The Little Giant of Aberdeen County Read online

  It’s strange to see what time does to your adversaries. Here I had the indomitable Miss Sparrow kneeling in front of me, but with a couple of teeth missing, yellow eyeballs, and a head as bald as a plucked goose. As she spoke, I remembered the day she’d confiscated my mother’s cracked mirror and the sound it made hitting the metal trash can, the tinkling of the glass splintering. Even now, that was still the noise I imagined a heart made when it gave up on life. For a moment, I wished I had that mirror back so I could hold it up to Priscilla Sparrow’s face and invite her to take a good long look. See, I would have said, ugly fits into anybody’s skin. Size doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

  The truth of it is, though, size has plenty to do with forgiveness. Staring down at the measly-boned Priscilla Sparrow, I realized for the first time that maybe my enormity was an unintended gift. All that fat and muscle hanging off my frame—the very same flesh that Robert Morgan seemed so determined to chip and whittle away at—was like a suit of armor laid overtop my spirit. And so far, I’d taken all the misery thrown at me and absorbed it like salt sucking up water.

  Without taking my eyes off Prissy, I leaned close to her. Gently, as if persuading a mean dog into a better temper, I took her clawed hands into my own. “I’ll take care of it,” I whispered, my voice as supple as the surface of Tabitha’s quilt. “I promise. One way or another, I’ll take care of it.”

  The doctor was not exactly congenial to seeing things in my fashion. I’d decided to try him first. “Absolutely not,” he sputtered when I informed him about Priscilla Sparrow’s visit. “I’ve told her I won’t. It’s completely unethical.” He worked a bit of ham gristle out from between his teeth. It was after dinner. Bobbie was upstairs doing homework. For supper I’d made all the doctor’s favorites—cola-glazed ham, two-fried potato hash, and sour patch tomato salad—but it wasn’t helping. He was crabby, and dangerous, and not inclined to agree with me about anything, especially when it involved his work.

  “But maybe it’s more unethical to prolong her life.” I slid a cup of overly bitter coffee across the table, trying to ignore the image of Sentinel’s pinched gray muzzle going slack in the moonlight.

  “It’s murder.”

  “It’s still an option.”

  “Which is murder.”

  “Or peace.” I eyed the doctor. After putting up with his pronouncements and orders, it felt like liberation to voice an opinion of my own, even if he was shooting it down. I put my hands on my hips. “Listen, you may know a lot about how the human body hangs together, but you don’t know doggone about the soul. People get tuckered out. They get tired of hanging around waiting when the finish line’s in plain sight. You ought to know that better than anyone.”

  The doctor shut up and slurped at his coffee. His hair was beginning to thin out, and what was left of it stuck up in tufts off his head. For a moment, he looked just like Bobbie. “It’s illegal,” he snapped, accusatory and mean, just like his old self. But maybe he can’t help it, I thought. Maybe his cells were just programmed that way.

  “Well now, that all depends.”

  “On what?” Robert Morgan was not a man who appreciated the easy morals of August Dyerson, but I was pleased to note that they were still alive and kicking in me—just like one of his hobbled old racehorses.

  I raised my eyebrows. “On not getting caught.”

  I was preparing to make my grand exit, sweeping out of that kitchen with all the dignity of the Queen of Sheba, but the doctor was a man who’d never lost out on the last word, and he wasn’t about to start now, even if it came at the cost of tarnishing his honor.

  “Not so fast. Sit,” he ordered. He kicked a chair out for me, then licked his lips and spoke with the sweet slowness of a man who had all the time in the world. “I didn’t want to have to do this now,” he said, running his hands through his hair, “but you’re leaving me no choice.” He looked back over at me. “Tell me, Truly, if it was you sitting on the other side of the fence, do you think you’d be making the same argument? Because what I’m about to say to you may change your mind.” I hesitated, a bad feeling rising in my chest. “Now, do you have any idea of the name of what afflicts you?”

