Then she raised her hand again, her sign that we were done for the day. She gathered the pages I had written, so that she could read what I’d taken from her own voice and correct it.
Ben Daisy took the solution faithfully. During that time, he did not appear any different—he still walked with one shoulder up high, and the other men still walked a little bit ahead so that they did not have to be in conversation with him. No one else from Culver’s came to Mama’s door. Either Ben Daisy didn’t tell them to come or they were unimpressed with his progress.
The only time we saw his sister was at church on Sundays. Miss Hannah sat in the back pews, near the door, and her brother never came with her. We sat in the pews in the front, because Mama’s father had been one of the men to build that church. When Mama was a girl, she and her brothers and sisters took up two whole pews. But now, of the old family, it was just me and her left sitting up front—the rest of the seats given away to friends. When we passed Miss Hannah on the way to our pew every Sunday, she would stiffly nod in Mama’s direction, but she didn’t smile. If Culver had read the apology aloud to her, it had not impressed her at all.
When Ben Daisy came back to our house two weeks later, it was in the last bit of light. His shirt was wet from work, and when we let him in, he sat sideways in his chair and we could smell the drink on him.
“I can’t give it to you if you’ve been to Culver’s already,” Mama said. “Tell me the truth.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “This is from one of the other men. They knocked a ladleful of cider on me, and that’s why I smell like this. I’m as sober as a judge.” Ben Daisy gave her a glassy smile.
Mama looked at him, and she came to some sort of decision.
“Libertie, my record book,” she said, and I went and fetched it for her.
She took the book and looked at the columns of numbers. Then she licked her thumb, very carefully, and smudged out one. She dipped her pen in ink and wrote something else over it. Then she sprinkled some sand to let the ink dry.
As she rubbed the grains from her fingers, she said, very steadily, “A dose and a half today for Ben Daisy, I think.”
Lenore sucked her teeth.
“Yes,” Mama said.
Lenore took the little steel file she used, and measured a few more grains onto the slip of paper she’d set on the scale.
By the time the dose was prepared, Ben Daisy’s head had begun to loll, and Mama had to hold his chin steady as she placed it in his mouth.
The other times he’d taken it, Ben Daisy had only grimaced at the taste—“Golly, Doctor, you can’t cut this with nothing?” This time, he truly gagged. His knees rose up to his chest and he coughed, and Mama stepped back, surprised, then called for water.
She poured it in a slow trickle in his mouth until he was swallowing good and steady, and then she let him go. He slumped back in the chair, breathing heavily. Another cough. A third. He swallowed. And then he vomited something green and awful-smelling, all down the front of his shirt.
I jumped forward, Lenore cursed—“Oh damn”—and Mama stepped back again.
“Get it off,” she said to Lenore. She grabbed one sleeve. “We’ve got to get it off.”
Between the two of them, they managed to get the shirt over his head.
Ben Daisy lay in the chair bare-chested, his belly soft in his breeches, his eyes still closed, his breath in shuffles. Then his eyes flickered open, and he slowly sat up straight.
“You all right?” Lenore asked.
He put his hands on his knees, shook his head gently.
“Sit still, sit still,” Lenore insisted. But Ben Daisy stood up, creaking, and made his way toward the door. By now it was dark; the sun was gone, and the fireflies of Kings County were out.
At the door, he looked out over the fields and watched the lights scatter across the long grass, as if everything was new to him. Then he gave a deep sigh, like the sound the water makes when the ocean turns over. And he lurched out into the night, still bare-chested.
“Well,” Mama said. “Well,” she half laughed. She was nervous.
“Should I run after him?” Lenore asked.
“No,” Mama said. “I am sure he will be fine.” But she did not look certain.
The next evening, just as Lenore was to leave for the day, the office door swung open and Ben Daisy stood in the frame.
“What did you give me?” he said.
“Why?” Mama asked. She snapped her fingers for my attention, and then pointed to the ledger book. I reached for a pen to transcribe their conversation.
“All day long,” he said. “All day long, it’s felt like this.”
“Like what?”
“I hear it lapping at my ear, you know. I hear it crashing.”
“Sit down,” Mama said, guiding him to the leather chair. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I hear it, in my ear. Lapping, lapping. It’s been lapping all damn day, Doctor.”
“Were you able to work?”
“I had to stop a turn and box my own ears, I did. Nothing came out.”
“Lie back,” Mama said. “Let me see.”
She snapped her fingers again, and I put down the record book, took one of the slim white candles she used
