by Carla Kelly
“Perhaps I could go,” Susanna offered.
Major Randolph was closer now. She thought he was headed to his quarters, but he veered toward Old Bedlam. He looked up and squared his shoulders in a gesture that went right to Susanna’s heart.
“It must be so hard to do what he does,” she whispered. “I couldn’t.”
They waited for him on the porch of Old Bedlam. The parade ground was busy now with soldiers heading to the mess halls behind their particular barracks, but the post surgeon hardly seemed aware of them. You have no one to go home to and talk out the misery you see every day, Susanna thought. What a shame.
He didn’t have to say anything when he got to the porch, because Katie was in tears. Without a word, he took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then put the handkerchief over her nose. “Blow, sweetheart,” he told her.
He looked at Susanna. “I had a note tacked to my door last night, and I’ve been in the Rattigans’ quarters since then. I wish I knew how to help her, but …” He shook his head.
“Is there anything I can do?” Susanna asked.
“Are you finished here?”
She nodded.
“You wouldn’t mind visiting a sergeant’s wife over on Suds Row? Emily would probably be aghast.”
“I’m going to overlook that question,” she said, more crisply than she intended, but at least it brought a momentary smile to his face. “What would you have me do?”
He thought a moment. “I’ll get a book from my quarters. I’ll introduce you, but would you stay there this afternoon and read to her? She might listen, she might just doze. She’ll know someone cares, and that’s all I care about.”
He left the porch with a quicker step than he’d arrived, and hurried to his quarters. “What’s Mrs. Rattigan like?” Susanna asked Katie.
“Quiet. Calm. She worships the ground Sergeant Rattigan treads on.” Katie shook her head. “All they want is a baby. It seems so simple.”
The post surgeon was in no hurry to return to Old Bedlam, apparently. When Katie started rubbing her arms to warm them, Susanna told her to go home. Katie left with no argument, walking carefully down the icy steps. Before she reached her quarters, her husband joined her. Susanna sighed to see them continue arm in arm, her head close to his shoulder.
When she began to wonder if the post surgeon had forgotten her, he hurried from his quarters and up Officers Row again, a book and package in his hand.
The package was a cheese sandwich. “I eat a lot of these. This one’s for you.”
She smiled her thanks and sat down to eat it. He pulled a half-eaten sandwich from inside his overcoat and peeled back the waxed paper. “It wasn’t so appealing last night,” he told her as he chewed and swallowed. “I knew it could wait.”
“You should eat better,” she admonished, wishing for water to wash down the dry bread. The man was no cook.
“I should do a lot of things better.” He said it mildly enough, but she heard the regret in his voice. “Poor Mrs. Rattigan. She just can’t carry a child to term, and I have no idea why.” He sighed. “She looks at me so patiently, and I feel more inadequate than a first-year medical student. Give me a festering wound any day.”
He waited until she finished. “Tonight, after supper, if you wish, I’ll take you around to meet your pupils.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He held out a book. “Up you get, Mrs. Hopkins. Here’s your text for this afternoon.”
She took it. “I have heard this is quite good.”
“I bought it in Cheyenne. Mark Twain always makes me smile. I doubt it will have the same effect on a lady who is sad, but we shall see.”
The bugler blew fatigue call as they crossed the parade ground and walked by the construction.
“It’s the new guardhouse,” he commented, taking her arm and walking her around a pile of lumber.
He pointed to a footbridge over the frozen Laramie River. “Can you swim? I’m joking. Over there is Suds Row, called so because of the laundresses. Noncommissioned officers and their families live here, too. This is where Private Benedict’s pupils come from, and this is Sergeant Rattigan’s quarters.” He opened a neat little gate.
“I don’t know if I can help,” she said, hanging back.
He pushed against the small of her back and moved her forward. “You can. She needs female company.”
“Do you bully everyone like this?” Susanna demanded.
“Yes. I always get my way,” he replied, a smile lurking around his lips.
