by Ward, Marsha
She shook off the image of her lost child’s carefully tended grave in the apple orchard behind her Virginia home. Yes, I would do that. She breathed deeply. I shall see no evil in doing a good deed. She straightened her shoulders. “I have one question. Why is James traveling? I thought he and the Bates girl were getting married soon.”
Hilbrands’ black eyebrows arched upward. “He’s powerfully angry about something, but he didn’t confide in me. Give him time to tell us what’s happening.”
“From what you have said, he will have plenty of time as he heals.” Amanda turned and hurried down the corridor toward the back room, hesitating only a second before opening the door and entering the room.
“Thank you, men. I will take charge of the boy now.” She hustled them to the door and closed it, then leaned on the smooth wood for a moment, looking at James, willing herself to imagine that he was her son.
Lord God, why did you leave me five daughters and take my only son? Three of those girls need husbands. Where can I find good men in this uncouth place? If only this boy was not spoken for....
James lay on the litter, his face white. The bandage at his side was dark red from absorbed blood. He will bleed to death if I do not tend him now. Amanda sighed, then pushed herself away from the door and went to stand beside the young man lying on the bed.
“There is a tub beyond the bed, James,” she said. “If you are not strong enough to get into it, I will give you a sponge bath.”
“Oh no, ma’am. I can manage.”
“That is good. Let us remove the bandage and free your left arm.” Amanda helped him to a sitting position, then unwound the bloody cloth above the wound, clucking at the crusted gash in his side as she gently uncovered it. “Oh, my dear boy! Are you in pain?”
“No.”
She looked at him, sitting rigidly on the bed, trying to smile, and decided he was lying to spare her. “A hot bath will clean away much of the blood and any putrefaction. Then I will see what is to be done,” said Amanda. Her fingers went to examine his arm. “Can you move your hand?”
James tried. “The muscles are stiff,” he said, but slowly opened the hand, then closed it again.
Amanda saw that the skin had grown closed over the spot where the bullet had entered James’s arm, but the skin around the hole where it had exited—although clean—still gaped open.
“It is not too bad, after all. When you have finished with your bath, I will stitch the flaps closed.”
James drew in a sharp breath.
“Yes, it will hurt, but it is necessary if you would use your arm soon. Now I will remove your boots and stockings.”
James moved slightly as though he would pull off the boots himself. “I do not think you should double up with that wound bleeding so much, young man.” Amanda bent over and soon had the footgear on the floor. “However, I will let you remove your own trousers.”
“I—”
“What is it?”
James looked away. “I’m not wearing underclothes, ma’am.”
Amanda fought the feeling of blood rushing to her cheeks, knowing the boy could see her embarrassment if he turned his head. “I see.” She stood up, gently pulling at his good arm. “Get up, James, and I will walk you to the tub. Lean on me. ‘Twill make the going easier for you.”
James eased his feet off the edge of the bed and stood on unsteady legs, and they slowly crossed the short distance separating the bed from the bath. “Now I will turn my back while you undress and get into the water,” Amanda said, carrying out the actions. “Can you manage it?” A moment later a splash answered her, and she bit her lip and turned to see if he had fallen.
James sat—face blanched as white as his shoulders—in the upright copper tub, clutching the rolled rim with both hands.
“There, now. Will you be all right alone for a few minutes?” At his nod, she picked up his pants and the soiled bandages and wrapped them up in the litter. “I will return in a few minutes. Mind you, I will want to check behind your ears.”
Amanda swept around the bed and toward the door, and heard James expel a long, shuddering breath.
~~~
James slid as far as he could beneath the water as Mrs. Hilbrands left the room. “Six little beans!” he exclaimed, and let his arms float on the water, then sink to his sides. “That woman is near as strong willed as Ma!”
For a moment he sat quietly, letting the heat of the water soothe him as it lapped gently against his chest. Then he tilted back his head and splashed a handful of water across his neck and chin. The movement brought sharp flashes of pain from his side, and he sat still for a while.
