“ADA!” her mother screamed.
“I have to go to her. She’s blind, and she’s been fearful since it happened.” She had a cloth in her hand, folded neatly. She put the cloth inside his half-open overalls, along the side where he’d been shot, then lifted his bloody hand and pushed it over that place to hold the cloth there.
Fresh pain flared at the pressure, and he grunted, but managed to hold the cloth like she wanted him to. He didn’t think he was dying. He hurt, and he felt weak and faint, but somehow he knew the wound wasn’t mortal. From a range of ten feet or so, Ada’s young friend had almost missed him—unless he’d been trying to wing him. That was possible.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be back quick as I can. I need to settle her.”
Jonah nodded, and she eased up to her feet. Before she left him, she bent down and kissed him on the lips. Surprised, Jonah didn’t have time to react before she’d stood again.
“Thank you for coming for me. I didn’t know when I’d see you again, if I ever would.”
Then she turned and left.
Jonah tried to breathe around the pain, and, in this moment of sudden solitude, tried to sort his thoughts. A man had killed her father. From the evidence of this morning’s events, Jonah knew it was a hobo, a stranger, who’d done the deed.
Her father had been murdered, and Ada was now alone with her mother. Her blind mother.
In one of their talks while she’d been recovering up on his mountain, she’d told him some about her parents. They were quite old, and her mother had gone blind later in life. In her own house, she wasn’t helpless, but she couldn’t be left alone, or go far beyond its walls. The only place she’d gone since her sight had left her, Ada had told him, was church on Sundays.
She couldn’t be left alone. There was only Ada for her now.
Her father’s death was why Ada hadn’t come to him. Her mother’s need was why she never would again.
That pain, of knowing he wouldn’t have Ada even for the little sliver of time he’d thought he might, dwarfed the thumping pain in his middle.
But his loss wasn’t the chief concern. Ada’s pain was what mattered. She was close to her parents, devoted to them. And now she was without her father.
She came back in, now carrying a basket, and set it on the table beside the bed. No, it wasn’t a table—it was a bookcase. There was a milk-glass electric lamp and a small stack of books on top. She set the basket on the books.
As she sat beside him again on the bed, Jonah looked around the room. The walls, papered in a plain pale blue with a faint stripe, were unadorned, except for one frame that held a paper with writing on it. The other furniture was a dresser with a mirror, not unlike Grace’s, and a chifforobe against the far wall. Nothing but the books showed much of the person this room belonged to, but they were enough. He knew.
“This is your room.”
She nodded as she opened the rest of the buttons at the side of his overalls and pulled the bib down. He looked at his side and saw that his shirt was soaked in vivid red, and there was a hole about the width of his finger in the fabric. When she lifted the shirt to show his belly, blood pulsed thickly but lazily from a corresponding hole in his side. Ada took the bloody fold of cloth from him and pressed it to the hole.
“Can you turn to your other side at all?”
Jonah did, clenching his jaw against the spike of pain.
“It went through. It went through. And it’s far enough to the side I don’t think it got any of your organs. I only know a little about anatomy, but I think I’m right.”
With immeasurable relief, he lay on his back again. “That’s good.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. Doc Dollens lives just a few miles toward town. Chancey’ll run and get his truck, and they’ll be here in an hour or so, if Doc’s home. I’m just going to bind this up until he gets here, alright?”
He caught her busy hands in his. “Ada.”
She stopped and fixed her eyes on his.
“I’m sorry about your pa.”
A twist of grief crossed her face. “Thank you. I’m sorry Chancey shot you. He thought you were a stranger and ...”
“I understand. I’m jus’ glad he didn’t kill me.”
Ada burst into a storm of tears. Ignoring the pain in his side and the blood still running from the wound, he pulled her into his arms, set her head on his chest, and held her.
By the time Doc Dollens arrived, Jonah’s pain had doubled, and he was having trouble keeping conscious—or even to know when he was awake and when he was dreaming. He knew Ada had stayed at his side, but otherwise, the world had spun and swirled and faded in ways beyond his ken.
