by Jan Watson
Shade reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch and a rolling paper. Tapping the pouch, he filled the paper with cut leaf, licked the edge, then rolled it in a tight spool. He cupped his hand to block the flare of the match he struck against the building. Tar-paper shingles made a perfect strike plate.
Maybe he should go make another call on the good doctor. Hadn’t she told him to come back? He could claim he was still worried about gangrene. That would be a sad, lingering way to die, but when he’d pulled the packing, it didn’t stink. Surely gangrene would smell as bad as a lye-free outhouse.
He narrowed his eyes with the first deep draw on the cigarette. A smoke would take the edge off, and he needed something to do that. The edge on him was sharp as a whetted knife. Booze wouldn’t work. He had to keep alert.
Man, he was that surprised when he’d walked into the office and seen a lady—and a pretty one at that. Since when did women become doctors? He leaned and spit in the dirt. She didn’t yammer on, either—bossing him around like his wife did. No, had done. Just like his wife had done.
Bile and tobacco smoke backed up in his throat and he spit again. That was never supposed to happen, but Noreen had finally said one word too many. She’d stoked his anger like cordwood in a cookstove, chunk after chunk after chunk; who could blame him for what had happened? He’d kept his tongue and kept his tongue until finally he broke.
Shade was so tired he could sleep standing up. He hadn’t been able to rest since. Every time he closed his eyes, that rock came crashing down again. Why hadn’t he just walked away? If he could just turn back time like the poet wished—“Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight.”
Although if he was going to wish for time to turn backward, he might as well wish he’d never met Sweet Noreen. He could see the big T for trouble stamped on her forehead from across the street that night in Cincinnati. She’d been alone, standing in a puddle of gaslight outside the train station. The hack stand was empty, and it was freezing cold, spitting sleet. So what did he do? Like a white knight drawn to a damsel in distress, he crossed the street.
“Hey, little lady, what are you doing out here all by your lonesome?” he’d said as blustery as the weather.
“I’m minding my own business,” she shot back. “Who might you be?”
He swept the hat from his head and bowed. “Shade Harmon, at your service, ma’am. And you are?”
“Sweet Noreen,” she said.
“That it?”
“That’s enough for you to know, mister.” She fished in her handbag and pulled out a small pot of carmine. She rubbed its waxy surface and patted fresh color on her already-shiny red lips, then capped the pot and dropped it back inside her bag. “Say, do you have a smoke?”
He resisted the urge to brush sleet from her hair. She was just about the most intriguing creature he had ever seen, and that was saying a lot.
“I know a place a couple of streets over. We could go there—grab some coffee, get out of the weather.”
“All right,” she said, “as long as you mind your manners.”
“Ah, Sweet Noreen, my mother taught me how to treat a lady.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” Noreen flipped the long braid of his hair off his shoulder. “Why didn’t your mama teach you not to wear your hair like a girl?”
Suddenly, the night lit up like the Fourth of July. He liked a gal with a little sass. Or so he’d thought, that cold winter’s night in Cincinnati.
Yawning, Shade dropped his smoke and ground it under the heel of his boot. He had to stop thinking about Noreen. What’s done is done.
The shadows were still playing on the window shade across the street. Maybe he’d rest just a minute—take a load off. He took a few sheets of newsprint from atop the trash bin and spread them on the ground. Lowering himself, he crossed his legs at the ankle and let the rough tar-paper wall support his shoulders. If he kept his head turned to the side, he could see the doctor’s office just fine.
The next thing he knew, a booted foot was tapping his leg.
“Move along, buddy,” someone said. “Go home and sleep it off.”
Glancing up, he saw moonlight bouncing off a six-pointed star. Keeping his head down, he scrambled to his feet. He was a real smooth operator, letting the sheriff catch him sleeping on the job. “Sorry,” he mumbled, moving away, pretending to stumble over his own feet. Hopefully, to the sheriff, he was just another drunk.
