The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine

by Kristen Heitzmann

  Èmie’s letter had brought Carina to tears. Stories of the miners she served at Carina’s restaurant and of the girls who served with her, and news of the baby she would bear in the fall. Quillan had held Carina close, let her tears soak his shirt, and kissed away her protests that she didn’t know why she cried. He knew.

  There were other letters from names he hardly knew. One man admitted Joe Turner had offered to pay postage for anyone who wanted to send Carina a letter. She laughed when she read those, describing the men who had come to her Sunday dinners. This one had lost an eye in a drilling accident, that one had seventeen children. How had she come to know so many and care enough to glow when she read their awkward scrawls?

  She answered each letter after sharing it with him, but refused to read more than one a day. He suspected it was to help him pass the time that now dragged like overloaded wagons with square wheels. It was her little ritual, and some days it did help.

  But today’s letter put him in a particularly difficult mood. Carina had paused when she pulled Alex Makepeace’s letter at random from the stack. Did she debate sharing it before she knew what it held? But she slit the envelope and spread the sheets across her lap where she sat at the end of the couch beside his useless leg.

  “It’s from Alex, Quillan. To us.”

  But he had already seen the address, and his name was not on it.

  “ ‘Dear Carina,’ ” she faltered, then went on. “ ‘The cave we found has proved a great venture. Many people come long ways to tour the limestone cavern. I have attached torch holders to the walls in some places to enable the tours better safety and allow its grandeur to be seen. The stalactites and stalagmites are magnificent in the light. The flowstone on the walls glimmers with greens and browns and streaks of white. I have identified all the minerals, but people don’t seem interested in all that. They do listen to how the cave was formed and seem inclined to remember that much at least. Not many aspire to geological greatness, I fear.’ ”

  Carina smiled. “Poor Alex. He was always more interested in the makeup of the cave than I.” She glanced up, and Quillan forced an even countenance.

  She read on, “ ‘I do include some of the side tunnels in the tours and take people into the crystal chamber. Do you remember you thought it was like the center of a geode?’ ” Carina paused, no doubt recalling her time with Alex in some fairyland cavern.

  Quillan caught his hostile thoughts and forced them to submit. Had he learned nothing? Where was the benevolence he had shown to Flavio, the peace it had brought his own heart?

  “ ‘Tell your husband the painted chamber is sealed off and safe from discovery. It was hard going, but we made it look like a natural slide, and no one so far has suspected. Probably because they do not know enough about the formation of caves to detect the anomaly of weathered outside rock in a limestone cavern.’ ” There Carina smiled.

  Quillan relaxed. Alex had kept his word, and he had to appreciate that much. But he tensed again when she read the next part.

  “ Èmie’s cooking is reminiscent of your own, and I dine thankfully every night, though things are not the same without you. Give your husband my regards. I am indebted to him for my continued position and partial possession of a very successful mine. My regards to you, as well, Carina. Sincerely, Alex Makepeace.’ ”

  Quillan smiled grimly at the irony. Alex Makepeace was growing rich on the mine Quillan had provided him, while he sat disabled and penniless. But when he looked into Carina’s face, he knew which of them had come out the richer. “What are you going to answer back?”

  She waved the pages. “I’ll send my condolences that no one appreciates the mineral content of the flowstone.”

  Quillan reached for her hand and held it a long moment. “Thank him for sealing off Wolf ’s chamber.”

  “I will.” She kissed his fingers and stood. “Shall I say anything else?”

  He fought a quick battle and won. “Whatever you want, Carina.”

  Still, he felt stark when she left. He looked down at the casted leg. Would the cast ever come off? And what would remain when it did? He had expected some acknowledgment of improvement. But Dr. DiGratia remained grave and resisted questioning. The leg must be as bad as he imagined.

  Quillan picked up Cain’s Bible and considered the verse he had made his own, the verse that assured him of God’s provision if he remained in him. But how could he remain in God alone when he was so helpless he had to depend on others, as well? He laid aside the Bible and shifted his position on the couch. His backside had never complained so much on the hard box of his wagon as it did now on this couch.