He knew the doctor was there, and felt the new pain of his work, and he tasted water when Ada gave it to him, but he wasn’t sure when all that had happened or how often.
He remembered trying to tell the doctor about his children, where they were and how he needed to send word, he remembered how crucially important that had been, but he wasn’t sure he’d managed to make the words.
His next moment of clear sense came in the late afternoon. He could tell by the light. Ada was sitting in a chair beside the bed, reading.
“Ada.” He reached for her. His hand was clean. She’d washed him. He wished he could remember that. Now that he was noticing, he saw that he was bare-chested, wearing nothing but a bright white bandage around his waist. By the feel of the cover on his legs, he wasn’t wearing much down there, either.
He hoped she hadn’t washed him all over. He definitely wanted to be awake for that.
He’d tended to her in those ways, seen her beautiful small body, seeming frail but truly strong. Sprinkled with light freckles like gold dust. He’d tried to be a gentleman and not look on her where she’d want to be modest, but it hadn’t always been possible.
At the sound of his voice and the reach of his hand, she looked up from her book and smiled. “Jonah. How do you feel?”
“Sore. Ada, the children. They—”
She took his flailing hand and held it to her chest. “They’re with the Cummings. You said. Doc Dollens sent Chancey up with word. He’s going to bring them down to us.”
“No. They don’t know that boy. They’ll not give my children to a stranger.”
“He’s carrying a letter from the doctor.”
A letter would have held no sway for him, but the Cummings could read. It might be enough to persuade them. He didn’t like the idea of a stranger—the man who’d shot him, the man who’d been with Ada, who’d been the only man in this house—taking charge of his children, but he didn’t know how he’d stop it now. And he wanted them with him.
He tried to sit up, but the pain was like a belly full of hot rocks, shifting with every move.
She sat on the side of the bed and pressed his shoulders down. “You’re going to have to let me nurse you for a while, Mr. Walker. Doc Dollens says the wound is clean and the bullet didn’t get anything but muscle, but you need to stay off your feet for a few days, and it’ll be a week at least before you can even try to get back home—and that’s only if you get a ride.”
“The animals ...”
“You have friends, Jonah. They will help.”
He hadn’t thought of anyone as a friend for years. But Hez Cummings had said he’d send his boys to look after the homestead. Maybe they’d stay up there as long as he needed to stay down here. He was too weak and tired to imagine an option, so he’d believe she was right and it was so.
She held his hand and studied it like she’d find some kind of secret in the creases of his knuckles. With her eyes away from his, something fell from her features, like a curtain dropping away, and Jonah saw how exhausted she was, how wan and slack.
“You look so sad, darlin’.”
A mournful attempt at a smile flitted over her mouth. “I am. I lost my daddy so horribly, and I thought I’d lost you, too.”
“When’d it happen? Mind me askin’?”
“Four days ago.”<
br />
The day he’d killed her bear.
Without further prompt, she added, “It was a wanderer. My folks have always been kind to men like that, offering them a meal in exchange for help around the farm, or shelter in bad weather. They’ve welcomed them with open hearts since men like that started walkin’ the roads, and never had a problem. But this one, I don’t know what happened. He stole a few things, and maybe Daddy caught him doin’ it. Momma only heard the scuffle. But he left my daddy with his head crushed. The sheriff said he beat Daddy with the radio we bought him. I found Daddy lyin’ in the hall. I think he died tryin’ to get back to my momma.”
As she’d spoken, the mountain had come into her voice. Whenever she spoke with deep feeling, her heritage overcame her education.
“Ah, Ada,” he pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”
She began to cry again. “I miss my daddy so, but there’s so much more this means than losin’ him. I can’t leave Momma alone. I can’t keep my job, and I can’t go up the mountain. I don’t know how I’m gonna take care of her, and I don’t know how I’m gonna get by without seein’ you!”
“I’m right here, Ada. Don’t you fret.”
She sniffed her tears to a halt and frowned at him. “Will you stay? Could you stay?”
