ESCAPE FROM THE MOUNTAIN (2)

   The morning was bright and clear from the night before. Edie woke up startled. She didn't want to fall asleep. She tried to stay awake so she and Susan could leave by dawn. She shook Susan to wake her. "Come on, Susan. Wake up. We need to go."Susan hated to get out of a warm bed. The bedroom didn't have any heat.
    Susan walked through the living room and pulled back the blanket that was hanging in the doorway to the kitchen. "This feels good," she said to Katherine who was sitting at the table peeling potatoes. Susan went to the pump house with a kettle to get some water to boil on the wood stove. Someone left the handle up. Oh no, Susan thought. I have to go out and get some water from the rain barrow and prime the pump. Good thing it rained last night. When Susan opened the door to the pump house, a rat ran in front of her. That wasn't new to her. It was the spiders and their webs that she hated.

ESCAPE FROM THE MOUNTAINS

    It was a rainy day and the kids stayed home from school. They had colds and too far to walk to school down that muddy road. The kids were playing in the attic when Edie called out to Susan to come down. Edie had a plan. She had a knitting bag with Susan's and her clothes in it. She told Susan to take the bag outside, go up the road and find a place under some tree limbs or something and hide the bag and do it fast before anyone knows you're gone. "Lock the kids in the attic and when you get back tell them you were playing a game." Susan asked, "Why were we doing this?" We are leaving tonight. Your uncle is acting wild again and I don't want to be here. Susan took the bag and walked up the road until she found a spot to hide the bag. It really started to rain now and she ran as fast as she could. The kids were screaming when she got back. She told them about playing a game. They didn't even notice that she was soaking and wet, they were so mad at her. She returned to her mother to tell her what she did. She was so proud of herself for finding a safe place.
    Edie woke Susan up. It was black as pitch other than the lightning. "We're going to go now so be quiet not to wake any one." Susan started to cry. "Mommy, I don't want to go out in this, I'm afraid." Susan crying must have brought Edie to her senses because she was so afraid and made up her mind to leave that night, a storm would not stop her even if they had to walk five miles on a muddy road. Edie held Susan and rocked her back and forth. What was I thinking? Walking in a stormy night. "We leave in the morning." I hope we can do this without anyone seeing us. Hope the men stay in the fields. 

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAINS (6)

    Being around some people, Edie was getting some ideas about what she was going to do about getting away from the farm. Her brother, Bill would never let her go on her own because how would she take care of herself and there was Susan. No, it was best she stay on the farm so she could be watched after, he thought. Bill didn't know his sister. She wasn't the mouse like she was as a child.

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAIN (5)

    Months went by and Edie was ready for artificial limbs. She had to go to Philadelphia. Because of the distance she would have to stay there until the limbs were made. This would take some time with fitting and making so she stayed at the rehab. She didn't like being away from Susan for a month but she was learning a little bit about walking. With her stump being so short, she being little and the limbs being heavy, it would take a long time for her to walk upright and not stiff but she has the will to walk. The lamb wool stump socks that she had to wear were very hot. She doused herself with powder to absorb the perspiration and the heavy belt around her waist with the steel hinges on the hips made Edie very uncomfortable. Limbs were made more or less for men. Even the shape of the legs were more manly. As years went by, Edie had three different kinds of limbs. The first were made of steel and painted flesh color. The second ones were made with a steel bar down the middle with foam rubber shaped around the bar or pole to look like and feel like a limb. These were much lighter and did not need such a large belt around the waist. The third artificial limbs came out after the Korean War. So many soldiers came home missing limbs. The limbs were made of pine. Pine is a light wood. The top half of the leg was hollow  with a hole on the side. The amputee would put the stump sock on, slide the stump into the top of the leg, pull the sock out through the hole and put a cap on the hole. This would form a suction around the stump and inside hollow of the artificial leg or arm. With more women being in the services, the legs were made more shapely, too. Edie liked these limbs, but she still had to wear a belt.

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAINS (4)

   There was a lot of noise. The mules were running toward the house. Two of them. They were big, wild animals. Edie was sitting on the ground. Where was her brother? Her mother went to get water for the plants. Just Susan was there. These mules were running toward her mom. She screamed. She tried to move out of their way. Her brother came up laughing and whipping the mules to get them back to the barn. Oh, how he laughed. He thought it was so funny to scare his sister. He told her he wouldn't let the mules hurt her, he was just kidding her. He always was a tease. But this was too much. He had gotten crazy. He said that he was going to chain his wife up in the woods one day  and chased her around with a large chain in the yard with her and the kids crying. 
    This was it. Edie thought, my brother has lost it. I can't take the chance of him hurting Susan or doing something like that again. We have to get away from here, but how? I can't even get out of this house because of the steps. Then the dirt road and Bill will never let us leave. I've got to find a way.

