Still House Pond

by Jan Watson

  Manda untied her bonnet strings and set the bonnet on the ledge beside her. With a contented sigh she twisted the top off a jug she’d stopped at Sweetwater Creek to fill on her way up the mountain. She was thirsty as a lizard in a dry creek bed, and the cold, pure water sure hit the spot.

  With her thirst slaked, she took a magazine from the linen bag she carried over her shoulder and quickly found her place. Oh, what had happened to the willful Rose Feathergay since last month’s serial chapter ended? Rose had fled her home after a dreadful argument with her mother over Rose’s broken engagement to Laurence Shallow, the town’s most eligible bachelor.

  Cracking the spine of the magazine, Manda read breathlessly as Rose, heiress to the Feathergay estate, granddaughter of a governor, wheeled a bicycle through the bustling streets of Boston.

  A bicycle! Manda couldn’t get her mind around that. She couldn’t figure how Rose kept it going fast as the wind. And what did she do with her skirts? What kept them from catching in the spokes and tipping the beautiful, misunderstood Rose headfirst over the handlebars? Perhaps she wore a split skirt like Miz Copper did when she rode Chessie. Manda thumbed back through the magazine to the pattern section, but she didn’t find any pictures of riding habits. Still puzzled, she returned to the story, underlining each typed word with one finger.

  In a flush of anger, the headstrong Rose cycled through the city and was soon out of town, bumping along on an unfamiliar road. She would not be forced into marriage just to please her parents, Rose vowed, while dashing hot tears from her porcelain cheeks. She would not. As if in punctuation to her mood, the skies darkened threateningly and the road turned desolate.

  Manda shivered. She hoped it didn’t rain and ruin Rose’s straw hat. Rose had grabbed the newly fashionable boater when she fled out the door of her father’s three-story mansion.

  The wind picked up, whipping like a gale. She should turn back. It was not too late to make amends, though her mother would have to accept that Rose was an enlightened woman. She would live her own life and not bow to the dictates of old-fashioned society. Rose turned her conveyance and pedaled hard against the wind. Rain stung her eyes as a sudden gust jerked her hat and sailed it into the trees that lined the uneven roadway. She could barely see, and pedaling became more and more difficult. Suddenly the bike careened into a bank. Rose could hear the hiss of the punctured tire even over the howling wind. She was stranded miles and miles from civilization.

  Manda glanced about. She could hardly believe it was still sunny here on the side of the mountain, for she could fairly feel the raindrops that wet Rose’s heart-shaped face. Whatever would happen next?

  The daring Rose had thought to carry a patching kit and a tire pump in her handlebar basket, and now she proceeded to change her own tire.

  As luck would have it, a handsome young man appeared from the forest with the straw boater clutched in his workingman’s hands. “Can I help you with that, miss?”

  Rose looked him over from his wide shoulders and narrow waist to his tightly laced logging boots. She liked what she saw. As her eyes met his, sparks flew. Easily, Rose handed over the patching kit. What began as a punctured tire on a rough road paved the way for a new adventure as the thoroughly modern Rose Feathergay met the old impasse of love.

  Manda closed the magazine. Her shoulders slumped. Why couldn’t she find romance like the fetching Rose Feathergay? Gurney Jasper was her sort-of boyfriend, she supposed. He was meeting her at the dance, after all, and everybody teased her about him. But he wasn’t one bit stirring. Gurney didn’t move quick enough to strike sparks.

  Manda ran through the couples she knew. Her brother Dimmert and his wife, Cara, were happy together, but they were dull as dishwater. Now her sister Dance and her husband, Ace, had sparks. Oh my, did they—always exchanging heated barbs, acting like they could set each other afire but not in a good way. That left Miz Copper and Mr. John. They were so sweet together Manda could see sparks sometimes, but actually they weren’t very exciting.

  Manda put the periodical in her linen poke and rose from her seat. Stepping across the path, she walked to the rim of Devil’s Eyebrow. In the valley far below, she spied a wisp of smoke rising lazily from the chimney of Dimmert’s toy-size cabin. Yonder was the house that belonged to Dance. Funny, as Manda looked down on land that held her bountiful family, she felt as alone as a church house on Monday morning. Here she was eighteen years old and not even promised, much less married.