  I refused the seat. When I’d decided to go to bat for Priscilla Sparrow, I hadn’t counted on nitpicking my dimensions, but if the doctor wanted to go that route, I figured, it was one I could follow. “Well, I’m guessing the word giant is in the title somewhere,” I said, “and if it isn’t, I’m sure you’ll petition to put it there.”

  Robert Morgan drummed his fingers on the tabletop, unperturbed. He appeared to debate something inside himself for a moment, then he nodded, satisfied, and continued speaking. “The precise term is acromegaly. You’re a kind of giant, Truly. Do you know what that means?”

  I sighed. How many times in my life, I wondered, was I going to have to have this conversation? I thought back all those years to my first day of school and Miss Sparrow’s incredulous assessment of me. It made me feel as dull and heavy inside as a rusty old barrel. Maybe I would take that chair, after all. I sank into it before answering, “It means I’m bigger than average, Robert Morgan.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s more than that. How did my father explain it to you when you were a child? A little clock?”

  “Yes. A clock.”

  “Well, that’s not technically accurate. It’s more like a stopwatch, or a kitchen timer. Most people’s pituitary quits sending out hormone after puberty, but yours never has, probably due to some kind of tumor. Your timer is infinite. In other words, you’ve never stopped growing, and you probably never will.”

  I sat back in the chair, absorbing this new information, wishing I had some more coffee to go with it.

  “There’s more,” the doctor continued. “I never told you before, but given our topic of conversation tonight, I believe now is the time. You need to know that there’s a high probability that this condition will be terminal for you, Truly.”

  “What?” The word terminal flapped in my throat like a duck trapped in lake ice. I tried to take a breath and found I couldn’t.

  The doctor lowered his gaze, slipping into professional mode. “Your heart won’t be able to keep up with your growth. Your organs will become enlarged and stressed. Inevitably, your vital systems will start to fail.”

  I shifted on my chair, aware for the first time of precisely how much the wood was bending and bowing under me. More than last week? I wondered. Much more than a month ago? I put a hand on my chest. “Oh. Oh my.”

  Robert Morgan folded his hands. “I realize this must be a shock.”

  He had no idea. My mind swirled with questions. How big would I get? How long would it take? How would I know if my organs were failing? But there were a few questions that were larger than any of the others and one in particular that couldn’t be ignored. “How could you keep this a secret all these years?” I finally blurted.

  Robert Morgan sipped his muddy coffee and considered. “I was always going to tell you. You have a right to know, of course.” He hesitated a moment, then cleared his throat roughly. “I was waiting for the right time. A better time.”

  I slammed my hands on the table. “Better than what?”

  To give him credit, the doctor didn’t even flinch. “Better than now,” he replied, calm as cabbage. He ran his fingers through his hair and elaborated. “Look, Truly, it’s always tricky giving someone bad news, and it’s even more so when that person is a member of your household. I suppose I didn’t like the idea of rocking our little boat. Not while you were still healthy, and not after everything Serena Jane put us through.”

  “But what if something had happened to me in the meantime? What if, what if—” What if I died? I couldn’t say it.

  Robert Morgan held up his empty palms as if he were offering all the blame back up to the universe. “Then it wouldn’t matter that I’d never told you, would it?” That sounded about right, I thought. Plus, it gave him a few hidden benefits. If I d
idn’t know about my condition, Robert Morgan would be able to watch me like a lion getting ready for a kill, tail twitching, eyes all narrow and tight. He would be able to keep measuring every inch of me right up until the end, notating all the changes, and when I was gone he would be able to write all those numbers up in a nice, fat medical article with his name signed in red.

  “What about treatment?” I finally asked. “Can’t you do anything?”

  The doctor shook his head slowly, almost a little sadly, it seemed. “Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but in your case, our options are limited. Surgery, I am almost certain, would be futile and far too dangerous. Radiation has its own drawbacks, which leaves only medication. I’d like to start you on a series of pills and injections right away.”

  “And what if I say no?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Then you’ll die sooner rather than later.”

