Torrent Falls

by Jan Watson

  Copper laughed, her anger gone. “You’re right about that. My problem is I care about you.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re sisters in Christ. I’m convicted to love you and help you in any way I can.”

  Dance hung her head. “What’s my job?” she whispered.

  “Your job is to let me.”

  “What if I don’t want your help or need it?”

  “I can respect that, but there are times in everyone’s life when we need each other. God didn’t mean for you to be so alone.”

  Dance twirled her tin plate. It danced like a top across the table, then fell with a jarring clatter. “That’s how I feel when there’s too much going on. My nerves get all jangled.”

  “Do I make you feel that way?” Copper asked.

  For the first time Dance looked at Copper straight on. She had beautiful eyes, light brown with specks of gold, framed by finely arched eyebrows. Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow naturally tinted pink. Copper thought it sad that Dance didn’t seem to know how pretty she was.

  “Not so much,” Dance replied. “Your voice puts me in mind of rain falling on the roof, kind of makes me sleepy.”

  A commotion on the porch made them turn in unison; Ace ambled in. “Well, lookee here,” he said, not bothering to remove his hat. “Trouble herself sitting at my dinner table.”

  “How are you, Ace?” Copper asked.

  “Dry as a lizard on a log,” he said as he plopped down. “Woman, pour me some buttermilk and take this young’un.”

  Dance took a pitcher from the milk cupboard and poured three glasses. “You want to keep him ’til I dish up the stew?” she asked Ace.

  “May I?” Copper said, eyeing the child in the sling across Ace’s chest. As soon as she stood to take him, baby Jay set to kicking and laughing. His little legs reminded Copper of a fat stewing hen’s, and she had to stop herself from planting kisses on his dimpled knees. When he smiled, his eyes disappeared in crinkles. “My word,” she said when he was released into her arms, “what are you feeding this bruiser?”

  Ace tipped his chair, balancing on its back legs, considering her from under his hat. He reminded Copper of the banty that greeted her every morning, always trying to best the bigger barnyard rooster, trying to be bigger than he was.

  “What don’t he eat? That’s the question, right, Mommy?” Ace put a piece of potato and some peas from his plate on a saucer for Jay and moved it in front of the baby. “Ye got to let that cool,” he instructed Copper.

  She laughed as the baby smacked his mouth and strained toward the saucer. With a spoon she mashed a bit of the food, then blew on it. “Here, baby.”

  “He likes it better if ye call his name,” Ace said. “Ain’t that right, Jay?”

  Dance didn’t light long enough to eat a bite. She jumped up for salt, then for clean rags to use as napkins. She poured more milk and left the kitchen to go to the well for water.

  “What are you here for?” Ace asked as soon as Dance left. “It will kill her if ye take this baby away.”

  “Why would I do that?” Copper scraped up bits of food with a teaspoon. Jay looked like a baby robin opening its mouth for a worm. “Obviously he’s thriving.”

  Ace chucked his son under his double chin. The baby fell back against Copper, laughing.

  “He is, ain’t he?” Pride shone from Ace’s coal black eyes. He took off his hat and hung it on his chair. “He goes to work with me near every morning; then after dinner I put him in his cot and he sleeps the afternoon away. Spares Dance some worry.”

  Copper stuck her finger in her glass of buttermilk and let the baby suck it off. “What causes her to fret so much?”

  “Huh!” Ace grunted like surely Copper had the answer to her own question. “She’s got a nervous disposition, and she’s afraid people like you will say she’s a bad mother.”

  Copper’s face colored. Hadn’t she come here to check up on Dance and Ace? Hadn’t she been afraid for the baby’s well-being? Wasn’t that a judgment of sorts? “Well, people like me would be wrong.”

  “See, the thing is, Dance don’t know that. Her own mommy sent her away to live with her mammaw when she was just a bitty girl. Good as Fairy Mae was to her, I reckon Dance never got over losing her mommy.” Ace slapped his knees. The baby startled; he’d been nodding off in Copper’s arms. “I see to my son and I see to my wife. Cain’t nobody fault me.”

  His words gave Copper pause. Both she and Dance had lost their mothers at a young age. Copper’s to death and Dance’s to circumstance. In that way they were alike, but why had they turned out so differently? Neither Mam nor Fairy Mae could be faulted for the nurturing they provided, so it wasn’t that, and they both knew the Lord. So what was it?

