CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I'D RATHER BE DEAD

By 1907 we were going through what might well be called an educational revolution. Many of the mountain people moved to Roswell or Alamogordo to send their children to better grade schools and high schools. Some cattlemen sold their land to large cattle companies and bought ranches closer to these towns. Usually, the mother and children lived in town during the school session, them moved back to the ranch for vacation time.

Jack and Hettie Browning decided that their five children needed better educational advantages; so they went to Roswell. They were one of the first families to desert the mountain people, but in a short while Hettie's people, the McNatt's, went over to the summit to the west side, bought ranches near the White Sands and settled their families in Alamogordo during the winter season. Mountain folks were going to see that next generation would have the latest in educational advantages.

I certainly approved of these moves, and on days when I felt fairly normal, I was comforted by the fact that my grandchildren were getting the schooling I had yearned for all my life. On other days my approval was for a very selfish motive. It would be easy now for Joe to travel to Roswell to visit Jack and Hettie, and Hettie would always be able to get opium to send back with Joe.

It must have been very humiliating for a woman of Hettie's caliber to be forced to buy this degrading drug. How she just have dreaded the prying eyes of the druggist and the strange looks of customers who heard her ask for gum opium. She told me later that she rebelled many times, but the thought of me out on the ranch going slowly mad with the desire of the filthy opiate haunted her. "I was afraid you would become violent and kill yourself, or harm poor old Pa." What she didn't need to say was that I was Jack's mother, and if I needed help, it was her duty to see that I received it.

She said she always dressed in her Sunday best and walked into the nearest drug store thinking, "If I look nice and neat and healthy, they won't think I want this stuff for myself." Hettie kept my secret so well, and people knew so little about opium users, its no wonder outsiders suspected I must have some terrible disease, but they didn't know what to call it. I knew I was the subject of much gossip when oldtimers gathered, but that worried me not at all.

"She won't even let her own grandchildren have apples from her orchard when they're rotting on the ground. They say young Jerome, Jack's oldest, you know, is the only one of the kids she's half way decent to."

"Her cellar is full of canned fruit that she'll never be able to use in twenty years!"

"They say if the girls happen up to see her around noon time, she won't even ask them to stay for dinner. She's so stingy she doesn't want to fix food for her own family."

"They say she knows her Bible backwards and forwards; that she reads it every day of her life. Why don't she practice some of it?"

I can remember very well when I decided that water on any part of my body made my bones ache. I didn't need to change clothes; I was used to these; they felt better. Hettie and Ida begged me to let them make me some new underwear. There was one petty coat that seemed to disturb them a lot. It had been white nainsook with deep insertion at the bottom. Now it was a greyish, green, with patches from belt to knee. I was furious when the girls tried to get me to change it for another they had made. I told them they were wasteful and extravagant.

About this time I turned pack rat. I started gathering articles from other peoples houses and hiding them in a very old trunk of mine. I didn't need them, and I never looked at them again. Finally, this project began to bore me, and I just grew tired of having all these things stored away.

This explained why people in our part of the country sometimes received mysterious packages through the mail, and when they opened them they would find long lost articles they had been missing for months.

By 1910 I faced a daily routine battle. Each morning when I had finished the dishes, I would rush out to work in my garden. Each morning I would say, "Today, I won't take my medicine. I don't have an ache or pain today; I can do without. Today I'll keep on working in the garden, and I won't know when ten o'clock comes; I'll not even know it."

This was fine talk but utterly useless. I knew the minute the clock would strike ten and very often start walking away from the house, then turn and run as fast as I could to get to my purse in the bureau drawer. Lot of time before I could get the purse open, my clothes would be wringing wet with cold sweat. In just a few minutes after I had swallowed that gummy pill, I would be so calm and so ready to work on a quilt piece or finish some patching. Such warm contentment! Why would I ever want to give it up? It didn't matter now if I were growing old, if the children were gone, if Joe and I were no longer friends. I didn't need Joe or the children.

By four o'clock in the afternoon the drug would wear off: then I despised myself for being so weak. I even cried because I was disappointed in Mrs JAB. The time came when I thought of taking another pill at four o'clock, but I was afraid to do it without asking a doctor. The thought came that it might put me to sleep forever, and I guess I was afraid to die.

Just to be sure I didn't take that second pill, I got the habit of going after the milk cows around four o'clock. By the time I came in, it was milking time for Joe, and I had to get supper. I must admit that supper was not a pleasant meal. Joe always came hobbling in to take his place at the head of the table without much conversation. It was his everlasting silence which goaded me into speech, "I suppose you want hot biscuits and more okra for supper. Well, there's okra left from dinner, and I'm not starting a fire this time of day to cook hot bread."

