by Carla Kelly
They came over the brow of the hill and Fort Laramie sprawled below. In the light of late afternoon, more forgiving than the glare of midday, the fort was a shabby jumble of wooden, adobe and brick buildings.
“Why is everything painted red?” she asked.
“Apparently some earlier commander noted in a memo to Washington that the old girl was looking shabby. Next thing you know, there was a gigantic shipment of what we call quartermaster red. For reasons known to God alone, we also have a monstrous supply of raisins. Welcome to the U.S. Army.”
Chapter Four
“It’s so shabby,” Susanna said. “This is it?”
Joe laughed, which made Captain Dunklin flutter open his eyes. “As forts go, Fort Laramie is old. Forts out here are built for expediency, not permanence. When Lo is on reservations and the frontier shifts, this old dame will disappear.” He pointed to a row of houses. “We’ll let out Captain Dunklin first.”
The ambulance slowed, then stopped in front of an adobe double house. Captain Dunklin croaked out his thanks as the post surgeon helped him from the ambulance.
Susanna watched with interest as doors opened along Officers Row. On the other side of the largest building on the row, she thought she saw her cousin standing on a porch. She squinted, impatient with her bad eye.
The post surgeon shook his head when he rejoined her. “Captain Dunklin thinks he’s on his deathbed. Mrs. Dunklin is sobbing. Who knew he was so susceptible to diseases of the imagination?”
The ambulance continued down the row, passing the largest building.
“That is Old Bedlam, built almost thirty years ago.”
“Old Bedlam?”
“It’s been used as a headquarters, officers’ apartments, but most often as quarters for bachelor officers, hence the name.”
She wondered what the building with its elegant porch and balcony would look like, painted sensible white. To her Eastern eyes, Old Bedlam was grandiose and totally out of place, even painted red. “Do you live there?”
“No. Rank hath its privilege. I am two doors down from your cousin, in quarters with six rooms, as befits a major. I know. It hardly seems fair I should have so much space—two rooms more than Captain Reese—but I use one room as my clinic for women and children. Ah. There is Emily Reese.”
He helped Susanna from the ambulance. The Reeses lived in one half of a duplex, with what looked like a half floor above. Susanna stood beside him, gazing up at her cousin, whom she had not seen since Emily’s wedding five years ago.
Emily Reese was as pretty as Susanna remembered, with the family blond hair. Uncertain, Susanna stood where she was, expecting her cousin to come down the few steps to welcome her. As she waited, she felt dread settle around her.
Major Randolph seemed to sense her discomfort. He took her by the elbow and steered her toward the porch. Susanna saw the door on the other half of the duplex open and a lady with red hair step onto the porch, smiling more of a welcome than Emily. Susanna smiled at the other lady, who gave a small wave, then stepped back inside her own quarters, closing the door quietly. Someone is glad to see me, Susanna thought. Too bad it is not my cousin.
“Mrs. Reese, here is your cousin,” the major said. “You should invite her in.”
It was gently said, and seemed to rouse Emily to do more than stand there. She came no closer, but took Susanna’s hand when she and the major climbed the steps.
“So good to see you,” Emily murmured.
I wish you meant that, Susanna told herself. “It’s good to see you, Emily,” she said, wanting to shake off her well-honed feeling of dread, but not sure how. “I appreciate this opportunity you have given me.”
She wondered how long her cousin would have kept them on the porch, if Major Randolph hadn’t taken matters into his own hands and opened the door. “Emily, you’ll catch your death out here,” he chided, as though she needed reminding.
Once inside her own house, Emily Reese took charge. She indicated that the ambulance driver should take Susanna’s luggage upstairs.
The major took Susanna’s hand. “I’ll leave you two now. Good night.”
Susanna was left with her cousin. Take a deep breath and begin, she told herself, smiling her company smile at her cousin.
“It’s good to see you, Emily,” she said. “I hope …” Actually, I wish you would look me in the eye, she thought in alarm. What now? “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Five years,” her cousin said, making no move to take the overcoat that Susanna had removed.
