The Texan's Touch

by Jodi Thomas

  Smiling at himself, Adam realized he didn’t even know what “cut a trace” meant a month ago. But here in the West that was how men referred to marking a trail for someone else to follow.

  Only Adam had no scout to mark his trail. He had no idea where he was heading. As he passed the stage office, he thought, come morning, he could step on a stage and head farther west. But to where, to what? Wes had his dream. Daniel had his duty. But Adam had nothing. When the war ended, he thought he had his life all planned out. Now six months later he was like so many others, drifting, belonging nowhere.

  Since the night he’d told Nichole he wasn’t sure about being a doctor, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about quitting. She’d cut his doubts off at the knee. Something inside him made him want to be as good a doctor as she thought he already was.

  There she was again, he thought. Drifting through his mind like she planned to homestead. Over the past months he’d caught himself talking things out with her in his imagination. Something about the way she’d demanded the best from him made him want to try harder.

  “You got a twopenny, mister?” a tiny outline whispered from between two buildings. “It ain’t for me, it’s for my ma.”

  Adam knelt down trying to see the child’s face. He was thin, deathly thin with hair and eyes the color of rust. His clothes were dirty and worn.

  “Is something wrong with your mother, son?”

  “She’s sick, but for a few pennies the cook will give a plate of leftovers from the kitchen. He’s real generous. Sometimes it’s enough to feed us all.”

  Adam fished a twopenny coin from his pocket and handed it to the boy. Then, silently, he watched as the kid climbed the steps to the back door of the small restaurant and asked for a plate.

  The cook, who looked like he could be wanted in several states, took the coin and disappeared. After a few minutes, he returned with a plate of mostly beans and potatoes. Atop it, he’d placed a large slice of cornbread.

  “Thanks.” The boy smiled showing several gaps where baby teeth had been.

  The cook grinned back with an equally toothless smile. “Don’t tell the boss about the cornbread. It was left over. Ain’t no use throwing it out.”

  The cook touched the boy’s shoulder a moment while he stuffed a small package in his coat pocket. “That’s for old Terry. Mangy old good-for-nothing dog.”

  “Much obliged,” the beggar whispered as the cook pushed him away in a great pretense of being bothered.

  Adam followed as the boy ran into the blackened alley. He could hear the child’s footsteps, but had to guide himself by touch.

  When Adam finally slowed, deciding to give up the chase, he turned a corner and saw a light. The air was so still in the alley, he could hear himself breathing and smell poverty thick as smoke around him.

  Curiosity drew him toward the spot of light.

  As his eyes adjusted, Adam found himself boxed in with the backs of two-story buildings on three sides of him. One, judging from the odor and muffled noises, was a saloon, only business didn’t seem very lively tonight. The second side of his man-made canyon was some kind of hotel or whorehouse. The third building looked abandoned except for a single candle blinking through a broken window. It was a wide old two-story that could have been officer’s quarters in its prime. It looked like it had been converted into a boardinghouse.

  Adam moved carefully around abandoned crates as he neared the window. The scene that slowly came into distorted focus through the broken glass made him question his vision.

  A woman, pale and fever wet, lay on a small bed. The beggar boy sat on the floor offering her the plate of food.

  Taking a step closer, Adam stared at the third person in the room. A nun. Her spotless habit was snow white and raven black in sharp contrast to everything around her. She looked like an aging angel as she wiped the dying woman’s brow.

  Adam couldn’t resist moving closer. As his foot took the first step, a dog the size of a colt jumped up from the shadows and barked an alarm. Adam froze.

  After a long pause, the boy opened the door only enough to peer out. “Yes?” he whispered in a brave little voice that said he’d protect those within as best he could.

  Adam didn’t waste words. “I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’ve come to help if I can.”

  “I ain’t got no money.” The boy lifted his chin slightly.

  “We’ll talk of payment later.” Adam smiled. He’d often heard of folks paying in services or chickens, but he’d never practiced medicine except during the war.

