FOUR CORNERS
By
Chapter 04 - RUNAWAY TRAINS
1919-1920
"Well, Mister Welles, what do you think?" Henry McCarren asked as he waved his out spread arms at the land before them. There was a beautiful river before them, gorgeous, fertile land with trees and brush. Birds were singing, and the wildflowers were in full bloom.
"Too beautiful for a factory. More like a site for a home." Stanley Welles said as he looked over the land. "You sure about the town council?"
"In my pocket, huh?" McCarren said, smiling. "They're desperate for work so people won't desert the town. We'll employ, oh, about two hundred people in our furniture factory. We'll have showrooms, and the railroad has promised to make this town a stop, so we can ship our products. It can't miss!"
"You know, Hank, I had my doubts, but, now that I see it, it has possibilities." Welles told his partner. "Still, we should be careful. Too fast, and we can blow the whole deal. I don't like the idea of building a two million dollar factory, and having it do a belly flop into red ink."
"Stan, you've always been a worrier." McCarren said, taking off his hat, running his fingers in his hair, then putting the hat back on. "But then again, you have kept me from making big mistakes in the past, and I appreciate it. Don't worry like you normally do. This will work." The two men walked back to their car and drove off.
One year later, the workers at the new Welles-McCarren furniture factory cheered as the first piece, a chest of drawers, came off the line.
The Welles-McCarren factory
was joined by the
Bailey Manufacturing Company joined them later that same year. They made pulp and paper products.
All three were successful.
All three dumped much of their sewage into the river.
The sewage began its slow absorption into the ecosystem, and into the bodies of the people who used the water for irrigating their farms for food, their cooking and drinking.
But the changes took a long, long time.
Through the depression, through the Second World War, the factories continued their output.
The people continued to use the more and more tainted water.
Finally it happened.
1947
Henry and Abigail Lemon struggled through the difficult birth.
The midwife finally got the baby out and nearly dropped it when she saw what she had.
Henry looked at his son and withdrew in horror. He ran outside after grabbing the shotgun he kept over his mantle, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Abigail demanded to see her child. She screamed, turned her head and cried inconsolably.
The child was the first of the new, mutant children.
Abigail would have done as her husband did, but a doctor named Sam Murdock, asked to have the child. "Let me see what happened to your baby, Abigail."
"That's not my baby," she replied, "my baby died."
Murdock understood, and took the boy from her. He didn't kill the baby boy, but took it home and examined the child.
Murdock did all that he could in
Five more were born that year. Three were killed outright by distraught parents, two, Sam Murdock saved. He raised the three as his own, and when they asked about their parents, they were told they had died. Period.
Over the next few years, the parents of the town found themselves giving birth to the mutant children. Most had four arms and double pupil eyes, some found themselves with three arms, or four hands, or any number of limbs, or none at all.
Murdock and the other doctors watched as the town started to lose grip on its sanity. They called a town meeting to try and calm everyone down. This was in Nineteen Fifty-four.
Murdock was joined by Doctors Raymond and Williams who sat at a table on the stage of the auditorium at Welles high school.
Out in the audience were the townspeople along with their children, many who were mutants.
Murdock gaveled the meeting to order. He allowed the silence to settle on the meeting and hoped they would listen to him and his colleagues. "I realize that the births in the last few years have been difficult. . ."
"Difficult?" Lonny Vincent said, "We're birthin' monsters!"
"Not monsters, mutants." Raymond said.
"What are you talking about?" Lonny asked angrily. "My wife stopped me from doing the right thing when that freak was born! I have a right to see to it I have a normal child!"
"Lonny," Williams said softly, "I got one too, but that don't mean I'm gonna kill it. There is a reason why this is happening, and we all want to know what it is. I am as horrified about this as any of you. But there is something inside our bodies that is making this happen."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Lonny said, furious, "you ain't saying it's my fault?"
"We're not saying it's anybody's fault, Lonny. . ." Raymond said.
"Lonny, sit down and shut up, and let these men finish!" Mayor Robert Taylor said. "It's high time we started trying figure out what's going on here, and if there's any way to change what's happened. That's not gonna happen if you don't sit down. We need facts, not fear!"
