Copper Star

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  She was so disgusted with having a girl like Glenda in the house that she woke William up and took him on errands, just so he wouldn’t be “further corrupted by Glenda’s influence.” Amazingly, she even took Dog with her, to keep Dog uncorrupted, as well, I suppose.

  I did exactly as Robert asked and helped get Glenda dressed in one of my skirts and blouses. Her eyes looked so beaten down. She did everything I asked, just like a little child.

  An hour or so later, Robert pulled into the driveway. He popped into the kitchen and asked if Glenda was ready to go. “You’d better come, too, Louisa.” We put Glenda in the backseat. As we drove down the street, we passed Herr Mueller standing in front of his bank. He stopped and stared at us as we drove past him. His stare made me shudder. Robert would say I was just being paranoid, but Herr Mueller always seemed to be watching me.

  “Glenda, we’re taking you to a woman named Betty Drummond. She lives alone on a little farm, way out of town. Her grandmother died recently, and Betty’s been lonesome. She’s good at nursing, too. Nursed her grandmother for years. I went to talk to her this morning, and she agreed to take care of you, at least until you’re back on your feet. Does that sound fine to you?”

  Glenda nodded. “But I ain’t ever goin’ back to Mick’s. I’m done.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Robert said. “We’ll help you figure out what to do when you’re mended.”

  When we reached Betty’s home, she had already made up the guestroom for Glenda and put flowers from the garden by the bedside. “Nobody’s done such nice things for me before. I thank you,” she said, climbing into bed.

  “You’re safe now, Glenda. No one can hurt you out here,” Robert said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to say a prayer before we go.”

  Glenda looked away. I put a hand on her shoulder as Robert bowed his head, not waiting for her answer. “Lord, please heal Glenda’s body and her spirit. We ask you to bless Betty, too, for being so gracious as to take care of Glenda. We know you love Glenda, Lord, for you brought friends to her to take care of her. We pray for your protection over her, and for justice to be delivered to the person who harmed her. Amen.” Then he added, “Glenda, Louisa and I will come out now and then to check on you.”

  One little teardrop escaped and rolled down her cheek before she wiped it away.

  Downstairs, I handed Betty a bag. “I brought some books for Glenda. She’s just learning to read. She’s smart, too. She’s already on first grade readers. I thought you might be able to help her, if you have a free minute.”

  From the look on Betty’s face, I wasn’t sure who was going to benefit more—Glenda from Betty’s care or Betty, from having someone to fuss over.

  On the car ride home I looked over at Robert and smiled at him. “Nice work, Reverend.”

  He glanced back at me with a shy grin. “Well, Betty could use a little extra cash right now. The church has a budget to pay for emergencies like this.”

  I knew the church didn’t have any such emergency fund. I knew Robert would be paying Betty out of his own modest salary.

  After dinner that evening, Mick Hills came to our door. Miss Gordon opened it and nearly suffered heart failure. She sent Mick over to Robert’s office. Back she marched into the kitchen, grumbling loudly with a resentful toss of her head in my direction, “twice in one day. I start the day with a prostitute and end the day with a panderer. That’s a fine kettle of fish.”

  I darted out of the kitchen, hoping to avoid hearing another diatribe about how I had further sullied the fine Gordon name.

  A while later, I heard Robert come in through the kitchen door. I ran downstairs to meet him. “What did he want? Why did he come to see you?”

  “Where’s Aunt Martha?” he asked, glancing around for her.

  “She went up to bed with a headache.”

  Robert sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a seat out for me. “He said Glenda has talked about you at the tavern. He took a guess that she came here.”

  “He doesn’t know where she is now, though, does he?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. He didn’t even seem to care about that. He just wanted me to know that he wasn’t the one who hurt Glenda. And he gave me this for her.” He pulled out a crisp new one hundred dollar bill. “He said it was her back wages.”

  “Who did harm her?”

  “He refused to say. All that he said is that it won’t happen again.”

  I turned over the hundred dollar bill. “Do you think this money is to keep Glenda silent?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” He scratched his chin. “Do you think she might confide in you about who did this to her?”

  “I don’t know.” I tilted my head. “Are you convinced Mick was telling you the truth?”

  “I can’t be positive, but I didn’t get the impression that he was lying.” He looked straight at me. “Why? What are you thinking? That someone wants to keep Mick quiet, too?”

  That’s exactly what I was thinking. And I had a sneaking suspicion who that someone might be. There was only one man in this town with money to throw around. But to Robert, I only shrugged. He often told me that my imagination worked overtime and probably would’ve dismissed my concerns as being ridiculously suspicious. I needed proof.

  And, this morning, I might have found it.

  * * *

  A few weeks went by before Robert and I went out to check on Glenda and Betty. Glenda’s bruises were healing well, and she was thriving under Betty’s motherly care. As Betty went to the kitchen to prepare a pot of tea for us, Robert gave Glenda the hundred dollar bill from Mick, explaining that it was back wages. A shadow passed over Glenda’s face as she accepted the cash, almost reluctantly.

