Firefly (25 page)

After the benediction, she ducked out the side door as usual and fairly ran through the graveyard.  She did not glance in the direction of Amy Morgan's grave, where the roses were a profusion of scarlet blushes now.

The churchyard gate was closed, but it took Julie only a few seconds to lift the bar and swing the portal open.  When she turned to close it again, Hans was no more than four or five steps behind her.

"I'll walk you home, Julie," he said sternly with no joy or even hint of happiness.

She could not refuse his company.

She made certain no one else was within hearing and then she confronted him.  The gate formed a barrier between them, one she intended to keep in position.

"I need to talk to you, Hans," she said.  She could not meet his eyes, but she did not let her voice quaver at all.  "I saw you last night with...with that girl from Nellie's.  You hit her, and I want to know why."

He coughed, glanced around nervously, then tried to push the gate open.  Julie held it firmly closed.

"I paid her for something and then she refused to give it to me, but it is not something for you to talk about.  It is a man's thing.  You must not even know about it."

"But I
do
know about it.  Is it the first time, or do you always--"

"I said we do not talk about it.  Now, come, we will go to your house and wait for your mama and papa.  What is for dinner today?"

He tried again to force the gate, and he was stronger than she.  She had no choice but to step out of his way or risk injury.  Hans, she suddenly realized, would not hesitate to hurt her.  He had hurt before.

With the gate no longer a shield, Julie could merely back away from Hans, but he took her arm and began to lead her in the direction of her father's house.

"I want an answer," she demanded, jerking her elbow out of his grasp.  "I will talk about it, and if not to you, then I will tell my father."

Hans took her arm again, holding too firmly for her to escape without making a scene, and they were now in the middle of the street, with a crowd outside the church door to watch them.

"It is something a man must do," he hissed.  "The women at that place are paid to do what men need.  I paid her, too, but she would not go with me.  A man must have what...what a man needs so he can be a man."

They had reached the gate to the Hollstroms' yard.  Hans opened it with his free hand and pushed Julie through.  Had she not seen Willy racing up behind them, she would have given full rein to her anger.

Willy captured Hans' attention with a display of his scar, thus allowing Julie to escape to the sanctuary of the kitchen.  The smell of a savory stew bubbling on the stove brought her back to life from her momentary sojourn in hell.

She had not invited Morgan for dinner.  Last night she had been in no state even to speak to him, much less encourage further contact.  When she walked out of the office, she had had no idea what she would discover; she could not have foreseen the horror she felt even now at Hans' explanation.  Stirring the rich gravy in which chunks of beef and carrots and potatoes and onions swam, she wondered if she would have invited Morgan had she seen him in church.  He had not attended, though she did not know if he had gone home to sleep or if he was still watching his patient at the office.

Katharine came into the kitchen with a last little echo of laughter.  Julie did not turn from her work, and in fact stirred the stew more vigorously.

"Dinner smells simply marvelous, dear.  Is Dr. Morgan joining us again?"

Julie noted how carefully her mother's voice dropped for that question, in a kind of conspiratorial confidence.

"No, Mama, I didn't invite him."

"Oh."  Was that disappointment Julie heard in her mother's voice?  Perhaps not, for Katharine quickly changed the subject and returned to a normal tone.  "I see Hans is all spruced up.  That talk he had with your father must have put him in a regular courting mood."

Julie wanted to scream.  She closed her eyes to still her temper, but she opened them quickly when Katharine came up beside her.  She took the long spoon from her daughter's hand and sipped the stew herself.

"It tastes every bit as good as it smells, too.  Will it be ready soon?"

"No, not for quite a while.  The meat is not near done, and the potatoes are hard as rocks yet."

"Good.  Then I shall have time for a little nap.  I feel one of those terrible headaches coming on."

Katharine raised a hand to her temple and pressed slightly.

"But, Mama, you haven't had a headache since you started taking the new medicine from Dr. Morgan."

Julie set the spoon down and finally faced her mother with genuine concern.  If Morgan's treatments didn't work, then she'd never be free of Katharine and Wilhelm and Willy.

"Well, you know he said it would take time.  And I've been busy this week, with you spending so much time with him.  Perhaps I just over-did myself too soon.  I'm sure a little nap and a sip of his medicine will help considerably."

She swept out of the room without another word to Julie, gave her excuses to the two men in the parlor, and climbed the stairs.  Julie heard the bedroom door close, but though she listened carefully for the creak of her mother's bed, the sound never came.

*   *   *

Harry slept through the night, allowing Morgan fitful rest of his own.  The sun was well up before either man stirred.  Harry's first feeble groans brought Morgan instantly to his bare feet and racing into the other room.

"Don't try to get up," he cautioned the still groggy victim.  "Tell me what you want and I'll get it for you."

"Where the hell am I?  And what the hell happened to me?"

