Coming Home for Christmas

by Carla Kelly

  He was already dreading his future wife’s first look at his army quarters. As a post surgeon, he had more room than most officers his own age—four rooms, in fact—but he knew the size of the Radnor manor, situated across the street from his own Philadelphia home. Their future bedchamber at Fort Laramie was half the size of his parents’ linen closet.

  And there was the matter of servants. Before he had left Fort Laramie, he had cajoled a corporal’s wife into promising to give his quarters a cleaning every week or so. Maddy had said she was bringing along a cook and her personal maid. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that even if they were more than usually homely looking, the two would probably be married in a month or less, sergeants and corporals being what they are in a female-starved society.

  “Captain?”

  Startled, he looked up at Frannie, who was giving him the same compassionate appraisal she had lavished on Nora Powell.

  “Yes, Frannie?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t been looking like a total no-hoper, rather than the capable, unflappable, maybe even charming officer and gentleman he tried to be.

  “You just looked a little dismal,” she said.

  “I feel dismal.”

  Frannie sighed and glanced at Nora. “She’s in a tough situation.”

  Will blushed, grateful for the gathering dusk and hoping that Frannie Coughlin would never know that he had been thinking of himself and not the Indian captive. “And I had to go and promise her lawyers,” he whispered.

  He was saved by the bell, the three-toned tinkle that announced dinner was soon to be served in the dining car. “When I get dismal, I eat,” he announced to Frannie and Nora, who had opened her eyes at the sound of the bells. “Let’s go.”

  Frannie shook her head. “I usually just wait until the candy butcher walks through the car, so I can inspect his sandwiches. I’m on a bit of a budget and I have to get all the way to Brooklyn.”

  He appreciated her honesty and reminded himself that the teachers of soldiers’ children probably weren’t in the top salary rung at any army post.

  “I never eat alone, ladies,” Will announced. “Let this be my treat.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Captain,” Frannie said, doubt high in her voice.

  How to explain to this frugal miss, daughter of a hospital steward, that he was thrifty by choice, despite being buttressed by the Wharton fortune? For a fleeting moment, he wondered how his stepfather had ever explained the same thing to his mother, before they were married in 1856. It always struck him as ironic that his stepfather’s branch of the Whartons was stuffed to the gullet with banking money, but they never talked about it.

  “Frannie, I have enough. You know there is nothing to spend money on at Fort Laramie,” he told her. “We’re going to eat right on this train.”

  He knew he didn’t have a stern face. He knew he could fake one when he had to. He gave Frannie The Glance. She saw right through him, but agreed to accompany him to the dining car. “We’ll spend his money, won’t we, Nora?” she said to the other woman and took her hand, so that she had no choice.

  Dinner was mostly an unalloyed pleasure. Will watched Frannie studying the menu, a frown on her face, as she looked for the least expensive items. He watched her trying to gather her courage to tell him it was all too dear.

  “Miss Coughlin,” he began, which made her laugh, considering he hadn’t called her that in an entire year. “Miss Coughlin, I’d be honored if you and Miss Powell—” to his delight, he even coaxed a twitch of the lip from Nora “—will let me order for you. I’m a real connoisseur of Union Pacific grub.”

  It was “grub” that did it. Frannie laughed out loud, let go of the menu and said, “I surrender, Captain!”

  She folded her hands in her lap. Will grinned at her with real affection, thinking of all the times she had helped him in the hospital simply by being there to read to his patients. He had never been able to show her any true gratitude before now.

  He picked up the menu and caught the waiter’s eye “We’ll start with the purée of chicken soup, and follow it with rib ends of beef and browned potatoes.” He looked over the elaborate menu to the two women seated across from him. “Unless either of you is partial to mutton and then I would give you my sympathies. No?”

  He felt only relief when Nora smiled. “Well, then, no sheep for us. We can chase the rib ends down with lamb pie, à la anglaise, then clear our palates with olives and celery, before we charge ahead.”