Embarrassed, Susanna cleared her throat. “Emily, where should I hang this?”
Emily opened a narrow door under the stairs. “Next to the mop. I’m sorry we haven’t more pegs in the hallway, but the captain’s overcoat and hat take up room.”
Susanna nodded, amused to hear her cousin-in-law, Daniel Reese, referred to as “the captain.” She wondered if Emily was equal to a little tease about relegating relatives to the broom closet, and decided she was not.
When Emily just stood there, Susanna prodded a little more. “Where did you have the private take my belongings?”
“Upstairs. Let me show you where you’ll be staying.” Emily smiled her own company smile. “Come along. It isn’t much.”
Emily was right; it wasn’t much, just a space behind an army blanket at the end of the little hall. At least I have a place to stay, Susanna reminded herself as she and her cousin stood on the small landing. One bedroom door was open, and she looked in, charmed to see her little cousin, Stanley, stacking blocks, his back to the door.
She glanced at Emily, pleased to see some expression on her face now, as she admired her son.
“Stanley is four now,” Emily whispered.
“I’m certain we will get along famously,” Susanna assured her, thinking of her own son at that age—inquisitive, and beginning to exert a certain amount of household influence.
As Stanley stacked another block, the wobbling tower came down. The little boy put his hands to his head in sudden irritation and declared, “That’s a damned nuisance!”
Emily gasped and closed the door. “Cousin, this is the hardest place to raise children!”
“I imagine there are plenty of soldiers who don’t think much of letting the language fly,” she said, putting a real cap on her urge to laugh. “Must be a trial.”
“It’s not the soldiers,” Emily snapped, the portrait of righteous indignation. “It’s the no-account Irish living next door!” She lowered her voice slightly. “You’d be horrified what we hear through the wall.”
Susanna stared at her. “Here on Officers Row?”
It was obviously a subject that Emily had thought long about, considering that she never thought much of anything. “That’s what happens when the army promotes a bog Irishman from sergeant to captain of cavalry. So what if he earned a Medal of Honor in the late war? They’re hopeless!”
“I have a lot to learn,” Susanna murmured, hoping that the unfortunates on the other side of the wall were deaf. She thought of the pretty redhead who had given her a welcoming wave, and decided to form her own opinion.
Emily pulled back the army blanket strung on a sagging rod, revealing an army cot and bureau obviously intended for someone with few possessions. That would be me, Susanna thought.
“You should be comfortable enough here. I had a private from the captain’s company hammer up some nails to hang your dresses.”
“I am certain it will do,” Susanna replied. “I am grateful. Major Randolph said something about captains being alloted four rooms, not including the kitchen.”
She quickly realized this was another unfortunate topic, because Emily sighed again. “I think it’s … it’s unconscious for a widower to have six rooms!”
Do you mean unconscionable, Cousin Malaprop? Susanna thought, remembering Emily Reese’s bedroom back home. “I suppose that’s the army way. Now I’ll unpack ….”
Emily was just warming to the subject.
“There are captains here with five rooms.”
“Why not Dan?”
“We came here at the same time as another captain and his wife who have no children, but this is what we have.” Emily frowned. “He was even in Dan’s graduating class!”
“Why did you get this smaller place?” Susanna asked, interested.
“Because Dan was academically lower in his class,” her cousin said. “Is that fair?”
I suppose that’s what happens when you marry someone no brighter than yourself, Susanna thought, amused. “What happens if someone comes to the fort who outranks the man who outranks … your husband?”
“We all move up or down, depending,” Emily said, “and the Major Randolphs just roll merrily along in their excess space.” She sniffed. “I didn’t know about this when I married the captain.”
No, you were mostly interested in how grand he looked in uniform, Susanna thought, remembering the wedding five years ago, where Tommy had been ring bearer. That was before Frederick started drinking each night. “There is a lot we don’t know, before a wedding,” Susanna murmured.
