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CZ Studio and Radio Verte presents The Wild Wind by Corey Zimmerman.

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Chapter 16

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The Wild Wind

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Given the time of year, as long as the country doctor arrived in time,

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usually all went according to plan. Yet when it didn't, it simply did not.

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Seeing how locating a country doctor in those days often required considerable effort. One might

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assume the ideal time would be at night, given the odds the doctor may be at home in bed.

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Nonetheless, two trips were required. One to the doctor's home, where he is awoken in his pajamas.

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Then, with the medical bag in hand, a journey bedside to where a woman screams in pain.

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Indeed, none too happy with the timely ordeal.

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Those trips by horse-drawn wagon could often be up to 10 miles at best.

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Expressly, if the subject in labor was but the wife of a humble farmer,

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and lived far off upon the plains. In just the complicate matters,

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one must also take into account the season and the weather.

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Count yourself fortunate if your water breaks on a starry summer night,

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and wise if conception was calculated according to the stars.

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Yet we are all human, or once were, and we are all undoubtedly aware accidents do occur.

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And just as a seed might fall from the pocket of a pair of bib overalls,

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a farmer may plant the fertile soil on a perfect day, without ever considering the almanac.

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In the year 1900 of the Gregorian calendar, the nation's population was 70 million.

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Casey Jones had crashed his train. The Philippine-American War waged on,

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and the groundhog had seen his shadow. Luckily, the hornets had built their nests high before

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the late season blowout. The war was over, and the war was over.

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The nearest doctor was but a mile away, good hoodoo. It had been a relatively warm,

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sun-filled day, with a joyful choir of birds. An old farmer down the way named Morris,

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sitting upon his porch, smoking his pipe, spotted a few rabbits running across his field,

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a lick of breeze upon their tail. The tobacco in his pipe smelled sweeter,

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and his hogs began to squeal when the rain began to fall thick and heavy,

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icy, just as the sun began to set. The songbirds went silent, ushering him back into his house

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to stoke his stove, as mama heard her own fire crackling louder than usual. As,

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Sam, you prepared your pot pie for supper. As the moon rose behind the veil of clouds,

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the dogs howled, and Pa kept on chopping wood to warm the widow's heart down the road,

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until the thick and heavy rain turned to thick puffs of snow, and a strong gale began to blow.

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The shingles on the widow's roof flapped about and blew away with the breeze,

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and with a gust her gait flew open.

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Pa took a sweet time, letting the widow know her wood was stacked neatly in the woodshed,

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offering to stoke her fire once more, which she obliged before he threw his axe in the back of the

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wagon.

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Pa switched Rowan Beauty, who pulled the wagon through the ruts, as Pa dug through his mind for

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an elaborate foray of words that might offer an excuse as to why, why he was down the road,

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once again.

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Pa knew better than to switch Rowan Beauty. They both knew the way, and both had tender hearts,

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but Pa switched him anyway. As Sam, you ran for the doctor, as mama clenched the quilt in her

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fists and the agony between her teeth.

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Mama once saw the world through faithful blue eyes, until her apron kept falling off, until she

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lost a hairpin, and it was then she knew precisely why the widow had accidentally stepped on her toes

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at the funeral.

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Pregnant and desperate, she pricked her own finger and dropped the blood in Sam's soup,

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and then paused coffee in the morning. She dropped a hairpin in a bottle and tossed it in the river

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full of hope. Yet he said, you can only roof houses at night, seeing the warp in the day,

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until the day the biscuits burnt.

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When Pa walked into the house with a jumble of words in his mouth, he himself found it hard to

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swallow, his stomach growling at the scent of your pie. Mama clenched her teeth, Mama screamed out,

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Pa ran to the bedroom, and Mama kicked him away.

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Pa retreated for the corner, where he hid in a shadow. Yet little did Mama know, I was dying

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inside her. You see, the cord had become a noose around my neck, or possibly I wrapped it around

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my own throat, not wanting to set eyes upon this dusty old farm, which awaited my bloody body.

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But Sam, you returned with Dr. Zollo, and he quickly calmed Mama in a way Pa never knew how.

