by Kit Morgan
Cooper hoped he wasn’t some drunk just come from Hugh’s saloon wandering the countryside. “Can I help you?” he asked, wondering why the man hadn’t uttered a word.
The man shook his head.
“Then … what are you doing here?”
He pointed at the rooster.
“Oh, he’s yours?”
The man started to nod, looked at the bird and shrugged instead.
Cooper crossed his arms. “You do realize you’re on private property?”
He grimaced, nodded and pointed at the rooster again.
“Look, take your chicken and go, Mr. …”
The man bowed, letting his hat fall off his head. He caught it, pulled out a card and handed it to him.
Cooper took it, eyeing him suspiciously. How odd. He looked at the card, grumbled and handed it back. “All right, so … be on your way.”
The man held the card out again.
“You want me to keep this?”
He nodded, smiling widely.
“You a mute?”
The little fellow nodded, then shrugged again.
“Them’s the breaks, is that it?” He knew that feeling well. “Fine, I’ll keep your card. Now kindly leave my property.”
The man smiled, nodded, then snatched up the rooster, who squawked and pecked at him a few times. He frowned at it, crossed his eyes – and wouldn’t you know it, the bird settled right down.
Cooper stared at them a moment, then waved them off. “On your way, I’ve got work to do.”
The man nodded and walked away, the rooster in his arms.
Cooper shook his head. “What next?” He took two steps and stopped. “Hey, you dropped something!” He picked up a folded piece of paper, turned around – and froze. Man and bird were nowhere to be seen. “What in tarnation?” He looked at the paper and his throat tightened as if he were holding a lit stick of dynamite. He unfolded the paper, but of course couldn’t read it. The words were just a swirling mess of ink. He closed his eyes and fought the urge to crumple it – it didn’t belong to him and it might be important.
Finally he refolded it, stuck it in his shirt pocket and got back to work. He’d have to ask Royce, who owned the next ranch over, if he had a relative visiting. Maybe the mute and his pet rooster weren’t from Hugh’s place after all. Then again, he might never know. There wasn’t a sign of the little fellow anywhere.
He returned to his chores, intent on getting things done in a timely fashion so he could fix supper and work on his latest creation. One good thing he inherited from his father was the ability to carve wood. Henry White had made a small living from it, selling his creations to guests of his mother’s stage stop in eastern Oregon. That had been a fun place to grow up, meeting people coming from all over and hearing about the wide world.
He stopped and gazed at the pasture he’d made when he first arrived in Creede a year ago. He’d seen a lot of the country before then, and wasn’t sure he’d stay. But Creede was as good a place as any to settle, so long as he didn’t get in any real trouble. Granted, the town had had more than its share of late, so he wasn’t sure he could avoid it completely.
Which made him think – was that fool tutor of his going to be trouble? How had she come by that book? He should have warned her not to leave the boardinghouse at night – maybe not even during the day. Why, he’d heard about another body being found a few weeks ago. He did his best to mind his own business, but dead men in the streets weren’t something you could ignore. They’d traced it back to some poisoned moonshine, but it still made him antsy.
He finished his chores, went inside and made bacon and eggs for supper. Well, one egg, his last. Maybe he should have hung onto that rooster and got himself a few hens. Hmm … well, for now he’d go through his larder, make a mental list and stop by Crowther’s Dry Goods after his lesson tomorrow.
He snorted – what lesson could there be, given who he was? “Ha! Don’t go there. She isn’t gonna help you.”
Cooper ate, cleaned up around the cabin, then sat down to do the one thing that calmed his nerves whenever words on paper confronted him: whittling.
The next day Hattie returned to the book shop to see what books they had on diseases. Maybe she could find something to help her understand what she was dealing with. Mr. White couldn’t be the only person in the country with such an ailment. Even something similar would help.
“This is all we have,” Mr. Redfern said, handing her an 1887 Gray’s Anatomy. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Thank you.” An idea struck and Hattie smiled. “Mr. Redfern, is there an ophthalmologist in town?”
“We don’t have one of those around here, just some regular doctors and a fellow who helps with sick horses.”
“Where is the nearest, er, ‘regular doctor’?”
“His place is just down the street. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.” She picked up the book. “Oh dear, I don’t think this will help.” She leafed through it anyway, then put it back and looked at a few other medical texts. Why the shop carried such books she didn’t know – they looked like books from a university, but were all well-worn like the children’s reader Mr. Dunst found for her. They might have come from a university, at that.
As big as they were, however, she didn’t find what she was looking for, and couldn’t spend her limited funds on anything she wasn’t sure she could use. She would have to broach the subject of payment with Mr. White today.
“Find what you’re looking for?” Mr. Redfern asked.
“Not yet. Where was the doctor’s office again?”
He wrote the address down, repeated his directions from earlier, then returned to the front of the shop.
She stared at the address and sighed. “Well, I might as well try.” She took a last look at the fat volumes she’d been thumbing through and left. As it happened, the doctor wasn’t in – she’d have to try again later.