  I pushed my chair back from the table, my stomach queasy. Was that a symptom? I wondered. The beginning of the end? And what about all my headaches? But when it came down to it, none of it mattered, I decided. All I wanted was to get away from the doctor’s house. I longed to go back to the farm and lie in my old room, the itchy weft of a horse blanket scratching my hips and knees. I wanted never to see the doctor again.

  Just then, Bobbie came stumbling into the kitchen, skinny arms pocked with insect bites, his tongue poking in between his teeth. He had just crossed the brink between boyhood and adolescence but hadn’t entirely left youth behind. “Aunt Truly?” He blinked, confused to see that the dishes hadn’t even been cleared yet. “I have a question about my history homework.”

  My head snapped to attention. Bobbie. Towheaded, berry lipped, prettier than any of Aberdeen’s girls. But lonely and still carrying puddles of sadness in the depths of his eyes. A boy so different from his father, he might very well have been a gift from the angels. If for some reason I weren’t here, what would happen to him? Who would he talk to when he came dragging his heels home from school, his lip bust open again by the bullies at school? Who would fix him dinner, and fold his socks, and make sure he brushed his teeth?

  “Aunt Truly,” Bobbie whined, “are you listening?”

  I put my hand on my heart. In spite of what the doctor had just told me, it was throbbing just like always, regular and true under my breastbone. Maybe it was large, I thought—bigger than average—but that just meant it matched the rest of me. It was as tough and stringy as that twice-boiled ham hock still lying on the bottom of the pot on the stove. I reached up to my face and felt a streak of salty tear. Turns out there’s some grit in me yet, I thought, then I looked across the table at Robert Morgan. Evening had fully fallen, and shadows were descending on us like cobwebs. If we didn’t move soon, they’d eat us alive, and one thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going to let it happen to me. I stood up. For that night, at least, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Of course I’m listening,” I said, beginning to collect the dishes. “I’ll be with you in a single minute. Your father and I were just talking, but we’re finished now. In fact, I just realized that we never even got around to dessert. Who wants peach cobbler?”

  Bobbie smacked his lips, and the doctor looked up and blinked, mild and surprised as a child. “Why, thank you. That would be kind.”

  I snorted. “That’s not kindness talking, mister. Just hunger.” I turned my back on him and flipped on the light. Facts are facts, I thought. None of us were built to last, but that didn’t mean we could ignore the here and now. After all, I had a stomach, and it had a mind of its own, and right then it was telling me to get up, stop feeling sorry for myself, and get to the work the good Lord had given me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if we took a cue from horses and treated our fellow humans accordingly. When a horse goes and breaks its neck, you don’t sit around debating the merits of keeping it alive. You go and get your shotgun, and you shoot it right between the eyes, hard. Anything else would be cruel. But when a man teeters on the brink, folks are apt to start philosophizing. They start asking questions that don’t have any answers, like What’s a life for? And what comes afterward? And how many of our actions are we supposed to answer for, anyway? Horses don’t have to live up to any of this, and if you ask me, they’re the luckier for it—free in their hearts and pure in the moment. Even August’s worst horse, the cockeyed Hitching Post, had a touch of the noble in his crooked old bones.

  In the end, though, a man is different from a horse. You can’t get around it. For one thing, men talk back at you. They blather a lifetime of opinions. And they’re fickle, for another, always changing their mouths to change their minds. You can pretty much always guess what a horse is going to do, but don’t ever gamble on a man. There’s just no telling. August found that out the hard way during his life over and over again, and I found it out, too, when I decided to help Priscilla Sparrow die. I had watched Sentinel. I thought I understood what would come to pass, but the universe always holds a few tricks up its sleeve, even for a veteran card turner like me who’s used to getting the cruddy hand. I guess it’s the world’s way of making sure we never get so comfortable in our skins that we quit asking ourselves the hard questions. At least that’s how I explain things to myself.

  When someone gives you bad news about the future, you basically have two choices in the matter. The first is to stew yourself a big pot of worry and despair, and the second is denial. In my experience, the first option just leads to bellyache. So, in order to take my own mind off my personal demise, I started focusing on Prissy’s instead.

