Home by Morning (10 page)

By the time everyone was assembled at the table, Cole was starving. It was a fair-size group Susannah had to cook for. She had Cole, his father, their foreman, Tanner Grenfell, Tanner’s two young nephews, Wade and Joshua, and tonight, Amy. Before the war began, when the crew was bigger, they’d had their own cook in the bunkhouse. Now there was more work than ever and fewer people to do it.

Somehow Susannah managed. She had the same steel-cored resilience that Jessica had. No one asked how she did it all. She simply did what had to be done. But even Cole had to admit, the strain was beginning to show. Some mornings she appeared at the breakfast table with purple shadows beneath her eyes, or her long black curls tied back hastily with a strip of leather. Cole often heard her pacing the hallway long after everyone was in bed, or puttering in the kitchen. He didn’t believe she’d slept an entire night through since Riley left. One day he’d passed her bedroom and it caught his eye that she’d moved their silver-framed wedding photograph from the dresser to her nightstand, as if she might bring him closer.

They were well into a savory meal of fried chicken when Pop blared across the dinner table, “Well, Mrs. Braddock, what does our war hero have to say for himself in that letter?” With the mail that Cole had brought home was a letter from Riley to Susannah.

Susannah sat at her place, scanning Riley’s hasty scribbles written on water-stained paper. “He says it’s been raining for days on end…his clothes are never dry and in the trenches they stand ankle-deep in water and—and worse…they’re sleeping in the wet. Lord above, he keeps saying they’re eating monkey meat. That can’t be right.”

“If a man’s hungry enough, he ain’t too picky about where the meat came from. I remember one time I et a rattlesnake because we didn’t have anything else on the trail. Shot it myself and—”

Cole interrupted. “I’ve heard about that meat. It’s not really monkey. The troops just call it that. It’s some kind of lousy-tasting canned French stuff they bring in from Madagascar.”

“He’s a sergeant now. He’s been promoted.”

“Hah!” Pop said, thumping the table. “I knew he’d do it!”

Susannah’s brows drew together slightly as she paused to read part of the letter to herself. Then she continued, her voice trembling slightly. “H-he’d like me to send him some clean socks and soap. The Germans are attacking them with poison gas, and lots of men have been blinded or killed.
Ohh
…he s-says the man next to him was hit by a shell and—” She broke off and refolded the letter to put it in her apron pocket.

Cole saw her swallow hard, and her brown eyes were bright with tears. Obviously there was more in Riley’s words that she either could not or didn’t want to share.

“Damn it, never mind that boo-hoo girlie stuff. What about the battles? What’s
he
doing? Is he giving it to the Huns? If I was over there, I’d teach them to
par-lee-vooz
, by God,” the old man declared.

“Pop, leave her alone,” Cole warned, irked by his father’s tactlessness.

“Well, the boys at Tilly’s count on me to bring ’em full reports.”

Susannah handed a bowl of mashed potatoes to Amy, who looked even more distressed than her future sister-in-law. Discord bothered Amy.

Pop went on, oblivious to the tension around him. “Sleeping in the wet—hell, that’s nothing. I herded cattle through gully washers and Montana blizzards that blew so hard the cows froze stiff on the hoof. By God, one time the snow was flying so thick the dumb beasts was about to walk right off a cliff. And I’ve slept out in weather that wasn’t fit for the herd or me, with nothing more to keep warm than one blanket and a bottle of whiskey. Cow camp ain’t for sissies.” He took a big bite out of a drumstick and continued talking around the food. “But I didn’t whine, I just kept—”

Susannah put down her fork and glared at him. “I don’t suppose that while you were on a cattle drive you had to worry about being blown to the hereafter by a howitzer or stabbed with a bayonet?”

Pop paused with his jaws in mid-chew. “Well, I never knew when I might come acrossed a wolf or an angry mountain lion—”

She folded her hands on the table, so tightly that her knuckles were white and her fingertips red. “And
if
one came along, did it have poison gas that it fired at you?”

“Gas—”

“Did you miss your family while you were out there, not knowing if you would see them again?”

