The Giant-Slayer Read online

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well, you can. And you will.” He’d never been so firm as he was just then. There were even hard lines on his face, wrinkles on his forehead. “Polio scares me to death, Laurie. I see all the children with braces and crutches. You see them too: the ones who’ll never run again, the ones who’ll never walk, the children in wheelchairs. Well, I see the ones in rocking beds, on treatment boards, in iron lungs. So many of them, and another thirty thousand every year. Can you imagine how it haunts them that they got polio just because they went to a swimming pool, or something as frivolous as that?”

  “I dunno.” Laurie had seen plenty of children on crutches, but of course she had never talked to them.

  “Well, I’m sure it does. How could an hour of play be worth years in braces or a lifetime in an iron lung?” He shook his head in bewilderment. “I can’t tie a string to you, Laurie, and keep you in sight. All I can do is ask that you follow the rules.”

  She shrugged and mumbled. She wanted to remind him, purely for spite, that he was only a fund-raiser, an organizer, that just because he worked for the Foundation didn’t mean he was an expert on polio. Laurie didn’t think her father really knew what he was talking about at all.

  But he did.

  It was never too early for polio.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  THE GIRL IN THE IRON LUNG

  Laurie believed that she could feel the virus moving through her body. She could see it, in her mind, crawling like a little worm along the tunnels of her nerves.

  Sometimes she could tell exactly where it was, when her skin began to prick and tingle, and in this way she traced its path through her body. She thought it was making for her brain, and every night she went to sleep praying that she would be able to stand up in the morning, that she wouldn’t be spending the next night in an iron lung.

  Just as her father had said, she began to wish with all her heart that she hadn’t gone to the creek that day, and then that she had never met Dickie Espinosa. A picture of him kept popping up in her mind at the strangest times: Dickie in his silly coonskin cap, Dickie with that stupid buffalo gun.

  She didn’t dare tell her father—or even Mrs. Strawberry—what was happening. But both of them saw that something was wrong. Yet it was many days before Mr. Valentine knocked again on Laurie’s bedroom door and crept mouselike to her bed.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the covers, doing her homework. “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” was playing—again—on her radio. She was sick of that song, she had heard it so often.

  Mr. Valentine turned off the radio. “Honey, what’s the matter?” he said. “Are you mad at me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you lonely? I know that boy hasn’t been around recently, and—”

  “That’s not it.” Laurie stared at her schoolbooks. Her tears made them look wet and blurry. Suddenly, it was all too much. She looked up and blurted out, “I think I’ve got polio.”

  She thought he was fainting, or having a heart attack. His face turned perfectly white, and his breath made a horrible gurgling gasp. His hands shook as he reached out to the wall to steady himself. He closed his eyes and just stood for a moment like that, trembling very slightly. Then at last he asked, “Where does it hurt?”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “Not really. But I can feel it inside me, Dad.” She touched her throat, at the base of her neck. “I think it’s right about here.”

  “Your arms? Your legs? Do they hurt? Do you have a fever? A headache?”

  “No, Dad,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

  He looked bewildered. “What makes you think it’s polio?”

  She told him straight out, then called him by a name she hadn’t used since she was tiny. “Because Dickie’s got it, Daddy.”

  Mr. Valentine sat down on the bed. He listened as Laurie told him all about the day at the creek and how she’d found out about Dickie. “I didn’t see him for a couple of days,” she said. “So I went to his house. And Mrs. Espinosa wouldn’t even open the door at first. She shouted at me to go away. I thought she was ashamed, that Dickie had done something awful. I asked where he was, and she said, ‘He’s at Bishop’s, in an iron lung.’”

  “Dear God,” said Mr. Valentine.

  “I was supposed to tell you, Dad, but I was scared,” she said.

  “How long ago was this?” asked Mr. Valentine.

  Laurie couldn’t remember exactly.

  “It must be more than a week,” he said. “Is it more than two?”

  “Nearly three,” she said.

