Sweet Everlasting

by Patricia Gaffney

  Even though it was only April, the late-afternoon scent of wildflowers was strong enough to make her pause, closing her eyes on a deep, dreamy inhale. This year she’d worked harder than ever on her flowers, and it had been worth it. She gazed about at the clumps of white Quaker ladies and trillium, heavy-headed and nodding, the low bed of rue anemone, the far-off spread of bloodroot and spring violets. She’d transplanted a tub of yellow wood betony from the patch near the cabin, because thinking of its other name—lousewort—always reminded her of Dr. Wilkes. She smiled now, remembering how he’d tried to make her laugh with his talk of “dogbane” and “bladderwort.”

  She didn’t really need flowers or anything else, though, to make her think of Dr. Wilkes. She’d thought of him every day in the three weeks since the revival meeting, and she knew a lot more about him now than she had then. She’d only been sixteen when the war with Spain broke out, but she remembered the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor and how it had outraged everybody in Wayne’s Crossing. She’d heard of the Rough Riders, too, and she recalled little boys in town brandishing stick swords and shouting, “Rough, rough, we’re the stuff, we wanna fight and we can’t get enough! Whoopee!” But now that she had met Dr. Wilkes, she wanted to know more—everything—about the war, and especially the First United States Volunteer Cavalry.

  So she’d gone to the library, where Miss Fuller had taught her how to look things up in old copies of The World and the New York Journal and the Post. Terrible stories of Cuban peasants starving and dying in the reconcentrado camps had made her cry. Cuba libre! She remembered the slogan, and wished now she’d been more aware of the war when it was going on. She might have done something to help—although exactly what, she couldn’t think.

  But the most interesting stories in the old magazines and newspapers to Carrie were the ones about Dr. Wilkes’s famous regiment. Twenty-three thousand men had applied for it, she read, but only a thousand had been chosen. Theodore Roosevelt was their leader, and the paper said it didn’t take him any time at all to learn every one of their names. They’d come from all walks of life—lumberjacks, college athletes, frontier outlaws, high-society polo players. They’d trained in Texas for weeks, until Roosevelt bragged his regiment could whip Caesar’s tenth legion. Carrie loved to look at the photographs of the troopers, posing on horseback in their slouch hats, leather boots, and low-slung gun belts. In one, she thought she saw Dr. Wilkes, looking rugged and nonchalant on a big black horse, in the third row of an endless line of soldiers spread out across the San Antonio plain. She’d stared and squinted, peered and gaped, but she could never be sure if it was really him.

  If she could’ve had one wish, it would’ve been that she could keep the photograph for her own, whether it was him in it or not, and tack it up on the wall behind the curtain in her sleeping place. But Miss Fuller said it was forbidden to even borrow the old newspapers, much less keep them. So she contented herself with going to the library as often as she could, to read about the Rough Riders and gaze at the grainy smudge of hat and handsome face and wide shoulders that might or might not be Dr. Wilkes.

  The sunlight was beginning to drain from the trees. It must be close to six o’clock, which meant Artemis would be wanting his supper. And he’d be wondering why it had taken her so long to clean dead leaves from the roof of the springhouse. But he was used to the not-quite-lies she told him to explain her tardiness and her frequent disappearances—“I was out walking,” she’d write, or “I didn’t notice the time.” As long as it didn’t inconvenience him, he didn’t really care where she went or what she did. He thought she was crazy anyway. “Hen-headed,” he called her, and “feeble-brained.” It didn’t matter to her what he thought. But if he knew about her hospital, he’d ridicule it or call it “godless” and forbid her to come. No, he’d do worse than that—more likely he’d wreck it, and then laugh at her if she cried.

  She took a last look at the sparrow hawk. You rest and get well, she advised him. I’ll bring a moth for your supper, after Artemis goes to sleep. And tomorrow she’d make sketches of the hawk for her Book. Covering the box again, she snatched up her shawl from a branch of mountain laurel.

