Tanglefoot_ A Story of the Clockwork Century - Cherie Priest [1]
In its way, the Waverly Hills Sanitarium was a testament to his outstanding imagination.
The hospital had incorporated many of the physicians’ favorites into the daily routine of the patients, including a kerosene-powered bladed machine that whipped fresh air down the halls to offset the oppressive summer heat. The physicians had also integrated his Moving Mechanical Doors that opened with the push of a switch; and Dr. Smeeks’ wonderful Steam-Powered Dish-Cleaning Device was a huge hit in the kitchen. His Sheet-Sorting Slings made him a celebrity in the laundry rooms, and the Sanitary Rotating Manure Chutes had made him a demi-god to the stable-hands.
But half-finished and barely finished inventions littered every corner and covered every table in the basement, where the famed and elderly genius lived out the last of his years.
So long as he did not remember how much he’d forgotten, he appeared content.
Edwin approached the doctor’s side and peered dutifully at the stained schematics on the discolored piece of linen paper. “It’s coming along nicely, sir,” he said.
For a moment Dr. Smeeks did not reply. He was staring down hard at the sheet, trying to make it tell him something, and accusing it of secrets. Then he said, “I’m forced to agree with you, lad. Could you tell me, what is it I was working on? Suddenly…suddenly the numbers aren’t speaking to me. Which project was I addressing, do you know?”
“These are the notes for your Therapeutic Bath Appliance. Those numbers to the right are your guesses for the most healthful solution of water, salt, and lavender. You were collecting lemongrass.”
“Lemongrass? I was going to put that in the water? Whatever would’ve possessed me to do such a thing?” he asked, baffled by his own processes. He’d only drawn the notes a day or two before.
Edwin was a good student, even when Dr. Smeeks was a feeble teacher. He prompted the old fellow as gently as he could. “You’d been reading about Dr. Kellog’s hydrotherapy treatments in Battle Creek, and you felt you could improve on them.”
“Battle Creek, yes. The Sanitarium there. Good Christian folks. They keep a strict diet; it seems to work well for the patients, or so the literature on the subject tells me. But yes,” he said more strongly. “Yes, I remember. There must be a more efficient way to warm the water, and make it more pleasing to the senses. The soothing qualities of lavender have been documented for thousands of years, and its antiseptic properties should help keep the water fresh.” He turned to Edwin and asked, with the lamplight flickering in his lenses, “Doesn’t it sound nice?”
“I don’t really like to take baths,” the boy confessed. “But if the water was warm and it smelled real nice, I think I’d like it better.”
Dr. Smeeks made a little shrug and said, “It’d be less for the purposes of cleanliness and more for the therapy of the inmates here. Some of the more restless or violent ones, you understand.”
“Yes sir.”
“And how’s your mother?” the doctor asked. “Has she responded well to treatment? I heard her coughing last night, and I was wondering if I couldn’t concoct a syrup that might give her comfort.”
Edwin said, “She wasn’t coughing last night. You must’ve heard someone else.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it was Mrs.…What’s her name? The heavy nurse with the northern accent?”
“Mrs. Criddle.”
“That’s her, yes. That’s the one. I hope she isn’t contracting the consumption she works so very hard to treat.” He returned his attention to the notes and lines on the brittle sheet before him.
Edwin did not tell Dr. Smeeks, for the fifth or sixth time, that his mother had been dead for months; and he did not mention that Mrs. Criddle’s accent had come with her from New Orleans.