Free View From a Kite by Maureen Hull Page B

in trouble again, too. We are supposed to report him if we see him trying to escape, but we all keep our mouths shut when we see his shadow moving along the west wing, or notice his skinny form gimping down the drive after dark—so he makes it off the property fairly regularly. It isn’t so much that he needs a drink—well, that’s part of it, but his friends smuggle in God’s own quantity of booze when he wants it and The Witch never finds more than half. No, it’s just that he is wild to dance.
    Every third or fourth Saturday night, he breaks out and hitches a ride to the nearest dance hall. Sometimes he gets roughed up when the local rednecks take offence at him dancing with their girls (he’s really good, so he’s really in demand), but that never stops him. He always gets stinking drunk, he always dances until his feet blister and the blisters break. The nurses say when they roll him into bed and undress him his socks are bloody.
    He comes staggering and crashing around the laundry door at three or four a.m. If OFN is on back shift she’ll drag him in, lock the door, and shush him upstairs to his room. Last weekend, The Witch was on, so she left him on the floor inside the door and lectured him for twenty minutes. Joe didn’t really care by then, it was like falling down in the mud, one more thing to be endured before he could get to his bed. He’ll be sick and footsore for the next week, but he won’t give it up. To punish him, Dr. Robichaud has cancelled his next leave home. He says it is because Joe has had a “setback” and needs extra bedrest, but we all know better. Joe is so morose, the only thing that cheers him up is the thought of the next dance. You’d never think it to look at him—he’s homely as a mud fence. Even when he’s dressed up he looks like an old bed nobody ever makes, but somewhere deep inside, in his head, or his heart, he is a prince. A prince or a poet. Only a prince or a poet would dance his feet bloody.
    Before 1882 the causes of tuberculosis were believed to include: hereditary disposition, unfavourable climate, sedentary indoor life, defective ventilation, deficiency of light, depressing emotions. Almost any kind of unconventional behaviour was suspected of causing the disease: too much food, too much booze, too much partying, newfangled fashions, excessive use of tobacco, improper position of the spine while sitting, a passion for dancing. The threat of consumption was used to try to keep people from having too much fun.
    In the early 1800s, when waltzing was all the rage, it was called the “ally of consumption and death.” When the polka became fashionable it got slapped with the nickname Polka Morbus. All that swirling and swinging about was potentially lethal.
    But you could kill yourself at a dance without actually setting foot on the floor. Slouch in your chair, wear a frivolous dress with an immodest neckline, scoff one petit four too many—and it’s off to the graveyard with you.
    â€œâ€¦If the muscles (of the splanchic area) are allowed to relax though improper position in standing or sitting, the result is stagnation of blood in the abdomen, and this in turn results in a vicious circle of evil effects…”
    I say we get up on our chairs and dance like hell.

CHAPTER 15
    We are stalled on the main drag in the middle of downtown Sydney in a bus, a Walter Callow bus with a big sign on it so everyone knows we are a bunch of cripples and misfits and invalids. I hunch down on my seat, scribbling, scribbling, hoping none of the people walking by on the sidewalks, gawking in the windows, will recognize me. Why should I care? I don’t know.
    Twice a year the San gets the loan of the bus and takes everyone deemed well enough on a recreational expedition. Last time, I’ve been told, they went off to see the Christmas lights and parked the bus on a side street near the bandshell so they