by Jane Peart
"That's all right. I've been vaccinated! My father was a pharmacist, you know, and he insisted on it. I've also had some experience nursing children."
"Oh, Vi, thank you!" cried Holly giving her friend a welcoming hug. "You're an answer to prayer. And I thought God wasn't listening!"
One night not long after Cissy's death, Holly was roused from an exhausted sleep by an insistent pounding on her door. She threw back the covers, struggled out of bed, flung her wrapper around her, and hurried to answer. An ashen-faced Ned, carrying Teddy and holding Aurelia by the hand, stood in the eerie light of a cold moon.
"Holly, I hate to bother you like this, but Hetty's real sick. I'm afraid it's the smallpox or maybe something worse. She's out of her head with fever, and I thought I better get the kids out of the house. I didn't know what else to do but bring them here. Then I've got to go for Doc."
"Of course, Ned," Holly said. "Here let me take Teddy. And Aurelia, honey, you come inside with me. They can stay here as long as they need to, Ned," shé assured him.
"Thank you, Holly, I can't tell you—"
"Don't try, Ned. You just go on, find Blaine, and I hope—I pray Hetty's all right."
Looking at the calendar, a dazed and worn-out Holly suddenly realized that six weeks had passed. It was as though she had been living in a long, dark tunnel. Most of the children were now in various stages of recovery. But this was almost harder than when they were feeling really sick. They were cranky, listless, homesick, as well as easily bored, easily upset. It was hard just keeping them amused and quiet until they were completely well or their families were recovered sufficiently to come to get them.
Vi went home, and one by one the other children were fetched home by grateful parents until there was no one left but—Joel.
As the last wagon with the last happily reunited child and parent drove out of the schoolyard, Holly saw Joel's small forlorn figure standing at the schoolroom window watching it leave.
The harsh reality of the little boy's fate gripped Holly. With a wrenching sensation she asked herself, What was to become of Joel?
Chapter 21
By the end of February the epidemic had subsided sufficiently for the town to resume its normal, activity. The temporary infirmary, where the worst cases had been put and for those who had no one at home to care for them, was closed. Within another few weeks the Health Board, after enforcing all the emergency mandates to prevent the further spread of smallpox, was dissolved.
Relatives had come to settle affairs, sell the property and belongings of their family's victims of the deadly smallpox scourge, and to take orphaned children with them when they left. However, there were some who had no relatives; no one to provide them with care or give them a home.
Joel McKay was one of those. He had remained at the school-house with Holly, and no immediate action had been suggested for his future. Through Geneva Healy, Holly found out that the Town Council had already sent some of the children orphaned early at the height of the epidemic to the orphanage at the county seat. The word "orphanage" sent a cold shiver of alarm through Holly's heart.
Joel in an orphanage! She could not imagine that lively, inquisitive, precocious child institutionalized, regimented, and made to conform to the necessary rules of a place already crowded with too many children— no individualized attention, no affectionate care. The thought of this little boy who had grown so dear to her in such a situation was too much for Holly.
School was not yet back in session on the March day when Ned had come to get Aurelia and Teddy. Joel was at the Healys', playing with their children, and Holly was alone. Although Hetty was still weak, she had recovered enough to want the children home. "I don't know how I can ever thank you, Holly," Ned said. "We are both very grateful. As soon as Hetty is able, I know she wants to thank you in person."
"Oh, Ned, I was just happy I could help," Holly reassured him as she hugged both the children good-bye.
In spite of Ned's assurances, she didn't count too much on hearing from Hetty, but it didn't bother her. Her mind was too preoccupied with another problem at the moment. What to do about Joel? She decided to go and talk to Vi about it. Vi would give her good advice.
Seated in Vi's sewing room, while Vi sat and continued to work at her treadle machine, Holly voiced all her jumbled thoughts. Finally, she sighed and said, "I can't just let him go to an orphanage, Vi. He's too special. He'd be lost there, I don't know what would happen to him."
