The Listening Sky (12 page)

“You’re a… bitch!”

“And you’re a… miserable old sot.” Jane held the spoonful of mush close to his lips and waited.

“I can feed myself,” he sputtered, and then his thin lips parted.

“I don’t trust you.” She thrust the spoonful of mush inside.

He held the food in his mouth while his eyes battled hers, then with a grimace he swallowed. His feverish eyes stayed on her
face while she fed him. When he had eaten half of the mush, Jane could see that he was having a difficult time swallowing.
She set the bowl on the washstand and picked up the cup.

“Drink a little milk,” she said and put her arm under his thin shoulders to raise him up. Without making a fuss, he took several
swallows.

“Aren’t you going to pat me on the head and tell me I was a good boy?”

“Sure. Good boy.” Jane laughed as she patted the top of his head, then dropped her eyelid in a wink.

“What’s your name?”

“Jane. What’s yours?”

After a pause he said, “Nathan Foote. It’s been a long time since I said it.”

“Nathan. After Nathan Hale?”

“I’m no hero.”

“Maybe you’re the villain. Every town should have one.”

Jane began working at the knots in the cloth holding his feet to the bedstead. When they were free, she swung his thin legs
over the side of the bed.

“Sit up and I’ll get a pan of water so you can wash yourself.”

“Aren’t you scared I’ll run off?”

“Not one bit.” She made a fist and shook it under his nose. “I’ve had to deal with unruly boys bigger than you. I learned
where to hit so it will hurt.”

A gleam of admiration lit his eyes. “Where were you twenty years ago?”

“Oh, I was probably a moonbeam or a snowflake or the song of a lark.”

“More than likely the croak of a frog,” he growled.

“You haven’t lost your sense of humor. Do you have a clean nightshirt?”

“I don’t
own a
nightshirt.”

“Or clean sheets?”

“Or clean sheets.”

“Wait right here. I’ll be back.”

She left the doctor sitting on the side of the bed and went downstairs. She found Herb standing on the porch with Colin Tallman.
The street was filled with men, horses, wagons. Shouts and good-natured banter rang out over the ring of the hammer and saw,
the stamping of dray mules and the slapping sound of lumber being unloaded.

“Doc all right?” Herb asked the minute she came out the door.

“He ate a little and drank a little milk. Where can I get a nightshirt for him and some clean sheets?”

Herb frowned and tilted his head. “He don’t have a nightshirt. Don’t reckon he’d wear it if he did. About sheets—We got plenty
a blankets.”

“They must have sheets at the mercantile.”

“Ah… yes. I believe they do.”

“Would you please get four sheets and a nightshirt. If they don’t have a regular nightshirt, get a big soft shirt.”

“Ma’am, is he… calmed down some?”

“Docile as a lamb. He’s very sick, you know.”

“I’ve knowed it a while.”

“I’ll make potato soup for his dinner if you’ll get me a few potatoes and some more milk from the cookhouse.”

On the way back upstairs to the doctor’s room Jane realized that she hadn’t thought about the note in her pocket for an hour
or more. Being busy was what she needed to keep her fear at bay until she could leave this place.

Before noon the room was clean, the chamber pot had been emptied and the doctor lay in a clean shirt on clean sheets. As she
worked, she told him about the activity out on the street, the sounds of which came in the open window.

“They’re putting up two buildings. One on the other side of the store and one by the blacksmith. One looks like it will be
two-story. They got two cookfires going along the side of the cookhouse and you can smell meat cooking.”

“Which one of the men have you got your eye on?”

“You,” Jane said with a quirked brow. She was rinsing the cloth she had been using to wipe the windowpane. “I thought you
knew that.”

“Bullfoot,” he snorted.

“You look like a good prospect to me.”

“Is that what you’re looking for? A man with one foot in the grave?”

“Sure. That way, I’m boss.”

“Herb’d make you a good man.”

“He’s too young. Besides, I’m a pig-ugly old spinster. Remember?”

“There’ll be a dozen trying to court you… even if you are.”

“I’m not staying to be courted.”

“Where’re you going?”

“I’ve not decided yet.”

“When?”

“As soon as Mr. Kilkenny finds someone to take me to catch the train.”