  He swung his left leg over the side, easing the casted mate to the edge. Should he try to stand? Even his good leg would atrophy if it sat there much longer. He put his weight on it and raised himself slightly. It suddenly felt like he’d stepped on an anthill. He jerked it up and waited while the blood infused his left foot, but his arms lacked the strength yet to get him up with one leg totally useless and the other half asleep.

  He settled back onto the couch. God, what do you want from me? He had gone over the words of that verse so many times. He had felt so sure that God wanted him to relinquish every desire for human acceptance, to find his worth in Jesus alone. And he had done so, even if it meant he would lose Carina, as well. On his knees he had surrendered all hope of human attachment. Then God—reversing Himself?—had rendered him completely dependent.

  “Maybe you must surrender your independence.” Carina’s words nagged him as badly as the Lord’s had. He would have died without Dr. DiGratia’s skills, without the constant care of Carina and her brother, even the broth prepared by her mother. What could Quillan have done for himself? For a time he couldn’t even raise a spoon to his mouth, couldn’t wash himself.

  Now he had use of his arms. He could raise himself, albeit painfully; he could stamp the blood back into his left foot, but he couldn’t stand. Not without help. And he couldn’t work. His independence was lost. Quillan squirmed. Anything but that, Lord! It was asking too much. God’s knife had slipped, cut away too much. This branch was too tender to bear it.

  Quillan looked at Cain’s Bible, as much at odds with it as he’d sometimes been with Cain himself. The words were fixed in his memory, but he didn’t understand. Why would God make him surrender his hope of family and acceptance, then make him helpless? The frustration grew until he scowled.

  He shook his head, unwilling to think anymore. He needed a distraction, something to chase Carina’s words and God’s from his mind. In times like this he rued the gift of memory. He picked up the treatise Carina had brought him to practice his Italian. Giuseppe Mazzini’s The Duties of Man.

  Just the thing. He would understand more of that than God’s word. Quillan reached for the book and flipped it open to the place he’d marked earlier with a slip of paper. He stared at the foreign words, ciphering them piece by piece and trying to fit them back into a form he recognized.

  La famiglia È un paese d’il cuore. The family is a country?—of . . .

  something. Quillan frowned. His mind was obviously not operating at its best.

  Dr. DiGratia came into the room with his usual flicking glance before he used his hands. Had he ever been touched so much in his life?

  Quillan suffered the back of the man’s hand briefly against his forehead, his fingers probing the soft tissue beneath his jaw, the quick grip of that jaw as his face was raised and the sharp momentary scrutiny of his eyes.

  As usual, Dr. DiGratia said nothing about what he looked for or saw, but Quillan had learned to read his expression. He wasn’t dying today, he assumed.

  “Open your shirt.”

  Quillan tucked the paper slip into the page, set the book beside him, and unbuttoned his shirt.

  Dr. DiGratia probed his abdomen, which hurt most when encouraged by the doctor’s fingers. Then he worked the same magic on Quillan’s ribs. Though he winced, Quillan could tell they were healing.

&nbs
p; “Very good.” A surprising accolade. “Vittorio.”

  His son came in carrying a pail of river rocks. He set it by the wall and joined his father at the couch.

  “Planning to stone me?” Quillan’s wry humor earned him the older man’s glance.

  “I brought you something to use instead of my books.” He removed several rocks from the pail, placing them on the floor, then lifted the pail to the bed, holding the handle up.

  Quillan caught his meaning and gripped the handle. The weight of the rocks was as much as he could lift left-handed, and it sent an ache through the collarbone. He crossed his right arm over his body and tried it with that one. Again a pain in the bone that had broken, and he could hardly raise it.

  “You can adjust the number of rocks.”

  Quillan realized the benefit to that; much better than trying to raise an ungainly stack of books. “Thank you.”

  Dr. DiGratia pointed to the book at his side. “That will do you no more good. It’s in Italiano.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll return it to the shelf.” He held out his hand.