  Copper could see Dance through the open door. She stood at the wash shelf pouring water over her hands.

  “That’s one of her habits,” Ace said. “Keeps her calm.”

  Jay grew heavy with sleep. His little head lolled against Copper’s shoulder. “Do you want me to put him in his cot?” she asked.

  “Nah,” Ace said, taking his son. “I’ve got to change him first. Finish your dinner.” Baby in arms, he went to the door. “Dance, come on in here and sit a spell with your company.”

  What a good father Ace is turning out to be, Copper mused as she watched him care for the baby. Who would have guessed it? Of course, that’s the answer. I had a daddy who loved me like Ace loves Jay, but Dance did not. Even now, Copper knew, none of the Whitts saw much of their father.

  By the time Ace had the baby settled, Copper and Dance were through with their meals. Ace sat back down, draining his glass of buttermilk.

  “Do you have time for a story?” Copper asked.

  Ace laced his fingers behind his head, his elbows sticking out like wings. “Work ain’t going nowhere. It will wait, I warrant.”

  “It was March of 1866,” Copper related. “I was two days old when a terrible flash flood swept my mother away.”

  She told them of men searching up and down Troublesome Creek and how her mother was found too late. “My daddy was left to care for me alone. He used to pack me around tucked inside his shirt as he walked the mountains searching for peace.”

  “I’ve heard of that flood,” Ace said. “My own pa was part of the group of men that looked for Julie Brown. Folks still speak of it, but I never realized you was that young’un.”

  Copper blotted her cheeks. She was never able to tell the story without tears. “When you came in with Jay in that sling, Ace, it put me in mind of my father and the tender care he took of me.”

  Dance hid her face behind the skirt of her apron. Her shoulders shook.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Copper told Dance. “I just wanted you to know I understand there is more than one way to raise a baby. I think you and Ace are doing very well.”

  “I ain’t upset for me,” Dance said from behind the apron. “It just makes me lonesome-like for you, losing your mommy that away.”

  Copper made her way home the lost way, back through the forest cathedral. She’d never have guessed there were so many shades of green: tops of evergreen trees black-green in shadow; bright green spongy mosses; yellow-green and gray-green trembling fern fronds; and brownish green pine needles as soft as carpet underfoot. They all blended together to paint a picture as pretty as a song. Majesty, she thought. God’s majesty bestowed on man.

  The time away was good for her. She dearly needed some wandering time to remember who she was—it was so easy to get lost in the demands of her busy days. “‘He leadeth me beside the still waters,’” she said as Mule Head headed for home. “‘He restoreth my soul.’” But now she was anxious to get home. It felt as if she’d been gone for days.

  Hezzy was catching a breeze when Copper got back from the Sheltons’. She sat on the porch stirring the air with a paper fan. “You caught me loafing,” she said as Copper approached. “Them girls won’t hardly let me do nothing.”

  “Good
for them,” Copper replied, dipping a cup of water. “Want some?”

  “I’ve got me a cup,” Hezzy said, holding it up. “Like I said, them girls is taking care of me.”

  “How is Remy this afternoon?”

  “I’m not happy with what I’m seeing around her wound,” Hezzy said, “and she spiked a fever about an hour ago. The girls give her an alcohol rub.”

  Hezzy accompanied Copper to the bedroom. When Cara drew back Remy’s light cotton covering, Copper was surprised to see not much more than a pile of bones held together by tightly stretched skin the bluish color of skimmed milk. She looked like a baby bird fallen from the nest before its time. It took Copper’s breath away. She had grown used to Remy’s condition, but her brief respite revealed a truth she didn’t want to acknowledge: Remy was slipping away.

  “Take a gander.” Hezzy pointed to Remy’s thigh.

  Copper gently removed the lint bandage. Sprinkles of charcoal powder clung to the lint. All this time the deep laceration had seemed to be healing. She knew from Simon’s tutelage to permit it to heal from the inside out and so had packed it with sterile gauze, pulling a small amount out with boiled tweezers each day. But as she bent close, a putrid smell filled her nostrils, and the drainage had changed from watery to thick. The edges of the contusion weren’t pink anymore but an awful, angry red with dark edges.

