“It must be so very trying to possess a brilliant mind and have to deal with the rest of the simpleminded rabble.”
“You have no idea,” she replied with resignation, missing completely the sharp irony of his remark.
What an excruciating bitch she could be, he thought, and she wasn’t important enough for people to tolerate it, or forget that he was married to her. She always tried to squeeze in the last word. “Well, for God’s sake, don’t offend any of them. Most of them have husbands I have to deal with every week, including Mr. Burton. His wife is the president of the society, isn’t she?”
“I am the very soul of tact.”
“Is that s-o-l-e or heel? Insulting them won’t do us any good.”
She made an impatient show of flapping out her napkin. “I am not incompetent, you know. And I can’t pretend to be.”
He rolled his eyes. “I mean it, Tabitha. Now, I really have to leave.” He approached her side of the bed and leaned over to give her cheek what passed, at best, for a dry peck. “When I get home tonight, I want to hear about the final plans for the party.”
“Harlan,” she huffed.
It’s that dream, Bax heard himself say in the dream’s setting. This moving-picture show had been playing an exclusive engagement in his head for the last four years. It usually ran at night in his sleep, but once in a while his mind showed a matinee if he took a nap during the day.
The details might vary, but they were always vivid, and the end was always the same.
The stench of rotting corpses, garbage, sewage, and mildew was everywhere under the gray skies of the Western Front. Even when they tried to bury men in shallow graves, the thundering shells and pounding rain blew them out of the ground again. The task was futile.
Sometimes a German officer shouted the command.
“Lassen Sie ihn nicht entkommen! Schießen Sie!”
Sometimes it was an American.
“Duncan! Get back here, by God!”
In the end, the result was the same. He was left to die. In the dream, he watched the life flow from him, leaving his body to join the dozens of other corpses in the mud. Blood ran thick with the rain, filling holes and forming puddles. The very earth, scourged and gouged with horrible wounds, seemed to be bleeding.
The cause of his injury never changed and neither did the outcome. In the dream, he did die. And even though he knew it was a nightmare—didn’t he tell himself so?—he was always shaken when he woke. But he was also grateful that it was only a dream. He was supposed to die but someone had decided to save him. Bax had rejected his commander’s heartless stupidity and had paid the price for it. Of course, though the true consequences were miserable, he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. That had really irked everyone he encountered wearing a uniform—his lack of remorse. But insubordination had its price.
The battlefield promotion, the medals, and commendations had been stripped from him without the pomp that often marked the French army’s elaborate ritual, but had lacked only a cigarette and a blindfold. In fact, the American Expeditionary Force rarely bothered with as much trouble as they had taken with him.
Several years later, he’d gone back to Cedar Mill. No one in town would have anything to do with him. His family—their reaction had been even worse. His father claimed they couldn’t hold up their heads with his deed putting a big black mark on their good name and reputations. But he was alive, for whatever that was worth. He wasn’t the same, but alive.
Awake now, he was relieved to find himself in his rented room in Powell Springs.
Slowly he rolled over to his back in the darkness of the quiet room in the quiet house, and felt the crisp sheets brush against his bare skin. He was conscious of Amy Jacobsen lying just on the other side of the wall. Nothing about her personality should draw him to her. He was no angel, but she had done a dishonorable thing, trying to steal her sister’s intended. She possessed all the charm of a bottle of castor oil, and he hadn’t seen her smile even once yet. Thanks to her, he’d have to take his wash to Wegners, which was damned inconvenient, and that lit a low flame under his patience with her. But there was something . . . something about her that wouldn’t let him cross her off the list of images that floated across his mind during the day. Something bad had happened to her, of that he was certain. Whatever it had been, it was enough to change her from what he’d heard was a sparkling, confident, though selfish young woman into someone who looked ten years older than she probably was.
But, hell, everyone had their secrets. Some, like his, were bad enough to destroy lives—it had cost him everything.
So, she had hers. He had his own.
Outside, the rain was back, driven by heavy wind gusts that rustled the trees and shrubs and slammed hard drops against the windows. The sound served to remind him that her life was complicated by a lot of things, including a husband, and that only a fool wouldn’t keep his distance.
Bax pulled the covers up to his chest to ward off the chill and waited for sleep—and maybe that damned dream—to claim him again.
The next morning, the sky was still gray and threatened rain. With her sleeves rolled up and wearing an apron over a black skirt, Amy stood at the Maytag electric washing machine on the back porch. It was only a year old, and Deirdre told her that Mrs. Donaldson had bought it just before she fell ill. To Amy, it was a wonder of technology that bordered on magic. It cut in half the drudgery of washing. In the tub, a load of Bax’s shirts and underwear agitated beneath the layer of suds created by curls of laundry soap she had shaved from a bar of Fels-Naptha. She had originally planned to charge him and Tom Sommers for this. But after Bax stepped in to help her with Sylvia Dilworth, she felt she owed him something, even though that help had been uninvited, and it was exasperating. She couldn’t very well give him free laundry and expect Tom to pay, so her plan to make money from this drained away with the wash water. It would be just this one time, though. She was determined that a single good deed wouldn’t obligate her to a never-ending handout.
