Firefly

by Linda Hilton

  Then the shock of Wallenmund’s announcement. He had met the farmer on the road home, well after midnight, and he had truly had a difficult time being civil. Hans, on the other hand, addressed him like an old friend. Morgan’s stomach turned at the hypocrisy.

  “The wedding will be Sunday,” Hans trilled. “You will come, won’t you? I might even let you kiss the bride.”

  “What, and shoot me afterwards? No, thanks, I think I’ll pass. Give my regards to her, though.”

  And then he had kicked poor Sam as hard as he could and sent the gelding off at an exhausted gallop.

  Angry at himself, he wandered up to the office after depositing the rented horse back at the livery. He should never have let Julie leave him Saturday night. He should have come right out and told her.

  “Hell, I shoulda told her a dozen times,” he mumbled as he got to his feet and went to answer the knocking at the door. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’!”

  It was Boone Walsh, all six foot eight of him, standing on the porch, hat in hand. Like all the Walsh boys, Boone was shy. Morgan knew he wouldn’t speak until spoken to.

  “What is it, Boone?”

  “Hi, Doc. It’s Mama. She’s havin’ another baby. Miz Fulton said it’s twins again and to come get her the minute anything started. But road’s closed on account o’ that landslide, and I get lost goin’ the other way. Barney and Banner’s up cuttin’ timber and I already sent Brian and Bart out to the cows, so I had to leave Bruce with Ma and come myself.”

  “And your daddy’s drunk, I suppose.”

  Morgan grabbed for his bag and hat, which he had dropped to the parlor floor when he returned earlier, and now he ushered the gangly Boone back outside.

  “Well, he’s gettin’ that way. I brung a horse for you. Save gettin’ Gus up.”

  Gus was crotchety enough late at night, so Morgan didn’t argue when Boone showed him the leggy skewbald. He’d seen worse. With Sam worn out from the night before, the skew might be an improvement. As he mounted and hung his bag over the saddle horn, Morgan glanced back at the house. The note he had tacked to the door yesterday was still there.

  *

  Wash clothes. Bake bread. Iron shirts. Scrub floors. Change linens. Wait on Katharine. The routine started the instant Wilhelm left for the telegraph office. And at nine-thirty, Liza Tucker showed up. Furious, Julie sent her home. She simply did not have the time—or the inclination—to begin training the new “help”.

  Katharine’s condition deteriorated throughout the day. She ate some lunch, then, while Julie took Wilhelm’s meal to him, Katharine claimed she went to the outhouse and threw up the entire meal. Julie berated her for attempting to walk any distance at all in the noon sun, but Katharine shrugged weakly and let herself be half-carried back to bed.

  When Julie tried sewing, for she fully intended to make her new clothes and take them with her when she moved to Hans’ farm, Katharine complained about the noise. The scrape of the shears set her teeth on edge. The whir of the sewing machine treadle upset her stomach. Around three o’clock she suddenly remembered that this was the day she was to have her arm removed from the splint Horace Opper had put on it six weeks ago. She nagged and nagged at Julie to get Morgan, but Julie refused.

  “If he said he’d be here, Mama, he will be here. Don’t worry.”

  “But perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he meant for me to come to the office. Please, dear, do go and check for me.”

  “I can’t, Mama. I have too much work here to do.”

  “Oh, leave it for a little while. I do so want this thing off my arm!” she cried, threatening to burst into childish tears.

  “Let’s just wait a while longer and see if he comes. Half an hour, all right?”

  And in half an hour, Julie prayed, I will come up with another excuse. Please, don’t make me go to him, not now. I swear it will kill me if I ever see him again.

  Slightly more than half an hour later, while Katharine was still whining about the doctor, Hans walked through the front door without so much as a knock and announced that he had come for supper.

  *

  Melissa Walsh delivered her ninth and tenth children with no complications. Morgan marveled, as he had when Brian and his twin brother Bart were born, that slender, small-boned Melissa carried her babies so easily and brought them into the world with so little apparent effort. Even this third set of twins posed no trouble for her. She named them Bonnie and Barbara, the first girls of her brood, and smiled cheerfully at Morgan when it was over.