“Maybe it’s just as well,” her cousin said, with another noisy sigh.
No, it isn’t, Susanna almost said. If I had known …
No matter that it had been ten years since Melissa’s fiery death, Joe Randolph never opened the door to his quarters without the tiny hope that this time she would be there to take his coat, kiss his cheek and ask how his day had gone. As a man of science, he knew it was foolish, but that little hope never left him.
He had been gone nearly a month this time on court-martial duty, but he had learned that whether left empty three weeks, two months or two days, houses without women in them soon felt abandoned. He still missed Melissa’s rose talc.
“I’m not busy enough, M’liss,” he said out loud to her picture, when he looked up from unpacking. There she was, smiling at him as much as she could, considering how long she had to hold that pose for the photographer in San Antonio.
On that journey to Texas, he had pillowed her head on his arm as they whispered plans for the future. Their last night had its own sweetness, as they made plans for the baby she was carrying. He was no ignorant physician; he had picked up on signs and symptoms before M’liss overcame her natural reticence and spilled those particular beans. He smiled now, remembering how she had thumped him when he had said, “I kind of suspected. I did graduate first in my class at medical school.”
She had kissed him, rendering the thump moot, and snuggled close in a way that made him feel like Lord Protector. Too bad he couldn’t protect her that next morning, when she stood too close to a campfire and went up like a torch.
Even four years of war had not prepared him for that horror. There wasn’t even a bucket of water close. Burned, blind, swollen beyond recognition, Melissa Randolph had suffered agonies until nightfall, when, jaw clenched, he’d administered a whacking dose of morphine that killed her immediately. The steward standing by never said a word to anyone.
There she was in the frame, forever twenty-four. Joe admired her for a long moment. “M’liss, what would you have me do?” he asked her picture. “I am thirty-eight and I am lonely.” He looked down at his wedding ring. He had never taken it off his finger since she’d put it there.
He took it off now. Her wedding ring had gone with her into Texas soil, mainly because he would have had to amputate her swollen finger to release it, and he could not. She had earlier removed a ruby ring he had given her. When he could think rationally again, he’d put the ring on a chain, and he wore it around his neck.
Joe lifted the delicate chain over his head now, unfastened the clasp and slid his wedding ring onto it. After another long moment he put the necklace and rings in his top drawer, under his socks.
His bedroom seemed too small after he closed the drawer, so he put on his overcoat again and went outside. He looked up Officers Row and saw lights winking in windows of houses with families. He stood there until he had formulated a good enough excuse to visit the Reeses again, and walked two houses down.
He chuckled to think of Emily Reese forced to live next door to the far kinder O’Learys. He would suggest to Mrs. Hopkins that she might find their Irish company enjoyable. Katie O’Leary had more brains than both of the Reeses, and Mrs. Hopkins would appreciate her.
Pipe in hand, Dan Reese opened the door to Joe’s knock. “Come in, Major,” he said, then called over his shoulder, “Mrs. Reese, is someone sick?”
What a blockhead, Joe thought, not for the first time. “Captain, I just wanted a moment with your cousin.”
The captain gestured him inside. “Is Mrs. Hopkins sick?”
“Not that I know of,” Joe replied, wishing he could laugh. “I’m current president of the administrative council and Mrs. Hopkins needs to make a visit to our commanding officer tomorrow. She has some credentials to show him.”
“Of course.” He looked over his shoulder again. “Susanna?”
It wasn’t a fluke. He saw relief in Susanna Hopkins’s eyes when she came out of the parlor, cousin Stanley riding on her hip, reaching for her spectacles. Captain Reese wandered back into the parlor, obviously the possessor of a shorter attention span than his son.
Susanna set down Stanley and cleaned her spectacles on her apron. Spectacles off, she looked at him, and he was struck with her mild beauty. He probably shouldn’t have—it smacked of the grossest impertinence—but Joe touched that dimpled spot under her left eye. She stepped back, startled.
“Beg pardon, ma’am. I am curious—can you see out of that eye?”
