The Hex of Hemlock

Prologue

I had met Lucy Bloom the first week she started teaching at Glenwood. She always had a smile on her face and an infectious laughter when she talked. Her really quick sense of humor made everyone in the building laugh. She especially was funny during staff meetings because she did not seem to fear the administrators or board members, and she usually said what was on her mind. Some of us wished we had her nimble wit and candid ease to say what she thought.

But I really did not become her friend until several years after she had joined our staff. I do remember the changes in her physical and mental attitudes during that time; and after we became friends, she opened up enough to say she had met many difficulties, but did not wish to share anything about them yet. It would be some time before she began to share the story that follows. She did not tell me everything at once, but she would on occasion open up and tell me that she felt she were living some sort of soap opera or something and maybe there would be a story for someone to write. She knew that I liked to dabble with tales and stories, so she only gave me a few hints about what she must have endured. I told her I would write a book about it someday. She agreed at least it might make a good read, and maybe some things ought to be shared.

We left it at that. I haven’t heard from her in years and do not know where she is now. But I do feel compelled to urge this story to publication. J.G.

Chapter One

Two weeks had passed since the board’s open hearing about Tuck Bardino’s alleged assault on James Carmichael. Early that Monday morning, Lars Blague suddenly burst into the Nadir School District Office main entrance and rushed over to the desk of Mrs. Helen Clarke, Dr. Bloom’s secretary. Not known for his manners, he blurted out to Helen, Is Joe in yet? I need to talk to him right now!

Before Helen could respond, Blague had reached Joe’s office—opened and slammed the door—and yelled out, Joe, vhy don’t ye stop dis mess! Vat’s the point of keeping dis going ven ye know…

Joe, seated at his desk, slowly lifted his head from the assessment of students’ performances on state test scores and vacantly scanned Lars. As he tried to stand up, he positioned his mouth to form a word, but the word did not shape. Joe staggered to get up and tried to extend his hand out to Lars. Just as he did, he kicked the back of his chair lunging forward and falling unconscious onto his desk.

Lars screamed for Mrs. Clark to come. She jumped up and ran to Joe’s office. Opening the door, she rushed to Joe’s desk and choked as she saw him fallen over his papers. His ink pen still stood erect, she noticed, but she whispered, What on earth is the matter, Mr. Blague?

Don’t ask vat right now. Get an ambulance…call 911…call the Nadir Regional Hospital… now. Do it now!

Blague moaned a bit when he realized Joe was out cold. He tried to grab Joe’s arm to try to get a pulse. Mrs. Clarke shot a look of disgust at Blague’s gesture, but she quickly grabbed the telephone and dialed an outside line and then 911. She told the emergency responder to rush the ambulance and paramedics, for it appeared very serious with Dr. Bloom. Lars stayed in the room with her as she tried not to disturb Dr. Bloom’s body, but to make sure he had not fallen on anything sharp. An eternity had seemed to pass before the emergency crew arrived and gently strapped Joe onto the gurney for his urgent ride in the awaiting small hospital.

Loaded with Joe and the technicians, the portentous vehicle screeched and bellowed as it wove into the busy stream of traffic with buses carrying children to school and early morning drivers hurrying to their jobs.

Mrs. Clarke knew where to call Lucy, Dr. Bloom’s wife, at her school, so after they had taken Joe away and Lars had left the building, she called Lucy. She told Lucy what had happened about Lars’s coming into the building and demanding to see Joe immediately. She heard Lars as he shouted and then yelled for help. She related the entire incident and suggested Lucy get to Nadir Regional Hospital as soon as possible. Lucy, visibly shaken, and barely audible thanked Mrs. Clarke for the information before calling and relaying the emergency to her school office. Her district had a substitute teacher on-call in the building at all times, so she just had to wait for the substitute to arrive to show her where Lucy kept her lesson plans and classes’ materials.

Lucy then rushed to her car and hurried toward the hospital. She did not stop to think of anything but of Joe and the kids. She just hoped Joe did not die, not now, she whispered, not now. Not knowing whether she would have to pick up the girls right away, she parked in the short term parking for the moment. She dashed inside the building to the information desk and got the details. Then, Lucy ran down the long corridor to the emergency unit where the floor nurse had directed her. When she opened the door, she had not expected what she saw. Joe looked dead. She sensed no movement and heard only the soft whirring of machines in the background. Joe lay colorless, limp as sea foam under the green sheet that cascaded in folds across his body. His eyes gazed pointlessly at nothing. Lucy walked over to him; he showed no recognition, no sign he understood anything. She wanted to grab him, but something held her back.

