The Listening Sky

by Dorothy Garlock

  He hadn’t counted on being so smitten by her.

  Why’d T.C. Kilkenny marry her? By holy damn, it made no never mind. He’d just have to kill the sonofabitch. It was better to get out of town, so he wouldn’t be blamed when Kilkenny showed up back-shot. Fresno wanted no new wanted posters out on him when he took Jane and they headed west.

  Bob began to plan. He doubted if many people in town knew the reputation of Herb Banks. Callahan didn’t know or he’d never have fooled with him. Banks looked like a kid, acted like a kid, but he’d laid out a good number of men who had thought he was a kid. Raised on wolf milk, some said. He’d taken the woman Callahan wanted. Bob wondered how he could use that to his advantage.

  Another thing was money. He was getting short. He glanced at Milo. If nothing else turned up… he’d take Milo’s.

  Chapter 20

  JANE awoke in the late afternoon and sat up on the side of the bed for a long moment, allowing her head to clear before she went to the window. The sun had already gone behind the mountains to the west. She had spent the whole day in bed, something she had done only a few times in her life. What must everyone think of her—then like a bolt it hit her.

  She had been married this morning to T.C. Kilkenny!

  Jane put her palms to her cheeks as memory came roaring back. He had explained that she would be safe here as his wife. That he wanted to marry her. He had even said that he loved her. But she knew that to be a broad statement. He liked her. He was giving her his protection. Her mind could not come up with a logical reason why he married her to protect her. Under the same circumstances, would he have married Sunday or Paralee or Mrs. Brackey?

  At the moment he suggested that they marry, her spirits had been so low that she would have done anything other than commit murder in order to stay within the safety of his arms, to lean against him, to believe that he cared for her. The feeling, however brief, of being loved, even cherished, had been undeniably sweet. She would remember it always.

  T.C. had urged her to marry him, but had not insisted. It had been her decision. She’d had her chance to say no when the preacher asked her if she would take T.C. Kilkenny for her husband to love and to cherish until death parted them. She closed her eyes in an agony of humiliation at her weakness.

  Oh, Lord! What had she done to him?

  She would have to tell him now. It was the only decent thing to do. She could not, would not, see him ridiculed before the whole town. The preacher, after the situation was explained to him, would tear up the wedding paper because they had not become man and wife in the eyes of God.

  Moving slowly, not sure if the pain in her head was completely gone, Jane put on her dress and her shoes. Her valise was on the floor beside the bureau and her shawl and bonnet hung on the pegs beside T.C.’s coat. For a moment she pressed her face to the soft leather and breathed in the scent of him. Then she took her mother’s picture from her valise and moved the valise over beneath her shawl beside the door. She placed the picture face down on the valise.

  At the small mirror over T.C.’s bureau, where a comb and brush were laid out, she brushed her hair, coiled it neatly and pinned it at the nape of her neck.

  Leaning close to the mirror, she inspected the scratches on her cheeks and her forehead and the dark circles beneath her eyes. What a sight! She turned quickly from the mirror and straightened the bed so that there was not even a hint it had been occupied all day long.

  She desperately needed to make a trip to the outhouse, but fear cut through her like a hot knife at the thought of going to that dreadful place. Instead, she labored up the stairs to the room she shared with Polly, hoping the chamber pot was there. It was, and it was empty. In the privacy of the room, she attended to her bodily needs, adjusted her clothing and gathered strength to go back downstairs. The sooner she faced the situation she had caused by coming here, the better for all concerned.

  Jane paused in the doorway of the kitchen. Maude, Polly and Stella were there. The table was set with a white cloth. Looking more closely, Jane could see that it was a folded bedsheet. In the center of the table was a tall cake with a small candle in the center. Polly and Stella were giggling. Maude, her face flushed from the heat of the cookstove, laughingly scolded them.

  “Jane!” Polly came to take her hand.

  “Ya feelin’ better?” “Much better. I feel like a sluggard spending so much time in bed while you two did the work.”

