Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  “Then I have your promise she will marry me as planned.”

  Was the man serious? Apparently he was, because he put no question mark at the end of that statement.

  Morgan sighed impatiently.

  “I have nothing to do with it. I can’t promise things for someone else. If Miss Hollstrom has said she’ll marry you, then that’s her business, not mine. I’ll lose a damn good nurse, more than likely, but there’s nothing I can do about that, either.”

  “She won’t work for you after we are married,” Hans insisted. He drew himself up a little taller but he still lacked several inches of Morgan’s rangy height. “She will be my wife and work in my home.”

  I don’t doubt that, Morgan mused silently, bitterly.

  He was hot, standing in the sun, and there were more comfortable places for conversation, even uncomfortable conversation, than the side of an outhouse. But when he made a move to walk toward the house, he found Hans blocking his departure.

  “I am not finished yet, Dr. Morgan.”

  “I see that.”

  “You do not know Julie as I know her. I know her weakness and how it almost ruined her life.”

  A man’s past—or a woman’s—was a private thing in the Arizona Territory. Too many people wanted it that way. Del Morgan found himself one of them.

  Morgan bit off the end of the cheroot and spat it out. He watched where it landed, the little wisp of dust rising and then settling. He almost expected the tobacco to catch fire and smolder in the piercing sunlight.

  “Let’s leave Miss Hollstrom’s past out of this discussion. If she wants me to know about it, she can tell me, all right?”

  Reluctantly, Hans agreed, but not without a few final words.

  “You are a man without a wife, Dr. Morgan, and you will spend many hours with Julie every day. I would be easy for you to take advantage of such a—”

  “Damn it, you fool!” Morgan turned away from the younger man and stared up towards the blinding sun. If the discarded stub of cigar hadn’t kindled, his temper had. “I don’t want the girl, Hans. I have no use for her, except as a nurse. Why can’t you leave it at that?”

  “All men have needs.”

  Morgan’s fist raised, not threatening Hans but poised to strike the bleached wall of the outhouse.

  He had watched a man die today, and he had had little sleep. Exhaustion and frustration ate away at his nerves, leaving them raw and painful and more sensitive than he could stand. Slowly he lowered his hand until it hung tensely at his side and he turned to face Hans once more.

  In a strained, angry voice he said, “Six years of cheap whisky takes away a man’s need. I don’t want your girl, Wallenmund, and even if I did, I couldn’t do anything to her.”

  A kind of horror spread across Hans’ features, and he backed up a step.

  Morgan made a sound that might have been a laugh, but if it was, it was full of bitterness.

  “Impotence isn’t contagious,” he assured Hans. “You needn’t fear failure with the girls at Nellie’s tonight.”

  But Hans, for whatever reason, seemed unable to remain in Morgan’s presence a second longer. He turned without another word and started toward the house. Morgan didn’t watch him; he kept his eyes on the dusty bare soil at his feet until he heard the back door squeak open and then shut.

  *

  When Hans had announced he wished to speak privately with the doctor, Julie hadn’t worried. However, when both men remained outside longer than she thought either of them would find comfortable, she insisted to herself she was doing nothing but checking to make sure they were all right.

  She hadn’t intentionally listened while she looked out the kitchen window, and she hadn’t heard all their conversation. Only Morgan’s tensely whispered words came back on the scorching breeze that stirred the curtains. Hans stood with his back toward the house; Julie neither heard him nor saw his facial expressions. She could read every bit of Morgan’s pain in his.

  If she had found them engaged in a rolling, tumbling brawl, she would have been less surprised than at this revelation.

  She knew exactly what Morgan was talking about.

  She tried to tell herself she had been worried about some of his motives and what their working so closely together would develop into. This news should have reassured her, but oddly it worried her even more. It wasn’t a lie, of that she was sure. Morgan, whatever else he may be, wasn’t a liar, and no man would admit such a thing about himself unless it were true.

  She ducked into the pantry the instant she saw Hans turn and head for the house. Until he walked through the kitchen and on into the parlor, she didn’t dare to breathe. She did not wonder that Morgan hadn’t followed.

  When Julie peeked out the window, Morgan was walking slowly toward the house. His shoulders seemed more stooped, his steps more weary, and he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs as though to rest before a long climb. Julie caught her breath. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove for tea.

  When Morgan came into the kitchen, quietly and without letting the door slam, Julie jumped. She turned to face him, remembering somehow to put a smile on her face first.

  “Mama suggested some tea,” she said, knowing how banal such a statement sounded. “Would you care for some?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re gonna kill yourself if you don’t stop behaving like this was New York or Ohio or wherever it is you folks came from. You can’t keep cooking all summer, not here, not in this heat. Draw your mother a glass of cold water or make her some lemonade,” he snapped.

  She shrank from his anger until, an instant later, she realized she was not the intended target. But before she could say anything—though she had thought of nothing appropriate to say anyway—Morgan apologized.

  “I think I’d better take my leave now and go home. I could use some sleep, and after yesterday and this morning, I don’t suppose I’m very good company.”

  “I’m sorry to have kept you so long, but I’m glad you came for dinner.” More banal small talk, when she wanted to say something entirely different.

