Carla Kelly (47 page)

o Julia's relief, Paul slept most of the afternoon, unburdened for what she suspected was probably the first time in years. She doubted he had ever told his story to anyone, not a reticent man like him, one with a certain reputation to maintain in the hard society he lived in.

That he had trusted her enough to tell her touched Julia's heart. Mothers and fathers. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. She couldn't fathom a relationship as toxic as his had been. Paul Otto was probably more resilient than even he knew. She thought again about the scripture in Mosiah, the one on the other side of that passage about beggars. “Believe in God, believe that he is,” she murmured as Paul Otto slept, his head on her shoulder.

Without waking him, she managed to get her Book of Mormon from her valise. For the first time in a public place, she didn't look around to see if anyone was watching her read “Joe Smith's Gold Bible,” as a fellow streetcar rider in Boston had called her Book of Mormon to Julia's humiliation. She didn't care who saw her now. She needed to see the rest of that scripture.

There it was. She almost sighed with relief. “‘Believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend,’ “she whispered out loud. She prayed then, asking Heavenly Father to somehow ease this good man's heart.
Right now, Father, not sometime in the future. Right now,
she thought fiercely.
Your Son went through all this and more. Touch Mr. Otto, somehow.

Me too,
she added,
if you have the time. I hurt so much. I miss my sister.

Paul woke up when the porter went through the car to announce dinner. He sat up and blinked his eyes, uncertain where he was. He looked Julia square in the eye. “I said a lot, didn't I?”

“You needed to,” she replied, looking up from Alma. “It goes no farther than me.”

“It shouldn't have gone that far.”

She marked her place with her finger and returned his penetrating gaze. “After all you've done for me? Paul, just let it alone now.” She returned to her reading.
This is it, Lord. Relieve his pain,
she prayed.

“Thank you,” he said after a long few miles, his voice normal again, his innate confidence back. He amazed her by picking up her hand and kissing it. “I'm hungry. Let's eat.”

“Your potatoes are better than these flabby, lardy things,” Paul announced over dinner. He put down his fork and eyed them with suspicion, as though daring them to rise off the plate and defend themselves.

“I thought so too, but Papa says I'm not humble enough.”

He picked up his fork again and frowned at the potatoes. “You've ruined me forever for bad food, Miss Julia.”

“What I've done, apparently, is turn you into a food snob,” she joked, grateful down to her toes at his familiar, teasing tone. “Shame on me.”

“It's your fault.”

“Then you should never have advertised for a cook.”

“You're going to be heartless and leave me in September, Miss Julia?”

“Sooner, if you don't quit complaining.”

Silently, Julia thanked the Lord. Sitting across from Paul Otto in the dining car was almost as easy as sitting with him in the kitchen of the Double Tipi, where no one was on their best behavior, and they were used to teasing each other.

“Look, you're obviously more comfortable calling me by my last name,” Julia said. “If I hear Miss Julia again, I'll … I'll make potatoes like these back home.”

“What a threat. Darling, it is,” he said promptly. “I do like to hear my name, though, ‘cause that Mr. Otto fellow is really old. Still, you could call me Boss, like Doc does, if you'd rather.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I will call you Paul.”

“My choice too.” He finished his coffee, making a face. “I'm about to give up coffee too.”

“Even mine?”

“Probably. It's nothing personal. I didn't miss it a bit at your parents’ house. Getting old, Darling. Me, not you.”

When they returned to the Pullman car's open section, the porters were preparing the beds for sleep, pulling out the bottom seats and then pulling down the bed overhead. They pulled discreet curtains around each newly created bed.

Around them, other passengers made ready for the night. Julia watched a frazzled mother march her two little ones down the aisle to the washroom at the end, coming back with her cherubs, somehow subdued in flannel nightgowns.

“I hope someone's been reading to James,” Julia whispered. “Doc promised me he would.”

“He promised me too, on my one night there after Chicago,” Paul assured her. “You miss James, don't you?”

She nodded, her eyes on another child being boosted into the overhead sleeping compartment across the aisle by his father. “I bought him Crayola crayons and paper for Christmas. Lots of paper.”

“I didn't get you anything, Darling.” He stood up when the porter moved to their side of the aisle, waiting to arrange the beds. He indicated an open seat farther down where they could wait.

“I didn't expect anything,” Julia said. “I have a present for you, and my father sent along something else for you, but it can keep until we celebrate Christmas with James.”

Paul watched the porter's deft motions. “The Mosses wanted me to stay in Chicago for Christmas with them. I couldn't leave fast enough.” He shook his head. “I don't know, Darling. It was strange, like they were trying to make up for all the pain they caused. They even tried to give me a portion of an inheritance that would have gone to Katherine. I just wanted to leave, but every time I mentioned that, Mrs. Moss cried, which always escalated into hysterics.”