  Quillan rested his palm atop the book. “If you don’t mind, I’ll muddle through it still.”

  The doctor raised his brows. “You are reading Italian?”

  “Somewhat.” Quillan felt defensive. Would the doctor tell him he had no right to their language, to understand their culture and beliefs?

  “Giuseppe Mazzini”—he pronounced it Matzini—“was a visionary for the unification of Italy. But he was a republican. Unlike Garibaldi, he did not want the nation unified under a king.” The doctor shrugged.

  “His writings are very powerful. May I?” Dr. DiGratia lifted the book.

  He opened to the page Quillan had marked and translated: “ ‘The family is a country of the heart. There is an angel in the family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter.’ ”

  Quillan pictured Carina, and in her all of that: grace, sweetness, love. It did render life less bitter. But he suspected the writing didn’t refer to one individual, but an entity created by the whole, the family.

  The doctor read on. “ ‘The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the family.’ ”

  As the doctor read, Quillan felt his spirit shrink. That was what Carina knew, what she valued, what she tried to give to him. But was it what God intended? He felt the doctor’s eyes on him, but couldn’t meet them, to see there the exclusion he thought didn’t matter. But it did. Hearing those words made him realize it did. Was God torturing him?

  Dr. DiGratia set the book on the table. “Vittorio, the saw.”

  Quillan looked up sharply. A saw could mean only one thing. Vittorio brought it, and Dr. DiGratia began cutting the cast from Quillan’s leg. Quillan watched with trepidation. What would he see when the plaster came off? A mangled piece of meat, no longer useful? A weight to be dragged along with a crutch?

  The plaster peeled off like the bark of a log. The flesh inside was like hairy chicken skin. A jagged scar rose red and angry along the thigh, which was thinner by half what it had been. Quillan moved his toes and felt the awful flexing of what muscle remained. Dr. DiGratia felt the thigh deeply, and Quillan shrank as much from the unaccustomed sensation of touch there as from pain.

  “Why do you want to know Italian when in America Italians learn English?”

  Quillan tore his eyes from his leg. Was the doctor trying to distract him? “Carina speaks Italian.”

  “Carina speaks five languages.” The doctor raised Quillan’s leg at the knee, feeling the break just above it.

  That was the worse of the two, Quillan could tell. It hurt as the doctor rotated the leg between his palms, studying his work. He flinched at the hands on his skin, the motion of a leg unused to motion, the bending joint, stiff and sore, and most of all, the flaccid muscle. He forced himself to respond to the doctor’s last remark. “Italian is the language of her heart.” He met the doctor’s glance.

  “Take his arm, Vittorio.” Dr. DiGratia swung Quillan’s right leg to the floor.

  His waxy yellow foot turned red, and Quillan hissed his breath sharply between his teeth at the shooting pain and maddening tingle. Vittorio caught him by one arm, the doctor by the other. Quillan resisted. He didn’t want to try the leg and fail. “The worst is the leg will not bear your weight.” Fear seized him.

  The doctor spread his hand between Quillan’s shoulder blades with a soothing warmth. Quillan tried unsuccessfully to release the knotted muscles, to hide the binding tension of that fear. He felt ashamed and at the same time protected. If he never stood, he’d never know, never face life as a one-legged man.

  Again he thought of Cain, saw the useless stump of a leg. “Sometimes in the night when the ghost pains come, I wish it had blown the rest of me up, too. Never thought I’d clobber about on a wood peg. But God knows best.” Quillan had doubted it then, and for all his efforts at faith, he doubted it now.

  The doctor said, “I think we should work the muscles first.”

  Quillan’s tension eased. Any reprieve was welcome, even though he knew the muscle would be sore and weak. The doctor reached for the pail and set it on the floor beside Quillan’s foot. Quillan stared at the rocks inside the galvanized pail while the doctor wrapped the handle with a cloth.

  Vittorio let go of Quillan’s left arm, probably confused by the abrupt change of plans. He hadn’t sensed what Carina’s father had sensed, the fear and resistance. The doctor had not missed it, though, and responded as a . . . a father might, with compassion and understanding. Quillan looked down at the graying head of the man lifting the handle of the pail over the foot and ankle of his right leg.

