Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  Katharine raised a hand to her temple and pressed slightly.

  “But, Mama, you haven’t had a headache since you started taking the new medicine from Dr. Morgan.”

  Julie set the spoon down and finally faced her mother with genuine concern. If Morgan’s treatments didn’t work, then she’d never be free of Katharine and Wilhelm and Willy.

  “Well, you know he said it would take time. And I’ve been busy this week, with you spending so much time with him. Perhaps I just over-did myself too soon. I’m sure a little nap and a sip of his medicine will help considerably.”

  She swept out of the room without another word to Julie, gave her excuses to the two men in the parlor, and climbed the stairs. Julie heard the bedroom door close, but though she listened carefully for the creak of her mother’s bed, the sound never came.

  *

  Harry slept through the night, allowing Morgan fitful rest of his own. The sun was well up before either man stirred. Harry’s first feeble groans brought Morgan instantly to his bare feet and racing into the other room.

  “Don’t try to get up,” he cautioned the still groggy victim. “Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”

  “Where the hell am I? And what the hell happened to me?”

  “You were shot, three times. I spent most of yesterday taking one bullet out of your leg and sewing up the holes from the others.”

  Harry slowly explored the bandages, coming eventually to the painful area of the shoulder wound itself.

  “It come out the back, too?” he asked, unable to reach that far.

  Morgan nodded even while he rubbed his eyes and yawned. His stomach growled almost as loudly.

  “How ‘bout my leg? You have to cut it off?” He couldn’t reach past the bandages that shrouded the upper half of his thigh.

  “No, it’s still there, and likely to be for a good long time. But you’ll be laid up for a week or so at least.”

  “Aw, shit!”

  The big body went angrily limp.

  “I gotta file my claim in Prescott before the end of the week or I lose it to my ex-partner’s wife.”

  Morgan pulled up a chair and sat down, placing his hand on Harry’s broad forehead. There was no sign of fever.

  “Well, today’s only Sunday. Maybe by Thursday you’ll be recovered enough to get on the stage to Prescott. If you take it easy until then, that is. You want some breakfast?”

  That idea seemed to cheer the invalid.

  “Yeah. ‘Bout two dozen eggs over easy, a whole slab o’ bacon, ten pounds of potatoes, and a gallon o’ coffee. And gimme the coffee first.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Morgan said while he pulled on his socks and boots. “I’ve got a neighbor who does my cooking, so I’ll go order up some breakfast.”

  “I hope she’s a good cook, and fast.”

  After straightening up his appearance as much as possible, Morgan saw to other, more immediate needs of his patient, then went to find Winnie.

  He crossed the street just as the preacher, his voice carrying out the open door, called upon the congregation to rise for the closing hymn. Winnie would be there still, as well as Julie and her family. Morgan refused to think about her. He hurried to his own house, quickly wrote out a note for Winnie that he slid under her door, and then was about to return to Harry. But he remembered that church would be letting out just now, with the townspeople milling about outside the door and in the street. He could not face them yet. Maybe in a week or two. He especially did not want to see Julie.

  He walked upstairs and out onto the rooftop, where his two cauldrons of water sat in the early morning sunlight. The night had been warm; the water was sufficiently heated for washing and would take only a few minutes to heat for shaving. He might as well make himself presentable while he waited for the Sunday morning crowd to disperse.

  The house was cool, much cooler than the sunny patio outside the second floor. Morgan stripped off his shirt and washed right there. He liked the invigorating warmth that followed a morning scrub, and the soft early breeze provided a much gentler towel than one washed in Winnie’s home-made soap. While he splashed the suds off, he let his gaze wander to the stream of townsfolk coming from the church. He swore to himself he wasn’t watching for her.