A labyrinth of wires and tubes shrouded Joe’s body. He was wired up to the heart monitoring machine. While the screen above him flashed seemingly erratic lines, his large arms, pinned by armguards, lay at his side. Glucose and other life-sustaining substances only a pharmacist could name dripped from a bag above his arm into one of his large veins; oxygen flowed through tubes inserted into his nostrils. Joe’s pallid frame, entangled in the latest technological hardware, did not resemble the man Lucy had kissed goodbye just a few hours earlier.

Like Prometheus, Joe had captured the light, but his chain had been too heavy. Lucy stood quietly for a few minutes. Then, she shook. Fear engulfed her as she groped for a chair.

Tears mounted, then gushed from her large, sad eyes, and she wept. Time passed without notice as it does in the still wilderness. She did not know how long she cried. A hand on her shoulder beckoned her outward, and she stood before a surgeon. Dr. Black tried to explain the impending procedure and the consequences of the surgery though she did not register understanding of either one.

Lucy pleaded, Will he live? Will he be okay?

Dr. Black, austere but unsure, returned audibly, I don’t know. We’re taking a chance, but everything is a chance.

The nurse pushed the paper on a clipboard before Lucy, and she signed her name and relationship to Joe perfunctorily. She did not read the paper because she knew that it said she had relinquished certain rights and granted the surgeon and hospital staff freedom to do what they thought Joe needed, whatever that was.

Making sure the oxygen, heart monitor, and IV remained intact, the medical team lifted Joe’s body and placed him onto the hospital gurney. Quickly, they rolled Joe out of the room. Alone and unaware, Joe took the most frightening ride of his life.

Mrs. Bloom…Mrs. Bloom… echoed down the hall.

Lucy had wandered out of the room as the stench of disinfectant seared her nostrils. The polished floors, appearing as glittering stalagmites in a lighted cave, ran interminably in the distance. The impeccably clean walls enclosed around her. The intercom bleated softly and intermittently. As she walked toward the waiting room, she suddenly realized where she was.

The nurse who had brought in the paper for Lucy to sign caught Lucy’s arm and spoke softly, Mrs. Bloom, Dr. Bloom has had a cerebral hemorrhage. The only way we can help him is to remove the massive clot. Otherwise, he will be a vegetable.

How cliché, she thought. Vegetable, what did it mean to be a vegetable? What did all this mean anyway? Does a man live his life diligently and consistently for others to end up as a vegetable? Questions raced through her mind and soared till the inevitable struck her. Why?

The nurse looked at her, but Lucy made no response. She must call the children. Nobody has called them, she thought. The telephone booths loomed down the hall. She left the nurse abruptly and rushed toward a booth.

Oh, what is the number of Theodore Roosevelt High School? She had never written down the number of the school; but Jolene and Beth, the only two children still at home, were there in classes. She grabbed the cumbersome telephone directory and frantically searched for the number. Finally, she had it and dialed.

Thank God, a telephone line is available…Yes, this is Mrs. Bloom, Dr. Bloom’s wife. Please tell Jolene and Beth Bloom to be ready at the front door on Seneca Avenue. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Their father is in the hospital. She did not wait for any response. She did not stop to consider whether the school would rush to get the girls at the bidding of a telephone call.

Surely I have Cathy’s and Mike’s numbers, she mumbled. Her purse rattled and shook as she lifted the teacher appointment book from under the pens and pencils and tubes of lipstick. She dialed Cathy first. Cathy worked some mornings, but maybe she would be there. Cathy studied art at the state university. This news would upset Cathy’s sensitive nature, but life upset many things. Dial—buzz, buzz, buzz. No answer. She would try Mike, who had graduated from the state university the year before and worked as an engineer for an oil company. Oh, please let him be at work, she thought. Lucy did not want to call Sharon, Mike’s wife. Sharon had just had a new baby, and this type of news can unnerve anyone, but especially a new mother. The telephone rang at the huge oil complex in Houston.

Within minutes, Mike gasped, Yeah, sure, Mom, I’ll be there as soon as I can catch a flight. I’ll call Sharon and have her pack my bag. Hang tight, Mom. Don’t think too much.