“Why?”

“You should have been a lawyer instead of a doctor.”

The doctor remained quiet, but his eyes followed Jane as she rolled the soiled bedclothes and placed them outside the door.

“I’m… dying.” He spoke as Jane came back into the room.

“I know.”

“It won’t be long now.”

“It could be a while—”

“No. It’s been a while coming on.”

“Rest and good food will make things easier.”

“I want it to be over.”

“If you were trying to kill yourself with whiskey, it made it hard for those who care about you.”

“No one cares.”

“Herb cares. The things you said hurt him.”

“Herb tied himself to me because he had no one else.”

“You underestimate yourself and Herb.”

The doctor turned his face away and was silent for a long while. Jane was tucking stray wisps of dark auburn curls back up
under the coiled hair on the top of her head when she felt his eyes on her.

“I’ve not had a pretty woman doing for me in more years than I care to think about.”

“Pretty? Me? What changed your mind?”

“Will you stay… till… the end%?”

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I didn’t think I did. Only a fool doesn’t change his mind once every forty years.”

“I’m an old maid… and bossy,” she said, trying to tease him out of his serious mood. It didn’t work.

He closed his eyes. “I hate asking, but will you stay? I… don’t want to be alone.”

“You won’t be.”

“I never had a family. I was too busy. There were my studies… then the war—”

Jane sat down in the chair beside the bed, reached over and took one of his hands in hers.

“You won’t be alone, Doctor Foote.”

“Thank you.” His fingers tightened on her hand. “Call me Nathan. Doesn’t make me feel so damned old.”

In the minutes that followed, Jane tried to think of a way to explain that
someone
would be with him when the end came, but not she. Any number of the women would come to tend him if Mr. Kilkenny asked them.
No words came to mind and she sat in stony silence.

She was relieved when she heard Herb calling her name from the bottom of the stairs. She released Doc’s hand and stood.

“I’ll be back. Sleep if you can. This afternoon I’ll read to you if you like.”

“There’s a Bible down in the surgery.”

Herb was waiting at die foot of die stairs.

“Miss Jane, diere’s a woman in the surgery with a sick young’un. I shut the door so Doc wouldn’t hear the little ‘an cryin’.”

“I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a trained nurse.”

“Talk to the woman anyhow.” Herb led the way to the surgery. “Ma’am, this is Miss Jane.”

The woman was walking the floor with a small wailing child in her arms. She looked at Jane, then accusingly at Herb.

“Where’s the doctor?’

“He’s very sick,” Jane said.

“Can’t he look at her? She’s been like this since last night. Her stomach hurts real bad, and she don’t want to straighten
out her legs.”

“Put her down on the table and let me look at her, then I’ll go up and ask the doctor what to to.”

The little girl shrieked as cramps knotted her stomach. In spite of the child’s clinging arms the mother laid her down. She
turned on her side and drew her knees up to her chest. Jane felt her forehead, then discovered that her little stomach was
bloated and hard. She knew immediately the little girl was constipated. She felt a stab of fear. Children died from locked
bowels.

“When was her last bowel movement?”

“I ain’t sure. Few days ago maybe.”

“Stay here and rub her stomach. I’ll go up and talk to the doctor.”

Jane hurried back up the stairs. The doctor’s eyes were on the door when she entered.

“I heard a young’un crying.”

“The child’s about two years old. Her stomach is hard as a rock. She insists on keeping her knees drawn up. The mother isn’t
sure when she had a bowel movement.”

“Constipated.”

“It’s what I thought. What do I do?”

“Take the corner of a towel and twist it into a cone shape. Coat it heavily with petroleum jelly and work it like a corkscrew
up into the rectum. While you do that hold your hand tight over her lower abdomen. If that doesn’t work put several spoonfuls
of warm olive oil up in there with the bulb syringe. It’s been cleaned. After you use it, pour boiling water over and through
the tube.”

“If that doesn’t work, shall I give an enema?”

“That’s right. Give her an enema using warm water with a spoonful of soda.”

“Is the soda in the surgery?”

