by Merry Farmer
Franklin groaned, answering the question for himself.
“Oh, thank God,” Alice exclaimed.
“Don’t move,” Jarvis told him, bending closer to see if Franklin had any cuts or bruises on his head. Miraculously, he didn’t. “Stay still,” Jarvis told him. “We’re trying to get you out of here.
“What’s going on over there?” The distant cry from a few men on Ginny’s team sent a wave of relief through Jarvis.
“Hold on, Franklin,” he said, then stood. He waved to Ginny’s men, John and Micah by the look of them, and called out, “Fetch a doctor! Franklin’s been badly hurt.”
The two men paused, then Micah turned and ran back the way they’d come, while John hurried to join them.
“What in heavens?” John asked when he reached the wagon and the pile of rails. “What happened?”
“No time to explain,” Jarvis said. There wasn’t. There wasn’t time for a fight about cheating either. “Help me to move the rails off of him.”
Alice stepped back from shifting the heavy rails, and Jarvis and John moved in to lift them and toss them aside, one by one. Alice took Jarvis’s place at Franklin’s head. She reached for his free hand and held it.
“Franklin, can you hear me?” she asked as Jarvis and John worked.
Franklin could only respond with a groan. That was better than nothing, as far as Jarvis was concerned.
He and John worked as fast as they could, but it wasn’t until more workers, from Howard’s crew this time, arrived in a wagon with their daily supplies that they were able to clear the pile of spilled rails away.
“What happened?” Howard’s man, Isaac, asked, eyes wide with fear as he stared at Franklin’s prone form.
The more rails they cleared away, the more they revealed just how twisted and broken Franklin was under them. One leg was definitely broken, and bent at a strange angle where there shouldn’t have been any bend at all. The other was very possibly broken too.
“He fell and the rails fell on him.” That was all the answer Jarvis was going to give.
They continued to work until Ginny’s cry of “Land sakes, Franklin,” cut through the shouts and grunts of the workers. Ginny was there, riding up atop Midnight. Jarvis was filled with the certainty that things would be all right.
“Lord help us,” Ginny exclaimed. She dismounted and ran to Alice’s side.
Alice gave Franklin’s hand a gentle squeeze, then stood to face Ginny. “He was standing on top of the wagon and fell. The side of the wagon broke and the rails fell on top of him. He’s badly injured,” she explained the situation succinctly.
“I can see that.” Ginny swallowed. Alice watched as her panic switched to determination. “How badly is he bleeding?”
“I can’t tell,” Alice said. “He has a lot of cuts, but it looks like he didn’t cut his head. He must have hit it, though. He’s hasn’t really come to, even though he’s groaning.”
“We have to get him back to Howard’s house,” Ginny said.
“Can we move him?” Jarvis asked, coming away from the side of the wagon, where men were now stacking the fallen rails to the side.
“I don’t see that we have much choice,” Ginny said. “I’m afraid… I’m afraid that it’ll be bad if we just leave him here.”
“Then we should move him,” Alice said. She hated to see the strong, brave woman battle even a little bit of fear. She knew how fear felt, and if she could do anything to stop someone from feeling that, she would.
Ginny met her eyes. Without words, she received Alice’s message of support. The older woman nodded, a flicker of a grateful smile crossing her lips.
“We’ll take him back in Howard’s wagon,” she said. “But we need to get all of those rails out of the back so we can lay him in the wagon bed.”
“Right.” Alice nodded to her, and the two of them jumped into motion. “You and you.” Alice pointed to two of the men, not caring who they worked for. “Empty the rails out of that wagon. We’re going to put Franklin in it and take him back to Howard’s house.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the workers said, and rushed to do as she’d asked.
Alice squatted by Franklin’s side as soon as Ginny rushed off to help the men and take charge of the wagon. She took his hand in hers once more and whispered words of support until Ginny drove back with Howard’s wagon.
“Let me take him.”
