by Sara Donati
When her father was in a teasing mood his left eyebrow cocked up at an angle, as it did now. He leaned down to tickle her with his beard stubble until she shrieked. “Did you make her look like a queen with rubies and diamonds in her hair?”
“No.” Lily struggled to get away, without success. “I drew her likeness, her real likeness, the way I see her.”
“Including the wart on her chin, the one with three hairs as long as cat’s whiskers?”
Lily narrowed her eyes. “Well, maybe I didn’t make the hairs as long as they really are … but she liked it anyway. She said she didn’t know she looked so much like her own mother, and she gave me a piece of maple sugar as big as your thumb.”
“Well then,” said her father. “I better have a look at this drawing of yours.”
“Wait,” Lily said, and he drew up. “I wanted to ask you something else.” She gathered her words together and then let them out in a rush.
“Why does Hannah argue so much with Strikes-the-Sky? I thought she was starting to like him a little at least, but they do as much arguing as they do talking like normal people. One minute everything’s fine and then she gets mad at him and he laughs and she stomps off.”
“I don’t suppose you heard what they were arguing about.”
“Clothes.”
“Ah.”
“You see,” Lily said with great seriousness, “Strikes-the-Sky believes that Sister shouldn’t wear O’seronni clothes ever, not even when she goes to see people like the Gathercoles. He says if they want her help they should accept her for what she is.”
“And your sister said?”
“She says that it’s none of his business if she wears doeskin or calico or walks around buck naked—she said that, really—and that she wouldn’t be shamed into or out of any kind of clothing at all. She said he was arguing for the sake of arguing and that if he wasn’t, why then he was stupider than she thought not to see the obvious. Then she called him a name and slammed the door in his face.”
“Did she? And what did she call him?”
Lily squinted. “She called him a pigheaded jackass. In English.”
“Oh ha.” Her father gave her a sour smile and put her off his lap with a thump. “In your sister’s case that kind of talk is called courting.”
“That’s what Mama said too, when I asked her.”
“She’s the expert,” said Lily’s father. “You can take your mother’s word for it.”
“Maybe I should be paying attention for when I’m older,” Lily said. She paused once again. “Do you think that Sister was right, was he arguing just to argue? To get her mad?”
“I’d say that he’s arguing for the sake of courting,” her father said. “Now what about that sketch you were going to show me?”
Every other day Hannah’s rounds took her to the Wildes’ farm, so that she could check the progress of Nicholas’s vaccination blisters and change his sister’s dressing. Eulalia had caught her arm on a nail and the wound wasn’t healing the way it should, something that worried Hannah enough to talk to Richard Todd about it.
While she recounted the treatments she had tried without success Hannah wondered how much the doctor was really taking in, as he was in the middle of making adjustments to the draw on the reverberating furnace.
Then he shot her an impatient glance. “Sounds like the wound might need cauterizing. I’ll have a look at her tonight at the trading post.”
It was the eighth day since the first batch of vaccinations—both the ones in the trading post and the ones she had done at home with virus material brought from the city—and tonight the village was supposed to gather for the next round. By Hannah’s calculations, if everything went according to plan, she’d have virus from fifteen recently vaccinated patients, which meant that working with the doctor they might be able to do as many as sixty more today. If that many people showed up who were willing. Hannah wished again that Curiosity were home; her help would be much missed.
“Might as well look at Mrs. Gathercole’s sore throat at the same time,” Richard added, interrupting Hannah’s calculations.
She thought of pointing out that Mrs. Gathercole, whose sensibilities were so easily upset, might not wish to be examined in a public place. The look on Richard’s face as he crouched in front of the furnace made it clear that he wasn’t interested in Mrs. Gathercole’s sensibilities or any other kind of interruption, and so she simply gathered her things together and left.
Lily was waiting for her, her dark head bent over her sketchbook. One plait had come undone and the curls flew around her head in the breeze.
