Firefly (44 page)

She knocked tentatively.

He answered the summons almost at once.  The sudden sight of him when he had opened the door sent Julie jumping backwards a step or two.

He looked like hell.  And he smelled of whisky.  His clothes were filthy, his shirt torn almost to rags.  The darker stains could only be blood, though they were hard to distinguish from the other smears and splotches.  The left knee of his denims flapped a three cornered tear, and the skin showing through was scraped raw.  A small cut over his eye had scabbed, but the streaks of blood he had wiped away still marked the side of his face.

He looked at her, all fresh and lovely in that twilight before sunrise, and the bitterness flooded back.  Her trousseau blouse, as blue as the sky would be this evening, clung to the body he would never know, only dream about.  The tiny waist--he had never noticed how tiny before this moment--and softly curved hips draped the new skirt gracefully.  And the hair.  God, he had never seen hair like that before.  Pale as platinum, it crowned her like a wedding veil without a single wave or curl.  A man could run his fingers through it for miles.

"I know it's awfully early, but I had something I wanted to tell you," she said before he even had a chance to greet her.  "May I come in?"

Her smile was a knife, sparkling and deadly, but he could not resist it.  He held the door open while she walked past.

She was radiant, glowing, lit from within by some secret fire, and he knew he had never seen a woman more beautiful.  Those enormous eyes captivated him with their glitter of happiness, but the delicious curve of her lips taunted too painfully for him to look at her.

"You don't need to, Miss Hollstrom.  May I be the first to congratulate you?"

He held out his hand stiffly.

"I met your fiancé on my way home last night.  He told me the date is set for next Sunday.  I perfectly understand your not coming to work any more, with all the plans you must have.  Don't worry about me; I'll manage somehow until I find someone else."

He was smiling.  She went numb.  He was actually happy for her! A knife turned in her heart when she realized how deluded she had been by her hopes.  He didn't love her; he was merely grateful to her for bringing him back from the depths of despair.  She had given him new life, but he was not going to give her love.

"I'm sure you two will be very happy," she heard him say and wondered how much she had missed.  She couldn't listen to any more of his platitudes.  Sick to her stomach, she ran from the kitchen and back to her own house.

*   *   *

A knock on the front door less than fifteen minutes after Julie's abrupt departure brought Morgan out of a dangerous stupor.  He had a bottle of whisky in front of him, uncorked.  Twice in the last few minutes he had actually raised it to his lips.  After yesterday and last night, he needed something.  But after seeing Julie, he knew nothing, not all the whisky west of the Mississippi, would drown this agony.

He had spent twelve hours trying to save the victims of a landslide brought on by the storm.  One man had been buried up to his chest and had died in excruciating pain when a broken rib finally pierced his heart before anyone could dig him free.  Another had been saved only by amputating his arm and leaving it under the pile of rocks and mud.  Three companions who had taken shelter under a rocky ledge were buried alive.  Their bodies untouched by the slide itself, they had died of suffocation.  The two who had escaped and come for the doctor suffered minor injuries in their abortive rescue attempts, including a broken finger, a severely lacerated and bruised shoulder, and a probable concussion.  To say nothing of the hangovers they'd have from the whisky they had fortified themselves with throughout the long night.  Though Del hadn't tasted a drop of the liquor, he had inhaled enough fumes to make him half drunk.

Then the shock of Wallenmund's announcement.  He had met the farmer on the road home, well after midnight, and he had truly had a difficult time being civil.  Hans, on the other hand, addressed him like an old friend.  Morgan's stomach turned at the hypocrisy.

"The wedding will be Sunday," Hans trilled.  "You will come, won't you? I might even let you kiss the bride."

"What, and shoot me afterwards? No, thanks, I think I'll pass.  Give my regards to her, though."

And then he had kicked poor Sam as hard as he could and sent the gelding off at an exhausted gallop.

Angry at himself, he wandered up to the office after depositing the rented horse back at the livery.  He should never have let Julie leave him Saturday night.  He should have come right out and told her.

"Hell, I shoulda told her a dozen times," he mumbled as he got to his feet and went to answer the knocking at the door.  "I'm comin', I'm comin'!"

It was Boone Walsh, all six foot eight of him, standing on the porch, hat in hand.  Like all the Walsh boys, Boone was shy.  Morgan knew he wouldn't speak until spoken to.

"What is it, Boone?"

"Hi, Doc.  It's Mama.  She's havin' another baby.  Miz Fulton said it's twins again and to come get her the minute anything started.  But road's closed on account o' that landslide, and I get lost goin' the other way.  Barney and Banner's up cuttin' timber and I already sent Brian and Bart out to the cows, so I had to leave Bruce with Ma and come myself."

"And your daddy's drunk, I suppose."

Morgan grabbed for his bag and hat, which he had dropped to the parlor floor when he returned earlier, and now he ushered the gangly Boone back outside.

"Well, he's gettin' that way.  I brung a horse for you.  Save gettin' Gus up."

Gus was crotchety enough late at night, so Morgan didn't argue when Boone showed him the leggy skewbald.  He'd seen worse.  With Sam worn out from the night before, the skew might be an improvement.  As he mounted and hung his bag over the saddle horn, Morgan glanced back at the house.  The note he had tacked to the door yesterday was still there.