  But he saw her nonetheless, alerted by the bright sun on the pale coronet of her hair. She had done the braids differently this morning, winding them around the top of her head like a tiara rather than in a simple knot at the back of her neck. Her dress was a dark blue calico, not nearly as faded as most she wore, but the color did not suit her at all. On Amy, with her dark auburn hair and jewel-bright eyes, such a dress would have looked quaintly becoming. On Julie, it made her look every inch the drudge she was.

  Yet when he saw the figure in the dark suit join her at the cemetery gate, Morgan thought only of how pretty Julie’s face had been in the lamplight of the surgery when she concentrated all her efforts on saving a man’s life. He recognized Hans and wondered immediately why the farmer had suddenly shown up in something other than his work clothes.

  Morgan picked up the bucket he had filled with his shaving water and stormed back into the upper hallway, slamming the oaken door behind him. He had seen Julie submit to Hans’ taking her elbow to lead her home; he did not see her throw that hand off.

  *

  Katharine’s headache did not go away. She did not come down for dinner and merely picked at the servings brought up on a tray for her. For once, Julie came close to enjoying waiting on her mother; it kept her away from Hans, who had announced immediately after Wilhelm’s grace that he intended to begin making wedding plans.

  Though Julie had no appetite herself, she knew she had gone too long without food and forced herself to eat. She tasted nothing. The slow-cooked stew might as well have been warmed-up mud, and the crumbly, sweet cornbread stuck drily to the roof of her mouth. But her thoughts of Morgan reminded her of her promise to him to take better care of herself.

  But for what? She remembered the way he pushed her from him last night after that moment of sweet insanity. The disgust in his voice when he sent her home could not have been clearer. Yes, they had been tired, and yes, they had been elated over Harry’s survival. But it hadn’t taken Morgan long to realize Julie wasn’t the wife he had once shared such victories with. She wasn’t Amy and never would be.

  Julie started to choke on a piece of meat but quickly washed it down with a sip of lemonade. Hans looked across the table at her, but almost immediately he returned to his food. He, too, ate in silence, except for infrequent statements about his plans for the future. When neither Julie nor Wilhelm responded to his ideas, he returned to his meal. Julie suspected that if he had spoken a single word directly to her, she would have burst into tears and run from the room, possibly even from the house.

  She washed the dishes without assistance, taking her time to delay joining the men in the parlor. She desperately wanted to know how Harry was and even contemplated a brief escape from the kitchen to visit the doctor and find out. But she knew it wasn’t curiosity about Harry alone that prompted her thoughts.

  It was impossible not to hear Hans’ half of the conversation in the parlor. Wilhelm could, when he so wished, keep his voice down. Hans could not, and the more excited he was, the louder his voice became. He was excited now.

  “I will need a new barn before winter, too. I have more cows this year than last, and I will need space for the heifers born this spring.”

  Wilhelm mumbled something too quietly for Julie to hear, but she wondered, while her father spoke, what Hans needed with another barn. Hadn’t he bragged just a few weeks ago about how large and clean and spacious his current barn was? Hadn’t he told her he built it much bigger than his present herd needed because he was counting on the increase? Maybe he had, or maybe she had misunderstood him. She rarely paid close attention to him; maybe he had only been speaking of plans then, too.

  “The house is plenty big, but
I don’t have so much furniture for myself, so I will have to buy more when I have a wife. She must have a nice place to work, a new stove, curtains, a big dining room table for all my sons.”

  Julie warned herself sternly. All farmers want sons to help with the labor. I mustn’t hold that against him.

  But when she tried to argue that even Del Morgan had wanted his son, she found an ache tightening in the back of her throat. Morgan hadn’t wanted sons to work in his fields and tend his livestock; he wanted that baby because it was something he and his wife had created out of love. Hans, Julie suspected, would never understand that. She swallowed the lump and started drying plates.

  Katharine called from the top of the stairs just as Julie finished cleaning the kitchen. She wanted a pitcher of fresh water.