Joe never looked at me or even seemed upset. He would answer patiently and monotonously, "No, Angie, this is fine. I like cold batter bread with fresh butter and honey."

I was so furious that I could hardly choke down food----the everlasting sameness of his answer seven days a week! Time dragged on, nothing to live for and certainly nothing to die for. Then I noticed that my body and my mind were two separate people! My mind told me to do something, but my body refused to obey.

"I suppose I'm really going crazy!" I thought I whispered it, but I noticed Joe stayed closer to the house at noon, and he came in earlier from the field in the afternoon. That gave me the excuse to rant, "You are lazy; that's what you are. You're just trying to get out of work!" Then I couldn't remember whether I had said these things aloud or not; so I'd ask poor Joe, "Was I talking to you, Joe?"

Joe never seemed to answer me, but suddenly he was at the house a whole week. He never walked farther than the yard gate. Then someone came by with the mail, and Joe came hurrying in to tell me there was a long letter from Hettie. We always loved to get her fat, newsy letter. Joe left it in my lap and went to close the garden gate.

I opened the letter to find pages of Hettie's fine, clear handwriting, but I could not find no meaning in a single word. I was so scared I grabbed Ruth's Bible and opened it quickly. It might as well have been Greek or Hebrew; I could find no meaning in passages I had read dozens of times.

Joe stood in the doorway watching me, and he heard me say, "I know what's wrong. I've closed the door in Hettie's face, I've closed the door in God's face."

Joe came toward me very cautiously and spoke very softly, "Let me help you, Angie" He was sure that I had gone completely insane.

"Don't bother me, Joe" I sat there all that night, and Joe came to sit near me and watch over me.

"Angie, don't you want to go to bed? You've been up all night. Sleep will help a lot. You'll feel better, then."

"I'll never feel any better." Joe had every reason to believe me, but he was just standing by to let me know he was there. He was thankful when I started a sort of prayer. He said it took me a long, long time to get the words out, and they were jumbled and confused.

"I'm going to pray now... I must have prayed before, but I can't remember why I prayed. Lord, Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me? I didn't say that... Jesus said it... pray for me, Jesus."

I seemed to doze a little at this time, and Joe thought I might be calming down. He spoke again very softly, "Let me help you get undressed, Angie. You need to be in bed."

Then I screamed, "Don't touch me! Don't you ever touch me! Joe said he felt like he had been hit right between the eyes, but as he stood looking at me, I spat out with, "If you see me in this filthy underwear and my patched petticoat, I'll kill you with my bare hands."

I seemed to quiet down in a while, and I knew when daylight came, for I walked to a window and looked out for a long, long time. I have a hazy memory of trying to find a certain peak in the distant mountains. I think I finally made it out, and it steadied me, for I do remember turning to Joe and saying, "Get ready, Joe. We're going to Roswell. Hettie will find a doctor for me."

Joe hobbled out on the run to hitch up the team, and I can tell you he made very good time getting to Hettie's house.

Dr. Fisher came to Hettie and Jack's house to have a long talk with me. I have every reason to remember this.

"How old are you, Mrs. Browning?"

"I am sixty-four years old."

"How long have you been taking opium?"

"If you count when I first started taking powdered morphine, it would be thirty-six years, but the opium.... since I was about forty-five years old."

"How much do you weigh, Mrs Browning?"

"About ninety-eight pounds."

"Do you realize, Mrs. Browning, that this cure is quite a strain on the heart at your age, and that you may not live through it?"

"I'd rather be dead then go on like this."

"Then we will proceed with the cure at once. You will return all the opium in your possession to your daughter-in-law."

I went to my purse and handed a package to Hettie with, "You understand, Hettie, you are going to see me though this, and no matter what happens, you aren't giving it back to me."

Hettie smiled at me and said quietly, "I'll be with you all the way, Ma."

I didn't know, of course, that Joe had contacted all the children to tell them that I was taking the cure, and that it was dangerous, and if they could, he would like to have them come to Roswell.

I had not taken my usual dose of opium the day Dr. Fisher came; so by afternoon, Hettie said I was walking the floor like a caged animal.

None of the grandchildren knew the battle going on; so they invited all neighbor children in to hear their grandma's Indian stories. Hettie decided to let them stay, for they kept me well occupied for that evening. When they were all sent to bed, I felt feverish, and by the next morning I was in a coma. Jack and Hettie, Tod and Ida waited with Joe for Dr. Fisher's arrival. He examined me and assured everybody there was no cause for alarm. He had expected just such a reaction.