Finally the pain subsided, and he bent forward, cupped his hands, and wet his head. Rivulets of water ran through his black hair and the stubble on his cheeks, then onto his back and chest. At his right side the liquid began to take on a reddish tinge as blood seeped from the wound, hanging suspended in twisting tendrils before blending with the water.
A bar of soap lay on a wooden rack that hung at the front of the tub, and beside it lay a washrag. James thrust one hand out of the water to get the soap, and an outflow of blood deepened the color of the water. He hastened to return his arm to his side, and the soap slipped from his hand. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead.
“Whew!” He expelled a lungful of air, and wondered how long he’d have to put up with the pain and the weakness. “I got to pay off that debt,” he muttered, craning his head to get a look at the gash.
“Tarnation,” he said, gingerly prodding the white, swollen flesh around the oozing wound with his fingertips. Beside the swelling he walked his fingers across the sunken area where the doctor had removed his shattered rib. The opening bled still.
“I reckon Mrs. H. better take a stitch down there,” he grumbled, then gently fished the soap from the bottom of the tub, took up the rag, and started to scrub.
~~~
Amanda returned to the room, bearing a large Turkish towel, a bottle of whiskey, and a sewing kit. She placed the items on the bed as she came around it to the tub.
“Have you finished?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” James said, looking at his fingertips. “I reckon I’m becoming a prune, too.”
“I will turn my back while you climb out of the tub. Here is the towel. Wrap it around you and sit on the bed. I want to stitch that arm before you rest.”
Amanda moved away with her back to the tub, and picked up a glass tumbler that was sitting on the washstand. James held the towel in one hand as he rose unsteadily to his feet and climbed out, trying to envelop himself in the fleecy folds. Hampered by the weakness in his left arm, he finally got the towel wrapped about his hips and sat on the edge of the gray coverlet.
“I’m ready, Mrs. H. While you’re at it, I reckon you’d best put a bit of thread into my side. I don’t hanker after the pain, but I’m not willing to bleed to death, neither, and this hole keeps seeping like a broken ragweed stem.”
Amanda turned, came around the bed to look at the clean wound, and bit her lip so hard that warm, salty blood flooded the space between her lip and her teeth. “I cannot imagine why the doctor did not do that job in the first place,” she exclaimed. “The fellow is not competent, James. I do not want him to treat you ever again.” She threaded a large needle with a double strand of heavy thread.
James took a full breath and averted his eyes. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t want to treat me, neither, since I couldn’t pay his bill.”
“The man thinks of nothing but his fee!” Amanda tipped some whiskey into the tumbler and offered it to James.
He made a face and drank it down. “No. He got the lead out of me without asking first was I rich enough to pay. I’ll give him credit for that.” He looked around for a place to put the tumbler, then set it on the coverlet.
“He is an insufferable drunk. Now, please sit sideways,” Amanda requested, sat behind him on the bed, and took a stitch in the meat of his arm.
“Ah!” he g
asped. “That smarts, ma’am.”
“Bite this,” she commanded, grabbing the washrag and thrusting it between his teeth.
He spit out the cloth. “Tastes of lye soap,” he said.
“Nevertheless, James, it will help the pain until the alcohol has taken effect.”
He sighed, and accepted the rag. Amanda glanced at his twitching face as she stitched as quickly as she could. She knew he was fighting to stay conscious.
“You will need to lie down for me to work on the wound in your side,” she said as she snipped the thread behind his arm. “I do not imagine you can bear the pain, even with the spirits, and I will not have you falling on the floor.”
Half a grin moved James’s mouth. “Tarnation!” he exclaimed.
“What is it?”
“Too many spots,” he replied, levering himself down to the coverlet and tightening his gut against the gouge of the needle.
Amanda took several hesitant stitches—pulling the thread through the flesh as rapidly as she dared—before James’s body relaxed in unconsciousness. Then she took her time to finish the job properly, fighting the rise of bile in her throat. After she tied off the thread, she went to the washstand, opened a drawer, and brought out several rolls of white bandage material.