“Naw, that was years ago. I didn’t have no family back then, but—”

“I hardly see any comparison, then, Shaw. I’m sorry I can’t give you something better to tell those fools at Tilly’s. Maybe your stories about cattle drives will interest them. Excuse me.” She backed her chair from the table and left the room. Tanner watched her go, then turned a sour look on the old man. They heard her run up the stairs and through the upper hall. In a moment, a door slammed overhead.

“What the hell was that all about?” Pop groused, plainly amazed.

“Are you happy now?” Cole snapped. Susannah had coddled Pop for a long time—spoiled him, as far as Cole was concerned—but obviously she’d reached her breaking point. There was so much work to be done on the ranch, and he knew she worried about Riley, despite the brave face she put on, and Shaw Braddock was as ornery an old crank as a body was likely to find.

Amy sat with her hands in her lap, looking at her plate, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Tanner tried to appear busy with his dinner, but all he really did was push the food around on his dish. Wade and Josh stared wide-eyed at the adults until Tanner elbowed them and nodded at their own plates.

“What did
I
do?” Pop asked. “I just want to know how the fighting’s going and what Riley is up to in France. I didn’t expect her to have the fantods like that.” He sopped up some gravy with a biscuit, but his own face was red to the ears, and he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. “Bah, that’s the trouble with women—they get all stirred up.”

“Yeah, there’s something about having a husband at war in a foreign country that bothers them,” Cole replied with a knife-edge in his voice. “That’s why I should have enlisted instead of Riley. He has everything to lose. I didn’t have a thing.”

Beside him, Amy uttered a horror-stricken noise, jumped up from the table, and flew to the kitchen. Her muffled weeping could be heard in the dining room.

“Shit!” Cole muttered, and threw down his napkin. He jabbed a finger in the old man’s direction. “If you weren’t my father, I’d make you bed down in the stables tonight!” He stood and walked out of the dining room as well, leaving just Pop and the hired hands at the table.

It took some doing, but Cole was finally able to calm Amy and convince her of what he’d meant by his remark at dinner. That he’d had nothing to lose by enlisting
before
he began courting her.

They rode in Cole’s truck, not speaking. Only the sound of bouncing springs and creaking metal joints broke the silence as they bumped over the rutted road toward town. It was easier than driving a wagon at night. The vehicle’s headlamps lighted the road ahead.

Finally Cole said, “Pop is a mean-spirited old bast—son of a gun. Sometimes I think my mother died just to get away from him.”

Amy tightened her jacket around her. Evenings had taken on a definite chill now that summer was leaving them. “Maybe he’s the way he is
because
she died. She’s been gone for a long time, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah, I was eight years old. Your father said something was wrong with her heart, probably from the day she was born. It just quit one day while she was standing in the yard hanging the wash.”

“Oh, then she was young.”

“Yeah, younger than I am now. She was twenty-seven.”

“And Mr. Braddock never remarried. He’s probably pining for her, and it’s made him bitter and less sensitive to the feelings of others. Maybe he envies us, and Riley and Susannah, for our closeness.”

Cole didn’t believe her theory, but Amy was always justifying the actions of others and looking for the good in people. If it wasn’t there, she manufactured it. “Maybe. Anyway, I’m sorry about that ruckus at dinner.”

She touched his elbow briefly. “So am I. It was so silly of me to—how did your father put it?—have the fantods. I felt terrible for Susannah, and then when I imagined you in harm’s way with nothing to lose, well…” She turned away to look out at the field zipping past in the purple dusk. “I know it’s not patriotic to say this, but I’m glad you didn’t enlist. I’m glad you stayed in Powell Springs, where you’re safe.”

Cole didn’t answer. That word popped into his head again and repeated itself all the way into town.

Slacker.

Horace Cookson’s prediction that Jessica wouldn’t be busy with patients turned out to be a poor one.

Word of her presence and location spread quickly, and those who didn’t trust Granny Mae, or weren’t satisfied with her doctoring, began appearing at Jessica’s office door on Sunday morning after church.

She treated a variety of ailments, most of them minor. That was a good thing, too, because she’d had no time to really get acquainted with the space and was working primarily from her doctor’s bag. It was also fortunate that Horace had been so desperate to find a physician that he’d sweetened the invitation by outfitting the office with a telephone, decent equipment, and a few supplies. Some, she noticed, were from her father’s own practice. Along with checking on Eddie Cookson, whose mother seemed capable enough of providing most of the nursing care he required, Jessica strapped a sprained ankle, lanced a boil, and diagnosed a pregnancy, all by two o’clock in the afternoon.

