What Frees the Heart

by Karen A. Wyle

  Ma reached out to run a finger along the carving and give a light touch to the silver. “How’d you get the silver melted?”

  Tom tightened his mouth up. “I had to get O’Connor — the blacksmith — to help. He swore he wouldn’t tell Finch. I have to hope he’ll keep his word.”

  He just hoped the cowboy’d be pleased enough for it to be worth the risk Tom was running. Instead of engraving the silver, he’d had O’Connor turn it into thin wavy strips that Tom could put on. He’d had to think up a way to keep the silver in place, ending up with a piece sticking out the back like a pin, but hooked at the end, that stuck partway into the saddle. There’d been enough silver to put it in four different places.

  It pleased Ma, anyhow. She admired it a while longer before she fidgeted from foot to foot and said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. You haven’t been visiting our neighbors much. Nor seeing many other folk your age. Wouldn’t it be a nice change from just us here and Mr. Finch in town?”

  Tom straightened up and studied her face. She was blushing a little — enough to make him suspicious. “And just why are you all of a sudden thinking I need to get more social?”

  Fidget, blush, fidget. “It’s just that — well, it’d be good for you, to start thinking about finding a girl. A young man your age, it’s none too soon for you to think about courting. Starting a family of your own. Though you could still live here, naturally, if you and she cared to.”

  He’d been expecting Ma to start singing that song sooner or later. In fact, she had done, right before the plowshare fell on him. Never since. So why now?

  He could sort of picture him and Pa building a new room on, him coming home at night to —

  But what he saw in his head, coming in that door they hadn’t built yet, was a woman with bright eyes, generous curves, and lots of red hair.

  That’s what Ma must have heard about.

  “Ma, is there some kind of talk you’ve been listening to, that has you so eager to match me up?”

  Ma had her apron in her hands and was twisting it like she was washing it. “I did hear, when I went to that quilting bee last week, some of the ladies were saying . . . that you’d been going to that place. The — the house where those women are. Loose women.” Her lips went thin. “That you’d been there more than once, even.”

  Tom stood up and put his fists on his hips. “Well, what if it’s true, then? What difference does it make to anybody?”

  Ma gasped and seemed to go searching for what to say. “Well — well — you could catch who knows what from those women!”

  “Doc showed me how to keep that from happening.” Though he maybe shouldn’t’ve mentioned Doc. Too late now.

  Meanwhile, Ma had found her next shot to fire. “But women like that, they’re not good for a young man, they’re — they’re hard, like, and bound to take advantage, and lead you away from the good path . . . . Oh, Tom, I’m afraid for you!”

  Tom thought back to the months before the first time he went to Mamie’s, and almost shivered to remember. “Ma, I love you dearly, and I thank you for caring about me, but you don’t know. You just don’t. When I first went there, I hated everything I could think of, except you and Pa and Martha and Billy. I hated everyone I saw, on account of what I figured they was thinking when they looked at me. I hated morning when it came, for what the day was like to bring, and I hated the day, and I hated evening when things had gone about like I figured. And then I met Jenny — yeah, she’s got a name, and it’s Jenny, and she’s the purtyiest thing I’ve ever seen — and she’s maybe tougher’n the neighbor girls, ‘cause she has to be, but she’s not hard — somehow, she ain’t got that way. She’s nice to me, and maybe I’m just a damn fool —” Ma gasped again at his language, but there was no stopping him now. “Maybe I am, but I think she’s nice because she means it, because she likes me. And this —” He whacked his wooden leg hard enough to jar the stump. “This don’t scare her or make her feel sick. And she’s seen what I can do on leather, and she thinks it’s swell, instead of only thinking about all the things I can’t do, like a farm girl would. . . . It’s maybe because of Jenny that I’ve started thinking about my future, leastwise as something more’n what I’ve got to put up with until my time runs out. I think it’s due to her I’m doing this work you see. Just for that, I owe her more’n I can say. And those who say they love me owe her plenty!”

