by Jan Watson
Willy stayed right beside him the whole time. He would not allow anyone else to fetch for his brother. Not even Mam had the heart to scold when Willy shoved the saved chicken feet in Daniel’s face.
“Thanks, Willy,” Daniel responded weakly. “These are grand.” He took a bite of egg. “I passed my test, Willy.”
Not a soul stirred.
“What test is that, Son?” Daddy finally asked.
“The serpent, Daddy. I took him up, just like the deacons at the meeting.”
“But you got bit!” Willy exclaimed before anyone could stop him.
“It wasn’t the snake I took up that bit me.” Daniel leaned back against his pillow; a light shone from his face. “It was the one I stepped on. Poor thing—he couldn’t help it.”
Copper’s mind swirled. She had much to think about as she hurried to the barn after breakfast, late for milking. “Why, Molly,
I thought you’d be bursting,” she said to the contented cow who was ruminating in the barnyard. “Who took care of you? John?”
She glanced out the window by Molly’s stall, expecting to see John off in the distance walking back to the Pelfrey farm. Not spying him anywhere, she turned to her chores. “I’d best get to the springhouse and see to the milk.”
She was surprised to find John in the springhouse, pouring milk into the container on top of the separator that spun the milk through a series of funnels and separated out the cream. His ears flamed red when he saw her.
“Goodness sake,” Copper cried, “where’d you get to? I saw you sleeping on the porch when I went down to the creek, but you were gone when I came back. Why didn’t you come in for breakfast?”
“Um . . . um . . .” he stammered and looked away. “I went home to do my milking first.”
“I could have done this, John.” Copper drew alongside him and leaned her elbows on the countertop where he worked. “You didn’t have to stay the night.”
“I wanted to be close in case you needed me.” He paused to cast her a concerned glance. “How’s Daniel?”
“He’s much better. He ate some breakfast.”
John poured the cream into a tin, tapped the lid in place, and lowered it into the spring. After that he poured the rest of the milk into a yellowware crock. “Is that man still here?”
“Dr. Corbett? No, he’s gone,” Copper said, wondering when he’d be back. “He left instructions for Daniel’s care with me.”
“Why you? Why not Miss Grace?” John stared at her hard.
“I don’t know.” She dropped her eyes and turned her back. “Maybe because Daddy told him I did a good job. Why does it matter?”
“I don’t trust him is all,” John admitted.
“Why, John—” Copper turned toward him and took the empty bucket from his hand—“you don’t even know him.”
John pulled away and started toward the door, then stopped and fixed her with a stare. “Just you remember, Pest. You don’t know him either.”
Copper stayed busy all day caring for Daniel. He continued to improve and by late afternoon was begging to leave his confinement on the settee. She carried him to the porch, where she settled him in Mam’s ladder-back rocker. An overturned bucket, positioned just right, served as a prop to keep his feet up like the doctor had said to do. She was just tucking a brightly colored crazy quilt over Daniel’s legs when she spied the doctor looping his horse’s reins over the hitching post in the barnyard.
Carrying his black kit, he strode across the yard and climbed the steps to the porch. “I thought I’d better make rounds,” he said. “You never know how these things can go.”
“We thank you for coming,” Copper said. “He’s feeling better. Aren’t you, Daniel?”
“Yes, Sissy,” Daniel responded as he grabbed her hand tightly. “Are you going to hit me again, Mr. Doctor?”
Doctor Corbett knelt down and took Daniel’s other hand. He glanced at Copper with a questioning look.
Willy had been watering Mam’s flower garden next to the porch. Now he stopped dipping water from the rain barrel and answered the unspoken question. “Daniel says you keep a hammer in your bag, Doc,” he said knowingly. “I told him you probably had to hit his knee to knock that viper’s teeth out of his leg.”
The doctor dropped his head. Copper knew he struggled not to laugh just as she did. Finally he opened his bag and took out the small rubber hammer he’d tested Daniel with during the night. “Come up here, Willy,” he said, “and I’ll show you both how to use this. May I?” he asked, taking Copper’s arm in his hand.
