She pulled the horse to a stop, stepped quickly from the buggy and called to Pauline before she entered the school.
“Is she hurt?”
“No, I don’t think so. She got a little bump on the head. You all right now, Fredda?” She set the small girl on her feet. “Go in and get a drink of water. You’ll feel better.”
“That plaything Mr. Harper insisted on having in the school yard is a menace,” Jesse said.
“I agree. I try to keep the big kids off while the little ones are playing nearby.” Pauline looped her arm into that of her friend. “Where are you off to, Nurse Forbes? Wherever it is, I wish I were going with you. I hate being cooped up in a schoolroom on such a lovely spring day.”
“I’m going up to Mill Springs to check on Mrs. Bailey’s ingrown toenail. Papa cut a hunk of it out last week. Granny Lester’s goiter is getting bigger. Soon her neck will be the size of a waterbucket. Papa wants me to try once again to get her to come down and let him send her to Knoxville and have it taken out.” Jesse grinned at her friend. “How is that for a romantic afternoon?”
“Oh, you!” Pauline’s brown eyes sparkled. She was not as tall or as willowy as Jesse, but her skin was flawless and she had a ready smile. The two had been friends for two years—since Pauline had come from Knoxville to teach in the new school.
“How do you find them?”
“There’s only one road, silly. I’ll just keep going until I get there. It isn’t as if I haven’t been up there before.”
“My foot! You shouldn’t go alone. You could run into that idiot that’s got the women in this town scared out of their wits.”
“The Looker? I’ll be back before dark.”
“Wade Simmer lives up there.”
“You think he’s The Looker?”
“Everybody else does.”
“Papa wouldn’t let me go up there if he thought it was dangerous.”
“I saw Wade Simmer at the depot once. He looked mad enough to bite a nail in two. He was having a set-to with the agent about something he’d expected to come in on the train. He seemed wild and… kind of exciting. Now that I think about it, he didn’t seem the type to look and not do anything else. He was pure-dee male from top to bottom. But then… you never know. Could be a horse kicked it or he got it caught in a fence and all he can do is look.” She giggled at the look of exasperation on Jesse’s face.
“Pauline! For goodness sake—”
“Yes, yes, I know. I’ve got a nasty mind. Tell you what. I’ll come help you put up your raspberry jam if you’ll go to the ball game Sunday.”
“That’s a bribe. You know how I hate making jam, but I also hate letting berries go to waste.”
“It’s a deal? I’ll be over Saturday morning.” The school bell rang, and, laughing over her shoulder, Pauline dashed for the school door.
“I’ve been hornswoggled,” Jesse called.
“You sure have,” Pauline retorted, and disappeared inside.
Jesse stood on the walk for a moment and watched the children file back into the school. Some of them were in awe of her, she knew. Once a month she visited the school to talk about the importance of clean hands and teeth. While she was there, she swabbed throats, treated boils and ringworm and a dozen other minor ailments.
Today she wore her nurse’s apron, white and starched, over her blue gingham dress. The square bib came up to the neckline. The long, wide straps that went over her shoulders crossed in back, fit into loops at the waist and tied. The little round, stiff white headpiece that was anchored to the crown of her head and the apron that covered her skirt identified her as a nurse. Jesse was proud of her uniform; she had spent two years away from home and family to earn it.
She walked back to the buggy, climbed in and slapped the reins against the animal’s back. It was a wasted motion. Molly was a well-trained horse. She knew that when Jesse or the doctor got into the buggy, she was to go. She also knew that when they got out, she was to stay until they came back.
The buggy moved past the creamery, crossed the bridge that spanned the creek and turned onto the road that led up the mountain. It really wasn’t a mountain. The Great Smokies were ten or fifteen miles to the east. What Jesse was driving through was more like a cluster of high wooded hills that rammed against each other, divided only by the rocky streams that cut a deep gash to the rich bottomlands. The ride was quiet and peaceful. Jesse let Molly travel at her own speed while her ears drank in the birdsong and her eyes feasted on the beauty of wild flowers.
