Her Hesitant Heart

by Carla Kelly

  “As you say, it hardly matters,” Susanna reminded him. “If it hadn’t been tonight, it would have been tomorrow.” She sobbed out loud, and put her hand to her mouth. “I swore I had cried my last tear over this!”

  Without a word he clapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close as they walked along, him holding her up more than she was standing. He seemed so furious she was almost afraid to look at him. When she did glance his way, she saw all the anger in his face, and knew it couldn’t be just for this alone.

  She stopped walking, and he was forced to stop, too. Gently, she disengaged from him.

  “I was wrong to think I could escape this.”

  “Now you’re going to blame yourself?” he exclaimed.

  She shrugged out of his grasp and continued on by herself. She looked back at him standing there, puffs of winter steam coming from his nostrils. He was angry, but she knew in her bruised heart it wasn’t at her.

  “Will it ever warm up here?” she asked in a normal tone of voice. She went into the Reeses’ house and closed the door behind her, wanting to lock it and never allow anyone in again, except it wasn’t her house, and the enemy was here, too.

  Standing right in front of her, in fact. Susanna regarded her cousin’s white face.

  There was so much she could have said then, none of it pretty. Suddenly Susanna was more weary than she been in months, tired of accusing faces and dead ends that brought her no closer to her son and toward no path leading back to respectability.

  Frederick had seen to that. If there was a greater evil than alcohol, she had no idea what it could be. All these thoughts went through her tired mind as she started up the stairs to her space behind an army blanket, the only refuge left to her in the world.

  “Did you tell them I started that little untruth?” Emily asked as Susanna neared the top of the stairs.

  Susanna shook her head, sad that her cousin felt no pity and no concern for her, beyond her own wish not to be part of her ruin. Susanna turned around to take a good look at her cousin, and mourned the loss of what could have been a friend. Perhaps Emily had meant well. Someone more intelligent would have understood how terrible a lie like that would appear to veterans of the Civil War, and that person was not Emily Reese.

  “No, I did not tell them you started that lie. If I had even a little money I would be out of here tomorrow, to spare you any further embarrassment.”

  She knew sarcasm was wasted on Emily Reese, who probably thought she was serious. Susanna pulled aside the blanket, then let it fall behind her. She lay down to stare at the ceiling. She thought of how Joe Randolph had questioned her decision to remain silent. Obviously, neither of them had known how bad this would become. I haven’t a brave bone left in my body, she thought. I should have said something.

  She lay in perfect stillness until the house grew quiet and everyone in it slept. Because the walls were thin, she couldn’t help but hear Katie O’Leary’s tears through the wall.

  Susanna went down the stairs a step at a time, careful to make no noise. She didn’t bother with her coat; she was only going next door. She knocked and waited.

  Captain O’Leary opened the door and pulled her in quickly.

  “You’ll catch your death out there, Mrs. Hopkins,” he told her, and put his arm around her shoulder. “Katie,” he called up the stairs.

  Her friend came down quickly, gathering Susanna close when her husband released her, and leading her into the parlor.

  “What terrible thing is this?” Katie asked, a sodden handkerchief in her hand.

  With her own hands so tight that her nails dug into her palms, Susanna told them the whole story of Frederick’s descent into drunkenness, his brutality and degrading treatment, and her desperation the night she’d fled from her own home, blinded by her blood.

  “He ruined me,” she finished simply. “Emily thought to call me a war widow to spare her own embarrassment.” She looked at Katie and held out her arms. “Katie! Joe wanted me to tell the truth to Major Townsend, but I was afraid! Am I always going to be afraid?” She started to sob.

  Katie held her close, and looked at her husband. “Jim, is there anything we can do?” She kissed Susanna’s forehead. “My dear lady, we have no credit here, either, or not much. Jim, please …”

  Susanna wiped her eyes when he handed her a dry handkerchief. He looked at her for a long moment.

  “I think I will tell Captain Burt tomorrow what you have told me.” He managed a ghost of a smile. “He’s infantry, but I trust him more than anyone here except Major Randolph.”