  “Ya sure ya feel better?” Maude asked, wiping her hands on her apron. “We were so worried.”

  “I must confess to being a little weak. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

  “Ma, give her the end of the bread. I’ll get butter to go on it.” Stella wrapped her arms around Jane’s waist.

  “That’s your favorite part, Stella.”

  “I want ya to have it, Miss Jane” The little arms tightened about her.

  “Thank you, puddin’. It’ll fill the empty place until supper.”

  Jane’s eyes followed the little girl, who danced away to help her mother. She was no longer the shy, scared child she has been when she arrived in Timbertown. The town had changed the lives of many who had come here. She now knew what it meant to love a man. Maude felt comfortable enough to reveal her warmth, and Polly’s once-sad face was rosy and smiling.

  “We’re goin’ to have the weddin’ cake when Mr. Kilkenny gets home,” Stella announced. “We have to eat supper first. Mamma made sugar-syrup icin’.” She returned to lean against Jane’s knee.

  “It’s very pretty.”

  Jane ate the hot bread, not because she was hungry, but because she needed strength to get through the next few hours, which she knew might be the worst in her life. She was unable to think beyond that.

  “We haven’t seen Sunday since right after the weddin’.” Maude set a mug of hot tea on the table in front of Jane.

  Jane tried not to flinch when they talked about the wedding. She hurriedly ate another slice of bread. She needed to be rid of that fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach before T.C. came home. Home. The word held a world of meaning. She’d longed for one when she was young.

  “She’s working in the store, isn’t she?” Jane forced herself to join the conversation.

  “She wasn’t at the store this afternoon. Stella and I looked for her.”

  “Colin hasn’t been here either.” Maude lifted a roasting pan from the oven. “Maybe they’ve gone off somewhere. Better light the new lamp, Polly.”

  “Herb says it’s a Rochester harp lamp. He got it at the store today.” Polly was proud of everything Herb did, no matter how small. “He hung it so it’d be right over the table. See? Ya can pull it down to light it, then push it up to where ya want it. They had ‘em in a hotel where I worked in Laramie. It was a grand place.” Polly lit the lamp. “Ain’t it pretty, Jane? Herb says we’ll get us one when we get our own house.”

  The yellow pool of light flooded the table and spread out into the kitchen. Jane looked at the happy faces smiling back at her. The two women, the child, and Sunday were the best friends she’d ever had. She would miss them.

  Determined to maintain her composure, she blinked her eyes to keep them dry, and forced her lips to smile.

  Darkness was falling when T.C. hurried down the street to his house. He had taken the first bath in Mrs. Brackey’s not-yet-opened tonsorial parlor. She had insisted that he try out the new tub, and then she had shaved him in the new chair. He told himself that it was a well-deserved luxury.

  He was eager to see Jane and spend some time with her. He had no intention of consummating his marriage this night, or any night, until she was completely well and wanted to be with him in the same way he wanted to be with her. He was not a rutting moose, he told himself. She would sleep in his bed; he would hold her in his arms even if he suffered the torture of the damned all night long. There would be no animal joining of his body to hers. It was important that they start this part of their union right.

  He th
ought of crossing over to the cookhouse to see if Colin was there with Bill. His friend had made himself scarce for most of the day. He had merely grunted when told to get Sunday and bring her to supper because Mrs. Henderson was planning something special.

  Evenings were getting downright cold, T.C. thought now, his mind forging ahead to winter. He hoped to have the surgery out of the house before too long. An addition to the hotel was being prepared for it. He expected to hear any day from the new doctor Rowe had located.

  He would set up a small pot-bellied stove in his office and one in the bedroom he’d share with Jane. For as long as there were other people in the house, the bedroom would be their only private place. They would spend their evenings there as well as nights. He wanted to know what she thought about everything. She loved books as he did. He had no doubt that she would teach at the schoolhouse this winter. Then in the spring they would go to the ranch and build the home where they would raise tall, strong boys and small, sweet, courageous girls like their mother.