  “I am, too.” He smiled and said sincerely, “Thank you, Julie. You really are a very good cook, and I enjoyed the meal immensely. It was worth losing a little bit of sleep for. But I meant what I said. If you’re going to stay in Arizona, you have to get used to a different way of doing things.”

  For a moment, or two or three, there was silence, then he said good-bye to her in the same quiet tone before he left her and walked into the parlor. Julie could not follow him, not with the enormous lump in her throat. She heard him bid her parents and Willy and Hans farewell, all the usual polite phrases of a departing guest. Finally she managed to get away from the kitchen long enough to see him out the door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, won’t I, Miss Hollstrom?”

  How could he smile? she wondered. But she answered, “I have laundry to do first. I might be late, maybe not until noon or even after.”

  “That’s all right. Just come when you can. Good afternoon, Miss Hollstrom, and thanks again.”

  He touched his hat before he turned and walked down the stairs of the porch. Julie watched him as long as she dared, then escaped to the kitchen once more. When the tea was ready and she could find no other excuse to avoid the parlor and its occupants, she straightened her shoulders and made up her mind to be as brave as he had been. Only then did she notice that her cheeks were wet. She wiped the tears on her sleeve.

  *

  Morgan stopped at Opper’s—he couldn’t get used to the idea that the house and its contents were his again—and tidied up a few things before heading home. He stopped at the cemetery only briefly, long enough to note the new blossom and to tell Amy about the miner. He apologized for the brevity of his visit, saying that he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, and promised to come again during the week and stay longer.

  He wondered if Julie and her betrothed would stroll under the co
ttonwoods again this Sunday but decided not to wait to find out. He hadn’t told Amy about Julie or about taking up his practice again or even about Horace’s death. There were a lot of things he wanted to talk to her about, but they would all have to wait. He did not want to be seen by the girl and her lover.

  Winnie was busy with the flowers when he arrived. Before she had a chance to start one of her endless streams of chatter, he sent her home, knowing full well that he was rude and unthinking. Poor Winnie couldn’t know or understand all that he had been through today, and none of it was her fault. But he couldn’t stand the thought of her invariable cheeriness. Despite his abominable lack of manners, she bid him a pleasant evening and strolled, whistling, back to her sister’s house.

  He draped his clothes fairly neatly over the back of a chair in his bedroom, then lay down on the bed. He had set the bottle on the table beside the lamp. In the afternoon dimness, he could just barely see the difference in color where the amber liquid filled the brown glass bottle’s slender neck. He had found it in a cupboard in Opper’s kitchen and had ignored its temptation all these days. Even last night, when he had sweated and worried and cursed and cried, he had practically forgotten the bottle.

  He didn’t know exactly when he had remembered. Maybe when he told Wallenmund about his disability. Or maybe not until he saw the way Julie looked at him in the kitchen. She must have heard his confession.

  The first swallow seared his tongue and lips and throat and brought tears to his eyes. He should have known better than to gulp fine scotch, but when the agony passed, he repeated his foolishness. This time the pain moderated, and the warmth concentrated in his belly. He lay back, eyes closed as he savored the glow, and held the bottle balanced on his naked chest. The cool glass felt soothing there.

  He didn’t bother to deceive himself that the liquor was to relax him so he could sleep. Oblivion, the old familiar forgetfulness, was what he craved. A week of sobriety hadn’t changed anything, hadn’t dulled any of the pain or made it any easier to bear. It hadn’t made him a better doctor or saved any more of his patients from death and suffering. It hadn’t even made him a man again.

  The level of whisky dropped. Everything felt satisfactorily fuzzy, and his eyes no longer focused clearly. The doorway wavered between sunshine and shadow, or maybe his eyes just slowly opened and closed. He knew they were wet, but he also knew he didn’t feel so bad about crying when he was drunk.

  Chapter Twelve

  With unwilling but welcome help from Willy, Julie had finished the laundry and the dishes and was able to leave the house shortly before eleven. She expected to find the front door to the doctor’s office open, but to her surprise it was closed and locked as well. Puzzled, she stood silently on the porch and tried to imagine what had brought about this situation.

  It was too early for Morgan to have gone to lunch. And if there had been an emergency, he would have come to let her know, she was sure. The only remaining logical explanation was that he had been so exhausted he slept late.

  She walked with calm, unhurried determination across the street and down the lane, past Winnie Upshaw’s sister’s house, and up the single step to the flower-shaded porch. She had given no thought, as she had so few days ago, to what peering eyes might make of her presence here, until her feet touched the weathered planks and she felt the cool shadows of lingering morning envelop her.

  If in the past few days she had become somewhat relaxed in his company, all her previous anxiety returned the moment she stepped onto the porch of the adobe house. Since the afternoon Steve Baxter had ridden up with his urgent message, Julie had not come this close to Morgan’s house.

  She raised a lightly clasped fist but then could not bring her knuckles down on that lovely but forbidding door.