He knocked and walked in. “I’m glad you’re sitting up, Maeve,” he said to a blanketed figure in an armchair, her feet propped on an ottoman. “Meet Mrs. Hopkins. She’ll be teaching the officers’ children starting Monday, and I’ve asked her to keep you company until your man returns. Mrs. Hopkins, this is Maeve Rattigan, just about my favorite person, because she makes me soda bread and peppermint tea.”
Susanna held out her hand. Maeve’s hand was cold, so Susanna did not release it, but put her other hand around it and sat on the edge of the sofa.
“I had … we had … a bad night,” Maeve said, not withdrawing her hand. She glanced at the post surgeon. “Did he tell you?”
“He did, and I’m so sorry,” Susanna replied simply. “May we ask the major to bring us peppermint tea?”
“Aye,” she said. “He doesn’t mind a little step and fetch.”
Her brogue was so charming that Susanna had to smile. “Do you know, I have only been here a few days, and I am rather smitten with the Irish accents I have heard. Thank you, Major. How prompt you are! Just set the cups on that little table. I need to take off my coat.”
She released Maeve’s hand and let Major Randolph help her with her coat. He hung it on a peg and returned to the lean-to kitchen. The house appeared to have two more rooms, and that was all. She looked around appreciatively. Everything was spotless.
She took Maeve’s hand again, pleased to feel more warmth. Major Randolph returned with something wrapped in a blanket. He lifted the blanket covering Maeve’s legs and pulled out a similar package. “Iron pigs,” he told Susanna. “I’ll leave the cool one in the oven and you can exchange it for this hot one, when it cools. Keep your feet warm, Maeve.”
He patted the blanket back in place and smiled at his patient. “Lean forward, my dear Maeve,” he told her, pulling out a thinner pad. “I’ll put this one back in the oven, too.” He returned to the kitchen, coming back with another blanket, which he put in place when Maeve winced and leaned forward again. “I’m not sure of the science behind a warm blanket on the back, but it feels good,” he told them. “You can trade it off, Mrs. Hopkins.”
He straightened up, took a professional look at Maeve Rattigan, then kissed her cheek. “Don’t tell the sergeant,” he said with a wink. Nodding to them both, he let himself out quietly.
Maeve shook her head. “I honestly think he feels worse about this….” She stopped and dissolved in tears, as though she had been holding them back until there were only women in the house.
Susanna gulped, then hesitated no longer than the major had. Quickly, she plucked a chair from the dining table and sat as close to Maeve Rattigan as she could. She leaned forward to hold her in her arms as the sergeant’s wife sobbed every tear in the universe. Tears came to Susanna’s eyes and she cried, too, both of them denied motherhood, one by cruelty and the other by biology.
They cried until there were no more tears. Her arms were still tight around Maeve Rattigan, and Susanna knew the warmth was gone from the blanket at the woman’s back. “Lean forward,” she said. “I’ll make it warm again.”
She did, returning with the oven-warmed blanket. She slipped it in place, and Maeve leaned back gratefully. Her eyes were raw and swollen with weeping, but her face was calm now.
“May I read to you?” Susanna asked. “Major Randolph has a brand-new book here.” She opened it. “I do like Mark Twain. Do you?”
No answer. Maeve just l
ooked at her with the same expression in her eyes as when she had looked at Major Randolph, as though there was something she could actually do that would end the pain. Susanna touched her hand. “It’s called Sketches New and Old. Let’s see now. Ah. ‘My Watch.’ Maeve, dear, would you mind if I take off my shoes and put my feet by that pig, too?”
Maeve smiled and shifted slightly so there was room. “It’s still warm. ‘My Watch,’ you say?”
Susanna made herself comfortable. She cleared her throat and began. “‘My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments ….’”
She looked at Maeve, already asleep, and closed the book. “You dear lady,” she whispered.
Chapter Eight
When Maeve woke up an hour later, Susanna made her comfortable, with no embarrassment. When she finished, Susanna sat beside her and took her hands.
“Johnny helps me, but it pains him,” Maeve said simply. “Major Randolph, too, I think.”