“Where are we going first?” She skipped along behind, putting her book and pencil into the pouch that hung from a string looped around her neck and shoulder. Many-Doves had sewn the pouch from moccasin leather and Pines-Rustling had done the beadwork, and Hannah had never seen a child more pleased with a gift.
“The Wildes’ place,” Hannah said.
“But I’ve drawn both of them,” Lily said without any rancor at all. And then: “There’s always that old dog of theirs, the one with the chewed-off tail and one eye. Maybe I can get him.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get tired of drawing?” Hannah asked, and then bit back a laugh at Lily’s expression, both thoughtful and resentful.
“Do you think you’ll get tired of medicine?”
“I hope not,” Hannah said.
Lily nodded as if she had proved a point. “You won’t, and neither will I. No more than Daniel will ever get tired of the endless forests and hunting and trapping and all of that.”
At the Wildes’ the door stood open, but there was no reply to Hannah’s call.
“There they are.” Lily pointed. “In the orchard.”
With a few exceptions—the most obvious being the doctor, the preacher, and Axel Metzler, who kept the tavern—the men in Paradise made their living hunting and trapping, and left the crops and the raising of children and animals—pigs, chickens, goats, and the occasional cow—to their women. In this, Elizabeth sometimes pointed out quite sharply, men of all colors were equally stubborn. There was one way to divide things up on the frontier, and one way only: men’s work was in the endless forests, in the marshes, or on the lakes; women planted corn and beans and squash, cabbage and kale in the rich soil near the river and tended it while their babies slept nearby in the shade.
But Nicholas Wilde seemed to be made of other stuff. He hunted for meat and he set a few traps for the furs they needed for their own use, but most of his effort went into the orchard he had started when he came to Paradise five years earlier on a wagon crowded with apple-tree saplings. The men of Paradise had laughed right out loud. Then the Wildes built a little cider mill and produced their first batch of applejack. Just that easily the jokes and comments and wonderings about Nicholas Wilde’s manliness stopped.
Axel Metzler had said it for all of them: a man who could grow apples that produced such a strong and tasty jack deserved some respect.
After that, the men listened good-naturedly when Nicholas Wilde talked about being the one to come up with the perfect eating apple. Everybody knew that apples were for pressing, but if Wilde wanted to eat them too, that was all right with the men of Paradise, as long as he kept his priorities straight.
Hannah and Lily found Nicholas and his sister in the middle of the orchard with its neat rows of small trees, twisted branches heavy with fruit just beginning to move beyond green. They were both so involved in examining fruit on a tree just five feet tall that they didn’t look up.
“What’s this one called?” Lily asked straightaway.
“Come from seed off the graft of a Snow on the Seek-No-Further,” said Nicholas. He was working with his sleeves rolled up and Hannah could see even from a few feet away that the vaccination blisters were at their peak. She just hoped that he didn’t break one by accident, as happened more often than she liked.
He took no notice of her examination, as he was busy talking
apples with Lily. “Don’t have a name yet. Probably never will neither. Looks like another spitter to me.”
“That’s an apple too hard and sour to press or eat,” Lily explained to Hannah with great seriousness. All the children spent a lot of time in the Wildes’ orchard in the fall, and Nicholas would talk about his trees to anybody willing to listen.
Eulalia said, “If you can give us ten minutes we’d greatly appreciate it.”
Her face was flushed and her upper lip and forehead were wet with perspiration. Hannah feared that it was not the sun but a fever that gave Eulalia such color, but she nodded. “We’ll wait back at the cabin.”
On the way Lily kept pausing to point out trees. “That one’s called Spitzenburg, it’s President Jefferson’s favorite. Those there are Ribston Pippins. Nicholas grows those for cider. That’s Maiden Blush, the earliest of them all. Tasty too.”
“Are those the yellow ones—”
“Eulalia brought us some of those last fall, yup. You see that tree with a hump there? That’s my favorite, Duchess. The apples are a greeny yellow color with red stripes. And all those trees over there—” She made a great sweep of her arm. “Those are the ‘maybe trees.’”