  He smiled just the tiniest smile. “Then I think you’re all right.”

  “How do you know?” asked Laurie.

  “That’s the way polio works,” said Mr. Valentine. “It can’t stay hidden. The symptoms have to show up very quickly.”

  Laurie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “What will happen to Dickie?” she asked.

  “You would need a Gypsy with a crystal ball to tell you that,” said Mr. Valentine. “Even his doctors won’t be certain. He could be back on his feet any day, or in hospital the rest of his life. It’s unpredictable.”

  “Can I visit him, Dad?”

  Mr. Valentine turned away, closing his eyes. “Oh, honey, I don’t know.”

  It was safe enough, and he knew it. There was no reason why she shouldn’t go and visit, but he didn’t want to say so. In his head he understood that polio wasn’t contagious for long, that she couldn’t possibly catch the disease from Dickie. But in his heart he didn’t want her to go, for all of a sudden he was full of doubts. What if it wasn’t exactly true that polio couldn’t be spread that way? What if something went wrong? Even he never touched the children in the polio wards, though he wasn’t proud of it. Secretly, he didn’t even like to stand too close to them. He had seen too many doctors keeping their distance, too many nurses hiding behind masks and gloves. For the first time he wondered: did the scientists know more than he’d been told? He was a mere fund-raiser, a tiny cog in the giant March of Dimes.

  “Can I, Dad?” asked Laurie.

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bulging. He felt that it would betray all that he knew to say no, but he wasn’t brave enough to say yes. He had lost a wife; he couldn’t stand to lose a daughter too.

  “I want to see him, Dad,” said Laurie.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Mr. Valentine. “If Mrs. Strawberry says yes, it’s fine with me.”

  He was pretty sure what the nanny would say, and he wasn’t disappointed. Mrs. Strawberry put her hands on her round hips and shook her head at Laurie.

  “A polio ward? Are you out of your mind?” she said. “If it’s up to me, a polio ward is the last place on earth you’ll visit, young lady.”

  The hospital was only a few blocks from Laurie’s house. Going the long way home from school took her through the grounds, along paths where mothers pushed their baby carriages, past a pond where people sat on benches to feed the ducks and squirrels.

  She had often gone to Bishop’s Memorial, sometimes with Mrs. Strawberry. There was a bench at the pond that had been their favorite when Laurie was a little child.

  From there, between the weeping willows, she could see the windows of the fourth floor, where the polios lived, and she had often sat staring at them, trying to imagine what was inside: a room full of iron lungs; another stuffed with braces and crutches; all the polios staggering and lurching down the halls. Only once had anyone ever looked back at her—a boy with blond and curly hair, a boy so pale and thin that he’d looked like a prisoner. She had thought of him ever since as the prince in the tower, and the image of him gazing down from the window was as sharp in her mind as a photograph. Though she had looked up many times, hoping to see him, he had never been there again.

  On the day in April when she walked through the north gate, Laurie had the grounds to herself. It was a drizzly afternoon, with puddles on the pathways. No moth
ers pushed their carriages; no one fed the ducks.

  Laurie passed through a tunnel of willow branches, looked up at the fourth-floor windows, and kept on walking.

  The building was enormous. It looked more like a fort than a hospital, more like a castle stripped of turrets and banners. At the top of a ladder, a gray-haired gardener was battling the ivy, as he did on many days. Leaves and stems rained down on the lawn and the path.

  There were birds in the trees, traffic on the street. The tires of cars and trucks made a sizzling sound on the wet road. A sleek red car, a Starlight, came up the curving entryway and slipped behind the building, heading for the parking lot where the doctors had their spaces.

  Laurie passed under the covered entrance and up to the row of doors.