  As she stood there, wondering what to do, she began to feel the old worries again. Who might be watching her, and what might they be thinking? Surely everyone in Plato knew by now that she had gone to work for Morgan, that he had given up his old ways and was once again practicing medicine in a perfectly respectable manner. There was no reason for Julie to drop her hand to her side and hide that little fist under her apron. Her reason for being here, she told herself over and over, was just as respectable.

  But when she lifted her hand again, she still could not find the courage to knock. If it hadn’t been for the sudden shouts of a woman in one of the houses, Julie might very well have turned and walked away, back to her own house. However, she felt a blush creep up on her at the thought of what that unknown and unseen woman would think if Julie went up to the man’s house and then didn’t even knock.

  If my intentions are so respectable, then I’d look guilty of something entirely different by retreating, she scolded herself.

  She rapped so sharply that the iron-hard old oak hurt her knuckles. Instinctively she put the sorest into her mouth and gently sucked on it.

  There was no response to her summons. She knocked again, watching this time to make certain she pounded on a smooth, uncarved section of the door. And though this knock was louder than the first, the result was the same.

  Or almost the same. Although no one answered her entreaty, the door had not been latched securely, and this heartier pounding jarred it open slightly.

  “Dr. Morgan?” she called in a voice hardly above a whisper and surely nowhere near as loud as her knock. If he hadn’t heard that, he could hardly have heard her call.

  She couldn’t knock again; the door would only swing open further. And she was absolutely petrified of speaking any louder, though she admitted she couldn’t think of anything else to do, short of pushing the door the rest of the way open and going inside. As intolerable as that idea seemed when it first entered her mind, she quickly realized it was the only possibility.

  Something serious had to be wrong. When she raised her voice to something actually approaching a shout and still he didn’t answer her, Julie swallowed all her protests and pushed the door inward. The hinges made not a sound, and a breath of cool air sighed out into her face, beckoning her inside.

  It occurred to her that anyone watching her would think her a complete idiot—or worse—for slowly peeking into the doctor’s house. Eager to avoid those prying eyes, she ducked inside and with a sigh leaned back on the door. It shut with a slam that, though not particularly loud, jarred her senses with its suddenness. And any sound would be loud in the dark, cool silence of this house.

  Not that she could have heard anything, she thought, above the furious pounding of her heart. She felt her pulse in her throat as it leapt against the tight collar of her dress, and she wiped her hands on her skirt. That was the only movement she could make, paralyzed as she was with fear.

  An agonized groan from upstairs added, if that were possible, to her terror. Someone was in mortal agony, she knew, and that person could only be Morgan. Forgetting all other fears, Julie dashed up the dark staircase toward the source of that moan.

  He was in mortal agony, all right. Seated on the edge of the bed, with a corner of the sheet draped across his thighs, he rested his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. Julie saw the empty bottle, tipped on its side in a pool of its contents, and she knew the man was in no danger. Except possibly from her own outrage.

  He looked up, probably alerted by her gasp of disapproval and disappointment.

  “Morning,” he said, with no attempt whatsoever to smile.

  He couldn’t distinguish colors, for the room was too dim and his eyes too hazy, but he knew her dress was dark, with a prim little white collar. The light that seeped in around the shutters reflected off her glasses where they hovered on the tip of her nose. He didn’t have to see to know that; they always teetered on the brink of disaster. He laughed, then gripped the sides of his head as the pain echoed between his ears.

  “You deserve it, you miserable….” But she couldn’t think of a word to call him.

  “Oh, I know that. I just forgot how rotten it feels, that’s all. I never u
sed to really get sober enough to feel good and hung-over like this. I’d find myself another bottle as soon as I could.” The ringing stopped, and he tipped his head back again, trying to adjust his vision. He had known it was Julie right away, not so much by her voice, though that was part of it, as by the way she stood in the doorway, too horrified to run away, too proper to come any closer. But he wanted to see her.

  “Do you know what time it is?” she asked.

  “Nope. I was going to set the alarm for eight, but I guess I forgot.” He reached for the little brass clock on the table. “I guess I forgot to wind the clock, too. It says quarter to four.” A faint curiosity cocked his head to one side. “Or did I sleep all night and all day, too?”

  Some of Julie’s anger gave way to common sense while he talked, and she realized with new horror that she was standing in the doorway to the man’s bedroom, that he was sitting on his bed, and that he was next best thing to completely undressed. In fact, she supposed there was nothing under that corner of wrinkled sheet but Del Morgan. She immediately turned her back and pressed her fingers to her burning cheeks.

  He took advantage of her modesty, which he was conscious enough now to understand. He grabbed his trousers from the chair and quickly stepped into them, then dragged the crumpled shirt over his arms. Barefoot, he stepped into the sticky puddle of spilt scotch and swore.

  The word was one Julie knew existed but had never heard uttered with such casual obscenity.

  “Mr. Morgan, please!”

  He chuckled, even though it made his head hurt.

  “Sorry,” he apologized with the same casualness. “I’m not used to waking up with ladies in my bedroom.”

  “I’m not in your bedroom,” Julie retorted, feeling her cheeks catch fire once more.

  And then she remembered the words she had overheard yesterday. No, a man like that probably wasn’t used to having women in his bedroom, but the ease with which Morgan made that statement caused her to wonder.