They had reached the cabin, and Hannah sat down on the porch step with Lily just beside her. “I suppose I should ask what you mean by ‘maybe trees.’”
Lily folded her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, pleased for once to know more than her formidable older sister, and to be able to share that knowledge.
“Did you know that an apple tree never ever breeds true? Every time you plant a seed you never know what’s going to come of it except it won’t be a copy of the tree it came from.”
“Like people,” Hannah said, and Lily tilted her head to one side in surprise. She let out a laugh. “Like people, yes. Maybe that tree there won’t produce anything but tiny spitters no bigger than a knuckle, or maybe it’ll put out big red apples better than the Duchess and the Spitzenburg both. That’s why I call them ‘maybe trees,’ because maybe one of them will have that perfect apple that will make the Wildes a fortune. When they find that perfect apple they’re going to call it Paradise. Look, here comes Eulalia. She looks sick.”
“Yes,” said Hannah, all thought of maybe trees and perfect apples banished instantly. “She does.”
The wound on Eulalia Wilde’s right forearm, four days old, was tender to the touch and inflamed all around with a bright red halo that was twice the size it had been two days ago. Worse still, red streaks reached out, moving toward her hand in one direction and her shoulder in the other.
“You should have sent for me,” Hannah said mildly, because to show her alarm would only make things worse. “Or you might have gone to see Dr. Todd.”
Eulalia had gone very pale under skin tanned dark from working in the sun. She said, “I washed it out with that medicine every day, the way you showed me. Didn’t do much good though.” She sucked in a breath as Hannah began to probe the wound with gentle fingers. Her brother put a hand on her other shoulder and cast Hannah a questioning glance.
Without looking Eulalia in the eye, Hannah said, “The doctor told me he was planning on checking your arm tonight at the trading post, but I’ll ask him to come by here this afternoon. You need to stay in bed, fevered as you are. I’m going to leave you willow bark tea; I want you to drink a cup every hour.”
“There’s so much work,” Eulalia began, but her brother squeezed her shoulder to cut her off.
“She’ll go to bed,” he said firmly. “And wait for the doctor.”
“Will you come with him?” Eulalia asked. “I’d feel better if you were here too.”
“I’ll be here,” Hannah said. “I promise. Now let me do what I can for you.”
When they were just out of hearing of the Wildes’ cabin Lily said, “It’s bad, isn’t it. The smell means that the wound has gone bad.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “It’s very bad.”
“Will Uncle Todd have to cut off her arm?”
Hannah let out a deep breath. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “If it’s a matter of saving her life. But he may want to cauterize it first.” But I doubt it, she might have added. If it were her decision alone, Hannah would have told Eulalia that the arm would have to come off if they were to have any chance of saving her. If the infection hadn’t settled in the blood already.
Just that suddenly she was very glad that she didn’t practice medicine here on her own. As difficult as Richard Todd could be, he was an excellent surgeon and a confident one; thus far Hannah had never had to carry out an amputation by herself.
“I would rather die than lose my drawing hand,” Lily said, with a sudden fierceness.
Sharp words rose in Hannah’s throat. Then she saw the fear on her sister’s face, and she swallowed them down again.
“I can’t come with you when you go back to see her with the doctor, can I?” Lily said.
“No,” said Hannah. “Not this visit.”
Late in the afternoon Hannah dove into the lake under the falls and stayed submerged in the bone-cold, churning water until she began to feel clean again. By that time her lungs were screaming for mercy, and as she broke the surface a sound rose up deep from her belly, a rush of frustration and anger that sounded surpringly like a scream.
Elizabeth was sitting on the rocks, barefoot, her arms around her knees. She said, “I was starting to wonder. Come and sit with me, Squirrel.”
Until she saw her stepmother sitting there Hannah didn’t realize how much she had been wishing for her calm and trusted voice, the clear gray eyes that saw so much, the shy smile. She hiked herself up onto the rocks, warm with the sun, and lay down so that the doeskin of her overdress would have a chance to dry.