“My poor boy,” she murmured as she approached the bed. “What pain you must be suffering.” She removed the cloth from his mouth and threw it into the tub. James didn’t move, neither at the sound of the splash, nor while Amanda bandaged his arm. With shaking hands, she rolled him from side to side to bind the cloth around his chest.
Before she gathered up her things, Amanda pulled the coverlet loose from the far side of the bed and threw it over James’s recumbent form. Then she gave the young man a pat on the shoulder, and hurried from the room.
~~~
“Mister James, Mister James, wake up, please? You must be hungry.”
Surprised to hear his name, James rolled over, grinning at the soothing touch of the water on his naked body, and swam upward from exploring the bottom of the pond behind the flour mill on a creek feeding the Shenandoah River. He tried to shrug off the hand that gently touched his right shoulder, but the movement brought such a flood of pain to his side that he moaned before he could catch himself.
“Please, Mister James. Ma said I wasn’t to come back to the kitchen without feeding you. If you don’t wake up soon, your food’ll be stone cold.”
He thrust his head and shoulders above the water, opened one eye, then immediately shut it against the sunlight that streamed through an open window between muslin drapes and hit his face. His body felt bloated, invaded by aches and twitches. And although he was still naked, he seemed to be lying half covered by a sheet and quilt on a bed inside a room, instead of treading water in the millpond.
Someone besides himself was in the room. “Six little beans!” he grunted, trying to shade his eyes with his left hand, remembering that a girl’s voice had addressed him. “It’s brighter than noon day in here. Can you shut them curtains?”
A young girl put the tray of food on the washstand and ran to the window to pull the drapes together. She returned to stand beside the bed, and James blinked his eyes as she drew near.
The girl was about fifteen, he judged, slender and blonde. She wore a white bib apron with a full skirt over a light weight gingham gown patterned with sprigs of lilacs on a white background. Her wavy hair hung below her shoulders, tied back with a white ribbon. The girl smiled, tentatively, and one dimple appeared in her cheek.
“Who’re you?” he asked, wondering how he came to be between the sheets. The last thing he remembered, he had been lying atop the coverlet, enduring the sting of a thousand hornets as Amanda Hilbrands’ needle pierced the flesh of his side. Now he looked around. The tub was gone from the room, and the towel had disappeared from around his hips. James blinked twice, and reached down to draw the sheet over his chest, grateful that the quilt masked his nakedness from the girl.
“I’m Sylvia. My pa runs the hotel. Don’t you recall he brought you here?”
James shut his eyes for a moment, less to remember his arrival than to recall where he had heard the girl’s voice before. He gave his head a shake, then opened his eyes.
“Yeah,” he sighed, a long drawn out sound, and fingered the bandage around his chest. “Your ma put this thread into me a couple of hours ago.”
“That was two days back!” the girl exclaimed. “You’ve been asleep since then.”
“Six little beans! Did I take a fever?” James got himself onto his elbows, and the girl bent forward to put a pillow behind his back so he could sit partway up. As the sheet slipped and gathered in creases about his waist, the girl’s hair brushed his shoulder.
The blonde hair—he could see it on another head, arranged in tumbling ringlets behind a face twisted with fury. A voice—with the same timbre as this girl’s voice—batted at his ears: “You never came around, Carl Owen. Cecil was here. I have a right to marry a man I can trust!”
James shuddered.
“No.” A frown furrowed Sylvia’s forehead. “I reckon you’re just wore out. You been through a lot of woe since you came to Pueblo City.” She turned away to bring the food tray, then sat gingerly on the edge of the bed with the tray on her lap. “This is a good room, though. Pa let Ida use it for her wedding night.”
A wrenching pain invaded James’s gut. Ida Hilbrands had breathed this air, her body had lain on this bed. The body that should have quieted Carl’s lusts was given to an English dandy—on this bed, beneath this quilt. James swallowed. His throat closed on cotton.
The girl touched his wrist. James’s arm twitched under the cool fingers.
