Firefly (17 page)

"Hans?" Katharine stopped halfway to the dining room and turned around.  Her forehead puckered in a confused frown.  "Has he spoken to your father?"

"He said he had last week.  He has waited a long time, Mama, and so have I."

"Then he can wait a little longer."

Julie nearly dropped a coffee cup at the spit of anger in her mother's usually placid voice.

"For heaven's sake, Julie, you can't go off to that ranch of his and leave me here with this broken arm." There, now the more familiar whine had returned.  "And we don't know yet how effective Dr. Morgan's treatment will be."

"I'd say it's been very effective so far." Julie almost pointed out that this was the first time Katharine had volunteered to help with any form of housework in months but she wisely held her tongue.

"That may be, but I'm still far from fit to take over all the household duties you've handled so capably for me."

Why not add that it's been nine years since I started
, Julie thought uncharitably.

"And besides, who would take care of Willy?" Katharine continued.

"Willy is quite capable of taking care of himself.  He doesn't need someone to spoon his food into his mouth or change his clothes for him any more."

Julie had to calm herself when she realized how furiously she was wiping the dishes clean.  It was just luck that kept her from dropping the platter and breaking it to smithereens.

"Mama, I don't ask for much, but please, I need--"

Katharine propped her left wrist on her hip and sternly faced her daughter.

"Just the other day you asked to work for Dr. Morgan.  If you go off and marry Hans right away, what will the doctor do for a nurse?"

*   *   *

Morgan waited a decent interval after Hans returned from the privy, then excused himself for the same purpose.  Another half hour or so and he could excuse himself from the entire affair and go home to bed, but until Julie and her mother rejoined the menfolk, he'd be polite and listen to the most boring conversation he's endured in years.

The backyard was an inferno, unshaded even by a scrub mesquite.  The breeze out of the west stirred the heat, did not lessen it at all.  Morgan wasted no time and attended to his functions as quickly as possible.  He was surprised to find Hans waiting for him when he emerged.

"I would have some words with you, Dr. Morgan."

Morgan only nodded, deciding to say nothing until he had heard what Wallenmund had to say first.

"You know Julie and I are almost betrothed."

Another nod, as calm as the first.

"I am going to talk to her papa today to set a date for the wedding."

"Fine.  Congratulations."

He hoped that wasn't the reaction Hans was looking for.

"Then you will leave her alone and not try to change her mind?"

"Of course."

"But she is going to work for you, no?  And you will see her every day while I am out at my farm and only see her on Sundays."

Morgan pulled a cheroot from his inner pocket and placed it carefully between his teeth.  If his words sounded stilted or unnatural, let the blame lie on the cigar rather than on feelings he hadn't expected and didn't understand.

"Look, Hans, I'm not out to take your girl away from you, if that's what you're worried about."  He tried to sound reassuring but didn't think he accomplished it at all, by the way Wallenmund looked at him.  "I didn't ask for any of this. When my wife died six years ago all I wanted to do was forget, and for six years I came pretty close to it.  Now, through absolutely no fault of my own, I've been dragged back into being a physician, one of the most agonizingly frustrating professions in the world.  That problem is enough trouble for one man without trying to court a woman already engaged to someone else."

"Then I have your promise she will marry me as planned."

Was the man serious?  Apparently he was, because he put no question mark at the end of that statement.

Morgan sighed impatiently.

"I have nothing to do with it.  I can't promise things for someone else.  If Miss Hollstrom has said she'll marry you, then that's her business, not mine.  I'll lose a damn good nurse, more than likely, but there's nothing I can do about that, either."

"She won't work for you after we are married," Hans insisted.  He drew himself up a little taller but he still lacked several inches of Morgan's rangy height.  "She will be my wife and work in my home."

I don't doubt that
, Morgan mused silently, bitterly.

He was hot, standing in the sun, and there were more comfortable places for conversation, even uncomfortable conversation, than the side of an outhouse.  But when he made a move to walk toward the house, he found Hans blocking his departure.

"I am not finished yet, Dr. Morgan."

"I see that."

"You do not know Julie as I know her.  I know her weakness and how it almost ruined her life."

A man's past--or a woman's--was a private thing in the Arizona Territory.  Too many people wanted it that way.  Del Morgan found himself one of them.

Morgan bit off the end of the cheroot and spat it out.  He watched where it landed, the little wisp of dust rising and then settling.  He almost expected the tobacco to catch fire and smolder in the piercing sunlight.

"Let's leave Miss Hollstrom's past out of this discussion.  If she wants me to know about it, she can tell me, all right?"