  Susanna shook her head. “He and Mrs. Burt were in that meeting, too! They both signed that letter!”

  “I know,” he replied, taking her hand. “But he’s a reasonable man, is Andy Burt. I may not convince him, but I can plant a seed.”

  Susanna nodded, unconvinced, but determined not to say so to these kind people. “That will be a start,” she said. She stood up and looked at the O’Learys. “I hope you will forgive me for not calling out that lie immediately. I think I have lived in fear so long that I don’t know anything else.” She touched Katie’s shoulder. “I couldn’t bear to lose your friendship, although I do not deserve it.”

  “You have never lost my friendship,” Katie said quietly. “Never.”

  Susanna shook her head when the O’Learys tried to coax her to stay the night in their parlor, and went next door again, letting herself in as quietly as she had left. She climbed the stairs as though she wore lead boots, then lay down to sleep.

  She was alone, at liberty to contemplate her ruin in a small society she could not escape until she earned some money to leave it. For the first time in the whole ordeal, she considered the merits of walking out the door and onto the open field behind Officers Row. She could take off her clothes and keep walking until she froze to death, which wouldn’t take long. She discarded the idea; with her bad luck, she would likely encounter a sentry who would save her life.

  Never mind. The O’Learys had assured her their son would be in the classroom in the morning, so Susanna would be there, too. The whole debacle probably would be over after one more day. Mrs. Dunklin would find a way to end the school.

  Susanna lay on her cot, silent, relaxing gradually after she heard the O’Learys in their bedroom through the wall. She had heard them reciting the rosary on other evenings. This night, it was balm to her wounds, not because she had any idea what the Latin words meant, but simply because she knew there were good people through the wall.

  She thought of the Rattigans, finding comfort in each other, and then of Private Benedict with his classroom in the commissary warehouse. Her mind lingered longest on Joe Randolph, who shouldered burdens even worse than hers.

  As always, she thought finally of Tommy, home asleep in the big house in Carlisle, where life, if never completely pleasant, had been tolerable before Frederick Hopkins decided to fortify himself with alcohol and make his family suffer.

  She did what she always did each night, whispering favorite nursery rhymes, then humming songs to Tommy far away. “Be a good son,” Susanna whispered, as she always did before closing her eyes.

  Joe Randolph couldn’t help but feel that his constituents had failed him greatly that night. Not one of them came asking for help with babies due, or croup, or any little or large ailments that often kept him busy in those winter hours when Fort Laramie slept. After four years with Sherman’s army, and then Melissa’s shocking death, he had grown used to sleepless nights. Here he was, wide awake, and the only person who needed him would never ask.

  Joe lay in bed, still dressed and still aghast at the coldhearted ruin of Susanna Hopkins. The monstrosity of what he had witnessed in the Dunklins’ parlor made the bile rise in his throat, until he had to get up and walk it off. Back and forth, from room to room, he tried to wear himself out. Instead, he revisited his own role in the deception, wondering if he should have gone immediately to Major Townsend and spelled out Emily Reese’s orig
inal lie. He concluded it would have made no difference, once Mrs. Dunklin—damn the woman!—had found a tale to bear and a bone to gnaw on.

  Joe concluded that all he could do in the morning was go to Major Townsend after guard mount and lay the whole nasty matter before him.

  “What will he do, Joe?” the post surgeon asked himself out loud as he made another circuit of his own parlor. “He will say it is none of his business, that this was a matter between a few families and the educator they contracted. He is right. God, how it galls me!”

  Joe walked until his feet began to hurt. He threw himself down into his favorite armchair, relieving his legs—oh, surgeons and their legs—but getting him no closer to sleep than he had been hours ago. Grim, he watched dawn come, relieved to hear reveille finally.

  Silent, he shaved and changed his shirt, then made his way up the hill for sick call. He was not inclined to suffer fools gladly that morning, which meant that the malingerers whose creativity he sometimes secretly admired found themselves snapped at and returned to duty almost before they had a chance to recite their ordinarily diverting symptoms.

