The doctor said I should eat no solids; nothing but soft food for eight days— “ and then,” he laughed, “you’ll not care to eat solids or anything else, for awhile.” That’s when the smallpox patient erupts internally. We settled on cream of wheat, and my sister, not getting the short term well fixed in mind, kept me on that one diet for forty-two days—long after I was well enough to get out. The County Health Officer was afraid to come down from Seneca to release me. He took plenty of time, and then without ever seeing me, issued an order for my release, with a “guess so” attachment.
My sister Nannie, at seventeen, was rather plump — not bulky fat—but after the vinegar treatment she came out as slim as a race horse, and has been trim ever since. An awful lot of cider vinegar —it had to be cider vinegar — was consumed in Wetmore that winter. I believe the vinegar produced an acid blood.
On the first afternoon when the fever was making me pretty stupid, I had spent maybe a half hour sitting by the stove in Bud Means’ store, below the printing office. Near by, there was a water bucket, with dipper, for everybody’s use. I did not drink at the public bucket that day — but when it became known that I had a high fever at that very time, and was now down with smallpox, it was but natural for Bud to imagine that I had tried to cool my fever with several trips to his water bucket. And there was no imagination about the quaff he himself had taken from that dipper, after I had left. Bud told me after I had gotten out—not right away, you can bet your life—that it almost made him sick.
With Elva’s and Eli’s pockmarked faces constantly in mind, I laid awake nights to make sure that I would not, in my sleep, scratch my face, or misplace the slipperyelm poultice, done in cheesecloth, in which my face was swathed. And then, even then, it was awful, a mass of apparently disfigurating open pustules, with face redder than a spanked baby.
After my face had come back to somewhere near normal, I sent my neighbor, Ed Reitzel, up to B. O. Bass’ barber shop to buy—not borrow—a razor and mug, aiming to use them only once. Then, before I had started on that oh-so-awful looking face, I began to wonder if maybe Byron had not sent me his “deadman’s” razor, and I had to send Ed back to make sure about that. I knew that Byron, when telling one of his funny barbershop stories, was liable to do and say things off key. One time he poured nearly a whole bottle of hairoil on my head—which I had not ordered, and didn’t want—while he was looking away from his work, and laughing at his own funny story. Then I had to have a shampoo before I could go to “protracted” meeting that night.