“Are you all right, Mister James?”
He cleared his throat. “You sound like your…older sister.”
“You mean Mary?” The girl’s face brightened. “How is her little baby doing? We all want to see her.” Sylvia picked up a spoon and a bowl and stirred the contents.
James eased the sheet up to cover his chest. “The little gal’s growing, but no, I wasn’t speaking of Mary.” The sheet bunched in his lap again, and James jerked it upward and pinned it underneath his arm.
“Oh. You mean—”
“Ida! I mean Ida.” His voice rasped in his throat as he said the name.
The girl looked puzzled. “Are you angry with Ida?”
James felt his face settling into ridges as he scowled. Angry? The word was wrong. Wrong and far too weak. I hate her. I despise her wide blue eyes and her lying, cheating heart. He cleared his throat again. “I have reason.” His breath left his lungs in a lengthy shudder.
Sylvia looked at him for a moment, puzzlement crinkling the skin around her eyes. Then she picked up a spoon.
“Here, have a taste of porridge. Ma made it fresh for you today.” Sylvia held the spoon to James’s lips, and he accepted the morsel. “What did Ida do to you? I thought it was Carl she threw over.”
For a moment, he could only chew, then swallow. He sensed no taste, no savor. Before he had a chance to speak, Sylvia put another spoonful of mush into his mouth. He swallowed that down, then, as Sylvia brought up another bite, James shook his head.
They’ll know sooner or later. Pa will come in for supplies, or Ma will send a note to Mrs. H. by a passing stranger. He turned his head to look at the doorway. Will I be gone, first? Or will Danny O’Brien shoot me in the back? He looked at the girl and squeezed his hands into fists. The pain forced his mouth open.
“You didn’t hear, I reckon. Carl got over being mad at Ida. He wed Ellen Bates about a week past.”
“Oh, Mister James! She was pledged to you!” Sylvia dropped the spoon into the bowl, and it clanked against the side.
Instantly, he repented of his burst of words. “Forget I said that. Just forget it!”
“I’m sorry.” Sylvia held her hands tightly together in front of her mouth.
James snorted. “It’s done and over.”
“How cou
ld that happen?” The girl moved the tray from her lap to the bed and leaned forward.
Bitterness rose in James’s throat, and he turned his head to swallow it down.
Sylvia bounced once on the bed. “Ida caused it. She sure is mean.”
James shuddered, slumping against the pillow. “Go away,” he said.
“What?”
“Take your gruel and leave me be. I’m weary.”
“But you didn’t finish.”
“Tell your Ma I fell asleep again. It won’t be a lie. Look. I’m nodding off now.” James shut his eyes.
He heard her get to her feet and pick up the tray. “I reckon I tired you out, talking so much.”
“It’s not you. I’m wore out, like you said.” James twitched the quilt higher on his chest. Suddenly he bolted upright, winced, then lay down again. “You’d better get your papa, girl. I got to put myself deeper in his debt.”
~~~
James sat up, craning his neck toward the doorway when Hilbrands sauntered into the room.
“It’s good to see you awake, my boy,” the man said, his voice booming in the small room. “Mandy was mighty concerned that you slept so long.”
“Tarnation, Randolph, I’m not on my deathbed. I’m sorry Mrs. H. took a notion to worry, but I’m almost ready to get up.”
The man chuckled. “You were so dead to the world a day or so ago, I wondered if it was worth the effort to tuck you in. Take your time and heal up right, my boy.” Hilbrands sat on the bed. “What do you want me for?”
James shifted his weight. “It rankles me to put you to further trouble, but I got a horse and mule boarding over at the livery stable, eating grain I haven’t got cash to pay for. My saddles are taking up space in the tack room, to boot. I also brung a war bag and a pistol I ain’t seen since the Irishman shot holes in me. I’d take it kindly if you would see to my animals and bring me my gear.”
Hilbrands laughed. “Seen to and done, my boy. That’s your bag tucked into the corner, and your animals are eating my hay out back.”