  Ma looked altogether lost. She wrung her hands and then slumped back against the side of the barn. “I just don’t know. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I don’t know how to keep my boy safe, and on the path of righteousness.”

  “Ma, weren’t you just saying how I was a man now, and ready to make my own path?” Well, she hadn’t said exactly that, but close enough.

  What would it take to get Ma thinking different about Jenny? Was that a trick Jenny could somehow do? “I wish you could meet her, somehow.”

  He half expected Ma to bolt from the barn at the very idea. But she studied Tom’s face as if she could see Jenny’s through it. “If this girl has done all you say, I don’t know what to think. My thinking’s all in a whirl.”

  Not having her push back hard against the idea took some of the starch out of him. “Way things are, it’s hard enough for me to see her. The one time she snuck out and met me in town, it ended up in a heck of a mess.”

  Ma seemed to be out of things to say, and Tom too. He stood still for her to come and kiss his cheek, and gave her the hug he’d been keeping. When she left, he looked back down at the saddle. At least that was something he could do, and hope to get right.

  Chapter 21

  Jenny woke up, saw the slant of the sun through the window, and jumped out of bed in a panic. Somehow she’d managed to oversleep! But how could that happen? Mamie always came through knocking on their doors and calling them to get their bones out of bed — “until you get back in with some company.” Why hadn’t she done it today?

  And there was some kind of commotion in the hall, lots of girls talking, and wasn’t that somebody crying?

  She scrambled out of bed and stuck her head out the door. It was Trudi crying. Trudi was one of the older girls, and one of the tougher, and Jenny’d never seen her cry before nor even imagined it.

  Jenny ran up to her, calling out, “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Trudi turned toward her with red, swollen eyes and wet cheeks. “It’s Mandy. She took too much laudanum. Doc Gibbs is with her, but it looks bad.”

  Amanda Jane? But she always seemed to know just what she was doing. Nothing got under her skin, Jenny’d thought. Was it an accident, or had she meant to —

  Jenny started crying herself as she ran to Amanda Jane’s room. Most of the girls were clustered there, some talking and some crying like her, blocking not just the doorway but part of the hall. And Mamie wasn’t there doing anything about it. She must be in the room with Amanda Jane and Doc.

  Bessie was one of the ones talking, Sophie bawling next to her. Jenny grabbed Bessie by the elbow and interrupted her. “What happened? Who found her, and how did they know?”

  Bessie might not be crying, but she looked paler’n Jenny’d ever seen her. “Mamie was waking girls up and wanted to tell Amanda Jane about some customer Mamie expected. From what Trudi says, Mandy was lying there acting half asleep, but scratching herself all over, except real slow. And when Mamie bent over her, she could tell Mandy was breathing awful slow too. So she sent Trudi to fetch Doc, but when he got here, he said she must’ve taken the laudanum hours ago. I saw him when he came near the door for a moment, and he looked awful sober.”

  Bessie turned away to take Sophie in her arms, so Jenny looked around for one of the others who might know more. Trudi had joined the group and was standing there real quiet. Jenny tapped her on the shoulder, but nothing happened. When she tried again, Trudi jumped and stared at Jenny like she’d never seen her before.

  Jenny mustered up her nerve and asked, “Did you know Amanda Jane was tak
ing laudanum? Did she do it regular?”

  Trudi seemed to come back from wherever she’d been. “Not back when I first knew her. She started maybe a year ago, when she got to thinking more about how old she was getting and where her life was likely to head.” She stared off at nothing again. “She said something last week about a customer giving her a special kind if she did something extra for him. I didn’t think nothing of it.”

  Just then, Doc and Mamie pushed their way through the crowd of girls enough to stand in the doorway. It seemed to take forever for everyone to hush up. When they finally had, Mamie said, her voice real tight, “Doc says that if any of you want to say goodbye, you’d better do it.”