He was sore and tired, and thinking was hard. He wanted Ada in his life. But this world was nothing he knew, and he was too old to learn how to live in it. Nearly everyone he’d met down here had wanted him dead. He was a stranger, and he didn’t belong.
But the thought that he’d lose even the tiny sliver of Ada he’d hoped to have made his heart sick.
Too slow in his thinking, he didn’t find an answer before Ada had one herself. Hopeless sorrow filled her face, and she nodded. “No, I know. You can’t. Your home is your home.”
“I don’t know how to make it right, darlin’.”
“I don’t, either.” She sniffed sharply and wiped her face with the hand he didn’t have hold of. Her back went straight, and she let out a brisk, cleansing breath. “Well. I’ve got you now, and you’re a blessing in time of darkness, Jonah Walker. I’m sorry you had to get shot to stay a spell, but I’m not sorry to have you with me. I’m tempted to pray for your slow recovery.”
He pulled her close and kissed her. “You go on ‘head and pray for that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Chancey brought the children down the next day, and Ada brought them into the bedroom, where she’d insisted on, and rigorously enforced, Jonah’s bedrest, allowing him to rise only when he needed to attend to his body’s business.
He didn’t fight her; in fact, he enjoyed her fussing. And he needed it. This gunshot wound was his first serious injury or illness in his life, and he’d lost a significant quantity of blood. Doc Dollens had told him to expect to be weak and wan for several days, and he hadn’t been telling a story. Jonah was tired all the time and sore, and when he stood, the world rocked beneath his feet. If this was akin to the vertigo Ada had experienced, he was doubly sorry for her in retrospect. Now, he was happy to let her take his arm and lead him when he needed to handle his business.
This house had a room with toilet, inside the house, with a sink and a tub in the same room. Jonah had heard of such a thing but had never seen one before. He found it unsettling and unsanitary—and when Ada had shown him the pull to make water rise up in a noisy rush and carry off what was in the bowl, he would have jumped back if his belly hadn’t been so sore.
He wondered where the water took it off to—not back to the well, he surely hoped—but he didn’t want to talk to Ada about such things, and there hadn’t yet been anyone else he could ask.
That strange inside-outhouse wasn’t the only unsettling thing around in this world. The buzzing electric lights in every room hurt his eyes and gave him a headache. And sometimes a car or truck rolled by, its wheels grinding up the gravel road and its motor growling, which startled him every time. These were things he’d heard of but had never, or at least rarely, experienced, and they all made him feel jumpy as a bug in a burning log.
Even the air felt wrong. It seemed to have weight and lie on the floor of his lungs.
When—what was it, a day and a half after he’d been shot?—Ada led Elijah and Bluebird into the bedroom where Jonah sat, propped in bed, their eyes were big round saucers of trepidation and befuddlement, and he knew what they were feeling. A strange man had brought them to a strange place, where their pa was hurt, and they’d already been worried for Ada. Their world had been turned all the way over in this short spell of time.
They’d never been any farther down the mountain than Red Fern Holler, nowhere near any kind of electricity or motor, or hot water coming straight out of a pipe with a turn-knob.
“Pa!” Bluebird squealed and rushed into the room, climbing on the bed to throw herself into his arms. It hurt, she might as well have kicked him in his side, but he didn’t slow her down. He wound his arms around her and held on tight.
“My baby girl. Were you good for Mizz Esther?”
“Uh huh we made little pies and I got to feed the chickens and play with Mary Jo she has a doll with yellow hair like mine. And Mr. Chancey took us for a ride in a truck! It’s bumpy and goes fast and loud.”
Jonah smiled over Bluebird’s head at his son, who stood quietly beside the bed. “What’d you think of that, boy?” He’d become fascinated with motors, reading about cars and trains and airplanes in his library books, and telling Jonah all about them.
Elijah tried for a noncommittal shrug, but Jonah saw the keen light in his eyes. He’d been astounded. “It was alright. You got hurt.”
“Just a little. I’ll be fine.”