His voice drifted while Lucy struggled to stand to get out of the booth. She remembered she had not reached Cathy, but she would try her again after she had picked up Jolene and Beth. Actually, she thought, she would have the girls call Cathy because she really did not want to tell Cathy. She must remember to check the flight schedules from Houston. Now, Lucy wanted to scream, to talk, to cry. But she knew she had to stay together. Stumbling, she wanted to allow time for self-pity and tears and bitterness, but that time must come later. Palsied with grief, she tried to steady her gait. Purposefully, she masked her discomposure as she staggered through the hospital corridors to the elevator. Somehow, she made it to her car. She unlocked the car door and got into the driver’s seat. As the engine sputtered, she backed out and took off as though she had control over herself and the machine. Mike’s last words haunted her because, yes, she had always thought too much about everything. Action… action… the world moves on action. She must get Jolene and Beth because she needed them as she had never needed them before.

Chapter Two

That night, a slight breeze arose as the heavy cloud sprinkled a new, gentle April shower over lawns of the many people who lived in Nadir. The smell of newly quickened grass and budding flowers wafted through the night air while the sounds of the city rang out in the darkness. Sirens bellowed for all to know of other emergencies; dogs yelped and howled to greet the rain and intruders of their domains; rock music screeched from the taverns to tell again and again of internal wars; families argued over money to alleviate the stress of inflation; nuns still chanted in dimly lit chapels to pray for a world immersed in sin and sorrow; barefoot children shouted to tell the world that they were not afraid of lightning in the rain. And the five of them—Lucy, Mike, Cathy, Jolene, and Beth—sat in the waiting room of the hospital to hear the news of whether Joe would ever walk or talk or laugh or love again. Apprehensive, frightened, silent—they waited as all people have ever waited or will wait.

Finally, Mike broke the silence. As the eldest child and only son of Lucy and Joe, Mike had captured the hearts of his three sisters with his jocund musings about everything from Steve Martin’s antics to the reality of other dimensions. The girls enjoyed Mike’s humor and vivacity while he tried to cheer them up with newly created stories about his three week old son.

Yes, Sean can hold his head up already. He won’t sit in his infant seat either. He gets right out of it. I’ll swear the kid will walk as early as I did or earlier.

Beth smiled, Oh sure, we believe that, Mike! But the girls laughed as they urged Mike to go on and on. And Mike made them giddy with stories he fabricated in his usual casual manner. Even Cathy, who like her mother thought too much, forgot the exigency of this night’s meeting and laughed, too. Cathy wrote poetry and painted pictures as though she were either divinely inspired or the reincarnation of Renoir or Monet. Jolene, like Mike, engaged in histrionics and games. She won the honors on stage; and when Mike would reach a lull, Jolene would pick up the cue and carry on the show. Jolene, a senior in high school now, planned to study medicine at the state university. Beth, the youngest child and a junior in high school, wore the smile of a coquette. Eternally optimistic, Beth could not see or hear anything which did not portend adventure. Once, on a friend’s dare, she had dialed a man named Darren Stevens in Salem, Massachusetts, just to see whether he had anything to do with the television program, Bewitched. Of course, that Stevens was stunned to get Beth’s telephone call. Another whimsical telephone call had her in a non-communicative dialogue with Hong Kong telephone operators who had no idea the call was merely one from Beth Bloom playing fun and games in the United States.

Reflective, Lucy looked proud as she watched and listened to the children. But her mind always gravitated toward thought and analysis and causes and effects. Lucy taught in Glenwood, a suburb of Nadir. Just the week before this night, Lucy had read an astute observation about her in one of her student’s journal entries. The student had sensed Lucy’s depression, her lack of her usual dynamics. And that same student had picked up on it several times during that year, for he wrote, Again, our English teacher, determined as she is to teach, has plans for instruction right up to the end of the semester. She seems down again, and I guess it’s because she’s sad that we haven’t learned as much as she had hoped we would… Lucy thought and thought and thought, and she knew the student had caught the mood, but not the reason for it.

Mike’s voice drifted on and on about the signs of a preppie or the test for a pimp or the ready-made, quickly accessible, handy new VD detector kit, which he would, of course, develop. The girls giggled, sometimes with their own interjections and stories. The murmur of their voices hummed in the background as Lucy’s mind churned back and back and back to years ago. Now, her slightly graying black hair showed streaks of either experience or heredity. The dark circles under her eyes had formed several years ago though she took pains to blot them away, for they somehow diminished the sparkling, probing green eyes which became her hallmark of compassion or grief or anger or thought. Lucy’s height fit right into the measurement chart for the average height of the average American woman of this era. She was now heavier than she had ever been though her body bore no signs of childbirth except a few varicose veins bulging on one of her slim ankles. The added weight made Lucy look puffy, uncomfortable as though it did not belong there. Her hands were big for a woman, and often she looked at them wondering how they could comfort Joe and her children and others’ children through one crisis after the other and still make music and meals and assignments in English and corrections on papers. To Joe, Lucy’s hands held assurance and strength and sensuality. Lucy herself had grown up in a neighboring town of Joe’s home town though she had not met Joe until she had been on campus at the state university for two years.