  But Dr. DiGratia did not look up. “Try to lift,” he said.

  Quillan hesitated. Would the bone snap with the effort? Jaw tight, he focused on his leg and tried to lift the pail. It came briefly off the floor, then clamored back down. The doctor removed several stones. “Again.”

  Quillan tensed the thigh and raised the pail a short distance, then dropped it noisily to the floor. Dr. DiGratia reached up and felt the bone above the knee. Quillan’s muscle shook under the doctor’s fingers. “Again.”

  The fingers bore deeply into the thigh as Quillan raised the pail, sweat beading on his forehead at such a small effort. “Leave us, Vittorio.”

  Quillan’s breath seized as he dropped the pail. Why did he send his son out? To tell Quillan he was a cripple? The doctor eased Quillan’s foot out of the handle and set it on the floor. He looked up into Quillan’s face. “Your fear will hold you back.”

  Quillan swallowed. “I don’t want to be less than whole.”

  “I believe,” the doctor said, “the bone has knit well. Shall we try again, we two?”

  Something in the way he said the word two, linking them together, made Quillan want to try. He sensed the doctor’s vested concern. It was important to him. He had worked hard for this moment. Quillan gathered the ragged edges of his will and nodded.

  The doctor stood slowly, taking Quillan’s arm over his shoulders. Quillan forced his muscles to respond and came up standing, though most of his weight was on the doctor.

  “Shift to your right.”

  Carefully, gingerly, Quillan allowed his right leg to take some of the burden. Pain, but not unbearable. Little strength, but no snapping or splintering of bone. The thigh looked slightly crooked as Quillan looked at it. But that could be the wasted muscle and the scar.

  The doctor eased out from under his arm, keeping hold of the small of Quillan’s back. “It bears your weight.”

  Quillan nodded, though the leg had started to shake uncontrollably.

  “Sit now.” Dr. DiGratia eased him down.

  Quillan was amazed by the gentleness of his aid. What brought it now, after their constant brusque sparring? Again the doctor’s fingers wer
e on his thigh probing deeply to the bone. Quillan grimaced.

  The doctor flicked him a glance. “Painful?”

  Quillan glared. What did the man think?

  Angelo DiGratia laughed softly. “You and I do not have an easy time between us, eh?”

  “It might be easier without the poking and prying.”

  “Ah.” The doctor smiled, deep lines forming between the sides of his nose and his chin. Quillan couldn’t recall seeing the man’s smile before.

  “Then I would not do my duty.”

  His duty. Was that it? Had he imagined the unity of purpose, of concern? Quillan looked away.

  “To my son.”

  The words jolted through him like lightning. Had he heard right? He looked back at Carina’s father, found a look of begrudged affection.

  “I don’t excuse what you did. But—” he stood—“maybe . . .” He spread his hands like Carina. “Because I have worked so hard to mend you, it makes a bond . . . like family.”

  Quillan’s chest tightened painfully. Had he misunderstood, used God’s words to support his own resistance? Was it harder to bear their acceptance than their rejection? “Dr. DiGratia—”

  “I think . . . it must be Papa DiGratia.”

  Papa. Quillan gripped the edge of the couch. Lord? Was it allowed him? If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Ask now, and it would be done. Which did he want? His fierce independence or that sweetness of which the author Mazzini spoke?

  The doctor held out his hand. “We will make our peace as you did with Flavio?”

  Throat taut, Quillan took his hand.

  The doctor, his . . . papa . . . leaned down and kissed both his cheeks. The oddness of it was washed away by the sheer wonder. “You said to judge you by yourself.”

  Quillan remembered. It had been brash and defiant of him.

  Papa DiGratia gripped his forearms. “I have done so.”

  Their eyes met in mutual esteem. For the first time since Carina, Quillan felt that someone had seen him as he was—not perfect, but neither more nor less flawed than the next man—and accepted him as such. “Thank you.”