  “How is your reading coming along?” I asked her, trying to change the subject.

  She brightened immediately and told me there was a book on her nightstand that she was almost able to read completely.

  “Let me go get it and hear you read aloud.” I ran upstairs and then, quietly, closed Glenda’s bedroom door. I felt a pang of guilt as I snooped around but not enough to stop me. There was something in this room that I needed to find.

  I opened up the drawer to her nightstand but it wasn’t there. I hunted in her closet and found the sweater she had been wearing that night she came to the parsonage, bruised and bleeding. I checked the pockets. And there it was: a man’s large ruby ring.

  When I had given Glenda my clothes to wear, I had picked up her sweater and the ring dropped out of the pocket, rolling on the floor. She had been in the room with me at the time and snatched the ring off the floor, hiding it in her hand.

  Today, I slipped the ring into my skirt pocket, picked up the book, and hurried downstairs.

  Glenda read the book aloud. I asked her to read it again, just for practice. “Even better! Glenda, you’re doing very well.”

  After tea, Robert and I said goodbye to the two women. We both felt much better than we had the last time we’d left them as we drove down the highway.

  Suddenly, reddish-brown walls of dust covered the Hudson. Robert pulled off to the side of the road as far as possible and set the emergency brake. “We need to wait this out,” he said. Dust storms usually only lasted a few minutes, but they could strike without warning in the desert and make driving conditions very hazardous. “Roll your window up tightly.”

  I used the lull to tell Robert my suspicion that Herr Mueller was the one responsible for hurting Glenda. I told him all about her nephew, Tommy, and that I thought Herr Mueller might be deceiving Glenda about Tommy’s whereabouts.

  His skeptical response was just what I had anticipated. “Louisa, I realize you don’t like the man, but you can’t just leap to the assumption that he would be visiting a brothel, beating up a girl and kidnapping a child.”

  “Why are you so certain it couldn’t be Herr Mueller?”

  “Because he’s a married man. He attends church. He’s a leader in the community. T
hose aren’t the kind of men who visit brothels.”

  And he called me naïve. “What if I could prove it to you?”

  “How? Glenda and Mick won’t say who is responsible.”

  “Do you ever remember noticing a large ring on Herr Mueller’s hand? It was big and flashy with a bright red ruby in the center.”

  “I never noticed.”

  I took the ring out of my pocket and held it out in my hand.

  He picked it up and examined it. “Where did you get this?”

  I explained how I had found the ring in her sweater a few weeks ago.

  “Louisa, I don’t want you to do anything about this right now.”

  “Why not? I have proof! I just need to convince Glenda to talk. I think she took this ring as insurance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just have a feeling she knows she might have trouble getting her nephew back. I think she took the ring to be able to force Herr Mueller’s hand.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment. “I still don’t want you to do anything about this right now.”

  “But why not now? Glenda is doing much better. You saw that for yourself.”

  “Because I’m going out of town for a while and I don’t want to have to worry about this while I’m gone.”

  What? Robert was leaving? “When? Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to North Carolina for a General Assembly meeting for the Presbyterian Church. I’m leaving at the end of next week.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “A week or two.”

  I was quiet after that.

  “Louisa, for now, Glenda is mending. She needs peace and quiet. Leave it alone until I get back.”

  Just then the dust cloud lifted, and he started up the Hudson, heading home. But as it lifted and the air cleared, I was left feeling completely churned up inside.

  * * *

  The evening before he left, Robert went up to his room to pack. I brought up fresh laundry Miss Gordon had ironed for his trip. With my arms full of laundry, I knocked on his door and waited until he opened it.

  “If I was learning English all over again, I would skip learning grammar and take a class that just taught common expressions. It seems as if that is the true spoken language of all Americans,” I decided as I handed him one stack of shirts.

  He put the laundry on his bed. “Especially true in Copper Springs,” he said. “It’s a fascinating language of word pictures.” He pulled his suitcase down from his closet shelf. “Why? What did Aunt Martha say?” His eyes were smiling.

  “She wondered if the cat’s got my tongue.”

  He laughed as if that was a very funny remark. He was feeling quite cheerful about this trip.

  I wasn’t.

  “Why is that so funny? I know the words, but I just can’t understand what they mean. I just hate feeling…not smart.”

  “Exactly why it is amusing!”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, irritated.

  “It’s a saying used when someone seems unusually quiet. It comes from an old punishment when the tongues were cut out of prisoners’ mouths and fed to the cats.”

  I looked at him in horror which only got him laughing again. I shuddered in disgust and handed him the other armful of laundry.

  “Thank you. I’ll need these.” He put the pile down next to his suitcase and started to pack. He glanced up at me. “You do seem a little out of sorts lately.”

  I ignored that remark. “When are you coming back again?”

  “I’ve told you three or four times. A few weeks. Why do you keep asking me?”

  “Because it’s always changing.” It was always getting longer.

  “Well, I‘ve heard Dr. Peter Marshall might attend.”

  “Who is Peter Marshall?”