Shade kept walking, swaying ever so slightly so as not to appear too intoxicated. The last thing he wanted was to spend the night on a jail bunk. He could feel the eyes of the law boring into his back—tattooing murderer between his shoulder blades.
Two streets over and he was at the only place to buy spirits in the one-horse town. Sally’s Teas and Fine Chocolates, the sign out front said. It should have read, Teahouse by day and blind tiger by night. The sturdy back door of the fine tea emporium sported another small hinged door through which money could be exchanged for whiskey or pure locally distilled moonshine. Like most other alkie-free burgs he’d been in, the law turned a blind eye to such establishments if they turned off the lights before midnight on a Saturday. There’d be no drinking on Sunday.
He wasn’t interested in spirits. That wasn’t his particular vice. But where you found alcohol, there was sure to be a furtive game going on—another thing the law turned a blind eye to in most mining towns as long as you kept it on the q.t. The men who played craps were mostly burned-out miners looking for a bit of action to stretch thin paychecks. Some of them weren’t half-bad at turning a dime into a dollar. Except for that one fellow—he was the unluckiest gambler ever to pitch a die. Shade had never seen him win a single penny, yet he kept pulling money from his pocket, and like a rube, he blew on the dice before they rolled from his hand.
Shade was careful not to seem expert. So far, on the few nights he’d played with this particular group, he placed wins and losses. No one had caught on that he was biding his time, like that snake under the riffle.
Yep, there they were under the light from the bar window: Hoppy, Happy, and Grunt, hunched on the ground like toads waiting for bugs. Shade liked to assign names to people he didn’t know, and never hoped to, based on their actions. It was a way to keep people straight in his mind. Hoppy jumped like a gigged frog when he was lucky. Happy kept a grin on win or lose, and Grunt never said a word you could understand without effort. Shade could predict what a person would do by the moniker he gave them. Except, that is, for Sweet Noreen. Her goal in life had been to keep him guessing.
Happy had just won playing a single roll on the hop, so the fellows made room for Shade. He hunched down, calling out bets in turn, his money a short stack of indulgence. Grunt rattled the dice, blew on his babies, then rolled them against the stair stoop they used for a backstop. One die bounced off into the sparse grass ringing the packed-dirt playing field. Short roll—didn’t count. Grunt found the die and rattled both again. Hoppy leaped and settled on his haunches when he won.
The game continued. Shade glanced at his pocket watch; it was 11:55, time for one more roll. The heat was on. Bets were placed. Grunt hadn’t won a cent all night but he threw down a ten spot. It was like taking honey from a dead bear. Shade called a hard way and won with boxcars just before the light over the window winked out. He raked in his money and stood. No sense saying adios. He’d see them again Monday night unless he hit pay dirt in another way.
He walked down the passway between the bar and the bank. The incongruity was not lost on him. Both took your money and then turned a cold shoulder. He should know. Once he’d been a regular working stiff, putting his earnings into an account bearing interest. He was saving for the house with the white picket fence his first wife yearned for. It took him five years to save that money, but the look on Betsy’s face when he turned the key to the front door of that five-room house made it worth every single day he toiled for the Man.
Then the business hit the skids and the Man let him
go. He could have found another job easy, but Betsy was sick. There wasn’t anybody else but him. Two months was all he was behind, but the bank was hiding under the riffle. They called in the mortgage, and he lost Betsy’s white picket fence and her five-room house. She died in one of those rooms as he was packing up their belongings. He couldn’t help but believe that her broken heart hastened that sad day.
It wasn’t good to think about Betsy, but she’d had these eyes the color of bluebonnets and hair such a pale yellow, it was almost not a color. Her face and eyes and that silky hair refused to fade from his memory.
“Don’t forget me, love,” she’d pleaded that long last night, her voice fading away to a whisper. With effort, she’d put her frail hand over his too-full chest. “Keep me here. Don’t forget.”
Toward morning, he’d bathed her with rose-scented water before dressing her in the soft cotton chemise she’d had him buy for just this purpose. He hadn’t expected it to be so difficult, maneuvering the lilac-printed nightdress over her lifeless frame. She’d wanted hose, so he wrestled them up over her knees before tucking her feet into the backless slippers he’d given her for Christmas. Last he brushed her pale hair.