*   *   *

Wash clothes.  Bake bread.  Iron shirts.  Scrub floors.  Change linens.  Wait on Katharine.  The routine started the instant Wilhelm left for the telegraph office.  And at nine-thirty, Liza Tucker showed up.  Furious, Julie sent her home.  She simply did not have the time--or the inclination--to begin training the new "help".

Katharine's condition deteriorated throughout the day.  She ate some lunch, then, while Julie took Wilhelm's meal to him, Katharine claimed she went to the outhouse and threw up the entire meal.  Julie berated her for attempting to walk any distance at all in the noon sun, but Katharine shrugged weakly and let herself be half-carried back to bed.

When Julie tried sewing, for she fully intended to make her new clothes and take them with her when she moved to Hans' farm, Katharine complained about the noise.  The scrape of the shears set her teeth on edge.  The whir of the sewing machine treadle upset her stomach.  Around three o'clock she suddenly remembered that this was the day she was to have her arm removed from the splint Horace Opper had put on it six weeks ago.  She nagged and nagged at Julie to get Morgan, but Julie refused.

"If he said he'd be here, Mama, he will be here.  Don't worry."

"But perhaps I was mistaken.  Perhaps he meant for me to come to the office.  Please, dear, do go and check for me."

"I can't, Mama.  I have too much work here to do."

"Oh, leave it for a little while.  I do so want this thing off my arm!" she cried, threatening to burst into childish tears.

"Let's just wait a while longer and see if he comes.  Half an hour, all right?"

And in half an hour,
Julie prayed,
I will come up with another excuse.  Please, don't make me go to him, not now.  I swear it will kill me if I ever see him again.

Slightly more than half an hour later, while Katharine was still whining about the doctor, Hans walked through the front door without so much as a knock and announced that he had come for supper.

*   *   *

Melissa Walsh delivered her ninth and tenth children with no complications.  Morgan marveled, as he had when Brian and his twin brother Bart were born, that slender, small-boned Melissa carried her babies so easily and brought them into the world with so little apparent effort.  Even this third set of twins posed no trouble for her.  She named them Bonnie and Barbara, the first girls of her brood, and smiled cheerfully at Morgan when it was over.

Brendan Walsh lay stone drunk on the sofa in the sprawling cabin's living room when Morgan left shortly before noon.  Brendan never knew how Melissa did it, either.

Boone accompanied the doctor back to Plato, partly to bring the horse back and partly to get some supplies.  Morgan hadn't really wanted the company, but he was soon glad to have someone to talk to rather than sit alone with his thoughts.

The road from the Walsh ranch back to town curved south along the course of a wash.  The stones were dry now, but here and there a puddle remained of the torrent that had scoured this bed so very recently.  A narrow track crossed the wash at one point, and Morgan noticed recent wheel marks in the stiff but pliable mud.  Following them with his eyes, he saw a cluster of buildings a quarter mile or so beyond the far bank.  He did not recognize them nor remember their being there before, though they looked old and weathered.

"Whose place is that?" he asked Boone.

"Oh, that's where that German fella started a farm."

"German?"  Morgan's brows arched quizzically.  This wasn't the sort of place he had imagined the prosperous Wallenmund to be taking Julie to as his bride.

"Yeah.  I can't say his last name, but his first is Hans.  He's got a couple cows, some chickens, not much.  When he first come here, oh, 'bout five, mebbe six years ago, he built a great big barn." Boone's gargantuan arms spread wide to demonstrate.  "I bet he coulda put a hunnerd cows in that thing."

"What happened to it?"

"Oh, nothin'.  It's still there, fallin' to pieces like everything else." Boone turned slightly sideways in the saddle and shaded his eyes with a broad hand.  "See, that's him there, hitchin' up his wagon."

Morgan swore quietly, fiercely.  Wallenmund was a liar as well as a brute.  Julie honestly believed she was going to a prosperous farm, with a white clapboard house, a spacious dairy barn, and probably a picket fence with a rose-arch gate.

He kicked the borrowed horse to a lope and clamped his own teeth together as though he were running with the bit.  Figuratively he was, for he was not going to be stopped this time.

He left the horse with Boone, who had business at the general store, then headed for the post office.  It was habit now to check for a letter from Adam, though at this point Del wasn't sure what difference it would make.  Still, he opened the door and walked toward Mr. Nisely's window.

"Well, there ya are, Del.  I been wonderin' when you'd show up.  Yer letter from Cincinnati come this noon.  Big fat one, too."

"Thanks," he mumbled, snatching the envelope from the old man's hand.

He knew he was supposed to have the office open, but somehow nothing, not even sick or hurt people, demanded his attention the way this letter did.  Ignoring greetings from friends and neighbors, he hurried down the street toward the lane.  He opened the letter and tried to read, but the sun was just too damn bright and Adam's handwriting too damn spidery.

Adam St.  Rogers, methodical as always, detailed everything.  There were nine closely-written pages, but two paragraphs near the end of the sixth gave all the information Morgan needed.