She slammed the door behind her and then wilted, close to tears. She would not, could not, let him see how devastated she felt.
“Pride, Zelda. Keep busy,” she said aloud. Dumping her load just inside the kitchen door, she forced her attention away from Tom and onto her new home, and her heart sank into her worn boots.
The kitchen was filthy, the plain wooden floors inches deep in dirt and littered with useless bits of trash the former residents had abandoned. The wallpaper was stained, the kitchen stove rusted, and when she drew aside the filthy curtain, she found the cupboards crawling with tiny ants.
Dreading what she’d see next, she moved in a horrified trance from one room to the next. The men who’d lived here must have partied for days before they left. There were empty liquor bottles everywhere and indescribable filth.
Tom found her in the doorway of the ground-floor bedroom, the room she’d planned for Virgil. A straw mattress had burst, and the room stank of moldy hay and mildew. The windowpanes were so dirty light hardly penetrated, and the room reeked of urine.
“These people were worse than animals,” she fumed. “How could anyone live like this?” Her shoulders slumped, and she added in a whisper, “And how am I ever going to get it clean enough for us to move in today?”
He reached out to touch her, to comfort her, but she moved back, signaling a warning with her eyes.
His jaw tightened and he stuck his hands in his back pants pockets. “I’ve checked the outbuildings. They’re almost as bad as the house. But the well is fine. I’ve got a fire started in the stove, and the chimney seems to draw okay. I’ve put two buckets of water on to heat.”
Her spirits lifted an infinitesimal inch. Tom would help her clean. It wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Eli and the men are waiting for me to come back. I’ve unloaded all the stuff from the wagon – it’s out on the porch.”
And just like that he was gone, leaving her to deal with this monumental disaster on her own. She stood and gaped at the empty doorway, unable to believe Tom would desert her this way. But she heard the horses and the wagon rumbling off.
Well, she had insisted she wanted to manage her own life her own way. Wouldn’t you know he’d take her at her word just when she needed him most?
She rolled up her sleeves and began to sweep the worst of the rubble out, but it was a mammoth task. Panic took over, and she dropped the broom and scurried from one room to the next in a tizzy, unable to organize any single task, overwhelmed by a sense of impending disaster.
She hadn’t accomplished a single thing by the time she heard the wagon returning. She clasped her hands together and for the first time in her life seriously considered having both hysterics and the vapors as she went out the door.
For a moment, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Instead of furniture, the wagon was loaded with women. Leona waved gaily. Billie Morton and Ethel Parker called cheerful greetings. Tiny May Howard looked like a child between the taller women, but she was the first to hop down.
The saloon girls had come to Zelda’s rescue.
They were equipped with buckets and mops as well as tins of calcimine and brushes and baskets of food.
“Tom said you needed us right away,” Leona explained cheerfully. “The girls were mostly sleeping, but we got them up. We’d better put on gallons of coffee, though, and I had the cook at the hotel make us a picnic lunch. I can’t go more than an hour these days without eating, so I told him to make a generous amount.”
There were three women Zelda hadn’t met before, and Leona introduced Beatrice, Julie, and Susannah. Smothering yawns behind their palms, they trooped through the house, exclaiming in delighted horror at the mess.
“It’s a fuckin’ pigsty,” Zelda overheard one of them say.
She repeated the words under her breath, feeling deep satisfaction at their expressiveness. She couldn’t have put it better herself.
Sleepy, or not, they were an efficient crew. Within a half-hour, they’d organized what needed done and assigned duties. They set to work, chattering like magpies, telling risqué stories, most of which Zelda didn’t begin to understand. They drank quantities of the coffee she brewed, giggled as they scrubbed floors, scoured windows, tore off dirty wallpaper, and brushed fresh white calcimine over bare walls.
By the time the wagon arrived with the furniture, the entire house was clean and sweet smelling, and the ladies were lounging on the freshly scrubbed porch, enjoying sandwiches and cakes and still more coffee.