“In a jar on the top shelf. It’s labeled. Wash your hands before and after with the bar of castile soap on the washstand.
Check the stool for worths. If she’s got ‘em tell the mother to bring her back tomorrow.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“I know that. You said you took care of sick kids.”

“Yes. But—”

“No buts. Go do it.” He turned his head and closed his eyes.

Responsibility for the sick child weighed heavily on Jane for the next hour. She first used the petroleum jelly, then the
warm olive oil. When nothing passed, she prepared the enema. Finally, with the mother holding the screaming child, Jane was
able, after the third attempt, to get enough water in the lower bowel to dislodge the blockage. The defecation came in the
form of hard round balls. The exhausted child stopped crying and drooped against her mother.

Jane checked the stool and found no signs of worms.

“Don’t let her eat a lot of bread for a while. She should have apples or raisins.”

By the time they were ready to leave the surgery, the child was sleeping peacefully on the mother’s shoulder.

“Thank you, Miss Jane. When one of my young’uns is sick, I’m scared plumb silly.”

“I can understand that.”

“My man will be around to pay.”

“There’s no charge. I’m not a doctor.”

“Ya ort to be. Ya got a knack for it.”

Jane carried the teakettle from the kichen and scalded the syringe, the bedpan and anything she had used in connection with
the child’s visit. She had learned to do that from a young doctor who donated two days’ service a month to the orphanage.
Jane had been attracted to him until he refused to come and tend a sick child because he had plans to attend a ball given
by one of Denver’s leading citizens.

While she cleaned the surgery, Jane chided herself for feeling so good about what she had done. She washed her hands again
with the castile soap, then took the Bible she found tucked among Doc’s medical books and left the room.

P
OLLY
was worried. Jane had not been beside her when she awoke, nor had she been in the cookhouse when Polly had gone there for
breakfast. The valise that held all of Janes’s belongings was still sitting at the foot of the portion of the bed where they
slept. Jane would not have left Timbertown without it.

Where was she?

When Polly asked Sunday, she shrugged off Jane’s absence by saying she must be around somewhere and that Polly shouldn’t worry.
Sunday had been so excited about the activity in town that she had paid scant attention to Polly’s concern. The bubbly, energetic
girl had eaten a hasty breakfast and then disappeared after announcing to one and all that she was as good as any man with
a saw and a hammer and better than some, especially a lumberjack with two left hands and the space between his ears filled
with nothing but hot air.

Another huge wagon pulled by two teams of mules and loaded with lumber came into town. Polly stood on the porch of the women’s
barracks and watched the mule skinner send his whip out over the backs of the dray animals.

“Gee, Buster! Wo-ah, Dewey! Move on over thar, Big Boy!”

The orders were punctuated with cracks of the whip. The wicked lash could take a strip of hide from the animals, but as long
as the sound was sufficient to make them obey, the mule skinner was careful not to strike the beasts.

Polly cringed against the wall. The wheels of the huge wagon were higher than her head. But it wasn’t the wagon that frightened
her, it was the voice of the mule skinner. It sounded like that of the man who had violated her. The driver was not the same
man, of course. She realized that at first glance because she’d never, as long as she lived, for get the whiskered, ferret-like
face and cruel hands of Dank Forestal.

“Hello, little lady.”

Polly jumped and let out a cry of fright. The voice had come close to her ear. She hadn’t even been aware that the man had
come up the side of the building and stepped onto the porch. Her attention had been on the freight wagon.

Polly moved sideways along the wall.

“Scare ya, did I?”

A confident grin showed a large space between the man’s two front teeth, one of which had been broken off. His nose was flat
and pushed slightly to the side. He
had
thick black brows and hair. A heavy mustache covered his upper lip.

“Yo’re the prettiest woman here. Me an’ you’s goin’ to get acquainted. Name’s Milo. Milo Callahan. Ya ever heard of Callahan
Lumber Company over in the Bitterroot?”

Polly shook her head.

“I own it. Half anyway. Ya see, I ain’t just no ordinary lumberjack. I could buy and sell these fellers here twice over if
I had a mind to,” he bragged. “If yo’re lookin’ for a man ta set ya up in one a them cabins, take care of ya real good, I’m
the man.”

Polly shook her head vigorously. “No.”