Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  “She knows how. She used to do it all the time before Willy was born.”

  So the boy’s birth had indeed been the turning point. Morgan found some of his suspicions confirmed, but other new ones were raised, too. And he wondered why Julie had begun to lose her enthusiasm and turn surly.

  Best to broach the subject now rather than let her stew.

  “Miss Hollstrom,” he said quietly, “is something wrong?”

  “I’m fine. Please, go on.”

  He’d used the wrong strategy. Her spine stiffened and she was pointedly refusing to look in his direction. Once warned that he might pry, she had her defenses up. He would have to get her to lower them.

  “In time I think your mother will recover fully. There should be no reason why she can’t take on her normal responsibilities to her family. It isn’t going to come overnight; changes of this magnitude never do.”

  She caught a corner of her lower lip between her teeth and tugged on it but that didn’t still the trembling. Though this was hardly the reaction Morgan expected, there was too much about Julie Hollstrom he didn’t know, too many questions he dared not ask, especially in a place as public as McCrory’s with the inquisitive Ada bustling about. Before he could suggest they find somewhere more private to continue the conversation, Julie suddenly turned to him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

  In a whisper that let him know she was every bit as aware of Ada McCrory’s presence as he was, she asked, “And just what am I supposed to do when they don’t need me any more?”

  Chapter Nine

  The desperation in her question caught him by surprise.

  “I thought you were going to come work for me.”

  She blinked away those threatening tears but her hesitation made clear that she either didn’t or couldn’t quite believe him and needed confirmation.

  “You still want me to?”

  “Of course, I want you to.”

  He wanted to laugh and tell her he wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if he didn’t, but he knew she was too vulnerable now to appreciate even the most gentle of sarcasm. Later, if necessary, he would tell her how much he needed someone with her strength, her calm. And later, if possible, he would ask her why she seemed eager to leave her father’s strict control and yet was also so very afraid to.

  “Is it really all right with Papa?”

  “He agreed, but only with certain conditions.”

  “Such as?”

  “I didn’t like his terms. I agreed to them only because he didn’t leave me any other choice.” That stretched the truth a bit, but not very much.

  “Did he leave me any choice?”

  “Not much. I’ll pay you eight dollars a week, but five of it goes to him. He said it was to pay off an old debt.”

  What kind of debts do children owe their parents? What kind of parents demand payment? Why does your father hate you? he wanted to ask, along with a dozen other questions.

  “What else?”

  “He wants you available to take care of your mother if the treatment I’ve prescribed for her doesn’t work.”

  “That much at least is reasonable.”

  But something else wasn’t reasonable.

  “Look, I was prepared to offer you ten, so that still leaves you five dollars every Friday. If you want, I’ll give him the extra two bucks, and pay your debt off that much sooner.”

  He never meant to be so forward, especially in plain sight of Ada McCrory, but he couldn’t help taking one of Julie’s hands in his. It lay limply, as though she didn’t know what to do, and slowly he let his own fingers slide across the back of it. He could almost count the bones, for there was little flesh under the skin. He touched a knuckle covered with a rough scab where she’d knocked the skin off somehow, and when he turned the palm upward, he saw an almost healed cut undoubtedly made by a kitchen knife.

  He didn’t dare go further, up to her wrist where the bones were almost visible, or to the shoulders so painfully thin under her blouse.

  “Are those terms acceptable, Miss Hollstrom?”

  She heard his voice, but his touch deadened all her other senses. She no longer felt the close afternoon heat or smelled the sharp tobacco smoke. The sticky sweetness left on her tongue by the ice cream disappeared, and a warm dryness replaced it. She knew, in some shadowy corner of her mind, that she was staring over his shoulder toward the front window, where Ada was displaying a bolt of blue calico to Estelle Kincheloe, but Julie’s eyes saw nothing. Morgan’s fingers, gently stroking across her palm, were all that existed.

  “Miss Hollstrom, are you all right?”