It was almost ten o’clock when she stood in her nightgown breathing in the scent of the soft, clean air. Between Eddie’s harsh bouts of coughing, the night was hushed and clean-scented, and a light breeze wafted the lace curtains, bringing in the smells of the season’s last hay, mown from the fields beyond the edge of town. It was much quieter in Powell Springs than it had been in New York. There were no noises in the street, no racket of clanging fire engines or wagons and trucks rolling by at all hours.

After she brushed her hair the required one hundred strokes, the gently stirring curtains called her to the upholstered chair by the window. She switched off the overhead electric light and let the moon cast shadows across the floor. As she braided her hair, she looked out at quiet Main Street. The shop windows were dark and if she listened hard enough, the occasional shift of the wind would carry the sound of slow-moving water in Powell Creek. Putting her elbows on the windowsill, she rested her chin in her hands and drew in a deep breath to smell the freshness.

It was nighttime in a small town. Her town.

Even more peaceful than she had remembered at moments of longing for home, it tugged at her heart. This was a very nice apartment, she thought, looking around at the dimly lit shapes. It was certainly nicer than she’d expected. Pearson should be very comfortable here. She knew she would be for the short time of her stay.

She’d had a long, busy day, and fatigue weighed down her limbs. But at least it wasn’t the utterly consumed feeling she had grown accustomed to. In New York, she’d known nights when she could barely drag herself up the stairs to her third-floor room.

Despite her exhaustion, though, there had been sleepless hours when she ached inside for the world’s broken heart, and would vow to work harder the next day to mend it. But no matter what she did, the world still wept.

Yawning, she crossed the room and climbed into the comfortable, welcoming bed. Sleep approached to enclose her in a soft embrace.

Here, the only broken heart was her own.

As Cole predicted, it didn’t take long for news of Eddie Cookson’s influenza to make its way around Powell Springs. By Tuesday afternoon, people had left flowers and notes for him on Jessica’s front stoop and in her waiting room.

Then the patients began trickling in, complaining of sudden sore throat, fever, cough, and headache. None was yet so ill that she’d had to put anyone in the other bed upstairs, but she worried that it was only a matter of time. Nearly everyone got the same instructions: go home, get into bed, and stay there. She had the druggist compound more influenza pills for her to dispense and recommended the application of Vicks VapoRub for chest congestion.

Jessica’s wires to Seattle and Portland yielded helpful but daunting information.

The Red Cross sternly advised that everyone in town should wear fine-mesh gauze masks to block sneezes and coughs. Their volunteers were making them and they could sell them to Powell Springs for ten cents apiece. She got Mayor Cookson to authorize the funds and placed an order. She also told the mayor the rest of what she’d learned—anything that drew people together, such as church services, theaters, schools, meetings, and parades, should be cancelled or closed. He agreed with her (convinced in part by the alarming condition of his own son, she was certain) and sent a formal public announcement to the
Powell Springs Star
, the town’s semiweekly newspaper. The editor thought the proclamation important enough to print an extra edition, which had happened only twice in the periodical’s twenty-year history.

The Red Cross asked Jessica if she needed a nurse sent to help her, but she declined. She’d not reached that point. Dr. Martin at Seattle General Hospital made the same cautionary observations, and also mentioned the possibility that an effective vaccine was in development but not yet available.

Helen Cookson took a room at the hotel and remained in town to help care for her son, for which Jessica was most grateful. It gave her a chance to sleep, wash, and change her clothes. Soon the small clinic smelled of sickness, camphor, and Vicks VapoRub.

Now that she had a little help, Jessica was able to escape for a while to meet Amy for lunch at Brill’s Confectionery. The shop had a very limited menu—mostly phosphates and sweets—but they’d both heard that Granny Mae was still crabby over the business with Eddie so they avoided the café.

As usual, Amy was neatly dressed and pressed, with shoes that matched her gloves and bag. Her honey-blond hair was curled and swept up into a fashionable hat. Jess was certain only that her own face was clean, her teeth brushed, and her hair combed. But given her last twenty-four hours, she was satisfied with that.