  After giving me the bad news, the doctor immediately started me on a new medical regimen, which involved swallowing fistfuls of pills and being stuck like a pincushion, as well as the taking of even more vials of blood and endless examinations. By the third week, I was starting to feel a little like a laying hen getting groomed for a new henhouse, but whenever I started to think that way, I just pictured Bobbie’s wan face moping over my grave, and remembered Priscilla’s situation, and it made it easy to choke down the next handful of bitter capsules.

  Much as I hated my latest routine, even I couldn’t deny how much my body had changed in recent months. My words were coming slower and slower now, as if my tongue were growing—which, the doctor assured me, it was—and the gaps between my teeth had never been larger. Also, I sweated all the time, even if it was chilly, and my skin always had a fine sheen of oil slicking it.

  “Now that we have a better idea what we’re dealing with, the medication will start to ease those symptoms,” the doctor claimed, but he wasn’t the one enduring them. At night, when Bobbie and Robert Morgan were sleeping, I tiptoed down to the kitchen and cooked up a few of Tabby’s remedies. For the nausea the pills brought on, I boiled more peppermint and chamomile tea. For the eczema that broke out on the tops of my feet, I made a paste of calendula and elderberries and mixed it with soft beeswax; and for my headaches, I tried dried feverfew. After only a few days of my home remedies, the doctor squinted at the clean skin on my bare toes and beamed.

  “I see the eczema is clearing up. Soon you’ll start to see results in other areas as well.”

  I examined my feet, certain that it was Tabitha’s beeswax balm that was making them better. “I wonder what your great-great-grandmother would have prescribed?” I asked, flexing my arches.

  The doctor snorted and clicked on a pen flashlight. “Eye of newt, probably. With a side of spiders. But I guess we’ll never know now that all her so-called spells have been lost. Turn your head this way.” He pointed the beam of light into my eye.

  I blinked, then forced myself to keep my eyelid open. “Didn’t she come from a whole line of witches?”

  The doctor moved the light into my other eye, then clicked the button again, satisfied. Spots swam before my eyes. “That’s what they say. Apparently one of her ancestors was burned at the stake in Massachusetts. But it’s all hogwash.”

  “What,
the burning?”

  Robert Morgan frowned. “No, that probably really happened. But the rest of it is nonsense. For all we know, she could have just been making moonshine with her brother until my great-great-grandfather made her stop.”

  “Hmm.” I crossed my ankles.

  “You sound skeptical. Don’t tell me you believe in the poppycock of an old woman. Trust me, Truly. There is no shadow book, and I should know.” A blush swept across his face, and he scribbled something very fast on his clipboard. “Okay, okay,” he said, scowling, when he saw that I was still staring at him. “I might have searched for it once or twice when I was young. Purely out of scientific curiosity.”

  I tried to keep a straight face. “Of course.” I was remembering a time shortly after my arrival, when I’d found him searching through the drawers of the little chest in the parlor and feeling the tiles around the fireplace. “Nothing,” he’d snapped when I’d asked him what he was doing. “Just checking the mortar, which is a job I should leave up to you, really.”

  He ripped yet another prescription off his pad for me now. “This should help with your arthritis. You mentioned that the joints of your fingers are growing stiffer. I’ll fill it, and get it to you by the end of the week.”

  Already, my mind was whirling through the lexicon of Tabby’s quilt. What cures were embroidered under the stitched bone? I tried to think. Horsetail, I thought I remembered. And arnica. I waited while the doctor stepped out of the room so I could retreat behind the screen in the corner and change into my baggy dress.

  “What’s for dinner?” the doctor called through the doorway of his office just as I was about to leave. For such a thin man, he had an unaccountable appetite. Not that it couldn’t maybe be dampened down a notch with some of the herbs from Tabitha’s quilt, I suddenly thought—herbs that could bring either suffering or salvation or maybe just common misery.