Her Hesitant Heart

by Carla Kelly

  He thought a moment before he answered, but she knew Joe was a deliberate man not given to impulse. A smile started to play around his lips, and she felt the rest of the callus around her heart dissolve. All the slights and vitriol, the humiliation and sorrow paled in significance as she watched his dear face relax, even though they stood in a military cemetery.

  “I’m better off, too. Unlike Maddie, I already know it.”

  He said it so simply. He turned his attention to a corporal from Company H, Ninth Infantry, an ordained minister, who recited the Twenty-third Psalm, and the passage from Job about “men born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”

  “That would be Claudine,” Joe whispered. “Come to think of it, none of us are wholly good or completely bad.”

  “I think you’re wholly good,” Suzanna said, discarding every fear that had ever controlled her. She made herself vulnerable.

  Such a light came into the post surgeon’s eyes that she stepped back, wondering at her own temerity. He came closer again, such a small distance to move, but one that made her heart beat faster. She knew her cheeks were red, but it was cold out. No one would notice.

  “Wholly good? Not so, Suzie. Before you arrived with Eddie, I was admiring Fifi’s assets.” He looked straight ahead then, the very image of military deportment, as she struggled not to laugh at a funeral.

  Only by bowing her head and cramming her fingers against the bridge of her nose could she control herself. Susanna looked up when she was firmly in charge again, this time to observe the four women who stood between Jules Ecoffey and a man who must be Adolf Cuny, his partner in commerce and vice. Fifi was easy to spot.

  “Someone should take out your eyeballs and wash them with pine tar soap,” she murmured out of the side of her mouth, and it was his turn not to laugh at a burial.

  By the time the brief service ended, the wind had picked up, tossing around dead cottonwood leaves from last fall. She looked around for Eddie, but Katie O’Leary had his hand now, and Rooney’s. They walked away, leaving her to stroll down the hill toward the hospital with the post surgeon only. He held out his elbow a little and her arm went naturally into the crook of his arm.

  “I’m supposed to read tomorrow night at the hospital, but I don’t have a book. We finished Little Men last week.”

  He shook his head. “Not this week, Suzie. We’re expecting the wounded from the battlefield any hour now, and I know there will be frostbite cases, too. Al picked up a telegram from Fetterman’s post surgeon to warn us what’s coming. Looks like we will be performing at least one amputation, maybe two. Better you stay away for a few days. I’ll be sleeping at the hospital.” He sighed. “It was easy enough during the late war. Maybe I’m getting old.”

  Susanna took another chance, even though it made her blush to bring it up. “Joe, if you’re at hospital, would you mind if I slept in your quarters for a few nights? Captain Reese will be newly home in one half of the house, Captain O’Leary in the other one. The walls are thin and I’m in the middle.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Suzie, you’re more than welcome in my ever so humble abode! I’ll be camping on a cot at the hospital. Give the lovebirds a couple of days.” He grew more thoughtful. “I hate for you to sneak around, but no one will understand, if they see you in my place. Back door and after taps, all right?”

  She did as he said. Private Benedict dismissed school early the next afternoon as the troopers rode into Fort Laramie, as dismal a bunch of campaigners as Maeve said she had ever seen. Susanna stayed for supper at the Rattigans, impressed with how quickly Maddie had taken over the duty of setting the table. Bless her Gallic heart, there were the first dandelions of spring flared out nicely in a teacup for a centerpiece.

  “It didn’t go well, did it?” Maeve asked John when he came home after retreat.

  The sergeant shook his head, his eyes lighting up when Maddie held up both arms for his overcoat. She practically staggered under its weight as she took it into the bedroom. “She’s a help, Maeve,” he said, and kissed his wife. “No, it didn’t go well, God bless the cavalry. The rumor mill says General Crook is preferring charges and specifications against Colonel Reynolds and another officer for neglect, mismanagement, and just about everything else Crook can think of except chilblains. The Northern Roamers are still free to roam, army men are dead and some left on the battlefield, and the Cheyenne have now allied with the Lakota.” John shook his head. “It’ll be a hot summer for campaigning.”