  His voice, raised and sharp, broke through her spell. Her hand lay on the counter; his were on his knees as he leaned toward her.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Did you just ask me something?”

  “I did.” His voice dropped again. “I asked if those terms were acceptable.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she mumbled, folding her hands on her lap again. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No, Miss Hollstrom, I’m the one to apologize. This isn’t something to be discussed over ice cream in the general store.” But where? And when? “Look, I have a lot of things to do this afternoon. I’m going to talk to the marshal about opening Horace’s house so I can sift through the wreckage and see if there isn’t something of value to be salvaged. Would you care to come and help me?”

  *

  Morgan and Julie spent the rest of Thursday afternoon cleaning the small house Horace Opper had lived in and used as his office. They made so little progress that when Julie met Morgan at the house Friday morning, she could hardly see any difference.

  Katharine did not volunteer to help, nor was she asked, but when Julie returned to her own house to fix lunch, Katharine agreed to take Wilhelm’s to him. How she was to carry the heavy tray presented a problem until Del suggested a picnic basket. Horace, it turned out, had one he wouldn’t be using.

  Saturday was much the same, except that now progress could be seen. The front parlor, which served as the waiting room, had been thoroughly cleaned. The floor shone with a fresh waxing, the window sparkled after its first washing in several years, the two small tables had been dusted and outfitted with periodicals bearing the current year’s date. Katharine checked all of the magazines to make sure she hadn’t missed anything of interest.

  Late on Saturday afternoon, the first patient arrived. The two companions who brought him in explained they were prospectors working a small mine in the mountains north of town. A shoring beam had given way, crushing their partner’s right leg.

  “We spent hours diggin’ him out,” the shorter of the two men explained. They hadn’t given their names, but the taller one addressed the patient and apparently forgot some of his caution.

  “It’s gonna be awright, Louie. We found ya a doc, an’ he’s gonna fix ya right up.”

  Julie saw no signs of such confidence in himself when Morgan got his first look at the injury.

  He helped carry Louie on his improvised stretcher to the room designated as the surgery, though it hardly looked the part. The enameled table was clean, but the counters were still littered with assorted instruments, spools of ordinary sewing thread alongside surgical gut, rolls of gauze, and sundry items of dubious use and value. The last thing Morgan wanted was to perform a major operation under these conditions.

  Julie stood in the doorway and waited for instructions. She discovered her hands were clammy, and the sight of so much blood had done queer things to her stomach.

  Morgan didn’t seem to notice her.

  “All right, gentlemen, we’ve got him settled now, so you go on into the other room and let us get to work,” he told Louie’s friends. Then he signaled to Julie. “Close the door,” he whispered.

  She did as she was told, then remained by the door, not daring to venture any closer.

  “Is he still alive?” she whispered back.

  “Unconscious, but alive. I’m afraid
you’re about to have your first lesson in surgery.”

  “You have to operate to set his leg?”

  He reached for a pair of shears tangled with other implements Julie didn’t recognize.

  “I don’t think I can set it,” he told her, snipping away at the bloodied trouser leg. “This leg is going to have to come off.”

  She felt the blood drain from her cheeks and chin. A queer numbness remained.

  “Are you all right?” Morgan asked.

  She nodded. This wasn’t what she had expected. Delivering babies and sewing cuts wasn’t very difficult at all, but an amputation required more fortitude than Julie thought she had.

  “Don’t be afraid to tell me if you feel sick or start to faint. You wouldn’t be the first one.”

  She didn’t altogether lose consciousness, but she came close. And she did lose her lunch.

  When it was over and Louie had been moved to a cot hastily set up in what had been Horace’s dining room, Morgan calmly walked to the small unpainted building behind the house and followed Julie’s example. He had struggled for hours against a nameless fear, wishing a thousand times that Horace Opper hadn’t dropped dead in McCrory’s alley. Wiping sweat from his eyes and spitting the last of the foul taste from his mouth, he cursed the woman who had brought him to this state.

