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All day, I thought about Becky’s problem I had a little money saved from the wooden bowls I crafted on the lathe that Hester sold for me at the flea market in Delmont There were three cars in the driveBecky needed the Pontiac to get to work Hester needed his Model T toanywhere, so that left the Olds for me

I let Becky put me to bed just as usual I could do it ently she holds my chin and opens my mouth to brush my teeth, then pushes htens my pillow and pulls up the covers For just a split second, her breast brushes my chest as she bends over me, but she doesn’t notice She’s a nurse and I’m just a patient to her

Before sunrise, I ood clothes on Not wanting to alert the household, I pushed the Oldsnition

Getting Trustler’s X-ray result was easy I’d driven to Pittsburgh plenty of tis coery The body remembers The hands remember

At West Penn Hospital, when I introduced myself as Dr Blum and said I was from White Rock CCC Camp, the report was handed over without question It took all of three sentences to get what I caas at the West Virginia border and had to walk ten miles back to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, but the Texaco station was closed Then it took allons of gas and I had to walk the ten miles back

I arrived home to a dark house about two AM, took off my shoes, dropped the folder on the kitchen table, and cat-walked up the stairs to bed I was never in the military, but I no soldiers must feel when they make it back to camp As I fell asleep I smiled to myself Mission accomplished

39

Asylum

"I’ tuberculosis was really upsetting me," Captain Wolfe opens up "My wife died of TB, but silicosis, that’s different There’s hope"

We are in his sedan, driving to Torrington to pick up Drake Trustler and I am elated Silicosis, I’ve read, is serious, but at least it’s not communicable, and Drake can cooes on, stroking his scarred cheek, and for the first ti me about his dead wife "I didn’t want to put her in the tuberculin asylum, but the doctors said it was her only chance The coolher would keepit

"I drove her up to Cresson near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the middle of winter It was the nicest sanatoriu Caroline was a teacher, an eleh we never had any ourselves, a beautiful, delicate wo"

He looks over with tears in his eyes and it strikes me that the man is still in love with his wife I think about oes on "I went up to see her every other week and the last day is like a hand-tinted photograph i day, but so was off, the yellow of the forsythia was too yellow, the grass was too green, the red on her handkerchief too godda and the next day she died, died alone" The captain wipes his eyes "If Drake had had TB, I couldn’t have stood it" After that there’s silence