The Gas Boys (Ch9)
Chapter 9 in THEDA'S TIME MACHINE.
Gas! GAS! Quick boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flood-ring like a man in fire or lime--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
“Theda. A word. If you please,” Dr. Harold Evora called from the hallway.
“Now you’re in trouble,” Violet grinned, dropping the heavy drapery at the tall front window, concealing the inky darkness on the other side. Theda was glad to see the curtain fall. Without rings of streetlights or houselights or a bright moon, the night was unbroken. For the first time she understood her weak-eyed ancestor’s primal fear of the dark. An acute sense of unease had been building in her since twilight, and when the night fell and engulfed the family in the strange house, it took an enormous amount of self-control to appear normal. I’m hundreds of miles from Philadelphia. I’m safe. But I’m scared. I don’t know why. Her mind’s treasonous streak flashed a picture of a city map of Philadelphia, silver mercury running along the street patterns in the methodical way Maxim would hunt for her. Tomorrow she was going to get her hands on the newspaper to see if the manhunt for the person who left a suitcase bomb had produced any arrests. But for now, she imagined herself a rabbit safely in its hole, waiting for the movement of the overhead fox to patter to a different field.
“I haven’t done anything,” she answered Violet and stood on shaky legs. The former officer’s house where the Evora family now resided had been decorated in the last century and judging by the cobwebs in the corners and the smell of the wooden floors, it had been deep cleaned last century as well. How can Father stay here on his own, alone in the dark, with no one but the spiders for company?
“You haven’t done anything yet, but we’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.” Violet raised a blonde eyebrow and resumed peeking from behind the curtain, waiting for the twin headlights of an approaching car containing Privates Rankin (“call me Billy”) and Jackson.
Theda wasn’t in a hurry to see either of them and expressed her displeasure at arriving in Kansas and right away having to go to see some terrible military entertainment. “Valentino and that oaf?” She had said to her mother and father as they relaxed in the parlor. “I can already tell this Billy Rankin is like a rooster in the hen house, and that Jackson is all brawn and no brain. Why would I want to go anywhere with either of them?” Theda had stomped her foot. Her father smirked. He was the only one who was secretly amused by her outbursts.
“Perhaps these men feel the same way about taking a child out for an evening of fun,” Margaret Evora had returned, and Theda crossed her arms. The foot stomping was indeed childish but only happened when anger began boiling below her surface. “Your sister wishes to go, and besides, these men will be shipping to the front in a matter of weeks. It’s the least you can do to serve your country,” Margaret peered over her reading glasses at Theda, who accepted the dig with a surly silence.
Theda crossed the hallway and into a small side parlor. Years of practice left her highly attuned to detect notes of displeasure in her father’s normally friendly tone, and her chest constricted at the sound of his voice.
“Yes, Papa?” Theda smiled, which had the effect of dispelling the negative emotions of those who were cross with her.
“Sit down,” her father said from behind a long, scratched dark wood desk. Behind him a fire crackled and the back light elongated the hallows of his cheeks and his grim expression.
Her smile faded and for the second time that day, with a neutral expression she concealed her shock at his awful appearance. At their last meeting in September of 1917, he was a robust healthy forty-nine year old, known for boundless energy in patient care and medical school lecturing. But now, his clothing hung loose around his six-foot frame, collar loose at the neck and the shoulders of his jacket jutting. But his face held the most change. Vertical furrows in his cheeks that hadn’t been there a few months ago gave the impression of starvation, and his deep brown eyes, inherited by his daughter, were hallow.
He looked up from papers in neat piles on the desk and smiled without warmth. “How do you find our accommodations?”
She relaxed slightly at his attempt at a joke. “Only the Russian Imperial Palace could rival this place in beauty and in perfection.” Then she stopped, realizing the grim joke as the Romanov family had been overthrown and exiled.
“Yes, seems as if living in a palace has its disadvantages in times of revolution,” he said. “So let’s say we’re safe in this cheery house. Although its last resident seemed to have not liked it much.”
“Who was that and may I move in with him?”
Harold waved his hand. “Useless to bring it up, really. There was a doctor here before I was asked to join the project. I replaced him, really. He must have been better than me to be asked first.” He smiled tightly. “But then one day he up and ran off, and not back east to New York where he was from. No, he took off and hasn’t been seen since. Some say the long hours had gotten to him, but rumors on the base whisper that he ran off with a pretty nurse.”
“That’s unfortunate. I’d hate to see anything like that happen to you, although I can’t imagine a woman better looking than mother who would tempt you away.”
“And you’d be right. It’s no matter, anyway. I shouldn’t have even brought it up. I was just being whimsical about this depressing house.” He laughed a little and pulled his pipe out of a drawer and a bag of sweet-smelling tobacco.
“If you say so, Father. The house doesn’t bother me. I’ve missed you.”
He smiled again and some of his usual warmth seems to appear. “And I, you. However, there are some serious matters that you and I need to attend to before you and your sister skate off to Army City with Privates Rankin and Jackson. Both fine men, by the way. You should feel safe in their presence. Private Jackson especially. One of the non-perks of coming here for the research project didn’t include access to my own vehicle, so Private Jackson has been assigned to drive me where I need to go, which doesn’t include many places aside from the General Building, I’m afraid.”
“I hate to think of you toiling away at work all day, only to come to this empty house,” she said. “It seems abysmally depressing. And forgive me, but you look terrible.”
He barked a laugh. “Yes, can’t say I’m looking my best. However, there’s a lot of work to do that’s important. An empty house and a few missing meals pale in comparison to what we need to do.”