Ethel Parker, exotically beautiful even in a plain gingham dress and a soiled apron, sat beside Zelda.
“I don’t know how to begin to thank you,” Zelda said.
“No thanks needed,” Ethel responded. She watched as Tom nodded at Zelda, jumped down from one of the wagons, and went around the back to lift Virgil down and help him across the yard and into the house.
Zelda got to her feet. “That’s my dad now. We’ll need to set his bed up right away in his bedroom.”
“Let us handle that. We’re good with beds.” Ethel gave a wicked giggle. “Isn’t that Tom the fellow who’s been going around saying the Turtle’s gonna slide over the town tomorrow night?
“Tom Chapman, yes.” Zelda kept her voice and face free of expression, but Ethel shot her a calculating, sidelong glance anyway.
“You believe him?”
Zelda nodded. “I’m totally convinced he’s right. That’s the reason I moved out here. He says the rock isn’t going to come this far, but it’s going to bury that whole row of cottages where we were living.”
Ethel nodded slowly. “How about the Union Bank? He say whether that gets buried? I got all my savings in the Union.”
“The bank won’t be buried, Tom says. Or the Imperial Hotel.”
“What about the Tenderloin?”
Zelda shook her head. The area where the girls lived and worked was well out of the Slide’s range.
“Well, that’s sure a relief,” Ethel gestured at Tom. “This fellow of yours, he some kind of prophet or something?”
“He’s not my fellow.” Zelda deliberately ignored the rest of the question.
Ethel gave her a skeptical look. “Horse twaddle. One thing girls like us get to know real well is when somebody’s head over heels,” she remarked. “Men get that way and it’s as if other women don’t exist anymore. Ain’t so hot for our business, I can tell you. Your Tom’s like that. Doesn’t so much as glance at any of us, and, believe me, men always look at us. It’s plain as the nose on your face how he feels about you, Miss Zelda.”
“You’re wrong, Ethel. He’s leaving tomorrow for good, and I’m staying here.” She was proud of her matter-of-fact tone.
Ethel snorted through her elegant nose. “Don’t you believe it for a minute. Even if he goes, he’ll be back.”
“I greatly doubt that. Not where he’s going.” Zelda’s ironic smile was cheerless.
Tom slid his arm around Virgil’s back, shocked and horrified at his fragility and the harshness of the coughing that racked him.
He could hardly walk, and Tom supported him into the house, into the fresh-smelling little room where several women had set up his bed and swiftly made it.
Tom did his best to hide his dismay. Virgil had aged years in the short weeks since Tom had last seen him. His flesh seemed to have fallen away. His russet hair had turned white, his once-strong body was skeletal, and the lively blue of his eyes had dimmed to a frightening weariness. His shoulders had rounded, his chest sunken, and each breath was an audible effort.
It was obvious this man who’d been the nearest thing Tom had ever had to a father was fast coming to the end of his life. Tom knelt, unfastening Virgil’s shoes and pulling off his stockings. The fact that Virgil didn’t protest was mute evidence of his weakness.
Loosening the rest of his clothing, Tom eased him down on the stack of pillows and tucked the blankets snugly around his shoulders. Virgil’s eyes were closed before Tom left t
he room.
Mechanically, Tom climbed back on the wagon and clucked to the team, his brain a maelstrom of bittersweet memories.
Virgil, bailing him and Jackson out of jail, offering them a place to stay. Cooking his special mush for them at dawn, shaking Tom’s hand at the mine entrance after the accident. Playing his harmonica at Jackson’s wedding, offering his last crumpled dollar bill in case Tom needed it.
Like an automaton, Tom packed the possessions that meant the most to his Italian friends and loaded them into the wagon, their wine-making equipment, the new carpet Sophia was so proud of, the spinet Joe had ordered from New York, Rosa Petevello’s prized sewing machine.
At the empty, lonely house on Alberta Avenue, it was a welcome release to chase and curse and finally catch all of Zelda’s chickens and stuff them into the crate he’d fashioned to transport them.