Afterward, all the while he walked to the undertaker’s, he was sure he could hear the invalid bell that had begged his attention for days that bled into weeks. How could he live without her want, her need?
It was noon when the hearse came. He’d helped lift her into the simple wooden casket, making sure she was exactly like she’d wanted to be, her gown arranged just so, her cream-colored hair loosely gathered with lavender ribbon, streaming over one shoulder, and a sprig of lilac tucked into her folded hands.
There was no funeral, for who was there to mark her passing but him? A minister, called out by the kindly undertaker, he supposed, said a few words at the graveside that very afternoon. And it was done. Shade was free of Betsy’s need and Betsy’s illness, but what was he to do with that freedom?
The preacher offered a ride home, but Shade walked. He wanted to walk a thousand miles, but it was only three to the big house that Betsy no longer craved. He’d gone straight to the kitchen and pulled out a chair, sitting heavily, relishing unending time without the tiresome tinkling of the bell, without water boiling for tea too weak, without burned toast needing to be scraped, without butter too cold to spread, without honey turned to crystal in the jar.
He tried to think of something he’d done right for her as death crept into her body a sickly inch at a time. But her illness was a wall he could never scale. Everything about it was a rebuke to him who had promised before God and man to care for her—what was the word that had so easily slid off his tongue? Cherish. He had promised to cherish her.
Finally, when it got too dark to see without a lamp, Shade rose from his chair. He’d finish packing—tidy up the place before morning, when the bank would put him and their things out on the street. They’d tack a cardboard Foreclosed sign on the door that was no longer his anyway. Let them have it.
It wasn’t as bad as he might have thought. The broom and the dustpan ordered the chaos in a soothing way. He’d finished the kitchen—pans all in a box, dishes wrapped in newsprint, icebox wiped clean—and headed for the bedroom. The bed needed stripping, small amber vials of medicines needed pitching, windows needed raising so the room could be aired.
He hadn’t stepped a foot across the threshold before he saw it lying there in the gloom of the fading day—one lonely slipper on the throw rug. He hadn’t even managed to bury her right. He would have walked on hot coals for her if it would have helped. He hoped she knew that. But all he could do was let the fire of his grief char ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Now, midway up the alley, Shade stumbled over his own feet and steadied himself with an elbow to the wall. The weight of remorse always took him by surprise. He wished there was a suitcase made to store heartache so you could slide it under the bed and get it out only when you had the need for a moment’s penance. Man, he’d have a trunkful.
Coins jingled in his pocket. He pinched his dice from among the coins and folding money and secured them in a small flannel bag. He was sure the players had not seen him switch the dice for his own on that last shot. He had his tricks: a clearing of his throat or a shift in posture would take attention from his hand as he removed the weighted dice from the cuff of his trousers. He didn’t consider it cheating because he was good at it. He had studied the craft and lost a lot of lucre in the process. Some men robbed with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen; he used what he had at his disposal. Turnabout, what goes around—all of life was just one fat gamble. It didn’t seem that much different to him than a man laying a bet against a roof fall every time he went down in the mines or a banker calling heads-I-win when a body fell behind on his mortgage payments.
Shade adjusted his hat and strode out of the alley. Right now he was betting he could have an easy look-see around the doctor’s office. She knew where his daughter was—he’d wager good money on it—and he aimed to find his Betsy Lane no matter what it took.
Chapter 15
Monday morning dawned hot and muggy, and Lilly was off to a late start. She wanted to wear her lightweight linen skirt, but no matter how she tugged at the button on the waistband, it would not fasten. She would have worn the same skirt she wore Friday, but Turnip Tippen had already come by for the laundry. Mrs. Tippen was going to spot clean and press her serge and lightweight woolen skirts today—would they even fit tomorrow?
