Passing Through Midnight (15 page)

"Thank God," he said, turning to her once more, bending
his leg onto the bed. "And tell me, Doctor, how long will this pain
last?"

"Studies show that he should be much less irritating by
the time he's twenty-five or thirty."

"Thirty?" He chuckled and leaned over her with a hand on
either side of her waist. "And is there some potent drug you can
prescribe to help me live that long?"

"Well, not without a thorough examination of the offended
body part," she said, reaching behind him to massage his supposed sore
end through his jeans.

He looked startled for an instant and then amused and
enthralled.

"You have a shocking little mind," he said, charmed, not
at all shocked.

"A smart mouth, too, I'm afraid."

"And a wonderful body," he added, pulling the sheet well
below her navel with two fingers. He settled a kiss in the valley
between her breasts. He hadn't meant to, but couldn't resist a few more
kisses and a sweet, sucking pull on the pretty pink nipple. She offered
him the other, and he took it mindlessly, his body beginning to hum and
throb. He felt her straining against him with desire and need, and he
pulled away. "Find a prescription pad, Doc. I'll be back in an hour and
a half for that exam."

He kissed her quick, stood, grabbed his flannel shirt and
denim jacket, and was out the door before he could change his mind.

"I hope you have good medical insurance," she called after
him, grinning at the sound of his rapid steps on the stairs.

"Me too!"

They were both of the opinion that the experimental
therapy they were undertaking would prove to be dear and costly. Still,
weighing the alternatives, it seemed worth the risk. What if it worked?

Life around Colby, Kansas, took on a happy humming sound
for Dorie… or maybe it was just spring she was hearing.

The days and nights became warmer in those last days of
April, the first weeks of May, though the near-constant breeze
remained, rustling the wheat and the grass as it grew taller and taller
in the fields.

And color. Overnight the vast landscape changed from
dreary dark brown to green. What few trees grew on the plains spread
their branches wide and filled themselves to overflowing with rich
green leaves. The corn was beginning to push its delicate pale-green
stems through the fertile prairie soil. The annuals in Mrs. Averback's
flower gardens came up straight and tall, blooming yellow, red, purple,
and pink.

Even the town of Colby seemed to come alive in the spring.
More and more people left the shelter and warmth of their homes and
stepped out into the sunshine. Easter came and drab winter coats were
replaced with bright-colored sweaters and sweatshirts. Indeed, Dorie
packed up her all-concealing sweaters and jeans and went to the factory
outlet center for some carefully chosen summer clothes. The people were
smiling. It seemed as if there were children everywhere she looked.

It was so different from springtime in Chicago. Yet maybe
the only real difference was in her.

"Well, if it's got a reverse, how come I can't use it?"
she asked, as frustrated at having put Gil out as he was at having been
put out.

"You can if you're not pulling anything," he said,
clomping around in the soft, tilled soil, unhitching the planting
machine she'd backed sideways into a ditch. "It's not like backing a
car up. If you turn one way the trailer turns at an angle in the
opposite direction. If you're pulling something, you take wide corners
and keep it straight. I told you that."

He hadn't told her about not backing the thing up, but
then she hadn't seen anyone do it either.

She'd watched for days while Gil and Fletcher and
sometimes Matthew plowed and harrowed the earth to prepare it for
planting. The plows were huge and deadly looking. But the automatic
planting machines looked simple enough to pull around behind the big
tractor. Gil or Matthew would show up periodically to refill the seed
bins and barrels of fertilizer. There didn't seem to be anything to it.

"I wanted to get that corner over there," she said,
pointing. "I was too wide. Fletcher gets most of his corners."

"Fletcher grew up on a tractor," he said, still perturbed
and still stomping. "He knows how to plant a field and he knows to do
the corners by hand if he must, or to leave them be because the
combines can't get to them anyway."

"Fletcher would never pull a stupid stunt like this,
right?"

