"He certainly is a hard worker," Mrs. Graham said, as she closed the door behind Lulu, who'd consented to stop in long enough to warm up. "It's too bad you had to come back so soon, instead of having a nice honeymoon somewhere romantic."
Biting her lip, Lulu merely nodded. What would the woman say if she knew the truth?
"Now you just set yourself down here and drink this tea. I'll bet you're tired. A woman in your condition has no business overdoing as you have today."
The tea in Lulu's mouth nearly ended up all over the table as she choked. Once she was done coughing, she said, "I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, I know you probably wish no one would notice, but really, there's no possibility you'll be able to keep it a secret much longer. Does anyone know exactly when you got married?"
Feeling the heat that must have turned her cheeks rosy, Lulu shook her head. "Only Mr. Eagleton--my husband's employer. Unless someone in Boise knows we live here. But we've never let on we have family there, and neither of us gave Hailey as our residence when we applied for the marriage license."
"Well, then, we'll just let everyone assume you've been married for some time. Didn't you say you visited your cousin in the fall? Tomorrow's the Altar Society meeting. I'll just say something vague about family obligations taking you away, but not tell exactly what they were or when you got married. After all, it's no one's business..."
For a moment Lulu could only stare at Mrs. Graham. At last she said, "I thought you'd be scandalized."
"I am, just a bit, but more because you put it off so long than for the fact that you had to marry. You're not the first to jump the gun, you know, nor will you be the last." She reached across the table and took Lulu's hand. "You've been a good neighbor, Lulu, and you're a sweet girl. And that husband of yours is a fine man. I'd hate to see you gossiped about." She shook her head. "There are those in this town who forget we all have our human failings and expect us to live like saints. And them no better than they should be, either, making judgments better left to the Lord." She raised her chin and looked down her nose, looking very like the banker's wife.
"Thank you, Mrs. Graham. You're a good friend. Now, I'd better be off. It's getting late, and I'm not familiar with the road."
"Have you got somebody out there to help you unhitch?"
With a smile, Lulu said, "I grew up on a farm. I can manage."
"My stars. You don't look like a farm girl. Get on with you, then. It'll be full dark before you get home." She shook her head, and Lulu knew she was worrying.
* * * *
Tony and Jack finished making all the connections about ten. "It's too late to test these tonight," Tony told the young man. "Go home and get some rest. I'll see you in the morning."
Jack, looking as worn out as Tony felt, merely nodded.
They locked the door, and fastened the heavy padlock through the eye of the strong hasp lock Mr. Eagleton had put on. Tony had filed off the screw heads, so opening the door without a key would now require a sledgehammer or an ax. "I'll be here about seven," he said, as they rounded the corner of the building, "to make one last check. You don't need to come in 'til eight."
"Thanks, Mr. Dewitt." Jack turned left at the corner, while Tony went straight ahead. The cot at the office would have to do him tonight. He didn't think he'd make it to Lulu's apartment. He'd rather do a full day's work with a shovel than the sort of trial and error testing and splicing they'd had to do today. If it had only been a matter of reconnecting the circuits, they'd have been done much earlier. But whoever had wrecked the switchboard, had a pretty good idea of what they were doing. Half of the wires had been cut before they came into the building, and more had been cut between poles all over town. They still had no circuits at all to Ketchum. Tony reckoned they'd find missing wires all along that line tomorrow.
Just before he dropped off to sleep, he wondered if Lulu missed him, even a little bit.
* * * *
...work for better, instead of settling for worse.
Tony's words had echoed in her mind many times since he'd spoken them. With each iteration, her resolve to strive for the best marriage they could have had strengthened.
The first step was to make a home for them to share.
Arranging Tony's house for the two of them took very little time, for there was practically no furniture, and only the kitchen cupboards in which to store anything. Lulu and Ted Hickson had dragged the mattress back onto the bed, and now the parlor contained only the shabby chair, the untidy bookcase, and two boxes of Lulu's books. Early Tuesday morning, once she had made the bed and set bread to rising, she curled into the big, lumpy chair and started to work her way through the back copies of the Wood River Times, which she had purchased at the newspaper office yesterday.
The first mention of the local Anti-Chinese League, back in mid-January, caused her to narrow her reading. One by one, she went through the newspapers, seeking articles on that topic. Some issues had not been available, so she knew she was missing a few articles, but she had enough to follow the story well.
And to make her furious.
"What fools! What incredible, short-sighted, narrow minded fools!" she muttered, as she read the details of the League's formation. "'A standing menace to American labor' indeed! Isn't that what was said about free Negroes? The only jobs the Chinese take away from 'American labor' are those that white men and women are too stupidly proud to take. Just because they work hard and save their money, the lazy and the shiftless hate and fear them." She tossed the paper aside, picked up another.
"What incredible bombast!" she muttered, some while later, as she read on. Then her eye was caught by a headline immediately following the one she'd just read. ADVICE TO HUSBANDS it was titled. Curious, she read.
Don't trouble yourself to be on time for meals...don't mind about sending her word...when your wife rises in the morning to build the fire and she sees you enjoying the refreshing slumber of the innocent...don't allow your wife to handle any money...don't be too interested in your wife's ailments...don't allow your wife to question the propriety of your drinking with your friends...
