by Lyn Cote
Hiram’s face turned a beefy red. “Esther, I’m taking you home tonight.”
Esther drew herself up, “Hiram, when you decide to keep your vows to me, I will come home.”
“You are making no sense.” Pushing Lee aside, Hiram started forward again, but halted when Mr. Chaney moved between Hiram and his wife.
“It’s simple,” Esther continued, “I want your love, Hiram, and not only for me, but for my three children, too.”
“Your children. Hah! A lot you cared for your children. Leaving them alone while I went to work. I can’t believe you abandoned them like that.”
Jessie shook, holding back hot words.
Esther said, “I would have brought them with me if I had the wherewithal to provide for them. But I couldn’t expect my widowed daughter to take in two more mouths to feed.”
“The twins are always welcome,” Jessie said with all the dignity she could muster.
“Keep out of this, missy,” Hiram growled. “This is all your fault. You’re the one who drove a wedge between me and my wife.”
“No, she isn’t,” Esther said.
“Esther, if you persist in this folly, I will make certain you never see your sons again.”
Esther blanched and covered her mouth with her hand.
“I think we’ve had enough of you tonight,” Lee said, then took Hiram by the back of his collar and seat of his pants and propelled him past Susan and out the front door.
Jessie couldn’t stop shaking.
Lee returned, dusting his hands. “I’ve wanted to do that ever since I met that man.”
Ruby stepped into the room. “Miss Esther, you come in the kitchen. I make you a cup a tea.” Esther, wiping away tears, agreed and followed Ruby. Mr. Chaney bid them all a tactful good night and went upstairs.
Jessie heaved herself back into her chair. “I feel as though I have just run a mile.”
“Strong emotion always takes its toll,” Miss Wright said.
Lee rounded on her. “You, our dear Miss Wright, deserve an award. No one else could have said what you did and have gotten away with it.”
Miss Wright let a momentary hint of a smile flutter over her features. “The man’s a fool, but that doesn’t help our dear Esther. He will keep her from her boys and he will make her as miserable as he is able.”
“I’m afraid he is a top hand at making people miserable,” Jessie said bleakly.
Miss Wright struggled to her feet. “Only God can melt a heart of stone like Hiram Huff’s.”
“But so far God hasn’t seen fit to act.” Jessie massaged her neck muscles with one hand.
Miss Wright turned to her. “If you start telling God what to do or if you let yourself hate Hiram Huff, you’ll be no better than he is. And I don’t care what you think, that is what Margaret would say.”
Jessie stared at the old woman in surprise.
Miss Wright grunted with pain and hobbled from the room, but tonight even her cane thumping was subdued.
“Are you all right, Jess?” Lee sat down in the chair beside her.
His closeness made her feel like a canary with a tomcat at its cage door. “I’m fine. I thought my stepfather would come sometime, and he’ll come again.” She stood.
“Most likely. But you aren’t alone.” He stretched out his hand to take hers.
Jessie ignored this gesture. She didn’t want to be alone with Mr. Smith. “I’m going to the kitchen to help Ruby and Susan comfort my mother.”
Looking disconcerted, Lee shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll go out and keep Linc and Butch company.”
They both passed through to the kitchen. He went on out the back door while Jessie sat down in the chair next to her mother.
“Miss Jessie, you want some tea, too?” Ruby asked from the stove where she stood by the kettle making the thrumming sound of water near boiling.
“No, thank you, Ruby.”
“Grandma, you come sit down,” Susan said. “I’ll make the tea.”
“You ironed all day long,” Ruby objected. “Sit. I’m too old to do much but I kin still boil water.”
Esther wiped her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, Jessie. I don’t know what poor Mr. Chaney thought of such a scene.”
“Don’t worry, Mother. He seemed to take it in stride.”
“He a nice boy, that’s for sure.” Ruby shuffled ponderously, carrying the steaming tea kettle to the table and set it on a cast iron trivet.
“I surely was glad he and Mr. Smith was here.” Susan folded her arms over her breast. “But don’t you fret. We’ll make sure that husband of yours don’t fine you alone.”
“Best he not fine her here a-tall,” Ruby spoke up, surprising Jessie.
“Grandma,” Susan scolded.
“I don’t mean what you thinking. I mean this lady should shake that man up good. Let him know she ain’t gone put up with his orneriness no more.”
“What do you mean, Ruby?” Esther dried the last of her tears.
“I mean he think you depending on him alone. He think he just need to talk and talk and get mad and finally you come home.”
“Yes,” Jessie encouraged.
Ruby pointed to Esther with her free hand. “You need to get you some new clothes and wear them where he kin see you. You need a new bonnet, new gloves. You need to make him see that you ain’t gone just sit around crying over him.”
“But how?” Esther asked.
“You go get you a job.” Ruby nodded with each of her words. “Not cooking or cleaning—get something at one of them big stores I seen downtown. That’ll make him worry.” Ruby poured out the steaming water into the teacups.
Could Ruby be right? Jessie wondered.
Ruby sat down and picked up her teacup.
“I’ll do it,” Esther said quietly.