  “Damn you, Julie Hollstrom,” he hissed in the near darkness while the nausea subsided. “Why didn’t you leave me alone? Who appointed you to sainthood? And why the hell do you have to drag me with you?”

  Aware that she expected him back, he straightened and ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair. He couldn’t indulge in this kind of self-pity when he had a patient to watch.

  *

  Katharine complained of a headache Saturday after supper, so Julie stayed home while Morgan watched Louie through the night. Louie’s two nameless friends volunteered to share the vigil.

  Winnie Upshaw brought a pot of coffee around nine o’clock. She offered him supper and he felt guilty telling her Julie had already brought him sauerkraut and sausage. He let Winnie bring the coffee. Every hour he took Louie’s temperature, watching it rise steadily as infection settled into the miner’s old, tired, battered body. Morgan began to doubt Louie would ever learn he’d lost the leg.

  Sometime between dark and dawn, when it was possible to move through the house without a lamp and not stumble, Julie arrived. She brought a skillet of fluffy scrambled eggs flavored with ham and peppers, a platter of crisp bacon, warm, buttered toast, and fresh coffee.

  The aroma brought a weak but sincere smile to Morgan’s face.

  “A true angel of mercy,” he said, taking a plate from the basket over her arm.

  He looked awful. In a way, he looked worse than when she’d first seen him. Blood, sweat, and the ever-present dust stained his once clean white shirt. Dark hollows shadowed his cheeks, with weary circles of almost the same color under his eyes.

  “I think you had better eat this and then get yourself some sleep, Dr. Morgan.”

  A yawn prevented any protest.

  “Aren’t you going to have some of this? There’s enough here for the both of us and then some.” He dished up some eggs and took a couple slices of bacon.

  “I’ve already eaten. How is Louie? Any better?”

  Morgan shook his head.

  “I told his friends a coupla hours ago that I didn’t think he was going to make it.”

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. You tried so hard.”

  He shrugged.

  “It happens. He was an old man who didn’t take very good care of himself, and he had lost a lot of blood.”

  He took a clean cup from the basket and handed it to Julie. She filled it with steaming coffee, never once thinking of all the times she had performed the task before.

  “Thanks,” he breathed after the first scalding gulp.

  “If you don’t need me for anything else, I have to go home and get ready for church.” She took a step toward the door, then stopped. What she was about to do required a great deal of thought, more than she had time for right now, so she took a deep breath and let it out slowly with words she could hardly believe she was saying. “Would you like to come for dinner later? We eat about one o’clock, and I’m fixing roast beef.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Reverend Mr. Wintergarden was not usually given to short sermons, and he remained true to form that morning. There were those in the congregation who dozed quietly while he indulged his enthusiasm for a particularly obscure passage in Revelation, and there were others who paid rapt if confused attention. Julie did neither. She prayed.

  She prayed for the life of the injured miner, then prayed for forgiveness because she had asked for the man’s life out of selfishness: she wanted the glory of saving his life for Morgan. The man needed the victory.

  At her left, Willy fidgeted impatiently. She asked for strength in dealing with him, which she knew would be more and more difficult the less time she had to spend with him.

  She glanced down the pew to Wilhelm. Stern as always, he stared intently at the preacher. Wilhelm paid no attention to his son or daughter, but then that was hardly unusual.

  Julie did not pray for him.

  She prayed for Del Morgan until tears came to her eyes at the memory of the grave just outside the church. She had not had time in the past few days to talk to Winnie Upshaw about Amalia Morgan’s death, and she could not talk to Morgan himself about it, not yet. He was still too much a stranger to her.

  When the last hymn had been sung and Reverend Wintergarden gave his benediction, Julie slid as unobtrusively past Katharine as possible and headed for the side door, to hurry home ahead of the rest of her family.

  She couldn’t avoid walking past the grave, nor could she keep from looking at the rose bush.

  The damaged canes had been pruned carefully to conceal the worst wounds, and a single fresh blossom had just barely opened its fragrant petals, vibrant red in the summer sunshine. Julie had no idea when Morgan found time to tend the flower, but obviously he had not neglected this special duty.