Tom was loading the noisy birds and the last of Virgil’s tools on the wagon when he spied a man in what had been Isabella’s backyard. No one had moved into the house next door, much to Tom’s relief. Along with all the others in this area, it would be buried deep under the Slide less than forty-eight hours from now.
“Hey, Mister, can I help you?” Surely no one was about to move in now.
The man whipped around, and with a sense of shock Tom recognized the stocky figure and flushed, bloated features of Nestor Vandusen.
He stood, bull-like, staring at Tom, and then he shouted, “Where is Isabella? Where is my Eddy, my Pearl? Where have they gone?”
Tom walked to the fence. “And just where the hell have you been all this time, Nestor? You walked out on them. You expect them to just sit around waiting for you to come back?”
Nestor’s nose was even redder than before, his clothing dirty and tattered. He was careful not to come near the fence, but he glowered at Tom from halfway across the yard, his stocky shoulders hunched, his hands balled into fists.
“Isabella, she is my wife,” he blustered. “Where did she go?”
“I haven’t a clue, Nestor.” Tom was about to turn away when the other man sidled closer, and Tom was amazed to see tears trickling down his veined cheeks and honest desperation in his crusted, red-rimmed eyes.
“I love her, my Isabella,” he sniveled. “I need her.”
“Yeah, well, you had one hell of a strange way of showing it, Nestor, and now you’re way too late. The best thing you can do is clear out of here, because tomorrow night that mountain”--- Tom tilted a thumb up at the lowering Turtle, dark now against the evening sky---“is going to come tumbling down over this town and bury these houses. Clear out of here while you can.”
The words didn’t register. Mumbling, Nestor turned away, making his way to the back stairs of the empty house. He fumbled a key out of his pants pocket, unlocked the back door, and disappeared inside.
What the hell! Tom shrugged. Nestor would probably rattle around in the empty house for a while feeling sorry for himself, then stagger off to find a bottle to climb into.
He’d send Lars a telegram in the morning, telling him that Nestor had turned up. Lars would take care of it from there.
Tom finished loading the wagon.
He was half a mile down the road, idly wondering what the hell made a man like Nestor Vandusen tick, when words suddenly popped into his mind along with the vivid memory of a huge, sad, old woman.
“Loving has to be learned, just like any other skill,” Evelyn Lawrence had said to him in what seemed another lifetime. “I never learned.”
Well, neither had Nestor, Tom mused. Then, like a powerful fist straight in his gut, it came to him.
He hadn’t learned, either. He jerked on the reins and the patient team pulled to a stop. Sweat broke out on his forehead and he sat, dumbfounded by what seemed a revelation.
For an entire year, he’d seen and experienced love in all its various forms, and yet it seemed he hadn’t learned a thing.
Nestor had abandoned Isabella, and now, much too late, decided he loved her. Wasn’t Tom about to make the same mistake?
He loved Zelda, and yet he was choosing to leave her. It suddenly seemed both stupid and wrong, the actions of an idiot and a coward. When it came down to it, there wasn’t much difference between him and Nestor Vandusen.
The rest of what Evelyn had told him was there in his mind, clear as a bell. “I got to thinking money was the important thing,” she’d said.
And so had he. He’d been ready to abandon everything of real worth, because he thought the same cockeyed thing.
Urgency rose in him. He hollered and brought the reins down on the backs of the astonished team with a resounding slap, and they broke into a trot.
Evelyn Lawrence had learned too late, Nestor Vandusen had learned too late.
Slow learner though he was, maybe there was still time for Tom Chapman.
A Distant Echo: Chapter Thirty-Five
Virgil was sleeping, peacefully for once, in his spanking clean, white-walled bedroom.
Zelda sat in the kitchen, tired to the bone, sipping a cup of tea. For the first time all day, the house was empty. Soon she’d light the lamp, but for now, there was still just enough natural light coming in the clean windowpanes.
A short time ago, all the women had gone back to town, calling good-byes, making ribald comments to her and one another as they climbed in the back of the rented wagon.