  “Must be nice to be an observer and take none of the blame, but dole out all the complaints,” Susanna grumbled.

  “It’s no wonder he and his aide de camp took another route back to Omaha,” Sergeant Rattigan said, then grabbed up Maddie when she came back into the parlor. “And how’s my girl?”

  Both your girls are fine, Susanna thought, as she walked back to the Reeses’ quarters, where the captain, dirty and needing a shave, had his arms around Emily. Amused, Susanna told them where she was going for the night, and heard no objections. She laughed to herself and walked two doors down, careful to stay in the shadows.

  The major had left a lamp burning. Glowing coals in the parlor stove welcomed her. There was a bowl of raisins in the kitchen. “Eat these. Please. I insist,” read the note. She did just that, taking the bowl on her lap, kicking off her shoes and sinking into the major’s armchair, saggy in all the right places, sort of like the major. She read his threadbare copy of Les Misérables until her eyes grew heavy. She took a blanket from the end of Joe’s bed and made herself comfortable on the packing crate settee in the parlor again, where the stove still shed its warmth. She knew sleeping alone in his bed would have made her sad.

  After the fort slept and the sentries were occupied, Susanna stayed there two more nights, enjoying the solitude after busy days of teaching. She must have slept more soundly than usual, because there was a note pinned to her blanket on the third morning. “Joe, you are silent,” she murmured as she opened the note.

  “Come up tonight, sleepyhead,” she read. “I have a good book that will make the men laugh.”

  The odor of carbolic, stronger than usual, tickled her nostrils as she opened the door to the hospital that evening. The single ward must have been full, because there were two hospital beds in the hall with portable partitions around them. She stood there, uncertain, until the post surgeon came out of the ward, still wearing his surgical apron, complete with mysterious stains.

  It was his eyes that troubled her. He looked so tired. And there was Captain Hartsuff pulling aside one of the partitions, the same look on his face and a nearly identical apron.

  “Did either of you sleep?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  The surgeons looked at each other and both shrugged. “We must have, ma’am,” Al Hartsuff said. “Can’t remember, though. I can stay, Joe.”

  “Nope. Get a good night’s sleep and relieve me in the morning, Captain, and that’s an order.” Joe rubbed his hands together, and Susanna noticed how chapped they were. “Go to bed, Al.”

  Eyes half-closed, Joe ushered her into the ward, where every bed was occupied. “Croup, bronchitis, frostbite,” he whispered. “We were a little late taking off one leg—how I wish Fetterman’s surgeon had acted! It doesn’t look good. He’s in the hall now, probably dying, so there I must be, too.”

  Joe raised his voice so his patients could hear him, leading Susanna into the middle of the ward. “Here she is, gentlemen.” He produced a book from his apron pocket, brushing off some flecks better left unexamined. “Give ‘em two chapters, Suzie. That’s all these wretches deserve.”

  Several of the more alert men laughed. Susanna seated herself and looked at the book, Roughing It, by Mark Twain.

  “Very well, sirs! Your post surgeon thinks reading is a remedy for everything from dandruff to bunions,” she said, pleased to hear low laughter. She cleared her throat. “Chapter One. ‘My brother had just been appointed secretary of Nevada Territory—an office
of such majesty that it concentrated itself in the duties and dignities …’”

  She read through the first short chapter, pausing at the end to note some patients already asleep. Others regarded her with the inward contemplation of men in pain. She doubted half of them comprehended what she was reading, but she recognized their satisfied expressions, which mirrored those of her own little students when she read to them. Since the first chapter was so short, she read the second and then the third, with its stagecoach journey and camels. She looked around then; everyone slept.

  “Perfect,” she whispered. She ruffled quickly through the book, reading some of the subtitles, which made her chuckle. As she did, a piece of yellow foolscap fell into her lap. She looked at it idly, then stared.