Jarvis’s gently spoken words sent a boost of confidence through Alice. He squatted by her side and studied Franklin. Once he decided on the best way to handle him, he scooped his arms gently under Franklin and slowly lifted him. Franklin groaned, and his head lolled against Jarvis’s shoulder as soon as Jarvis held him close.
“Move slowly,” Alice charged him, trembling now that she could see how badly injured Franklin was.
Franklin’s legs were certainly broken, and blood stained the ground where he had been lying. He had cuts that they hadn’t been able to see, and as Jarvis carried him to the wagon, where Ginny and several other men waited to shift Franklin to lie in the bed, blood dripped down Franklin’s trouser leg.
“Dear Lord, help him,” Ginny muttered. She climbed over the back of the driver’s seat and into the bed to settle her nephew as comfortably as she could. “Somebody else drive,” she said, voice shaking. “I don’t think I can.”
“I’ll drive,” Jarvis said, jumping swiftly into the wagon’s seat.
“I’ll make sure Midnight gets back into his stall,” John reassured Ginny.
Ginny was too focused on looking for Franklin’s wounds to reply. The proud woman’s face had gone white. As Jarvis tapped the reins on the back of the horse to get the wagon moving, Franklin cried out in pain. Ginny let a keening moan slip out and brushed a hand across Franklin’s face.
“He’ll be all right,” Alice reassured her, even though she knew nothing of the kind. Those were words that needed to be spoken, words she would have wanted to hear if she had found Harry on the battlefield and carried him to safety.
Harry. She hadn’t thought about him at all since the night before, since before giving herself to Jarvis. She had looked for a sign that Harry wanted her to move on, to open her heart to love again. She thought of him now, how he must have looked, broken and dying, as he was taken away from the battlefield.
Her eyes settled on Franklin. He was so young, his whole life still in front of him, just like Harry had been. Just like so many young men fighting the war were. But Franklin had a chance. If they worked quickly, if the doctor reached them in time, Franklin would live on. He might even learn from his mistakes and become a man to make his father proud. Harry would be proud of that.
The thought was strange and strangely timed. Harry would be proud of Franklin for living? But yes, the idea was there, deep in her heart. Harry had been full of life. He would have been happy for anyone to live on, to make for themselves the life they wanted.
Harry would want her to make a new life for herself.
Suddenly, the weight she had carried in her soul for a year lifted. She reached out and took Franklin’s hand, pressing it against her heart.
“Oh Harry,” she whispered, seeing the young man she had known and loved in the pale, injured form of Franklin. “I did love you. So much. I’m so sorry that we weren’t meant to be.”
Franklin stirred. He squeezed her hand. It felt to Alice as though Harry was reaching out to her from beyond to say goodbye.
“Help him,” she murmured, lowering her head to kiss Franklin’s hand. “Help him to live, Harry. Help me to go on and to be happy.”
Harry’s answer, a deep, powerful sensation of positivity, washed through Alice. It settled over her with such peace that tears came to her eyes.
“I think I can stop his bleeding,” Ginny said, focused on her nephew, unaware of everything swirling around Alice. “He doesn’t have that many cuts. The worst of the damage is probably on the inside.”
“I’ll see if I can go a little faster,” Jarvis called
over his shoulder. “I don’t want to go too fast or bump against too many rocks, though.”
“You’re doing just fine, son,” Ginny told him, managing a faint smile. “Slow and steady.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jarvis answered.
“He’ll be fine,” Alice said. She’d said those words about herself so many times. Now she knew that every time she said them without thinking, it wasn’t her, it was Harry telling her so. He’d been telling her all along. “Franklin will be just fine. We all will.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jarvis steered the wagon onto the lawn in front of Howard’s house. There was no time to waste, and if the manicured grass suffered, it was for a good cause.
“We need to lift him out gently,” he said, dropping the reins once the horse had stopped, and climbing over the back of the wagon’s seat.
Franklin groaned at the jolt.
“He’s starting to come around,” Ginny said, stroking Franklin’s head, “though I don’t see how with the pain he must be in.”