Susanna nodded. She opened the book to “My Watch,” and continued reading through the afternoon. Maeve dozed, then woke for the story, which was starting to make her smile, then dozed again. She laughed out loud with “… I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense,” and gave a satisfied sigh when Susanna closed the book.
“I can leave it here so you can finish it on your own,” she said, looking at the clock.
There was no overlooking the color that bloomed suddenly in Maeve’s pale cheeks. “I can’t read,” she said softly.
I think I have my work cut out for me at Fort Laramie, Susanna thought, gratified. “Would you like to learn?”
“Aye,” came Maeve’s equally quiet reply. “Will you have time?”
“I can teach you at night.” And keep myself out of Emmy’s unwelcome parlor, she added to herself. “Private Benedict told me about night classes for the enlisted men.”
“Johnny doesn’t want me there.”
Susanna sat back, her finger still in the book. “Might there be other ladies who would like to learn in a separate class?”
“There might be.” Maeve turned her head toward the door, her face alert. “Here comes my Johnny.”
Susanna didn’t hear anything, but she wasn’t married to Johnny Rattigan, and from the soft look on Maeve’s face, in love with him. “I should leave,” she said.
“Not yet, please. Meet him.”
The door opened to reveal a handsome man with worry on his face. His eyes brightened to see Maeve, but the worry was still there. Major Randolph was right behind him. The two tall men seemed to fill the sitting room, the modest allotment of a sergeant in the U.S. Army. They brought with them a rush of cold air, and the winter Susanna had forgotten about for a few hours with Maeve Rattigan, struggling with sorrow, and Mark Twain, who had made them both laugh.
The sergeant knelt by his wife’s chair. Susanna felt the tears start in her eyes when Maeve pulled him tenderly toward her and kissed his head. Susanna glanced at the major, who was looking at her. She had already decided the post surgeon wasn’t a man well versed in hiding his emotions. He seemed to be telling her, Look, some marriages are lovely.
Major Randolph introduced her to the sergeant, who was feeling the warming pad behind his wife’s back now. He took out the pad and went to the kitchen. He had obviously done this small thing for his wife many times, which made Susanna swallow and wonder why she had ever thought for the smallest moment that hers were the worst troubles in the universe.
At his wife’s whispered words, the sergeant put the newly warmed pad on her abdomen this time. Susanna knew he must be a man used to command, but his voice was calm and quiet. “I greatly appreciate your kindness,” he told her, his accent as charming as Maeve’s.
“Glad to help,” she said. Were all sergeants so handsome? “If you’re busy tomorrow, I will happily return.” She touched Maeve’s blanketed foot with her hand. “We have more stories to read.”
“I am busy tomorrow,” he said. “The army doesn’t stop for family difficulties.”
“Then are we agreed?” Susanna asked. She looked at the sergeant, feeling decisive for the first time in months. “What time do you have breakfast here?”
“Around six, I suppose, eh, Maeve?”
“If the post surgeon can locate us some eggs, I’ll make an omelet. I know he has cheese and it’s not very good, but …”
“That’s army issue,” the major interrupted. “Likely found in the dark corner of a warehouse sometime after Appomattox, reboxed and christened Aged Cheddar. I have eggs.”
“Major, they’re so dear,” Maeve said in protest.
“Not as dear as you, Mrs. Rattigan,” he told her cheerfully. “Come, Mrs. Hopkins. I want you to meet some of your Monday-morning pupils. Good day to you both.” The post surgeon put the back of his hand against Maeve’s cheek. “If you feel so much as a twinge, send the sergeant on the double. He knows where I live.”
The Rattigans looked at each other and smiled, but only an idiot could not have seen the sorrow, too. They knew only too well where Major Randolph lived.
Outside, Susanna took a welcome lungful of winter, then shivered against the January cold. She stopped in surprise on the Rattigans’ postage-stamp porch when the post surgeon pulled her muffler tighter around her neck.
“Mrs. Hopkins, if you won’t button that top button on your coat, you’ll have to do better with your muffler.”