  Both of the women were smiling now. Satisfied, he cleared his throat elaborately and returned to the menu. “Aha!” He stabbed the paper. “Here I see squash, green corn—heavens—green peas or beets. No beets, ladies—I forbid it. People who eat beets would probably drink their own bathwater.”

  Frannie laughed, which pleased him to no end. She had a hearty belly laugh, the kind that would send Maddy fleeing to another room. Nora laughed, too, then looked around, as if she wondered who had done that.

  Will grinned at them both. “Green peas? Wise choice. Now let’s take this dinner home with pumpkin pie and ice cream. Tea or coffee?” They agreed on tea and Will handed back the menu with a flourish that even made the waiter smile.

  The Union Pacific did its usual best with the dinner he had chosen, but Will could have been eating ash cakes, for all he tasted it. His pleasure lay in watching Nora Powell work her way through every course with a single-minded intensity that told him worlds about her usual bill of fare. The ice cream on the pie made her eyes widen. “It’s been years,” she whispered. She savored a tiny bite, then a larger one, before she set down her spoon. “I wish I could share this with my children,” she said, looking at the bounty in front of her, her face suddenly serious.

  Please, don’t let her cry, Will thought. Without hesitation, he launched into a vivid description of his first Christmas in Philadelphia after they had moved from Scotland, with strange food and customs, and his own fears of newly found cousins laughing at his thick Scottish brogue. “My stepfather swore he could only understand one word in ten,” he told his little audience, then launched into his best Dumfries dialect.

  To his relief, Nora smiled at his antics; so did the children at the table across the aisle. He glanced at Frannie, who watched him with an expression he could not interpret, and held his breath until Nora picked up her spoon again.

  The waiter brought the bill when they had finished. “Captain, is she the Indian captive?” the waiter whispered as Will paid the bill.

  “How did you know?”

  “Not many secrets on a train, sir,” was all the waiter would say. He watched Nora leave the car with Frannie, then shook his head. “I’d rightly hate to be in her shoes.”

  “You’re right,” Will told him. “I’d hate to be in her shoes, too.”

  He let the women go ahead, standing a long moment in the space between the two cars, balancing easily as the train clacked its steady course across Nebraska. Hands in his pockets, he watched through the glass as Frannie settled Nora down again and put her arm around the woman, who seemed to be crying. Frannie drew her close, both arms around her then.

  “Frannie, you’re a woman in a million,” he said out loud, and watched them until the cold penetrated his uniform and he was forced to enter the warm carriage.

  Chapter Five

  Will thought about Frannie as he stared at the medical journal in his hands. For several months, he had looked forward to this opportunity to read his back issues and think about nothing more strenuous than necrotic tissue and third-stage syphilis. When Paddy Coughlin had asked him to keep an eye on Frannie, he’d known she would be no trouble. He’d known he would still have time to read his journals.

  Then Nora Powell had been thrown into the mix. Now he felt the full weight of her distress descending on him; he knew he had to do better. He closed the journal, not even bothering to mark his place. Duty called, but it was more than that.

  He cleared his throat, wondering if he was about to blunder, but driven to a
sk by something his mother had told him once about the need for people in grief to talk, something her first husband’s family had never allowed. “Nora, tell me about your children and your husband.”

  He thought he had made the mistake of the century when Nora’s eyes filled with tears. He held his breath as she dabbed at her eyes with her fingers, then looked at him. “You are the first Blue Coat to call him my husband,” she said.

  “He is, isn’t he?” Will asked, startled. “Did he seek you out and throw the robe over you at a dance?” He had seen courting dances before, when he visited a Cheyenne tribe troubled with influenza. He thought them charming and certainly more fun than filling out a dance card. Plains Indians were worlds more practical than gentlemen making stupid small talk at a cotillion and hoping for a waltz.