"That's right," he said with an angry grunt as he pulled
at something under the hitch. What she'd done wasn't such a terrible
thing. It happened sometimes. But the spreader was big and heavy and
awkward, and he was going to have a devil of a time hauling it out of
the ditch. If one of his kids had been dumb enough to back it into a
ditch, he'd be thinking serious child abuse about now. "Even Baxter
knows better than to back up—"

"Are you yelling at me?" she asked, calmly breaking in on
his tirade.

"Hell yes, I'm yelling at you. You're a grown woman. You
should know better than to… What?" he asked sharply as he
straightened to bellow at her, only to find her grinning at him. "You
better not be thinking this is funny."

It'd been a long time since anyone had scolded her. Most
people had a tendency not to argue with doctors. Nurses were skilled at
being gentle and tactful in discussing their differences with a
physician. Her mother would usually plead her case. Philip always
reasoned with her. She liked that Gil didn't think her too
professional, too well educated, too authoritative to make mistakes,
and that he was brave enough to lay her out in lavender for them.

"I'm not laughing. Just smiling."

"Why?"

"Cuz you're so cute when you get mad," she said, teasing
him, knowing it would make him angrier.

"Don't even think of starting that stuff with me, Dorie,"
he said, clomping back to the front of the tractor. "I didn't want you
out here in the first place. This looks easy to you, but you should
check out some of those fancy statistics of yours on farming accidents.
Stupidity gets people hurt out here."

"Now you're calling me stupid?"

"Yes." Her grin broadened. "Aw, hell. Get down from there.
I'll finish this field myself," he said.

"No." Her smile vanished immediately. She put her hands on
her hips. "I want to finish this field. Just get me out of the ditch."

"I said get down from there."

"I said no."

He could have had her by the neck in a matter of seconds.
It was a hot afternoon, he hadn't slept in his own bed in a week, and
he sure as hell didn't like being told no. He was the law on this farm
and what he said…

Dorie was glowering down at him. Her face was flushed from
the sun and the wind and her temper. She looked healthy. Alive.
Beautiful. He could hardly remember the woman he'd met so many weeks
ago on the front porch of the Averback farmhouse. Had she really been
so pale and helpless looking? Had she really been frightened and timid,
or had he imagined that?

"Well, you'll have to get down so I can turn the damn
thing around and get you going again," he said, his anger draining
slowly away. There wasn't enough room in his heart for anger when he
looked at her. It was too full of the laughter they'd shared; the joy
and the passion; whispers in the dark; common thoughts in a touch or
glance; companionship and… Well, maybe not love, but
certainly a great deal of caring.

"I want to do it. I want to help. Tell me what to do and
I'll do it."

"It would be easier to do it myself," he said, trying to
be patient with her.

"I want to learn."

"Dorie. Dammit." He let loose a defeated sigh. "Why is it
so all-fired important that you do this? You're a doctor, not a farmer."

The jury was deliberating the future of her medical
profession, and she was pretty sure she'd never be a good farmer. Still
she had her reasons.

"If I ask you what you did today and you tell me, I want
to know what you're talking about. I want to know why you're tired at
the end of a day and why you stand on my porch and look out at your
fields with such satisfaction on your face."

"Couldn't I just explain it to you?" he asked, despite the
odd feeling in his chest. It had been a long time since a woman, since
anyone, had shown an interest in his life.

"It's not the same as doing."

She was
doing
more and more every
day.

"Mm. Your house smells good!" Baxter exclaimed, blowing in
through the back door with the prairie breeze. Both doors now stood
open most of the day, to let in the sunshine and fresh air and most
anything else that happened by.

"New recipe. Do you like molasses cookies?" she asked,
pleased to see him.

"I don't know." He looked nervous. "Are they like those
carrot-nut ones you made last week?"

"You didn't like those, did you?"

He shrugged. "They were okay."

"No they weren't. And it's all right to tell when you
don't like something."

"Dad said you went to a lot of trouble for us. And I
shouldn't hurt your feelings."

"It won't hurt my feelings if you're honest with me. Heck
I make them for you. It's crazy to make you things you don't like,
isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Good. Then you tell me if you don't like these molasses
cookies."