They tell me my tongue was swollen twice it size by the fourth day, and my breathing was very rapid. When Dr. Fisher made his daily visit, he said the crisis was very near; he couldn't be sure I would live the day out. That's when my men folks put on a stampede all their own. "Give her back the dope, Doc' we want her to stay alive!"

That's when Hettie stood off the whole Browning clan. She had made a promise to me, and with God's help, she was going to keep it. Nobody, but nobody was going to give me opium in Hettie and Jack's house.

Bert told me later she was a she-lion defending her cub, and good man, Old Doctor Fisher stood right by her and let it be known in no uncertain terms that he could not and would not prescribe opium.

All the men walked to the yard and wiped the tears away; all the women stayed near my bed and bowed their heads in prayer; all but Ida and Hettie, who wrung out old cold cloths and applied them all over my body to keep that terrible fever down. This went on all night, and by morning my fever was lower, and I seemed to be back in the world again.

Three more days passed; then Dr. Fisher said I was out of danger. The boys and wives left for their ranches, and Joe took Della and her children, who had come all the way from Wyoming, home with him. They all had the gumption to realize that Hettie couldn't nurse and cook for all of them, too.

I was bedridden for two more weeks without gaining consciousness of the world about me. I wondered back to my childhood days and to the harrowing Indian fights in Texas. When my tongue regained its normal size, I evidently talked incessantly. I continued the Indian stories for my grandchildren as if there had been no intermission on the day I arrived for the cure. Hour after hour I talked on.
While the children were in school and Hettie was busy with cooking and housework, she left the door open to my room, realizing I didn't know whether I had an audience or not. Hettie said I relieved my whole life, and as far as she knew, hadn't missed a place or a date in the whole history.

When I actually became normal again, I kept telling Hettie my throat was so tired. Imagine my chagrin when she told me I had been talking constantly for two solid weeks.

It wasn't many days after that when Joe arrived to take me home. I couldn't find words to say "thank you" to Hettie, but I tried. We were both crying happy tears when I waved goodbye. Hettie said she knew what it meant for a slave to be given his freedom. That said it well enough.

Joe and I rode leisurely along, talking about this or that. I wanted to know about Della and the children, about the milk cows, about my flowers and plants. Some of the time we just rode long miles not saying a word, but Joe and I both knew peace rode with us after all these years. We didn't turn any cartwheels or shout for joy or offer congratulations. We just set about to enjoy calm, normal living which we had not had for thirty years.

It was Hettie and Ida who did the celebrating. They burned my old petticoat and old underwear; then Hettie dressed in her best went down to the druggist to return the last batch of opium. She walked in, plunked down the package and said in her calm, ladylike manner, "We won't be needing this any more. The cure has been taken."

The druggist astounded her by saying, "I'm glad to hear that, but would you mind telling me for whom you were buying this? Of course, we knew you weren't using it."

"How did you know?" asked Hettie in surprise.

"My gosh, lady!" You certainly don't look like a hop-head! They have dry, yellow skin like parchment, and their eyes are glazed all over by a film. Besides that, their lips twitch and their hands are never still."

Hettie said she felt so foolish. "For here I had been worrying about myself all these years."

In the meantime I was busy at home again trying to make my weak knees behave. It was six months before I could walk as fast as I wanted to. By that time I could do my own housework, garden all I pleased, and sew me some decent clothes.

Of Course old friends and neighbors came calling right off the bat. The news had traveled fast, and folks wanted to see a cured dope fiend. One well meaning woman had to ask, "Mrs. JAB, do you desire to take the dope at ten o'clock any more?"

I shot back with, "Does a body want to go back to hell, once he has climbed out of it?" Then I saw I had spoken sharply, so I laughed and said, "Gracious me! With these five children of Della's around I don't have time to remember whether it's seven, ten or twelve o'clock." That left the lady grinning, but I did think her question was a little out of order.

Della was a widow now and had been for several years; so she saw no reason to take her children back to Wyoming, but she did want them in school; so after a good visit, she decided to move to Alamogordo. That made us very happy, for Wyoming seemed a long trip from our farm.

By 1913 I could see that Joe was getting too old to do farm work and take care of the few stock we had. We talked it over with the boys, and it wasn't hard to persuade Joe to sell the little farm-ranch and move to Alamogordo. He did ask one question that the boys had not figured on, "What will I do all day in a town?"

Tod said, "What would you like to do, Pa?"

"You really want to know? Well, it seems to me that little corner grocery store would be just the thing for me. Folks would drop in for a few things and maybe stop to pass the time o'day with me. I'd like that."

Joe got his grocery store, and we were making plans like two young kids just starting out. We sold all the stock but one cow and one pretty mare. The cow we had to have provided us with milk, and, of course the little mare had to be driven to a fancy buggy. The JABS were moving for the last time.