After the Parade

by Dorothy Garlock

  “He may have fallen out of love with me and used the baby’s birth as an excuse to leave me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Johnny I used to know. That Johnny would have said plainly why he was going.”

  “He did. Later.”

  “Had he been looking forward to the baby?”

  “He could hardly wait We had names picked out for a boy, and a girl, but we just knew it would be a boy. The last few weeks he wouldn’t go any farther away than the barn for fear that I would need him. We talked about a little girl with red curls, or a boy with dark hair like his.

  “On the morning my water broke, he was so excited. Then when it was over, they brought Mary Rose to me and let Johnny come into the room. They had given me the bad news and told me how she would look, but they hadn’t told Johnny. I’ll never forget the look on his face. Nothing has been the same between us since. He became more and more distant. Then he enlisted—not to beat the draft; his number was not that high on the list. He just wanted to get away from me.”

  “Did he talk about the baby at all?”

  “No. All he said was that he couldn’t give me the family I wanted. He told me to get a divorce while he was gone and find someone that would.” Kathleen twisted the handkerchief in her hands and blurted, “I may be pregnant.”

  Jude sat back in his chair, showing not a trace of the surprise he was feeling.

  “I still had on my nightgown the morning he came to tell me that Gabe Thomas had been killed. It just happened. I know he was sorry because he got right up and left the house.”

  “You’ve missed your period?”

  “Yes, but sometimes I’m late.”

  “How do you feel about the possibility of being pregnant?”

  “I don’t dare hope—”

  He pushed a calendar toward her. “Show me when you had your last period and when you made love with Johnny.”

  Kathleen’s finger traced along the dates then stopped. “Here. I seldom go more than three days.” Her finger moved to another date. “And this is when we … were together.”

  Jude turned the calendar toward him. “At that time you were in your most fertile period, Kathleen.”

  “But … one time? After so long?”

  “Oh, yes. Many women conceive after long periods of i abstinence.”

  Kathleen began to smile. “Jude…ah, Doctor, I’ll thank God every day for the rest of my life if he lets me have this baby.”

  Jude frowned. “Don’t get your hopes up …yet.”

  Kathleen didn’t listen. “I can’t help but hope. If there is the slightest chance … I’ll hope. I don’t want Johnny to know. Please. You won’t tell him?”

  “If you’re pregnant, it isn’t my place to tell him; but I think he should know.” His voice was grave, his eyes somber.

  “No. He’ll be angry and think that I tricked him into my bed. I don’t want him to know. He doesn’t want to chance having another child. I don’t want him putting a damper on my happiness.” Kathleen’s voice was almost shrill. Her blood was pounding.

  “We may be getting the cart before the horse here.”

  “When will we know? I’ll not be able to stand the suspense.”

  “If your dates are right, you are six weeks into your pregnancy. Have you experienced any morning sickness?”

  “Not really. I haven’t been drinking my tea or eating my toast for the past few mornings, but I chalked that up to a case of the nerves.”

  “If you want an examination, I’ll call Theresa to prepare you. She’ll stay with you. She’s very good at this.”

  “Will you be able to tell with any degree of certainty?”

  “I believe so. While you’re being prepared, I want to refer to some of my medical books. I’ve not gotten to the place yet where I think I know everything.” His smile was beautiful. The woman who gets you, Doctor Jude Perry, will be a lucky girl.

  Kathleen walked home from the clinic with a smile on her face.

  Her heart was celebrating.

  At first she had been horribly embarrassed about Jude looking at her private parts. A sheet had been hung so that she couldn’t see the doctor or the nurse during the examination. With Theresa being there and acting very professional, as if this was something they did every hour of every day, it had been easier than she expected.

  When the examination was over, Jude came around the curtain and smiled down at her.

  “I can say, and Theresa agrees, that seven and a half months from now, you may expect a permanent addition to your family.”

  Kathleen had burst into tears. No way on earth could she have stopped them.

  Before she left she asked again that the visit be confidential, and was assured word would not leave the examination room.

  At home, she sat down in the big chair, leaned her head against the back, and allowed her mind to absorb the wonderful news. Next August she would have Johnny’s baby. It would be all right. God wouldn’t be so cruel as to give her this happiness, then take it away.

  She placed her hand on her stomach.

  “Oh, baby, I’m so glad you’re here. There may only be you and me; your daddy may not want you, but I want you so much, and I’ll love you so much—”

  Theodore Nuding watched Kathleen when she left the house and walked to the clinic. She would be doing some volunteer work, he presumed. If she had been sick, she would have driven the car. When she returned a couple of hours later, she was waltzing along, swinging her purse as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  When she was safely in the house, Nuding checked his watch, started his car, and drove to the Gas and Electric office. He had been carefully studying the schedule of the employees. This was the time that he could catch Harry Cole alone in his office.

  Harry Cole was looking through the mail left on his desk, searching for a letter from the head office in Oklahoma City. Two days after Dale left him, he had written asking for a transfer to another office. He was having difficulty here, he explained, because of his wife’s indiscretions. He had put up with it as long as he could; now he wanted out of the marriage and out of Rawlings.

