Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  She knocked tentatively on the closed door. When there was no response, she tried the handle. It turned, and the latch clicked free, but the door refused to yield.

  “Move the chair, Mama,” Julie ordered. “I want to come in and talk to you.”

  “Go away,” Katharine whined, sounding exactly like Willy.

  “No, Mama. I need to see you. Are you all right? Did Papa hurt you?”

  To her surprise, Julie discovered that she felt real concern for her mother, not just the obligatory worry. Had those few hours of comradeship this afternoon restored all that nine years of slavery had destroyed? Or was it something else?

  “I’ll break the door down if I have to, Mama.”

  At that, there was a creak of bed followed by the tapping of high heels on the floor before Katharine slid the chair out from under the doorknob and the door swung inward.

  Katharine’s hair hung loosely tangled about her shoulders, as though someone had grabbed it and pulled it free of its pins in a single swipe. Her eyes looked larger than usual in the gloomy light as she peered hesitantly around the door.

  “Is he gone?” she whispered.

  Julie nodded.

  “But I don’t know for how long.”

  Katharine’s eyes darted about nervously, from Julie to Willy to the descending staircase and the door at its foot.

  “Julie, go get Dr. Morgan, right away,” she ordered in that same desperate whisper.

  “Are you hurt? Did Papa hurt you?”

  “I…I don’t think so, but I’m not sure. Please, just go get the doctor.”

  “All right, Mama, I’ll try to find him. Just let me put some clothes on and—”

  “No, Julie, please go now. Your father may be back any second. Here, take my robe and put it on.” She handed the long velvet garment to Julie, who didn’t take it right away. “Hurry, please, Julie, please!”

  Again Julie heard terror in her mother’s voice. Ignoring Willy, who shouted behind her, Julie raced barefoot down the stairs and opened the door. She stopped on the porch only long enough to fit her arms into the sleeves of her mother’s robe, which was inches too short, and to decide where to begin her search.

  The office was dark; he wasn’t there. Ignoring the mud that clung to her feet and spattered her nightgown, Julie ran across the street and down the lane toward the adobe house. It, too, was dark, and something about the place suggested stark emptiness. Worried, Julie raced back towards the main street, though she had no idea where she would go next.

  Lucas Carter sat on the porch in front of McCrory’s, full in the light of Simon’s lantern. Staying well out of that light, Julie called to him.

  “Mr. Carter, have you seen Dr. Morgan this evening?”

  He squinted toward her and shot a long stream of tobacco in her general direction.

  “I seen him at Leif’s havin’ supper, but not since. I know he ain’t at the Castle, though, Miss Julie. Mebbe he got called out o’ town on a ‘mergency.”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Carter, that must be it.”

  She turned to head home, disappointed and afraid, because she knew there had been no emergency. There was no sign tacked to the office door, and Del was always careful to leave word when he was called away.

  And where had her father gone? Should she go looking for him? Would she find him with Morgan? She shivered and swallowed more tears. That nightmare could not possibly come again.

  She didn’t realize, walking in the dark, that she had passed the gate to her front yard and was nearly to the edge of town. What brought her back to reality was the sound of crying, or maybe it was laughter, from the churchyard. Now that her eyes had become accustomed to the near total darkness, Julie could see that the gate hung open, though there was no breeze to stir its rusty hinges.

  Her feet found the same puddles Morgan’s had, and she walked just as unerringly to the rose-garlanded grave where he knelt.

  He had been talking, but at the sound of Julie’s sloshy footsteps on the path, he stopped and held his breath.

  “Dr. Morgan?”

  “Julie?”

  She halted a step or two from him.

  “I’ve just been talking to Amy about you.”

  She retreated another step. Was he drunk again? Or just mad? Had the tragedy of Alice Elroy pushed him over the precipice into insanity?

  He got to his feet and, though she was hard to see in the darkness, he reached a hand out to her. When she didn’t take it, he let it fall slowly to his side.

