Home by Morning

by Alexis Harrington

  “I know, your work,” Amy said. “I imagine Daddy is spinning in his grave. After all, you promised him you’d take over his practice.”

  Jess stared at her. What a nightmare of a notion. Yes, at one time, that had been her plan. But now? To come back to Powell Springs and have to see Cole Braddock around town, as Amy’s husband, perhaps even have to treat him as a patient? After everything that had happened?

  Jess might be able to visit with a facade of grace, but she would have to be a saint to come back to Powell Springs to live. Surely her father would understand that from wherever he watched her now. “I think the town can get along without me. And if Cole…proposes, you’ll be busy planning your wedding.”

  “I certainly will.” That vaguely smug expression slipped across her face again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The man sat on the edge of Emmaline’s thin, sagging mattress and began dressing. She watched as he pushed his arms into the fine fabric of his shirtsleeves. He’d stayed longer than usual, and he checked his pocket watch, once, and then again.

  “Where does your wife think you are, Frank? Out selling your tractors?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. She propped herself up on one elbow and turned her gaze to the shaggy five acres just outside the window. It was wild and overgrown, with straggling rosebushes and a wall of blackberry brambles that all but surrounded this shanty.

  “I’m not married. You already know that, Em.”

  She laughed, but there wasn’t much humor behind it. “Don’t worry. Even if you really are, there ain’t much chance that she’d find out about me.” Facing him, she ran a hand through her long hair. “’Less you told her.”

  “I’m not married,” he repeated. “If I was, I wouldn’t…” He let the sentence hang unfinished.

  “Yeah, I know. You wouldn’t be here. Don’t be too blamed sure of that. Married men come by here all the time. They don’t have to offer excuses but some do. Others are full of complaints. And believe me, I’ve heard ’em all.” She shrugged a bare shoulder. “I imagine they’re the same ones my husband told to some other woman after he run off and left me without as much as a so-long-sister.”

  Standing, he pulled up his trousers and buttoned them. “How long has he been gone?”

  She sighed slightly. “Five years, now.”

  “And you’ve never heard from him?”

  “No, and good riddance, I say.”

  “But you’re still married to him?”

  “Not by my reckoning. He don’t know where I am anyhow. For all I know, he could be dead. It wouldn’t surprise me. He was the sort who made a lot of people mad.”

  He looked in the peeling mirror over her dresser and combed his hair with his fingers. He was young, quite a bit younger than her own forty years. “What line of business was he in?”

  “Lambert?” Now her chuckle was harsh and incredulous, and the bedsprings screeched beneath her. “Lambert’s notion of business was turning a quick dollar whichever way he could, legal or not. He was sure his one big break was just around the next corner, and that I was holding him back. So he took off, and I was stuck over in Parkridge with two kids and a cardboard suitcase.”

  He turned his back to the mirror and fixed her with an expression of faint horror. “You have children? Where are they?”

  Damn, she hadn’t meant to mention the youngsters. She tried not to even think about them, it gave her such heartache, though it was impossible not to. She got up and grabbed a faded dressing gown from the end of the bed to wrap around her body, suddenly feeling naked. “Well, they’re not around here, if you’re wondering that.”

  “But do you ever see them?”

  She pressed her mouth into a tight line. “You’re just full of questions today, ain’t you? That’s my private business and it’s got nothing to do with you or anyone else.”

  She was amused to see Frank actually turn red, all the way up to the ears. There was something about him that didn’t figure quite right. She knew his name, Frank Meadows, and that he lived nearby in Twelve Mile where he sold John Deere tractors. At least that’s what he’d told her. She’d never once seen him on the street when she rode her tired, swaybacked mare into town for supplies. Twelve Mile was a decent-size place, but not so big that she wouldn’t expect to run into him once in a while.

  Still, in the line of work she’d been forced to take up, she’d become a fairly good judge of men. He was kind and well-mannered for the most part, but she couldn’t imagine him in his job, chitchatting with farmers about crops while he stood in a field, ankle-deep in mud and manure, wearing his nice clothes and smelling of bay rum. And he was so closemouthed about himself, she figured he was married, no matter what he said.

  “I didn’t mean to pry, Em.” He dug into his pocket to fish out five dollars, which he left on the battered dresser.

  It was more than she asked from him, but she wasn’t about to turn it down. Although the place was as neat as she could manage, it was still a tiny, two-room shack furnished with castoffs that she’d cobbled together. It had no ceiling, and above the open rafters overhead were bare shingles, patched here and there with water-stained tar paper. She didn’t suppose the moss that furred the roof helped to keep it from leaking. In winter, this place was as cold as a witch’s tit. The owner let her stay here rent-free, and had been one of her customers, a doctor from down in Powell Springs. He’d used it as a hunting cabin when he was younger, he said.

  He’d made some improvements, such as buying her a new stove, and had promised to fix up the place. Then she’d gotten word that he died. Nobody had come to claim it, or throw her off the land, so it was hers now as far as she was concerned. But the house was still a dump.

  She reached over and snapped up the money, putting it in her pocket. “Yeah, well, no harm done.”