  The boy hesitated, then opened the door.

  When Adam’s gaze met the nun’s stare, he couldn’t move. She had the most knowing eyes he’d ever seen. The kind of eyes an artist would try to paint for a saint. Ageless eyes in a face that shattered into a thousand wrinkles when she smiled.

  Without a word, she opened her aging hand and pointed to the woman on the bed. “Please,” she whispered. “Help this child of God if you can, Doctor.”

  Leaning forward, Adam felt the patient’s forehead, the side of her throat, then her hand.

  “Boy,” he snapped. “You know that café where you got the food?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go to the front door and look in. You should see a man about my size with a scar on his left cheek. Tell him Adam said to bring the medical bag.”

  “But I can’t go into that place. Not the front.”

  Adam smiled, wishing he could see Wes’s face when the boy ordered him. “Don’t worry. Just tell the man with the scar to hurry. He’ll see no harm comes to you.”

  As soon as the boy left, Adam pulled the covers back. “We’ve got work to do.” He looked up at the elderly nun, knowing she would help. “This woman’s fever is dangerously high.”

  Wes was somewhere into the fog that comes in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. The waitress was starting to look slimmer and less moley. The banging on the piano had almost evolved into a tune when a dirt-covered kid stepped out of nowhere and yelled at him.

  Wes shook his head and tried to understand the words as a bartender grabbed the boy up and swung him toward the door.

  “Wait! What did you say, boy?” Wes hated it when people seemed to talk in some kind of code leaving out every other word. They tended to do it when he’d had a few too many drinks, but he refused to allow them to get by with it.

  “He told me to tell the man with a scar to bring Adam’s medical bag.” The boy tried to wiggle from the hairy hand that held him captive.

  Wes looked around as if expecting to see others with scars. When he turned back, his eyes had sobered slightly. “Let go of the kid,” he ordered as he stood and paid his bill. “I’ll get the bag. Take me to Adam, son.”

  NINE

  DAWN FINALLY FOUND its way to the alley and brightened the back windows of a building that had once been part of the original fort, Adam guessed, from the wide middle hallway and the square frame. Someone had taken the time a few years ago to add improvements, but now the place needed a fresh coat of paint and a bag of nails.

  “Want another cup of coffee, Doctor?” asked the old nun, who’d helped him during the night, as she poured without waiting for a reply.

  “Thanks.” Adam stretched back in his chair. “I think the boy’s mama might have a chance of making it.” He looked at the woman who’d been working by his side. “Thanks to you.”

  She shook her head. “You were the blessing. I sent the boy to seek a doctor two days ago, but he said there was none to be found. I did what I could to help her. Which was a yard short of enough in this case.”

  Adam watched her closely. She hadn’t had any sleep, but she looked the same as she had last night, spotless and efficient. She had a way of guessing what was needed a moment before he asked for it. “Are you with the mission here, Sister?”

  She glanced away. �
�There is no mission near. I travel alone.” She straightened as if testifying before a judge. “I belong to a church no longer though I still hold the beliefs. I greatly dishonored my order. I’ve worn a habit for fifty years. I no longer belong in it, but this is all I have to wear.”

  Adam clamped his jaw down to keep from asking the dozen questions that came to mind. How could this perfect image of a Sister of Mercy appear in the middle of nowhere and claim to have committed some great sin?

  Before he could think of which question to ask first, she raised her head.

  “Thank you for not demanding more of my story, for I can say nothing else.” The flavoring of a foreign accent added another unanswered question to his list.

  “The boardinghouse belongs to Mrs. Jamison and her son, but I don’t know for how much longer.” The nun switched the conversation topic. “I’m told she and her husband managed to scrape out a living here before the war. With the war, there was no business. She told me he turned to outlawing.

  “In ’63, he went to prison and died of a fever within a month. When they sent his clothes back to her, there was not a valuable among them.

