Firefly (3 page)

As his fingers lifted her arm and gently probed, Katharine drew in a breath and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

"It's broken for sure," Morgan announced even before he had finished his examination, "but not as badly as I thought it might be. This scratch was probably caused by a splinter on the stairs."

Katharine moaned when he found the break.  Whatever else he might have forgotten, he recognized instinctively that the ends of bone were out of alignment, not far but enough that he doubted the woman would be able to withstand the pain of having the break set.  She was already near fainting.

He didn't take his eyes from the mother's pale, drawn face as he told her daughter, "I need a couple pieces of wood and strips of linen for a splint, plus some whisky.  She won't handle it without help."

"There's no whisky in the house," Julie replied, wondering just whom he thought needed the fortification of liquor.  "I can find the other things, but Papa doesn't allow spirits."

"Then I'm afraid--"

He was cut short by shouting and fists pounding on the front door.

"Miss Hollstrom!  Miss Hollstrom!"

Julie ran the few steps to the door and admitted a frantic, florid-faced old man with a black bag gripped in his left hand.  He pushed past her rudely and stormed into the parlor.

"Simon told me you were here, Morgan," Horace Opper puffed. "You no good drunken bastard, you don't have any business tending this woman's injuries."

Horace drew up his portly figure to his full height of five and one half feet and faced the green-eyed interloper who had also got to his feet.  Morgan just looked down his nose with as much disgust as he could muster.  Opper seemed unruffled.

"Get out, Del Morgan.  Go back to your bottle and leave the practice of medicine to sober physicians."

"Sober, true, but it's a good thing you didn't describe yourself as competent, Horace.  You were washed up and out of date ten years ago." He scratched at his beard unconsciously again and closed the green eyes for a long second.  When they opened, he added, "By the way, she's got a displaced fracture of the left radius about three inches above the wrist."

Opper's red, fleshy face approached a brilliant crimson.

"I don't need you to diagnose my patients for me!"

As Julie watched in horrified disbelief, Morgan shrugged and backed off, then walked around the physician the way one would avoid horse droppings in the street.  He came to a halt in front of her by the front door.

"That's five bucks for the consultation," he sneered. "Next time, wait for the old fart; don't take me away from my hangover and my bottle, all right, Miss Hollstrom?"

He held out his large, freshly scrubbed palm.

Five dollars was outrageous.  Julie had some money in her apron pocket, a couple of silver dollars and some change, but not enough to make this charlatan's fee.

"This is all I have," she offered meekly.  The coins jingled onto his hand, but he did not close his fingers over them.

He hadn't expected her to pay him anything.  If she had kicked his worthless carcass out of her tidy little house, he would have shrugged and gone on his way, back to Simon's or the Castle.  Three dollars and twenty-two cents would buy a day or two of oblivion, but somehow he couldn't take it from her.  He dropped a fifty-cent piece into his shirt pocket before pressing the rest back into her slim hand.  He could feel, if not see, the red roughness of that hand.  Her mother's, in contrast, had been white and smooth and soft.

Then without another word, he walked outside into the blast furnace heat of the afternoon, and he hoped those big brown eyes of hers weren't watching as he went.

Chapter Two

Katharine Hollstrom sat at the dining room table and smiled beatifically.  Her left arm rested in its sling made of a torn bed sheet; her right hand lay patiently on her lap while Julie deftly cut a thick slice of roast pork into bite-sized pieces on Katharine's plate.

"I hate putting you to all this trouble, Julie," she apologized, just as she had at every meal for the past week. "Imagine, five more weeks of this!"

She raised the incapacitated arm and smiled again.  Julie choked down a caustic retort.  She took the bowl of mashed potatoes from her brother Willy and scooped a small serving beside the meat, then covered both with creamy gravy.  A deep breath of that warm, rich aroma set her stomach to grumbling rather loudly, to Julie's acute embarrassment.

"Not too many green beans, dear," Katharine cautioned. "You know they don't agree with me."

Seated just around the corner of the table from Katharine, Hans Wallenmund grabbed the bowl the instant Julie set it down and quickly emptied the contents onto his own plate.

"Then that will be all the more for me," he exclaimed.

"Hans must be working very hard on his farm to have such an appetite," Wilhelm observed from the head of the table.

"And I do not cook so good as Julie," the blond farmer replied.  He added a mound of potatoes beside the beans.

When Julie had finished her mother's plate, she walked around the table to her own place opposite Hans.  Her stomach growled again as she sat down, but before she could put any food on her plate, her father signaled for grace.

"Lord God our Father, we ask a blessing upon this bounty."

Julie bowed her head but did not quite close her eyes while Wilhelm droned on.  She could almost see her reflection on the china's surface, her glasses sliding slowly again, and bitter thoughts filled her head.  She hadn't eaten since six o'clock that morning, and she had spent the intervening hours--except for the one at church--slaving in the kitchen until she was exhausted as well as famished.  Now the green beans, fresh from the straggly little garden, were gone.  Hans had poured nearly all the gravy on his heap of mashed potatoes, and only one biscuit remained of the dozen Julie had baked.  She paid no attention to her father's prayer because all she could think about was that biscuit, still warm in its towel-lined basket.  It was within her reach; if she moved quickly at the end of the grace, she would have it.