  It was more than a year now since she had left her father and stepmother’s place in Virginia to come to Kentucky to live with her brother. She was sure her pa didn’t miss her one bit. He probably hadn’t noticed she was gone. And Manda sure didn’t miss her stepmother. When Pa married Nora, Manda had been excited and pleased. Her own ma had been dead for a long time, and Manda longed for a mother’s touch. Why, she’d even changed her name to please Pa’s new wife. All the Whitt kids had names that started with D except Ezra. Hers was Dory. Nora made fun of it. She called her Porky Dory. So Manda used her middle name. It hadn’t made a difference. Nora had children of her own and was not given to motherly ways. Manda was little more than a Cinderella before the ball in her stepmother’s house.

  It wasn’t that she minded working for Miz Copper—most of the time, anyway. Manda liked to stay busy, and she liked earning her own keep. But she wanted a house of her own, a real home full of sunshine and laughter like what she remembered of her grandmother’s house. Miz Copper’s was like that too. And busy—my goodness, the work never stopped. Manda lived at the Pelfreys’ during the week, helping with the cooking and cleaning, and went to her brother’s house for the weekends.

  Manda felt a flicker of guilt. She probably should have told Miz Copper she was going up mountain. And she probably shouldn’t have told Lilly instead. Sometimes Manda just needed some space.

  Just beyond easy reach was a tiny white blossom springing up in a fissure. Manda thought the fragile bloom very brave to pick such a barren place to live. Maybe she could pluck it for her album. She steadied herself with a handful of cedar and leaned out as far as she dared, then bent to pick the flower. It took her a moment to realize the branch that steadied her was slowly tearing away from the trunk of the tree. The soles of her slippers slid like sled runners as she tried to scramble backward across the overhang. Her body careened toward thin air and certain death until an unseen hand grabbed her arm and knocked her off her feet. The sharp, clean scent of crushed cedar brought her to her senses. She was down, but she was alive.

  “What are you doing up here, girl?” Gurney Jasper asked as he hunkered down at her side.

  “I was just taking a walk,” she said, “taking in the air.”

  “You come in a hair of taking a little too much air.” He helped her disentangle from the cedar. “They don’t call this place Devil’s Eyebrow for nothing.”

  She’d never felt so foolish. “I need to sit down,” she said, her voice all aquiver, her arms and legs shaking like the palsy.

  Gurney took her arm and guided her to the relative safety of the narrow trail. After taking off his light jacket, he spread it on the ledge rock and indicated for her to sit. “Do you want a swallow?” he asked, twisting the top from a canteen.

  Water spilled out her mouth and trickled down her chin as she took a long draught. “Thank you. I’d be singing with the angels if you hadn’t come along.”

  Gurney shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away.

  “Say,” she said, “what are you doing up here?”

  He hung his head as a flush crept up his neck.

  “Gurney Jasper, were you following me?”

  “Well . . . not exactly.”

  “You were spying on me,” she said, feeling the heat rise in her face to match his. “Oh, that makes me mad enough to spit.”

  Gurney took a lethal-looking slingshot from his back pocket, seated a small stone in the pouch, and pulled it back. “See that blacksnake sunning himself in the crook of yon
sycamore?”

  She peered at the tree. Sure enough, a blacksnake was coiled tight as a spring in the fork of a big limb. “So?”

  Zing, she heard as Gurney released the pouch, then whop-whop-whop as the snake struck one limb after another in his rapid plunge to the ground.

  “I come up to practice with my sling—then I saw you, I’ll admit. I was curious is all.”

  “Looks like you could have chosen another place to practice,” she replied, picking sticky cedar from the cuffs of her sleeves.

  “Since when do you own this mountain, Miss High-and-Mighty?” Gurney snatched up another stone and let it fly over the cliff.

  “I’m sorry. Here you’ve saved my life, and I’ve trounced on your feelings.”

