Dorothy Garlock (22 page)

Smith’s eyes were fixed unwaveringly on hers. There was a terrible intensity in his gaze, as if what she was saying was a matter of life or death to him. Seconds passed. Smith felt that something totally unexpected was happening to him. He was softening toward her, and he didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.

“Don’t expect the old lady to be nice and polite,” he said gruffly, turning on his heel and walking away.

“All right.” She breathed a sigh and watched him until he went through the door at the end of the bunkhouse.

*  *  *

Willa rapped on the door for the third time. While she waited, she tucked the loose hair blowing about her face into the knot at the back of her head. The smoothing of her hair was not due to vanity but to nervousness. The breeze behind
her billowed the skirt of her blue dress and lifted strands of her hair from the top of her head.

She looked back at the long narrow building that fanned out from the barn. Was Smith watching with that I-told-you-so look on his face? Did he expect her to slink off the porch because this rude, inconsiderate woman refused to come to the door? He had said for her to go on in, and, by golly, she would.

“Mrs. Eastwood?” Willa called out while opening the door. “Mrs. Eastwood? May I come in?”

It took a minute for her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light, but her sense of smell told her immediately that the room had not been aired for quite some time. Wrinkling her nose at the offensive odor of soured milk and a variety of other unpleasant scents she could not identify, she stood just inside the door and gazed at the disorder. The cookstove, the kitchen cabinet and the work counter were covered with soiled pans and dishes. The table was littered with everything from dirty clothes to crystal glasses. The floor, constructed of wide, smooth slabs of oak, was littered with grease and food scraps. In the light coming through the open doorway she saw cobwebs floating from the ceiling beams.

As she hesitated, Willa heard a low moan coming from the far corner of the room. Peering around the table and the high-backed chairs, she saw a large overstuffed couch, and lying on the floor beside it, a thin, gray-haired woman in a heavy black dress. Her forearm was over her eyes.

“Mrs. Eastwood? Oh, my goodness! Are you hurt?”

The moaning sound came again. Willa moved around and peered down at the woman. Even in the dim light she could see that her face was ashen gray. Her mouth was open and with each breath she made the moaning sound, as if she were in pain.

“Mrs. Eastwood—”

Silence except for the moaning.

“Mrs. Eastwood, are you hurt? Do you want me to get help?”

The arm came down and black eyes stared up at Willa.

“What’er ya . . . doin’ in my house?”

“Are you ill?”

“I’m not sick. I fell down and hurt my hip is all. Who the hell are ya?”

“My name is Willa Hammer. I came here with Mr. Eastwood’s niece and nephew. They came for a visit not knowing their uncle had passed on.”

“Liar! He ain’t got no kin. Ohh-h—” Maud was suddenly sick. She turned her head and vomit spewed out onto the floor at Willa’s feet.

“Mercy me!” Willa found a towel on the counter beside the hand pump, wet it and brought it back to the woman. “Let me wipe your face. Then we’ll get you up on the couch.”

“Don’t . . . touch me—”

Willa’s anxious eyes searched the woman’s face and saw that her eyes were not focused. She was slipping into unconsciousness.

“Fanny. My little girl. I knew you’d come.” Maud’s hand went out to Willa. “Fanny, I feel so . . . strange—”

She was out of her head!

Willa was frozen for a second before she took the thin, cold hand in hers. The woman’s eyes, black as midnight, were drifting shut. Deep creases in the skin on her face and her sunken eyes spoke of a recent weight loss. Willa tried to keep from breathing because the woman’s breath was so putrid.

“Oh, my. You need a doctor—”

With a sudden rush of horror, Willa saw that Mrs. Eastwood’s leg was twisted beneath her at a ghastly angle. She hadn’t noticed it before because of the heavy black skirt.

“Mrs. Eastwood! Mrs. Eastwood!”

Oh, sweet mother of God! The woman was not only sick, she had a broken leg and possibly a broken hip.

Unaware that her heart was racing like a runaway prairie fire, Willa ran out the door and onto the porch. Her eyes searched frantically for someone, but no one was in sight. She ran toward the bunkhouse.

“Smith!” she yelled. “Smith! Come quick!” She sucked air into her lungs and yelled again. “Smith!”

Smith came out the bunkhouse door on the run. Billy and Charlie were right behind him.

“What is it?” His long stride quickly ate up the distance between them.