  As soon as she stepped inside, everything seemed familiar. The hospital smell, the odd hushing of every sound, reminded her of the time she’d had her tonsils out. She remembered struggling against doctors who had rushed her away on a gurney, holding her down as the bed rolled along. She could remember with perfect clarity the hum of the wheels, the hurried slap of the doctors’ shoes, the way the lights had flashed past on the ceiling. One of the doctors had pressed a mask on her face and told her, “Count backward from ten.” She had held her breath, afraid he was trying to kill her. But at last she’d had to breathe, and the next thing she knew, she was coming awake in the night with a sore throat.

  She’d found herself in a strange bed in a strange place, feeling frightened and alone. She had started crying in the night, and kept on crying until a nurse finally came by and told her sharply, in a voice like a witch’s, “Keep it up, honey, and you’ll tear out your stitches.”

  In the lobby was an information desk, where a lady sat at a switchboard. She had silver hair, a red sweater, and lipstick so bright that it made her mouth look like an axe wound.

  Laurie told her, “I came to see Dickie Espinosa.”

  The lady looked down at a big binder. She turned the pages. “Do you know what room he’s in?”

  “No.” Laurie poked her glasses. “I think it’s the one with the iron lungs.”

  “Oh, dear.” The lady looked sad. “Are your parents with you?”

  “No. My nanna’s at home; my dad’s at work,” said Laurie.

  “You came on your own to visit your friend?”

  Laurie nodded, sending her glasses sliding down again.

  “Hold on a minute.” The lady called for a nurse, and the one who arrived a few minutes later was twice as pretty and half as old as Mrs. Strawberry. She had super-curly hair as black as coal, with a white cap pinned high on top, but tipped back like a sailor’s. A heart-shaped watch was hanging upside down on her breast.

  She said her name was Miss Freeman. “I’m from Polio,” she said, as though the disease were a country. “So you’re friends with Dickie? You must be Laurie Valentine.”

  “Yes,” said Laurie.

  “I feel like I know you already, he’s said so much about you. How you played in the creek and called it the Shenandoah. How you played with the train people. He’s been hoping you’d come and see him.”

  “I was kind of scared,” said Laurie.

  “Well, sure you were. Who wouldn’t be scared?” Miss Freeman was as cheery as a songbird. “We had a boy whose parents never came to visit, not once in four years, because they were too afraid of taking polio home to his sister. They couldn’t understand that it’s only contagious for the first few days.”

  “My nanna’s like that,” said Laurie.

  “She doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “No way. She’d go ape.”

  Miss Freeman grimaced. “You know, I really shouldn’t let you up there without your parents saying it’s okay,” she said. “But if Dickie knew you came and I didn’t take you up, it would bust his little heart. So I’ll do it this once. All right?”

  “Thank you,” said Laurie.

  They took the elevator, standing side by side to watch the lighted numbers change above the door. As the 2 went out and the 3 came on, Laurie asked, “What’s it like in Polio?” And Miss Freeman said, “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s different.”

  The elevator shimmied as it crossed the third floor. Laurie could only imagine the polio ward in black and white, as she’d seen at the movies, in the March of Dimes. She imagined long rows of iron lungs, a dozen nurses moving about in silence, somebody pitching up and down on a rocking bed, kids in braces learning to walk all over again.

  A chime sounded as the elevator stopped. The doors slid open, and Laurie looked out at a green wall, at a poster with a picture of a little boy striding away from his cage of a bed, cured of his polio. He was marching like a soldier, below a huge slogan that said, “Your dimes did this for me!”

  “Come on,” said Miss Freeman. She stepped out of the elevator, into the hall, with Laurie behind her.

  They had gone only a few steps when Laurie heard the scream of a child. It came from somewhere around the next corner, and was followed by another scream, from a different child, and the rumble of wheels turning fast. Miss Freeman moved closer to the wall but didn’t slow down. Behind her back, she motioned to Laurie with her fingers. “It might be best if you got out of the way,” she said.

  Laurie pressed against the wall. She thought a gurney was coming, pushed by running doctors. But round the corner came a wheelchair, moving so fast that it careened on two wheels. In the seat was a girl with long hair, her arms driving the wheels so fast that the spokes looked like solid silver. The chair swerved, then straightened, and the girl looked back and screamed again—a sound of happy fright.