  “Sticks and stones.” He started to walk away. “Your words don’t hurt me none.”

  Manda worked off her shoes. “Wait up,” she called. The packed dirt of the trail felt smooth and cool on the bottoms of her feet. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Quick-stepping to keep pace, she followed his broad shoulders down the steep and winding path. “I’m fixing dried apple pies for the dance,” she appeased, sorry for her hurtful words.

  He stopped and she nearly smacked into him. “Really?” he said. “That’s my favorite.”

  The way to a man’s heart, Manda thought. She wondered if Rose Feathergay knew how to cook.

  4

  Copper knocked at the cabin door. “Adie? Open up. It’s me.”

  Slowly the door creaked open. Adie stood behind it, barefoot and hugely pregnant. Generally Copper hated the word pity. It conjured up an air of superiority to her mind, but pity was what she felt for Adie Still. The woman was skinny as a string bean, all elbows and knees and bulging belly. Her hair was tied in a looping knot that hung halfway down her back, and she wore a wool sweater although it was a pleasantly warm day.

  “So how are you getting along today?” Copper said, embarrassed by her own muffled, cheerful tone behind her cotton mask. “Are you feeling well?”

  “I been racked by chills off and on.” Adie slumped down in a straight-backed chair at a small table. “Last night it was the fever, and now I can’t seem to get warm.”

  Copper pulled a stethoscope from her doctor’s bag. Pressing the bell to Adie’s narrow chest, she listened. “Your heart sounds good,” she said before she put the bell to Adie’s back. “Breathe deep through your nose. Again,” she said before she had to stop for Adie’s torturous hacking cough. “Any blood today?”

  “Not so much—little streaks.”

  “Say aah.” When Adie complied, Copper was glad to see her tongue looked less scalded, but tiny ulcers peppered the back of her throat. This disease was so odd. Yesterday Adie was abed so weak she couldn’t blow her own nose, but today she was sitting up and talking.

  Remy thought Adie’s general bad health made her a poor candidate to survive this illness, but Copper felt they could fatten her up and give her a good chance if she didn’t pox. Thank the good Lord she had had Lilly vaccinated when they were all in Philadelphia visiting her parents. What a hard decision that had been. She would have the other children done when they were old enough. Women of child-bearing age couldn’t receive the vaccine, but she protected herself with the mask and gown.

  “Have you been drinking your beef tea?”

  Adie ran her fingers up and down her neck. “Some. It pains me to swallow. I et a pinch of biscuit this morning.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have sent the biscuit if it hurts you to swallow.”

  “It tasted good soaked in the broth, gave me a change from that milk toast.”

  Copper moved the stethoscope to the mound of Adie’s belly and listened intently. She laughed when a tiny kick rewarded her efforts. “He’s a strong one.”

  “You reckon it’s a boy?” Adie asked. “That’d please Isa aright smart. He don’t want no girls.”

  Behind her mask, Copper chewed her bottom lip. Give me the right words, Lord, she prayed. “Adie, about Isa, will he be able to care for you and the baby properly when you go home?”

  Adie rested her hand on her belly. “He’s got his old mommy a-living there with us. I reckon she can help care for this’n. She’s been good with the rest.”

  “I hope he doesn’t still blame me for you being here,” Copper said. “It was the only solution I could come up with that day the nurse from the board of health brought the law to your place.”

  “Isa don’t like the government a-telling him what to do with his own property,” Adie said, slowly lacing the long tail of her hair through her fingers. “He figures you’re part and parcel of them.”

  Property. The word Adie applied to herself stuck in Copper’s craw. “The law couldn’t ignore the fact that you have a contagious disease. It would have been nigh impossible for you to keep in quarantine at home.” Careful, Copper reminded herself. One wrong word and Adie would walk right out the door.

  “What was that quare woman doing in town anyways?” Adie took a raggedy breath and struggled to continue. “Why am I any of her business?”

  “From what I’ve gathered, the nurse has been staying out at the settlement school with a missions group. She’s teaching hygiene and disease prevention to anyone who comes to the meetings they’ve set up. I guess she just happened to be in town the day you collapsed or else someone sent for her.”

