“Where on earth is Hattie?” Ruth asked the following morning. She and Lucy and I had come down to the dining room expecting breakfast to be ready. When there was no sign of food or even our table settings, the three of us walked into the kitchen to find it sparkling clean. It was clear Hattie hadn’t yet arrived. I knew she occasionally spent the night away, with her boyfriend, Oscar, but she was always at the house early enough to make breakfast for Henry, who often left for work before the rest of us were up. I’d been glad to find Henry gone when I woke up that morning. I was both perplexed and irritated by his lovemaking last night.
Ruth peered out the window toward the cottage. “I hope she’s not ill,” she said.
“I’ll go check on her,” Lucy said, but before she could open the back door, a truck pulled up near the garage and Hattie stepped out of the cab in her gray uniform and white apron.
“That’s Zeke’s truck,” Lucy said, as the truck began backing out of the driveway. “She must not have stayed in the cottage last night.” She pulled open the door as Hattie rushed onto the back steps. Even from where I stood, I could see that her eyes were red.
“Sorry I’m late!” she said, hurrying breathlessly into the kitchen, a handkerchief wadded up in her fist. “I’ll cook y’alls’ breakfast right—”
“What’s wrong, Hattie?” Lucy interrupted her.
Hattie stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking woefully at the three of us before burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving. Ruth pulled a chair from beneath the table.
“Sit down, dear,” she said. “Tell us what’s happened.”
Hattie lowered herself onto the chair, her dark cheeks streaked with tears. “Butchie has the polio!” she said.
“Oh no,” I said, and Ruth took a step backward as though Hattie might be a carrier of the dreaded disease.
“How horrible!” Lucy pressed a fist to her mouth.
“Zeke come get me last night and brung me over Adora’s to help out before they knowed what was wrong,” Hattie continued. “Doctor says he’s the first case in Hickory. He’s real sick. Can’t move. Can’t even swallow and ain’t breathin’ right.” She looked up at us, a mystified expression on her face. “Why my baby cousin got to be the first one?” she asked.
“Poor Adora,” Ruth said, genuine concern in her voice. “Did the doctor give him some medicine?”
Hattie shook her head. “They come in a ambulance and took him away to Charlotte,” she said. “Honor’s all tore up. They wouldn’t let her go with him. They let me and Zeke leave the house, but Adora and Honor and Jilly is all under that quarantine now.”
“This is terrible.” Lucy twisted her hands together in front of her. “He’s such a sweet little boy.” Were there tears in her eyes? She ordinarily struck me as so self-absorbed. This was a different side to her.
Ruth looked at Lucy. “We need to take them something,” she said. “What do they need, Hattie?”
“They need their baby boy back,” she said, blotting her eyes with the handkerchief. “That’s about it.”
I remembered little Butchie running out of Adora’s house the day we took them the leftovers from the box supper. His adorable little suit and tie. The joy in his face at seeing Lucy. I hated to think of him so sick.
“I could make them one of those stuffed hams,” I said, wondering if my contribution would be welcome. Hattie had told me how much they’d liked my ham, but my connection to Adora’s family was peripheral at best. I looked at Hattie. “You said they loved it.”
“They did.” Hattie sniffled. “That’d be right nice, Miss Tess.”
I felt Ruth and Lucy studying me in silence. “They did like that,” Ruth acknowledged after a moment. “We can get a ham. What else do you need for it, Tess? Hattie can go to the store.”
I ticked off the ingredients on my fingers and Hattie nodded after each one, committing them to memory.
“If you make it, I’ll take it over,” Lucy said to me. “I’m not afraid of those germs.”
“Can’t go in the house, Miss Lucy,” Hattie said. “Nobody ’lowed in now, not even me. The health people put a big sign on the door.”
“Well, you can just leave it on the porch for them,” Ruth said to Lucy.
Hattie got to her feet, smoothing the skirt of her uniform and sniffling. She reached into the cupboard where she kept the skillets. “Let me git some breakfast for y’all before I go to the—”
“Don’t worry about it, Hattie,” Ruth said. “We’ll take care of ourselves this morning. You just get ready to go to the store.”
