Yes, she was down there right now.
Clucking with exasperation at himself, he stripped his bed, flipped the mattress over, got the other sheets out of the box and made it up fresh.
He took a clean cotton blanket down to the boat, spread it on the deck beside the girl, and gently rolled her over onto it, trying not to look directly at her. He wrapped it around her, slid his hands under the blanket and stood up with her, astonished at how light she was. It was easier to carry her out and around and up the front way. He put her on the narrow bed and went back and closed his screened door, noticing the last of the mist was burned away.
He opened the petcock and ran some rainwater from his roof cistern into a basin, washed his hands with the sliver of yellow soap, dried them on sacking. He ran rainwater into the pot, pumped the little gasoline stove, lit the burner, put the pot on. Then he went over and sat on his heels and looked at her. Pretty enough little face, but the bones behind it looked sharp enough to come right through the skin. Skin worn off her cheek, mound of her forehead, edge of her jaw. He puzzled it out and decided it could have been rubbed against the teak deck just that way if the boat moved around much. Scrawny little arm about as big around as a turkey leg. He felt her forehead and clucked again, and said, “Just like a fire inside there, missy. You’ve got a fire that’s burning the meat right off your little bones.”
When he turned her head gently, he found the worst place. Where the fair hair was matted and tangled dark, above her ear. He fingered the hair pad away, separating it, and found the wound, perhaps two inches long, gaping almost an inch wide in the middle. It had been rain-washed, and had a skin of healing over it, but the lips of the wound were swollen and granular. He sucked his mouth in and held his breath and prodded at it with a gentle finger, but he could feel no give or shift of the bone under the wound, no fatal sponginess.
“Missy, you got a good hard little skull, or somebody didn’t get a good solid swing at you with that rifle butt. What that needs is some sewing, and maybe I can and maybe I can’t. All depends.”
When the pot of water began to sing, he dropped the handful of tea leaves in it and took it off the fire and swirled it. He filled a tin cup, tasted it, blew on it to cool it, put two spoons of sugar in it, stirred and tasted it again, and took it over to her. He supported her with one arm behind her, thumb and finger at the nape of her neck. He poured hot tea into her slack mouth and it ran out and down her chin and onto his blanket. He tried twice more with the same result.
He shook her, and yelled, “Swaller it, God damn ya! Stop messing up the bed!”
When he tried again, her throat worked and it went down. A sip at a time, he got it all down her and lowered her gently and said, “Missy, when I yell you got to understand it comes out before I think a thing about it. Now I got to see how that back looks. Kindly excuse me.”
He shifted her over onto her face and peeled the blanket away, tugging carefully where it had adhered to the drying fluids that leaked from the burned flesh. He swallowed hard at the faint sicksweet smell of infection, and said, “Now you lie still there. It’s not so bad at all, missy. There was a boy in my outfit, when we got pulled back there in North Africa to get some rest, can’t recall his name, blond boy, he got dog drunk, passed out on the beach, didn’t wake up ’til afternoon, and he looked worsen you.”
He examined her carefully. It was easy to see what had happened. She’d had a pretty good tan, but not across the buttocks where skimpy pants had covered her, and not across the band across her skinny back. There the burn had bitten deep, had blistered, cracked, suppurated, and was now a strange dark rough red, marked with random areas of yellow and yellow-green.
He pondered the problem. He went and got the little jar of the sulfa ointment he used when he got an infection from a barnacle scratch, or a catfish spine, or a bug bite. Damn little of it. Piece it out some. So he opened one of the small tins of butter, put about two parts of butter to one part of the salve in a bowl and mixed it thoroughly. Next he got his half bottle of snakebite whisky from under the bed, took a sheet of paper from his scratch pad and crumpled it, rolled it between his palms. He sat on the edge of the bed, soaked the paper ball with whisky and, after hesitant moments, began to scrub the bad-looking areas, breaking the crusts, rubbing down to a healthier rawness.
He thought she made some small sound, but could not be certain. “Got a poor sad little can on you, missy, all crumpled in and the bones showing, and these here little knobs down your back, like in that labor camp we took over that time. And your belly is puffed the way it is on the starving folks. Now that’s the worst of it for a little time, and I can butter you down now.”
He smeared her back glistening with the mixture he had concocted and then began rubbing it in. He hummed to her and he closed his eyes and he began to rock slowly back and forth, thinking that even starved down, hurt and burned, she was a soft, sweet and tender little thing. Suddenly he realized he had begun to breathe quick and high and shallow, and he jumped up and covered her over and paced back and forth, cursing the evil for wanting to come out at such a time. He wiped his hands on the toweling, settled himself down, and tried to think of some kind of covering for the burns.
Remembering he had some fine netting somewhere, he looked until he found it, cut squares of suitable size, boiled them, wrung them out, and pressed them onto the contours of the burned areas, turned her very gently onto her back and covered her over with the edge of the blanket.
The head wound took more time and trouble. He had to light the bright gasoline lantern and bring it close. He had to soak the matted hair, lather it, shave it with great care. He put a needle and some braided nylon line in the saucepan to boil clean. But what to put on the wound. Not a thing left.
Suddenly he jumped up, swatted himself in the forehead and said, “There’s a damn fool in this world every place you look, missy.” He hurried down and got aboard the fine boat and located the first-aid kit in one of the stowage areas in less than a minute. It was a good one, a big new one, the seal unbroken.
He put a strong antiseptic on the head wound. He sewed it neatly and solidly, pulling the edges together where they belonged. He put a gauze bandage on it and taped it in place. He had a wealth of medicines and instructions. The instructions were hard. He could get them into his mind, but then if he read further, the first part would slide right out of his mind. He found another burn remedy, and plenty of gauze and tape for her back. And some pills for fever, for infection, for a lot of other things which sounded as if she might have them. He settled for four different kinds, and decided two of each would be about right. Getting them into her was another problem. He found he could put her flat on her back, pull her jaw open, holding her tongue down with his thumb. Then put a couple of pills as far back as he could get them at the base of her tongue, poking them back in place with a finger. Then if he closed her jaws and poured tea into the corner of her mouth, making a little pocket for it, she would swallow.
He looked out and was astonished at how much of the day was gone. He read about exposure and sunstroke and dehydration and head wounds and shock, and the treatment for some of the things seemed to be just opposite to the treatment for others. He read the words aloud, puzzling over them. There was one certain thing. Nourishment and plenty of fluid.
He boiled the scallops, mashed them to paste, made a thick gruel out of them, gradually got all of it down her. And more tea. And boiled rainwater. And brandy he found on her boat. When there was a sharp ammoniac odor and a spreading stain on the blanket he had a feeling of pleasure. Get her full up enough so it starts running out the other end, you’re making some progress.