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Sam, you took Mama's side, Mama pushed and pushed until my head, as blue as a blackberry pie,

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emerged, slid into his warm gentle hands. He removed my auspicious veil, I saw ghosts.

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Dr. Zollo quickly cut the noose from my neck and handed it off to you, Sam, to throw it in the fire.

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Nonetheless, I felt that cord wrapped tightly around Mama's heart all her life.

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There was a chill in the air as the doctor held me upside down, and Mama screamed when she saw my

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lifeless body dangling from my feet. He swatted my backside again and again.

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Silence, slap, silence, deadly silence.

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Sam, your praying hands clenched Mama's own, and tears pooled in both of your eyes,

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while Pa hid in the darkness. Slap, silence, slap.

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The doctor then placed his lips upon my own, exhaling into my lungs, expanding them with the

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breath of God, until I finally let out a god-awful cry. I wailed as the dust of my body

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was buried in pure white snow. I was wrapped in a warm blanket and placed in Mama's arms,

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and we cried together. If I were given a choice to retain one memory, Sam, one I could lock away

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in a vault within an immortal mind, where not even the unforgivable claws of senility, nor death

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itself could grasp at it. It would be that kiss of love, the kiss of love that I could never forget.

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I was born with blue eyes, as you know. All babies are born blue, and the large amount of hair on my head,

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well, it was meant for trouble.

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Dr. Zola rubbed afterbirth on Mama's nipples, and I wasted no time in suckling them dry.

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He brushed the back of his fingers upon the soft spot on my head, and then ran them through my

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toe-head, messing it, blessing it. He congratulated Paul with an honest shake,

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thanking you, Sam, for all your help, and then he left as he had came. A god.

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The following day we stayed in bed under a quilt, and she asked you, Sam, to turn all the mirrors in

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the house toward the wall, and then to sit beside us in a chair, and to read aloud.

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Paul kept his distance as Mama turned her back, exposing my face just enough for him to take a

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brief sight. Of Sarah, Mama whispered.

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Paul didn't debate it, but when he reached his rough and soiled fingertip out to touch my rosy

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cheek, Mama pulled me away, saying, don't, you'll give her a stutter.

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Mama buried my face in her breasts, for the window was much too bright.

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We stayed in bed for days, listening to your thunderous voice that shook the tiny bones in

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my ear and filled the pure white void with glorious myth, and if even for a time, Sam,

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I was blind to the muddy reality that would soon be revealed by the melting snow.

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I kept your file locked away in a drawer, Sam, separate from the others,

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never willing myself to open it. You were unlike most of the patients on the hilltop,

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you seemed perfectly normal to me. Yet there was something peculiar about your normality,

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which made it even more difficult to open your file. I'm not sure if I was afraid of what I might

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discover, or if I felt awkward invading your privacy. I had much respect for you, Sam,

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but it was your intrigue that I adored the most, and the unconditional kindness you always provided,

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wisdom you never ceased to endow upon me, a void you filled within my heart.

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Sam, you were Sam, and I wanted you to remain Sam.

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Sam, well I was a wedge that had come between my parents, and I felt this way ever since that night

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I heard them shouting. I could have sworn I heard them blame the pregnancy. In fact,

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I heard many words, words of loss, blame, shame, heartache, and loneliness.

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The deeper I poured myself into that night, sitting quietly on those stairs, I found myself settling for the fact that Paul was but a simple man,

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a simple man who simply met another lady down the road. It was all so simple after all.

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The lady was a widow, and Paul began stopping by to see what she might need, and to help out around the farm.

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She owned a simple farmhouse amongst a simple field, arid and dry. Yet one on rainy days became a sea of mud.

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The paint peeled from her house like an old birch tree, and since her husband was planted six feet beneath that tree out back where the corn never grew,

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she asked if Paul might mind mending her fence, as for her broken heart, if you might tend to it as well, I suppose.

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Paul gave his heart to the widow's empty chest, a chest never to be filled.

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There was simply too little promise, and there was me, the wedge, the same wedge which had come between

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Mom and Paul was driven between Paul and the widow, whose gate slammed shut in the wind,

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whose roof kept sagging and needing repair, whose woodshed needed filling, until the earth finally settled,

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the dish falling to the floor, spinning and shattering.

