The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

a small impropriety and missed the point. I knew I was in for a spanking, so I decided to step off the plank and say something truly awful. Before I could speak, Flip Flop, for no apparent reason, went berserk. He began to twist and claw at Dottie G., who shrieked and held him out to me. I lunged for him, coming down hard on my right leg, which hurt so much that I collapsed in a ball on the floor. My mother rushed to my side. No spanking after all.

Our family doctor diagnosed my problem as rheumatism and suggested a visit to Mudlavia, which he described as a health spa known for its curative mud baths and mineral waters. It was only forty miles southwest of Lafayette, near the state line. Dr. Heath explained that a Warren County farmer, a Civil War veteran, had been digging a ditch near the spot where they later built the spa, and the mud had cured his rheumatism. People from all over went there to take the cure. Medical doctors were on the premises. It was just the ticket, Dr. Heath said.

“Sounds shady to me,” my father said at dinner, the night Mother and I told him about Mudlavia. He helped himself to roast beef, clicked on his stopwatch, and began to eat. That summer he was practicing Frederick Taylor's regime of time management. At first he’d tried to impose it on Mother and me, but we’d rebelled by doing everything as slowly as we could, so he gave up and was now bent on improving only himself. He was thirty years old but looked twenty, so he’d taken to wearing rimless spectacles of plain glass and had grown a sleek blond moustache. I suppose he wanted to look more like a school superintendent and less like the man he’d been before he met my mother, a young rake who’d had a tempestuous, short-lived marriage to a woman named Toots Goodall. I’d stumbled on this information one day when I was poking through a box he kept hidden in the back of his closet. I’d found photos of him and Toots. In one of them he was perched on a large, gaudily painted quarter moon, Toots sitting in his lap. When I asked her about Toots, Mother told me about his failed marriage, and made me promise not to mention it to anyone, including him. I thought then that she didn’t want to remind him of his earlier, wilder life, fearing that he might decide to go back to it, but she must have known that part of him already had.

While Father fiercely chewed his roast beef, he stared at Mother and me with accusing eyes, as if we were hiding something from him, and I guess we were-we were hiding the intensity of our desire to go, to get away. “How do we know the place is safe?” he asked Mother.

“It's out in the middle of nowhere,” Mother said. “It must be safe. Dr. Heath wouldn’t have recommended it.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Father said, clicking his stopwatch. “Two minutes, thirteen seconds. A new record.”

Small-town doctors were gods, and to ignore Dr. Heath's advice would be a social snub. Mother had said the right thing.

Mudlavia was tucked back in the woods, up against a hillside. As our bus rounded the last bend, we passengers strained to get a good look at the place that would cure us. The sprawling building was four stories high, green with white trim, and had a wide wraparound porch. In front was a manicured garden, bordered by hedges, with a bubbling limestone fountain in the center. Despite the heat everything looked fresh, even the pink hollyhocks lining the dusty road.

The bus pulled into a dirt lot beside the hotel, and the engine rattled and died. A feeling of peace, along with the dust, settled over me. It was the quietest place I’d ever been. Ninth Street was one of the busiest streets in Lafayette, and all day long we heard the roar of motorcars and the clatter of trolleys struggling up the hill. At Mudlavia, I heard individual sounds-a crow calling in a tree behind me, the atonal tinkling of wind chimes. A side door of the hotel flew open and a group of men, dressed in white, marched toward the bus. A few of them were pushing wheelchairs.

Mother touched my shoulder. “One of those chairs is for you,” she said.

“Why? I don’t need it.” My crutches were beside me, leaning against the seat.

“The doctor here recommends it. It will put less strain on your knee.” She bent over and whispered in my ear. “For you, it's only temporary.” Her windblown hair, pulled loose from her egret-feather hat, tickled my cheek.

“Your hair's a mess,” I said, sounding like my father.

Flinching, she turned away.