“A job? Mother, I don’t want—“
Esther sat up straighter. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Jessie. Hiram’s done that for twenty-three years. Besides I don’t want to be dependent on you and you don’t need me with Susan and Ruby to help you around here—”
“Mother—”
“No, Hiram Huff thinks I’ll come crawling back to him. If I take a job and begin making my own way in the world, maybe he’ll take me seriously. In any event it’ll give me something more to do than cry all the time.” She smiled at Ruby. “Thank you.”
Lee and Linc came in. “Linc’s homework is done. I’m going to walk him to his room.”
“I’ll come, too.” Jessie stood up. Maybe now would be a good time to tell Mr. Smith that she wanted him to begin distancing himself from her son. Unless he’d decided to reveal the truth. The three of them walked through the dining room to the foyer. Linc submitted to having his hair ruffled by Lee and to being kissed by his mother. Then he went into their half of the curtained-divided parlor. Jessie slid the pocket door nearly shut. Then she found herself face-to-face with Lee.
“I’d like to talk to you privately,” Lee murmured.
“I need to stable the goat. Would you like to come with me?” Jessie led him outside.
Lee felt awkward. Maybe it was due to Hiram Huff’s visit. Jess untied the goat from her stake. In the alley, Lee propped open the shed door and Jessie led the goat in. The musky smell of goat surrounded them and the chickens were already tutting in their roost for the night. Jessie murmured soothing sounds to the nanny as she tied her rope to the ring in the wall.
“Jess, tomorrow I begin training for a position in Gentlemen’s Finer Attire at Field & Leiter’s.”
“I don’t care what you are now. What were you?”
“Jess.” His right arm hooked the inside of her elbow and swept her into his arms.
She tried to push herself out of his arms.
“Please listen, Jess. Today I turned over a new leaf. I’m going to prove to you I’m worthy—”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me. Just tell me the truth.” Her eyes avoided his.
Pulling away, Jessie scattered fresh straw over the floor.
“It’s hard to put my feelings into words because I never thought I would ever say them to anyone. Jess, will you be my wife?”
Jessie took a step back from him. “I won’t remarry.”
He couldn’t believe her words. “But we…I have fallen in love with you, Jessie. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I thought you realized. I’ve always been careful never to—”
He felt himself stir, feel frantic. “Jess, you don’t understand. I feel…everything’s changed.” He rushed to explain what he’d experienced earlier. Certainly she’d understand. “Today in the park, a young woman was out walking her baby. Suddenly I wanted it to be our baby.” He searched her expression for a softening from understanding of what he was trying to express.
Jessie avoided his eyes. “I will never remarry.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t have feelings for me. I am the man you were kissing last night—”
“I’m sorry if I mislead you.”
“Why are you doing this? We could have a good life together.” Panic twisted his stomach.
“I do not want Linc to grow up under a stepfather—”
“Under a stepfather? You can’t mean you think I’m like Hiram Huff.” His heart began to pound.
“No, of course, not.” She frowned. The nanny goat settled down into its bed of straw, her bell clanging dully.
“Then you’re not being logical. I would never treat Linc like your stepfather treated you.”
“You wouldn’t mean to-—”
“You’re wrong.” He tried to sound logical though his fear was rampant now. He reached out to take her hands.
She took a step back from him and came up against the back wall of the shed. “You’re wrong. Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t.” He now understood the saying “hot under the collar,” and couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “Explain to me how I’d treat Linc like your stepfather.”
Jessie’s face flushed. “You said it yourself. You said ‘our baby.’ Lincoln will never be ‘our baby.’”
“What has that to do with anything?” he demanded.
“If we married, we’d always have a divided home. There would always be my son and your children.”
Lee flung up his hands. “You’re not making sense. I love Linc.”
She drew herself up. “You’re not making sense. How could I marry a man who won’t even tell me his name.”
Her last words left him silent and staring angrily into her stormy eyes.
Finally Jessie said in a taut voice, “I’ll bid you good night.” She pushed past Lee and left him standing alone in the deep twilight.
Chapter 14
October 6, 1871
At first, Lee couldn’t think, then he hurried inside Jessie’s front door. He yanked his hat and jacket from hooks and scuttled down the front steps. Raging against women’s illogical thinking and Hiram Huff’s hypocrisy, Lee broke into headlong retreat.
Heedless of direction, he hurried down block after block. Finally a church clock tolling ten stopped him. Looking around the night-shrouded street, he found he was on the South Side near railroad tracks where shabby dwellings huddled among warehouses.
He rubbed his face with one hand as though trying to clear away the turmoil in his mind. I should go home to bed. I have a new job in the morning. But going home and meekly to bed—in the room above Jessie’s—struck him as impossible. As impossible as convincing Jessie that his past was not important to them.
He began trudging the darkened streets again. I can’t expect her to understand what it meant to live through the war as a surgeon. No one who didn’t go through it could understand.
Suddenly he needed to hear someone agree with him. Mentally he went through the short list of men he had become acquainted with in the past months. He recalled Jessie mentioned Caleb had served in the Union Army, too. Caleb didn’t like him.