“Mrs. East . . . wood,” Willa gasped. “She’s . . . broken her leg and maybe her hip. And . . . she’s sick—”

“She what?” His hands went to her shoulders.

“She fell down. Her leg is bent under her. She’s sick too.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the house. “Come. We’ve got to do something—”

“She’d not want me there, Willa. I’ll get Charlie and the girl—”

“No! Jo Bell would be useless. Smith, please. Help me. I know a little about nursing.”

“Maud hates me. She’ll have a fit if I go in the house.” They were at the porch. Smith held back.

“She’ll just have to have it. I can’t get her up off the floor by myself,” Willa said crossly.

Smith reluctantly followed Willa into the kitchen and to the corner where Maud lay beside the couch. Her eyes were closed. She was breathing through her half-opened mouth.

“She was out of her head. She thought I was someone called Fanny.” Willa pulled up Maud’s skirt to show the black-stockinged leg bent beneath her.

Smith snorted an obscenity. “Fanny is her daughter. Good God! It sure as hell is broke.”

“It’s so dark in here. Will you take the blankets off the windows so we can see?”

“She won’t like it.”

“That can’t be helped. We can’t help her if we can’t see.”

While Smith removed the blankets from the three tall windows; Willa pumped water into a basin and wet a cloth. She bathed Maud’s face before she placed the folded wet cloth on her forehead. Smith stood in the middle of the room gazing with disbelief at the filth.

“Godamighty! I knew it was bad, but not this bad.”

“Didn’t anyone ever come in to see about her?” Willa asked frostily.

His face froze into lines of resentment. “Hold on a damn minute. I’m not welcome here. I don’t make a habit of going where I’m not wanted,” he said in a tone as frosty as hers had been.

“I’m sorry. Whatever is between you and Mrs. Eastwood is your affair. She needs help now.”

“What do you suggest?”

“The obvious. Straighten her leg out and get her up off the floor and onto a bed. She’s fainted. Let’s do it before she comes to.”

A few minutes later Smith sat back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Maud had screamed when he had moved her leg. It had unnerved him.

“I think her hip is broken too.”

“How long will it take to get a doctor here?”

“Tomorrow, if the one in Buffalo is sober enough to ride. I’ll send Plenty to fetch him. But you’ll have to write something down on paper for Plenty to give the doctor or he won’t come.”

“Where can I find pen and paper?”

“Here? You’d have to hunt for it. I’ll get some from Billy.”

“Smith,” she called as he headed for the door. “We’ve got to get Mrs. Eastwood in a bed. She can’t stay here in the kitchen.”

“Why not? She’s stayed in here for six years.”

“She slept in here? Well, for goodness sake. She needs to be in a bed,” Willa insisted. “She needs quiet.”

“She’s had plenty of that.” Smith threw up his hands. “Are you staying on?” he asked begrudgingly, as if it pained him to ask.

“Is there anyone else to take care of her?” Willa raised her brows in a gesture of impatience. “I just can’t go off and leave her even if
you
don’t want me here.”

Smith looked at her steadily. “She won’t thank you.”

“I don’t need thanks. I’ll do it for myself as much as for her.”

Smith’s eyes examined her from head to foot. Finally he went out the door.

Willa didn’t stop to think that fate had stepped in and provided her with a roof over her head and work to earn her keep. She pushed open the swinging door that led to the other parts of the house. The foyer was as dim as the kitchen had been. A cloth covered the glass on the double front doors. She yanked hard on it and dust settled in a cloud around her as the faded blanket hit the floor.

At the end of the foyer a magnificent clock stood silent and lonely. Its glass door was dust-covered, its brass pendulum dull. Spiders had wrapped it in a webby embrace.

Sliding panel doors on the right of the entry opened to reveal a parlor, tastefully furnished but dust-coated. Mice had chewed holes in the upholstery of the loveseat and built nests in the cotton among the springs. Leaving the doors open,
Willa crossed the hall. The room was a small library. The walls were lined with row after row of books. She gasped with pleasure as she ventured inside to run her fingertips over leather-bound volumes of Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Fenimore Cooper—a treasure covered with dust. Mice droppings were thick on the library table behind the upholstered sofa that faced a stone fireplace.

Next to the library was a study and between the kitchen and the parlor, a stately dining room. Above the table that seated twelve hung a chandelier with hundreds of dull, dusty prisms encased in cobwebs.