"Lots of children grow up in an orphanage, Holly. They seem to survive. They're not starved or beaten, they're taught a trade. It might be the best thing for Joel. Anyway, what can you do about it? Ad had a piece in the paper yesterday about the children who had lost parents in the epidemic. They're now wards of the county, didn't you know? The Town Council decides what to do, where they go."
"No!" Holly exclaimed emphatically. "I can't possibly allow them to send Joel away! He's lived all his life here in Riverbend, all his friends are here—I'm here!"
Vi stopped pushing the treadle and held the wheel. "You're here? What do you mean, Holly?"
Holly stood up and started pacing back and forth, then looked out the window. It had begun to rain. She watched the rain pelting the old leaves on the oak tree in Vi's yard, and as they hit the window they ran down the glass pane in tiny rivulets. "I guess I mean I'm here for Joel," she said slowly, then turned around and faced Vi. "I could adopt Joel."
Vi's mouth parted in surprise. "You can't do that. You're not married; the Town Council would never place a child, especially a little boy, with a single woman."
"Why not, I'd like to know?" demanded Holly. "What about all the widows in the world who raise their children alone?"
"That's different."
"Why is it different? Most of the time they have to work to support their fatherless families. I work, I teach, and Joel would be right there with me all day."
Vi stared at her. "But I thought you were leaving in June to go back to Willow Springs. Do you mean if you got Joel, you'd stay here?"
Holly started pacing again. "I don't know. I mean, I hadn't thought that far ahead. But, I do know I'm going to try to adopt Joel." She halted, whirled around, and said, "Why aren't you supporting me, Vi? You brought up your daughter by yourself, didn't you?"
"It wasn't easy, Holly," Vi said quietly. "It was, in fact, very hard."
The two women stared at each other for a full minute without saying anything more. Then Vi said gently, "Let's go have a cup of tea, and I'll tell you how it was with me."
An hour later Holly walked back to the schoolhouse in the pouring rain under the umbrella Vi had lent her. The story that Vi had told her weighed heavily on her heart. It had made her admire her friend even more. It seems Vi had been the late child of middle-aged parents, was the proverbial "apple of their eye." They lived comfortably in a small town where her father, a pharmacist, was a well-respected pillar of the community and her mother a prominent church leader. Vi was given everything. When at a young age she had shown musical talent, she was given piano lessons; later she played the organ in church. Under all this loving care she had grown up in every way a model daughter.
Then the summer she was nineteen, Vi's whole life changed. A handsome pharmaceutical salesman with smooth manners, irresistible charm, came to town. Vi fell head over heels in love. Her parents were terrified of losing her and discouraged the romance. But dazzled and headstrong, Vi agreed to elope with the man. Only weeks later she found herself deserted in a San Francisco hotel with just a note of explanation that the man at least had the decency to leave for her. It revealed the sad truth that he was already married.
Vi was devastated, especially when soon she discovered she was pregnant. She could not return home because she knew it would break her parents' hearts, disgrace them. For days she walked the city streets dazed, depressed, desperate. Finally, she apprenticed herself to a dressmaker, who took a liking to her and when her pregnancy became advanced, offered to help Vi. This
kind woman allowed Vi to continue working out of her home after the baby was born. Nearly a year later, she secretly contacted a friend in her hometown to get an idea of what the situation with her parents might be. To her sorrow she found out that her father had had a stroke and died and her mother was in fragile health and doctors felt she had not long to live. Vi knew if she made the decision to go home with her baby, that would be the last straw for her aging mother. It would be far better to let her die in some peace without ever knowing. So she wrote, saying that she was well and happy and would be home when she could. Her mother died without ever knowing the truth.
"I hated living in the city, and I didn't think it was a good place to raise a child," Vi told Holly. "By this time I had become an expert seamstress, so I knew I could make a living for us. So I packed Avesta and myself up and bought a stagecoach ticket to—"
"Riverbend-'the end of the line'!" Holly finished for her.