  A wild mix of different girls crying welled up. Trudi got hold of herself first and yelled out, “Quiet, all of you!” They mostly quieted down enough for her to ask Mamie, “Why couldn’t Doc help her?”

  Mamie looked like she was going to tell Trudi off, but Doc put a hand on Mamie’s arm and answered, “An overdose of laudanum has to be handled right away. There’s a drug I can give to make the person vomit up what they took, but by the time anyone knew what had happened, too much of the drug had been in her too long.” He stopped, and Jenny could see his Adam’s apple jerk like he was swallowing hard. “I’ve seen it before, when wounded soldiers take too much laudanum or morphine, by mistake or when their pain became too much for them. The doctors couldn’t help if the man was found too late. I couldn’t do any better.” All of a sudden he looked different, angry, as angry as ever Papa did. “And it seems some scum of a medicine show pitchman gave her something stronger than she was used to.” He breathed hard, calming himself, and got to just looking sad again. “I’m sorry.”

  Mamie grabbed his hand and gripped it hard, pulled him out of the doorway into the room, and faced the girls. “Any of you wanting to go in, you get in a line. Four at a time by her bed. And don’t take too long about it.”

  Jenny stood there frozen. Did she want to say goodbye, if it meant seeing Amanda Jane lying there dying?

  By the time she decided to get in line, the group that went in a little ways ahead of her came out, some crying even harder, one screaming. Amanda Jane was gone.

  Mamie shooed the girls away from the door. “It’s over. The rest of you can say your goodbyes when we bury her. Now leave us be.” As she closed the door, Jenny could see Doc sitting in Amanda Jane’s customer chair, bent over, his head in his hands.

  Mamie called them all together in the main lounge an hour later. “We’re closed, today and the next two days. We’ll bury her day after tomorrow. Any of you that don’t have something that feels right to wear, you come talk to me.”

  Sophie piped up, “Where will they be burying her? I heard there’s not a lot of room left in the cemetery, that they’ve talked of starting up a new one.”

  Mamie clenched her fists tight, another thing Jenny couldn’t recall ever seeing before this terrible day. “Didn’t you know? They won’t put the likes of us in the cemetery, next to decent folks. They’ll be burying her alongside in that empty field.” She looked out over their heads toward where the preacher lived. “But maybe they’ll forget and put the new cemetery there, and Mandy’ll be in it after all and get the last laugh. She’d like that.”

  And then, finally, Mamie dropped into a chair and started to cry. Bessie went to her and put an arm around her, and Mamie let her. The rest of them filed out of the room, quiet as the grave.

  Jenny went back to her room for lack of any better thought. All she could picture was having someone come hold her, like Bessie was holding Mamie. But she couldn’t see any of the girls in that picture.

  She lay down on her bed, closing her eyes, wishing hard that she could go back to sleep, knowing it wouldn’t happen. But something did drift into her head, like a waking dream. Tom, lying on the bed alongside her, his big strong arm holding her tight.

  It’d been a whole day since Amanda Jane died, and Jenny’d hardly been able to think about anything else. She’d been lying in bed, and getting up and pacing around, and lying in bed again, and getting up again, for maybe hours. She hadn’t known she could feel drained and restless at the same time. It felt kind of like having a fever, though she hadn’t had one since she was little. Remembering that, remembering Mama’s hand on her forehead, made her want to start crying again, but she was so sick of crying . . .

  When someone knocked on her door, she called out, “Come on in!” and then hoped it wasn’t Mamie, who’d be mighty put out at her not getting up to open it. But it was Bessie, and she came in and sat on the bed.

  “Doc’s here. Mamie called for him, on account of so many of the girls being so upset. She didn’t want to give ‘em laudanum after what’s happened, but she didn’t know what else to do. He’s in our room now talking to Sophie. Would you like him to come see you next?”

  Didn’t seem likely Doc could do much to help, but he’d always treated her kindly, and she could use all the kindly she could get today. “I’d like that, and my thanks for thinking of it.”