The biscuit became an obsession.  The little lump of flour, milk, and baking powder represented more than just a morsel of food to be snatched before greedier hands grabbed it. Julie fought the rebellion that smoldered in her, fed by her gnawing hunger, but the feeling stubbornly refused to be suppressed.  She wanted that biscuit, wanted to smother it with fresh butter and wild honey, wanted to nibble at it and savor the fluffy, doughy goodness that she herself had created.

"In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen."

Julie had listened for those words, and as soon as they were uttered, her hand darted out and her fingers closed around the object of all her desire.  She dropped the biscuit to her otherwise empty plate and did her best to smother a triumphant smile.

She plopped a small serving of mashed potatoes from the spoon and managed to scrape some gravy together.  With a slice of meat and a dish of applesauce, the meal looked spare but sufficient, though Julie couldn't help glancing to the green beans steaming on Hans' full plate.  She licked her lips despite her efforts at control.

She did not have to exert the slightest effort, however, to avoid looking at Hans Wallenmund.  Without looking up from her plate, she could still see his smoothly handsome features, the broad, strong nose, the wide blue eyes, the square jaw, the blond hair from which a boyish forelock tumbled.  He wore a clean but unpressed chambray shirt buttoned to his Adam's apple, with black suspenders supporting his slightly faded denim trousers.  Hans dressed the same every Sunday when he came to Plato from his farm for dinner with the Hollstroms.

"I bought six more Holsteins this week," he informed his hosts.  "No more little Jerseys."

He said it as if he were spitting out a piece of unchewable gristle.

"I get twice as much milk from a Holstein, and they don't have problems calving the way Jerseys do.  The four I bought last year all dropped their calves with no help, but I had to pull three calves from my seven Jerseys.  Even so, I lost two calves and one cow."

"Such a loss!" Katharine exclaimed.

"With the Holsteins I can make up for it very quickly," Hans boasted, and he reached without asking for another slice of pork, his third.  "Already every month I am making two hundred pounds more
schmierkase
."

At that point Julie stopped listening to the conversation. There was no excuse for this repeated bragging of the wealth and success of Hans Wallenmund.  His farm, his crops, his livestock, his cheese, his barn, his house, even his new wagon had been verbally inventoried and spread out before her over the past three Sunday dinners.  None of it appealed to her in the least, especially the thousands and thousands of pounds of cottage cheese.

Hans didn't appeal to her either.  He was handsome enough, and he had money, though here in Plato there wasn't much to spend it on.  His manners weren't the best, but Julie had seen worse.  Lucas Carter, for instance, with his perpetual chaw.  Or that drunken lout Del Morgan and his foul tongue.

She couldn't blame Hans for his lack of education, which was one of the points that irritated her.  Few of the farmers she had known in Indiana or the other places the Hollstroms had lived had been able to do much more than read and write their own names.  Hans at least could print a legible letter and he knew enough arithmetic to avoid being cheated when he sold his precious cheese or bought another cow.  But Katharine Hollstrom had raised Julie with a love for literature and history, and Julie doubted Hans would be the kind of husband with whom she could share those interests.

Not that she expected to find such a man out in the wilderness of the Arizona Territory any more than in the frozen wastes of Minnesota or the wide golden wheat fields of Kansas.

Hans pushed himself away from the table with a loud belch, interrupting Julie's musings.

Katharine smiled indulgently and said, "I do believe we're ready for dessert, dear."

Julie stared at her half-eaten meal.  The potatoes were cold, the gravy congealed greasily.  She had barely touched her applesauce.  The biscuit, however, was quite gone.  She expected a lecture from her father on this waste of good food, but Wilhelm remained silent while she gathered the plates and took them to the kitchen.

The pie on the windowsill fairly glowed in the narrow band of sunlight.  From the golden crust oozed lush red strawberry sauce, almost candied in the oven.  Strawberries were Hans' favorite, and he had complimented her profusely last week for the unsurpassed deliciousness of her pie.  She had made this only at Katharine's insistence.  The effort of preparing dinner was more than enough, and Julie could easily have done without the added work of baking a pie.  Now she felt reluctant to share the splendid work of art.  She hesitated before sliding her hand carefully under the pan and lifting the pie from the windowsill.

She
was
a good cook, she smiled proudly to herself, no matter what anyone else said--or didn't say.

In the dining room, as she cut and served the pie she added, "I have whipped cream in the cooler, and the coffee is hot on the stove.  I'll fetch them in a minute."

Wilhelm took a healthy wedge of the pie, Willy demanded an equal portion despite his mother's protests that he would never be able to eat it all, and of course Hans took two, leaving barely a third of the pie.  Julie cut what remained into two portions and gave one to her mother, then returned to the kitchen for the coffee pot and the bowl of whipped cream.