Waltzing In Ragtime (6 page)

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Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

BOOK: Waltzing In Ragtime
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The prisms of light were gone. The sky was clear, but there was no sign of a thaw. The sequoias’ warm red bark stood silent in the dying light. Their everlasting presence, once a comfort, now taunted him. Beside them human life was so fragile. She was so fragile. Stop it. She could feel again. She would recover, be gone.
“Well and gone,” he whispered fiercely at the ground that had taken the others.
Olana pushed her plate against the saltshaker. “I shall not eat another egg as long as I live!”
“They’re good for you. Build up your strength.”
“If only they were in a custard, a flan —”
Matthew’s eyes grew hopeful. “Can you make custard?”
“No.”
“Well, neither can I. So you’ll just have to suffer them boiled until you get home.”
He stood, reached for his coat. “If you can manage to get me home before my parents die of grief!” she challenged his back.
He turned slowly, his eyes cold. “I’m doing the best I can. Your blasted feet aren’t helping.”
“How dare you decry my infirmity?”
“How dare you ignore my instructions to keep them raised?”
“I cannot lie still for hours in this dreary place!”
Olana knew that fierce look in his eyes. He’d lost his patience, was beyond speaking. He pushed away the table and lifted her from the chair, almost in a singular motion. He deposited her on the bed, yanking the pillows from behind her head, stuffing them under her swollen feet. He took out his remaining anger on the door as he left.
Olana still felt Matthew Hart’s strong arms across her back, under her knees. He was never rough enough to hurt her, but she was always made aware of his strength, and that threatened her enough to hate him for it. He left every day, now that she could get along without his constant ministrations. Where did he go?
“Digging out. You’ll be all right,” he’d demanded rather than assured her, as if she had no right to cause him yet more trouble.
Sometimes she heard him talking to his small brood of animals as he banged around in the barn. But sometimes he went away altogether and the place grew horribly silent.
Olana thought of when he’d put his mouth to hers. Was it a kiss? It was nothing like when suitors brushed their quick, cold lips across hers. She’d felt Matthew Hart’s strength ride through her. A delicious sensation made her long to open … open what? He knew. He knew what he’d done, how he’d made her feel. Was that why he was so distant now?
Olana sat up, reached for her traveling desk, her pen, and writing papers. She forced her peeling, tender fingers to write.
I start to wonder if I’ve not been here forever. This tree, angered by my intrusion, is alive again, its rings of age, its roots, growing in again — catching, crushing me …
Olana stared at the words she’d written. She started again.
Mr. H. brought me my writing desk, which was trampled into shambles on his barn’s floor. With a patience he has yet to demonstrate to my physical person, he thawed the ink, reshaped the paper in stacks. It all smells of unsavory odors, but I’m happy to have it.
I struggled with the knots and brambles in my hair until yesterday morning. It was then there appeared a mirror and comb on my bedside table. They are coarsely made, but carved with almost delicate primroses. They are not his. I don’t believe Mr. H. would groom himself properly
were the King to call. Still, he’s clean, as are his clothes. I managed, with my mysterious gifts, to plait my hair into a single braid. That evening he granted me one of his rare smiles, but said nothing.
She frowned. This was not what she wanted either. But she couldn’t stop, as if she didn’t know what she herself was thinking, feeling, unless she wrote it down.
We have been living on the most awful assortment of dried, smoked, and canned foods. Mr. H. does not ask my opinion, only frowns when I leave so much of my share uneaten. Happily, I am free of the bandages, though not of the shrinking blisters and the itching. Mr. H. made Indian-style moccasins to cushion my feet, and I wear them as I take my necessary few paces a day. I can do almost everything for myself now, and the joy I take in my independence rivals, I feel sure, the glee a child feels at increasing mobility from crawling, through standing upright and walking. Only my stubbornly swollen feet cause both my benefactor and I continued worry.
There. A start. And, miraculously, Olana felt better, less hemmed in by the spare, dark dwelling. Benefactor. Is that what Matthew Hart was? Now she must date the entry. What was the date? Was it still October? Olana’s eyes focused on the place where she’d hit her finger in Mrs. Goddard’s cupboard. The purple bruise had worked its way to the middle of her nail. A clue. At Mrs. Goddard’s, it had been the second week of October. That last morning, the cramp in her side told her that she was halfway through her monthly cycle. But it had been weeks since then, it must have been. A creeping realization set in. Late. She was late, and she’d never been late since her monthly cycles began. What was wrong with her? How could she find out?
The book. The large, worn book he’d been so engrossed in when he kept his vigil, that might help her. It was in his curtained-off
room. It was Matthew Hart’s refuge, she knew, from the way he yanked the loosely woven material across its rod when he’d enter. He wouldn’t want her in there. Still, he’d never actually forbidden her entry, she reasoned, as she eased her feet off their perch, slipped them into her moccasins, and walked across the wooden floor, a blanket in tow. She had to know if she was ill. Where had the blood gone? Was it festering inside her?
The room beyond the blue-striped curtain was smaller than she’d imagined. Olana could scarcely stand up straight. The ceiling got even lower, meeting the dirt floor in the dark recesses of the sequoia’s hollowed bark. He slept here nightly, this animal’s den but for the shelves of glass bottles containing liquids, powders, leathery shavings. Those reminded Olana of peeking into a Chinese chemist’s shop as a child, before her nurse pulled her away.
There were trunks, all closed. Intriguing her. What was inside? She fought a delicious terror, imagining herself the last of Bluebeard’s wives. Silly. Leave the man some privacy, Olana. Then she saw the book, on top of one of the trunks, in plain sight. Well, it couldn’t be so confidential, she reasoned, if he left it out so carelessly. Olana sat on the trunk, pulling up her feet inside the blanket’s warmth, and took the massive book on her lap.
 