  He could hardly wait to tell her about it.

  Jane heard him coming down the hall and steeled herself for the meeting. She stood with the table between her and the kitchen door and was grateful that she was not alone when he appeared in the doorway, his hands, shoulder high, clutching each side of the frame. Although his dark face showed no expression, his silver eyes seemed to see only her, to pin her to the floor where she stood.

  “Are you all right, Jane?”

  “I’m… ” Her first attempt to speak produced a croaking, gurgling sound. She tried again. “I’m fine. Just fine.”

  He smiled, and her heart leaped. He was breathtakingly handsome when he smiled.

  “You look rested. Headache gone?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Look at the new lamp Herb put up,” Polly said breathlessly.

  “It’s a dandy,” T.C. said, still looking at Jane.

  An awkward silence followed. Jane seemed rooted to the spot. T.C. didn’t come any farther into the room.

  “Supper will be ready in just a little bit,” Maude said. “Herb went to look for Colin.” The door at the front of the house slammed shut as she finished speaking. “That’s probably them.”

  T.C. moved out of the doorway and into the kitchen. Herb’s eyes found Polly first, then Jane.

  “Miss Jane! Ya feelin’ better?”

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “That Mrs. Miller at the rooming house said Sunday’d gone to bed. Said she wasn’t feelin’ good. I never found Colin. Wasn’t in the saloon, or at the cookshack. His horse is in the livery so he’s ‘round somewhere.”

  “I just betcha Sunday ain’t sick. I bet her and Colin had a spat,” Polly said. “It’s what I’d’a done if I didn’t want to come face Herb in front of folks.”

  “You may be right.” T.C. had moved over close to Jane. Stella was on her other side. “Colin has been like a bear with a sore tail all day.”

  “Ya smell good, Mr. Kilkenny.”

  “You like that, puddin’?” T.C. grinned and rubbed the top of Stella’s head with his long fingers. “I had a shave at the new barber shop.”

  “Is it… toilet water?”

  “It’s Bay Rum.” T.C. laughed and bent down so that Stella could press her nose to his cheek.

  “I like it better’n rosewater.”

  “You may grow up to be a lady barber.”

  “I’m goin’ to be a teacher, like Aunty Jane.” Stella leaned against Jane, and Jane put her hand on the side of the child’s head and hugged her close.

  Maude turned back to the stove. She almost wept at the kindness these people had shown to her and to Stella. The child would have a good life here—if she could stay.

  They waited a half-hour for Colin, and when he failed to come, they sat down to roasted duck with rice stuffing, mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Maude was an excellent cook. She insisted on waiting on the table by herself, cutting the hot bread, pouring the tea, giving milk to Polly and Stella.

  Jane did her best to do justice to the meal. Maude had worked all day, and not for the world did Jane want her friend to know that each bite stuck in her throat. T.C. knew how nervous she was and kept a string of chatter going to cover for her. One time, beneath the table, he reached into her lap and squeezed her hand. The thoughtful gesture made her want to weep.

  The candle on the wedding cake was lit. Stella could hardly contain her excitement. Jane and T.C. were to blow it out together. Jane could muster up only a small breath of air, but T.C. let go with one powerful puff that extinguished the flame. Jane, urged by Maude, cut the first piece and placed it on T.C.’s plate.

  “Kiss the bride! Kiss the bride!” Polly and Maude cried in unison.

  T.C. turned to the red-faced woman by his side and placed a quick kiss on her lips.

  By the time the meal was over, Jane, knowing what lay ahead, felt sick to her stomach. Her nerves were frayed, her hands shook, her eyes darted from the wall to the stove to the table but never to T.C. A hundred disjointed thoughts swirled through her mind. When Maude and Polly began to clear the table she got up to help.

  “Not tonight, Mrs. Kilkenny,” Maude said sternly. “This is your weddin’ day.”

  “Oh, but you and Polly have worked all day, while I—”

  “She’s right, sweetheart. This is a special day. You can make it up to Maude and Polly later.” T.C. took her hand and led her to the door.

