THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020 67
THEEND OFPOETRY
Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,
enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.—Ada Limónwell spent. But, listen, there were no
techniques, except don’t wash your ricey
basins in the river, where the poisons
will drift, which was exactly what they
went out and did, poor fools. And too
soon the Mengers and the Hurleys, then
the Hopwoods and the Mortensens,
they all come down with it. ‘Come down,’
you hear me? Going back like this, I fall
right into my grandmother’s voice. Now,
after suchlike buildup, you might think
there’s not much of a story to the rest
of it. But what’s mainly inter-resting is
such madness as grew up around him
during the worst part of our plague. All
La Verne left enough bread puddings
and bushelled fruit outside his house to
where he couldn’t open the front door
of a morning. Had to go out around the
back to see what gifts had him so locked
in. Doc kept busy, writing off for help,
him so new to the practice and out here
in this throwback sickness. But most
doctors elsewhere had their own hands
full. Still, Petrie made newspaper sug-
gestions that the Bugle printed and
passed along. He listed do’s and don’ts,
most of them a scared boy’s purest guess-
work. Mainly meant to keep folks’ panic
down. And, at the end, he added how
important it was that people stick by
each other through the worst. The doc-
tor wrote how civilization depends on
nobody going untended.
“And then Petrie ‘strongly suggested’
that families gather into bands to in-
sure that no matter how bad it got some-
body’d stay put and tend those left alive.
And local tribes, especially those with
farmland adjoining, they went along
with him on this. And, oh, but that sure
saved many a local. Later, they gave Doc
Petrie all the credit. His idea: the Health
Alliances, they were called, and that still
holds. Nowadays, they’re mainly used
for tornado-watch and swapping Christ-
mas gifts. Community granges, like, but
they’re still called the Petrie Alliances.
“Was a real warm June, that June,
which was bad for spreading the chol-
era but good, you know, for how stuff
grows in soil this black. Young girls
brought him masses of zinnias, and they
got into his house, and folks heard tell
that more than one threw herself at him.
What he did, who knows. And yet you
kind of hope he at least tried something
with a few of our better-looking ones
that were spunky. They weren’t all
peaches, trust me.“Petrie would be home in his rental,
hurting his hands with carbolic acid, try-
ing to burn the infection off them, wash-
ing up, and shucking off his pants and
throwing hot water and soap even over
his good shoes, standing there alone wear-
ing nothing but his shirttails, and more
girls would come in. Folks swear that for
weeks there were virgins turning up at
all hours of the night. And their parents
right aware of where the daughters’d gone
and what for at this ungodly hour. Guess
I can still hear them: ‘Now, daughter,
don’t you be letting that Grace Cunning-
ham get a jump on Doc ahead of you.
Why, sister, when this is over, after all
he’s done to help our county, he can stand
for governor, sure. They say Boss Brins-
ley alone gave him two hundred-dollar
gold pieces when their spoiled littlest girl
pulled through. But brush back your hair
off your face, why don’t you. Show those
features. Grace Cunningham is not a
patch on anybody pretty as you.’ Oh, but
it was a pagan time, 1849, I swear to God.
“ Now, this,” and here she awkwardly
angled off the stool, finally scooping up
the painting and clamping its lower edge
against the glass counter between us.
“This portrait of Petrie came to me, it’d
be just five weeks back. Been hanging
up in the public library on the square
since our town fathers commissioned
his portrait, eighteen and fifty.”
Theodosia finally placed into my
hands the oil painting. His image was
pulling away from old yellow pine
stretchers still marked as coming from
a shop in Cedar Rapids.
“This painting, see, was done from
a daguerreotype they got his mother to
send. Talented local lady painted it, one
Miss Beech, a teacher who’d been at the
church the few times he set foot in there
before they applauded him off. He still
kept introducing himself as Mark—
maybe it was what his mother called
him. But he’d got too important to ever
be that casual around.
“Well, one day ’bout four weeks into
the worst of it, he was out at the Brins-
leys’ again (mighty demanding, the
Brinsleys), and their little daughter they
thought he’d saved and had paid him
so well for saving, she was down and
looking but poorly again. Petrie bends
over her asleep, and shakes his head and
says to her rich parents, ‘I just don’t like
her color.’ And instead of agreeing or