She told herself this, even as she remembered seeing him trot toward her on the street yesterday afternoon, the nickel-plated deputy’s badge pinned to his vest, gleaming dully under the clear sky. And then hearing him hail her. Amy!
As she filled the washer with clean rinse water, it occurred to her that she’d never given much thought to money before she married Adam. She had never had to worry about such things and had supposed that nothing would change with him. It had been a rude awakening to realize that he was a penny-pinching skinflint. She’d had to wheedle money from him for every hairpin or pair of stockings she needed. As time passed, he only became more miserly.
In the kitchen, Deirdre presided over the wood-fired stove, cooking eggs, bacon, potatoes, and toast for breakfast. So far, Amy had seen no evidence of the odd behavior Daniel Parmenter had hinted at. She was a shy woman, and a whiff of sadness seemed to envelop her, but Amy chalked it up to her widowed status.
On the back stairs that led to the kitchen from the second floor, she heard the clomp of men’s footsteps. Tom and Bax appeared in the kitchen, where the table had been set for everyone.
“Mrs. Gifford, ma’am?” Tom said.
Deirdre turned and nodded at the young man. “Breakfast is almost ready. I know you’re due at the mill—”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am, it’s not that, although I do appreciate it. I’m looking for my dirty clothes. I left them where I always do, in that basket in the bathroom. I wondered if you’d seen them, since we’re supposed to take care of our own stuff now.”
“I have your wash here, Mr. Sommers,” Amy said over her shoulder, hearing the question. “And yours, too, Mr. Duncan.” She left the machine to do its job, wiping her hands on her apron, and started shaking out things that had already been through the wringer. “Mr. Duncan did a favor for me yesterday, and I thought I’d return it by taking
care of his wash. I included yours, too, on the house,” she nodded at Tom. “Just this one time.”
Bax looked at her with raised brows and a baffled expression. Then comprehension seemed to sink in. He walked out to the porch, ducking around wet laundry that hung from the retractable clotheslines. “Thanks, Amy.”
His eyes bore an intensity that was ever present, and she wondered what had happened to him to put that look in their gray depths. “You’re welcome.”
Amy sighed. She had a feeling that “just this one time” was going to become permanent.
“How have you been feeling?” Jessica asked Susannah Grenfell. “You look luminous!” The two women sat in Jess’s examination room.
Susannah grinned and patted her pregnant belly. “I’m starting to feel like one of the mares.”
Jess laughed. “Well, at least you’ll get a bit of a break—only nine months instead of eleven or twelve. Although toward the end, it will seem like that long, and you’ve got another two and a half months to go. How is Tanner handling this?”
The other woman shook her head. “I never saw him worry more. And he’s the sort who’ll sleep in the stall with a mare that’s about to foal. He treats me like I’m an invalid and fusses over me so much, I try to find things for him to do to keep him busy. He’s missed Wade and Josh since they’ve gone back to live with their mother. He fostered them for so many years when Em was working and couldn’t keep them.”
“You’re hoping for a boy, then.”
“You know women don’t care, as long as the baby is healthy. Tanner might be hoping for a boy. At least I’ll have you for the delivery instead of Granny Mae.”
“There weren’t a lot of choices. When Margaux was born it was either her or Cole. I didn’t think he was up to the task. Actually, she’s a pretty good midwife, and yes, I know she used to help farmers around here pull a calf now and then, although she’s gotten too old for that. She’s become Margaux’s substitute grandmother.”
Susannah leaned forward. “But what about Amy? Everyone is buzzing about her.”
Jessica sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I’m not surprised. It was the shock of my life to walk into Laura Donaldson’s old place and see her standing in the kitchen. I can’t say that I’m holding a grudge—she’s my sister, my only blood relative. And Adam isn’t with her, thank God, but I’m not sure just what’s going on. She claims he’ll be along soon.” She shook her head. “Really, I think people around here will tar and feather him if he shows his face, and I doubt that anyone would try to stop them, not even the sheriff or Reverend Mumford. As for my sister, she left a lot of hard feelings and burned bridges behind her.”
Susannah, who had believed Amy was her best friend, later realized she was just using that friendship to get close to Cole. The shadow of an old hurt fluttered across her face. “I didn’t realize how selfish and immature she was.” She stood up and gathered her coat.
Jess stood, too. “I don’t think anyone else did either. But I guess she’s about to find out how they feel about it.”
Amy did find out, almost everywhere she went.
One day she and Deirdre were walking home from Bright’s Grocery on Main Street when she saw an old schoolmate, Glynis Landon, approach, holding a little girl by the hand. Amy smiled at her automatically, recognizing an old acquaintance, and not thinking of all that had happened since. Glynis merely glared back. Although the streets were muddy after another rainy spell, the woman pulled on the girl’s hand to cross to the opposite side rather than be forced to share the sidewalk with her. Amy lowered her head for a moment, surprised by how much it stung. After all, this certainly wasn’t the first time she’d experienced humiliation in the past few years, both public and private.
“You know her, don’t you?” Deirdre asked.