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAINS (3)

    After Edie got dressed with the help of her mother, she wanted to take a tour around the house. The living room was huge with a stone fireplace, kitchen was a country kitchen with wood stove and long table in the middle of the room with an oil cloth spread on it and an oil lamp in the center. Boxes of stuff all over the place to be unpacked. Edie was no longer interested and wanted to go back to her room where she stayed. She even ate her meals in her room. There was nothing she wanted to see outside her room. Susan finally talked her after a couple of weeks to come outside and grow some flowers under the bedroom window planters. 
   Grandma put soil in the planters and Susan got the small seedlings that she and grandma planted weeks ago. Edie and Susan planted the seedlings and waited for Edie's brother to hang the planters.

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAINS (2)

    "And we will have electricity in about three weeks."
    "Three weeks," Edie yelled out. "What are we going to do until then?"
    "Oh, stop your complaining. What do you want for breakfast? I have a nice wood stove and coffee is hot. Want a cup?"
    "Have you heard anything from Jim?"
    "No, just about him. He is running around with some older woman. She has money, I guess. He drives her car. The bastard." Edie was surprised to hear her mother say bastard but she hated Edie's ex-husband. She didn't want her to marry him. Said he was too wild and five years older than her and being in the Army. She was just a kid. They got married when Edie was seventeen. She got pregnant two months later. She went crying to grandmother. "I'm too young to have a baby." The grandmother had a cure for everything. You see, she was the mid-wife and if you had any sickness, you went to Grandma Wood and she would boil you up some herbs and make a tea and you would be just fine. Edie's grandma told her to douche with mustard and water and the "mistake" would flush away. Well, the "mistake" was born in July and was named Susan. One remedy that didn't work.

THE MOVE TO THE MOUNTAINS

    The move was hard on everyone and there was no relief at the end. The house was large but had no running water or electric, just a well and a three-hole outhouse. There was a bedroom downstairs so this would be for Edie and Susan. The bed was set up and Edie's things were moved in first before it got dark. Oil lanterns were lit throughout the house. Edie's mother and Susan carried water in from the well, made up the bed and set up the bedside commode. An oil lantern was lit on the dresser. How cozy, Edie thought sarcastically.
    After a sleepless night, Edie sat up and got into her wheelchair and went to one of four windows that were around the room. She looked out each one. Just empty fields ready to be plowed and trees as far as you could see. Oh, and then the barn with animals, behind fences. She called out to her mother or anyone. She was afraid. What had she got  in to? Her mother came running thinking she fell out of bed (which she had done before).
    "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
    "I'm okay. What's going on? Is this where we're going to live? This is it?" What in God's name were you thinking, Mom?
    "Calm down, everything is going to be fine. There are 100 acres of fields for farming and another 300 in timber and we'll hire men to help us work the farm"
    "What about water, lights, and a bathroom?" Edie didn't care about fields.
    "Your brother is going to build a pump house off the kitchen and there will be water in the kitchen at least. Whatever a pump house is*. The people down the road about five miles said they would help him.

*A pump house is a small addition to the outside wall of the kitchen where a pump is placed on a long piece of metal or trough. The pump is on a stand and has a pipe that goes under the floor in the ground and into the well. The pump has a handle and you pump up and down so the water comes out the spout. If the handle is left up, then no water will come out of the spout and then you have to put water in the top of the pump. (That's why you keep a rain barrow.)

Edie (6)

    Edie wanted to stay outside for awhile before going in for the night.  She sat in the truck in the drive way. Susan stayed behind, but off to a distance.  She still had not warmed up to Edie. She still felt that her grandmother was her mother and called her "mommy" but, not around Edie.  Slowly, she moved closer to the truck.  Edie called to her and asked if she wanted to come in.
    Susan moved slowly until she reached the truck door and then stopped.  Her mother talked softly until she got in the truck.  Susan was a little bit afraid and held on to the door and looked down at her shoes .Her mother asked her if she liked her new shoes and Susan replied "yes". Edie kept asking her questions about school and about herself to get her to open up.  She finally started talking about the chickens and the baby chicks in Grandma's hen house.  That was a start..Edie asked Susan is she ever sang.  She said no.  Well, I know a great song. "You Are my Sunshine"., As Edie sang, Susan looked up at her mother for the first time since the accident.  As their eyes met, they both started to cry and they held on to one another so tight and cried so hard it was like they were forcing their pain and loss out of themselves. So much was gone.  Their house and everything in it.  Even daddy.  Edie had a lot to make up for the loss for her little girl and she had the will to live for her and she will take care of her.