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Sensibilities often sharpen quick enough, yet once broken, everyone knows they will all break apart in time.

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And being swept under the rug will do no good, only harm, inviting the hoodoo.

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It is simply to ask for a wrap upon the door, and in time,

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Paul returned to our field, yet our home remained arid, even on rainy days, when he left his muddy boots on the front porch.

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Paul may have returned to his family, but he was working on Sunday. Your hands will stick to the plow, they say.

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But Paul burnt leaves and chopped wood, defying the fate that might strike down upon him,

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going toe to toe with the hoodoo, but he forgot about the rest of us, and what that might mean.

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Or maybe it was just too late, too mysterious, too worrisome.

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I'm not sure if it did any of us good when he left his heart down the road, broken like that dish upon the floor,

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lying unswept, stepped over again and again and ignored.

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Until that night, Sam, you took me from the stairs and made me Swedish pancakes,

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the same ones waiting upon the table each morning, along with a girdled book, one from your own collection,

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one for me to carry along to the schoolhouse a mile down the dusty road.

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As I made my way each day, my belly warm with pancakes, I read.

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My pup Jojo, the rascally little mutt, with a cute smile and a pink tongue too big for his own britches, dangling off his right fang.

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I buried my thoughts in those written words and ignored the farmhouse where the shards lie,

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where the paint had long peeled like an old birch.

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and art's

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lessons.

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Looking out the schoolhouse window with the vast blue sky, golden chariots rained above,

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as Jojo laid in the green grass below, wagging his tail as our eyes met in a gaze.

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After school, I'd make my way back down the road, and some days rainbows would appear to the east,

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and I'd dodge mud puddles with my tiny feet.

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Yet my mind too consumed in words to notice the sloping roof.

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Nonetheless, I felt that itch on my left foot, and as I passed by the sea of mud as raindrops battered the pages

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in my windswept dress, the flies would bite and the clover leaves while they turned upward in the ditch beside the road.

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When I arrived home, German sweets lingered in the air, and Sam you were always there to mess my wet hair with a rag

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before sitting me down by the fire, taking the book and reading it aloud as I sat on your knee.

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Each page dried at a slow pace as each word soothed my heart, as the fire warmed my bones and the glowing wood crackled.

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You would read for an hour and then finish preparing supper, in which I always dropped a biscuit for Jojo.

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And after supper, Paul still covered in dust and dirt and mud, belly extended, too exhausted to remember to kiss me goodnight.

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I remember the stained outline of his body upon the bedsheets as they hung to dry in the breeze upon the clothesline.

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Once Paul was snoring, Mama would disappear somewhere within the house where she would weep her soul out to seep into the cracks of the floor.

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Mama left me for sadness, Sam, ghosts we had become.

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For I did not know as a child the responsibility was not mine to bear, as the luxury of wisdom comes with adulthood

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and besides, we all like to relish in guilt.

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We relish in the thought of control, even in situations where we certainly possess none.

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We wish not to be victims, but victimizers.

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So as Mama abandoned me, I abandoned her.

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As Mama wept, Paul snored. Hollow chest, hollow eyes, hollow home.

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There was nothing left but to sweep the shards up in my palms, to sweep the crumbs of the German sweets into the cracks of my heart.

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Who do had struck my childhood like the plague?

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Yet Sam, you did your best to provide me a daily vaccine.

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Your tonic was a concoction of kindness, attention, food, and words.

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And as much as you frustrated me, messing my hair, your words, your deep German accent, exotic and rare in every way,

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unlike the common words spoken by Mama and Paul, crackling in my ears.

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My heart aglow.

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Sam, you were from a different part of the world, and of another time, of strange blood and a different mind.

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But you utilized that mind, that brilliant mind to water and feed my own, filling me with wonder,

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keeping my heart whole and my thoughts full of hope.

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You handled me with care, never letting me drop, never allowing me to spin nor shatter, nor being swept under the rope.

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This Sam, is why I never opened your file.

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Never allowed the shards to spill out amongst the cracks in the floor.