  “And could you help me out of this dress? I just don’t think I’m going to feel well enough to join your father and our guest this afternoon. My headache isn’t getting any better. Do you think you ought to bring Dr. Morgan here to see if he can do anything?”

  Although the bed was turned down, Katharine hadn’t been in it. She had sat in her little chair by the window, and when she noticed how Julie stared accusingly in that direction, Katharine gave a weak smile and an easy alibi.

  “It’s so much cooler by the window, you know. I get so warm lying down and I wear my poor hand out with that fan.”

  Julie could not deny that there was a slight breeze, unusual as it was to come out of the east. And though it wasn’t cool, it did stir the air enough to be more comfortable than lying on a featherbed.

  “I’ll see if I can find him. I’m not sure he’s at the office; he may have gone home, depending on how Harry is.”

  “Harry? Is that the poor man who was shot so badly? I didn’t know you had learned his name.”

  Julie unfastened the long row of buttons down the front of her mother’s blouse.

  “We haven’t learned his real name, but we had to call him something. He has such very hairy legs that ‘Harry’ seemed quite natural.”

  “Is Dr. Morgan confident of his survival?”

  “Relatively.” Julie pulled the sleeve over the splinted arm, then loosened the stays while Katharine unbuttoned and stepped out of her skirt. Thinking of Morgan’s confidence brought back the memory of that celebration kiss last night. Bittersweet. Julie knew the meaning now.

  “Well, I do hope he can spare a few minutes away from this hairy Harry to come see me,” Katharine added as she lay down on the bed. “Of course, you mustn’t tell your father what you just told me. I mean, about the man’s legs. Good heavens!”

  Julie heard very little of her mother’s last words. She had gone back to the window to close the shade and make the room dark for Katharine to rest better, and she had seen the view from the window. Only from the odd angle of Katharine’s chair could she see across the street and down the little lane to the adobe house with the patio on the roof.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Katharine felt sufficiently recovered after Morgan prescribed a mild sedative Sunday evening that she helped Julie with the laundry and baking Monday morning. Though the chores still weren’t done until almost one o’clock in the afternoon, Julie had time to dash over to the clinic shortly after nine to check on Harry.

  “To begin with,” Morgan told her, “his real name is Thaddeus Burton, he has a legitimate claim to a mine just beyond where Louie’s friends shot him, and he’s doing damn fine. I hope to keep him in bed another day or two, if possible, but I doubt he’ll stay put past tomorrow afternoon. He’s already pestering me about crutches.”

  They sat in the kitchen over cups of inky coffee, Morgan looking far better than he had last evening. Perhaps he had taken a dose of the sedative himself.

  “How’s your mother today?” he asked when Julie had sat in stony silence for a long while. She hadn’t even sipped at her coffee, though he knew he had made it much too strong for her. “Did she sleep well?”

  “Just fine, she says. She helped me with the laundry this morning, if that’s any indication.”

  He nodded and drained his cup.

  “I think her diagnosis last night was pretty accurate,” he commented, getting up to refill the mug. “She’s going too fast, trying to do too much before she’s really ready. She has to take it easier and not expect so much of herself.”

  He peered over the rim of the cup at Julie and wondered what her reaction to that news would be. It was not what he had expected.

  She took a deep breath as though striving for patience and then let it out with a long, slow sigh. He hated it when her shoulders slumped like that and her features seemed to sag with defeat.

  “I’ll try to be more helpful. I blame myself partly for her relapse, because I’ve taken such advantage of her this past week. I won’t do it again, I promise.”

  She got up to leave, having barely touched her coffee. He could see the weight of guilt she bore even for that simple sin. And who was she to worry about taking advantage? He wanted to throw his cup on the floor in anger, but it was the floor that Julie had so patiently scrubbed and kept so spotless; he would not add to her burden.

  Yet hadn’t he already added to it with his lies? Katharine’s headache last night was no more real than any of her other complaints, and the sedative he had given her was nothing but a combination of vinegar, sugar, and enough of Horace’s scotch to make it taste like medicine. The cure was as phony as the ailment. Only Julie’s guilt was genuine, and wholly without cause.