  April on Dreamy Mountain was a trial sometimes. You couldn’t trust it, and every good day was still a gift. Nature had played tricks all day yesterday, for instance, with snow in the morning, then rain, dazzling sun, wind all of a sudden, and then hail, and finally the prettiest sunset she’d ever seen. Today it was warm and muddy, and the air smelled sweet, and the noise of birds was loud, wild, and constant. She stepped over a soggy, greening carpet of sphagnum moss and started along the path that led down to the cabin. The path was still rough, no one could see it yet, she was sure; but in a few weeks she’d have to begin taking a different route, start a different trail.

  Even though it was late, she paused, under the Squeaky Tree, bending over to examine the clear-cut, heart-shaped little hoofprint of a deer in the wet earth. Behind a tangle of wild grapevine a towhee was scratching. She waited for his song, and presently he piped up, “Drink your teeeee!” Beside her shoulder, a green tree caterpillar lowered himself on a silky thread. She touched him with the tip of her finger, and he wriggled up and out of sight before she could blink. Chipmunks raced in the dry leaves; their sharp, steady chipping sent a message: Go home, Carrie, you’re late.

  She thanked them for reminding her and set off, quickening her pace. But at the woods’ edge she stopped again, to look at the sky. One star flickered just over the top of the black birch, pale yellow and so faint she could hardly see it unless she looked off a little ways to the side. The first star of the evening was the best wishing star. She made her wish, the same one she’d made every night for three weeks. I wish I could see Dr. Wilkes again.

  She rounded the side of the cabin, intending to give the mule a hug before she went inside. She stopped short when she saw a horse and buggy standing in front of Petey’s lean-to. On the floor of the buggy sat a small black case. A doctor’s bag. It renewed her flagging faith in star wishes.

  “What would I be wanting with that? Puny little thing, it sure ain’t no hunter. No offense, but you can take that back wherever it came from, Doc. I can’t hardly keep food on the table for me and the girl as it is, the last thing I need is a useless animal.”

  Dr. Wilkes turned when he heard her in the doorway, and Carrie saw what he had in his arms—a puppy. She was already smiling from the pure pleasure of seeing him; the sight of the little brown and white dog made her want to laugh.

  “Hello,” he said in his deep, stirring voice, smiling back at her, and her heart gave a powerful leap in her chest. He looked stronger, she thought; his face wasn’t as thin as three weeks ago, and his color was healthier. Men weren’t supposed to be beautiful—but he was. Oh, he was.

  “A patient gave it to me yesterday in lieu of payment,” he was saying, holding the puppy out to her. “I thought you might like to have it, since Shadow’s gone.”

  The puppy had a round baby face, brown with a white spot over one eye and the opposite ear. She loved it already, even knowing she couldn’t have it. She took it out of Dr. Wilkes’s arms and gave it a soft hug. It was a male dog, she saw. He smelled wonderful. His fat belly was warm and almost hairless. He wagged his tail and started to lick her cheek, and she lost her heart altogether.

  “I’m telling you, I won’t have it in the house. She can’t keep it, and you’ve got no call bringing useless animals here just because nobody else wants ’em.” Artemis planted his feet and got the mule-stubborn look in his face that meant he wouldn’t budge if a hurricane hit him. He was so ignorant sometimes, he could take offense at a cross-eyed glance, and now he’d decided to take Dr. Wilkes’s kind offer as an insult. Carrie felt her face getting hot from embarrassment, and buried it in the puppy’s furry neck.

  “I’ll take it back with me, then.” His voice didn’t sound like it, but she wondered if he was angry. “I was in the neighborhood, visiting the Haights�
�� little boy, and I thought of Carrie. Because she lost her dog recently.”

  She glanced up to see how Artemis took that, if he’d look guilty or angry or what. His cheeks under the stubble of his two-day-old beard turned red, but he didn’t say a word about Shadow. “You been to see Haights? What they want with a doctor for?” He laughed his mean laugh. “Bet you got nothing outa them for your trouble, did you? Not even a dog.”

  “The little boy, Gillie, has a fever,” Dr. Wilkes said shortly, and this time Carrie was sure she saw a flick of temper in his blue eyes.

  Artemis hawked up some spit and then swallowed it. “Fever, eh? It’s nothing but a punishment for the godlessness they live by. The Lord don’t allow sinfulness forever, not in this life. There’s a payment for it. Gillie Haight is paying it for ’em today. Next time it’ll be a different one.”