Squares of once colorful Persian carpets covered the floors. At the windows, heavy draperies of thick tapestry decorated with long tassels hung from round wooden poles with fancy corrugated ball ends.

Willa had once seen such an elegant home in a picture book. She shivered. The house was quiet as a tomb; quiet and cold and lonely. She had to shake off the feeling that ghosts wandered up and down the foyer before she could force herself to go up the open stairway to the rooms above.

The second floor consisted of a wide hallway, four richly furnished bedrooms, a small unfurnished room and a water closet with a claw-foot bathing tub. A narrow door opened onto a stairway that led to the attic.

At the front of the house was the main bedroom. After opening the draperies to let in some light, Willa immediately realized that it was strictly a masculine room. The furniture was heavy walnut. A shaving cabinet sat beside a wardrobe that contained only men’s clothing. Nothing here indicated that Mrs. Eastwood had ever shared the room with her husband. It was neat as a pin except for years of accumulated dust and cobwebs.

The room across the hall was the one used by Mrs. Eastwood. It was cluttered with a variety of clothing, some items
still in their original boxes. Old newspapers and several animal pelts lay scattered; and an unfinished, poorly done piece of embroidery secured in round wooden hoops sat on the table. A set of quilting frames leaned against the wall. Willa instinctively knew that this was where Mrs. Eastwood had once spent most of her time. It would be familiar to her.

Working quickly, Willa cleared the bed by rolling up the covers with the clutter and tossing them into the hall. The mattress was in good condition, and she began a search for bed linens. She found sheets and pillow covers in a chest at the end of the hall. They had a musty smell as did everything else in the chest, but they were clean and there was no evidence of mice. Willa made up the bed and hurried back down to the kitchen.

After rewetting the cloth, she knelt beside the still unconscious woman and placed it on her forehead.

“I’ve had some nursing experience, Mrs. Eastwood, and the doctor will be here tomorrow. I’ll be here. You’ll not be alone. Can you hear me, Mrs. Eastwood?”

No response.

Smith came in with a tablet and a stub of a pencil. Jo Bell was with him. She stood just inside the door with her mouth turned down in what Willa recognized as her sulky expression.

“Write what you’re going to and Plenty will be on his way.”

Willa sat down at the table. After a few minutes she tore the sheet from the tablet and handed it to Smith.

“I told the doctor she has a broken leg and possibly a broken hip and that she is also sick with a fever. Do you think he’ll come?”

“He’ll come. I don’t know what good he’ll be, but he’ll come. This place needs a cleaning. Jo Bell will help you.”

“I ain’t doin’ no nigger work, and that’s that,” Jo Bell sputtered. “Phew! It stinks in here.”

“If you don’t work, you won’t eat.” Smith said the words flatly, leaving no room for argument, and walked out.

“Hear that? Don’t that beat all? He’s sure gettin’ high ’n’ mighty all of a sudden. He’s only a hired hand here. He don’t own nothin’ ’n’ he ain’t bossin’ me.” Jo Bell looked around, took a deep breath, then continued. “Papa said Uncle Oliver was rich. But things is so run down he must’a run out of money.”

“Jo Bell . . . hush,” Willa whispered. “If Mrs. Eastwood comes to she’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’s your aunt and she’s very sick.”

“She ain’t no blood kin. Charlie can help if you’re bent on cleanin’ up this place. Papa said he didn’t raise me to do nigger work.”

“Things will go more smoothly and be more pleasant if you do your share, Jo Bell.”

“Papa said ugly girls work ’n’ pretty girls like me was to be looked at. Charlie knows that he’s suppose—”

Jo Bell stopped speaking when Smith stepped into the kitchen carrying a slab of wood, obviously a door he’d removed. He placed it on the floor beside Maud.

“Your papa was mighty wrong about a lot of things,” he said curtly to Jo Bell. “Charlie will not do
your
work. He has his own work to do. You
will
help here in the house or you will leave.”

“Me ’n’ Charlie are goin’ anyhow.”

“Not Charlie. You.”

“All by myself?”

“All by yourself. Charlie is staying and so is Willa.”

“Charlie will go if I tell him to.”

“He won’t. I’ve hired him on to work here. Here’s the coal hod and the shovel. Clean the ashes out of the cookstove so I can build a fire. Willa will need hot water.”