“Welcome to Mudlavia.” A deep, southern-sounding voice filled the bus. The speaker was one of the men in white-a tall, strong-looking man with a squarish head. “We’re here to make your stay with us as comfortable as possible.” He spoke as if reading from a prepared speech, and his eyes were trained on a spot at the back of the bus. “Do not hesitate to ask if you are in need of anything, ladies and gentlemen.” His eyes shifted to me. “And young fella.” He smiled, two front teeth popping over his lip. Every head turned toward me. My mother had tears in her eyes. I bowed my head, embarrassed and pleased to be the center of attention.

At dinner Mother and I sat at a table for four in the dining room, I in my wheelchair, she in a ladder-back chair. There were white tablecloths and huge chandeliers. We picked at our helpings of glazed ham, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables from “Mudlavia's Healthful Garden.” In the corner of the large dining room a piano player in a tuxedo played popular tunes that we could barely hear over the rattling of dishes and the diners’ chatter, some of which, especially from the table next to ours, was raucous.

At that table sat a thin, almost emaciated man with dark, sleek hair who perched on a red rubber cushion. On his right sat a voluptuous young woman with an elaborate, piled-up hairdo. She wore a low-cut, short-sleeved dress made of shiny silver material. On his left sat a woman who had dark hair cut in the new bobbed style, and wore an equally revealing black dress. A huge green parrot sat on her shoulder. The two women nestled in close to the man with the cushion, and all three were laughing loudly, as was everyone else at their table. Everything about these people was overdone, from the timbre of their voices to the sparkle of their jewelry. I’d never seen a parrot outside a cage before. And except for the man with the cushion, none of them appeared the least bit sick.

I couldn’t look Mother in the eye. Somehow I felt embarrassed, as if I were responsible for these “unsuitables,” as my father would have called them. I wanted to protect her from them, or felt that I should. And more of these big-city types were scattered throughout the dining room. Only a few people, most of them passengers on our bus, had the same scrubbed demeanor we did. We were outnumbered.

Had Dr. Heath ever been here? I wondered, not able to take my eyes off the threesome at the next table.

“One would think,” Mother said, frowning at me, “with all the sick people…” She didn’t finish her sentence, but I knew she meant that our neighbors ought to be more considerate. “I think this place is more of a resort than a health spa.” She took another bite of glazed ham, chewing slowly.

“We could leave,” I said, knowing I should offer the option. “We could call Father, and he’d come get us.” I drained my glass of milk in one swallow, the way I was forbidden to do at home.

Mother didn’t notice. She was staring at the man with the cushion. “No,” she said. “We’ll be here only three weeks.”

“Paul Dresser wrote ‘On the Banks of the Wabash at Mudlavia,” I reminded her. This was something else Dr. Heath had told us.

“You say the most intelligent things.” Mother smiled, giving us permission to enjoy our dinner.

“Good evening.” The cushion man stood beside our table. The woman in the silver dress waited there with him, hugging his cushion to her large bosom.

Mother set her fork beside her plate. “Good evening,” she said to the man, but she looked at me.

“Your first night here?” His voice was surprisingly soft.

“Of course it is,” the woman in the silver dress said. She also had a big nose. “Isn’t this the first time we’ve seen them?”

The man ignored her. “I’m Harry Jones,” he said. “This is Sylvia Smith.” He kept smiling at Mother in a way that made me afraid he was going to cause trouble, like the villain, Flip, in the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Mother said, “Nice to meet you,” but didn’t tell him our names.

“Come on.” Miss Smith gave Mr. Jones a little shove with the cushion. “Let these people eat in peace.”

“Enjoy the pecan pie,” he said, still smiling at Mother in that peculiar way. “We’ll get acquainted later.”

Mother nodded. Miss Smith gave Harry another gentle shove, and the two of them left the dining room.

Mother said, “‘Mr. Jones’ and ‘Miss Smith.’ Do we look that stupid?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but from then on I thought of them as Harry and Sylvia.