"How come you don't just do the ones in the box anymore.
They were good."

"Variety is the spice of life," she told him, but when
that didn't seem to be a reasonable answer, she added, "Weren't you
getting sick of the same old cookies? There's only three different
kinds in the boxes." He looked at her as if to ask who in their right
mind would get sick of chocolate chip cookies. "Well, I was getting
bored making the same ones over and over. And building them from
scratch has turned out to be fun."

And time-consuming, which was the name of the game these
days. At first it was enough to simply feel alive again. To see the
wheat fields, the oil derricks, herds of cattle, and grain elevators on
the Kansas landscape. It was enough to hear music on the radio, birds
chirping in the morning, the rustle of the wheat in the fields. To
taste and enjoy food. To look forward to trips into town, to meet
people, to watch the way they moved, listen to their voices.

It was enough to know that she could care for one man, two
boys, and a cute old coot who stood back and watched her slowly
reclaiming her life with knowing eyes and a wise heart.

But all too soon enough wasn't enough anymore. She took to
having her morning coffee on the porch to greet each new day with the
Howletts. But, chores done, they were gone before long, and she was
left with an entire day to fill until they came again at six that
evening.

It was disconcertingly clear that Gil didn't appreciate
having her in the fields with him and there were only so many good
excuses to go into town. In abject defeat she'd removed a few more
dustcovers and polished some furniture. Vacuumed. She even swept off
the front porch one day. Discovering the joy of cooking was the last
straw before she started pulling out what little hair she had left.

"Uncle Matt says you got the C's down pat," Baxter was
telling her. "He hopes you get to the chapter on S's before he splits
his pants wide open."

"What are C's and S's?"

"That's what I wanted to know. C's are cakes and cookies.
S's are soups and salads. Uncle Matt's gettin' fat."

And tired of eating her cookies, she suspected. Now what?

"Soups and salads, huh?"

Life was just one ordeal after another…

Truck gardening.

For a girl raised in crowded Chicago suburbs and tall city
apartment buildings, dirt was amazingly… dirty.

The Howletts planted what they referred to as a truck
garden, which she soon discovered was almost an acre of various
vegetables that would either be eaten at their table, canned for the
winter, or taken to the local farmers market and sold as fresh produce.

"How come… you don't plow…
this… the way you do… the fields?" she asked,
screaming over the ruckus of the Rototiller, her whole body vibrating
as she guided it through the soil. Her white sneakers would never be
the same.

Fletcher, standing to one side of the garden, watching her
spasmodic movements with a grin on his face, shouted back. "Need
smaller rows."

"Need… an easier… way… to
do this."

Well, then; was the garden tractor and the attachable
plow, but Matthew had said the Rototiller would keep her out of
everyone's hair longer. Fletcher shook his head, smiling. Matthew
hadn't mentioned the added amusement of watching her.

He liked Dorie. She wasn't just fun to watch, though he did
plenty of that. She was an okay person to be around. She and his dad
hadn't tried to hide how they felt about each other or what they were
up to at night or on those few mornings lately when his dad would "feel
like" feeding the cattle alone. They weren't exactly advertising it,
but they also weren't trying to fool anybody.

"So, are you and my dad getting serious?" he'd asked one
afternoon as he lay in the grass in the shade after washing her
Porsche. It had become a volunteer job. He didn't bargain for pies
anymore. He'd wheedled a solo run in the shiny green Porsche, down the
lane to the road and back. Dorie was a pushover.

"That depends on what you mean by serious," she said,
sipping at a cola.

She'd contemplated telling him that his father's
relationship with her wasn't any of his business. Except, considering
the other women in Gil and Fletcher's lives, she couldn't think of
anyone who had more of a right to know.

"Serious," he reiterated. "Like love and marriage and
stuff."

"Oh, you mean
real
serious," she
said, stalling, wondering what to say. She looked at him and could see
he was expecting an honest answer. "I don't know, Fletch. How would you
feel if it was real serious?"