Amy swallowed and cleared her throat. “Oh, I used to. I doubt that she remembers me, though.”
Deirdre waited a moment before responding. “Your business is none of hers. It’s not as if you ruined her life.” She gazed at Glynis and her child across the street, then turned back to Amy. “Some people don’t know what real grief is.”
Amy nodded, but didn’t trust her voice to speak again at that moment. She appreciated Deirdre’s kindness, even if it sounded a bit backhanded. Yes, Amy had ruined her own life.
There had been other incidents like that one and her visit to Dilworth’s.
She was now forced to accept that the price of refuge in her hometown was rejection.
A rare few did not see her as a pariah. Leroy Fenton, the telegraph operator who had unwittingly sent the telegram she’d signed Cole’s name to, telling her sister that he was breaking their engagement, had died. No one working at the railway station knew her now. And at the time of her disgrace, some people were far too busy with their own concerns of death, grief, and war to be bothered with social scandal. Others had shorter memories or didn’t care about her doings. Those individuals, when Amy encountered them, were indifferent to her. And that might be the best she could hope for. But she’d made up her mind that if people were rude to her, she didn’t owe politeness in return.
She had to remind herself that she could survive the snubs. Her singular goal, to pick up the pieces of her old life—before the war, before the scandal—was more important than any other she’d ever had. But while dread and apprehension had been her constant companions when she’d lived with Adam, sometimes she still felt a weight dragging at her heart. At least she had a couple of new dresses, underwear, and a pair of new shoes. Her old ones, worn through at the soles and water damaged beyond saving, had gone out to the burn pile in the far corner of the backyard.
The days passed as she settled into life at the boardinghouse. She and Tom had arrived at a compromise regarding the laundry, which she now did for less money than she’d originally planned. They were an odd little mix, she and her tenants. But more often than not, she felt her eyes straying to Bax Duncan when he was around.
Worse, her interest and curiosity were increasing about the man she saw. Tom Sommers was beefier—husky, with a barrel chest and big hands that made him look as if he could pick up a felled tree and carry it to a wagon. But Bax . . . he moved with a long-legged, rugged stride that tended to make her follow his movements with her gaze.
Early one afternoon, as she stood at the ironing board in the kitchen, running the iron over the collar of one of his shirts, his image rose in her mind’s eye. He was a lot like Cole Braddock and Whit Gannon in that way—tall, slim-hipped men who seemed comfortable in any situation. There was something more about Bax, though. In his eyes she glimpsed a troubled, shuttered look that did not invite questions. She knew nothing about him. He wasn’t inclined to talk about himself the way that Tom did, although most of Tom’s bashful comments were directed at Deirdre.
Amy was ironing a sleeve when she heard boots thumping up the back porch steps. As if her thoughts about him had conjured his presence, Bax walked in, obviously in a rush.
On the front of the shirt he was wearing, a large brown stain stood out like a cow pie. He unbuttoned the top two or three buttons and pulled it off over his head.
“What in the world hap—?” she began.
He recognized his own shirt on the ironing board and snatched it away from her. “I need that.”
“But only one sleeve is ironed!”
“I don’t care. I can’t wear this,” he said, wadding up the dirty garment and throwing it over a chair. “There was a fight at Tilly’s between a couple of loggers and I got in the way of someone’s flying beefsteak and gravy.”
“Oh, my—”
“At least it wasn’t a hammer fight.”
“A hammer fight!”
“I’ve seen two or three of those, and they never end well. Anyway, both men are sitting at Whit’s office. Since there’s just the one cell, we can’t put them together. One of them is
locked up and the other is shackled to the hitching ring out front. He’s a big, liquored-up lummox, and he’s boiling mad, braying like a mule. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled the whole damned thing out of the concrete and escaped. I have to get back.”
Plainly unconcerned about a lady’s delicate sensibilities, he stood there naked to the waist and wearing no undershirt. He revealed more muscle and sinew than she would have expected him to possess. She tried not to notice, but with him standing so close she could only drop her gaze to the ironing board. He pushed an arm through the unironed sleeve. The other one, flat, crisp, and ironed shut, kept eluding his hand and he turned in a full circle, chasing the opening.
While his back was to her, Amy saw two scars on the left side of his back. One was completely visible. The other disappeared into the waistband of his pants. They were horrific—the color of calf’s liver—and she blurted out her question without thinking. “Dear God, what happened to your back?”
He whirled around to face her and gave her a scowl so dark and menacing that she backed up a step. “Mind your own damned business!”
Without uttering another word, he got both arms into the sleeves and started buttoning the shirt. Then he picked up the dirty one from the chair and shoved it into her hands. Charging outside, he slammed the door behind him and pounded down the back stairs, stuffing the shirttails into his jeans as he went.
Two houses down the street, a man in rumpled clothes, partially screened by a laurel hedge, peered at Bax Duncan as he jumped into a county sheriff’s car and drove off. He allowed himself a very satisfied smirk.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. This day was turning out to be even better than he’d expected. Yes, indeed—that thousand dollars might be about to turn into a bigger jackpot.
The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) Page 5