  “I’m not crazy, Julie,” he told her. “And I’m not drunk, if you thought that, too. But sometimes I like to come and talk to her, you know?

  She nodded and hugged the loose robe tighter around her. She fumbled for the belt but it was gone, or perhaps she had never had it.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, lacking anything else to say.

  He laughed softly, sadly.

  “Who knows? Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Any man who comes to his wife’s grave and talks to her for hours on end can’t be too sane, can he, so I guess I’m a little crazy.” He approached her again and this time she held her feet immobile. He found her hands clutching the front of the robe and clasped them in his. “Please, Julie, I think it’s time you came to meet Amy.”

  She stumbled on leaden feet and slipped, falling to her knees, when she encountered the rain-dampened grass. This was a graveyard, and though Julie had no daylight fear of the spirit world, there was something unnatural about the quiet within the railed cemetery after dark. She held more tightly to the strong hand gripping hers.

  “Humor me, Julie,” he begged, the strain in his voice more and more apparent. “I’m not sure I can get through this without your help, and if I sound a little awkward, it’s because I’m scared to death.”

  What, her frantic mind screamed, is he going to do? She wanted to run, to drag him with her out of this accursed ground, but she knew she couldn’t. She had to stay.

  “I’m here,” she reassured him in the same voice she used to calm frightened patients. “We’ll get through it together.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Then I’d like you to meet Amy, my wife of the past twelve years. I’ve been telling her about you, about how you got me off the bottle and put the pieces of my life back together. You’d have liked her, Julie. If you had known her, you’d have been best of friends.”

  I don’t think so, Julie told herself. I’d have been too jealous of her, having you.

  “Amy was such a kind person. She teased and she flirted and sometimes she used her father’s influence and money to get what she wanted, but deep down, she was warm and kind, just like you. She had to be, to come out here and live with me in this God-forsaken part of hell. She believed in me, just the way you do.”

  “Please, Dr. Morgan, it’s very late,” Julie dared to say when he paused for a moment. “I only came here because my mother’s been hurt and she wants you.”

  “In a minute, Julie, in a minute. It’s taken me all day to get up the nerve for this; don’t interrupt me.”

  Now she was frightened, but she could not leave him.

  His voice, which had been a little shaky and almost dreamy, firmed and settled into a strong timbre that sent a queer thrill down Julie’s spine.

  “Amy was my life, everything I lived for, Julie. The sun, the moon, the very earth I walked on. When she died, it was as though all the light turned dark. I couldn’t find my way through it without her. I stumbled, I fell, I banged into things and got hurt.”

  Her right hand still held the edges of Katharine’s robe together, but Del had wrapped both his around her left. Warmth enveloped her, spreading upward from that tiny portion of an embrace.

  “Do you see those stars up there, Julie? Amy and I used to try to count them. But they don’t hold still, and you can’t reach out and pick them the way you would berries in a basket. They just sit up there and tease with their sparkle. They don’t light up anything bright enough to see, and yet we know the nig
ht would be unbearable without them.

  “But then there’s the firefly.”

  He let go her hand long enough to pluck one of the glimmering beetles from Julie’s hair. It crawled along his finger a while before winging off into the sultry night.

  “It’s alive,” he whispered. “It brightens the night no more than a star, and only for a brief second, while the stars shine steadily. But it will light on your hand and let you hold it for a while, and somehow the dark isn’t so dark.”

  He caught another of the little creatures and imprisoned it in a loose fist. As it lit up, the glow seeped out through his fingers. When he flattened his palm, the firefly didn’t leave, as though it were content to rest there and shimmer captively until he blew gently, and, like its companion, it flew off.

  “You’ve been like the firefly to me, Julie. My life has been one long night since I lost Amy. Finally you came along and lit that night with a brilliance I could hardly remember. Unlike the frozen, distant, teasing stars, you were right here where I could touch you and hold you…and let you go, if I had to.”