“Where is that skirt that was too big when the dressmaker sent it? You know, the brown one?” she asked of Kip. In order to be of help, he leaped into the clothes closet and sniffed around. The closet smelled of cedar and made her slightly ill—everything made her slightly ill these days, especially odors.
She sat on the edge of her freshly made bed and surveyed the closet. It was truly a thing of beauty. Most houses didn’t even have a press, just pegs on the wall or, worse yet, twopenny nails pounded into a doorframe. But in his thoughtful way, Tern had constructed roomy closets in each of the bedrooms as well as a linen closet in the bathroom and a coat closet by the front door.
“Oh, Kip, how can a person have so many options and not a thing to wear?” She rose and sorted through the wooden hangers once again. This shouldn’t be so hard. All her things were neatly and precisely ordered: shirtwaists in the front, skirts next, arranged by color, then dresses: day dresses, business wear, Sunday go-to-meeting, and last the gowns she kept in cloth protectors. Hatboxes were on the top shelf, undergarments and nightgowns folded between sheets of tissue paper in built-in drawers, shoes side by side on the floor. Tern had his own closet on the other wall.
“You know, Kip, I think I put that skirt in a box with some other items and stuck it on the shelf in Tern’s closet. He has more room.”
The closets had sliding doors, another innovation. She slid Tern’s open and looked up at the shelf. There was the pasteboard box. She should go to the pantry and get the folding stepladder, but instead, she pulled the bench from her vanity table over to the closet. She was already behind, and the bench was sturdy.
Even standing on the bench, the shelf was above her head, and the box was big and awkward. She heard the squeak as she slid the box toward the edge. A mouse poked its head out a ragged hole. With a yelp, Lilly lost her balance. Box, clothes, tiny baby mice, and she herself tumbled to the floor. Kip went crazy as the mother mouse darted around the room.
“Kip,” Lilly yelled from where she lay on her back. “Leave it! Leave it!”
Gingerly she stood and rested her hand on her abdomen. Thankfully, her back had taken the brunt of her landing and she hadn’t fallen hard. Everything seemed fine. What a foolish risk she’d taken. Now she had ruined clothes, a nest of shredded tissue paper, and a host of mice to deal with before she even started her day. Lilly sighed. She was doing nothing but stamping out fires this morning.
She could see the mother mouse’s whiskers twitching from underneath her dress
ing table. Kip nosed one of the babies. “Kip! Sit!” His whole body twitched, but he obeyed. Such a good dog. Now, what to do with the mice?
“Lord, I could use a hand,” she prayed sincerely and wondered if there was a Scripture for this particular problem. All she could think of was “A prating fool shall fall.” That sounded like Proverbs. Surely she had played the fool by ignoring the sturdy ladder in the kitchen in order to save a minute. She could have hurt her baby.
Before she could berate herself further, she heard the kitchen door push open and a familiar voice calling.
“Doc Lilly? Mommy sent you some eggs and some honey that Daddy took from a hive. Doc Lilly? Want to see my stings? I got seven.”
“Just a minute, Timmy. I’ll be right out.” There was nothing to do but wear one of her loose-fitting dresses today. Slipping one over her head, she buttoned the dozen buttons. With a quick look in the mirror to straighten her pearls, she went to the kitchen. The good Lord did provide. Of all the people in the world, Timmy was perfect for mouse removal. She’d take Kip to work with her to get him out of the way.
“Hey, Doc,” Timmy said. “Say, did you know someone busted out your window last night?”
Lilly looked around the room. “My window?”
“Not here, at the clinic.” At the drain board, Timmy arranged the eggs in a pyramid—the better to make a mess with when one fell from the stack with a plop. “Oops.”
“Timothy,” Lilly said with a sigh, “explain the window.”
“Well, Mommy dropped me off at your work so’s I could leave you the eggs and show you my stings, but you weren’t there, so’s I brung them here.” He held out one arm dotted with red blotches. “See? Daddy says never stick your arm up a hollow tree before you smoke the bees.”
“The window, please, Timmy,” Lilly said as she mixed baking soda in water and began to dab the paste on Timmy’s wounds.