  Brendan Walsh lay stone drunk on the sofa in the sprawling cabin’s living room when Morgan left shortly before noon. Brendan never knew how Melissa did it, either.

  Boone accompanied the doctor back to Plato, partly to bring the horse back and partly to get some supplies. Morgan hadn’t really wanted the company, but he was soon glad to have someone to talk to rather than sit alone with his thoughts.

  The road from the Walsh ranch back to town curved south along the course of a wash. The stones were dry now, but here and there a puddle remained of the torrent that had scoured this bed so very recently. A narrow track crossed the wash at one point, and Morgan noticed recent wheel marks in the stiff but pliable mud. Following them with his eyes, he saw a cluster of buildings a quarter mile or so beyond the far bank. He did not recognize them nor remember their being there before, though they looked old and weathered.

  “Whose place is that?” he asked Boone.

  “Oh, that’s where that German fella started a farm.”

  “German?” Morgan’s brows arched quizzically. This wasn’t the sort of place he had imagined the prosperous Wallenmund to be taking Julie to as his bride.

  “Yeah. I can’t say his last name, but his first is Hans. He’s got a couple cows, some chickens, not much. When he first come here, oh, ‘bout five, mebbe six years ago, he built a great big barn.” Boone’s gargantuan arms spread wide to demonstrate. “I bet he coulda put a hunnerd cows in that thing.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Oh, nothin’. It’s still there, fallin’ to pieces like everything else.” Boone turned slightly sideways in the saddle and shaded his eyes with a broad hand. “See, that’s him there, hitchin’ up his wagon.”

  Morgan swore quietly, fiercely. Wallenmund was a liar as well as a brute. Julie honestly believed she was going to a prosperous farm, with a white clapboard house, a spacious dairy barn, and probably a picket fence with a rose-arch gate.

  He kicked the borrowed horse to a lope and clamped his own teeth together as though he were running with the bit. Figuratively he was, for he was not going to be stopped this time.

  He left the horse with Boone, who had business at the general store, then headed for the post office. It was habit now to check for a letter from Adam, though at this point Del wasn’t sure what difference it would make. Still, he opened the door and walked toward Mr. Nisely’s window.

  “Well, there ya are, Del. I been wonderin’ when you’d show up. Yer letter from Cincinnati come this noon. Big fat one, too.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, snatching the envelope from the old man’s hand.

  He knew he was supposed to have the office open, but somehow nothing, not even sick or hurt people, demanded his attention the way this letter did. Ignoring greetings from friends and neighbors, he hurried down the street toward the lane. He opened the letter and tried to read, but the sun was just too damn bright and Adam’s handwriting too damn spidery.

  Adam St. Rogers, methodical as always, detailed everything. There were nine closely-written pages, but two paragraphs near the end of the sixth gave all the information Morgan needed.

  “I had one helluva hard time finding out about your Mr. Hollstrom. The only bank in Rinton, Indiana, nine years ago went bankrupt in ‘81 and most of the people who had worked there left town. I did locate a Howard Irvine, however, who is now a teller at the new bank and whose father worked at the old one. The senior Mr. Irvine remembered this Hollstrom very well
.

  “Wilhelm Hollstrom worked in the Rinton Bank for twelve years. In the summer of ‘75, a serious shortage of funds appeared, and Hollstrom was suspected of embezzlement. An investigation proved little, and when later he left town following the lynching of a young drifter, the bank’s owner considered the matter closed. It was discovered some months afterward that the young drifter was actually an agent for another bank, one in New York City, where Hollstrom had worked before coming to Indiana. I investigated a little further myself and discovered that after the Hollstroms moved to Minnesota, Wilhelm was suspected there in a similar disappearance of funds from a store where he worked. He also left behind a mountain of unpaid debts, exactly as he had in Indiana. I traced him from Minnesota to Kansas City and discovered the same pattern. Unpaid bills, and suspicious circumstances upon his leave-taking.”

  Morgan skimmed through the rest of the letter before he returned to that second paragraph and read it over and over. He sat at the kitchen table and vaguely wondered where Winnie was; she should have been here cleaning his house and doing his laundry the way she did every Monday. Yet he did not miss her. He was hungry and wanted something to eat, but at the same time he knew he would not be able to stomach food.

