Traces of Mercy (4 page)

When you put your finger into a cup of hot tea—it burns.

Women are not supposed to wear trousers—but I do.

Old men like Abe snore loudly when their mouth falls open, and they aren’t very happy when you wake them to let them know.

I do not like red beets.

A gunshot wound hurts a lot more than the size of the hole it makes.

Outside, people were yelling in the street that the president was dead, and Doc cried for a man he told me he’d never even met. He said his name was Lincoln.

Questions can be tiresome if you are not the person asking.

There are times when Abe says, “Let’s have a few moments of silence, shall we?” and he isn’t teasing.

A lot of people come to Doc for help. There was a man with shoulder pain and a little girl who had a sore throat and an old woman who complained of a bellyache. He helps them and sends them on their way, and they look happier when they go than they did when they arrived.

Tomorrow, we are going to ride in a horse-drawn wagon. I asked Doc where we’re going, but he said it’s a surprise.

I don’t remember if I like surprises. I hope I do.

St. Louis hummed with activity as Doc steered the wagon through heavy horse-and-buggy traffic on Main Avenue. The day was warm, and it didn’t take long for the girl to feel the sun heat up the wool of her shirt, making her wonder why she had chosen such heavy material for her clothes. The relative quiet of the clinic seemed like a haven to her in contrast to the hustle and bustle of the people, wagons, horses, and buggies along the city street. Everywhere she looked she saw busyness. Merchants unloading wagons, women in brightly colored dresses making their way along the road, soldiers in different uniforms standing together in clusters. Loud clanging bells sounded behind them, and she jumped. Doc slapped the reins against the horse’s back as a wagon filled with a half-dozen men careened past them.

“Fire somewhere,” Doc observed as he fell back in line with traffic. They continued up Main past several businesses, and she frowned.

“The windows are all covered in black.”

“As a sign of respect,” he said. “The country is in mourning over President Lincoln’s death.”

But she’d already turned her attention to two black men weaving their way in and out of the buggies on the street. He watched the way she studied them.

“I’m guessing you don’t remember seeing Negroes before?”

“Negroes?”

“Colored people. Black-skinned.”

The girl kept her eyes on them as they passed close by their buggy. “No, I don’t.”

“They’re a good part of the reason we just came through that bloody war,” he said.

“The fighting was over black men?”

“In part—yes,” Doc said. “The Southern states who wanted to secede from the Union believed that a white man has the right to own a black man as his slave. Slave labor has been a part of the Southern way of life for as long as I can remember.”

“You mean the black man would be—property?”

“Yes.”

“Who won the fighting?” she asked.

“The Union, my dear. The Union prevailed, and slavery was abolished by Mr. Lincoln, and now, supposedly, all men are equal.”

“You don’t sound as if you believe that’s true,” she said. The same black men she’d been watching disappeared into a building displaying a sign that read The Freedmen’s Bureau.

“I believe it’s how it should be,” he said. “But I also believe it will take more than my lifetime for everyone to come around to that way of thinking.”

A man staggered past them and heaved right on the ground. The girl recoiled from the sight and grimaced.

“Doc—he’s sick,” she said, pointing to the man as he wiped a beard of vomit from his chin.

“He’s sick all right,” Doc retorted without sympathy. “Sick on whiskey.”

“Aren’t you going to stop and help him?”

“I’m afraid it’s pointless,” Doc said. “I imagine a man like that is drinking to forget something.”

“That hardly seems fair,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s drinking to forget, and I forgot without drinking.”

Thirty minutes later, Doc slowed the horse and turned down a long dirt road lined with trees. They stopped in front of a nondescript whitewashed building.

“We’re here,” he announced.

The girl examined the building. “So—
this
is the surprise?” she asked, her voice tinged with disappointment.

“Part of it.”

“Why are we here?”

“That is the other part of the surprise,” he said. “There is someone here I want you to meet.”

She turned troubled eyes on the doctor. There was something he wasn’t saying—something that he didn’t want to say. She could sense it. And it made her stomach flip with worry.

“I don’t want to meet someone.”

“Yes, of course you do. It’s always good to meet new people,” he said. She could hear the sound of pounding from somewhere behind the house.

He jumped down from the buckboard and offered her his hand. “Come on now. Here we go.”

She ignored him, choosing instead to look straight ahead.

“Please, Missy. Get down.”

“Why?”

“Because I think it would be a good idea for you to stretch that injured leg of yours,” he said. He wiggled his outstretched fingers in the air, and she reluctantly grasped his strong, weathered hand so he could help her from the wagon.

The pounding grew louder as they approached the back of the building. And then she heard voices—women’s voices raised over the noise.

“Where are we?” the girl asked as he hurried her along. “What is this place?”

But he didn’t answer. Instead, he ushered her around the side of the structure until she was looking at several women all dressed exactly alike. They wore black tunics that brushed the ground and white headpieces that fit closely around their faces. Some of them had pushed up the sleeves of their tunics so they bunched at the elbows, and more than a few of them held hammers.

“My, my, my. The addition is nearly finished,” Doc Abe muttered, obviously impressed by what he saw.

“Addition?” the girl asked.

“They’ve added this part onto the house, you see,” he said, gesturing to an L-shaped room shooting off from the back of the house. However, it wasn’t the building that interested her. Instead, she focused on the activity in the yard. Several women were gathered around a horse, a beautiful bay, and some had formed a semicircle around a rough piece of wood on the ground. The beautiful chestnut-colored horse was being tethered to a heavy rope around his harness, while the women around him spoke in a steady stream of encouragement.