"Well, yes, that was almost the way I decided to come," Vi agreed. "I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me, no one knew my story, where I could create a whole new life for myself and my daughter."
"And you did," Holly said. "So, why can't I?"
"Holly, I've just told you the bare facts of my story. I haven't told you what it's like to live with no family, no background, to have to be careful what you say, what you mention, or that you might slip and name a town or a place that someone can connect with your past—I have made up a life for my daughter, too. I don't want my mistakes to ruin her life."
"How did you manage, Vi? I mean, the lonely nights, the times when you needed someone to turn to?"
"I had to build on a faith that I'd almost lost," Vi sighed. "I literally spent nights reading the Bible almost blindly, crying out for help." She paused. "Remember, when I told you to read until some verse or even just a line of Scripture quickens to you? As if it was meant for you? Well, finally it was one from Isaiah that spoke to my heart and that I came to lean on—Isaiah 54:4: Tear not, you will not be put to shame, for you will forget the shame of your youth and you shall not remember the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name. ..." I just kept repeating those verses over and over."
Holly reached the schoolhouse and hurried up the porch steps, closed the umbrella, left it on the porch, and went inside. She was conscious of a new hope, a new determination. There must be a way to keep Joel, and she was going to find it. Almost from the first day of school she had felt a special bond between herself and the little boy. It had grown even stronger through the last few weeks, after the epidemic, certainly after Cissy's death and the death of his parents. Whatever she had to do to convince people that she was capable of bringing up a child, Holly was determined to do.
And if she couldn't—well, then she would take Joel home to Willow Springs. She felt certain that her mother and father would make him welcome as part of the family. Holly tried to imagine how a homecoming like that would be. Would there be as much gossip about her return as there had been before her leaving?
Holly's imagination took her no further. There was no use imagining circumstances that might never happen. She should concentrate on the positive. Take the first step, whatever that was, to adopt Joel, then worry about what to do next.
The first thing she had to do to reinforce her qualifications with the Council was to prove that she could offer Joel a stable home. For that she would have to apply to have her teaching contract renewed for another year. That would establish the fact that she would have a regular income and a permanent place to live.
It surprised Holly to discover that she had no qualms whatsoever about writing a letter of intent to teach at Riverbend for the coming year. She had no misgivings, no lingering regret that she wouldn't be returning to Willow Springs in June. It was the right thing to do. If there was a reason other than to ensure the granting of her petition to adopt Joel, she was not yet ready to admit it. It was her only purpose for wanting to remain in Riverbend, she told herself as she filled out the application to the School Board.
When Holly told the Healys what she intended to do, she asked Matt how she should go about petitioning the Town Council to grant the adoption and name her Joel's legal guardian.
Matt shook his head, warning her warily that nothing like that had ever come before the Council before. That did not deter Holly's resolve. She immediately followed his instructions as to how to place an item on the Council's agenda for decision at the weekly Town Council meeting. This was duly printed in the Monitor in the regular column as "News of Public Interest"— the usual procedure of publishing the business before the Council—in case anyone wanted to speak for or against the item.
On his way out to the schoolhouse, Ad felt strangely disoriented. He was still ambivalent about the decision he'd come to after a great deal of uncharacteristic self-debate. He left Main Street and turned onto the road leading out of the center of town, gave the horse its head, sat back in his saddle, and let his mind wander back to almost a year ago—to the first time he had set eyes on Holly Lambeth, just off the stagecoach, the evening she arrived in Riverbend.
He had known at first glance, here was a real lady. There had been an unmistakable aura of class about her from her quality clothes to the look of breeding and background about her, an air of independence and spirit that Ad particularly admired in a woman.