  “And if I didn’t want to go?”

  She could scarcely believe she had said those words, and yet they seemed the most natural reply to all he had told her. No, he hadn’t said a single word about love. She kept that fact quite clear in her reeling mind. And not a word about marriage, either. Still, she didn’t think he would resort to such poetic comparisons if he merely wanted her to stay on as his nurse.

  “You are free to do as you wish, Julie. I can’t and won’t hold you against your will.”

  It was torment to say those words, when what he really wanted to do was beg her to stay. He struggled against that stubborn pride, but he knew he did the right thing. Pleading would only embarrass them both, more so if she turned him down.

  She could not throw herself at him, much as she wanted to. She could not sacrifice that precious self-respect, so desperately won in spite of her confessions. And yet, she had hope. That alone was something to hold on to. The night was somehow brighter.

  He touched her chin and tilted it up until her eyes met his. His kiss was soft, giving and not taking even what she offered.

  And then she remembered her mother.

  She pulled away from him roughly, clumsily, and turned her back to him.

  “Please, Dr. Morgan, my mother needs you. She…she’s not feeling well and sent me to find you right away.”

  And I can’t stand kissing you like this when I know you’re still thinking about Amy. If you want me at all, it’s because you think I can take her place, and I can’t. I won’t.

  Not waiting to see if he followed, Julie squelched through the puddles and the mud back to her house. Through sheer effort of will, she kept from crying, though her eyes blurred and she saw nothing.

  *

  Hans Wallenmund walked up to the door of the Olympia House after leaving Nellie’s. He was wiping the worst of the mud from his boots when he heard the squeal and clang of the cemetery gate. Though it was difficult to see anything in this darkness shortly before midnight, he discerned first the vague figure of a woman. He almost thought her an apparition from beyond the grave, for the white of her gown glowed eerily where the darker robe parted to reveal it. But when she stood in the doorway of her house and the light hit her fully, he knew it was Julie. Surprised that she would be out at such an hour and in such scant attire, he waited and watched.

  Less than five minutes later, his vigil was rewarded. Del Morgan lazily crossed the muddy street and mounted the Hollstroms’ steps.

  It was exactly as Hans had expected. Wilhelm had told him to be careful, to give the girl no opportunity, but Hans had not counted on the physician’s rehabilitation over so short a period of time. And he had believed the man when he said he had no use for women. Obviously, Morgan had lied.

  Hans had nothing better to do than wait. His evening at Nellie’s had been satisfactory, though it had cost him more than usual, and he was in a relaxed mood. He found a chair on the porch and sat down, then lit a fat cigar.

  When Morgan left the Hollstrom house only a few minutes later, Hans jumped to his feet and in seconds had positioned himself at the corner of the hotel where the lane back to the adobe house began.

  “Halt, Herr Doktor Morgan,” he ordered.

  Morgan froze, blind in the dark after leaving the well-lit house. His assailant had given him warning; he would not go further.

  “What do you want, Hans?”

  “Only that you keep your promise.”

  “I made you no promises.”

  “No? Then you will now. You will leave Julie alone, or I will kill you. She is mine, all mine, and no one is going to take her away from me. If you touch her again, I will see you dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Katharine took to her bed immediately after Julie went in search of the doctor, and she did not leave it. When Morgan came, Katharine insisted that Julie remain with them, so that she was never alone with the one man who knew most of her secret. He prescribed a glass of sherry as a sedative and waited only until Willy, still awake, brought the bottle and Katharine gulped down the required dose. Without another word to any of them, Morgan left.

  In time, Katharine dozed off and Julie got Willy back to bed, where he too was soon snoring. Then she helped herself to a glass of the wine and eventually fell asleep, still in her soiled nightdress and borrowed robe. She did not hear her father come home.