  She turned her gaze and footsteps toward home and encountered a familiar figure square in the path, waiting for her.

  “Good morning, Hans,” she greeted stiffly.

  “Good morning, Julie.”

  “I missed you in church,” she lied, feeling horribly guilty. She hadn’t once thought of him, much less missed him.

  “I was busy at the farm.”

  He looked as he always looked, his hair a week longer, his shirt as clean and wrinkled as ever.

  As they walked through the open gate of the churchyard and crossed the empty street, Julie tried not to think about the confrontation to come. She struggled to keep her mind on Hans, who had dared to take her elbow when they reached the private precincts of the Hollstroms’ yard. He was saying something about a calf being turned the wrong way.

  “Like a breech birth in a woman?” she suddenly asked, taking an interest that obviously surprised Hans.

  “I…I don’t know about women. I only know cows and horses and sheep,” he stammered.

  “I watched a baby being born the other night,” she told him, forgetting his grip on her arm. “It, I mean he, was turned the wrong way, too. Dr. Morgan had to pull him out, and he said the baby would have died if I hadn’t been there to help. I helped deliver him, and Mrs. Baxter named him after me.”

  She had been excited, telling him even so briefly about her experience, but the excitement died quickly. There was no matching joy in Hans’ blue eyes, only cold disapproval.

  “Women do not speak of such things,” he told her through tightly clenched teeth. He let go her elbow with a gesture of distaste. “Go in the house and fix dinner. I will wait here for your papa and mama.”

  There was plenty of work in the kitchen to keep her mind off the coming debacle, but the harder Julie worked, the more she thought about Morgan and Hans. Morgan might not accept the invitation, which would solve a great
number of difficulties, but she did not wish for that solution. She was peeling potatoes to lay around the roast when she first admitted how badly she wanted him to come.

  But where would she seat him? In the past, she had put Hans on one side of the table, with herself and Willy on the other. Wilhelm and Katharine occupied opposite ends. But should she put Dr. Morgan beside Hans, and if so, which of them would sit directly opposite her? Or, considering his position as a hopeful future husband, did Hans rate the place beside Julie, with Willy next to Morgan? She certainly couldn’t put Morgan at her side and Hans opposite.

  With the roast and potatoes in the oven, she shook her head clear of etiquette problems and began the cake.

  Applesauce and cinnamon flavored the entire kitchen. After pouring the batter—of which she’d had more than enough sample tastes to be sure it was perfect—into the pan, Julie stood back from the oven just to drink in the delicious smell. A light tapping on the back door brought her out of her reverie.

  As soon as she opened the door, the look in his green eyes told her all she needed to know.

  “When?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron and sliding her glasses back up.

  “Half an hour ago.”

  She stepped back to admit him to the kitchen. He sat down at the table, unmindful of the bowls and measuring cups and mixing spoons that littered the checkered cloth. A long reddish streak of cinnamon lay under his forearm.

  “I knew there wasn’t much hope when they brought him in, but when he made it through the night, I thought maybe he had a chance.”

  He spoke calmly, either hiding his disappointment or not yet feeling it. After a long silence Julie walked up behind him and lay one hand on a weary shoulder. It shuddered with his sigh.

  “You did what you could,” she said. “Sometimes you just can’t do anything more. At least you tried.”

  “Yeah, at least I tried.”

  Her lower lip trembled; she bit it to hold it still and tried not to let her hand shake. But it wasn’t sorrow that sent nervous quivers up and down her arm.

  She had touched him to give him comfort, but that touch brought something else to her. A few days ago that hand had lain passive while he caressed it, chasing all coherent thought from her. Now she touched him, and the effect was as startling as it was different. For now she was as much aware of her surroundings and circumstances as she was of the hard muscle beneath her fingers. Only a layer of linen shirt separated her palm from the warm skin of his shoulder, but the spark arced that tiny distance and current hummed along the wires of her nerves. Her heart beat as unevenly as the dots and dashes of the telegraph code.