  Jane wished that he hadn’t called her that. He would remember later and hate himself for it. She wanted to dig in her heels and refuse to leave the safety of the kitchen, but breathing deeply, to steady her nerves, she walked along beside him. In the near-darkness of the hall, he turned her to him with his hands on her shoulders.

  “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I’m not going to demand that we consummate our marriage tonight. I can see that you think that. Don’t be nervous, sweetheart. When we come together as man and wife it will be because we both want it to happen.” Holding her chin firmly in his hand, he bent his head and placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

  “I know nothing of men… or that,” she said in a breathless whisper.

  “I don’t expect you to. Jane, I need to talk—”

  “—I know.”

  “Come to the surgery. There are things in Doc’s desk I want to show you.”

  “Wait.” Pride stiffened her backbone and she pulled away. “I must talk to you first. But there’s something I need to get from… your room.” She went quickly to the bedroom and in the dark felt for her valise and her mother’s picture she had placed on the top. Hugging it to her, she closed her eyes for a second or two, then backed out of the room.

  T.C. had gone into the surgery and lit the lamp. Jane entered and closed the door behind her. He was standing beside the waist-high table.

  “If this is going to be painful for you—”

  “It is, but it must be done.” She placed her mother’s picture face up on the table. “This is my mother. I was born on her sixteenth birthday.”

  T.C. picked up the painting. It was of a young girl no older than Polly.

  “She was pretty. You look a great deal like her. Do you remember her?”

  “Faintly.”

  Head up. Shoulders back Don’t cower. Jane repeated the admonitions to herself as she had done a thousand times over the years since she had learned who she was.

  She was about to reveal something she had never told before—to anyone. Even as a small child she had not shared her secret with the one or two girls that she considered friends. The stories that circulated throughout the school, the city of Denver, and, as she was told, the entire territory had made the revelation impossible.

  She looked into T.C.’s face, recording every feature in her mind so she could call each one to memory again in the years ahead. She had the strength to tell him only because she loved him so much and wanted to spare him. He was so close she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes. And she must lo
ok him in the face when the testing was over. Seeing the hatred there would make it easier for her to leave.

  “Please sit down.”

  He took the chair at Doc’s desk and swiveled around to face her. She plunged into the story, determined to get it over.

  “Your solicitor wrote, I’m sure, that I was raised in a Methodist orphanage. The trustees and the headmistress preferred to call it a boarding school, but in fact it was a home for children who had no other place to go.”

  T.C. nodded.

  “My mother died when I was very young. I lived with my mother’s friend, Alice Medlow, for a year or two before I was taken to the orphanage. This picture was the only thing I was allowed to keep. Aunt Alice brought it to me on the first of the only two visits she was allowed to make.”

  “Why didn’t they allow her to visit?” T.C. thought questions would help Jane tell her story because at times her voice was almost breathless.

  “I think, now, they wanted to tear me away from anything having to do with my mother.” Jane walked around the table, clasping and unclasping her hands. “Most of the children knew about their parents and talked about them. Mrs. Gillis ran the school with an iron hand; each time I asked about my parents, she cut me off. I knew nothing of them until I was about ten years old.”

  T.C. wanted to break in but was afraid she would stop talking.

  “Some children talked of the homes they once had had. A few had come to Denver in a wagon train. Others had been children of settlers… who had been burned out during Indian raids. All I had was a picture, and some wouldn’t even -believe it was my mother. I had one other memory that I never talked about. It was of a big man with black hair, a black beard and light eyes who came in the night, wrapped me in a blanket, took me to the orphanage and left me without ever speaking a word.

  “One day I pried this wooden back off the picture frame.” She turned the picture over. “I found two letters. One was written to my mother by… the man who fathered me, who was, I suspect, the one who took me from Aunt Alice. The other was to me from Aunt Alice, telling about my mother and how… I happened to be born a bastard. She had put it there, hoping that someday I would read it.”