  Still standing beside the bed, she lifted the thin quilt and dingy top sheet to look at the state of the bedding beneath it. Deciding it would stand another use, she reached for an atomizer on the windowsill and spritzed the coarse, graying bottom sheet with five-and-dime rosewater. Then she made the bed for the next man who came knocking on the door of her shack. As much as she needed the money, she hoped no one else showed up. She was tired and had a headache.

  “I got me a rabbit stewing on the stove, if you’d like to stay to eat.” The words were out before she realized she’d uttered them. She never asked anyone to stay. But sometimes the soul-stripping, confounded loneliness of her existence ate at her.

  Again, that astonished look crossed his mild features, more pronounced this time. “Oh no, I’ve still got—a busy day. Sales calls to make. I just dropped in for…well, I’ve got to be going.” He grabbed his coat and reached for the doorknob.

  She nodded and fingered the cash in the pocket of her dressing gown. “All right, then. See you next time, Frank.” He regarded her silently for a moment, as if he were about to say more. Instead, he pulled the door open and stepped outside.

  Emmaline waited until she heard his horse and buggy travel down the long path that hid her place from the main road. As she stood there, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dresser’s milky mirror. She couldn’t remember when all those gray strands had begun dusting her red hair. The sound of the wheels faded away, and she sat down at her tiny kitchen table, looking at the money he’d given her until the sun worked its way through the gloom of the tall trees surrounding her little spot on Butler Hill.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Good Corporal Braddock, do you have a match?”

  Riley Braddock glanced to his left, the direction from which the request had come. It was pointless, though. With a black, cloudy night overhead, it was so damned dark here in this wet, miserable trench he doubted that a cat would be able to see anything. He was surrounded by men from his battalion, but he recognized this voice by its liquid vowels.

  “Whip, that you?”

  “It is,” Remy Whipperton Fournier, III, replied. “I managed to r
oll one dry smoke but I don’t have any matches.”

  “I’ll check.” Riley patted his pockets and rummaged through the pouches on his cartridge belt. His fingers closed on a small metal canister. Opening the lid, he extracted a single match. “Here you go.”

  Whip’s hand fumbled with his own in the darkness until it found what he was searching for. “Thanks.” The match flared for a moment, and Riley saw the man’s genial face in its glow. “Damn, but I hate it up here,” was his languid complaint. “This is hardly what I expected my Grand Tour to be like. You never know when the Hun is going to lob a shell at you, and there goes your head, rolling down the trench like a croquet ball. Or floating past, if it’s raining.”

  Riley smiled. “At least it probably won’t happen at night. But I admit I liked it better back at that farmhouse we left yesterday. The food was a hell of a lot better than that monkey meat and canned salmon we get here.”

  Whip pulled on the cigarette, creating a small orange beacon. It highlighted his grin, as broad as a cantaloupe slice. “The scenery was far nicer, too. That old man’s young wife—ooh-lah-lah.” Whippy was a drawling Southern gentleman from Baton Rouge with a wry sense of humor. The fluent French he spoke made it easier for him than the other boys to communicate with the locals, though Riley had the feeling that most found his particular dialect offensive to their ears.

  “Don’t you ever think about anything except women, Fournier?” another voice asked from the dark.

  “I certainly do. I think about keeping my body and soul together.”

  “What about the countryside? Didn’t you notice that grove of live trees?”

  “Gentlemen, I agree the landscape was pretty, too, except for that unfortunate yard ornament every French villager seems to have.”

  “You mean the manure pile by the front door?”

  Whip let out a gusty sigh. “Yes, I just can’t get used to that.”

  “Just as well,” came another voice that sounded like Steven Collier’s. “If the French were as fussy as Americans, they wouldn’t let us in with our cooties. At least they don’t mind the lice. And we don’t smell much better than those dung heaps.”

  “Well, damn, Lieutenant, I suppose that’s a little comfort,” Riley said, only a touch of humor in his chuckle.

  Fournier continued in his lazy molasses accent, his train of thought not derailed. “I imagine if I had a stunning paragon like your Miss Susannah waiting for me back home, I’d be thinking about her instead. She’s a beautiful, angelic creation on God’s mortal earth. Let’s see her picture again, Braddock.” He sucked on the cigarette once more.

  Automatically, Riley put his hand over the pocket that held Susannah’s photograph. “You just keep to your own business. Besides, it’s too dark here to see anything.”

  “And just what is this place again?”

  “Jesus, Whippy, where have you been?” Riley posed. Fournier was a nice guy and even a good soldier when he had to be, but he never seemed to have his mind on the right subject. He was college educated and should have been an officer, but he’d refused the commission. Too much responsibility, he’d said. That he’d avoided getting his head torn off, as he joked, sometimes amazed Riley. “This battle started back on September twenty-sixth. We’re near Verdun, somewhere between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. I guess. It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

  “Ah, yes, the Argonne. Where all the fighting has been going on.” With one last drag, the hot coal of his cigarette disappeared. Riley heard the sound of a heel grinding it into the mud. “Well, I’m off to the latrine, boys,” Whippy said. “Be sure to come get me if the Hun starts up. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  Their battalion had just trekked several hours in the rain, winding their way through communication trenches, blown-out roads, and snarled traffic of vehicles, horses, and men that seemed hopelessly locked. They’d come loaded down with supplies to reinforce another front-line battalion. Moving at night helped them avoid the enemy’s snipers and lookouts, but the weather wasn’t fit for any living thing except the frogs and rats that infested this hole.