  Guard mount offered none of its minuscule attraction. Since even colder weather had clamped down, the band remained in the music hall and the time-honored ritual of guard relief and guard mount seemed to go in double-quick rhythm, to Joe’s tired eyes. Scarcely anyone moved across the parade ground, once the morning business concluded. Joe watched Sergeant Rattigan, in company with his corporals, hurrying toward the footbridge to Suds Row and their own families for breakfast.

  A few minutes after the new guard had retired to the guardhouse and the cold soldiers had retreated to their mess halls, Joe saw Nick Martin leave Old Bedlam, where he must have started the usual fire, to warm up the classroom. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Joe stood at his front window and watched Mrs. Hopkins leave the Reeses’ quarters and make her way along the icy sidewalk to Old Bedlam. A few minutes later, both Captain and Katie O’Leary left their quarters, Rooney between them. From habit, Joe regarded Katie professionally, and decided he would be called upon soon enough to usher another army dependent into the world. God bless the O’Learys to give him his favorite army duty.

  He stood by the window as the O’Learys returned. Joe noticed Katie’s head against her husband’s shoulder, his arm around her, consoling her. The sight made him angry all over again, which was probably a better emotion than the grim disgust at meanness that left him so hollow. Maybe it was more. Joe felt a strong urge to console Susanna Hopkins much as Captain O’Leary was consoling his wife.

  “But here I stand, a coward,” he remarked to no one except himself.

  He watched as Jim O’Leary left his quarters and went down the row to Captain Burt’s home. He wondered what business Jim had there, and shook his head. The Burts had signed that pernicious letter, too.

  Next he watched Mrs. Dunklin leave her quarters and stride with great purpose toward the admin building. Joe sighed to see all that misguided umbrage on the loose. He watched until the woman returned to her quarters, then it was his turn.

  The snow squeaked and crunched underfoot, advertising just how low the mercury had retreated. He looked up at the snow dogs overhead, another frigid advertisement to January on the northern plains. January was the month when the Northern Roamers were commanded by Washington to move their families to reservations not far from here in Nebraska. That will not happen and there will be premeditated war, Joe thought. No one will care that a competent teacher has been forced from her classroom by meanness.

  Major Townsend was waiting for him. Joe nodded to him and shut the door behind him. All Townsend did was hand him the letter that Mrs. Dunklin must have carried to him that morning, the one with all the signatures of indignant parents on it, except the O’Learys.

  Joe barely glanced at it. “What happened shouldn’t have happened, Ed,” he said, calling on his years of friendship with the fort’s commanding officer to keep this painful discussion informal. “The Dunklins only have half the story, and their half is lies and character assassination.”

  Edwin Townsend regarded him for a long moment, and Joe felt his heart sink even lower.

  “She had no business trying to pass herself off as a war widow.”

  “Emily Reese started that lie, heaven only knows why,” Joe countered.

  “Mrs. Hopkins had every opportunity to deny it.”

  “Did she? I earnestly believe she wanted to spare her cousin embarrassment. Ed, did you ever try to unbake a cake? Bring someone back to life after the autopsy? You can’t do it!”

  “Sit down, Joe.”

  The post surgeon sat. He hoped Ed would sit next to him in the empty chair, but the major sat behind his desk instead, choosing command over friendship. Silent, he rummaged through a stock of correspondence on his desk and pulled out one of the twice-folded documents with the government stamp.

  “It’s already begun. General Crook and Colonel Reynolds will be here in February to lead a winter campaign against the Roamers. I’ll need that room at Old Bedlam for temporary quarters, so I probably would have evicted her, anyway.”

  “Ask General Crook if he’d like to stay with me,” Joe said. “I know what it feels like to have lies and character assassination dished my way.”

  He hadn’t meant for his voice to rise. He was going to be calm about this, except he couldn’t, not with Susanna Hopkins’s stricken face before his, and then the death of hope in her eyes that he understood all too well, because he had a mirror over his bureau.