Her voice caught as she spoke. Her efforts not to weep with worry were etched into her face. Alice was strangely quiet. She held Franklin’s hand and watched him with a look beyond anything Jarvis had seen before. Something in that look struck reverence into Jarvis’s heart. Alice was a thousand miles away.
“What’s all this?” Howard stepped out onto his porch, as blustery as usual. “You’re not thinking of trying any tricks, are you Ginny?”
Jarvis straightened, forgiving the man’s gruff comments. “Franklin has been hurt. Badly. We sent a man for the doctor, but we have to get him inside.”
Howard’s face went white. He hovered on the edge of the porch before rushing down the stairs and across the lawn to the wagon. When he saw Franklin lying in the wagon bed, his trousers bloodied and his face drained of all color, Howard gasped.
“Franklin, my dear boy,” he croaked. He swayed forward, then snapped his eyes up to Ginny. “What can I do?”
Ginny was still busy checking her nephew for cuts to stop any bleeding. She had unbuttoned his vest and was gently prodding his abdomen. “We need the doctor,” she said, vulnerability plain in her words. “He was crushed by a pile of fence rails. He has a few cuts, but I’m worried about bleeding we can’t see.”
“Can you help me lift him?” Jarvis asked.
“Yes, of course,” Howard answered.
Alice drew in a breath and said. “Let me know how I can help.”
“You can—”
Jarvis stopped when he looked at her. Alice’s eyes blazed with purpose and determination. Her face shone with life. She’d changed. She’d become herself.
He didn’t have time to explore that beautiful idea further. “Help me shift him to the end of the wagon so that Howard can help me carry him into the house.”
Alice nodded, and together they set to work, with Ginny’s help. They had to move as carefully as possible to avoid jostling Franklin. If he did have more injuries than met the eye, it was vital that they not throw him around and make them worse. They inched him to the end of the wagon. Jarvis hopped down, and together he and Howard shifted the young man into their arms.
They carried him up to the house, moving at a snail’s pace in their effort to keep Franklin steady. Ginny and Alice ran ahead, opening doors and rushing upstairs to prepare Franklin’s room. By the time Jarvis and Howard reached the second floor and brought Franklin into his room, the bed had been turned down and the windows open to let in air, and Alice had rushed downstairs once more to tell Hattie to boil some water.
“What next? What do we do?” Howard continued to fret. “Where is Doc Shaw?”
“I sent Micah to fetch him,” Jarvis said. “I don’t know how long it will take him to get here.”
“It will take Doc Shaw half an hour to get here at least,” Ginny said, focused on Franklin and making sure he was comfortable. “That’s if he was already up and dressed.”
Franklin groaned, trying to move against his sheets.
“Hush,” Ginny told him. “Hush now and stay still. You’re home and we’re taking care of you.”
“Franklin.” Howard dropped to his knees on the other side of the bed from where Ginny sat tending him. He reached for his son’s hand. “Franklin, you need to stay settled. You’re in good hands with your Aunt Virginia until the doc gets here.”
Franklin moaned in response, and Jarvis thought he nodded his head.
Alice rushed back into the room. “Hattie has water boiling if we need it,” she said.
“Better see if she’s got some spirits for us too,” Ginny said, beginning the tender work of removing Franklin’s clothes, starting with his shirt.
“I’ll get his shoes,” Howard said, jumping up and rushing to the foot of his son’s bed. He stifled a cry of anguish at the broken state of Franklin’s legs.
“What can I do?” Alice whispered to Jarvis, joining him in the corner he’d backed into.
Jarvis shook his head. He grabbed Alice’s hand and held it close. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do until the doctor get here.”
He turned to her. She still looked like she’d rolled across the prairie with the tumbleweeds. Her hair was a tangle of corn silk and her face was smudged with dirt. She’d done a poor job of dressing. Her buttons weren’t done up right and her skirt was skewed to the side. Jarvis’s heart swelled all the more for it. They could have been caught in a compromising situation, but Alice hadn’t thought of that. She’d only thought of poor Franklin and the help she could give him. And in the wagon… the transformation around her had been breathtaking. He would have given anything to know what she had been thinking during their journey to Howard’s house.