"You were shot, three times.  I spent most of yesterday taking one bullet out of your leg and sewing up the holes from the others."

Harry slowly explored the bandages, coming eventually to the painful area of the shoulder wound itself.

"It come out the back, too?" he asked, unable to reach that far.

Morgan nodded even while he rubbed his eyes and yawned.  His stomach growled almost as loudly.

"How 'bout my leg?  You have to cut it off?"  He couldn't reach past the bandages that shrouded the upper half of his thigh.

"No, it's still there, and likely to be for a good long time.  But you'll be laid up for a week or so at least."

"Aw, shit!"

The big body went angrily limp.

"I gotta file my claim in Prescott before the end of the week or I lose it to my ex-partner's wife."

Morgan pulled up a chair and sat down, placing his hand on Harry's broad forehead.  There was no sign of fever.

"Well, today's only Sunday.  Maybe by Thursday you'll be recovered enough to get on the stage to Prescott.  If you take it easy until then, that is.  You want some breakfast?"

That idea seemed to cheer the invalid.

"Yeah.  'Bout two dozen eggs over easy, a whole slab o' bacon, ten pounds of potatoes, and a gallon o' coffee.  And gimme the coffee first."

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Morgan said while he pulled on his socks and boots.  "I've got a neighbor who does my cooking, so I'll go order up some breakfast."

"I hope she's a good cook, and fast."

After straightening up his appearance as much as possible, Morgan saw to other, more immediate needs of his patient, then went to find Winnie.

He crossed the street just as the preacher, his voice carrying out the open door, called upon the congregation to rise for the closing hymn.  Winnie would be there still, as well as Julie and her family.  Morgan refused to think about her.  He hurried to his own house, quickly wrote out a note for Winnie that he slid under her door, and then was about to return to Harry.  But he remembered that church would be letting out just now, with the townspeople milling about outside the door and in the street.  He could not face them yet.  Maybe in a week or two.  He especially did not want to see Julie.

He walked upstairs and out onto the rooftop, where his two cauldrons of water sat in the early morning sunlight.  The night had been warm; the water was sufficiently heated for washing and would take only a few minutes to heat for shaving.  He might as well make himself presentable while he waited for the Sunday morning crowd to disperse.

The house was cool, much cooler than the sunny patio outside the second floor.  Morgan stripped off his shirt and washed right there.  He liked the invigorating warmth that followed a morning scrub, and the soft early breeze provided a much gentler towel than one washed in Winnie's home-made soap.  While he splashed the suds off, he let his gaze wander to the stream of townsfolk coming from the church.  He swore to himself he wasn't watching for her.

But he saw her nonetheless, alerted by the bright sun on the pale coronet of her hair.  She had done the braids differently this morning, winding them around the top of her head like a tiara rather than in a simple knot at the back of her neck.  Her dress was a dark blue calico, not nearly as faded as most she wore, but the color did not suit her at all.  On Amy, with her dark auburn hair and jewel-bright eyes, such a dress would have looked quaintly becoming.  On Julie, it made her look every inch the drudge she was.

Yet when he saw the figure in the dark suit join her at the cemetery gate, Morgan thought only of how pretty Julie's face had been in the lamplight of the surgery when she concentrated all her efforts on saving a man's life.  He recognized Hans and wondered immediately why the farmer had suddenly shown up in something other than his work clothes.

Morgan picked up the bucket he had filled with his shaving water and stormed back into the upper hallway, slamming the oaken door behind him.  He had seen Julie submit to Hans' taking her elbow to lead her home; he did not see her throw that hand off.

*   *   *

Katharine's headache did not go away.  She did not come down for dinner and merely picked at the servings brought up on a tray for her.  For once, Julie came close to enjoying waiting on her mother; it kept her away from Hans, who had announced immediately after Wilhelm's grace that he intended to begin making wedding plans.

Though Julie had no appetite herself, she knew she had gone too long without food and forced herself to eat.  She tasted nothing.  The slow-cooked stew might as well have been warmed-up mud, and the crumbly, sweet cornbread stuck drily to the roof of her mouth.  But her thoughts of Morgan reminded her of her promise to him to take better care of herself.

But for what?  She remembered the way he pushed her from him last night after that moment of sweet insanity.  The disgust in his voice when he sent her home could not have been clearer.  Yes, they had been tired, and yes, they had been elated over Harry's survival.  But it hadn't taken Morgan long to realize Julie wasn't the wife he had once shared such victories with.  She wasn't Amy and never would be.

Julie started to choke on a piece of meat but quickly washed it down with a sip of lemonade.  Hans looked across the table at her, but almost immediately he returned to his food.  He, too, ate in silence, except for infrequent statements about his plans for the future.  When neither Julie nor Wilhelm responded to his ideas, he returned to his meal.  Julie suspected that if he had spoken a single word directly to her, she would have burst into tears and run from the room, possibly even from the house.