  “I was just tired. I wanted . . . to set a spell. Ain’t no law against it, far as I know.”

  “She thought you were coming down with smallpox. You can’t fault her for acting so quickly, and honestly, if you’d stayed home, your children might have come down with this scarlatina. I know you wouldn’t want that.”

  “Oh, I miss them kids. I ain’t gone a day without a baby in my arms since I was sixteen.”

  “I can only imagine,” Copper replied.

  Wrapping her arms around her trunk, Adie rocked back and forth. “If I was to leave for a little bit—just long enough to see my young’uns, would you sic the law on me?”

  Copper longed to put her arms around the slight woman, but she daren’t. She had a family of her own to protect, and she was doing the best she could for Adie. “I have faith you wouldn’t put me in that position. Listen, what if John went to talk to Isa? Isa could come for a visit. You could see each other through the window glass.”

  Adie’s eyes were red with fever. A fine rash bloomed on her cheeks. She shrugged and shook her head. “He won’t come here.” Her body seemed to collapse into itself. She turned her face toward the window. “I feel so unnecessary.”

  Copper studied her patient. Adie needed something to keep her spirits up. She patted Adie’s knee. “I’m going to bring you some sassafras tea to cut your fever and some yarn and needles to cut your boredom. This wee one will need a gown and a hat. And how about some socks for your husband and the boys?”

  A flicker of interest lit up Adie’s dull eyes. “I’d dearly love to put my hands to work.”

  Copper stood. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of it before.”

  Inside the washhouse, Copper stripped off the duster that covered her day dress, removed her bonnet, and hung both on the same nail. The mask she stuck in the duster pocket to be used again the next day. After pouring water from a bucket into the granite pan she kept handy on an old washstand, she scrubbed her hands and arms to the elbows with lye soap. The clean, strong smell of lye tickled her nose and caused her to sneeze.

  From the direction of the creek she could hear childish laughter. The sound lightened her heart, and she paused to thank the Lord for her blessings, specifically her husband and her children. Smiling, she thought of John. He didn’t mind a whit that she had been married before and that she brought a child to their union. From where she stood at the washhouse door, she could see the proof of his love for her. He had built their home himself, and it was more than the usual cabin. It was open and spacious with room for their family and the occasional patient. Even the burbling creek was a sign of his l
ove. He had started building in a different location only to move everything when she decided she could not be happy without the sound of Troublesome Creek out her kitchen door.

  John had not been pleased when she brought poor Adie home with her a few days ago, and he continued to worry about her safety. But what was she to do? It wasn’t Adie’s fault that she had scarlatina and that she was due to deliver a baby within the month. Copper couldn’t just ignore her, so she had sworn to the law that she would keep Mrs. Still in quarantine at least until the baby came.

  Copper carried the pan several feet behind the washhouse, then dumped the contents in a pit John had dug for her. She returned the pan to the washstand. She wouldn’t need to clean up again if she put Adie’s tea outside her door. Hefting a bucket of disinfectant, she carried it to the place where she had dumped the wastewater and other refuse from the sickroom and the invalid house. With an old dipper she sprinkled the solution all around. The bucket used to dissolve the solution of zinc and common salt in water was almost empty. She’d need to mix more disinfectant soon. Lastly, she changed her shoes and set the dirty pair on the windowsill to catch some sun.

  When she got back to the house, she was pleasantly surprised to see Tillie sitting on the porch with Jumbo.

  Tillie flashed a big smile. “Look how well we’re doing,” she said, pulling the blanket back from the baby’s face. “Miss Remy said it would do us a world of good to get some air.”

  “Wonderful,” Copper replied, studying the infant’s face. With her thumb she retracted his lower eyelid. “Looks like Jumbo’s got a bit of yellow jaundice. Let’s move your chair so you’re sitting in the sun. Sunshine will clear this right up.”

  Tillie thanked her profusely—so different from Adie.

  “It is my pleasure to see you doing well.” Copper chucked Jumbo lightly under the chin. “Would you like a cup of sassafras? I’m just going in to make a pot.”