Over egg salad sandwiches and iced tea, Amy stabbed at the newspaper announcement with her index finger. “Mayor Cookson can’t mean this! If the bond committee can’t meet, how will we raise funds?” In a most uncharacteristic display of temper, she thumped the small marble-topped table with her fist, making the silverware clatter. “It’s not fair! No one but poor Eddie Cookson is really sick, and he’s practically quarantined in your office. How can anyone else come down with the grippe?”

The counter girl stared at them.

Amazed by her outburst, Jess said quietly, “Shh, people are already getting sick.” She revealed some of the information she’d received. “I asked the mayor to ban large public gatherings like church services and to close the schools. I imagine places like this and Mae’s might be next.”

“
You
did! Jess, how could you? You know how important this is to me.”

“For heaven’s sake, Amy, this is disappointing, I know, but—”

Her sister’s face took on a pinched, suspicious expression. “No, you don’t. I’ve been expecting Cole to take me to the hotel for dinner and propose—” Tears glistened on her lower lids, and she dabbed at them quickly. “I’ve dreamed of my wedding day for years, and just when I think he’s about to ask for my hand, something happens. His work, the ranch, now this. You can’t begin to feel, to know, how disappointing it is.”

Jess fixed her with a sharp look for several seconds. “I know very well how it feels. You might remember who
I
expected to marry before you—” She broke off the sentence, fearing she would say something she might regret.

Amy stared at her with a flash of guilty comprehension and then dropped her gaze to her sandwich, her cheeks blazing red. “Yes, of course,” she mumbled.

They ate in silence for a few moments while Jessica smothered the fierce resentment that had flared within her. In the days since she’d come back to Powell Springs, she’d struggled to put on her best face and keep her hard feelings in tight check. Amy was her sister, her only family, she told herself, blood was thicker than water, things just hadn’t worked out between Jess and Cole. She’d conjured every excuse and tired bromide she could think of to get through the days.

But the unvarnished fact was that Amy, sister or not, was planning to marry the man Jess had once expected to have as her own husband. A man who had told her he would no longer wait for her. And though it was probably her imagination, Jess thought that Amy seemed unbearably smug and triumphant about the turn of events.

Pushing her resentment back into a dark corner of her heart, she spoke at last. “I’m sure the ban on public gatherings won’t last long. Just until we know if Powell Springs is in danger of a real epidemic. Things have been bad everywhere else.”

Her dignity recovered, Amy replied stiffly, “Then I’ll pray that Eddie not only gets better soon, but that he’ll have the only serious case of influenza.”

Late the next afternoon, Jessica had just sent an order to the druggist’s for more influenza pills when she heard someone open the front door. Worried about what might be coming next, she was surprised to find Adam Jacobsen standing in her waiting room holding a bouquet of pink and yellow chrysanthemums.

“Adam! You must be here to visit Eddie.” She assumed so, since he was once again Sunday-dressed and didn’t seem to be ill himself.

He smiled at her. “Yes. Well, partly.”

“And you brought him flowers. How thoughtful.”

He stepped closer and handed her the mums. Over the sickroom odors, she caught the faint whiff of hair tonic. Holding her gaze with his dark-lashed eyes, he said, “The bouquet is for you, Jessica.”

Though the blooms themselves had no fragrance, the flowers and stems were damp and smelled fresh and green in her grip. Dumbfounded, she stammered, “Me—I—”

He glanced at the floor and looked almost sheepish. “I saw them growing in the yard and they reminded me of you. Golden and blushing pink.”

As if on cue, Jessica felt her cheeks grow warm. She hadn’t blushed in years. It was an awkward moment, but one that also was a balm to her female ego, somehow. No one had given her flowers in, well, she couldn’t remember how long it had been, and now they came from Adam Jacobsen, of all people. She barely knew how to respond. “It’s very kind of you. Thank you, Adam.”

“I wanted to thank you again for agreeing to take care of our folks for a while.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “And I came to see Eddie, of course.”

“You know, you probably shouldn’t. You’ll expose yourself to his contagion.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from tending to him.”

“But I’m his doctor.”

“And a noble one at that.”