“You changed out of your village clothes,” Elizabeth said.
With an arm over her eyes Hannah said, “This afternoon we … this afternoon I took Eulalia Wilde’s left arm off above the elbow. Richard supervised.”
The silence drew out for a long time, and while Hannah was glad to be with Elizabeth she was also very relieved that she had no questions to ask.
Finally she said, “It was easier than I expected, when I was in the middle of it. Then it was over and it was harder than I imagined.”
“Because you know Eulalia?”
“Yes. And because it won’t be enough,” said Hannah, sitting up suddenly and wiping the lake water from her face. “Curiosity says you can tell about a wound sometimes if it’s willing to give up or if it’s nasty-minded. Richard doesn’t like talk like that but Curiosity’s right. And this wound is nasty.”
Elizabeth struggled hard not to show the surprise and unease she was feeling. If she understood correctly, Hannah believed that Eulalia Wilde would not survive a simple scratch. Before she could think how to ask if she was correct, Hannah shook her head so that the water flew around her in a halo.
She said, “And then on the way home, Cookie stopped me.”
“Cookie?” Elizabeth echoed. “From the mill house?”
“Yes. She took a great risk, I think. She was waiting for me in the trees just beyond the turnoff to Big Muddy. She thanked me for helping with Reuben’s laying-out,” Hannah said. “And then she asked me if I’d vaccinate her and the rest of the slaves. Behind the widow’s back, of course.”
Elizabeth realized she was holding her breath, and she let it go noisily. “And you said?”
Hannah shot her a sharp look, confusion and irritation. “I said of course I would vaccinate them if they wished. Should I turn them away? What other choice do I have?”
“None,” Elizabeth said softly. “There is no other choice. Of course you must vaccinate them if they ask for it.”
Hannah pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. When she lowered them again she had managed to find a small and dismayed smile somewhere within herself.
She said, “You must forget that I told you about this, Elizabeth. I mustn’t draw you into this new troubl
e. I don’t know where it will end.”
“Hannah Bonner,” Elizabeth said, quite sharply. “Would you shut out your family when you need them most?” Then she put her arm around her stepdaughter’s shoulder and drew her close. She was wet and shivering, and Elizabeth cared not at all.
Against Hannah’s temple she said, “Just try to get rid of us. As single-minded as you are—and the Lord knows you came by that honestly—you wouldn’t be able to shake us off. Whatever you do, wherever you go, Hannah, we are still your family. You must be very upset indeed if you need to be reminded of that.”
They rocked together in the warm sun of the late afternoon for a few minutes. Then Hannah said, “I don’t know what to do about Strikes-the-Sky.”
Elizabeth made a soft sound and hoped it would be taken as encouragement. For many days now she had watched Hannah’s face and seen so many new things there: exhilaration, confusion, longing, self-doubt. She had watched and waited for her to come and talk.
That Hannah had fallen—was still in the process of falling—in love, Elizabeth could see very well. What she did not know was how she could provide comfort when it was needed without intruding on something so perfectly personal. As Curiosity had done for her, in those first days of learning that she was capable of loving Nathaniel.
“If it were up to Strong-Words and Many-Doves I would go west with him,” Hannah continued. “They both think he is a good match for me. Even Lily is convinced of it.”
“Forgive me, daughter, but here the question is not what others think, but what you feel.”
Hannah pulled away from her, shuddering a little in spite of the heat. “I don’t want to go west.”
It wasn’t an answer to the question Elizabeth had asked, but she didn’t point that out.
“My father likes him too,” Hannah added.
“Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “He likes Strikes-the-Sky. Everyone here seems to.”
“What do you think of him?”
Elizabeth hesitated. This was not the time for platitudes or empty comfort; Hannah needed the truth. “I think he has a courageous and kind heart,” she said. “I think he needs help sometimes regulating his temper, but he will never direct that temper toward you. On his face I see that he loves you already, even after such a short time.” She paused, but Hannah did not stop her.