  He rocked back and forth in his swivel chair thinking that he wouldn’t have to put up with the stupid cow. She had served her purpose; getting her pregnant right away as he had planned, hoping to stay out of the war.

  Harry was sure now that he would not be asked to run for public office nor be offered the position of trustee at the clinic. The bitch had seen to that. He had been humiliated when he was served the order restraining him from going near her and Danny. But anger, resentment, and knowing that he was right overrode the humiliation.

  This was best for him after all, he decided. He was tired of living with a wife who acted like a whipped puppy. He wouldn’t have any trouble getting another woman. This time he would be more choosy. He leaned back in his chair and visualized a young blonde with a slim waist and high, pointed breasts urging him to come to bed.

  He’d not marry again. He was certain that he could get what he wanted without tying himself down. There were other advantages as well. The money he earned could be spent entirely on himself. His daydreams were interrupted when he heard someone come into the outer office.

  “Office is closed until one o”clock,” he called. “Didn’t you see the sign on the door?”

  He listened for the door to close; when it did not, he got up from his chair and went to the counter where customers paid their bills. A shabby-looking man in an old brown hat stood there.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? The office is closed until one o’clock.”

  “I heard you and I saw the sign. I want to report that one of your electric poles is down and wires are on the ground.”

  “Where? Did you run into it?”

  “I’ll show you on the map.”

  “All right, but make it snappy.” Harry went back into his office. A large map of the area was under a glass on his desk. He sank down in his chair.

  “
I thought it important that I report the wires down.”

  “The road crew will be in soon, and they’ll know about it; but show me if it’ll make you happy, then leave. I’m busy,” he said harshly.

  Nuding moved around behind him to look at the map over his shoulder.

  “Humm … It was along here somewhere near where the two main roads meet.” He made a few humming sounds, and a grunt or two as if studying the map while he took the syringe from the metal box.

  “This is the place. Right here,” he said, and jabbed the needle just above the hairline in the back of Harry’s neck.

  “What the hell?” Harry jumped.

  “I’m sorry about that. I must have had a pin in my tie.” Nuding returned the syringe to the metal box and moved around to the front of the desk. “I lied about a pole being down.”

  “Get … out—”

  Nuding looked at his watch. “In about fifteen seconds.”

  Harry’s face began to sag. His hand fell from the edge of the desk onto his lap.

  “What … Why—” Then the slack mouth opened and closed without making another sound, reminding Nuding of a fish.

  “Why did I do it? Because you deserved it. I did you a kindness and injected you above the heart, so that it wouldn’t take long. Good-bye, Mr. Cole.”

  Harry’s eyes glazed over and his head fell to the side.

  Nuding nodded with satisfaction, walked calmly out of the office and back to his car. It was good to know that the poison developed by the Nazis during the war was as deadly as the seller said it was.

  Harry Cole’s sudden death of a heart attack was a shock to all who knew him. An employee had found him sitting at his desk when he returned after his noon meal. Dr.Perry, acting as coroner, could not find a mark on him and had to assume, without an autopsy, the cause of death to be heart failure. Sheriff Carroll agreed, and an autopsy was not ordered.

  Dale learned the news when Doctor Perry returned from the Gas and Electric office. She was stunned. Harry was not a good man, but she hadn’t wanted him dead.

  “Could my leaving him and the humiliation he suffered have brought on the heart attack?”

  “He appeared to me,” Jude explained, “to be a man who was constantly under stress. I can’t say that a little more pushed him over the edge. From what I learned while talking to the people who worked with him, he seemed during the past few days to have accepted your leaving and was looking forward to a transfer and a new life somewhere else.”

  “He was always angry at something or someone. If it wasn’t me, it was Danny, the men at the Gas and Electric, or someone that he imagined had slighted him in some way. It’s strange, but Harry was only happy when he was angry.”

  “The stress finally caught up with him.”

  “I’ve got to tell Danny.”

  “Pete has gone to the school to get him.”

  “Thank goodness for that. I should leave now, Doctor. I’ll have to make funeral arrangements.”

  “You’ll have all the help you need. I’ll take you to Mrs. Ramsey’s. That’s where Pete is taking Danny.”

  Later that day Dale was given a letter marked personal that had arrived at the office. The message inside came from the main office in Oklahoma City and was a dismissal.

  Numerous complaints about conduct unseemly in a manager of one of our substations have been made over the past year. We Have no choice but to dismiss you immediately.

  Dale ripped the letter to shreds and flushed it down the toilet. Harry was dead. Danny need never know that his father was fired from his job on the day he died.

  After the funeral, Dale and Danny moved back into the house. Life had suddenly opened up for Dale. The fear she had lived with for so long was no longer there. She tried to feel sorry about Harry’s death, but she felt only relief.

  Pete had been very discreet about the help he had given Dale, knowing that it would be easy for tongues to start wagging. Now that he knew what he wanted, he was satisfied to wait.

  Instead of leasing or buying land for his horse ranch, Pete decided to put all his assets into the rodeo promotion plan. He spent time talking to Keith McCabe in Vernon, whom he had met when he helped Johnny with his horses. Keith was crusty, a fount of information about the rodeo business and willing to share his knowledge. He had contacts who could supply the information he didn’t have.

