen its grip and I came home to recover. Our house was bustling with patients again, talking about how the Central Office was trying to wipe out a town of women and Dr. Bingen was their vector.
Ma still went to Dr. Bingen’s office every day, but only to pocket medicines when Dr. Bingen wasn’t looking.
One night she came home with something called a stethoscope, and we listed to each other’s heartbeats. She showed me a scalpel, held out the sharp end, and dared me to touch it. I declined. Then, she showed me the bone saw with a spot of Jessamine’s blood still on it and I couldn’t look away.
The final time I saw Dr. Bingen, she’d regained her beatific expression and smooth hair. She’d summoned us all to her porch, just like the day she’d arrived.
“I’m leaving Drybranch,” she announced. “As Evangeline kindly pointed out, my training is not in frontier diseases. And many of you think I started all this.” She giggled a little. Nervousness, probably. But it sounded more like a dismissal, or like she was poking fun at us.
The crowd’s energy shifted, as if they simultaneously understood something to be true. Ma worked her way through speaking to each one of us conspiratorially, reciting an incantation, verifying our beliefs. The hush, the calm, the undercurrent of unspoken rage that was igniting under the surface was more terrifying to me than all sickness, death and grief we’d been through.
I needed this to be a dream, to wake up cozy in my bed before the illness, before Jessamine’s raging leg wound, before being abandoned by Dr. Bingen and the mysterious Central Office. I knelt down and picked up a stone. I felt its weight and heat in my hand—dreaming, or real?
I flung the rock so hard my shoulder popped. It landed at Dr. Bingen’s feet with a hollow thud. Before she could register what was happening, another rock struck her temple, releasing a swift-moving rivulet of blood that pooled in her dainty collarbone.
I was awake.
She turned to run into the house, rocks slamming her between the shoulders, bouncing off the door frame, and smashing a window. I heard the lock turn. Ma leaned into Iris and said something she seemed to understand. Iris ducked out of the crowd.
Ma slowly herded the women like they were cattle until they encircled the doctor’s tidy, white house on the edge of town. I could see Dr. Bingen inside, racing from room to room.
Iris returned holding an oil lamp out in front of her like Stingy Jack. She marched grimly through the crowd and up the doctor’s stairs. She tossed the lit lamp through the broken window, and the drapes went up in an instant.
Solemnity settled over us. The only sound was the furniture, the rugs, the paintings crackling as they sparked into flame. Dr. Bingen had opened a window and was attempting to save herself when the women drew close enough to force her back in through sheer physical intimidation. Burn or be beaten, her only choices.
That eerie silence is forever etched in my memory. But what still jolts me awake at night all these years later is the haunting sound of Dr. Bingen’s sorrowful cries.
“Evangeline, why? Why? Why?”
But Ma refused to hear it. She allowed the mob to do her bidding as she slowly, deliberately walked away.
When the doctor’s home was nothing more than a pile of ash, and the women of Drybranch were dazed and soot-black from pillaging the remains, I stumbled home to find Ma drafting a letter to the Central Office, artfully explaining that Dr. Bingen had succumbed to the perils of the frontier — and could someone please send her a new horse.
Bethany Browning’s work has been published in Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume 3, Allegory, Angel Rust, Drabbledark II, Mudroom, Flash Flood, Filth, The Sunlight Press, The Drabble, and Esoterica. Her stories have been described as “strange and unnecessary” by her 99-year-old aunt. She’s on Twitter @buzzwordsocial.
So good 🙂