* * *
Henry came home at noon for lunch—a rarity for him. His cheeks were pale and his expression grim when he walked in the back door, and he grew even paler when he found me sweating over a pot of boiling water in the kitchen. Lucy’d found some linen for me to wrap the ham in rather than using another pillowcase, and the scent of the meat and herbs and spices filled the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m making stuffed ham for Adora’s family,” I said, putting the lid on the pot. “Her grandson—that little boy Butchie?—has polio, and—”
“I know,” Henry interrupted. “Zeke told me. But you don’t have anything to do with that family and I don’t like to see you tiring yourself in the kitchen. Let Hattie take care of it.”
“Nonsense.” I smiled.
“She don’t let me lift a finger, Mr. Hank,” Hattie said. She was slicing tomatoes on the counter near the sink.
I knew my face was glistening, tendrils of my hair glued to my forehead and cheeks. It felt good to be doing something other than stewing about my suddenly consummated marriage. Hattie had complained that I was in her way in the kitchen, but I thought she was only teasing. I had the feeling she was touched that I was making something for her relatives.
“I’m enjoying it,” I said to Henry.
He looked at me blankly, that worrisome pallor in his face, and I knew there was more on his mind than his distress at finding me in the kitchen. I touched his arm.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He turned away from me, setting his briefcase on the seat of one of the kitchen chairs. “Just some problems with the factory,” he said. “If it’s not the boiler, it’s the spray booth. If it’s not the spray booth, it’s the kiln. We had a near accident with the boring machine today because it malfunctioned.” He sighed. “Always something that needs attention.”
Lucy suddenly burst into the room. “You’re home!” she said to Henry. “Did you hear about Butchie?”
He nodded. “I told Zeke he could take time off to drive Honor to the hospital in Charlotte so she could be with him,” he said, “but she’s under quarantine, and it looks like she wouldn’t have been able to see him anyhow. Zeke drove all the way over there and they told him no one can visit Butchie for the first two weeks.”
“First two weeks!” Lucy exclaimed. “He’ll have to be there that long?”
I knew Butchie could be in the hospital much, much longer than two weeks, but didn’t say anything. Everyone seemed too upset as it was.
“Could be a very long time,” Henry said. “Polio doesn’t generally go away quickly.” He looked around the room at all three of us. “By the way,” he said, “I told Zeke to give the hospital our phone number, since Adora doesn’t have a phone. Just in case they need to get in touch with an update on his condition.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hank,” Hattie said. “I don’t know what Honor’s gonna do without her baby boy home to dote on.”
“She’ll have him back in no time,” Lucy said, patting Hattie’s arm.
“Should someone get in touch with…” I tried to remember the name of Butchie’s father. “Del, is it?” I asked.
For a few seconds, no one said a word. Then finally, Hattie spoke up.
“Is there a way?” She looked hopefully at Henry.
He hesitated. “I doubt it,” he said finally. “But I’ll look into it.” He shot me a look that told me I shouldn’t meddle. I supposed the last thing Del needed was to worry about his son when he was overseas, fighting for his country, in danger every day.
* * *
I made the stuffed ham, wrapped it in waxed paper, and set it in the refrigerator to chill. I knew it would do little to ease that family’s worries, but at least it would keep them fed. I tried to imagine what it was like for little Butchie to be without his mother, unable to move parts of his body, struggling to breathe. If it hurt me to imagine him scared and separated from his family, what must it be like for Honor? Being pregnant and losing my baby seemed to have made me more sensitive to anything having to do with motherhood.
When Henry came home from the factory in the early evening, he and Lucy took the ham over to Adora’s.
“Shall I come too?” I asked. I felt as though I should go with them, since the ham was my contribution.
“No,” they both answered at the same time.
“No point to it,” Henry added, “since we can’t even go inside. We’ll let them know you made it though.”
I packed the ham in a large paper bag and handed it to Lucy. As the two of them left by the back door, Henry stopped. He turned back to me, touched my shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said. “It was kind of you to do this.”