  Johnny had become as irritable as a cow with its teat caught in the fence, and Pete told him so — often. Finally one morning, Johnny told him to find another partner for his rodeo scheme because he would be unable to raise the money for his part without mortgaging the ranch, and he would not do that because Kathleen owned part of it.

  “Why the hell don’t you go see her?”

  “I don’t want to intrude,” Johnny retorted sarcastically. “She seems to have plenty of company.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Every time you come out here you’ve got something to say about her. She’s had her hair cut. She’s making progress on her book or Barker came and fixed her sink. She baked a peach pie or some other bit of news.”

  “I like going there. She’s good company.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Dammit, Johnny. You’re going to mess around and lose that woman. She’ll pack up someday and hightail it out of here and you’ll never see her again.”

  Johnny turned and leaned over the motor he was working on. Not with a flicker of an eyelash did it show that his heart had jumped up into this throat.

  “Is she leaving?”

  “No, but for some reason she seems to smile and laugh a lot more than she did. She’s happy about something.”

  “Maybe she filed for the divorce.”

  “Have you been notified?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then she hasn’t filed.”

  “I suppose you’ve been divorced and know all about it.”

  “I’ve not been divorced, and I will never be if I can help it. When I marry, it’ll be for as long as I live.”

  “Good luck,” Johnny said, and walked away.

  It no longer worried him that Pete would make a play for Kathleen now that he was so enamored with Dale Cole. It was a relief in a way that Pete was keeping an eye on Kathleen. It shook him when Pete said something about her moving away. He hadn’t thought of that prospect.

  He hadn’t seen Kathleen since the night of the carnival two weeks before. If he went to see her now, just six days until Christmas, he’d have to have a reason. He couldn’t just walk in and tell her that he was so hungry for the sight of her that he couldn’t eat or sleep, or that wanting; to make love to her was causing his guts to boil just thinking about it.

  The only rational thing he could say was that he wanted her to have the gifts he had made for her that first year he was away. The year when he really didn’t care if he lived or died.

  He would wait, he decided, until a couple days before Christmas, then go see her and take the chance that she wouldn’t slam the door in his face.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Kathleen was both happy and fearful. She was happy because of her pregnancy and fearful each time she went to the bathroom that she would see color, which would mean that she was aborting. She didn’t even mind the morning sickness that usually lasted not more than an hour. It was unpleasant, but she endured it gladly because it meant that she was really pregnant.

  She longed to tell someone about this wonderful thing that had happened. If she told Adelaide, she would argue that Johnny should be told. So would Marie and Pete, They all loved Johnny. She love him too; but when he found out, he would hate her. She couldn’t bear having him think that she tricked him into making love with her so she could have this baby when she knew he had sworn never to father another child.

  The days passed one after the other without as much as a call from Johnny, not that she expected one. The book was half-finished. She wrote to her editor and promised the complete manuscript by April.
At night she would read one of the books she brought home from the library. Her favorite authors were Zane Grey and Bess Streeter Aldrich. She read A Lantern in Her Hand twice, something she almost never did.

  Mrs. Frisbee, the librarian, told her about a new book by another Kathleen, Kathleen Winsor. Forever Amber, a rather racy historical novel, was one of the year’s bestsellers. It was enjoyable reading, but Kathleen was not particularly interested in English history.

  Her other pleasure was the movies. She went on Sunday nights when fewer people were there. The big nights were Friday and Saturday. Some of the Rialto movies were old. She didn’t mind. She went to see an old W.C. Fields picture even though she didn’t like slapstick comedy.

  As Christmas approached, she got into the spirit and decorated her living room with red paper bells, and silver ‘icicles’ hung on the green ropes she looped across the window. She mailed Christmas cards to Tom and Henry Ann in Red Rock, Hod and Molly in Kansas, and to the McCabes’s.

  Pete had been by to tell her that she was invited to spend Christmas at Jude’s. In addition to Theresa and her boy, Dale and Danny would be there.

  “I don’t think I can come, Pete, but thank Jude for inviting me. Barker asked me several days ago. Invite Johnny. If he knows that I won’t be there, he’ll probably come. I hate to think of his spending Christmas alone.”

  “I’ll ask him. Hey, you look awfully chipper. Did someone die and leave you a million dollars?”

  Kathleen laughed. “I’d look a lot more chipper than this if that happened.”

  “I’ll have to bring you some mistletoe. There are big clumps of it in the trees along the road. I’ll hang it in the doorway so I can kiss you every time I come over.”

  “You don’t have to go to all that trouble.” She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “You are a dear, dear friend, Pete. I want you to know that.”

  Pete was to remember those words in the days ahead.

  Nuding was exhausted. He sat in the chair in her room and looked around at what he had accomplished during the past two weeks: the plump high bed, satin coverlet and fancy pillows, the Persian carpet on the floor, the armoire filled with clothes from Neiman Marcus, lamps, the desk and typewriter, the dressing table with drawers filled with creams and perfumes. He even had a selection of books for her to read.