  No, Adam had gone on to say, there was no warrant out for Wilhelm Hollstrom, not after all these years. Morgan was sorry for that. Apparently the man’s pride was his greatest possession, after his greed and cruelty, and Morgan would have enjoyed humiliating Hollstrom utterly to death. He intended to find much greater satisfaction, however, in saving the man’s daughter from a far worse fate. If he could.

  “Yoo-hoo, Dr, Morgan!”

  There was the faithful Miss Upshaw at last.

  “Come in, Winnie,” he called. When he heard her coming through the parlor, he folded the letter and slipped it back in its envelope. “I’ve been out to Walsh’s delivering twins.”

  She set a tray on the table in front of him; he could smell fried ham and hashed browns.

  “I know. Lucas saw Boone riding in this morning and told me you left together. I figured Miz Walsh was about due—again. My goodness, how many does that make now? Nine? No, if it was twins then she’s got ten now. Were they boys again, or did she finally have some girls?” Winnie lifted the cover from the plate that contained an enormous omelet and a pile of golden potatoes. “I left coffee here for you. Do you want some or should I go back and get some lemonade? I made it fresh this morning for the boys and believe it or not there’s still some left.”

  “No, thanks, Winnie. Coffee’s all I really want. Did you happen to notice if there’s anyone waiting at the office?” He walked to the stove where the coffee pot stayed warm and took a cup down from the shelf.

  “What do you mean all you want is coffee?” she scolded, ignoring his question. “You were out all last night without supper and no breakfast either, because I checked with Leif to see if you ate there and he said you didn’t. Now you just sit yourself back down there and eat your lunch.”

  “Look, Winnie, if I have patients—”

  “Well, sir, I don’t have any patience,” she interrupted brusquely. “As a matter of fact, there are a couple of folks waitin’ on the porch over there, but they can go right on waitin’. I told ‘em so. I told ‘em you’d been out on errands of mercy and would get to them as soon as you had your lunch. Now, eat.”

  Poor Winnie. She should have had a family of her own, rather than spending her life looking after her sister’s boys. Somehow, Winnie had settled Morgan down enough that hunger overcame anger, or maybe it was just the smell of that omelet. Winnie wasn’t a good cook by any means, but she had done a fair job on this meal, and he ought to give it his respect. He sat down again.

  “And while you’re eating, I have a few things to say to you. I heard that mean old Mr. Hollstrom talkin’ in church about his daughter yesterday. Now everybody in this town knows there ain’t nothin’ between you and Miss Julie, and I think anyone here would tell you she’s done a fine job helpin’ you and gettin’ you to lay off the booze. Lord knows I do my share of talkin’, but I listen once in a while, too, and I have never ever heard one single word against her. Not one. But her father seems to be spreading all kinds of stories, kinda like he was repeatin’ things he had heard other folks say only I know nobody did. It’s all him, and it’s all lies.”

  Morgan chewed thoughtfully, digesting every word of Winnie’s exactly as he did the food. She rambled and sometimes got her thoughts out of order so that he had to re-sort them in his own mind, but he got the gist of her speech and was suddenly too hungry to interrupt her.

  “I don’t rightly know if I should say this, but I never kept my mouth shut when I should’ve before, so this is no time to start.” Winnie plopped herself down on the chair across from him and propped her double chins on her fists. “Miss Julie has been damn good for you, Del Morgan. In more ways ‘n one. She ain’t Miss Amy and never will be, and no one can ever change that. But you gotta do something to make that man stop talkin’ about her that way. You might even have to marry her, and that might not be such a bad idea. There, I said it, and you can kick me back home if you want, but I’m not sorry a bit.”

  He swallowed, and without looking up, said flatly, “She’s going to be married, to that Hans Wallenmund.”

  God, the words stuck in his throat like one of Winnie’s unfortunate biscuits. She had made cornbread today, and it wasn’t so bad, but the biscuits she usually made were next best thing to inedible.

  Winnie screwed up her face and tried to hold the word in, but it exploded from her anyway.

  “Bullshit!”

  Her face turned beet red, and Morgan couldn’t hide a smile.