But for all her independent spirit and determination, Ad knew the odds could be stacked against her. No matter that it was now 1883, people in Riverbend had not all moved ahead with the times. In some places, the cities, for example, women were allowed all sorts of privileges once limited to men. Why there was even a woman reporter in the city room at the San Francisco newspaper where Ad had worked before coming here. Women owned their own businesses, negotiated their own contracts, managed their own property, bought and sold real estate. But here—Ad knew firsthand, some of the attitudes about a woman's "proper place" were still archaic. Unless there was a man—a husband—in the picture, Ad doubted that Holly's chance to adopt the little boy was very good.
He had come to admire Holly, her intelligence, the strength that she had shown during the epidemic, as much as he enjoyed her wit and her clever conversations. More than that, Ad knew he had come to care deeply for Holly. It was more than friendship if he allowed himself the truth. Maybe it wasn't love, but it was a deep affection that maybe eventually—who knows? Much as it went against Ad's long-held freedom, the kind of future he had always taken for granted, he could not let Holly face the possibility of losing Joel. If this step could help—even if it changed his life forever, which it certainly would, it would be worth it.
Ad turned his horse into the schoolyard, dismounted, and slung the reins over the hitching post. He brushed dust from his knees with his wide-brimmed hat, straightened his string tie, and checked his vest buttons, then marched toward the porch, took the steps two at a time, and knocked at the door.
When Holly came to the door, Ad was newly conscious of how attractive she was. Even with her rich brown hair slightly disheveled and a smudge of chalk on her cheek, she looked utterly charming.
Feeling suddenly awkward under her curiously direct gaze, he said, "Hello, Holly, I'd like to talk to you about something. But if you're busy, I could come back another time?"
"Do come in, Ad. I'm not really busy. Just the usual after-school cleanup, wiping blackboards, filling inkwells, and—what I have to do can wait. Come on in. What do you want to talk to me about?"
Ad twirled his hat absent-mindedly as he glanced around the schoolroom. He hadn't been in it since New Year's Day. He remembered how they had discussed what the coming year might hold for both of them. That seemed a long time ago, now. A lot has happened since, he thought, his eyes coming to rest again on Holly. He took a few steps around looking at everything: the children's pictures, the bunches of flowers in glass jars on the windowsills, a low tier of shelves filled with books behind the teacher's polished desk.
&n
bsp; "Looks nice, Holly. You've sure done a lot, made some real changes," he commented, continuing to slowly circle the room.
"Thanks, Ad. The children help. It's fun," she said, giving a final swipe to the blackboard before wiping her hands on a cloth and folding it. "Why don't we go into my parlor, and I'll make us some tea? We can talk in there," she suggested, leading the way through the door into her own part of the building.
Here, too, Ad saw things he had never noticed before. Crisp curtains hung at the windows, some plants and flowers in a pretty bowl on the round table covered with a bright cloth. All the touches Holly had made to make it, well— cozy, homelike. An alarm sounded in his brain, and he shut it off quickly. Isn't that what women do? The "nesting instinct"?
Leaning against the doorframe, he watched Holly go about setting the kettle on the stove, getting down the tin canister of tea, and spooning out tea in careful measures into the teapot, enjoying the sheer gracefulness of her movements, Ad thought Holly looked especially pretty today.
She wore a simply styled dress the color of a robin's egg, its fitted bodice showing off a waist that Ad could surely span with both hands. Her hair was swept back and up from her neck, and here, too, the curls had escaped, making it hard to resist the temptation to run his finger the length of its slender column. Ironically, he wondered if perhaps Fate had ordained it that way to stiffen his resolve, the purpose of this visit?
"Cream and sugar?" Holly's question caught Ad off-guard, and he was brought abruptly back from the contemplation of her pretty neck to stammer, "Sugar, no cream."
"Tea's brewed," she announced and turned from the stove, her face flushed from the heat. Placing the teapot on the table, Holly motioned Ad to draw up a chair. "Now, what did you want to talk about?" Holly asked stirring her tea and fixing him with an interested look.
So, here it was, the moment that he had debated over and finally had come to the conclusion to act upon. But, not quite yet—
