The doctor shut the bedroom door quietly and came into the living room. Joannah Bybee rose from her chair by the window and met him in the middle of the room.
"What is it doctor?"
"Well, Sister Bybee, we call it Saint Vitus' dance*. I guess the name comes from the twitches in the patient's arms and legs. You did the right thing in taking him out of school. We think it might be brought on by too much studying or worry about school work. It usually occurs in school age children. Is he a bright boy?"
"Oh, yes. Frank has always done well in school when he has been able to go." Joannah replied.
"Has he been ill before?"
"Last year I kept him out to rest for a while. He gets kind of worn down halfway through the year. Of course, there's the farm, too. Sometimes he has to stay home to help out, things being as they are."
"How is your husband doing with the railroad? I ¼always liked John."
"Oh, he's doing fine. They pay pretty well and he thinks he'll be able to come home next month for a visit."
"Well that's good. You keep that boy in bed for a few weeks now to rest up. After that, ease him into the chores and farm work while he gets his strength back. I'm sure he'll be fine, God willing. Let me know if there are any changes in his condition. Good day, Sister Bybee."
Joannah shut the front door with a sigh of relief. She crossed the room quietly and let herself into the boy's room. Frank was sound asleep on the bed in the corner. His face was flushed with a low fever and twitched occasionally as he slept. She smoothed his brown hair and sighed again. Somehow she would get the crops planted with the help of the older boys. It would be hard on Frank to lie in bed while Lee and Arley did all the spring planting. He was thirteen now and felt the responsibility of helping his mother while his father was gone. Somehow she would manage. She always did.
As Frank slowly got better he fussed and fumed about staying in bed. The whole family tried to think of quiet things to keep him occupied. The oldest girls, Nancy and Josie, gave him light household chores to distract him from the outdoors. He tended the fire in the stove or mixed the bread dough or rinsed the socks on wash day. Amy, who was just two years older than him, would come home from school with stories about all their friends. As he grew stronger and the weather warmer, he and Arley would go for short walks around the farm looking for milkweed plants along the ditch banks. They would dig the roots up and take them home for Mother to cook like asparagus. Mother was a good cook. Frank especially liked her mince pies and chocolate cakes. When the other children were off at school or doing chores he would sit in the kitchen and watch his mother bake while she told him stories from the Book of Mormon and from pioneer days. He decided that he wanted to join the Latter day Saint Church when his father would allow it.
When summer came Frank was feeling much better. He only needed short naps in the afternoon to keep him going. Frank started working on his schoolwork again. Now that school was out for the summer, Josie would come check his work and suggest new assignments. His sister Josie was a real school teacher. Frank especially liked Josie's music lessons. She taught him how to sing slow and sad or fast and bouncy. He learned to do all kinds of things with his voice to amuse himself. He learned to imitate the songs of the birds around the farm. He could do sparrows, chickadees, canaries, robins, meadowlarks, and the sea gulls that followed the plow. He could do a sage hen that would wake their dog out of a sound sleep.
By autumn Frank was better and could help with the farm. They had grown acres of cabbages this year. They also had a good crop of tomatoes. Father had suggested they take a wagon load of vegetables down to Salt Lake City. He thought the prices would be higher there. So Lee, who was nineteen now, and Frank, who was ¼almost fourteen, loaded their biggest wagon with all the cabbages and tomatoes it would hold. Mother packed some food for the boys to take with them and Josie made up bedrolls for the trip. Frank took his felt hat and his French harp.
The wagon was loaded so heavily that it took three teams of horses to pull it. It took three days for them to get to Salt Lake City. Frank thought it was a great adventure to be on the road with his older brother, sleeping in the wagon under the stars, in charge of the family fortune of cabbages and tomatoes. He whistled and sang most of the journey. He practiced the bird calls he had learned on the farm. And, as he heard new calls along the way, he would try to learn them. He learned the killdeer and the bluebird, the duck and the pheasant.
Lee and Frank sold their vegetables at the Farmer's Market on Second West and Third South in Salt Lake City. They went to see the Tabernacle and the famous temple that had taken forty years to build. The whole trip was a wonderful success.
When the boys drove the big, empty wagon up to their mother's home in Riverdale they whooped out a victory cry that brought everyone out of the house. Joannah looked at the glowing, tanned, healthy face of her youngest living son and caught her breath and smiled. God willing, she thought. God willing.
¼*Although Frank's illness was known as Saint Vitus' dance at the time, it was ¼actually a symptom of rheumatic fever. Bed rest was the best treatment of the day. This ailment may have damaged his heart and contributed to his death of a heart attack in 1957.
This story was pieced together from the recollections of Frank's wife and children. The sources for these recollections were:
A letter from Walter C. Bybee to Karen Skidmore Rackliffe, Dec. 14, 1987.
A telephone conversation with Ferrel Bybee, Dec 22, 1987.
Several telephone conversations with Zara Bybee Skidmore in
Dec., 1987.
A telephone conversation with John R. Bybee in Dec., 1987.
A taped interview with Eva Campbell Bybee and her children
Zara Bybee Skidmore, Walter, and Alice Bybee, Dec. 30,1987.
I could not determine exactly how old Frank was at the time of his ¼illness or at what age he made his trips to Salt Lake City, but all my ¼sources agreed that these events occurred in his teenage years and probably spanned several years. Despite some discrepancies in the overall ¼chronology, it is true that he had the condition known as Saint Vitus' Dance, was taken out of school several times for it, helped on the farm, was taught by his older sister, traveled to Salt Lake with wagons of vegeta¼bles, was a great imitator of birds, and recovered to serve a mission and raise a large ¼family.
I consulted two medical books to help me understand his ailment, one written in his day and one written recently.
R. C. Barnum, "Saint Vitus' Dance," ö People's Home Library
(Toronto, Canada: Imperial Publishing Company, 1917), pp 199 200.
Benjamin F. Miller, M.D., "Rheumatic Fever," ö Complete Medical
ödeòew York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 292.