  He was, however, too busy eating to keep her from picking up the thread of her filibuster.

  “Well, that’s what it is,” she stammered defensively as her blush slowly subsided. “You ask Gus down at the livery what he thinks of Mr. Wallenmund.”

  “What’s Gus got to do with it?”

  “Well, last spring, Mr. Wallenmund came into town and asked to rent a horse. Said he needed to ride to Prescott and wanted a nice strong riding horse, ‘cause he didn’t need to take his wagon and his horse was only good for pullin’, not ridin’. Gus gave him Sam, seein’ as how Sam is about the best distance horse he’s got. Well, ‘bout a week later, Mr. Wallenmund—” she was spitting the name out now, not just speaking it, “— drives back into town in his wagon with Sam tied to the rear. That horse looked like he was run to death, only he wasn’t sweatin’ or nothing. Just tuckered out, not like he would be after a ride even to Prescott. Gus takes one look at Sam and starts swearin’ a blue streak o’ Swedish, ‘cause Mr. Wallenmund had used Sam as a plow horse. Sam! Can you imagine?”

  “And of course Hans denied it.”

  “Oh, of course. Just like he denies beatin’ up Maude over at Nellie’s. Nellie warned him again Saturday night about roughin’ up her girls. She charges him double ‘cause of all the extra expenses he puts her to.”

  “How do you know so much about what goes on at Nellie’s?” He lifted the last forkful of potatoes to his mouth and cocked his head at Winnie.

  She blushed all over again.

  “I visit with Nellie sometimes in McCrory’s. Did you know she was married once and her husband left her with five kids? She even taught school for a while, back in Iowa. And Iris’s grandpa was a preacher. And—”

  “All right, all right! I don’t need a life history of all the soiled doves in Nellie’s house. But you’re sure about Hans? I mean, about his roughing up Maude, and abusing Sam?”

  Winnie drew herself up proudly and crossed her heart.

  “I saw Sam when Mr. Wallenmund brought him in. And you know Nellie even better ‘n I do; she’s a madam, not a liar.”

  He knew Nellie well enough to know she had told a few tales in her time, but he believed what she had told Winnie was true. The marks on Maude proved it.

  He took out his watch and snapped it open.


  “Quarter to two. Look, Winnie, do me a favor.” He swallowed the last mouthful of coffee with a sigh of satisfaction. “I’m going to get cleaned up before I go to the office. Will you hold the fort there for me? Give me half, three-quarters of an hour.”

  “What about Miss Julie? Where’s she?”

  He stood and pushed his chair back. Somehow, telling Winnie wasn’t quite as difficult as he had expected, but he couldn’t control the anger that slipped out in his voice.

  “They’ve set a date for the wedding and Hans won’t let her work any more. As soon as I get done with today’s patients, I’m going to see what I can do about changing that situation.”

  But slightly over an hour later, when he helped Winnie escort an arthritis-crippled old woman down the clinic steps, Morgan saw Hans drive up in the wagon and stop in front of Julie’s house. It was as though Wallenmund had already taken possession of her. Morgan walked back into the waiting room with a scowl on his face.

  *

  Julie picked up the mending she had laid aside earlier. She knew Hans was perturbed that she had not chosen to sit beside him on the sofa, but with her parents upstairs, she had her choice of seats. And though she had been frantically busy all day, she had no intention of sitting idle now. With three more stockings to darn, she would at least have something on which to focus her attention other than Hans.

  Why, for heaven’s sake, hadn’t he left? Supper was over, the dishes were washed, and it was nearly dark. Outside, Plato had settled into that soft silence that precedes sunset, when the shadows are long and indistinct and the light is so clear as to be almost tangible. After a harried day that differed from Sunday only in that Julie had even more work, she would have liked to walk in that evening calm, even though there was no cooling breeze. She could not bear the thought, however, of sharing it with Hans.

  Nor would she give Morgan the chance to see them together. He must have seen Hans arrive, or at least knew by the wagon’s presence that her fiancé was in town. She could do nothing about that. But she could prevent any further public evidence of her engagement. She refused to be seen with him. So she sat, quietly intent on her darning, while Hans watched her from across the room.