Bluebird shifted on his lap, putting her little knee into his gut as she turned around. “And you found Mizz Ada and now we together and don’t hafta be apart no more!”
Ada was still standing in the doorway. Jonah looked up and met her eyes. Two worlds full of impossible need crashed in the look they shared.
Jonah must have dozed off; he woke alone in Ada’s bedroom. But he was not alone in the house. He heard the rumble of voices, a sound he hadn’t heard around him since he’d been here. With the children in the house, activity and conversation had increased.
He lay there for a while, listening. He couldn’t make out more than the general sense that people were talking, and who they were. His children. Ada. Chancey, that man-boy who was around far too much. And, he thought, Ada’s mother. All out there, talking together. And him alone in here.
Ada had brought her mother, Bess, in to meet him last evening. She was an old woman, small as a sparrow, with white hair, soft, creased skin, and clouded blue eyes. Jonah had been struck by how anxious she’d looked, how tentative, as Ada had led her forward. She’d reached out small, withered hands, and Jonah had, as Ada had explained beforehand, allowed her to feel his face and shoulders. Only then had she spoken to him.
Now, out there with his children, he thought he heard ease in her tone, though he couldn’t make out anyone’s words.
Willing the pain to step back for a minute, Jonah pushed himself carefully to a fully seated position and eased his legs off the side of the bed. All he had on were his summer drawers, which was a problem, but Ada had washed his overalls and left them, folded, on the top of her bureau. His shirt, she hadn’t been able to get clear of the bloodstain. But at least he had his overalls. The bullet had just nicked the very edge on the front. It had gone through the back, but that didn’t matter much.
Could he get into his overalls on his own, still woozy with blood loss, his side stitched up and aching, and all his muscles around his middle still feeling oven-hot?
In the short time Ada had been taking care of him, she’d been attentive enough that he’d had no need to call on her; when he’d needed her, she was there.
Just now, the only need he felt was for company. He was lonely, and the people he loved were just barely out of his reach. But he didn�
��t know if he could get to them on his own.
He didn’t want to call out for her, especially not with Chancey around. Jonah wasn’t a jealous man, maybe because he’d never before had call to be, but he didn’t like that boy. The way he hung around this house, like he was waiting for something. The way his eyes seemed to fix on Ada always. Not to mention the way he’d shot him.
Jonah would be dumbstruck if the boy was more than eighteen or so, half his own age. But something in that boy made his hackles raise up.
Using Ada’s bookcase as a support, Jonah levered himself to stand. Then he put his hand on the wall and waited for the room to stop dancing around, and the fiery waves of fresh pain to ebb. Eventually, he found that his feet were fairly steady and his legs would hold him, as long as he took it slowly. He made his way to the bureau and picked up the folded overalls.
He’d never thought about how he put his clothes on before he’d gotten shot. Everything, every kind of movement, even breathing, hurt. He let the denim unfold and lay out down his legs, and thought about how to get this done without falling over or tearing up what was only just starting to heal.
He was going to have to sit down again, wasn’t he? Which would mean getting back up again.
Jonah sighed and shuffled to the bed.
Though he’d been brought through the house after getting shot, he’d been distracted by shock and pain and hadn’t paid much attention to it. Since then, he’d seen nothing more than Ada’s room, the strange bathroom, and a bit of the hallway between them. Now, as he eased his way in the other direction down the hall, to the sitting room, one hand on the wall to keep his balance, Jonah paid attention. This was Ada’s home.
The house was smaller than his own but brighter, and in the stark difference, Jonah saw how much of his home he’d let decay around him since he’d been alone with the children. All his attention had been on keeping them well—healthy and fed and loved—and he’d paid no mind to the house itself, except to keep it standing. Curtains put up maybe before he was born still hung in the windows. Paper peeled off the walls. Most anything of any value had been traded or sold off before he’d been in charge of the place, and he’d cast off nearly all the rest in the same way. He’d used castoff newspaper from Hez Cummings’ place to fill in and cover up places in the walls that gapped or leaked, without ever thinking once what things looked like. His home was spare and grim and grey.
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