The last paragraph caused her to crumple the paper and toss it across the room. She reached for her notebook, lying on the floor beside the chair. Then she set it back down again. If the article had been serious, she would make no friends by attacking it. If people in Hailey subscribed to the advice given, they were not about to be convinced otherwise. And if the article was meant to be humorous, she would make herself appear ridiculous by taking it seriously. For the first time, she regretted not making friends in town, for if she had she would have a better idea of how folks here thought and believed.
"Perhaps Miss Petersham would advise me," she said. Or would Miss Petersham even be willing to acknowledge her? As a schoolteacher, she would naturally be constrained to associate only with people of high moral character. Lulu had often wondered how she got away with her support of women's suffrage.
She picked up the next paper, resolving to ignore other inflammatory articles, and only read those having to do with the Chinese issue.
Here was one, on the ninth of February, in which the Chinese were said to have claimed to own property worth more than $35,000 in the Wood River valley. Reading on, she discovered that they might have erred in thinking that would change anything. The article urged the District Attorney to look into back taxes paid on that amount of property, and all but said the Chinese had lied to avoid paying the full amount. She shook her head. Of course. Nothing the Chinese could do would please those who hated and feared them. Just like the South.
A shudder crept up her spine as she once again remembered the awful night when Reverend Thomas had been killed. Could that happen here?
The articles continued, each one adding to her anger. After a while, she went back to the beginning and read her way through each paper, using the other news as an anodyne to fury. She broke away to tend to the bread and to start a pot of soup, and when her stomach growled, t
o nibble on cheese and a two-day-old biscuit, then back to her reading, where she still paid more attention to the articles about the Chinese issue than anything else. Then, on the nineteenth of February, she read something that made her smile: No great social reform has ever been accomplished without the active sympathy and co-operation of women....
"Good heavens! I can't believe they actually printed a statement like that." She set the paper aside to keep, and picked up the next. But before she could do more than skim the headlines, she heard the back door open.
"Lulu? I'm home."
Immediately she rose and went to greet him. "You're filthy," burst from her mouth before she could stop it. He looked as if he'd rolled in mud, then in grease. Or the other way around.
Wearily he peeled out of his coat. "Sorry. We had to crawl under the office up at the smelter in Ketchum. Remind me never to run wires under anything again." Sitting on the rickety bench beside the back door, he worked the wet and muddy laces of his boots loose. "Look, I'm going to undress right here, if you don't mind. Could I get you to bring me the britches on the hook in the wardrobe?"
By the time she returned with the britches and a wool shirt, he was naked. His back was to her. Muscles rippled as he tossed his Union suit onto the pile of soiled clothing. Lulu's mouth went dry and something fluttered in her belly. Not the baby. A needy fluttering, one that would be calmed only by...
He turned. Started when he saw her. "Sorry, I--"
"Here are your britches," she said, her voice thin and hesitant. As soon as he'd taken them, she turned quickly and went to the stove. But even as she unnecessarily stirred the soup, her eyes were drawn to him.
How magnificent he was, with narrow flanks and a deep, broad chest. His skin, more delicately golden where never exposed to sunlight, held a gleam like precious metal. His sex, unaroused, emerged from a nest of shining black hair. When he pulled the clean britches on, she swallowed, remembering how he had looked as he'd come to her, that night in September. When he donned the shirt, she almost regretted bringing it to him. "Supper is ready whenever you are," she said, once more in a voice unnaturally high and thin.
"I'd like to sit a while first," he told her.
Was his voice less strong, less resonant than usual? She thought so. After all, he was exhausted.
When he went into the parlor, Lulu busied herself making fresh tea. She'd purchased several varieties yesterday, and while the kettle came to a boil, she studied her choices. Finally she reached for the small tin of lapsang souchong. It was not a tea she cared for, but she remembered Soomey saying once it was invigorating. When the pot was well heated, she put in a small handful of the dark, twisted shreds, then added more. "If some is good, more is better," she mused half aloud, as she poured boiling water over them.
He was slumped in the big chair, head back and eyes closed. His bare feet were stretched toward the stove, but she doubted if much heat reached them. Doesn't he have slippers? She hadn't seen any when she'd been arranging her clothes beside his in the wardrobe and bureau.
After setting the tray on the box she'd pulled next to the chair, she went to the bedroom and brought back her afghan, a colorful mix of leftover yarns she'd made when she was learning to knit. She draped it over his legs and tucked it around his feet.
"Thanks," he murmured, without opening his eyes.
"Did you sleep last night?" she wondered aloud.
"Five hours or so," he replied. "I used the cot in the office. Didn't have the energy to go to your apartment."
The tea had brewed long enough, so she poured him a cup. "Here. Drink this, and then we'll have supper."
He took it and sipped. Grimaced. "Good lord! What is this stuff?" He tasted it again, without waiting for a reply, "Never mind. It's lapsang souchong, isn't it? God! What a nasty taste!"
Unreasonably hurt, Lulu said, "I thought you liked it." She reached for the cup. "Here, let me pour it out and make something else."