  Riley sat with his back against the trench wall, which had been fortified with sandbags and slim tree branches. His army-issue Springfield rifle stood upright on its stock, also resting against the wall. Somewhere down the line he heard soft singing, beautiful soft singing, a harmony of wistful voices.

  There’s a long, long night of waiting

  Until my dreams all come true;

  Till the day when I’ll be going down

  That long, long trail with you.

  Riley swallowed the sudden knot that had formed in his throat. He wished that Whip hadn’t mentioned Susannah. He hadn’t seen his wife in sixteen months. God, it seemed like a lifetime. The abject loneliness and isolation he often felt, despite being surrounded by thousands of men, were not problems he’d expected when he left home. How can a person feel isolated in a crush of humanity? But he did.

  He closed his eyes and pictured Susannah’s long, black curls, her soft cheek, the sweet curve of her hip under her chemise, the way she looked at him with those dark chocolate eyes when they were alone. He imagined her, thigh-deep in tall summer grass, smiling at him, beckoning him with a glint in her gaze that made him come to her and wind his hands through her hair. Then she’d pull him down with her, down, down, where no one would find them.

  If he really concentrated, he could still remember the scent of her—cherry bark and almonds. He caught himself sniffing hard enough to bring him back to his present circumstances.

  The trenches smelled like—well, there was no way to describe it. So many things contributed to the stink: thousands of shallow graves, cooking, overflowing latrines, unwashed bodies, rotting sandbags, all mixed with stagnant mud. Sitting here in the dark, there was no way to see the brown rats he knew crawled through these trenches without fear. The filthy rodents were often the size of house cats, since they didn’t lack for food. They gorged themselves on the human remains that littered the countryside. Some campaign veterans swore the rats could sense impending German shellfire and so scampered away until it was over.

  Why he’d originally believed that war would be a glamorous, noble experience escaped him now. Nothing about running a horse farm had prepared him for miles of barbed wire, machine guns that could reduce a village to rubble in a matter of minutes, and the unspeakably inhuman savagery he’d witnessed. But then, none of these men had been prepared for what they saw. Hell, at least he could have waited to be drafted, like some of them had.

  Sometimes…just for a minute…he would wish that he’d let Cole win the argument about which of them should go and which should stay behind. Cole had wanted to come over here.

  Of course, Pop had been beating his tambourine, insisting that both of his sons would bring honor and glory to the Braddock name. There had never been a question in Riley’s mind that he should enlist. But Pop’s cranky nagging hadn’t worked on Cole, and Riley was glad for that. There had been resentment between them, Riley and his brother, over the turn of events. But someone had to help Susannah with the contracts, and his father was in no shape to do that.

  And those days of eternal summer, golden and lambent, that he remembered so well—they were why he was here in France. They were why he and the others were fighting an enemy that would crush their freedom under a cruel heel of tyranny.

  So they’d all been told, anyway. But he didn’t believe it anymore. If he died, what good would freedom be to him?

  He tipped his head back to look at the sky. There wasn’t much to see.

  At least it had stopped raining.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After lunch, Jessica walked down to the telegraph office to send a wire to Dr. Martin at the hospital in Seattle explaining her revised plans. She handed her note to Leroy Fenton, Powell Springs’s elderly head telegrapher.

  “Seattle, eh? I’ve been getting some news from those parts—looks like there’s a bout of the grippe goi
ng around up there.”

  “There is?”

  Leroy adjusted his sleeve garter and continued. “They say it might have started at Camp Lewis and spread to some civilians who went there to watch a review of the National Guard Infantry.” He shrugged. “The docs up there say we have nothing to worry about, though. Other camps have had it, too, but they’ve got the situation under control. That’ll be three dollars, Miss Jessica.”

  Jess had heard about a few of those outbreaks herself—some doctors diagnosed it as pneumonia—but she’d also heard of the overcrowded conditions in the temporary military camps. Disease found easy pickings under those circumstances. Still, the mention of Camp Lewis drew her thoughts back to the Cookson boy.

  “In war, more men die of disease than wounds,” she said, searching her drawstring purse for the cash to pay Leroy.

  “Do they?” He looked at her message again, then dropped his voice and glanced around, as though there were someone else in his office besides the two of them. These days, that was not an unreasonable fear. A casual comment could get a person in trouble. “Then I’m glad I’m too old to go.”

  She patted the older man’s arm and smiled. “So am I, Leroy.”

  Then she left the office and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, anticipation and dread thumping in her chest. Taking a deep breath, she headed for the hotel.

  Cole stopped at Jessica’s hotel room door and pulled off his right buckskin glove, his knuckles hovering over the wooden panel. Although Amy had drafted him for this job, he’d gotten himself in even deeper and he was determined to make the meeting as brief as possible. If Amy hadn’t asked, he would be back at his forge now, or helping Susannah and Tanner with the horses.