She was silent as he arranged her muffler to suit himself, not fooled at all.
“How do they bear it?” she asked, when he offered his arm and she took it with no hesitation. The walk was icy.
“I don’t know. There aren’t two people in this whole garrison who love each other as much as Maeve and John Rattigan, and she cannot give him what they both want so much. When they make love, it only leads to sorrow. I’m sorry for my plain speaking.”
“It only leads to blood in a bucket. I can speak as plain as you,” she finished. “How tragic.” She stopped before the footbridge. Children returning from Private Benedict’s school were running across the icy planks. “Did you take me here today to remind me that it’s time I quit feeling sorry for myself?”
“No, but if that’s a byproduct …” He took her arm again when the children were across the bridge. “I took you because the last thing Maeve needed to see was another sergeant’s wife towing her own children over, to sit and commiserate, which I swear the Irish do better than anyone. You watch—she’ll be fine in a few days. But right now, a reminder of children isn’t good. What did you learn today?”
“That I like to prop my feet up on a warm pig, too, and maybe I could teach some ladies to read. Can you really find eggs?”
“Bam, can you change a subject,” he joked. “I have a small pig in the hospital which I will gladly loan you for cold nights, and yes, I have an egg source, officially listed in my supplies as medicinal. As for teaching ladies to read, bravo.”
He was quiet then as they strolled along. She could tell how tired he was. “When did you last sleep, Major?” she asked.
“Two days ago, I think.”
“I can meet my students tomorrow afternoon,” she offered.
“Tomorrow there will be some other crisis,” he told her, pointing to the adobe house on the end of Officers Row. “Let’s begin here.”
“There really isn’t any point in arguing with you, is there?”
“None whatever.”
It was dark by the time they finished the visits. It amused her to see eagerness on some faces and discontent on others, who probably saw her as a spoilsport ruining their idyllic existence.
“I would be upset if Mrs. Hopkins showed up, ready to confine me to a classroom, when there is a fort full of swearing men, tales of scalps being lifted, and the promise of riding with Papa on campaign,” she told him as they neared the last house.
“There
will be Nick Martin in the back row with his gallows smile,” the major said. “A daunting prospect.” He stopped then. “Speaking of daunting prospects, here we are at Chez Dunklin. I saved the worst for last.”
Susanna felt her heart thump harder. “I hope Mrs. Dunklin takes no interest in Shippensburg gossip.”
“We’ll know soon.”
The Dunklin quarters were overheated like all the others, but with heavy, dark furniture. Obviously not for the Dunklins were packing crate settees, which Susanna found charming, or light folding chairs, easy to move to the next garrison. The Dunklins seemed to be doing their best to bring Pennsylvania to the West.
To her relief, Captain Dunklin dominated the conversation in his own parlor, as he had attempted in the ambulance from Cheyenne. He complained of headache, which Major Randolph assured him was the principal symptom of erobitis.
“It will run its course by tomorrow afternoon,” the post surgeon said with a straight face. “Here is your scholar. Bobby Dunklin, Mrs. Hopkins has so much to teach you.”
Bobby scowled. Susanna decided to seat Nick Martin directly behind him, starting Monday. She glanced at Mrs. Dunklin, aware that Bobby must have inherited his scowl from her. Goose bumps marched in ranks down Susanna’s back as she chattered to an unwilling Bobby about school. “I’d rather ride my horse,” he said.
“Just think, Bobby,” Susanna said “While you’re waiting for spring, you can learn a few things.”
She felt Mrs. Dunklin’s eyes boring into her back. Can we leave? she pleaded silently to the post surgeon, wishing Major Randolph was susceptible to thought waves.
As the post surgeon started eyeing the door himself, Mrs. Dunklin stood up suddenly. “We’re so pleased you are here to lead our children into knowledge,” the woman said, sounding every bit as pompous as her husband. Then she frowned. “It’s going to drive me distracted until I remember why your name sticks in my mind, Mrs. Hopkins. I’ll figure it out.”