I was too young for him to die. I was seven and he was thirteen. My brother Dan had been feeling ill for several days – throwing up and with a slight fever. These were the days in the rural southwest before professional medical care became popular, post-depression, before the economic/material benefits of WWII filtered down to these areas. Times were hard for some folks. Mama delayed taking him to the doctor. She was timid and self-conscious and besides, where would she get the money to pay for the doctor’s visit? How would they get there? The older boys were in the military and Daddy was not at home. She delayed, but when his color became an eerie gray-green, he couldn’t stop throwing up and the pain wouldn’t go away, she took action.
“Lucy! Lucy Anne! I need to get Dan to the pickup! You have to drive us to Dr. Conway’s office!” our frightened Mama exclaimed. “Oh, no,” Lucy thought, “I can’t be seen driving that pickup!” The red fading-to-black pickup was an old one, falling apart at its seams. Our brother, Jerry had had an accident in it and left it a-shambles. One door was missing and the driver side door had to be tied shut. Lucy climbed in the door-less side, slid over to the steering wheel and drove them to the doctor. Fourteen-year old Lucy was more embarrassed driving a jalopy around town than she was worried about her brother, she told me. But when the doctor said it was appendicitis, his appendix had burst in the waiting room and there was not a moment to spare, her embarrassment quickly gave way to terror. They climbed into the one-doored pickup again and Lucy broke all speed limits while Mama and a nearly fatally ill Dan hung on for dear life!
Immediately the hospital staff took him to surgery. They were with him for hours, working against time, as peritonitis had set in. After surgery he lay drained, dazed and dismal in an oxygen tent. He hovered on the precipice for days, getting massive doses of penicillin and many blood transfusions. We waited and waited and waited.
Jerry was in Europe but Benny and John, luckily, were stateside. Mama sent telegrams asking them to come home as Dan was having emergency surgery with a 50% chance of survival. Dan still has the telegram she sent John. Benny said he took the bus to Los Angeles from Oakland and got military transport to San Antonio - the first time he had ever flown in a plane. He hitch-hiked from there to Lubbock where Uncle Jim picked him up and took him to Clovis.
Both brothers went straight away to the hospital, and Dan remembers John standing in the doorway, gently sliding down to the floor in a faint. I remember going to the hospital and seeing Dan lying there with his head covered in a transparent plastic tent. I felt scared and sad and I wanted to cry but I didn’t.
Dan was still in hospital when school started in September. Helen and I, the two youngest, walked to and from school, every day fearful that by the time we got home the worst might have happened. On our return from school one day the neighborhood brat, Peewee, was standing in his front yard, lying in wait for us. Peewee got his name because his given name was Dan. Our brother, Dan, was a cool, tough, bright short guy who learned the games quickly and played them well. Dan didn’t like it because Peewee was such a brat and had the same name as he. Besides, Peewee was two inches shorter. Dan nicknamed him Peewee before anyone in the neighborhood had time to get confused or mistake the Dans. Few people remembered his given name after that.
Peewee was waiting for us. With four big brothers to protect us, my sister and I feared very little in the neighborhood, except maybe our brothers themselves. We were accustomed to safe passage. But now, with Dan in hospital and the other three in the military, we were fair game for anyone who dared perpetrate a trick against us. Peewee dared. He sauntered out to meet us and fired his deadly shot. “Guess what! Dan’s dead!” Measuring our shocked and grief stricken reaction, he continued, “Oh yeah, I guess you hadn’t heard, he died an hour ago. They’re taking the body to the funeral home!”
Oh the terror of those few seconds, the protector, the fighter, the standard bearer slain in the bloom of youth by those two adversaries, poverty and ignorance. The flood gates lifted, the water was about to overflow and the taste of victory sweet on Peewee’s tongue. He sneered, ready to savor his reward when it was snatched from him. The hand of fate intervened in the form of a neighbor who had several kids of her own.
“Peewee! What are you doing, telling these children a thing like that!” She turned to us and said, “That’s not the least bit true. Your brother is alive, still in the hospital, but okay. Now you go on home and talk to your Mama and be nice to her. She’s been through a lot.” With tears of relief in my eyes I started for home to find out for sure. Meanwhile our neighbor grabbed Peewee by the ear and marched him to his house, scolding him all the way. “We’re going to your front door and I’m telling your mother what you did. You should be ashamed! God will punish you for this and you’ll know it when he does!”
After surgery and a week or so of recovery, Dan was wanting to go home, but he had to stay longer. It seemed like he was there forever and finally, after about 3 weeks, he was released. I came home from school that day and saw him surrounded by comic books! What a treat, I thought, staying home from school and reading comic books all day!
Of course, it wasn’t a treat for Dan and the results of missing many weeks of school hounded him for years, he said. “I got behind in Algebra and never caught up. When I was a sophomore I tried Geometry but after two weeks my teacher told me to forget it.” So he missed out on the academic courses, took FFA, business and typing. In the end it seemed to have served him well: when he was drafted during the Korean War he stayed the entire time in Ft. Bliss, typing for a Commander; he bought and sold cattle; and he had a successful career in banking.
The crisis was over and with Dan recovering, our brothers went back to their posts. Lucy, Helen and I continued to go to school and Mama remained grateful, breathing a sigh of relief.
*Written in November 2018*
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