“Top a’ the mornin’ to you, Doctor!” a voice called out from above. The girl and the doctor looked up to see two women straddling a crossbeam centered on the edge of the roof. Their black tunics rode up on their legs, allowing everyone below them a glimpse of black stockings and sturdy black shoes.

“Good morning, Sister Martha! Sister Ruth!” Doc Abe said.

“They are your sisters?” the girl asked.

“They are
nuns
,” he answered.

She searched her impaired memory for the word, testing it out. “Nuns.”

“Yes. The sisters here,” he said with a touch of impatience. He called out to the women on the roof. “Where might I find Mother Helena?”

“Right there,” one of the sisters said, pointing to a small woman kneeling beside the wood on the ground. She pulled a long nail from between her lips and positioned it for striking.

“Mother Helena?”

Mother Helena gave the nail a few sharp raps and then turned toward Doc. It was plain to see she was older than the other sisters; her face was etched with lines and life, and nothing about her seemed soft or feminine.

Doc gave an absent pat to the arm of his companion. “You stay right here, Missy. I’m going to have a word with Mother Helena.”

The girl watched Doc walk until he was standing close enough to the older nun to presumably have a private conversation. A conversation, she assumed, that would be about her.

Mother Helena was both thankful and irritated that she had to take a break from the time on her knees. The sun was climbing higher and the day growing hotter, and though she loathed admitting it—even to herself—her joints were throbbing with a steady heartbeat of pain. Several pairs of hands reached down to help her when it became evident she was going to stand. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that she could be on her knees for hours in prayer and never feel a twinge of discomfort? She allowed the sisters to help her to her feet and turned to face her friend Abe Johnson, taking care to dust off her black habit and straighten the rosary beads that hung from a cincture around her waist.

“Abe! This must be divine timing!” Mother Helena said in a voice rich with an Irish brogue. She looked past Doc to his companion, who stood several yards away. “You’ve come to help and brought an able-bodied young man with you!”

“Not a young man, Mother,” he said. “A young
woman
in need of your help.” He lowered his voice. “She’s got nowhere else to go. No means to support herself.”

Mother Helena couldn’t hide her surprise. She narrowed her blue-gray eyes and looked again with more scrutiny, even as the young woman started to make her way closer to the activity in the yard.

“I’m sure there is a story here,” she said, “but the fact of the matter is that I don’t have time to hear it right now.”

“She needs a place to stay,” Abe said.

The nun shook her head. “I’m sorry, Abe, but I can’t take her in. We honestly don’t have room.” She looked from Abe to the two nuns on the roof. “Sister Martha! You need to move back a bit. You’re dangerously close to that edge.”

“Yes, Mother,” Sister Martha said, carefully inching herself backward on the beam.

Satisfied, Mother Helena looked back at Doc. “I don’t mean to be rude, Abe, but the day is growing warmer, and we’ve still work to do before the heat forces us inside. Surely there is someone else who can take her in? Doesn’t she have family? Friends? Even a distant cousin somewhere?”

“I honestly don’t know—and neither does she. She was brought to my clinic two weeks ago, unconscious. When she woke up, it quickly became apparent that she’s suffering from amnesia—probably due to a head injury. She remembers odd things—can read and write. She’s obviously been educated—seems quite intelligent—but has no specific memories about herself. I’ve been calling her Missy because she can’t even remember her own name.”

Mother Helena lifted a brow that disappeared beneath the bandeau of her headpiece. She turned her attention back to the young woman. “And the clothes?”

“She was found in them, and she’s refused my offer to buy her something more appropriate.”

“Pride, I suppose,” Mother Helena said. “The clothes she’s wearing may have been all she could find in some unfortunate circumstance.”

“I don’t believe that’s true, Mother.”

Mother Helena glanced over at the young woman. “Oh? What makes you say that?”

“Pardon my candor, but her chest was tightly bound under that shirt,” he said. “I suspect her identity is perplexing to her in more than one way. I’m sure she intended to pass herself off as a man.”

The horse whinnied impatiently and snorted loudly. Mother Helena’s attention went to a young postulant kneeling by the horse’s harness. “I believe that horse is the Devil incarnate,” she said.

“How did you end up with him?”

Mother Helena rolled her eyes heavenward and shook her head. “We had limited funds to procure a horse. The liveryman gave us a choice from some animals rounded up from captured Confederates. He looked the strongest, and we were assured he had an even temperament. He said his name is Lucky, but if you ask me, it’s the liveryman who got lucky when he sold us that unpredictable animal!”

The horse snorted again and pawed at the ground. Mother Helena called out, “You know what happened last time, Oona! Make sure that knot is secure!”

“Yes, Mother, I will.”

Mother Helena saw the young woman in the trousers move even closer to the activity.

Abe’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Please, Helena. As one friend to another, take her off my hands. I can’t keep her on at the clinic any longer. It’s not proper.”

“I’m sorry, Abe, I truly am, but all of our energies are focused on getting the orphanage ready. The horror of the war is over, but the new horror is how many children have been left without parents. The orphans are coming. The Lord has told me to hurry, and that’s precisely what I’m doing.”

“For all intents and purposes,
she is
an orphan, Mother.”

“She’s a grown woman.”

“Yes, but more importantly, I know you would concede she is a child of God, and who better to see to her spiritual and physical needs than God’s humble servants such as yourselves?” he asked with an innocent look. “Turning your back on one of God’s own must break a dozen or more commandments.”

“There are ten commandments, Abner,” Mother Helena said. She arched a brow at the doctor. “If you’re going to use the Good Book to argue your point, at least get the number of commandments right.”