  Dr. Wilkes didn’t say anything, he just looked at Artemis as if he was some new, strange kind of person he’d never encountered before. The silence went on and on until, to Carrie’s surprise, Artemis dropped his eyes and started moving his thumbs up and down behind his suspenders, nervous.

  “Where’s your manners?” he barked all of a sudden, glaring at her. “Give the doc something to drink. Stay to supper, Doc? Carrie, get the food started. Right now.” He turned away toward the fireplace.

  “Thank you, but I can’t stay. Maybe another time.”

  Artemis glanced up sharply. “Sure, another time.” He looked baffled, as if he couldn’t decide if he’d been insulted again or not.

  Carrie made up her mind to say good-bye to Dr. Wilkes by herself. Still holding the puppy, she went to the door and stepped outside. Dr. Wilkes followed, and she closed the door on Artemis without looking at him.

  Out in the yard, they stood next to each other without saying anything for a minute. She stared at the cabin in horror, wondering how she could’ve missed seeing how run-down and shabby it looked. What must Dr. Wilkes be thinking of that broken front window Artemis wouldn’t fix? She’d covered it herself with a piece of greased paper so some light could get in, but that, she saw now, just made it look worse. Tackier. How backward they must seem to him! His house had electricity and even a telephone. And how puny her garden must look; she wanted to explain to him that it was too shady and cool right here for much besides onions and lettuce, cabbage and beets. But did he notice how healthy her herb garden was, and did he think it was clever of her to plant it between the rungs of that old ladder on the ground? Drat—why hadn’t she swept the porch this morning, and gotten those cobwebs out from under—

  “I’m sorry about the dog, Carrie.”

  Sometimes his voice could go clear through her, all the way to the soles of her feet. She gave the top of the puppy’s head a sorrowful little kiss and handed him over. He started squirming, half in her arms and half in Dr. Wilkes’s, so they set him on the ground between them. Immediately he waddled over to the side of the house and peed on the violets and the lily of the valley that hadn’t bloomed yet. She and Dr. Wilkes looked at each other and grinned.

  Carrie got her notebook out and wrote him a message. Thank you for thinking of the puppy for me. I wish I could’ve kept him.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he said after he’d read it. He was looking at her with such a warm expression, she could’ve melted right where she stood. “I didn’t think about your stepfather. Stoneman told me a few things about him, and now I realize I shouldn’t have brought the dog. I apologize if I’ve made you feel worse—that wasn’t at all what I intended.”

  She reached out and touched his sleeve, anxious to set him at ease. Scribbling quickly, she wrote, I don’t feel worse. Honest! Will you keep him for yourself? The puppy?

  He smiled, and her heart did the little dance in her chest again. “I guess I might have to. Mrs. Quick will not be pleased. Which is reason enough to think about keeping him, don’t you think?”

  She touched her hand to her mouth, laughing with her eyes. It thrilled her to be taken into his confidence like this, to hear him talk about his housekeeper in that humorous way—as if they were really friends and Mrs. Quick was someone they could joke about together.

  The puppy was over by the buggy, snuffling around the horse’s feet, yipping at it, and worrying it with little make-believe attacks. Dr. Wilkes walked over to him, scooped him up, and set him on the seat inside the buggy. “Stay,” he commanded. It didn’t surprise Carrie at all when he stayed.

  In her notebook she wrote, Is Gillie going to get well?

  “Yes, I don’t think it’s anything serious.” He hesitated. “The Haights haven’t got much good to say about your stepfather, have they?”

  She nodded unhappily. Bad Mood, she wrote. Willis Haight and Artemis—enemies.

  “So I gathered. But they all think you’re an angel. Gillie said he wished you were his real sister.”

  She flapped her hand in the air and made a face.

  “Mrs. Haight told me—out of her husband’s hearing—that they might not have made it two winters ago without your help. Secret help, I think. And dangerous for you if your stepfather knew of it. Am I right? “

  She shook her head. Nothing, she wrote hurriedly. Really, nothing. The disbelief in his face made her write, Really, again, dark and bold. Quickly she wrote, How are you feeling these days ?