  “She tried to keep the boardinghouse going, but couldn’t. She’s not a strong woman and now without enough food or heat she grows sick.”

  “How long have you been helping them?” Adam found it interesting that she could be so silent about her life, yet so talkative about Mrs. Jamison.

  “Two weeks. I came to ask if I could stay a few days for I’d heard of the Jamisons and this house. When I saw how ill she was, I had to help. I’ve used up what little supplies I had. When the coffee’s gone, there will be nothing.”

  The old nun crossed her hands in front of her and waited. It took Adam several seconds to realize, like a patient teacher, she was waiting for him to give her the answer.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers, Sister.” He stood and walked to the door. “I’m just passing through. The widow will need good food for weeks to get all her strength back.”

  The nun didn’t move, she only waited.

  Adam touched the doorknob. “I don’t even know where I’m headed.” He reached in his pocket. “I can leave enough—”

  He stopped, realizing the little amount he could leave would only delay starvation, not prevent it.

  “I’ll try to find someone.” Even as he said the words, he doubted there would be anyone to help. The entire country was full of widows and children without means.

  “I’ll think about it,” he finally said, and managed to break the invisible hold this nun had on him. “I’ll be back later.”

  He almost ran up the alley to the street. By the time he reached the hotel where he and Wes had taken a room, he was breathing hard and frustrated that he couldn’t do more to solve her problem.

  When he opened the door to the room he’d rented, a bottle rolled out of the way and Wes’s snoring greeted him. Adam unstrapped his gun belt and pulled off his coat, telling himself he needed sleep. He’d worry about the nun’s problem in a few hours. Right now, all he wanted to do was relax in the first bed he’d seen in months.

  As he pulled off his boots, he looked around the place they’d rented after dark. The room had two beds and an old dresser missing a third drawer. The washstand was grimy and the pitcher empty. Both windows had been nailed closed. It was hard to believe, but this operating hotel was dirtier than the abandoned one the boy’s mother lay dying in. Someone had yellowed the wallpaper in one corner to save going to the outhouse. Light, about bullet-hole size, shown through the walls in several places.

  Adam closed his eyes in disgust. He didn’t like the idea of having to live in a place like this for months, maybe longer, while saving his money to open a practice. He hadn’t found a suitable location. Every town needed a doctor, so he guessed anywhere would do. Even Fort Worth.

  As he crossed into dreams Nichole was by his side. Only she wasn’t sleeping next to him, but waiting for him to help the nun and the widow, and the boy. She seemed to expect it, as though that was the kind of man he was and nothing would change the fact.

  Rolling awake, Adam stared at the empty space beside him. He remembered something his mother used to say about not looking for the right person to love, but being the right person. It was time he started being the man Nichole had thought he was. He might never see her again, but he’d know.

  Three hours later Adam was standing in front of the boy again waiting to be admitted. The huge dog watched him from the corner of the porch, but didn’t bark.

  “I’m not bringing charity,” Adam said for the third time. “I’m here to offer a deal to the man of the house, and I guess that’s you.”

  The boy let the doorway open enough for Adam to enter with bundles dangling from his shoulders.

  Adam nodded to the nun as he put the groceries down on the long kitchen table. “How’s our patient?”

  “Resting, thanks to the medicine.” The nun watched him closely, only allowing her gaze to dart momentarily to the bags of supplies.

  “I think I’ve found a solution.” Adam saw no hint of surprise in her eyes. He looked at the boy. “I’d like to rent the downstairs rooms of this place from you, sir. Besides this kitchen, I think I noticed four rooms, two small rooms on the side with the kitchen that I could use as living quarters and two larger rooms on the other side of the stairs and front foyer where I could set up a practice. The stairs, foyer, and kitchen would be common ground.”

  The child started to shake his head.