She nodded, unable to speak. Just the touch of his hand made her whole arm tingle. He placed his fingers on either side of her elbow and tapped her lightly with the hammer. Her forearm jerked. He tapped it once again.
“There, Willy,” Dr. Corbett said. “Did you see how your sister’s arm jerked? That is a reflex action, and that is what I was checking when I tapped your knee last night, Daniel. I was making sure your reflexes were strong.”
Willy’s eyes took on a devilish look. “Hey, Doc, what’d happen if I checked Sissy’s head with this here hammer?”
Copper was mortified. She gave Willy a look meant to stop him in his tracks and said, “Willy! Go finish the flowers.”
“Oh, all right,” he said, giving in, “but I might want to see that hammer again, Doc.”
Dr. Corbett smiled. “You may borrow it anytime, Willy.” He stood beside Copper as Willy trudged back to the flowers with another dipper of water. Copper didn’t dare move, for he still held fast to her elbow. Somehow she didn’t want him to stop.
Just then Mam stepped onto the porch, drying her hands on a small linen towel. “Doctor Corbett, it is so kind of you to come again so soon. Won’t you stay for supper?”
Casually, as if he was not aware that he had held her arm all that time, Dr. Corbett let it fall and reached out to Mam. He took her hand in both of his and said, “Why, thank you, Mrs. Brown. I don’t mind if I do. But tell me, have you quite recovered from your swoon?”
Copper slipped inside and left Mam to talk with the doctor. She was in another quandary. Why did the stranger’s touch make her warm all over? Why did she hanker for him to touch her again? Pulling dishes from the cupboard, she began to set the table. Supper would be easy to fix, because neighbors had been bringing food by all day. She dished up the meal: a round of corn bread slathered with fresh butter, mustard greens boiled down with bacon grease, corn pudding, and rabbit fried to a tasty crisp brown. Dessert would be Mrs. Wilson’s cake. Swiping a lick of caramel icing with her finger, Copper reckoned there’d never been an illness anywhere in the hollow that Mrs. Wilson’s cake didn’t soothe.
Brother Isaac came by on his round of sick calls and became the seventh person at the table. Willy dragged the bench in from the porch so they would have enough seating.
They all bowed their heads and clasped hands as Brother Isaac blessed the food and thanked the Lord for Daniel’s life. Copper tried mightily to keep her mind on the prayer, but she was seated next to Dr. Corbett, and as luck would have it, his hand was in her own. He didn’t need to hit her with a hammer to start the tingling in her arm again.
John and his father stopped by after supper, and all the men-folk settled on the porch. All the men except John—he went to milk Molly. Copper and Mam washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen before Mam said they could hang up their aprons and join the men on the porch.
Mam took a seat on the bench beside Daddy, so Copper lifted Daniel and sat with him in Mam’s rocker. He snuggled down and soon fell asleep in her arms. It was comforting to sit and listen to the men as the whip-poor-wills tuned up for their nightly serenade and the lightning bugs turned their little lanterns on and off, off and on. Willy ran wildly about the darkening yard capturing the insects in a fruit jar, rushing up now and then to show off their greenish glow. Finished with milking, John settled down on the porch floor near her feet. Copper breathed a sigh of contentment and let go of the worry that ha
d knotted her shoulders since Willy had run screaming from the forest.
Copper learned a lot about the doctor that evening, and she never had to ask a single question. Matter of fact, she never opened her mouth, just sat and rocked Daniel. Brother Isaac took care of the questions for her—he was as good as a lawyer at getting answers from folks. And he had once gone to school in the city, so he and the stranger had something in common.
Doctor Corbett was twenty-six and had his own medical practice in Lexington. His parents were deceased, and he had one sister, Alice, who was married to a banker. He told them about his elderly cousin, and Copper thought him very kind to care so tenderly for the old soul. But the thing that set her heart to fluttering was when she learned that he was not married but a bachelor living on his own.