  Bessie pressed her hand and left, her feet dragging. Jenny flopped back against the pillow, and rolled around trying to find some way to lie there that felt right. Nothing did.

  It wasn’t long before she heard the kind of knock that you could tell was a man’s. The door cracked a little open, and Doc said, “Jenny, are you ready for me to come in?”

  This time she got up and met him at the door. She even called up something like a smile, but it felt so strange on her face that she dropped it. Doc came in, looking almost as sad as she felt, but then he made his own try at a smile, a bit better’n hers. He looked around like he didn’t know just what to do with himself, so she sat on the bed and waved toward the chair.

  Once he’d sat down, he said, “I’ve brought something that may help you and the other girls feel better. It’s lemon balm tea. Somebody’s granny told me once that it was good for soothing people, and it turns out the Indians use it too, though they prepare it differently. I can fetch you some.”

  “Doc, you shouldn’t go fetching and carrying for me —”

  He hushed her. “I want to do everything I can, and it’s little enough.”

  He looked even sadder as he said it. She took hold of his shoulder and shook him a little, wondering at where she got the nerve. “Doc, it wasn’t your fault. None of us think it was.”

  He tried for a smile again and didn’t manage it. “Thank you for saying that, my dear, but it’s what I think that matters more just now. Or rather, what I feel, which is that somehow, I should have been able to save that poor girl.” He took a deep breath. “And now, I’ll make myself useful and get you that tea.”

  While he was getting it, Jenny sat at her dressing table and tried to tidy up. Her eyes were still swollen from all the crying she did before, and her hair was such a tangle she could barely get a comb through it. Trying got her feeling so wild, she pulled a clump of hair clean out and threw the comb down just as Doc came back with a steaming cup that smelled good. He acted like he hadn’t noticed and put the cup down on the dressing table, saying, “Blow on that a bit and drink it up.”

  She picked it up and only then noticed that her hand was shaking. She managed not to spill but a couple of drops. Doc patted her shoulder and walked softly away, closing her door behind him.

  Something stopped him, though, not far outside her door. Jenny took another drink of the tea, put it down, and crept over on tiptoe to listen. What she heard was Mamie’s voice, sounding fretful. “How is she? I don’t know whether to worry more about the older ones more like Mandy, who’ve seen too much, or the young ones who haven’t had such a chance to build their defenses up.”

  Jenny had to press her ear to the door to hear what Doc was saying. “I’m hoping the tea will help. But if I may suggest it, I think it’d do Jenny good to get out of here for a while, get some fresh air and a change of scene.” Then, as if Mamie had got ready to object, “Now I know Jenny got into some trouble a wh
ile back, but I could go with her, be her escort. Or chaperone, if you want to think of it that way.”

  Neither of them said anything for a minute. Jenny could just picture the look Mamie was likely giving him. “And does Jenny need this kind of outing more than the others, to make you offer to take her under your wing?”

  Jenny’d seen Doc blush a few times, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was blushing now. “Well, she’s the one we were discussing, as well as the one you might not trust out on her own, given that bit of history.”

  Another quiet stretch, until Mamie finally said, “All right, then. I won’t ask too many questions. So long as you promise to keep an eye on her, and not let her do anything likely to cause her more grief.”

  Then Doc’s voice, kind of low. “I’m no wiser than any other man, and I can’t tell the future. But I’ll do my best.”

  She heard Mamie’s footsteps moving down the hall, and only Mamie’s. She jumped back from the door in time to be clear of it when Doc opened it again. He saw how close she was standing, though, and smiled better’n he’d been able to before. “I gather you heard what I proposed. Would you like to get out for a bit?”

  Jenny walked over to the corner of the room farthest from the door and crooked her finger to draw him after her. When he’d joined her, or almost, she whispered, “Is there anything you didn’t tell Mamie about what we’d be doing?”