Lonny said, "I'm scared, bless it all!" He broke down, dropping to his seat, resting his head on the seat in front of his, and cried. The crowd understood what he was feeling, but the mayor was right, they needed to think, not panic.
"I think we all understand what Lonny's feeling right now. I know I do." Williams said "When I saw my little girl at birth, I hung my head and cried. I thought the wrath of the Lord was on me."
"I think we all know now, that if this is happening to just about everyone in town who've given birth, I think it's safe to say that whatever is causing this, is doing it to everyone in town. Am I right?" Murdock said.
There was murmuring throughout the crowd.
"Yeah but what do we do about it?" Jake Masters called from the back row. "These kids are gonna grow up, and we can't hide them forever. . ."
"No, we can't hide the children, but we will teach them how to hide what's different about them. But we will not panic, and most of all, we will not be ashamed of them. Something frightening has happened. We can let it destroy us, or we can beat it."
"How we gonna beat it? We don't know what caused it!" Mercy Jean Hammond shouted. "How do we know we can beat this? If it's something in our bodies, we may never find out!"
"Mercy Jean, I believe we can find out what happened, but we are going to need your help." Raymond said firmly. "What we are going to have to do is learn, so we can change what's happened to us. I know it's too late for the children already here. They'll be all right if we work with each other. I want to get to the bottom of this like all of you."
"Mister Mayor?" Murdock said.
The mayor stood up and said; "We are gonna build a research center to study this. I have taken the liberty of buying two of the old Bailey buildings they no longer need and begun the conversion to research labs. Doctor Murdock?"
"This is what we're going to do. . ." Murdock said as youths went through the crowd handing out stapled sheets of four pages each. The plans were outlined in detail of the effort to get to the bottom of the mutations was outlined.
Grim faced, the assembled listened to the plan, not sure if they really wanted to, or if it were a pipe dream of finding some way to put an end to what some felt was a living nightmare.
It took them a year to put the buildings together and get the equipment to stock everything. The town was grim faced as the mutant births increased, and the town redoubled their efforts to get the labs established.
Within a year, all the residents in town had samples of every kind taken. They also started an intense school program that emphasized the sciences.
They taught their mutant children to hide their differences. Some in the town wanted to mutilate them by removing their second sets of limbs. That idea was shot down quick.
Still, many of the mutant children adjusted. Others did not.
Jake Kramer snapped at age ten, jumping off the
tallest building in town, the town hall. This led to an intensified move by
some to see to the mental health of the mutants. Some still abandoned their
children, but they were taken in by others. Some would be parents sterilized
themselves and left town. Some who had left found themselves coming back to
It wasn't easy, but the town did all that it could to make sure no one else found out what happened to them. Those who left never spoke of it to anyone.
1960
"You know, Doctor Murdock, I never realized
how fascinating the field of genetics were until I
heard you speak on the subject." Frank Morgan said as he and Sam Murdock
walked down the hall at in the Sciences building at
Murdock smiled. He knew what the young doctor to be was saying, and was impressed by his grasp of the fundamentals of the course. "Well, it isn't the sewage in and of itself, but the chemical compounds in it, or what is formed when it is in the water for a long time. It isn't instant by any means, but a very gradual process that has to take a long time. Remember, that we're still just grasping the idea of how chemicals may affect the human body, no matter how long we've studied it, we still have much to learn."
"No doubt." Frank said.
'In any case, we're going to learn a lot more as we go along." Murdock said as they came to the top of the steps of the ornate building. "The field is wide open, of course, and we can go in any direction. My interest is in how chemicals affect the body if the compounds in action are unknown."
"I would think you'd go back to the source of the chemicals and analyze what went into them. If it's organic, say like something in water, but wasn't water soluble until it interacted with another chemical, then it might be able to affect an organic creature."
Murdock stopped in his tracks. Whether he knew
it or not, Frank had hit on what had been eluding his team in
"I don't know, sir, you're the doctor." replied Frank.
"Well, you may have hit on something that I hadn't thought of yet." Said Murdock.