  He must have unleashed a flood. Nora leaned forward, her tears forgotten. She nodded and he suddenly saw the pretty woman under all the cares, hunger and devastation. “I had been watching him, too,” she said, her voice shy.

  “A handsome man is always worth a look,” Frannie put in. “Is he handsome?”

  Nora was silent a long moment. “He was.”

  “Oh,” Will said, feeling stupid. He saw his mother’s face in his mind, then, and remembered how gently she could counsel. “Where did he die, Nora? How did it happen?”

  “We call it the Greasy Grass. I think you Blue Coats called it the Little Big Horn. Crazy Horse told me later that my husband was counting coup on a soldier when it happened.” She raised her head proudly. “Thank you for mentioning him. He was a warrior.”

  “Then it is good to remember him,” Will said, on sure ground now, because his mother was right. “Tell us about your children.”

  “Little Frog is eight summers. He is tall for his age. My daughter does not have a name. She was born after the Greasy Grass and I was too sad to name her.”

  “Will…will someone else name her?” he asked, touched to see tears in Frannie’s eyes. He swallowed a boulder in his throat.

  “I do not know,” Nora replied, after another long silence. “I do not even know who is watching after them. My husband is dead. His parents are dead. There was only me.”

  She said no more, turning her face to look out at the darkness. Will put away his medical journal, no longer interested in science when a greater tragedy loomed in front of him. Heavens, what have we done? he asked himself, unable to sit any longer. Not looking back at the women, he walked through two cars to reach the last platform. The first was a car like the one he had left, the other an immigrant car, with wall-to-wall people, babies crying, children milling about and food cooking. He breathed in the odors of cabbage, strange spices and unwashed bodies.

  It was too cold for company on the platform. His mood lifted and he smiled to see a small clothesline, diapers flapping in the frigid air, turning into boards. As the train curved slightly north, he looked west, wondering where in that vast distance Nora’s children were. He thought about Maddy, who had never known a hard thing in her life, and then Frannie, with her frugal plans to avoid the dining car. And here was Nora, wrenched from her children and heading toward who knew what.

  And here I am, rich, educated and coming up short, he thought, not so much disgusted as sorry that the world wasn’t fairer. Frannie should have a kind husband and a comfortable life, and Nora should have her children.

  Cold, he leaned on the railing, driven by some idiocy to punish himself because he was blessed and they were not. He had no answers, so he went inside again, walking slowly through the immigrant car, observing out of habit.

  He smiled at the children who gazed back, solemn. New beginnings, he thought, remembering Mama’s immigrants at the community house, which his stepfather’s money had created in Philadelphia for people in need. As he walked, Will noticed a solitary female, barely more than a child herself, who appeared far gone in pregnancy. He never did understand people’s instincts, because she gave him that patient look he had seen many times, when people thought he was a doctor and capable, in their minds, of making the lame walk and the dead rise. I wish, he thought. I wish. Sometimes I can barely help myself.

  He nodded to her and continued through the car. He was nearly to the next car when he stopped, listening to labored breathing from a small boy leaning against his mother. All business then, Will crouched beside them, putting two fingers on the child’s throat to find a thready pulse.

  The woman eyed him with suspicion. He smiled at her and said, “I’m a physician.” She only gathered her child closer.

  Will looked around. “Does anyone speak English?” he asked, resisting the urge to raise his voice and speak more slowly, on the off chance that it would make a difference. He tried the same statement in poor French, passable Spanish, then slightly better German. Nothing. He stood up and left the car in a hurry.

  Back in his own car, he rummaged under the seat for his medical bag.

  “What’s wrong?” Frannie asked.

  “There’s a child with lung congestion in the immigrant car,” he told her, looking inside the bag, even though he knew everything was in its place. “Maybe I can help.”

  “Do you need me?”

  The oddest thing happened then, as though the earth’s axis had suddenly tilted. Maybe it was the way she asked—sincere and earnest and ready to help. Or maybe he had been taking her for granted all year, coming to rely on her because she was utterly sensible, perfectly kind and so lovely.

