David Nickle - Eutopia

“I know about missionaries. They spread the word of Jesus.”

“Word and deed,” she said. “The college taught me what I know about nursing; the Sanatorium taught me the need for it. They were still working on it when I left it for Eliada, later that year. Made by good Christians, in a lovely well-off village, to minister and cure the fallen women of south Chicago. Some would come to the sanatorium. But we’d go visit more than that, in their homes… in their slums.”

“Slums?” That was a new word to Jason.

“Jason, I watched more babies born into filth and squalor—put those babies into the arms of their mothers, and left them in their cold, filthy shacks… more than I’d care to say. I don’t know if it was worse if their man had left, or if the cad was still sharing the roof. It broke my heart to see it, I swear.”

Jason put his hand on Nurse Rowe’s. “Better if they leave, if they’re that kind of pa.”

Nurse Rowe took a breath, and slipped her hand from under Jason’s. “And so,” she said, “when Mr. Harper stood in front of us, and said those three words— Community. Compassion. Hygiene. —it struck a chord in me. I remember how Father fidgeted beside me, when Harper explained how we could fiddle around the edges all we wanted—babies would still die in their mothers’ arms, until we got to work in the middle… fixed society up, top to bottom.”

“Or start a new one,” said Jason.

Nurse Rowe nodded. “That was when he had me. The missionaries… for them, the meek are rewarded in Heaven. It seemed to me that Mr. Harper was fixing to make a little bit of that Heaven right here. Before we left, I took down the address he gave—it was a lawyer’s office in Chicago—and a week later, I went there. To offer my services.”

“And you’ve been here since then. For—” he counted it in his head “—four years.”

“Nearly, yes.”

Jason thought about that. “You must’ve seen some things in that time,” he said.

Nurse Rowe shook her head and chuckled. “You are fishing, Mr. Thistledown,” she said. “You ask why I want to stay here in Eliada, and that’s a fair question. But I could ask the same of you.”

“I haven’t been here but two days,” he said.

“And yet—the things you’ve seen.” She bent forward and put her hand on top of his now. Her eyes found his, and he couldn’t look away. It may have been that, it may have been a shift in the cloud… but it seemed as though Nurse Annie Rowe was bathed in a strange light, like gold shimmering down from Heaven.

She went on: “You went into the quarantine,” she said, “and you drew your own blood. And you saw. And now you’re trying to find a way to talk about it.”

“I ain’t—” he began, but she stopped him.

“It’s all right, Jason,” she said, and gripped his good hand in hers.

Jason yanked his hand away. “No,” he said, “it ain’t.”

“It’s all right,” she said again, but she kept her hands to herself. “You’ve seen so much. You can let it go, in here. I won’t tell. It’ll be between you, and me, and Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Jesus ain’t here,” he said.

Annie laughed once more and said, “Of course he is. All around us, Jason. Always. You know what Eliada means, don’t you?”

And then, for an instant, Jason thought that funny gold light showed him a row of teeth… Then he thought, No, I got her confused with someone else … and Jason pushed his bandaged hand underneath his arm, and pressed down hard.

“My aunt,” he said, through gritted teeth, “said I should see a nurse and get some fresh air. I have to go get some air now.”

Nurse Rowe nodded. And a cloud moved above the skylight—perhaps—and dimmed whatever light it was that rained upon her.

“I didn’t mean to press my beliefs,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought it’d give comfort.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you like it here,” said Jason as he got up and headed to the door.

He spared a glance at the skylight—at the even ceiling of deep grey cloud—and he added, “Thank you for the bandaging and all.” He stepped out the door, and headed down the hallway toward the town, for his second tour of “Utopia” in as many days.

He wouldn’t run into Ruth Harper this time either, and Jason was fine with that. For the first time in many weeks, he thought of the solitude of winter on the farmstead, the quiet of Cracked Wheel in early spring… both places without God, or man.

Both places, right then, that he missed, with a soaring and unreachable ache.

Nowhere on the invitation sent from Ruth Harper to Jason Thistledown could Aunt Germaine find the words… and Mrs. Germaine Frost ; and as the hours and days passed, no second notice arrived at the Eugenics Records Office in the Eliada hospital. But that did not dissuade her. When Jason awoke Sunday morning, his Aunt Germaine was dressed and ready to go, sitting impatiently in the antechamber to their rooms in the hospital, sour as old milk.

“We are going to worship,” she said simply as he buttoned his shirt. “Then to the Harper estate. Comb your hair, Nephew.”

He knew better than to argue. Aunt Germaine was as reasonable as sweating dynamite these days. For a time he thought it was because she disapproved of Miss Ruth Harper, but as the hours and days wore on, he realized it was a deeper trouble. She was offended, more deeply than he would have thought possible, that her name had been omitted from the invitation.

They went to the only church in Eliada. It was called Saint Cyprian’s, at the end of a row of workmen’s houses, along the road to the Harper estate. The service was underway when they got inside. Jason looked over the slumped backs of the worshippers to see the priest going on in Latin the way they did in this church. He and Aunt Germaine slid into a pew near the door, earning a couple of dirty looks for their troubles. Jason felt his heart twist, but not from that. He happened to spy Sam Green, decked out in a black suit, bowler hat nowhere to be seen, bent forward in fervent prayer. During the whole long service, he did not look over once and Jason was fine with that. It wasn’t as though he didn’t appreciate Sam Green’s help directed through him to Dr. Waggoner; he simply thought that conversations with the Pinkerton man came at too steep a price.

By the time the service was done it was nearly the noon hour and time for the picnic. It was turning into a good day; the sun was beating down and it was warm enough to walk without a jacket.

The road went a quarter mile before it led them to the gate, cut nearly straight through the rows on rows of blossoming apple trees that made up the Harpers’ orchards. Some of those trees were pretty tall, Jason thought, to have been planted when the Harpers were supposed to have come here ten years back. He wondered who was here before that, with the leisure to plant apple in fine old rows.

Surely it was not the same folk with the leisure to build a house like Mr. Harper’s. That place was something. It was huge—bigger than any two barns combined that Jason had ever seen—in the same class as the sawmill or the hospital.

The house was laid out like a horseshoe, made of cut stone near the ground, square-cut log higher up. Jason counted six stone chimneys, climbing high above the steep-peaked roofs. How many rooms could you put in a place like that? How many kin?

How many servants?

This would have been a sore point with his mama. She had unkindly views on the keeping of servants. A woman ought not live larger than she can sweep in a day , she would say. Every servant she used brought her that many steps further from looking after herself in a pinch.