Ironically, Joe and Lucy had already watched Mike and Cathy also meet the thin thread between life and death as both of their children had lain ill with pervasive, bacterial infections. And, ironically, Lucy had just recently reread Joe’s journal which had catalogued his many experiences. Lucy’s and Joe’s lives had become so commingled that their union twined like the double helix of the DNA. Their consciousnesses had interwoven until Lucy could not discern who had formed the idea first. It was as though Joe’s ideas became her ideas; her ideas, his. They had fought and disagreed often, but in their commingling of minds, their union became more than a physical mergence.

Chapter Three

… So now the thoughts swirled and ebbed in her recall as she journeyed to a time and place long ago…

* * *

Over twenty years ago, Joe at the age of twenty-two had arrived at the state university. He carried an army duffle bag stuffed with his only possessions and an assurance of an education from the GI Bill. Joe, a young product of a small American town, had witnessed the slaughter of friends and foes and the Communist invasion of countries across the Atlantic. Older and more seasoned now, though his early life still colored his thoughts with scenes of Americana not often revealed in print, Joe was determined somehow to make the world a better place to be. After all, he, an army veteran and son of two—not one—but two alcoholic parents, knew something of suffering and hunger and pain. Joe knew his high school grades would not offer a better spot than at the state university. Joe had often talked about his moving from school to school missing the basics here or there because of his messy home life. But Joe knew he had brains and stamina; he could do something with his life. His prejudiced, supercilious home town had offered no encouragement, no hope for any of the seven Bloom children. The local citizens shook their heads and agreed dogmatically that none of the members of that family would ever amount to much. The righteous folks of Midtown especially emphasized Joe’s worthlessness because Joe’s penchant for saying what he thought had always incited the citizens. The citizens did not care what a young punk thought, nor did any of his teachers think that Joe would do much with his life. A sullen and sometimes obstreperous student, who deliberately left his books in his locker and skipped school and shouted obscenities long before the peace children arrived or the Warren court affirmed students’ rights to freedom of speech, could not rise too high in this world.

During combat, Joe often watched the medics as they scrambled to cleanse the dirt and blood oozing from or crusted around the entrenched bullets. Joe marveled at many things during the war; but the act of healing stamped itself as the only act necessary in a world filled with hatred and greed and muck and gore. Sometimes, Joe would dream that he were a physician, a healer of minds and bodies; he relished the dream and fantasized over his ability to render balm until the inexorable reality of no money, no hometown doctor referral, no encouragement, no academic background struck him sharply.

So Joe filled out the forms for entrance to academia. As a major, Joe picked the only one he knew he could safely tackle: physical education.

Joe’s physique towered at six feet, one inch. His thick, muscular body, made strong by hard work, looked husky at 220 pounds. His dark brown, wavy hair punctuated his clear sapphire eyes. Luckily, Joe’s teeth were perfectly set, for his family could not afford dental appointments or treatments, much less orthodontic work. His glistening eyes and gregarious grin glowed as he spoke. Of course, Midtown’s football coach had used Joe to run touchdowns and tackle for Midtown’s big year in football several years back, and Joe still had the force to run and tackle for the state university. The head coach had already promised him certain rewards for every touchdown Joe made for the university team and even bigger ones for every tackle Joe made to keep the opponents from making a score so that physical prowess and the teaching of it presaged the only natural course of a fate that seemed determined for him long before he had arrived at the university.

The ping of the monaural record player and the smell of sweat jolted him as he sauntered to his first class in physical education. Huge, sinewy young men, dressed in shorts and t-shirts, cavorted around as they goosed each other in the huge gymnasium until the instructor’s nasal voice bellowed, All right, you jocks, settle down. Cut the goosing. Save it for the girls. Uh, today we must learn how to teach ‘Drop the Hanky.’

The record, scratched and worn, again swelled throughout the gymnasium, and the instructor told the thirty-five young men to line up in five groups. These thirty-five young men ranged in age from seventeen to Joe’s twenty-two years. Joe had attended a junior college before his army years so that he had earned enough credits to be a junior. The instructor then gave hankies to the first person in each of the lines.