  Do I need you? he asked himself. Goodness, I believe I do.

  Will took a deep breath; the impulse simply had to pass. Maybe the bad air in the immigrant car had affected his brain. He was on his way to Philadelphia to marry a beautiful woman he had known since he was twelve. All the plans had been made. He shook his head to clear it.

  “Are…are you all right, Captain?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he lied. “This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. You keep Nora company.” He snapped his bag shut and hurried from the car.

  His unsuspecting patient was still leaning against his mother. The wary look on her face vanished when Will took out his stethoscope. She offered no objection when he raised her son’s shirt and listened to his chest.

  Will concentrated on the sounds within, grateful not to hear the crackling noise of pneumonia, but still not happy about the congestion. “I wish you could understand me,” he said to the mother, who was looking at him intently now, as if trying to understand English.

  “I can help.”

  Will looked around to see another worn traveler, dressed no better than the others and certainly smelling no better. “You speak English,” he said with relief.

  “Not much.”

  Will touched the sick boy, who had closed his eyes. “What language do they speak?”

  “Russian.” The man gestured more grandly. “Russians. Serbs. Some Greeks. A Pole or two. Latvians. Italians.” He turned a kind eye on Will. “What can I do?”

  Will looked at the pot-board stove, where a woman in a scarf and quilted jacket was boiling cabbage. The steam rose off the odoriferous pot, fogging the window. “Can you tell her to take her son close to the steam? He needs to breathe moist air.” Will pantomimed breathing deep and motioned toward the boiling cabbage. “She needs to keep him warmer.”

  The man nodded, then spoke to the woman, who stood up immediately and took her son closer to the stove. Will moved her even closer, while his translator spoke to the others. In another moment, there was a second blanket around the child.

  “Just keep him there. I will come back later to check on him,” Will said.

  When the Russian finished translating, Will stood there a moment longer, wishing he had a croup tent and the ingredients for a poultice. He walked through the car again, looking more closely at the immigrants. It suddenly seemed strange to him that they would be traveling east. Surely they had not come from the Pacific Ocean.

  Curious, he found the conductor in the next car, talking to a salesman. Wh
en the conductor had finished his conversation, he looked at Will. “Everything all right in there, sir?” he asked.

  “Well enough. There’s a sick child, but I will check him again later. I was wondering, why are they heading east? I thought all immigrants went the other way.”

  “They overshot their destination,” the conductor said. “It happens now and then with immigrant cars.” He sighed the great sigh of the put-upon. “A few immigrants will miss their stops, or find no one waiting for them. We take them to Omaha, where hopefully they are straightened out.” He shrugged. “Foreigners.”

  Will returned to his own car to see the porters at work converting the seats into upper and lower sleeping berths, with discreet privacy curtains. Frannie and Nora stood in the aisle, waiting for the porter to finish. Will handed him some coins when the porter had plumped up the final pillow.

  “Nora and I will take the top berth,” Frannie said. “You should be more accessible, in case the little boy needs you.” She smiled at him. “It never ends, does it? My father mentioned to me that you had been planning to do lots of reading on this trip. Are we a great deal of trouble?”

  “You have never been trouble,” he assured her. “Did I ever thank you for all those hours you spent in the hospital, reading to my motley collection of malingerers, malcontents and misfits, better known as the U.S. Army?”

  She laughed, reminding him all over again how much he enjoyed a hearty laugh from a woman. “Captain, if you had wanted an easier life, you would have stayed in Philadelphia.”

  “That’s what my fiancée wants me to do,” he said impulsively. He regretted his words the moment they left his mouth, because they sounded disloyal to Maddy and branded him as a complainer.

  Frannie looked him in the eye; she was a tall woman and it wasn’t hard. “Your malingerers will miss you, if you resign your commission. So will my father.” She hesitated. “I will, too.”