"I'm sorry, I was just speaking out loud. . ." Frank said, not sure what his teacher was getting at.
"No, no, no. Water can wear away at something for a long time to wear it down. It can also take a longtime for something to reach the right proportions before it affects some thing." Murdock said as his eyes started to see something before him. His mind started to make some calculations as he said absentmindedly, "I want to thank you, Frank. You may have just solved me a very big puzzle." He ran down the step to his old Ford four door, got and drove away for the weekend.
"You're welcome, sir. . ." Frank said staring at the departing car.
"I tell you, Bill, this just might be the big piece of the puzzle we've been looking for." Sam Murdock said as he drove the Ford to the river.
"You think the compounds are in the river water?" Bill Reynolds had been dragged out of his office by his friend and colleague to the river's edge. In the trunk there was a dozen one-gallon glass jugs. "Explain to me about the jugs again."
"You're not that dense." Murdock said.
"No, I'm not that dense. But humor
Murdock sighed. "Okay, fine have it your way. We're going to take the water we collect and analyze it, then take the samples of tissue and blood we've gathered over the years and see if any of the chemicals match."
"Why didn't we dot this in the first place?" Bill asked.
"You really want to know?" Asked Sam.
"Yeah."
"We're not as smart as we think we are." Sam told him. "Besides, I don't see you coming up with any better ideas."
"Okay, I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
"You know, I think we might start trying to get some of the fluid from the currently pregnant moms and see if there are any traces in the fluid."
Sam shook his head. "You know, this has been pretty hard on everybody."
"Yeah, I know. The hardest part about it is that we didn't guess that it might be something we all had in common." Bill said as he stopped drumming his fingers on the car door. "The other day when I delivered Mazie Hawkins new boy, I could swear there was a slight greenish tint to her fluid. I got some on a towel, and I wondered why it was, so I put it in a sack and took it back to the lab. I haven't looked at it yet."
"You think her fluid had some of what we're looking for?" Asked Sam as he parked the car.
Bill looked out the window, then at Sam. "I think so. That colored woman wept hard when she took that boy in her arms. Kept saying, "Lord, forgive me for my sins. . " over and over again. They gonna have to be brought into this. They just can't be left out any more."
"Most of them live right on the river, so they've been getting the water directly. . . " Sam said.
"You don't think the coloreds have been having the mutant babies before we started, do you?" Asked Bill. He whistled. "That means, if that's true, they've got mutant teenagers. . . ."
"That makes sense." Sam said. "Poor people who really have no where else to go, get hit when things get rough first."
"You want Jim with us when go to check out the other side of the tracks?" Asked Bill.
Sam nodded. "We're gonna need another pair of hands when get there." He parked the car, got out and took out two of the jugs then went to the river, held the jugs under the water, filled them, then got two more and did the same as Bill joined him.
Soon, all the jugs were filled and their caps twisted tight.
Sam stood up, looked at his colleague and said, "I want to go over to Mazie's house."
"You got your bag?" Bill asked, wiping his hands on his pants.
"Of course I do. What kind of doctor do you think I am?" Sam said indignantly.
Bill chuckled. "I just wanted to make sure."
"Uh huh." Sam said as they got in the car and drove off.
An hour later, Sam Murdock examined the baby boy who moved four perfectly shaped arms in circles. The twin heartbeats were listened to, and he and Bill agreed the child was in good health.
The baby's father, a big construction worker named Mordecai watched the two men intensely. "You must know somethin'."
Bill glanced at Sam, then looked at him. "Why do you say that?"
"Two white doctors coming to this house right after the baby's born with four arms and two pupils in his eyes. I picked him up and listened to his heart, don't ask me why I did it, I just did. I heard two hearts beatin'. Now I may not know what y'all do, but I know somethin' in our bodies that done this. Done it to other babies, too. Somethin' is wrong here."
The two doctors looked at the big man. He'd put two and two together and didn't like the answer. "It's happened to us on our side of the tracks, too." Sam said quietly. "Have any of the other babies been killed, too?"
Mordecai shook his head. "Couldn't nobody kill the babies. I can't kill mine just cause of this. Our doctors can't tell us nothing about it. What's happenin' to us?"