She laughed, thinking he must be joking. Amy seemed closer to noble, knee-deep in her good deeds. “Really, I’m nothing of the sort—” But in his face she saw that he was serious.

He glossed over her objection. “Just as your calling requires you to deal with difficult situations, so does mine sometimes. I’m sure Eddie could use a little spiritual comfort right now. I hear he’s pretty sick.”

Her smile faded. “He is. He might not even know you’re there. He’s been delirious a lot of the time.”

“It doesn’t matter, God is with him. Eddie isn’t alone in his darkness. I just want to remind him of that.”

Jess could think of no answer to that statement. If Adam was determined to visit her patient, she wouldn’t stop him. She gestured at the stairs. “He’s up there. His mother is sitting with him.”

He nodded and turned to climb the steps.

Jess went to find a vase for the mums, her firmly established opinion of Adam Jacobsen a bit discomposed.

Midnight settled over the clinic, a lonely time that, in Jessica’s experience, began the hours that could bring a new life or take one too weary to survive. These were the hours when the rest of the world dreamed in sleep, or wept in the darkness from loneliness or despair or regret.

Helen Cookson had gone back to the hotel just an hour earlier, and now Jess examined Eddie with growing alarm. Air that should be in his lungs seemed to be escaping into the outer tissues of his failing body, puffing him up like a balloon. Whenever he moved he made a crackling noise like crumpled cellophane. What in the world kind of influenza was this? she wondered desperately. His breathing had become more labored than ever, and the cyanosis—the blue pallor tinting his skin—had grown darker and more pronounced. Muted light from the bedside lamp only made him look worse.

But there was something else, something new. The smell. This wasn’t the odor of an unwashed body—Jess had experienced that plenty of times. And it wasn’t just from sickness. This was the smell of putrefaction.

Jessica’s heart sank.

She reached down to straighten the sheet across his chest and he opened his fever-bright eyes.

“I’m going to die,” he croaked in a froggy whisper. It was the first time in the forty-six hours since he’d collapsed in her office that he’d seemed almost lucid.

Jess grasped his hot hand where it lay on top of the blanket. “Do you think so?”

His nod was almost imperceptible, and Jess knew the truth nearly as well as he did. A few times she’d seen people as ill as he was who felt the very life draining from them and knew their time had come.

“I’ll get your mother—”

“No,” he said, struggling for every breath and word. He kept his grip on her hand. “Stay with…me. I don’t…want…to be alone with him.”

“Him?”

“He’s come to take…me. See?”

Jess felt the hair rise on her scalp as she looked around the room. “No.”

He lifted a heavy arm an inch or two and pointed. “Sitting down there…end of the bed…waiting…for me to die.”

Again she looked, though she knew she would find nothing. Jess ought to get his mother—the hotel was just a couple of blocks down the street. But she didn’t want to leave Eddie. If he died alone, she would never forgive herself.

She thought of the telephone downstairs. The hotel had one, too. But without an operator to connect them, it was just a useless gadget mounted on the wall, like a stopped clock with no key to wind it.

Disentangling Eddie’s hand from hers, she went to the window, looking for any living soul on the street below. It reminded her of two nights earlier when she’d hoped to find someone to give him a ride. There had been no one around then, and that had been at six-thirty. Now at midnight, even Tilly’s was about to close.

Feeling helpless and cut off, she lifted the sash and stuck her head out to gaze up and down the dark street. There was no one. Only a stiff night breeze carrying the scent of rain. Its first drops hit her in the face. The fresh air was a relief but didn’t solve her dilemma. Then, just as she was about to lower the window, she saw movement, someone on the sidewalk below. Straining to see into the darkness, she waited for the figure to step into the square of light cast from her own window.

Cole Braddock. Wishing it was someone else, she was also grateful to see
anyone
. And she knew he would take action.

“Cole!”

He looked up, his eyes shadowed by his Stetson. “Jessica? What’s the matter?”

“Please—will you go down to the hotel and get Mrs. Cookson? It’s an emergency! I can’t leave Eddie alone.”

He gave her a short nod and took off a trot. She watched him go, all long legs and lean torso, as he faded into the darkness. Only fleetingly did she wonder why he was in town and on the street at this hour. Returning to the bed, she took Eddie’s hand again.