  “Much better.” He sounded impatient. “Carrie—”

  You look wonderful, she scribbled, and held the paper out for him to see. He grinned. She blushed. Much healthier, she clarified, beet-faced.

  “Thank you very much. I think it’s this wholesome country air.”

  She nodded, and started to write, It’s very—when he reached out and put both hands on her throat. She was so surprised, she didn’t move. His touch was light and gentle—she could’ve taken one step back and been free of it. She stayed still. She felt like she was under a spell. But he must’ve seen something in her eyes because he said, so quiet, “Don’t be afraid, Carrie, I’d never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?” Yes. She moved her chin a little, to tell him. He smiled, and she had to close her eyes for a second. He slid one hand to the back of her neck, steadying her, and started to move the fingertips of his other hand up and down her throat. She stopped breathing entirely. “How does this feel?” he murmured. “Is there any pain when I press here?” No. “Or here?” No.

  His eyes were the same color as gentians, blue-violet and brilliant. Carrie’s legs started to tremble. She couldn’t look at his mouth any longer. She closed her eyes again and all her senses, everything in her focused on the soft, sure feel of his hands on her bare skin. No one had touched her, not like this, with kindness, almost with tenderness—not since her mother died. Tears burned behind her closed eyelids. Her heart burst open. She loved Tyler Wilkes.

  “Open your mouth, Carrie.” He had his fingers on her lips, pressing softly, persuasively. “Let me see what I can see. Open up, that’s my girl.”

  His smile shattered her. She almost—almost obeyed.

  She batted his hand away and ran.

  “Wait!”

  He grabbed her shoulder before she could go three steps and pulled her around to face him. His hands weren’t so gentle now. “What is it? Carrie, why are you frightened? Tell me.”

  All she could do was stare at him, miserable, both hands pushing against his chest.

  “Listen to me, I want to help you. If I can’t, I’ll find someone who can. I know a doctor in Baltimore, he specializes in ailments of the larynx and the vocal cords, he could—Carrie, wait—”

  She twisted away, too quick for him this time. She started to bolt for the house—and skidded in her tracks when she saw Artemis in the opening door, poking his head out and scowling at her.

  “Were you planning on making supper tonight? Get inside, girl, now.”

  He looked more than mad, he looked suspicious. Forcing her body to relax, Carrie made herself turn around and give Dr. Wilkes a friendly, casual wave. He stood stock-still, watching
her. Then he said her name, quietly so Artemis couldn’t hear, in a tense question. But of course, she couldn’t answer. She waved again, turned, and fled.

  7

  CARRIE COULD HARDLY BELIEVE she was here. In fact, the louder the music played and the more crowded the fire hall got, the more unlikely it all seemed. But she was here, all right, dressed in her old yellow pinafore, patched blouse, and worn-out shoes, trying to become invisible against the farthest wall of the fire hall at the Wayne’s Crossing Annual Spring Heel-and-Toedown. Wondering what in the world had possessed her to come.

  She must not have been in her right mind. It hadn’t been her idea, that was for sure. It was Eppy’s fault, really, because she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Carrie had spent the day taking care of the four little Odell girls while Eppy went to Chambersburg to visit her mother, and when she came home she’d insisted that Carrie go with her and Frank to the dance. Nothing Carrie had done had made the least bit of difference. Eppy looked sweet and gentle, and people who didn’t know her made the mistake of thinking she was a docile, even a meek sort of person. Ha! She didn’t have a meek bone in her body. Most people did what she said, just to avoid getting bullied, and more often than not Carrie was no different.

  Still, she might have disobeyed her tonight, considering how much she hated public gatherings or any other occasion, even church, that gave people a chance to look at her and whisper about her. She guessed she would never understand what was so interesting about a person who couldn’t talk, or why people hadn’t gotten used to her by now. Being mute had set her apart from the day she and Artemis had come here four and a half years ago, and she hadn’t helped any by being shy, private, and nearly always alone. Things were better now that she was through school—adults didn’t torment her the way children did, and by now most people had figured out that she was harmless. Except for a few, though, no one had much to do with her. That was partly her fault, because of her bashfulness and isolation, and partly Artemis’s fault. Nobody liked him, and when they thought of him, naturally they thought of her, too.