  “It’s setting up to mortify,” Hezzy said.

  Copper stepped back, her hand to her chin. “I pray not. If it gangrenes, we’ll have to find a surgeon. This is not within my ability.”

  “She wouldn’t survive having her leg cut off,” Hezzy said. “They ain’t enough of her left to put up a fight.”

  Remy flinched.

  Everyone stared. “Did you see that?” Darcy asked.

  Copper put a hand on either side of Remy’s body and leaned over. “Remy, I won’t let that happen. You hear me? I am going to fight for you. We all will fight this battle for you—Hezzy, Darcy, Cara, and me. We won’t give up!”

  Remy’s emaciated hand crept across the bed and covered Copper’s. One finger tapped against hers, a blessed message of hope. It was enough to set all the women in the room to crying. Lilly woke from her nap and joined the cacophony with loud wails of her own.

  Darcy lifted Lilly from her bed and hugged her close. “These is happy tears, Miss Lilly Gray. We’re happy because Remy’s awake.”

  “Mama’s dolly waked up?” Lilly asked.

  Copper could hardly believe her ears. Mama’s dolly? From the mouths of babes . . .

  Lilly wriggled free of Darcy. She tugged on Copper’s skirt. “Rock me.”

  A thousand needs tugged at Copper: Remy, supper, milking—had she fed the chickens today? But there was her baby, clinging to her dress, reminding Copper who came first. “Baby girl,” she said, swinging Lilly up, “you’re exactly what Mama needs. Let’s go find the rocker.”

  “I’ll sit with Remy,” Hezzy said, “and I’ll be careful of my words.”

  “Think I’ll fry up some chicken and make a cobbler for supper,” Darcy said. “We need a celebration.”

  “I’m staying,” Cara replied. “Dimmert will find me easy enough. I’ll go milk Mazy.”

  All Copper had to do was sit on the porch with Lilly and ponder what just happened. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought she would ever see this day. She supposed Remy would lie up in bed like a baby for the rest of her earthly time, or worse yet like a dolly, a body without a brain. Mam always said there are things worse than death, and Copper knew it to be so. Still, like a mother clings to her stillborn baby, loving that shell of broken promise, Copper clung to her remembrance of her friend Remy. She wouldn’t let her go. She couldn’t let her go. But now, with just the tap of a finger, joy pierced her heart and soared higher and higher—to the very heavens.

  Just as Mam always said, “Where there is life there is hope.” Copper knew God was blessing her quest to save Remy. Now she had to figure out how to save Remy’s leg. She’d tried every remedy she could think of—good ones from Simon’s medical texts and old-timey ones she’d known herself: dusting the wound with burnt flour, feeding Remy onion juice with a medicine dropper to purify her blood. Neither seemed to be working.

  She remembered a horrifying story her daddy told of the past war when soldiers’ wounds were soldered with a hot poker. Copper shuddered. She could never bring herself to do that.

  What she needed was an honest-to-goodness doctor, a man with a medical degree. Guilt, that old bugaboo, crept round her heart, threatening to strangle her with doubt. Well, it was too late now. In Remy’s state she couldn’t be carried off the mountain, and by the time they found a doctor willing to make a house call, her leg would gangrene for sure.

  Copper prayed for God to send a way to bring Remy through the valley of death on her own two legs, a whole person. This might be too much for her, Copper Brown Corbett, but all things were possible with God. Copper claimed Matthew 7:7. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Then she rocked her baby and waited for supper.

  John surveyed the new house. It was coming along nicely, and he was rightly proud. He’d hired Ezra Whitt to work alongside him, and Dimmert helped out when he wasn’t busy tending Copper’s crops and animals. Those Whitt boys were worker bees. Ezra helped John finish the chimney today.

  At least with the one room done he had a place to sleep and cook—or more likely open his canned beans. Mostly he took his meals with Cara and Dimmert, though Cara was not the cook Darcy was.

  John slapped his hat against his thigh and whistled for Faithful. They walked along in companionable silence. He was settling, he knew, for breathing the same air as Copper. It was not as he had wished, but it was all he had.