He pulled it out of her reach. "Never mind. I'll drink it. Soomey always insisted it increased energy and vir-- and vigor." He sipped, made another face, and sipped again. When his cup was empty, he set it on the tray. "I feel better already. You said supper was ready?"
They ate in silence. Lulu watched him, worried at the way his shoulders were slumped, his face lined with exhaustion. Yet she sensed a tension within him, as if he was holding tightly to words and emotions he was afraid to let loose. She wished she knew what to say to relax him, to soothe him, for she was certain she was to blame for some of his unrest.
Lacking the words she needed, she said, "Did you get everything working?"
"I think so." He yawned. "At least all the circuits were working when I quit, God only knows if they'll still be in the morning." He slammed his hand down on the table. "Damn them! They had to know what they were doing. I'd give anything--"
"Have you spoken to the sheriff?"
"Eagleton did. But there's not a chance they'll find who did it. No tracks, no conveniently dropped handkerchiefs. Nothing. We'll have a guard on the switchboard at night from now on, but there's no way we can protect the lines. That son of a--" He dropped his face into his hands, breathed deeply. "Sorry, Lulu. I just wish..."
"What you need is a bath, then sleep. I've got hot water in the reservoir. I couldn't find a tub big enough for you to sit in, though."
"I don't have one. I've been taking my baths out at the hot springs."
"Well, then, you'll just have to make do. At least you'll be warm. Let me clear the table, and get things ready."
He sat and watched as she tidied the kitchen. She set the soup pot onto the back porch and brought in the milk. "I'll set some of this to warm while you bathe. Mamma always said there was nothing to untangle the knots better than warm milk and a soft bed."
"Sounds good," he said, as he stood and slid his suspenders from his shoulders. "Oh, I picked up your mail. It's in my coat pocket."
Once everything was ready for his bath, Lulu got the mail. "I'll be in the parlor, so call if you need anything." She kept her eyes averted from the sight of his naked chest. Even so, she saw his hands go to the fly of his britches. Before she could be tempted to watch him remove them, she scooted into the parlor.
One of the letters was from her parents, one from a college friend. The return address on the last envelope had her tearing it open with shaking hands. A check fell out, a check larger than any she had ever received for her writing. The letter that accompanied it seemed almost a fairy tale, even on second reading. The Ladies' Home Journal had bought her story and hoped she would send them more. She looked again at the check.
And as she did, she had an idea.
If he'd been alone, the house would have been as cold as outdoors, and Tony would have simply fallen into the icy bed as soon as he'd removed his filthy clothes. Instead he was warm, well fed, and standing ankle deep in a tub of hot water. In a few minutes he'd crawl into bed and sip hot, sweetened milk, if he could stay awake that long. He swiped the dripping washrag across his chest and shivered as water trickled down his belly. Bending one more time--what an effort!--he rinsed the rag, and wiped the last of the soap from his legs. "Good enough for government work," he muttered, too tired to care if he'd left a smear of mud here and there, or a residue of soap somewhere else.
He stepped out onto the folded cloth Lulu had laid beside the washtub and dried himself with a soft linen towel she'd left hanging on a chair back beside the range. One of hers, he reckoned. His own towels looked shabby in comparison, and were getting ragged. No wonder. They were the ones he'd taken with him when he'd gone away to college, ten years ago.
As he reached for his britches, he noticed the garment hanging on the other chair back. A nightshirt, unless he was seeing things. A new one, still creased from the store. With a sigh, he slipped it over his head. If that was how Lulu wanted him to sleep, that was how he'd sleep. Until they got their differences straightened out, anyhow.
He sure hoped it didn't take too long.
When he stepped into the parlor, Lulu rose from his chair. "I've warmed the bed for you. There's still one hot stone at the foot, so be careful you don't burn your feet. I'll bring your warm milk."
For some reason his throat felt tight. As if he was about to weep. Ridiculous! I'm just worn out.
Once he was in bed, he could hardly keep his eyes open to drink his milk. Its warmth seemed to seep into every inch of his body, sapping his will and stealing his consciousness. He handed the mug back to her still half full. "That's enough," he said, the words dissolving into a tremendous yawn.
"Before you go to sleep, I have to ask you something," she said, sounding hesitant.
"Ummm?" Opening his eyes was too much work.
"I'd like to get us some furniture, and hire a handyman. There's a lot that needs doing, if we're going to stay here any time at all."
"Fine." His jaw creaked with another yawn. "Do whatever you want. I've got some money set aside, so go ahead..."
He felt her pull the covers over his shoulders, then nothing.
Lulu looked down at him, sprawled across the bed. She really should discuss her idea with him before she went ahead with it, but he had so much on his mind. Better to let him spend his energies on his work, while she took over the running of the household.
Once she had it running smoothly, she'd have plenty of time to read about babies. There was a lot she needed to learn, and only four months to learn it in.
Chapter Twenty-two
Some Springfield physicians are speculating upon the influence of the telephone upon the sense of hearing. They have found several cases wherein disease of the ear has been aggravated by using it.
THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER Page 22