Reluctantly, Hans agreed, but not without a few final words.

"You are a man without a wife, Dr. Morgan, and you will spend many hours with Julie every day.  I would be easy for you to take advantage of such a--"

"Damn it, you fool!" Morgan turned away from the younger man and stared up towards the blinding sun.  If the discarded stub of cigar hadn't kindled, his temper had.  "I don't want the girl, Hans.  I have no use for her, except as a nurse.  Why can't you leave it at that?"

"All men have needs."

Morgan's fist raised, not threatening Hans but poised to strike the bleached wall of the outhouse.

He had watched a man die today, and he had had little sleep.  Exhaustion and frustration ate away at his nerves, leaving them raw and painful and more sensitive than he could stand.  Slowly he lowered his hand until it hung tensely at his side and he turned to face Hans once more.

In a strained, angry voice he said, "Six years of cheap whisky takes away a man's need.  I don't want your girl, Wallenmund, and even if I did, I couldn't do anything to her."

A kind of horror spread across Hans' features, and he backed up a step.

Morgan made a sound that might have been a laugh, but if it was, it was full of bitterness.

"Impotence isn't contagious," he assured Hans.  "You needn't fear failure with the girls at Nellie's tonight."

But Hans, for whatever reason, seemed unable to remain in Morgan's presence a second longer.  He turned without another word and started toward the house.  Morgan didn't watch him; he kept his eyes on the dusty bare soil at his feet until he heard the back door squeak open and then shut.

*   *   *

When Hans had announced he wished to speak privately with the doctor, Julie hadn't worried.  However, when both men remained outside longer than she thought either of them would find comfortable, she insisted to herself she was doing nothing but checking to make sure they were all right.

She hadn't intentionally listened while she looked out the kitchen window, and she hadn't heard all their conversation.  Only Morgan's tensely whispered words came back on the scorching breeze that stirred the curtains.  Hans stood with his back toward the house; Julie neither heard him nor saw his facial expressions.  She could read every bit of Morgan's pain in his.

If she had found them engaged in a rolling, tumbling brawl, she would have been less surprised than at this revelation.

She knew exactly what Morgan was talking about.

She tried to tell herself she had been worried about some of his motives and what their working so closely together would develop into.  This news should have reassured her, but oddly it worried her even more.  It wasn't a lie, of that she was sure.  Morgan, whatever else he may be, wasn't a liar, and no man would admit such a thing about himself unless it were true.

She ducked into the pantry the instant she saw Hans turn and head for the house.  Until he walked through the kitchen and on into the parlor, she didn't dare to breathe.  She did not wonder that Morgan hadn't followed.

When Julie peeked out the window, Morgan was walking slowly toward the house.  His shoulders seemed more stooped, his steps more weary, and he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs as though to rest before a long climb.  Julie caught her breath.  She filled the kettle and set it on the stove for tea.

When Morgan came into the kitchen, quietly and without letting the door slam, Julie jumped.  She turned to face him, remembering somehow to put a smile on her face first.

"Mama suggested some tea," she said, knowing how banal such a statement sounded.  "Would you care for some?"

He shook his head.

"You're gonna kill yourself if you don't stop behaving like this was New York or Ohio or wherever it is you folks came from.  You can't keep cooking all summer, not here, not in this heat.  Draw your mother a glass of cold water or make her some lemonade," he snapped.

She shrank from his anger until, an instant later, she realized she was not the intended target.  But before she could say anything--though she had thought of nothing appropriate to say anyway--Morgan apologized.

"I think I'd better take my leave now and go home.  I could use some sleep, and after yesterday and this morning, I don't suppose I'm very good company."

"I'm sorry to have kept you so long, but I'm glad you came for dinner." More banal small talk, when she wanted to say something entirely different.

"I am, too." He smiled and said sincerely, "Thank you, Julie.  You really are a very good cook, and I enjoyed the meal immensely.  It was worth losing a little bit of sleep for.  But I meant what I said.  If you're going to stay in Arizona, you have to get used to a different way of doing things."

For a moment, or two or three, there was silence, then he said good-bye to her in the same quiet tone before he left her and walked into the parlor.  Julie could not follow him, not with the enormous lump in her throat.  She heard him bid her parents and Willy and Hans farewell, all the usual polite phrases of a departing guest.  Finally she managed to get away from the kitchen long enough to see him out the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, won't I, Miss Hollstrom?"

How could he smile? she wondered.  But she answered, "I have laundry to do first.  I might be late, maybe not until noon or even after."

"That's all right.  Just come when you can.  Good afternoon, Miss Hollstrom, and thanks again."