  Behind her came a boy. But not in a chair. He was lying on a platform with four little wheels, like something a mechanic would use to roll himself under a car. He was paddling with his feet as he pushed with his hands, and he rolled round the corner like a pinball.

  The girl hurtled past. She raised a hand for a moment, high above her head. “Hi ho!” she shouted as she barreled past.

  The boy followed behind her, laughing all the time. His platform spun sideways, and he paddled and kicked like a frantic swimmer caught in a current. He hit the wall and bounced away. “Hi, Miss Freeman!” he cried.

  Miss Freeman waved as he passed. “See what I mean?” she asked Laurie. “There’s usually a wheelchair race or something going on. Last week I saw eight kids in one chair, all piled up like a pyramid.”

  “Really?” asked Laurie.

  “Sure. Sometimes it gets kind of crazy.”

  Laurie followed Miss Freeman around the turn in the corridor, past a large room where many people—mostly children—were busy with different things. A girl with braces on her legs was pushing a doll in a stroller. A boy was using Lincoln Logs to build a sprawling cabin. Others were watching television, staring at a tiny screen in an enormous wooden cabinet.

  The corridor turned again. Laurie looked through half-open doors at identical wards, at tall hospital beds with wheels on the legs and railings on the sides. She passed room after room, turned again, and went on to the end of the corridor. The last door was propped open. Miss Freeman stopped just before it.

  “This is the respirator room,” she said. “It’s not so much fun in here.”

  Her expression had changed; she wasn’t smiling anymore. Laurie could see only a corner of the room through the doorway. She heard a hum and whir of machines, a steady whoosh of air.

  “Now listen,” said Miss Freeman. “When you see Dickie it’s going to be a bit of a shock. You’ll feel pretty bad for him, but don’t let him see it. Okay? If you think you’re going to cry, just go look out the window. It won’t do him any good to think people are sorry for him.” The nurse looked at Laurie. “Can you do that?”

  “Okay,” said Laurie.

  “There are two others in here as well,” said the nurse. “They’ve been here quite a while, and there’s one I think might never come out. But don’t feel sorry for them either, because they’re not as alone a
s you’ll think. They get visits from actors sometimes, from magicians and clowns.”

  Miss Freeman took a step toward the room, then paused again. “These are the bravest kids you’ll ever find anywhere,” she said. “You know the story of David and Goliath? Well, these kids, they’re all Davids to me; that’s how I think of them. They got knocked down something awful, but every day they get back up—even if it’s only on the inside—and keep throwing their little stones.”

  Miss Freeman rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She sniffed and said, “I’m sorry. I get mushy about it.” Then she went breezing in the open door, her voice happy and excited. “Hey, Dickie! Guess who’s here.”

  Laurie had never seen an iron lung, except in the films for the March of Dimes. Now four of them were right in front of her, and she could hardly believe how big they were, how high they stood on their framework of metal legs. They reminded her of the Martians’ spaceships from The War of the Worlds, the big cylinders that had smashed into Earth with tiny creatures inside them. There was a blond-haired girl in the first one, a boy in the second, little Dickie in the third. But only their heads stuck out from the ends of the metal tubes, resting on pillowed shelves. It looked as though their bodies had been swallowed by the cylinders, because the metal things seemed so much alive. The huff and puff she’d heard was the breathing of the machines. Their rubber lungs worked below their bellies, and she watched them stretch and shrink, fill and empty.

  The fourth machine was vacant. Still and quiet, its lungs frozen, it seemed to be dead. Or waiting.

  Laurie saw this all in a moment, in the time it took the children to turn their faces toward her. Dickie grinned. “Oh, boy,” he said. “It’s Laurie.”

  The others just stared: the boy in the middle with a curious look, the girl with no expression at all. Their skin was pale, their faces gaunt. Dickie said, “Laurie’s my best friend.” And the girl said, “Whoop-de-doo.”