Zelda’s heart swelled when she thought of all they’d done for her that day. The house and even the outbuildings were clean and tidy, all the Ralstons’ meager possessions in place. Even the chicken coop had been limed and strewn with fresh straw, in preparation for her chickens.
Tom was bringing them. He should be there soon. Her stomach clenched, and she realized she was listening for the sound of the wagon.
The sounds in this isolate spot were different than she was used to in town. Night birds called in the trees outside, and she could hear the creek not far away, gurgling over the stones.
There were no miners’ voices, calling greetings to one another, no boisterous youngsters playing kick the can or catch, no mothers ordering children into the house. Missing as well was the constant sound of the trains, bringing boxcars to the mine and taking them away filled with coal, and the sharp whistles that marked the endless progression of shifts.
Here, there was only silence, at least for this one, last night. Zelda shuddered, thinking of the following night and the Slide.
What would it sound like? What would it feel like, being close to such a catastrophe? The ones who survived would have to be strong. There’d be a need for food. She’d already put a huge pot of beans to soak, and in spite of her weariness, she decided to set bread before she went to bed. She’d bring as many of the homeless home as she could. Her father would want that.
From the bedroom just down the hall, she heard Virgil cough, and she tensed. But for once the coughing didn’t continue, and after a moment she sat back in her chair again.
“Your father belongs in the hospital,” Dr. Malcolmson had told her two days ago.
“Is there some new treatment then, that will help him?” she’d asked, praying it might be so.
But the kindly doctor had sighed and shaken his head. “I’m afraid that’s not likely, but it might be easier on you, Miss Ralston.”
Her temper had flared. “My father took care of me for years,” she snapped. “I can manage quite well caring for him.”
But could she? Virgil was all but bedridden, needing attention round the clock. Eli came by whenever his job allowed, but the brunt of the nursing was up to her. Especially at night, she felt terribly alone and very frightened.
The crunching of gravel told her the wagon was coming down the rutted path in front of the house, and every nerve in her body tensed. She leaped to her feet and lit the lantern, turning the wick as high as she dared. She didn’t want to meet Tom in the dark.
The horses were trotting, as if Tom was in a great hurry to get this day over with.
She smo
othed her hand over her hair and unfastened her soiled apron, tossing it over the back of a chair, as she went to the door.
She’d help him unload and stable the horses. It would go faster that way. He could leave sooner.
He reined the horses in, and almost before the wagon stopped rolling, he jumped to the ground.
“Zelda.” The single word echoed in the evening stillness, and the urgent, passionate way he said it made her heart lurch and then hammer. She stood where she was, one hand on her throat.
“Zelda,” he said again, and this time the word had all the impact of a caress. He crossed the yard with determined strides and took the porch steps two at a time.
“What –” she began, but the query ended in a gasp as he caught her roughly in his arms. She could smell sweat, and chickens, and the good smell of his body. Automatically, her arms went round him.
“I think I’m suppose to get down on my knees or something,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. He moved her back, just far enough so that he could look down into her face. “Zelda, I love you. Will you marry me?”
She gaped up at him. “You’ve---you’ve taken leave of your senses.” If he hadn’t been holding her, she was certain her knees would have given way. Her mind was blank with shock.
“No, damn it all, I’ve just come to my senses.” She could hear the smile in his words. “Zelda, marry me. I’ve been a total ass, but that’s over now. Say that you’ll forgive me, that you’ll marry me.” He gave her a small, impatient shake. “Tonight, if we can find someone to do it. Right away, right now.”
She was beginning to recover. She shook her head and tried to step away from him, but he held tight.
Her brain was starting to work again. “What would be the purpose, Tom? You’ll likely be gone tomorrow night, and you know I can’t –”
“No. I’ll be here. I won’t be leaving.”
She frowned. “Nonsense. You’ll change your mind.” She thought she understood. “It’s because you don’t think your plan will work, is that it? You think you’ll end up staying here whether you want to or not.” He was simply hedging his bets. That’s what this was about.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 92