  “He’s a Scottish minister with an excellent preaching reputation. He pastors the church where Abraham Lincoln used to worship, right in Washington D.C. Called New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.”

  “A Presbyterian and a Scotsman. No wonder you want to meet him.”

  “Aye, lass. A winning combination,” he said, feigning a Scottish accent.

  I threw a ball of socks at him from the pile of laundry on his bed. He caught it and tossed it into his suitcase, an uncontrollable grin spreading across his face. I sat down on the bed across from the suitcase. “And you have a ride to the train station?”

  ”Yes. Judge Pryor said he could take me. We’re leaving at dawn. He has some law business to do in Tucson and then I can leave the Hudson for you and Aunt Martha. You’re going to start taking William to that Bisbee tutor, right?” He glanced up at me as he was putting clothes into his suitcase.

  I nodded. “First meeting is scheduled for next week.”

  “I might talk to Judge Pryor about Mueller and the ring, Louisa. I just want you to promise to leave it alone until I get back.”

  “I promise. I told you that,” I said, sounding a little more annoyed than I intended to sound.

  He stopped packing and looked right at me. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have you heard some news about Dietrich?”

  “No. Still no trial. He is getting some letters smuggled out. The warders and the guards are helping him, amazingly enough. They let him have visitors. But that’s all that I’ve heard.”

  “Are you worried about him?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that why you seem so quiet lately?”

  “I told you. I’m fine.”

  “Not worried about Glenda?”

  I shook my head.

  “Or Mueller?” He eyed me with suspicion. “You’re not cooking up another crazy evil scheme that he’s up to, are you?”

  I frowned at him and stood up to leave. I was not interested in being preached a sermon about the pitfalls of an overactive imagination. I put one hand on the doorknob and turned back to him. “I heard on the news this morning the Germans are withdrawing in Italy. And that’s after surrendering in Crimea just a few days ago. Hitler is starting to get backed into Germany. Things are looking good for the war to end soon, don’t you think?”

  “It’s certainly looking better. In Europe, anyway. We’re still in for a long fight on the Pacific front, though.”

  “You’ll be back in two weeks?”

  “Probably three. Maybe four.”

  I shut the door behind me, holding on to the doorknob for a moment.

  During the night, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went downstairs to get one of Robert’s thick theology books to read. That always did the trick to help me fall back asleep. He was in the parlor, sitting on the davenport, staring at the fire. I didn’t expect him to be downstairs; I thought he had gone to bed hours ago.

  “What are you doing up? I thought you were leaving early.” I curled up on the opposite end of the davenport.

  “Same as you. Couldn’t sleep,” he answered.

  The fire crackled, warming the room with its dancing light.

  “So…you’re looking forward to this General Assembly meeting?” I asked.

  “Yes. I really am. They’re creating an important report on a theology called dispensationalism.”

  “Are you for or against it?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said in that condescending tone I knew so well.

  “I know, Robert. I’ve read about it. Dispensationalism believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and makes careful distinctions between different periods of God's dealings with man.” I looked over at him. “Does that cover it?”

  Surprised, he answered, “impressive scholarship, Miss Schmetterling.”

  “Do you think I just borrow your big books to use as a doorstop?” I said, smiling, and turned back to watch the flickering flames of the fire. For a long stretch of minutes, we continued to sit without talking.

  Then, without thinking first, I blurted out, “it just won’t seem the same whi
le you’re away.”

  He reached over and took my left hand in his, weaving his fingers with mine. “Louisa, I…”

  “Don’t,” I whispered. “Robert, please don’t say it.” I rose to my feet. “Have a safe trip. Godspeed. And please hurry back.” I kissed the top of his head and quickly went up the stairs to my room. I just couldn’t bear to see the look in his eyes.

  * * *

  I thought the first few days after Robert left would be the hardest, but I was mistaken. Each day grew longer, and rather than feel as if it brought his return closer, it only seemed to extend it further.

  Throughout each day, I would think of something I wanted to talk to him about, or share a sentence from a wonderful book I was reading, or have William show off his newest words, only to remember that he was gone and it would be weeks before he returned.

  To add to that, I worried about the way we left things between us. I knew I had to stop him that night before he said another word. I hoped that by stopping him, things wouldn’t change between us. Our friendship could remain just as it was.

  Miss Gordon, William, and I went to church on Sunday. In Robert’s pulpit stood a minister called a ‘supply pastor.’ Retired ministers filled in for the active ministers while they were away or on vacation. Reverend Hubbell, an elderly minister recruited from nearby Douglas, a border town to Mexico, agreed to deliver the Sunday sermons for Robert until he returned.

  He looked shockingly frail, his skin papery thin, and he had a raspy, feeble voice, not unlike how I imagined Noah’s voice would have sounded after climbing a set of stairs in the Ark. Yet when he stood up at that pulpit, out thundered a booming voice.

  The text he chose was Ecclesiastes 5:1-7. “When we come to worship before the Lord,” he bellowed, “come quietly! Be prepared to listen more than you talk. God is communicating. God is speaking! Listen to the wisdom of King Solomon: ‘Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words. For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God’.”