Bill ran his finger through his hair. "We think it's got something to do with the water we use for everything."
"In the water?" asked Mordecai.
"In the water." Sam said.
Mazie brought glasses of lemonade and set them down on the table. "What's in the water?"
"We don't know yet." Bill told her. "We know there isn't any fish in the river now."
"Ain't been for twenty years." Mordecai said. "I got to go thirty miles just to fish."
"Whatever's in the water must have killed off the fish." Sam said, carefully choosing his words, "but by time it gets to us, it's not as bad."
"I don't know what you talking about. We gotta draw our water, like everybody else on this side of the tracks." Mazie said. "We ain't got running water."
Bill and Sam looked at each other. "Have you any other children?" Asked Sam.
Mordecai and Mazie looked at each other. "We were hopin' this one would be right." Mazie said. "I love my children, but I want one who ain't like this."
"Anyone else have children like this?" Asked Bill.
"Just about everyone around here, mister." Mordecai told them.
"You kept it secret?" Sam asked. "For how long?"
"I guess the first one came out about forty-seven, that right Mazie?" Said Mordecai. "Just about every child since then is like that." He was pointing at his newborn son. "Tell me, mister doctor, why?"
"Why?" Was the hardest question he had to answer, and the one that was still a mystery to Doctor Sam Murdock. "Why?" Taunted him, mocked him for the last ten years, and the answer was right in his face, and he almost couldn't see it. He looked at Mordecai and realized these people had been using the water directly for years, so their mutated children had been born much earlier. "Mordecai, I want you to think about what I'm going to ask you. To the best of your memory, when was the first four armed child born?"
Mordecai glanced over at his wife, who was picking up the child for the first time, he realized he had to do the same as so many parents on his side of town did, raise the child and teach it to hide his arms in plain sight. There was no lying to this man, now, he'd figured it out. He went over to the writing desk where his papers were. He did a quick search, then found a old, well kept three ring binder in a drawer, pulled it out and opened it. He then put on his glasses and read until he came to the first entry. "The first one of these children was born June six, nineteen hundred and forty five. The baby was found and taken in by Mama Dozier. She raised it, and went around to everybody who found out they had a four armed baby. . ."
Both doctors' mouths dropped.
". . . and saw to it that the babies survived by takin' 'em in." Mordecai finished and closed the book. "I guess you want to go find them?"
"Yes." Murdock said.
"They live in the old furniture factory." Said Mordecai as he saw his wife breast feed the child for the first time. "Mostly because it's isolated now, since the owners deserted it. We do what we can, cause we figured it wasn't happenin' to you white folks."
"It happened to us, only much slower." Reynolds said as he put the medical bag's contents back in. "I got one."
"Well, I guess we all in the same boat." Mordecai said as he put the book back.
"Why'd you keep the diary?" Murdock asked.
"Somebody had to." Mordecai answered. "Besides, I watch 'em some days, but I figure we gonna have to move 'em. Where, I don't know."
Bill looked at Sam, knowing what the black man meant. They were just as scared, and with the way most whites felt about blacks, it would be difficult at best, impossible at the worst to convince anyone that what happened to the blacks was important. "I don't think you have anything to fear, Mordicai, but it will be hard. Are they in school?"
"What schoolin' we can give 'em."
"Please, take us to them. I want to examine them. Please, it's important." Sam said, his eyes pleading with the skeptical man in front of him. "I think I can help."
"I can't just take you up there. Mama Dozier won't allow any one to hurt them children. I tell her about you, but she may say no." Mordecai told him. "She runs that place with a firm hand, and don't care who you are if she thinks you're trouble. You gonna have to give me time."
Sam Murdock knew that was all he'd get for now. "Fine. But let her know what happening here is also happening with white people, please."
"Third time you've said please to me mister. You must be hurtin' bad." Mordecai said. "I tell you straight, I don't trust you. You make a big show of carin', but that don't mean nothin'. You could be just settin' us up for trouble."
"I'm not like that. . ." Murdock said.
"We'll see it in the by and by." Said Mordecai. "We'll see."
To be Continued
This story posted by permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.