Where the road rounded a curve, the trees opened up and Jesse could see the town below—Mr. Harper’s town. The wide brick-paved streets were laid out in straight lines, fanning out from the main street that ran through town. Business places filled the four-block area around the park square. In the center of the park was a statue of the town’s founder. To the intense irritation of Boyd Harper, the statue had become a favorite resting place for pigeons and starlings and needed periodic washing down to maintain its dignity.
Farther out on Main Street Jesse glimpsed the large, Victorian house where she had lived since she and her father had moved here from Knoxville when she was five years old. Here he had met and married Dora Gilbert. Jesse’s own mother had died giving birth to her, and much of the time she had been shuffled among relatives until her papa remarried; Dora, his new wife, had been all Jesse’s young heart had dreamed a mother could be. The family had had ten wonderful years together before Dora died when Todd was still a baby in diapers.
The windows of the white, gabled house gleamed in the morning sun. Set well back from the street with a narrow walk leading to the wide steps of the veranda that curved around two sides, the home was much like the others that lined the main street beyond the business section.
The Harper house, of course, was much bigger. The town’s leading family lived in a square red brick building set in the middle of two acres of well-tended lawn. The white pillars rose up to support an upper porch. On the side were two sets of bay windows on both the ground floor and the upper floor that extended to smaller bays on the third-floor attic rooms. A fretwork railing circled the flat roof. Every eave was decorated with the elaborate scrollwork. And, fluttering in the breeze, the United States flag hung from a pole that jutted out from the porch, as if, Jesse thought, to identify it as an official residence.
Jesse’s smile was one of indulgence as the horse followed the meanderings of the road. Unlike most people in Harpersville, she felt no animosity toward the Harpers because they were rich or because they thought they owned the town fifty-five years after their ancestors founded it. To her, their struggle to be important was almost childish.
At the crossroads Jesse took the trail through an un-fenced pasture and passed a tobacco patch before entering the cool woods again. All was quiet except for the chirping of the birds and the chatter of a squirrel now and then as it scampered to the tops of the birches that stood white and clean. A mockingbird trilled high up in a treetop and a bluejay scolded him from the sumac below.
“You old fussbudget,” Jesse teased as she passed by.
Molly pulled the buggy on up the hill. The sun was warm and bright. It was a sweet-smelling May day, a bright blue day and one that would stay in Jesse’s memory for a long, long time.
CHAPTER
* 2 *
Mules, horses and teams were hitched to the rail in front of the mill when Jesse drove by. A man was unloading sacks of corn and a woman with a stiff-brimmed sunbonnet stood holding the hand of a small child. The woman waved. Everyone in a four-county area knew Doctor Forbes’s buggy. They also knew that it was his daughter in the white uniform of a nurse.
Jesse promised herself that if she had time, she would stop at the store on the way back and visit for a moment with the miller’s wife, Mrs. Frony. She usually found the tiny woman crocheting. She made everything from baby booties to doilies and tidies to bed and table covers. On her last trip Jesse had delivered a box of thread that had come in on the
train, and Mrs. Frony had given her a lacy dresser scarf.
On down the road she found Mrs. Bailey barefoot in the garden with only a dirty stocking covering the toe that had been a bloody mess a few days earlier. Jesse persuaded the woman to soak her foot in a washpan of warm water, then liberally doused it with iodine and put a bandage on it. A half hour later she took her leave with a jar of dill pickles and a glass of chokecherry jelly that had been carefully sealed with beeswax. The poor but proud hill folk never sent the doctor or his nurse away empty-handed.
When Jesse reached the Lesters’ neat little house set back in the woods, Granny was sitting in a bent-willow rocker on the front porch with the ever-present snuff stick in the corner of her mouth. Before she got out of the buggy, Jesse could see that the goiter in Granny’s neck was larger than when she and the doctor had visited a month earlier.