 
Matthew Hart discovered her, hours later, shivering from more than the cold. He yanked the curtain back farther. “You have no business in here. Or with that.”
Olana clutched the book against her. “Get away from me!” she almost screamed.
His eyes began to thaw. “What’s the matter?” he asked softly.
“Stay back!” she warned.
But he picked her up anyway — book, blanket, and all. First he nested her in his bed. Then he built up the fire she’d let go down to embers. Then he returned to her side.
“Now. What in hell ails you, woman?”
He squinted at the opened book, its pages crammed into her
bosom. Then his eyes seemed to read something in hers. He stepped back, straddled the chair beside the bed, sat. He rested his forehead in its pressed-wood back. When he looked up again his voice was the gentle one he’d used when she first was ill.
“Is it your flow? Don’t fret on it. You’ll need clean rags, won’t you? I’ll fetch you some. Cramping? I’ll make up hot packs if you want, how would that be?”
Flow. Olana had never heard anyone call it that. It sounded so normal. “It’s not … that,” she whispered. “It hasn’t come. I’ve never been late. And I wanted to know why it hasn’t come.”
His eyes stayed on hers. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying, Mr. Hart! It explains in the book why I could be late. I was at your mercy after the storm. Benefactor. I thought you were my —” No tears. Head high, eyes on his. “I demand to know if, in my helpless state, y
-you
—” He was still staring. She would have to finish, he would not even spare her this humiliation. “If you took your pleasure with me.”
When he stood, she thought he might strike her. “What do you think I am?”
“I — I don’t know what you are. The way you kissed me —”
“I said I was sorry, damn it!”
“And, before that, I remember, or think I remember —”
“What?”
“You. Lying next to me, with no … neither of us had on any —” Her steaming face collapsed into her arms and she sobbed. She heard him place his chair closer to the bed, sit properly, wait. When he spoke there was no anger in his voice.
“I didn’t think you remembered any of that. Didn’t want to upset you further when you’re already so damned sensitive about —” He pulled in a pained breath. “I’m sorry. That’s not for me to judge. Aw, ’Lana, look at me, will you?”
She took in a breath and lifted her head. What had he called her?
“I didn’t hurt you, take advantage. I was trying to keep you alive. You needed my warmth to bring you back. Learned it up north. Cold winters up north, you know? In the Klondike? Olana.
It doesn’t seem proper, but I had to. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded slowly.
“Do you believe me?”
She stared at him.
“All right. That’s all right, you don’t have to, yet.” He looked up at the single window. Though it was dusk, the light appeared to make his eyes smart. “You’ve been under my roof, wondering all this time if I —” He looked back at her. “Lord, I’m sorry.”
Olana hadn’t been wondering any such thing until she realized her monthly visitation was late, but she was enjoying the look of remorse on his face too much to say so.
“Things have to change around here,” he declared, suddenly earnest and animated. “We have to talk more, you think?”
Olana remained silent.
“All right, I’ll talk more.”
He drew his wire spectacles from their case in his pocket, put them on, then reached for the book in her lap. She held it fast. “Please,” he sighed. She surrendered it, then watched him carefully straighten the crushed paper.
“Wrong part,” he told her gently as he turned from the “With Child” section to the pages headed “Female Ailments.” Olana felt herself grow calmer watching him scan the small, imperfect lettering.Who had written it?
He lifted his head. “Amenorrhea. That’s a mouthful, ain’t it?”
“What does it mean?”
“The absence of menstruation when it should occur.” He read further. Then he sighed hard, sounding almost like his horse. “Appears I haven’t been taking good enough care of you, Miss Whittaker.”
She was Miss Whittaker again. “It says that?”
He smiled. “The cause might be the exposure, part of the toll it took on you. But I ain’t — haven’t been — attentive enough, that’s clear. You’ve lost weight, even I can see that. Your body’s reacting to the trauma and my rude care. I’ll fix up the remedies set down here, then we’ll talk on the rest. All right?”
When she didn’t respond this time he gifted her with one of his lopsided grins. “Come on, have mercy. I’m going hoarse in my efforts, dar … miss.”
Olana felt herself coloring. “All right,” she agreed.
Another smile. He was much less fearsome when he smiled. He backed away into his curtained enclave, but returned with one jar containing dried sheets of something green, the other, a dull-colored powder. He pulled out a piece of the green substance first.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to chew on this?”
Olana inspected. It smelled briny, tasted worse. “Ugh,” she said.
“Have to have it stand between you and starvation on a desert island, maybe.”
“It’s seaweed!”
He grinned. “Dried kelp, yes. The other’s smartweed. I’ll grind them together, try to make it palatable.”
He shaved the kelp into a stone mortar, added the powder, crushed them both with the pestle. And, miraculously, kept talking. Olana didn’t think he had so many words in him.
“I thought you were just fussy. About the eggs, the food. See, I’m so used to being alone, and don’t need much — I’m not excusing myself, you understand. Can’t slaughter another chicken, but I’ll try to find a deer tomorrow so you can have some fresh meat. If the ice ain’t too thick on the creek, I can get a few fish after that.”
“But you’ll be gone so long —”

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