EDIE (5)

     Edie was able to sit up for about fifteen minutes at a time a few times a day in her wicker back wheelchair. Her mother had to change her bandages twice a day. Her stumps were healed other than on the ends. They still bled at times so Edie had to return to the hospital for another amputation on the ends of the stumps. She remained in the hospital for another two more months. She could come home but had to remain in bed for another month on her stomach. (In three months she was able to sit up and push herself around in her chair.) One day the family all piled in to the truck, even Edie. She sat in the front seat between her mother and brother. Her first outing in almost a year. She did not go into the store which was just a general store and she didn't want people to stare at her, anyway. It was just nice sitting outside looking around at people, houses with yards with flowers and trees, kids' toys instead of hospital walls and beds. Shopping was over, the boys had haircuts and all five kids, Susan too, had new shoes for school. One hundred pound bags of sugar and flour were loaded on the truck. The girls were picking out the sugar or flour bags that they wanted for their dresses (the bags that the sugar and flour came in back then was material with flowers printed on it. So the women would make dresses from the bags. Very pretty, too.) (This girl had many herself).

EDIE (4)

    After nine months, Edie got to go home to her mother's farm, not her cute little house with the new living room curtains and the kitchen table where the neighbors sit and had coffee and gab in the morning. An ambulance took Edie to her mother's and while she was lying on the cot looking out the window, she wondered what she would do. Her husband couldn't handle everything that had happened and wanted a divorce. She din't want to live with her mother because her brother and wife and four kids also lived at the farm. And what a noisy bunch. Well, the main thing now was that Susan and I will have a roof over our heads, she thought. I can't wait to see my little girl, Susan, she told the nurse that was with her. She told her about Susan's experience seeing her in the hospital and how afraid she was of her the way she looked with no hair and scratches all over her face and even worse no legs. What a shock to a little child. Susan was living with her grandmother at the farm and called her mommy. Tears welled up in Edie's eyes. Did Susan forget her completely? The nurse comforted her and told her she would remember again that children spring back. And all along she hoped what she was saying to Edie would come true.

EDIE (3)

    As time went by, Edie started to feel a little better. She craved pineapple juice. So, the doctor ordered all she wanted. She swore that was what healed her. Today we have found out pineapple is a healer.
    While lying on her stomach at that time, Edie took up crocheting again. She also took up a sport of throwing string beans at a patient's big toe from across the room (In the 1940s, hospitals had wards where several people shared the same room.) one bean at a time and if she hit the lady's toe both Edie and the old lady would yell. The lady was a loud foreigner and she would yell in her native tongue for Edie to stop, but she had a slight smile. Edie yelled because this would be a novelty for her to hit this woman's toe even though she was very good at playing darts. 
    The nurses were not happy with having to clean up the string beans and they let Edie know it. All the while, they were laughing under their breath. 

EDIE (2)

    Edie was in so much pain that she was packed in ice bags while on her stomach. She laid on her stomach for nine months. Then she had bed sores on her stomach. The pain was so great she would pull her hair out and scratched her face and arms. The nurses cut her nails and shaved her head and the doctors gave her morphine. When her mother saw her, she didn't know her. She acted like a crazy woman. Talking out of her head about things her mother didn't know about and what about her hair? What happened to her beautiful blonde hair? What did these people do to my daughter? What is she doing under this tent? Oh my God! Her legs! Oh, that's right, they were amputated. Oh my baby! Two nurses came in to see what was going on. They held Edie's mother and explained why Edie was the way she was, but her mother couldn't stop crying. This was her daughter, her child, and now look at her. Oh my God, what are we going to do? Oh my God.

EDIE

    As I sat down at the table next to a couple women having lunch, I noticed an attractive woman in a wheelchair. What happened to her? I wondered. When she turned around, my question was answered. Her skirt was long, almost to the floor, but no feet were under the skirt. Looking farther up, I saw no leg impressions, either. What could have happened to this lovely lady?
    A man came to take her to the front of the room where she was introduced and then taken up onto the stage. She received an achievement award for all her accomplishments.
   Her story was told. A gas furnace in the basement in the house blew up, causing the house to catch fire. Edie was asleep. The child was rescued by the firemen in time. Edie was not. She made it out alive, but she had third degree burns over seventy-five percent of her body. Her face, head, chest, and from her elbows down to her fingers were spared. Gangrene set in her legs and they had to be amputated. 
   Her husband was in the army. This was during World War II. He was in a hospital in the Philippines with a broken leg when he got the news about his wife. The Red Cross flew him home.