He supposed she could have ordered him from the house, but she didn’t. She put her glasses back on. “I have a corrective lens in that side. The other lens is plain glass.”
He had his suspicions, but he wanted to ask how she had come by such an injury. Yet he knew he should beg her pardon. She held up her hand, maybe knowing what he intended.
“Don’t apologize. I know your interest is medical.”
He nodded, wondering if she was right.
“I’m a blockhead,” he said simply. “Will you come with me tomorrow morning after guard mount to see Major Townsend? He needs to see your certification. Since I am president of the administrative council, you are my responsibility.” Good Lord, you sound like a jailer, he thought, disgusted.
Susanna Hopkins didn’t see it that way, apparently. “Certainly! The sooner I offer my credentials, the sooner I can get out of …”
She blushed, which he found charming.
“This house?” he asked in a whisper. “Tell you what, Mrs. Hopkins, after we visit the colonel, I’ll introduce you to your next-door neighbor. She’s clever, witty and …”
“Not what my cousin has already said?” Susanna finished. “I thought as much. I would like that. But tell me, what is guard mount?”
He was on sure ground now. “It’s our one daily affair, when the night guard goes off duty and the day sentries come on. In the summer, when there is no danger of trumpeters’ lips freezing on their mouthpieces, the band plays and the companies and troops go through the manual of arms.” He bowed. “Mrs. Hopkins, I will meet you on this porch at nine of the clock.”
“You don’t march?”
“Doctors don’t have to, thank God. And now I’d better go see if the hospital is still standing.”
It was a feeble witticism, but she nodded as though he had said something profound, and held the door open for him. Joe wasn’t going to look back at the Reese quarters as he started toward the hospital, but he turned around and there she was, watching him.
It was a small thing, but it gratified him as he walked to the hospital on its knoll behind the cavalry barrack. Not since Melissa had another female paid him any attention—at least, not that he was aware of.
The hospital was still standing. According to Theodore Brown, his steward, the contract surgeon had done no harm, all a man could hope for. Ted’s notes and files were impeccable as always, and m
uch easier to read than Joe’s own scrawl. There was nothing to do but take an unnecessary ward walk, and return to his empty quarters.
Most of the quarters on Officers Row were dark now. He glanced at the Reeses’ duplex again, even though he knew it was silly to think that Mrs. Hopkins would still be standing there. To his surprise, she was.
I will be her friend, he thought as he went into his quarters. He knew someone as pleasant as Susanna Hopkins would make friends soon enough. From habit, he pressed the extra pillow next to him, and was soon asleep.
Chapter Five
“Can’t you sleep, cousin?” Emily asked Susanna, coming downstairs after closing the door to her own room. She came to the window to stand beside her. “Is there something unusual outside?” she asked. “Indians? Coyotes? Should we raise an alarm?”
Susanna sighed inwardly, certain that her cousin had never been inclined to stand at a window and think. She had just watched Major Randolph return from the hospital.
Touch me, Emily, she thought. Just put your hand on my shoulder. We used to be close, and now we are not. She tried to think of the last time anyone had touched her, until she realized that it was an hour ago, when Major Randolph had touched her eye out of professional curiosity. His fingers had been gentle.
Her cousin made no move. There had been a time when they had shared secrets, and a bed when they went to visit their mutual grandmamma, a tough old boot from Gettysburg who had spent that battle frying doughnuts for whichever army happened to control the town on any particular day and tramped near her kitchen.
One of them had to speak, and Susanna knew she was the one with both gratitude and grievance. “Emily, I appreciate your arranging this teaching position,” she said, before the silence between them reached an awkward stage.
Emily turned startled eyes on her. “I had nothing to do with it,” she exclaimed. “Mama knows a lady in town who is a sister of the colonel of the regiment. Mama inquired about any teaching positions out here, and word eventually got to the colonel. Mama contacted me.” There was no ignoring her tiny sigh, until Emily put on her company face again. “I told her we didn’t have room, but you know my mama.”
