Russell Banks - Trailerpark

Moving quickly to the top step, she pitched her shoulder against the door just above the latch, which immediately gave way and let the door blow open, causing Marcelle to stagger inside, off balance, blinking in the darkness and floundering in the odor of the animals as if in a huge wave of warm water. She reacted like a fireman entering a house filled with smoke. “Flora!” she yelled. “Flora, where are you!” Bumping against the cages, she made her way around them and into the kitchen area, shouting her name and peering in vain into the darkness. In several minutes, she had made her way to the bedroom in back, and there in a corner she found Flora on her cot, wrapped in a blanket, looking almost unconscious, limp, bulky, gray. Her hands were near her throat clutching the top of the blanket, like the hands of a frightened, beaten child, and she had her head turned toward the wall, with her eyes closed. She looked like a sick child to Marcelle, like her own child, Joel, who had died when he was twelve — the fever had risen and the hallucinations had come until he was out of his head with them, and then suddenly, while she was mopping his body with damp washcloths, the wildness had gone out of him and he had turned on his side, drawn his skinny legs up to his belly and died.

Flora was feverish, though not with as high a fever as the boy Joel had endured, and she had drawn her legs up to her, bulking her body into a lumpy heap beneath the filthy blanket. “You’re sick,” Marcelle announced to the woman, who seemed not to hear her. Marcelle straightened the blanket, brushed the woman’s matted hair away from her face, and looked around the room to see if there wasn’t some way she could make her more comfortable. The room was jammed with the large, odd-shaped cages, and Marcelle could hear the animals rustling back and forth on the wire flooring, now and then chittering in what she supposed was protest against hunger and thirst.

Taking a backward step, Marcelle yanked the cord and opened the venetian blind, and sunlight tumbled into the room. Suddenly Flora was shouting, “Shut it! Shut it! Don’t let them see! No one can see me!”

Obediently, Marcelle closed the blind, and the room once again filled with the gloom and shadow that Flora believed hid the shape of the life being lived here. “I got to get you to a doctor,” Marcelle said quietly. “Doctor Wickshaw’s got office hours today, you know Carol Constant, his nurse, that nice colored lady who lives next door? You got to see a doctor, missy.”

“No. I’ll be all right soon,” she said in a weak voice. “Just the flu, that’s all.” She pulled the blanket up higher, covering most of her face but exposing her dirty bare feet.

Marcelle persisted, and soon Flora began to curse the woman, her voice rising in fear and anger, the force of it pushing Marcelle away from the cot, as she shouted, “You leave me alone, you bitch! I know your tricks, I know what you’re trying to do! You just want to get me out of here so you can take my babies away from me! Get out of here! I’m fine, I can take care of my babies fine, just fine! Now you get out of my house! Go on, get!”

Marcelle backed slowly away, then turned and walked to the open door and outside to the sunshine and the clean fall air.

Doctor Wickshaw, Carol told her, doesn’t make house-calls. Marcelle sat at her kitchen table, looked out the window and talked on the telephone. She was watching Flora’s trailer, number 11, as if watching a bomb that was about to explode.

“Yeah, I know that,” Marcelle said, holding the receiver between her shoulder and cheek so both hands could be free to light a cigarette. “Listen, Carol, this is Flora Pease we’re talking about, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get her into that office. But she’s real sick, and it could be just the flu, but it could be meningitis, for all I know. My boy died of that, you know, and you have to do tests and everything before you can tell if it’s meningitis.” There was a silence for a few seconds. “Anyhow, I don’t want some infectious disease breaking out here, and Doctor Wickshaw could save us a lot of trouble if he’d just drive out here for ten minutes and take a look at this crazy woman so we could know how to handle her. I mean, I maybe should call the ambulance and get her over to the Concord Hospital, for all I know right now! I need somebody who knows something to come here and look at her,” she said, her voice rising.

“Maybe on my lunch hour I’ll be able to come by and take a look,” Carol said. “At least I should be capable of saying if she should be got to a hospital or not.”

Marcelle thanked her — not without first laying down a curse against doctors who set themselves up like bankers — and hung up the phone. Nervously tapping her fingers against the table, she thought to call in Merle Ring or maybe Captain Knox, to get their opinions of Flora’s condition, and then decided against it. That damned Dewey Knox, he’d just take over, one way or the other, and after reducing the situation to a choice between two courses, probably between leaving her alone in the trailer and calling the ambulance, he’d insist that someone other than he do the choosing, probably Flora herself, who, of course, would choose to be left alone. Then he’d walk off believing he’d done the right thing, the only right thing, without it ever occurring to him that he’d missed the point of the whole dilemma. Merle would be just as bad, she figured, with all his smart-ass comments about illness and death and leaving things alone until they have something to say to you that’s completely clear. Some illnesses lead to death, he’d say, and some lead to health, and we’ll know before long which this is, and when we do, we’ll know how to act. Men. Either they take responsibility for everything, or else they take responsibility for nothing.

Around one, Carol Constant arrived in her little blue Japanese sedan, dressed in a white nurse’s uniform and looking, to Marcelle, very much like a medical authority. Marcelle led her into Flora’s trailer, after warning her about the clutter and the smell—“It’s like some kinda burrow in there,” she said as they stepped through the door — and Carol, placing a plastic tape against Flora’s forehead, determined that Flora was indeed quite ill, for her temperature was 105 degrees. She turned to Marcelle and told her to call the ambulance.

Immediately Flora went wild, bellowing and moaning about her babies and how she couldn’t leave them, they needed her. She thrashed against Carol’s strong grip for a moment and then gave up and fell weakly back into the cot.

“Go ahead and call,” Carol told Marcelle, “and I’ll hold on to things here until they come.” When Marcelle had gone, Carol commenced talking to the ill woman in a low, soothing voice, stroking her forehead with one hand and holding her by the shoulder with the other, until, after a few moments, Flora began to whimper and then to weep, and finally, as if her heart were broken, to sob. By now Marcelle had returned from calling the ambulance and was standing in the background almost out of sight, while Carol soothed the woman and crooned, “Poor thing, you poor thing.”

“My babies, who’ll take care of my babies?” she wailed.

“I’ll get my brother Terry to take care of them,” Carol promised, and for a second that seemed to placate the woman.

But then she began to wail again, because she knew it was a lie and when she came back her babies would be gone.

No, no, no, no, both Carol and Marcelle insisted. When she got back, the guinea pigs would be here, all of them, every last one. Terry would water and feed them, and he’d clean out the cages every day, just as she did.

“I’ll make sure he does,” Marcelle promised, “or he’ll have his ass in a sling.”