She took this little ray of hope and nurtured it like a cupped candle flame as she prepared herself for bed that evening. Pulling the combs from her hair, she braided a thick plait that hung halfway down her back before shimmying into her nightgown and slipping under the covers. The window by her bed was half open, and she could hear the same whip-poor-wills that had begun their song earlier in the evening; some tiny tree frogs added their peeping to the music of the night. The moon was halfway up its climb in the dark sky, and she couldn’t help wondering if Dr. Corbett was looking at it now. And was he maybe thinking of her as she was thinking of him?
Simon Corbett propped his feet on Lottie Boone’s porch railing and stared at the big yellow moon. What was happening to him? Try as he might, he couldn’t get the feel of Copper Brown’s touch from his mind. He’d held many a young woman’s hand in his but never one like hers. Hers was firm, almost hard, and she kept her nails short and trimmed straight across like a workingman’s.
He dropped his feet from the rail and let the legs of his tipped-back chair fall to the floor. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he rested his head in his hands and tried to get a grip on himself. She was sixteen, he’d learned. Sixteen! This cannot go on. But his parents stole into his mind. His father had also been a doctor, and he’d captured Lilly Mae Mitchell’s heart and married her at the tender age of fifteen, though he had been twelve years her senior. Simon had never known a better-suited couple than his parents, but still . . . sixteen? It happened, he knew—it was not even unusual. But he never supposed he’d be smitten by such a young girl.
He stood and stretched, chuckling softly at the wandering of his mind. He’d just met the young woman and his mind was planning a wedding? He needed to be careful. . . .
CHAPTER 23
Simon Corbett spent the next day tending to his cousin’s needs. Meeting with her nursemaid, he laid out plans for the invalid’s next six months of care. He wouldn’t be back until early winter, and he wanted to be sure everything was in order.
With the rising of the sun, his mind had cleared. The stirring in his heart the night before was replaced by calm logic. Yes, Copper Brown was beautiful, and yes, she was intelligent and charming . . . but she was not the girl for him.
He ate a biscuit and a piece of ham and washed it down with hot coffee, thankful the nurse was also a good cook. Taking an ax from the shed, he went out to clear the scrub brush and Virginia creeper vines that threatened to overtake the porch. His day continued in such a vein, and by late afternoon the yard was free of bushes and weeds, and a stack of firewood lay neatly by the back door.
Wonder how the boy is doing, he thought after a quick wash in the creek. What if he took a setback? Maybe he should go by the Browns’ and check on Daniel.
Simon stroked his cheeks. Maybe he’d shave first.
Willy saw Dr. Corbett first. Copper heard him yell from the barn, “Sissy, set another plate. Doc’s back again!”
She peeked out the screen door, and indeed there he was, ambling across the yard with Willy, who swung his black doctor’s bag. Thankfully, Mam had fried some extra chicken, just in case.
“Oh no, ma’am,” Copper heard him say when Mam met him on the porch and asked him to supper. “I don’t want to trouble you. I just came by to check on our patient.”
“Nonsense,” Mam replied. “You’ll stay and eat. Come on in. Daniel’s on the settee.”
His presence filled the cabin as he knelt and pulled up Daniel’s nightshirt. Copper watched him probe the wound with his long, slender fingers. “Does this hurt?” he asked as he made his way up Daniel’s leg. “How about this?” Then the words they’d waited to hear: “Daniel, you’re going to be just fine. Let’s try walking a few steps.”
Daniel slid to the edge of the settee and stood. Willy supported him on one side and Copper on the other as he took his first wobbly steps.
“Now,” the doctor said, “let’s see you walk by yourself.”
Mam stood by the table with her hand to her mouth, and Copper held her breath as Daniel hobbled to the door and back, wincing with each step. His eyes found his mother’s. “It feels funny. It feels like something’s too tight . . . like my leg is drawing up.”
“Hmm,” the doctor said. “Hmm.” He lifted Daniel and set him on the corner of the table. Taking Daniel’s foot in his hand, he asked him to push as hard as he could.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said finally, “Daniel’s going to need a bit of work. Seems the poison has affected this long muscle.” He traced upward from Daniel’s ankle to his knee with one finger. “The muscle’s cramping when he walks. It’s causing him to limp.”