She crossed the street, found a bench, sat and closed her eyes. Since her arrival she hadn’t had much time to think about her situation, really think. Now that she had a moment, despair found her. Did she do the right thing? Would she regret her choice to run away?
She thought about the last meeting she had with her father, how their words tore at each other’s hearts. “Hattie!” he’d yelled across his desk. “You’re getting married and that’s final! You’re nineteen now – if you don’t accept Bart’s proposal, who knows when you’ll have another chance!”
She’d yelled back, said things she shouldn’t have. That her father made her out to be a spinster at nineteen was ridiculous. She knew plenty of women in Boston who hadn’t married until well into their twenties. Yet he’d said it more than once. Did he think no one other than Bart would want to marry her? Of course they would. The Dodges had enough money to tempt many a man her way. Father’s motivation was that Bart Sullivan had more.
“Oh, Papa,” she whispered to herself as a tear escaped. “Why couldn’t you see things my way?” For the first time since packing her bag in the dead of night and leaving, she regretted escaping her father’s house. What if she never saw her parents again? What if they didn’t want to see her? To be disinherited was one thing; to be ostracized, another.
Hattie pulled a handkerchief from her reticule, wiped her eyes and stood. “What’s done is done.” She squared her shoulders and continued down the boardwalk, turning her mind to the present dilemma: teaching Cooper White how to read, and getting paid for it.
Chapter Five
“And what about this one?” Hattie asked, pointing to another letter. She’d forgone the reader for now, instead writing out the alphabet on twenty-six pieces of cardstock – uppercase on one side, lowercase on the other. Currently they were looking at a capital R.
Mr. White sighed in frustration. “It’s just no good, ma’am. I can’t … well, I can’t see them.”
Hattie thought. He’d told her the same thing the day before, more or less. “Mr. Whi
te, what can you see?”
His eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”
“If I gave you a pencil and paper, could you draw what you see? Perhaps I can better understand what we’re dealing with.”
He scratched his head. “No one’s ever asked me to do that. I can try.”
“Good,” she said, looking around. They were on the same bench as before. She wondered if this was all that was left of a larger park that a fire had ruined. Regardless, they wouldn’t be able to meet there much longer. The days were definitely growing colder, and Mr. Hicks did say they’d already had some snow.
She gave Mr. White her notebook and pencil. “All right, draw what you see.” She pulled up a different card, the capital H. That should be simple enough.
Mr. White put the notebook on his lap and stared at the card a moment. He drew a vertical line, then a small horizontal line, with a bit of space between them.
She studied it. “You … have half of it.” She looked at him. “And this is all you see?”
His jaw tensed. “When the letters and words aren’t … turning.”
“Turning?” she repeated, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure I understand.”
He licked his lips, glanced at her, then closed the book. “It’s like … someone puts the letters in a bowl and stirs them. Not always, but sometimes. Most of the time the letters are just broken into bits and pieces. Or that’s what I see.”
Hattie thought a moment, her mind searching for any sort of eye trouble resembling his description, but she couldn’t recall one. Yet she knew something could be done. Couldn’t it? She put her hand over his and guided the pencil he held. “Here’s the rest of it.” She made the other vertical line and connected them. “There – the letter H.”
He looked at it. “I … see it.”
“You do?” She removed her hand and smiled at him.
“Yes.” He blinked a few times, looked at the page again. “It’s gone.” He shut his eyes and shook his head.
Hattie’s chest tightened. She was at a loss, and needed to do some more research. What if he was right and this was something he’d inherited from his father? “I’m not sure if you told me yesterday – could your father read?”
“He sure can. So can my mother and the rest of my family back home.”
She gazed at him a moment. This was a strong man, a rancher. He was tall, broad and muscular. Ranchers worked hard and she was sure he was no exception. Yet in that moment she saw in Cooper White a vulnerability she’d never noticed in a man. It had to take guts for him to let her see that. “Where are you from?”
“No place, really. Just a stage stop in eastern Oregon.”
“That’s far away,” she said.
“I guess it depends where you’re from,” he said with a hint of a smile.
Should she tell him? What if men came snooping around asking questions? Wait, hadn’t she told him where she was from yesterday? “You mean you don’t recall?” Worse thing was, she didn’t.
“No… can’t say that I do. I’m sorry, sometimes details slip my mind.”
She studied him a moment and wondered if that had anything to do with his inability to read. “Boston.”
“Oh. I don’t remember that.”
“I may have forgotten to say – we didn’t get off to a very good start, after all. I asked a lot of you yesterday, and perhaps I shouldn’t have. But I wanted to find out your skill level.”
He laughed. “How can I have a skill level when I don’t have the skill?”
“You’ve never been able to read? I thought you said you could a little.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I can pick out a word or two, but it’s an effort, Miss Dodge. A big one.”
“I see. So much of an effort you stopped trying?”
“Well… yes and no. I mean, I’m trying today. But …”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a gentle smile. “I know this must be hard for you.”
“It is,” he admitted. “There are a lot of illiterate men and women in the world, I suppose. But they can be taught. I can’t.” He looked away. “There’s something wrong with me and I don’t know what.”
She put her hand on his sleeve. “I can understand your frustration. Maybe it has to do with your eyesight?”