  Major Townsend couldn’t look at him. He indicated the Dunklin letter again, which lay between them like a rank specimen in a pathology lab.

  “Joe, I have no control over this situation,” Townsend said, his voice firm, even if he couldn’t look his friend and war comrade in the eyes. He jabbed the paper. “These families contracted with Mrs. Hopkins, and they are at liberty to break the contract, as they have done.”

  Joe took his time. “I suppose that as this year’s administrative council head, you want me to shut her down. She’s teaching the O’Learys’ boy right now.”

  “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

  Joe contemplated his friend, remembering their shared Civil War fights. “Not much, obviously,” he said. He went to the door, wanting to jerk it off its hinges. As he stood there, Joe made up his mind. He looked back at the major, who was watching him now, wary. “I’m resigning my commission, Major Townsend.”

  “Save your breath. You’re turned down, Major Randolph,” his commanding officer replied, biting off his own words. “We’re at war with the Sioux Nation, as of two weeks ago. You’re not allowed to resign.”

  Joe walked to the hospital, head down. He mishandled paperwork until recall from fatigue, then walked down the hill to discharge his awful duty.

  Mrs. Hopkins made it easy for him. As he approached Old Bedlam, she was coming out with Rooney O’Leary, holding his hand. She walked past Joe and took the boy up to his front door, giving him a hug and an affectionate swat on his backside when Katie O’Leary opened the door. Susanna shook her head at what must have been an invitation to come inside, then left the porch to stand by him on the boardwalk.

  “Major, I have banked the fire and gathered the books on the desk,” she told him with the steely calm he wished he could have used in Major Townsend’s office. “Please return them to the officers’ families.”

  “Susanna, I …”

  She only shook her head, and her expression was kind. “Thank you for trying, Major.”

  “It’s Joe,” he told her, feeling stupid and lame and impotent.

  She shook her head again, her eyes still gentle. “I think not, sir. Friendship with me will not further your own cause. Good day.”

  She walked past him and up the steps of the Reeses’ quarters. Miserable, he watched her as she stood a long moment, her forehead against the door, as though trying to work up her courage to turn the handle.

  “Susanna, I know what it feel
s like to be where you are not wanted,” he said distinctly, so she could hear him.

  “Perhaps you do, but you’re a man and you have the ability to change your situation,” she told him as she went inside and closed the door quietly behind her.

  “No, I do not,” he whispered to the closed door. “I can’t leave this place, either.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I will leave that lady alone, Joe told himself for three days. It wasn’t difficult, he decided, even though he felt ashamed of his attitude. Maybe if he was not popping in to offer whatever puny commiseration he thought useful, Susanna and her cousin Emily would finally start to talk.

  To his gratification, even though it hardly mattered now, Jim O’Leary told him of Susanna’s midnight visit and her confession. “She’s been too frightened to speak up,” O’Leary said.

  His voice low, he told Joe what Susanna had said of her husband’s mistreatment of her. “She just took it, until she feared for her life,” he said, appalled at that kind of brutality.

  Jim had told him of his visit to the Burts, where he minced no words, either.

  “What was their reaction?” Joe asked.

  “Shock. Revulsion. Uncertainty. No one knows what to believe,” Jim said. “People have to know, though, even if Susanna is the last one who would ever tell such a sordid story.”

  It was a sordid story, Joe knew, after Jim O’Leary bared that kind woman’s shame. He should have gone to her then, but it was easy enough to stay away because duty called, the kind of duty that he could cure with stitches or medicine. Susanna’s wounds were different. With something approaching relief, Joe treated a nasty forefinger avulsion in the stables, which would more than likely cause an infection that led to amputation; a trying childbirth on Suds Row; and a more pleasant one just down the row at the O’Leary household, which resulted in a lively little redhead much like Katie O’Leary herself. Then his contract surgeon left unwillingly for detached duty at Camp Robinson, and Captain Hartsuff decided he needed another week in Cheyenne doing God knows what. By the fourth morning after Susanna Hopkins had returned the key to the classroom, Joe began to worry.