The house Grandpa Lester had brought Granny to as a bride was four rooms now—the original two in front and the two across the back that had been added when the family increased. The porch was narrow and was sheltered by the sloping roof of the house. The two front doors stood open to allow the breeze to circulate.
“Now ain’t ya just as pretty as a buttercup.” Granny spat snuff juice in the small tin can beside her chair before she spoke.
“Hello, Granny,” Jesse said, coming up the two steps to the porch. “Isn’t this a lovely day?”
“It’s as sightly a day as I ever did see. Come sit a spell.”
“Thank you, I will. How are you feeling?”
“As good as can be expected with this devilish thin’ growin’ in my craw.”
Jesse noticed that Granny’s eyes had started to bulge and that she was short of breath.
“How’s Grandpa?” Jesse asked while trying to think of a way to bring up the subject of the trip to Knoxville.
“Fair to middlin’. The boy come and helped him put his tobaccy in the shed.”
“One of your boys came home? How nice! The one from Huntsville or the one from Atlanta?
“Neither. Ain’t one of ‘m goin’ to dirty his hands with tobaccy. They be too high-toned fer that.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you had but the two.”
“We don’t.” Granny cocked her head to listen. “That’s Mr. Lester comin’ in.” Although everyone called the couple Granny and Grandpa, they called each other Mr. and Mrs. Lester.
The bald-headed old man in the patched overalls came through the house and out onto the porch.
“Howdy,” he said to Jesse, then held up two dead squirrels by their bushy tails.
“Looky here, Mrs. Lester. They was on the back step, shot through the head like they is, ain’t no doubt ’out who left ’em.”
“The boy.” Grandpa nodded and Granny said, “Well, clean ’em, Mr. Lester, so the doctor can have squirrel for his supper.”
“Oh, no,” Jesse said quickly. “I’d dearly love to take them, but I’m afraid they’d not keep in this hot weather. I want to stop and visit with Mrs. Frony on the way home.”
“Well, now, reckon there’s somethin’ to what ya say. Mr. Lester, didn’t ya say them vines was making taters? Go dig her a mess to take home.”
“Grandpa,” Jesse said as the old man started to leave, “Papa sent some ointment for your hemorr—for your piles.” She bent over the gaping top of the leather bag she had brought from the buggy and took out a flat, white tin. “Did sitting in the warm, then cold water, help?”
“Some,” Grandpa said without looking at her. He took the tin. “Thanky.”
Because Jesse knew he was embarrassed, she said nothing more. When she was alone again with Granny Lester, she broached the subject of the operation.
“Granny, your goiter is going to keep growing. It’s beginning to affect your eyes and your heart. Have you given any thought to going to Knoxville and having it removed? Papa says it’s not a complicated operation, and seventy-five percent of the patients get along fine. Of course, it depends on a person’s general health, and you seem to be fine otherwise.”
“I thought ’bout it oncet.” Granny spat snuff juice out of her mouth. “I ain’t goin’. Ain’t leavin’ Mr. Lester here all by his own self. When it comes my time and the Lord calls me to the pearly gates, I’ll go. There ain’t no two ways about it.”
“You may leave Mr. Lester alone for quite a few years if you don’t have the goiter removed.”
“Fiddle-faddle. He’d not get along a winter without me. When ya get old yore supposed to die and that’s that. Hot, ain’t it? Have a fan, it’ll stir the breeze.”
Granny handed Jesse a cardboard fan that advertised ROSADALIS BLOOD PURIFIER. Bold black print stated that the medicine would positively cure nervous debility, rheumatism, gout, goiter, bronchitis, consumption. The list went on, but Jesse didn’t bother to read it. She did notice the claim that many “Physicians and Ministers of the Gospel” recommended the product.
Her cause was lost. Granny Lester would never have the operation. Jesse handed the fan back to Granny, closed her satchel and rose to go.