  “Hear me out. I need a place to stay and work. You and your mother can have all the upstairs. When I walked around last night, I think I noticed six rooms. You can live in them all or rent a few out if you like. This house is so large, you’d hardly notice me.”

  Adam faced the nun. “Will you stay with them a little longer? The boy’s mother needs care, and I can use help. I can’t pay you, but you’ll have a roof and food. I’m sure they’d welcome you as their guest.”

  “I’ll stay as long as I’m needed. I’ll accept no pay.” She folded her arms. “I help when I can, but I work for no man for pay.”

  Adam looked back to the boy. “We’re not taking over your place, son. We’re just asking to be boarders. It’s up to you. You can turn us out on the street if you like. For payment, I’ll doctor your ma and provide food. Maybe I can pay rent once I open my practice.”

  He knew the boy had no choice, but he admired the way the little fellow took his time considering.

  “All right, but I help out, too,” the boy finally answered. “A man who’s healthy and don’t work shouldn’t oughta eat. And don’t call me boy or son. My name’s Nance, Nance Edward Jamison just like my pa.” He stood as tall as his five years would allow. “And my dog’s named Terry, Terry Jamison. He don’t have no middle name cause he’s a dog, but he’s a Jamison just like me.”

  “Fair enough. I’m Dr. Adam McLain, but you can call me Doc, or Adam.” He looked up at the nun waiting for her introduction.

  “I’m Sister . . .” Sorrow clouded her eyes. “Just call me Sister, Dr. McLain.”

  Nodding, Adam moved to the table. He’d spent most of his cash buying food and supplies to be delivered later that day. He’d also sent word for the postmaster in Corydon to send his medical books. He hoped they arrived before his doors opened. He had his worries about treating anything except gunshot wounds.

  Adam was so busy the next few days he saw little of Wes. His older brother spent his days sleeping and his nights drinking while Adam used every second of daylight to turn one side of the downstairs into offices and the other into a study and a bedroom.

  Wes surprised him one morning when he stopped by to say good-bye. Though his eyes were red and his face dark with a week’s growth of beard, Wes still sat the saddle tall and proud just the way the military had molded him.

  “Keep an angel on your s
houlder!” Wes yelled the familiar farewell with a hint of their father’s Irish accent as he turned his horse away.

  “And your fist drawn till you brother covers your back,” Adam finished the line. He waved, watching Wes ride out. A part of him wanted to go with his brother, but Wes was a loner who guarded his solitude. And Adam liked things settled. Living out of a saddlebag had never appealed to him. He preferred waking every morning and knowing everything would be where he left it the night before.

  He returned to his chore of patching the roof. Wes was in as much hurry to start his life as Adam found himself to be. It was time to start catching up on the years they lost.

  Once he decided to plant a few roots, there was no stopping Adam. He figured he could have an office open in a few weeks, and by spring would have completely forgotten about Bergette and all the plans he’d dreamed with her. She’d have a fit if she knew he was opening an office between a whorehouse and a saloon. But somehow, he figured, Nick would be proud of him.

  Nichole wouldn’t be quite as easy to erase from his mind, he realized. Most nights he found himself reaching for her in his sleep, like she’d spent more than two nights in his arms, like he needed her. She was somewhere deep in Tennessee, fighting for her land beside her brother. She wasn’t thinking of him, he told himself repeatedly, and he wasn’t thinking of her.

  The nun offered little help in conversation. She answered no questions, not even that of her name. She also took no orders, but was good at guessing what Adam needed. If he asked her to hand him a hammer, she’d say she didn’t have time, but if he left his dirty shirt out, she managed to find an hour to do the wash. She cleaned and cooked and listened.

  By the end of November, Adam had told her every thought and dream he’d ever had, and she’d told him how to make potato soup.

  He’d spent hours trying to guess what she’d done that was so terrible that she’d left her order and couldn’t speak of it. The only thing he’d learned about her was that if cleanliness is next to godliness, she must be heaven’s next-door neighbor.