The doctor arrived twenty minutes later.
“Where is he?” they heard him call from the open front door.
“Up here,” Howard replied. He had removed Franklin’s shoes and socks and done everything else he could think of to make him comfortable, but in the end he’d resigned himself to stand in a corner, like Jarvis and Alice, fretting and near tears. He tore into the hall at the sound of the doctor’s voice. “We’re up here. Thank God you’ve come, Shaw.”
Ginny too backed away from the bed, where she’d been bathing Franklin’s head with the warm water Hattie had brought upstairs. She let Doc Shaw come through and watched as he examined Franklin’s prone and restless form.
“What happened?” Shaw asked without looking at any of them.
Jarvis darted a look to Howard’s near-panicked face before saying, “Franklin was standing on a wagonload of fence rails. He slipped, which caused the pile to shift and the side of the wagon to break. He fell and was buried under rails.” He couldn’t bring himself to say more, or to mention his suspicions about why Franklin was there before dawn. In a way, he didn’t have to. He was fairly sure everyone knew.
Doc Shaw hummed and nodded, and continued checking Franklin. “These legs will need to be set as soon as possible. I’ll have to send someone for the equipment. In the meantime, it’s internal bleeding that concerns me.”
“Tell me what to do, Shaw, and I’ll do it,” Howard said. “Anything.”
Doc Shaw turned to him. “You can wait downstairs,” he said. “You too, Mrs. Piedmont. I’ll have to remove his clothes and it could be unpleasant for both of you.”
Howard bristled as though he might object, but when Ginny nodded and fled from the room, he puffed out a breath and left too.
Jarvis exchanged a look with Alice. “I’ll go after Ginny, see if I can’t calm her down,” he said.
Alice nodded. “I’ll see to Howard.”
She paused, her hand still in his. Her eyes stayed locked with his. Jarvis felt infinite peace and confidence pouring off of her, in spite of the direness of the situation. Then she smiled and leaned in to give him a quick kiss, and his heart blossomed in his chest. She let go and rushed out of the room. Jarvis knew he would follow her wherever she went.
It seemed utterly o
ut of place for Alice to feel so full and at peace in the midst of such turmoil and heartache. Franklin would be fine, though, she knew. She knew it just as she knew Harry had given her his blessing to move on. He’d given it to Franklin too, given his life to Franklin somehow. Now she needed to find Howard and tell him.
Howard was pacing in the parlor, as he had that first night when he told her about his family and their troubles. When he saw her enter the room, his face lit with emotion—strong emotion that took Alice’s breath away—and ran to her.
“Oh my dear,” he said, catching in her arms for a hug as though she was his own daughter and he needed the comfort of her presence. “Whatever will I do?”
She hugged Howard back as she would her own father, tears choking her in spite of her confidence. Her heart went out to Howard.
“Everything will be all right, Howard, you’ll see,” she assured him.
He let out a breath and stepped back, studying her while blinking back tears. The effort he put into smiling broke Alice’s heart.
“I wish I could believe that,” he said, “but every time I get my hopes up, they only come crashing down.”
She clasped his hand, walking him toward the sofa.
“I used to feel that way,” she told him. “I struggled after Harry died. But life has the most amazing way of moving on. There’s always a new horizon after every hardship.”
She intended to have Howard sit on the sofa with her, but he broke away and continued his pacing, as agitated as ever.
“Oh, my dear, I wish I could believe that,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Try as I might, I can’t bring myself to believe it.”
Alice couldn’t think of anything to say aside from, “I’m so sorry.”
Howard shook his head, continuing to pace. He drew in a deep breath. Alice watched as emotion after emotion warred in his eyes. It took him several moments of painful restlessness before he stopped and turned to her.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if Franklin dies, Alice.”
“Franklin won’t—”
Howard held up his hand. Alice closed her mouth and let him continue, which he did with desperate pleading in his eyes.