  He hated these lies and wondered where the truth was hidden, how deeply it might be buried.

  “Don’t go yet, Julie, unless you have to. I need to talk to you about a few things.”

  She turned slowly but did not move away from the door.

  “Please, sit down, or do you have something urgent to get back to?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “No, not for a while. The dough is rising, and I have no more room on the clothesline just now until some of the other laundry is dry.”

  “Good. Then we can talk.”

  He told himself he wasn’t going to add to the stack of lies he’d already told. He was merely seeking another route to the truth.

  “To begin with, you shouldn’t be baking bread in this kind of weather. Ask Mrs. Alvarez to show you how to make flour tortillas or something, but you’ve got to learn you can’t cook the way you did in Minnesota, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But my father—”

  “Damn your father, Julie. When it’s over a hundred degrees outside, you can’t fire up an iron cook stove to bake bread without risking your health.”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized like an unjustly chastised child.

  Morgan drew back and calmed his anger.

  “No, Julie, I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you like that, though I did mean what I said. But it’s really your mother I wanted to talk about.”

  “Mama?”

  “Don’t panic; she’s doing fine, better in fact than I had expected.” That much at least was true. He hadn’t thought Katharine would shed her old habits so quickly. “But I need some additional information on her medical history to determine what course the treatment should take now.”

  “I thought you had asked her all the questions you needed.”

  “I did, I did, but sometimes it helps to get another person’s viewpoint. We don’t always tell the whole truth about ourselves, you know.”

  All the blood drained from her face, and her heart stopped beating for a second or two. He can’t know, she assured herself. He’s just a doctor asking perfectly normal questions. He can’t know everything; he can’t.

  “You said your mother went into this decline, for lack of a better term, after Willy was born. That would have been when you were seventeen, right?”

  “Yes. I had just turned seventeen. My birthday is the end of July; Willy was born the end of August.”

  “Then you were old enough to remember most
of the details. Was there any problem with your mother’s pregnancy? Did she have a great deal of illness, morning sickness, was she confined to bed for any reason?”

  “No, not that I remember. Papa worked in a bank then, and we lived on the edge of town, but Mama used to walk to the post office almost every day, and it was half a mile or more.”

  The color came back to her cheeks, though they remained pale. Something he said had frightened her. Whatever it was that brought that look of terror to her eyes every now and then was connected to her mother, and quite possibly to Willy, too. Morgan recalled, in a few quick seconds, the times he had thought the relationship there just a bit odd. Now he was certain of it. When he mentioned Willy’s birth, the girl had gasped and turned white as a sheet.

  “Then if her pregnancy was normal, did she have difficulty in the delivery?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there when he was born. I just know that he wasn’t due until October and he came early. Mama was sick for several weeks afterward. I helped to take care of her, but Papa had the doctor in almost every day, for her and for Willy.”

  She rolled the hem of her apron around her finger, then unrolled it. Morgan knew she would not meet his gaze, though he kept it trained carefully on her. She was worse at lying than he, and he was terrible.

  But he wasn’t accomplishing anything either, except to make her squirm, and he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t dare pry any further. Old habits were hard to break; in Cincinnati one knew everything about everyone, but in Arizona one didn’t know and one didn’t ask. He’d been in Arizona too long.

  And the question that hung in his mind now was one he simply could not bring himself to ask, not of her.

  “Well, that doesn’t help me much, but it’s a start. Thanks, Julie.”

  She could have left then, but she remained by the back door, still twisting her apron around her finger. Instead of divulging a part of the secret he knew she had to be keeping, she merely offered him lunch.

  “I have some stew left over from yesterday, more than we’ll eat. Would you like me to bring some over for you and Mr. Burton, or is Miss Upshaw planning to provide your meals today?”