“How does the work go?” Now the conversation felt right and Theda began to relax into a familiar ease. They had passed countless evenings in front of roaring fires or open summer windows discussing a medicine. Harold would list a patient’s symptoms and Theda would have to guess the correct diagnosis. Or break down one of his many medical school lectures and the questions that followed. You’re right, Harold would say and shake his head. I could have been clearer when describing the cilia’s function. If I didn’t have you, where would I be?
Harold sat back in the large brown leather chair and turned to the side, watching the orange flames crawl over logs that emitted a wet woodsy fragrance. “The work is hard. Long hours. Useless, really.”
“Why?” She thought of the day in early September when a uniformed man showed up on their front doorstep. The late summer afternoon light filtered through the apple trees when a black Patterson Sedan pulled to the curb, and a hulking man emerged from the back seat. From her bedroom window, Theda watched as he approached the house, the medals on his breast throwing little sparks into his path.
Theda had snuck down the stairs in stocking feet, avoiding the boards that squeaked, and listened to her father talk to this guest in their parlor. Their voices were low and even Theda’s fox ears only caught certain words. Patriotic duty…mustard gas…our boys…Kansas…deployment…
The stranger left and after much discussion and shouting from her mother, Father boarded a train for Kansas.
“The gas destroys their lungs,” he said simply. “Even when Major Whittaker first explained that the Army wanted to develop a treatment for the boys who were gassed, I already knew it was futile. Once the lungs are burned there’s no coming back. We call them the gas boys. The inhumanity is staggering.” He took a long stick from a pile by the fireplace and placed it into the flames. A moment later, he pulled it out and began the process of lighting the pipe.
“There’s no hope?” Theda asked.
Harold shook his head. “Ever since the first instances in 1915, in the first Ypres, there was no hope. Cholerine gas was deadly. Then third Ypres and mustard gas that’s worse because it burns and disables and sticks around. It seems as if the world has gone made, doesn’t it? Gas…flamethrowers…tanks…machine guns.”
“The war will end. All wars end eventually.”
His head lifted and rested on the chair back, staring at the chipped and peeling ceiling paint, pipe smoke scenting the room cherry. “Wars never truly end. Pain doesn’t stop at the signing of a treaty. It grips its fingers into the bloodlines and lingers for generations. Does it end for the shell-shocked man? When he awakes at night hearing the hissing of a deployed gas canister? When the moaning of drowning men in trenches is deafening? No, wars don’t end. They linger. Like a slow, terminal illness.”
He exhaled and tapped the pipe into an ashtray. “Which brings me to two things I want from you. One, while you’re here, no nonsense. Having a war protest in your school is one thing. Shooting off your mouth on an army base where thousands of men are shipping out is another. A good deal of these men aren’t coming back, or coming back maimed from this disaster. I’ll not have you embarrass me or yourself while you’re here. That’s final.”
“Father,” she began, flabbergasted, “how foolish do you think I am? You really think I’d walk into a roomful of soldiers and…”
“No,” he cut her off. “No, you won’t. I know you’re not that foolish but a reminder is still in order. It’s done. Now the second thing. You and your sister and mother are going to leave here the day after tomorrow.”
“What? I thought we were going to stay for at least a few weeks. We just arrived.”
“I know, but staying here is going to be incredibly boring for you all after only a few days, and besides, I have something I want you to do. I want you to deliver a package for me to a doctor in New York. You’ll go there straight from here, and after you do this, you’ll head to Philadelphia.”
“I thought I might be able to go to work with you…”
“No!” He cut her off with force. “No, that’s not going to happen at all. It’s dangerous work. We’re running chemical experiments all the time. No, it’s no place for anyone who is untrained, and you’re not qualified.”
Theda sat back. I can’t go back yet. Father, you don’t understand, I have to stay here! “I don’t want to go back just yet,” she said. “Send Violet and Mother. They can deliver a package just as well as I can. Let me stay with you. I’ll keep out of the way, I promise. I’ll volunteer. I’ll do anything. Please let me stay.”
“It’s out of the question.” The urgency in his voice was gone and replaced by sadness. “I’d worry about you during the day, and I have to concentrate. It’s not going to work. I want you to go home and begin brushing up on the medical books in the library. Next fall, you’ll start at the medical school.”
“But I don’t have a diploma,” she began, reluctant to bring it up.
“Yes, but it won’t matter. I’ve spoken to the right people. They already know you’re up to it.”
It was no use. She knew him well. Once his mind was made up, it was done, and her own mind began its calculations. If she hid in the house and buried herself in books she could avoid the Philadelphia streets. “What’s in the package?” she asked.
He turned in his chair and faced her head on. There was a look about him that she wasn’t used to seeing, a seriousness that wasn’t his usual Highly Esteemed Doctor persona but something else, something she couldn’t identify. “It’s of no concern to you. But I’m trusting this to you because it is a matter of high importance. I’m trusting you to personally deliver this package. Just please let’s leave it at that. Trust me when I say it’s important, but also highly classified. Can you do this for me?” His eyes did not falter.
She nodded. “Yes. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“Good,” he sat back. “Tomorrow we’ll visit and enjoy each other. Then you’ll head home.”
The moment was further broken by the sound of the front door opening, followed by a rush of cool air. Male voices mixed with the lyrical voices of Violet and Margaret.
Harold smiled. “Go now. At least try and have fun. And save Violet from Private Rankin. He’s a bit of a scoundrel, I hear.”
“You trust me to save your darling daughter?”
“You’re my darling daughter. Now go. And don’t get into trouble.”
READ CHAPTER 10 HERE:
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