  “My goodness, Joe,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

  Across the top, in his doctor’s handwriting, she could just make out “Suzie Randolph.” Her face grew hot and she put one hand to her cheek. Feeling like an eavesdropper into the most private part of a man, she looked at the page, which, to her relief, appeared to be nothing more than French sentences.

  She looked closer in the dim light. It seemed that Joe had printed in English, and someone else had written in French. There appeared to be two different handwritings besides his, one firm and graceful, the other spidery and barely legible.

  At the top, under “Suzie Randolph,” Joe had printed, “How do I say ‘I care for you’?”

  “Je m’occupe de vous,” Susanna whispered, not even needing to read what the firm hand had written.

  She looked down another line to see Joe’s printing. “More serious?” she read. It was followed by the spidery writing, “Je t’aime.”

  Scarcely breathing now, she read, “How do I say, ‘Do you love me?’”

  “You just ask me, Joe, and I’ll tell you,” she said softly.

  “I’m not wasting my hard-learned French. Estce que tu m’aimes?”

  Startled, she looked up, aware now that Joe was leaning over the chair. “Mais oui,” she said simply. “I do love you.”

  His hand was on her shoulder now. She looked at his chapped fingers, probably washed over and over with carbolic as he’d treated the wounded men from the monumentally unsuccessful Powder River campaign.

  “I have some salve for your hands,” she whispered.

  “I can’t say that in French yet,” he whispered back, his lips close to her ear now, tickling it and causing the warmth in her chest to travel lower. “I did work on this next sentence, because it’s important. Fifi helped me, and Claudine, when she could. Mostly it made them giggle. So nice to see Claudine happy. Let me try …. Veux-tu m’épouser?”

  “You have a terrible accent,” Susanna told him. “No wonder they giggled.”

  “Well?” he asked, kneeling by her chair now. “After fourteen years of nothing, it took me about four months to go from ‘I worry about you,’ to ‘I care for you,’ to ‘I love you more seriously,’ and now this last question. I can’t imagine a less romantic setting, unless it might be the dead house out back, but that’s the question. What’s your answer? I’ll take it in any language.”

  Susanna turned to look him in the eyes. He still wore that disgusting apron, and he had not shaved in at least three days. “How have I lived this long without you?” she murmured, both hands on his face as the book fell to the floor.

  “You’re supposed to answer my question, not ask another one, knucklehead,” he said. He sounded like a man who already knew what her answer would be. He sounded like a husband. It occurred to her that all Joe knew how to be was a husband—a good one.

  “It’s yes,” she said. “Soon, s’il vous plaît.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Susanna didn’t care if all the patients were asleep as she kissed Joe Randolph. He smelled of exhaustion and carbolic and other nameless odors that she didn’t intend to question. She breathed deep, and found him entirely to her liking.

  Her spectacles got in the way a little, until Joe unhooked them from around her ears and set them on the floor as they both continued a remedy for heart pain not commonly found in an army ward. His hand was warm on her neck. When their lips parted, he rested his head in her lap, and she understood how supremely tired he was: tired of this medical emergency, tired of living alone, tired of wanting and not having. She understood him precisely, because she felt the same way.

  After a few more minutes, he got up off his knees, handing back her spectacles and raising her to her feet. His arm around her, he walked her from the quiet ward. She glanced in the hall to see the partition gone from around a now empty bed.

  He gave her shoulders a squeeze and started her toward the entrance. “In the middle of this month, would Private Benedict have any serious objection if you take two weeks off for a trip to Cheyenne? I’ll have two patients fit enough to travel to Fort Russell by then. I intend to accompany them in an ambulance, and you will come along, if you haven’t decided I’d make a terrible husband.”

  “I will come along.”

  “Rumor says there will be a court-martial—the first of General Crook’s victims from Powder River—and I will be needed for court-martial duty. Before that boring job, you and I will find a justice of the peace. I trust you won’t be too bored waiting for my sorry carcass to show up each evening in the hotel. What do you think? It’s hardly the honeymoon of a woman’s dreams, but welcome to the army.”