  But Wilhelm had come home sometime before morning, for he appeared in the kitchen shortly after Julie put water on the stove for Sunday morning coffee. She prepared his breakfast without a word and he ate it in similar silence before announcing that he would meet her in church. With no other explanation, he left his dirty dishes on the dining room table and then walked out the front door.

  Julie followed him and watched as he crossed the street and strode in the general direction of the hotel and stores, but a sharp cry from Katharine demanded Julie’s attention before she saw her father’s ultimate destination.

  For the first time since she could remember, Julie missed Sunday morning church service. She sent Willy off by himself with orders to join the McCrorys if Wilhelm couldn’t be found, but Julie stayed home at her mother’s frantic insistence.

  The Katharine of yesterday afternoon who had resembled so much the Katharine of more than nine years ago had once again become the whining, petulant invalid. She demanded a thousand tiny favors that Julie rushed to satisfy, and always fell a tiny bit short. The tea Katharine begged for was first too hot, then too cool, then, when it had been warmed again with more hot water, was too weak and had to be brewed from scratch.

  After finally drinking a cup of tea that suited her, she decided she felt much better and asked Julie to help her dress for church.

  “Don’t you think you’d be better off resting, Mama?” Julie asked, “It’s unbearably hot out there today.”

  “But your father will expect us, Julie,” Katharine sighed. “Here, help me out of bed and over to the chair. I think if I can sit up for a while I’ll feel much better.”

  The exertion, she then claimed, made her thirsty again. She wanted cold water, which Julie dutifully brought. Katharine selected a crisp peach-colored muslin dress and actually showed signs of recovering her enthusiasm when Julie got her laced into her stays. But when she had the dress slipped over her head and was standing at the foot of the bed while Julie did up the row of buttons down the back, Katharine suffered another “attack.” Slumping quite to her knees, she complained of a splitting headache, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a host of other ailments. The dress and corset came off, and Katharine was helped back into bed.

  Julie had no time to think—about anything. She raced from Katharine’s bedroom to the kitchen and back again, bringing tea, water, toast, jam, honey, a clean spoon to replace the one Katharine dropped on the floor. Somehow, between all these mad dashes, Julie managed to cut slices from the ham she had bought yesterday and
shred potatoes to fry in the skillet for dinner. There would be no dessert; she couldn’t find time for that.

  When Katharine ran out of physical needs, she turned to emotional ones. She begged Julie to stay with her, even to hold her hand for a while, until Julie insisted that she had to leave to tend the meal. Katharine gave her just long enough to flip the potatoes over, then she called for further assistance.

  Open the window. Draw the drapes. An extra pillow. Comb her hair. Another cool drink. Perfume on her throat. A fresh nightgown. Close the window. What was that noise? Another headache powder.

  The frenzy didn’t lessen when Wilhelm and Hans, with Willy in tow, returned from church. In fact, it worsened, for Julie now had three more “patients” demanding her attention. Willy, unaccustomed to being told to wait, pouted on the stairs and twice tripped Julie as she raced to answer her mother’s whined summons.

  With dinner on the table at last, Julie hoped her father and Hans would stop expecting her to wait on them. She had put the food in front of them and could think of nothing else they needed. She did not bother to serve herself; she knew no one would let her eat.

  But Hans quickly consumed all the ham and Wilhelm and Willy both wanted more, so she had to slice additional meat and fry it for them. Katharine asked for a tray, but then didn’t like anything on it. She decided she wanted more toast.

  At three o’clock, precisely three o’clock, Hans and Wilhelm rose from the table. The once spotless cloth was stained in a hundred places where they had spilled things in trying to pass dishes. Willy’s glass of milk had been tipped over, leaving the cloth stuck to the table. Julie would have to spend hours repairing the damage to the finish. She stood in the doorway between kitchen and dining room and stared at the disaster—and the mound of dirty dishes awaiting her.

  “We are going out, Julie,” her father announced in a tight voice. “You will stay here and take care of your mama.”

  When have I ever done anything else? she sighed mentally.