Grandpa led Molly around the house to the watering tank. When he returned, a gunnysack half-filled with potatoes was on the floor of the buggy. Jesse thanked him and exclaimed on the size and the quality of the gift. She waved good-bye and turned the horse on up the trail.
Granny was taking the quack medicine recommended by ministers of the gospel and had faith it would dissolve the goiter. Ministers of the gospel, indeed, Jesse fumed. She bet the man who had written the label had invented them—and the “physicians” too. If the growth wasn’t removed, Granny would be dead by Christmas, if not sooner.
Wade Simmer came out of the woods and squatted on his heels beside the trail. When the doctor’s buggy left the Lesters’ and turned north, he had cut through the woods in order to reach this place. This was not the first time he had waited for the buggy carrying Jesse Forbes. Usually he faded into the woods and watched her pass. Today he intended to stop the buggy and talk to her. What he had to tell her could delay her so long that it would be dark by the time she came back down out of the hills. That meant he’d have to follow her home to see that nothing happened to her.
Wade cursed himself for not approaching her while she sat on the porch with Granny, but he’d waited too long to meet her face-to-face to do it in front of Granny Lester’s sharp eyes. Old Granny had been telling him for years to get himself a good woman—as if good women were like apples hanging on a tree just waiting to be plucked.
He had been back at the family homestead for about a year when he had seen Jesse for the first time. What he saw only made him want to see more. He began to carry a small pair of field glasses with him when it was time for her to visit Granny or the Fronys’. Just curiosity, he told himself when a little part of his mind told him he was a damn fool. That was about a year and a half ago. Now he knew her face as well as he knew his own.
Wade had also caught glimpses of the doctor’s daughter in town when he occasionally went down to the post office or to get freight at the depot. He wondered how she would react to him. Did she think he was the one who was stripping women naked and looking at them?
Not much that went on in Harpersville escaped Wade’s notice. A couple times a week he went to Ike Spangler’s garage to tinker with a motor. Ike had told him he was suspected of being The Looker. He’d got a chuckle over that.
Hell, there hadn’t been this much excitement in Harpersville since he was a kid and he and some of his friends had come down from the hills and hoisted Boyd Harper’s privy to the top of the bank building.
The jingle of harness brought Wade to his feet. Suddenly he was as breathless as if he had run five miles, and it irritated him. Godamighty. She was only a woman, for Christ’s sake. Then it occurred to him that in his mind he had built an image of her; not her physical appearance, but what kind of person she was on the inside. And he didn’t want to be disappointed.
Jesse was so deep in thought that at first she didn’t see the
man standing in the center of the trail holding a rifle in his arms. When she did, the first thing she noticed was the scowl on a face that was dark with whiskers, a face that she suspected would be dark even if he had just shaved. He stood, booted feet spread, as if he were facing an enemy. His brimmed hat was pulled low over his forehead so that she was unable to see the color of his eyes, but she could tell that they were looking at her.
She pulled up on the reins, aware that her heart was beating awfully fast. Somehow she knew that this was the notorious Wade Simmer. If he were The Looker, as everyone in town believed, he’d not harm her here in broad daylight, would he? Her father wouldn’t have sent her up here if he had thought she would be in danger. She had not known him to make a mistake in judging a man’s character.
“Hello, Mr. Simmer,” Jesse said calmly, although a mad, frightened dance was going on inside her.
He came slowly to the side of the buggy. From the road, she’d been able to tell that he was a wide-shouldered, slim-hipped man with long arms and legs. Up close, she could see that his eyes were green with amber flecks and his hair black as midnight. His jaw was solid and hard and looked as if it had withstood many a barroom brawl.
“You know who I am,” he said, his eyes holding hers.
“Am I wrong?”
“No. Aren’t you afraid to be out here alone with the one they call The Looker?”
“You’ve heard that? Naturally, they want to believe you’re The Looker because they don’t like you. If Papa thought I’d run into that revolting excuse for a man, I’d not be here.”
“Your papa is too trusting,” he said drily.
“Is he wrong?”
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