  Maybe he should think on what Alice Upchurch had advised. She’d surprised him right smart before she left for Lexington. He couldn’t remember her even speaking to him before, but on that day she’d followed him across the yard. “A word,” he remembered her saying in that haughty voice of hers. Well, he’d stopped to listen. It wasn’t as if a body could say no to Mrs. Upchurch.

  But if he did what she counseled, he’d have to leave for weeks, possibly months, with no assurance of success. He had the funds, but it was a gamble at best. And John was not a gambling man. No, he’d best stay put. At least this way he could keep Copper safe and keep an eye on her. His biggest fear was losing her in one way or another. Being friends was better than nothing. He was sure on that. Whoever heard tell of such a thing as annulment anyway?

  Maybe he’d take supper at Copper’s tonight. The thought lightened his mood. He whistled as he walked.

  “Leeches,” Hezzy’d said. “We need leeches.”

  So Copper was in the creek and it was nearly dark. Why hadn’t Hezzy asked for leeches while it was still light out? She turned up the lantern, then set it and a Mason jar on the bank and commenced her search. She picked the nasty-looking creatures from the underside of rocks and dropped them into the jar. Yuck, she’d always hated the slimy things—hated the way they snuck up on you while you were swimming or wading and attached themselves to the tenderest skin. Water ticks, Daddy called them.

  It was pleasant being in the creek at dusk—except for the leeches of course. When she and John were children, they used to sneak off and go swimming after dark. It was forbidden, but she did it anyway, chancing the sting of Mam’s willow switch. That just made it all the more exciting.

  Copper sighed. Seemed she couldn’t keep her mind off John. He’d come by earlier and stayed for supper. Sitting right across the table from her, he talked crops with Dimmert, teased Darcy, and fed Lilly from his plate, as if life was as it had been. All the while, Copper hurt so bad she couldn’t eat.

  She waded out of the water and wiped her feet in the grass. The leeches flipped this way and that in their creek-water bath. Copper wondered why they didn’t suck each other’s blood. Turning the lantern off, she headed home, finding her way
easy enough in the dark.

  The coal-oil lamp cast a golden glow over Remy’s wound as Copper and Hezzy bent to their task. Copper pinched a leech from the jar.

  “Find the head,” Hezzy said.

  Both ends looked the same to Copper. The vile thing squirmed between her forefinger and thumb.

  Hezzy took it from her and wiped it with a soft cloth. “It’s the smallest end.” Holding the leech with the folded cloth, she placed it on Remy’s wound, where it lay like a dead slug, paying no attention to the job at hand. “I need me some sweet milk.”

  Copper fetched a cup from the kitchen, then watched as Hezzy smeared the milk on Remy’s wound. Once again, Hezzy directed the head to the festering sore. She did the same with two other parasites. Then she and Copper watched.

  “Leeches work like buzzards,” Hezzy said, “cleaning up.”

  The buzzard leeches siphoned blood. “Don’t pull it off,” Hezzy cautioned. “It’ll fall off on its own when it’s had its fill.”

  One by one the parasites detached, looking like overripe grapes against Remy’s pale skin.

  “These is good suckers,” Hezzy said while she laid them on a saucer and sprinkled them with a little salt. The leeches disgorged Remy’s blood. Red splotches stained the small white plate.

  As if she did this every day, Hezzy washed the leeches and dropped them into a glass filled with fresh water. “These is keepers.”

  Copper bathed Remy’s oozing wound and covered it with cotton wool. “What do we do now?”

  “You go to bed and I’ll keep watch. I’ll catch me a nap after a while.”

  Copper straightened Remy’s bedclothes and turned down the lamp wick. “I wish I hadn’t let Lilly Gray go home with Cara.”

  “It was for the best,” Hezzy said. “Ye didn’t want the little thing to witness this.”

  “You’re right. And Darcy’s with her. She’ll be fine, but I won’t sleep a wink.”

  After prayers Copper crawled into Darcy’s bed. Too tired to braid her hair, she fumbled with pins and combs and let it fall unfettered. She stretched her tired muscles, then plumped the bolster pillow under her head. Darcy must have just changed the pillow slip; it smelled of starch and lavender. This was the first time she’d slept in a bed since Remy got hurt. The curtains were open, and the window raised to catch the warm, early summer breeze.