Still, the idea appealed to Lee. He didn’t want platitudes about duty or any other soothing pap. He needed a man who would be completely frank, a man who would understand the way the war had really been, not the way people were already beginning to romanticize it. Caleb would understand. Lee looked around and figured out how to reach the late Reverend’s house.
In the warm summerlike night, he heard the faint clanging of a fire bell. Small brush fires on vacant lots had become commonplace after a summer-long drought. His heartbeat matched the pealing of the discordant bells. When Lee found the one-room house, no light shone in the window. Lee hesitated in the yard, thinking what to do.
“What are you doing here?”
Startled out of his thoughts, Lee whipped around. “Caleb.”
Caleb stopped in front of him, leaning forward belligerently. “I asked what are you doing here.”
“I…I just came to talk.” Lee knew it sounded lame as an explanation, but it was, after all, the truth.
“Why?”
The man’s unconcealed hostility turned Lee’s stomach sour. Still he went on, “I…you…I need to talk to another veteran.”
Caleb pushed past him. “All right. Come in.” Lee followed, sorry he had come. While Caleb struck a match and lit a lamp on the table in the center of the room, Lee stood by the door. He remembered too clearly the Reverend’s death in this house.
The circumstances of tonight’s visit already rendered him uncomfortable. And he couldn’t look around the room without seeing it filled with phantom mourners and hear again the melodies they’d sung.
“Sit.”
Lee could recall hearing warmer welcomes from Southern women pointing loaded rifles at him. He eased down on a ladder-backed chair near the sputtering lamp.
Caleb swung his chair around backward and sat down astride it; his long arms draped over the chair back.
“It’s difficult not to think of your father—”
“You hardly knew him—”
“I didn’t have to know him long to respect him, just seeing him die…He was an exceptional man.”
“Thank you.” Caleb’s tone was grudging. His face twisted. “What did you come to talk about?”
Lee shifted in his seat. How to start? “What was your outfit?”
“I was with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment. And you?…Susan told me you were with Mrs. Wagstaff’s husband?”
“Yes.” But I wasn’t Smith, the ambulance driver. Lee didn’t know how to go on. Silent seconds ticked by.
Caleb slapped a hand down on the tabletop. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here or am I supposed to guess?”
The man’s sarcastic tone goaded Lee. “I need someone, someone who went through the war, who will understand—”
“Understand what?” Caleb barked.
Lee grimaced. “I was with Will Wagstaff, but I’m not Lee Smith.”
“You lied to Mrs. Wagstaff?”
“I had to—”
“Who are you?”
Caleb had Lee cornered and it was all Lee’s own fault. He’d wanted to rid himself of the guilt he carried by telling someone his awful secret, to be absolved, not challenged. But in a haze of half-baked emotion, he’d gone to the wrong person. The Reverend’s son would, of course, side with Jessie. But Lee had come too far to turn back. He propped his elbows on his knees and buried his forehead into his hands. “Did you ever spend time in an army field hospital?”
“I carried a few comrades to them.” Caleb’s voice sounded wary.
“Did any of them live?”
“One did.”
“What did he lose?” Lee asked grimly.
“An eye.”
“A fortunate man.” Lee exhaled and sat up. “I have nightmares of those awful days and nights. The screams and moans still have the power t
o wake me. The stench of the blood and sweat…You’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about.”
In the low lamplight, Caleb nodded reluctantly. “I know Mrs. Wagstaff’s husband served in the Union army with the Sanitary Corp. It sounds like you were, too. What did you lie about?”
Lee took a deep breath. “I’m not Lee Smith. He was an ambulance driver who served with us till he died in sixty-four. My name is Leland Granger Smith.”
“So?”
“Will was my best friend. I’m Dr. Smith.”
“Doctor? You’re a doctor. You mean you stood by when my father died and you did nothing!” His fists clenched, Caleb reared up like a fighter coming into the ring.
Lee flung his hands up. “No medicine can give an old man a new heart. I did what I could for your father!”
Caleb halted, breathing hard. For long moments his eyes fixed on Lee’s face. Then he settled down again on his chair and ran his big hands over his forehead. “I guess you’re right about that.”
Lee lowered his own arms. “All I could do was make him more comfortable…”
“And pronounce him dead.”
Lee gave a dry, bitter laugh. “I had plenty of practice at that. I could do it in my sleep. I often did.”
“I still don’t get what your problem is. Just tell Mrs. Wagstaff. She’ll understand. You’ve been good to her son.”
“I want to marry her.”
“So?”
Lee resented the question, but he had started this and he must finish it. “How can I tell her I’m a doctor when she has been looking for one all summer?”
“Just tell her the truth and offer your services.”
“Well, now that’s the rub,” Lee said, his pulse speeding. “I can’t ever practice medicine again.”
“Why not?”
Lee’s face twisted into a mockery of a smile. “Practice peacetime medicine? I wouldn’t know how. I came straight out of medical school into the army. For four years, all I did was dig out bullets, cut off shattered or gangrenous limbs, and stitch up sword and bayonet slashes. I’m no physician. I’m a butcher. Give me a slab of meat—not a human.”