  “I have fairly low expectations.”

  He laughed softly. “Good thing. You’ve seen my kitchen, and you already know I have a lumpy bed.”

  “I thought it was fine.”

  “So did I, actually. Change your mind now, if you’re going to.”

  He waited, his tired eyes as lively as they were going to get, without at least eight hours of sleep. She kissed him.

  “I won’t change my mind.” She hesitated, watching his face. “There is one thing.”

  “You can have anything up to half my kingdom, which right now is a plantation in Virginia where my unforgiving relatives squat. I own it, by the way. Paid enough damned taxes to carpetbaggers.”

  “I want to ask an attorney what … what my rights are, if we find Tommy.”

  “We’ll find him, and we know where he belongs.”

  He said it quietly, but the conviction in his voice stayed with her down the hill, into the Reeses’ quiet quarters, and to her own bed. She made herself drowsy by trying to decide which of her shabby dresses would be the best wedding dress. She smiled in the dark. It had probably better be the one with the least chalk dust on the sleeves.

  They were married two weeks later in Cheyenne by a justice of the peace who seemed to find their shyness somehow endearing, no matter that both of them were above and beyond thirty years of age, previously experienced in the snares of Venus, and endearingly besotted with each other. The JP had sharp eyes.

  Or so he told Joe, while spending a moment with him, examining the certificate Joe had composed as attending physician, and registered after Melissa’s death. He spent more time over Suzie’s more voluminous divorce decree. To Joe’s relief, he had no editorial comment to make about divorce. He only offered one piece of advice.

  “Major, treat her as you would the Queen of Sheba,” he said as he pulled on his more official black frock coat. “Ladies are a rare commodity in Wyoming Territory, and a pretty one like your future wife should keep you on your toes.”

  “I’ll treat her as kindly as the army allows.”

  The justice of the peace winced at that doleful bit of news. He regarded the post surgeon in silence a moment, his eyes kind now. “Major, did you have a good first marriage?”

  “I did. No complaints except that it was too short.”

  “Then you should have another good one. Those things tend to follow one another.”

  They nodded to each other in perfect agreement.

  Joe didn’t think Suzie could have any surprise for him, but there she was in the justice of the peace�
�s parlor, almost breathtaking in a deep green dress that he thought he remembered Katie O’Leary wearing at a dinner a year ago. The dress had an exquisite lace collar similar to one he had noticed Mrs. Burt wear at the enlisted men’s Christmas dance two years before the O’Leary dinner. He definitely recognized the paisley shawl as Maeve Rattigan’s.

  “You’re well rigged out, Mrs. Hopkins,” he whispered when he took his place beside her and offered his arm. “Did you borrow a nightgown from Fifi?”

  She looked down, then gave him a sidelong glance. “Major, I didn’t even bother with a nightgown.”

  That rendered him speechless until his “I do,” which amused his new wife no end.

  He had collected himself by the time they stood in the street again. “Why are you not flustered and taking shallow breaths?” he asked, surprised at his wife’s calm demeanor.

  She gave him another look, one that set his mind at ease. She leaned toward him. “You mentioned a few weeks ago about curing the common heartache. We’ve just done that again.” Two men walked by and she lowered her voice. “I love you, Major Randolph. I never thought I would love anyone again. I was wrong.” She patted his arm. “You may take all the time you need to decide. I already have. And now, where is that attorney’s office?”

  His fingers propped together in a steeple, the lawyer heard what both of them had to say without interrupting, writing down his questions to ask when each finished. He sat a long moment, looking at his list, then leaned back in his chair.

  “Mrs. Randolph, to your knowledge, your former husband, now deceased, had no living relatives?”

  “None.”

  He smiled at them both. “Frederick Hopkins’s death renders this court decision void. Nowhere do I see any evidence of another party authorized to step in. I hope you find Thomas. I would certainly advise at least one of you to return to Carlisle and consult with the local authorities. Little boys don’t just disappear.”