“What does that mean?” Mam asked, a note of panic in her voice. Copper slipped her arm around Mam’s waist. “Will my boy be crippled?”
“Oh no, my dear,” he answered assuredly. “Not at all. I’ll just need to teach you how to exercise this muscle to get it back to full function.”
Copper lifted Daniel from the table and held him on her hip. He nestled his head against her shoulder. His little white nightshirt billowed around her waist. “Teach me, Dr. Corbett. I’ll see to Daniel.”
“Yes, please,” Mam said, her voice still shaky. “Please show Laura Grace what to do.”
“Me too,” Willy piped up. “Do we get to use that rubber hammer?”
That evening Copper sat on the porch with Dr. Corbett and practiced Daniel’s care while Mam and Daddy did her chores.
Over and over he showed her how to contract and release the muscles in the leg. Willy was their willing patient and Daniel watched, laughing from his chair. When she was sure of the exercises, the doctor taught her how to make and apply a poultice to draw out soreness and inflammation.
As Mam and Daddy took seats on the porch, Doctor Corbett took a hickory nut-size lump of alum and mixed it with egg whites in a tin pan. He stirred and stirred until the alum turned to jelly. Pouring the whey into a clean jar, he took the jelly and put it on a clean cloth before wrapping it around Daniel’s lower leg. Copper was to wet the cloth with the whey several times a day for the next few days, making more as needed.
Afterward she watched, fascinated, as the doctor took a tortoiseshell fountain pen from his bag and dipped it in a tiny pot of ink. He wrote the directions for the alum jelly in a precise hand, waved it in the air for a moment, and presented it to her.
The combination of alum and egg whites made for a sticky mess. “Time for a washup,” she said, and he followed her to the outdoor bench where they kept a basin and a bucket of water.
She took a dipperful of water and poured it over his hands as he scrubbed them with lye soap, and then he did the same for her. It seemed like a very intimate gesture somehow, sharing a towel, and she found herself wanting to lean against him as he stood beside her at the bench. When his hand accidentally touched hers, she trembled, and when her eyes met his she saw his yearning.
The spell was broken when Pard let out a long and lonesome neigh from the barnyard. “Poor old Pardner,” Dr. Corbett said.
“I’ve been neglecting him.” He hung the towel on a nail and turned to Daddy. “Mr. Brown—”
“Will,” Daddy said, a sparkle in his eyes as if he knew wha
t was coming next.
“Will—” the doctor cleared his throat—“I wonder if you’d permit Laura Grace to take a stroll with me. I was thinking of taking Pard to the creek for a drink.”
“That would be fine, Doc,” Daddy answered straight-out. “Just fine.”
“I’m sure Willy would like a walk also,” Mam interjected.
“Boy howdy, would I! Can I ride Pardner?” he called, already running across the yard. Suddenly he stopped and ran back to Daniel. “I won’t be gone long, buddy, and I’ll bring you something special.”
“I’ll bet Dr. Corbett was glad you suggested Willy go along,” Will teased. “Did you see the sparks between those two? I was afraid they’d set the porch afire.”
“What’s wrong with the cattle trough by the barn?” Grace asked, her eyebrows raised. “Last I looked it was full of water.”
“I haven’t seen Copper so lit up since I gave her that shotgun for her birthday. Maybe we ought to let her take the good doctor hunting come Saturday morning. He’d be curious as a hound dog on a cold trail if he could see her flush some turkeys.”
“Please, Will, don’t be entertaining such a thought,” Grace said. She took out her hanky and pressed it against her nose. “He is much too sophisticated for her,” she huffed. “I am afraid an assignation with Dr. Corbett could only lead to distress.”
“Well, darlin’, any man who hurts my daughter—” he stroked his beard and started rocking—“doctor or no, will find his tail so full of buckshot, he’ll be using it as a sieve.”
“Please don’t be coarse.” She rocked harder. “Can’t you just send him on his way? We can care for Daniel now.”
Will faced his wife. “Grace, you surprise me. I thought it was your wish to have Copper living in the big city. Think of all the fine things she’d have if she was a doctor’s wife.”