Form circles, now, men.

Nursery rhymes calmed the young, but Joe’s esthetic nature did not stir to any heights at Ring around the Rosy. Joe looked around, and the other men seemed satisfied. No moans came from their lips; no frowns smirked across their happy faces. Joe stood momentarily at the end of his line. This is so absurd, he thought. Suddenly, he burst from the gymnasium and sprang to the locker room. Out, he knew, he had to get out of there. Joe showered and dressed quickly and descended unannounced on the dean of students.

Bespeckled, Dean Jones was a wizened man with stringy gray hair topping his head. His frail frame shuffled along as he went about the business of being the dean. Nobody had ever seen him smile. And everybody wondered whether he and his wife, who walked in Oxford shoes and bobbysocks around the campus with her hand in his, ever did it. Her tightly drawn back hair and officious grin complemented the staid demeanor of the dean as they covered the territory on nocturnal strolls, apparently making sure nobody was screwing or drinking on campus, for the late fifties still frowned on loose living. Neither of them left in observers any trace of having lived through any real scene. No sign of feeling ever showed as they met the students whom they guided. Mrs. Jones held a Master of Arts degree and taught English history; she seemed a spinster from a Gothic novel. The dean seemed—well—he seemed unreal like a phantom wrapped in one of Poe’s vaults. Both reflected the status of the university culture which echoed theories and expounded ideas in a setting as distant from American civilization as were the lowlands of the Nile or the rings around Saturn.

But, Dean Jones, I can’t major in physical education. I’ll be a grape picker before I waste my time learning how to teach ‘Drop the Hanky.’

Now, Mr. Bloom—er, Joe, calm down. There is some beauty in teaching youngsters how to play together. ‘Drop the Hanky’ is just one game of childhood that teaches children rhythm and suspense.

Bullshit! This is a university. Any nitwit can get ‘Drop the Hanky’ without three hours of college credit. I’ll go crazy; I can’t handle this kind of stuff.

Mr. Bloom—er, Joe, do watch your language. You army men must realize you’re back in civilization. We don’t use such words here. Our students are very young, right out of high school, and these words are mundane and guttural. By the way, do you like anything?

Joe looked at the dean blankly and mumbled a slight thanks as he turned to leave. That old guy doesn’t know anything about anything came out inarticulately as he reached the corridor. For days, Joe hammered over and over in his mind what he could and could not do. He knew math had been tough, and his several teachers had never taken time to see why he struggled with it. Joe sulked as he waited for some sign about how he could make a decision.

Two weeks passed, but no sign came. Still Joe could not decide. Often he thought of why his parents had been poor and alcoholics. Joe heard his mother’s voice pealing over and over, The rich keep the money. It’s only with education and money that you’ll ever get a break.

All of his life Joe had read—books, papers, magazines—anything he could get. He liked to read, maybe because reading took him away from the smell of vodka and cheap whiskey or the rasping of his mother‘s trying to ward off being beaten by his drunken father. But Joe hid often under an old oak tree or climbed the steps of the bleak, plank floor of the rented house, where he slept with his four brothers, to read. The floor of the rented house was less inviting, however, than the soft velvet of the earth and the sounds of nature as music for his musings. As he read, Joe lived through many of his and man’s struggles. He fought with Jurgis to open new doors for workers, or he fancied himself Kennicott saving the dying people in frozen Minnesota. Joe already knew about the American Dream even before he read about Willy Loman’s disaster with fate and delusion.

Nature had also fascinated Joe long before classes in biology or botany. Joe peered at the stars and wondered in the fifties whether life as man knows it flourished in the massive breadth of Orion or Pegasus. Joe, of course, did not say anything about that idea to anyone; for during that period in American history, even though initial space probes were in clandestine makings, only crazed nuts spoke aloud about space travel and other beings who might exist in the universe. So Joe sought refuge while he absorbed the fall in the Midwest. The season splashed glorious cascades of color on the Midwestern campus. His lumbering feet trampled on the golden and amber and brown leaves arraying the earth. Joe listened for the soft murmur of the mourning dove, and he heard the chirping of wrens and mockingbirds before they readied themselves for the flight to the South. Woodpeckers squawked at squirrels as they scampered to gather food for the winter. The decision sprang out to greet him as quickly as his departure from the rancid gymnasium had been.

In the last week of September, as