“I don’t think so.” He fiddled with the notebook. “We were always so busy at the stage stop, so Ma never had a chance to take me to a doctor. But my grandma was married to one – she checked my eyes and said they were fine. I know I don’t see stuff as fuzzy like folks who need specs do.”
Hattie sighed. “It doesn’t seem right. Your vision is fine, but it’s like you only see parts of letters.”
He arched an eyebrow and tapped his temple. “It’s something up here.”
“But you’re an intelligent man, Mr. White,” she countered. “Anyone can tell by speaking with you.”
“Yeah, until I pick up a book.”
“There has to be a logical explanation. If something inhibits you from …”
“Inhibits?” he said, cutting her off. “I’d say it does more than inhibit, Miss Dodge. It stops me dead in my tracks the second I see a note or a newspaper. And it’s only gotten worse over the years.”
“You said you could read a few words before? How long has it been?”
He grumbled and scratched the back of his neck, staring straight ahead. “Well … it’s not so much a matter of how long ago as how long it takes.”
She blinked a few times. “I don’t understand.”
“You drew the rest of the H. If I’d looked at it long enough, I might’ve been able to do it. But we’re talking ten or twenty minutes for one word.” He looked at her and smiled. “I’m not the man you want to give an urgent message to. Not unless I’m just delivering it.”
She smiled at his joke. “No, I suppose not. It’s a good thing people yell ‘fire’ when there’s one instead of expecting you to read it on the note.”
He smiled and nodded. Hattie thought he looked adorable in that moment. She blushed and looked away.
“At least you don’t laugh at me,” he said.
She gasped. “Laugh at you? Why in Heaven’s name would I? What a horrible thing.”
He shrugged. “It’s why I left home.”
“Really?” She gave him an incredulous look.
“Really.” He twirled the pencil. “I was fifteen. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
She sat, wondering what could have happened to him. “I remember you said you had uncles. Did they tease you, make life difficult?”
“No – they did everything in their power to help me. All my family did.”
“Then why leave?”
He looked at her and sighed. “It was a stage stop, Miss Dodge – different folks coming through almost every day. It was on account of them. Stupid the way I let it get to me. Maybe if it had only happened a few times, things wouldn’t have been so bad. But … it seemed like it was all the time.”
Hattie cocked her head. “Tell me,” she asked without thinking. But she sensed he wanted to tell her, as if it was a huge burden he’d been carrying for a long time. Maybe it was.
“We had a lot of men come through … the first time was a schoolmaster from Oregon City traveling to Baker City in the eastern part of the state. Guests would sit in the parlor in the evenings to talk, read, sometimes play games. This man, Mr. Carmichael, wrote a book and was having each of us take turns reading from it. I think he was just showing off.”
She smiled and nodded for him to continue.
“When it came my turn I took the book and just handed it to my Pa. Mr. Carmichael didn’t like that and insisted I take a turn. When Pa told him I didn’t have to, he got upset, took the book from Pa and handed it back to me. Of course I knew what would happen. I’d embarrass Pa. Ma was in the kitchen, so she didn’t see what happened.” He took a deep breath. “I tried to read, but of course I was so nervous I couldn’t make anything out of it. The words were swirling all o
ver. I started to cry like a baby.”
“How old were you?”
He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe seven, eight.”
“My goodness, I’m sure you weren’t the only boy of eight in the world who hadn’t learned to read yet.”
“Maybe so, but Mr. Carmichael got upset and started to berate Pa.”
“That’s terrible.” She shook her head. “Awful.”
“That’s what I thought – and Mr. Carmichael a school teacher, no less. Then he said Pa couldn’t read, so Pa took the book and read a whole page, perfectly. That’s when Mr. Carmichael said there had to be something wrong with me.”
Hattie caught herself leaning toward him and stopped. She cleared her throat. “What happened then?”
“Pa insisted I knew my numbers and a few other things. Which I did, I just couldn’t read well.”
“And what did Mr. Carmichael say to that?”
“Anyone who meets my Pa can tell he’s not … quite right.” He shrugged and turned to face her. “He’s a good man, Pa is, and smart in a lot of ways. He’s just… slow.”
Hattie nodded. “I understand. And he’s not the only one in the world like that.”
“No, but are you related to someone like him?”
“I can’t say that I am,” she said with a sigh.
“It tore me up to watch him go through that. He didn’t bat an eye. He let Mr. Carmichael rave on and on. And when he was done Pa just said, ‘Thank you for your opinion. Now go pack your bags. You’re no longer welcome here.’”
“Oh my,” Hattie said with a giggle. “Did he now?”
“Oh yeah.” He smiled. “Then he looked at me and told me to forgive the man – and all those who come after him.”
Hattie just stared. “Your father’s a wise man.”
“Yes, he is,” he said with a smile. He looked at the notebook on his lap. “But it kept happening – someone would require me to read a book, a recipe, a letter … I couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t stand to watch Pa go through it either.” He sighed.
She clasped her hands in her lap – the urge to comfort him was too great. “I’m going to do some research, Mr. White.”