“How did you manage to escape?”

Paul gave her a wry smile. “How apt! That's exactly what I did. I crept barefoot downstairs in the wee hours, before anyone was up. I never have to go back there again.”

“Upper or lower?” Paul asked later, when the porter finished and moved on down the car. “Better say upper, because I don't much care for heights.”

Julia laughed, which made Paul beam at her. “That's the first time you've laughed in days.”

“I suppose it is.”

When she came back later from the washroom, her hair in pigtails and robe carefully buttoned over her nightgown, she got barely a glance from Paul, who was sprawled in the lower bed, reading the Book of Mormon now. Funny that she should feel shy; for months now they had been sharing the ranch house, which meant enough nights like this one.

“Need a leg up?” was all he said, turning a page.

“Nope. I am sufficiently agile.”

The bed was soft, even if it did smell faintly of cigar smoke. She opened the front curtain enough to read a few pages in the Book of Mormon and then composed herself for sleep, which came quickly. She was only vaguely aware when Paul retired to the bed below hers.

For all that she dropped to sleep soon after, her dreams were not peaceful. She dreamed of Iris and a train trip to the Chicago Exposition years ago, when she was ten and Iris a precocious four. Except Iris wasn't four, but twenty-two, and lying on the floor in her farmhouse kitchen in Draper. Julia, still ten, was banging on the door, trying to get in. And then they were in a cemetery, but it must have been a cemetery in Chicago, because there was the Great Wheel from the Exposition, and now she was trying to stop the wheel, because Mr. Otto, dressed in black like her father, was kneeling by an open grave, in tears, and she couldn't reach him.

But it wasn't Mr. Otto in tears; it was her. Mr. Otto had opened the curtain to her upper berth, and he was shaking her gently. “Darling? Darling?”

She clutched his hand, and he clasped hers. “It was the worst dream.”

“Thought so.”

Julia looked past his shoulder and into the Pullman car, now dimly lit and quiet, except for someone snoring a few curtains over. “I hope I didn't wake anyone.”

“Not over that racket,” Paul said, amused. “Bad dreams or just sad ones? Scoot closer to the edge, will you?”

She did as he said, dragging her pillow with her. She rested her head on it, Paul's face close to hers as he rested his arms now on the fold-down bunk. He had on his blue and white night shirt, which was faded, the stripes nearly gone.

“It started out fun,” she said. “Iris and I were on our way to the Chicago Exposition. We went when I was ten, and she was almost five.”

Julia closed her eyes as the tears came. Paul rested his hand on her head. “There now, Darling. There now.”

His hand was warm and soothing. Julia felt her eyelids grow heavy as her heart resumed its normal rhythm. “Strange. I can't quite remember what woke me up.”

“Good. I'm here. Go to sleep. If you wake up again, I'll still be here. It's hard to leave a moving train.”

The train was slow into Cheyenne, and they barely made the connection to Gun Barrel. There was only time to scribble a note to the Gillespies, telling of Julia's safe arrival. She handed a coin to the conductor, along with the note and the address. Losing scarcely a beat in his “Aboard! All aboard!” he gave it to one of the boys standing on the platform, who tipped his ragged cap to Julia and took off running.

“I wish you had a telephone,” she told Paul as they sat down.

“You just won't rest until you ruin my place, will you?” he teased. He gazed at her, and she smiled back serenely. “Sometimes I wish we had one too,” he said. “Would make life a little simpler, eh?”

Yes and no,
she decided, after they changed into riding gear at Gun Barrel's livery stable, mounted up, and started the now-familiar ride to the Double Tipi. During her stay in Salt Lake, Mama's seamstress had made her a divided skirt that fit. Papa had dragged out the riding boots she used to wear on occasional trips to St. George and her brothers’ property. “This is better,” she announced to no one in particular as they rode. “Now if only I were a better rider.”

“Patience, Darling, and practice.”

There wasn't much to say. Maybe Paul was right. Maybe she did like the open spaces. The air was bracing, but there wasn't any wind for a change, and no snow anywhere.

“No snow. That's convenient,” she said as they rode side by side.

“I'd prefer snow. Could be we're headed for a dry spring and summer: no haying, sunburned pastures, thirsty cattle, range fires.”

“Is that common?”

“Common enough.” He touched spurs to his horse. “Let's go home.”

James was still awake when she came into the kitchen. Eyes bright, face lively, he looked up from the kitchen table, where he sat next to Doc, who was reading an outdated newspaper. James was in her arms in a moment, nearly bowling her over.