Springwater Seasons Page 14

  Savannah was watching McCaffrey with her heart in her face, and Pres was watching her. He couldn’t seem to help it. She looked so different in her prim, schoolmarmish clothes, somehow even more alluring than in the bright, flouncing silks, satins, bangles, and feathers she’d worn to sing and peddle drinks at the Hell-bent Saloon, back in Choteau. He wondered what sort of past had brought her to such a present.

  She was a soiled dove, a lady of the evening, Pres reminded himself, and he was a used-up, throw-away drunk, friendless, and literally down to his last nickel. What a sorry pair they made, misfits, both of them. Lost souls.

  Again, he shoved a hand through his hair.

  “I’d better show you where to bed down before you fall over,” Jacob said. “You want any supper? Hot water, maybe?”

  Pres couldn’t have forced down so much as a bite of food, but the offer of clean water had a distinct appeal “A bath wouldn’t hurt me,” he allowed, and caught Savannah with a look of devout agreement on her face. He almost laughed again, but he was too tired, too dispirited, too long out of practice, and his throat still hurt from the last time. For a moment, he wanted very much to stay in Springwater, to find himself again, to build a simple country practice, like the one his father had had, at home in Maine. He’d found a semblance of peace, standing by that spring and watching the first stars rise against the wide sky, had even thought he might be able to lay himself down and sleep through a whole night, here in this quiet place. A grand illusion, all of that, he’d reminded himself then, as he did now. It was the waking nightmares that were real, the screaming and incessant carnage, the black flies and the putrid stenches. He had to keep moving, stay a step ahead of the memories, lest they pull him under like quicksand.

  “Come along, then,” McCaffrey said, matter-of-factly. “I’ll see to the water and find you some fresh clothes for tomorrow.”

  Pres finished his coffee, stood, and carried the cup over to the cast-iron sink, near the cookstove. That done, he followed the Stationmaster to a small room at the back, hardly bigger than a closet, but blessedly clean, with the distant sound of the springs coming in through an open window. The bed was narrow, and covered in an ancient, neatly pieced quilt with a date—1847—and a partial Bible verse embroidered in the center panel. Seek ye first the kingdom of God …

  “I don’t have the money to pay for this room,” Pres said, moved to confession by the other man’s quiet generosity, “or for the bathwater and soap, either. I’ve got five cents and a stagecoach ticket to my name and I need them both.”

  “I didn’t figure you was real flush,” Jacob replied, obviously a master of understatement. “We got water and soap aplenty, and the room’s just settin’ here, empty as the Lord’s tomb, so you might as well be in it as out there in the barn or on the ground someplace. I’ll fetch the tub while you’re making yourself comfortable.”

  Comfortable. When had he last enjoyed that blissful state? At home in Rocky Cove, eating his mother’s cooking, sleeping in the sheets she kept clean and crisply pressed, accompanying his father on rounds. It all seemed so distant and unreal that he might have been reflecting on the life of some long-dead stranger, rather than his own innocent youth.

  Jacob McCaffrey had slipped out sometime during this revery, closing the door behind him. Pres went to the window, more because he couldn’t stand still than because he thought there was anything to see. His hands shook even when he grasped the sill to steady them, and he felt a pinch in the pit of his stomach as he stared out on that moonless night. It was an excellent metaphor, all that dark nothingness, he thought, for the ruined and desolate landscape of his own soul.

  He rubbed his beard-roughened jaw. It seemed a supreme irony, craving whiskey, for he truly despised the stuff, but crave it he did, especially in still and lonely moments like these. In spite of the way it branded the inside of his belly at every swallow like molten steel.

  Without it, though, there wouldn’t be the remotest chance of even closing his eyes, let alone sleeping. He had not, in fact, enjoyed a night of natural rest without the aid of whiskey or laudanum since before his enlistment in the Union Army, in the summer of 1862. He’d been full of ideals then, fresh out of medical college and damnably certain of his ability to save the world.

  Mercifully, Jacob returned in the midst of these ruminations, forcing back some of the gloom by the simple but palpable force of his presence, carrying a sizable round washtub, lined with copper. After that, he began lugging in water, with the boy, Toby, helping him. Towels were provided, along with a bar of rough yellow soap, an extra bucket of water, a straight razor, and a leather strop. The promised change of clothes appeared, too—a loose, butternut-colored shirt, worn to a chamoislike smoothness, and a pair of rough-spun trousers, black like his own.

  “Will’s things, or Wesley’s,” Jacob said, by way of explanation. “Miss June-bug looked for our boys to come back for a long while—I guess she hoped the reports were wrong—and kept a lot of their belongings lest they be needed.”

  Pres felt his throat tighten and go painfully dry. He might have seen the McCaffrey’ sons in his travels, might even have treated one or the other, for he’d tended Union soldiers and rebels alike, during his term of service, scrambling from one battleground, one field hospital, one ambulance wagon to another. Never doing anybody a damn bit of good, no matter how hard he worked.

  “Thanks,” he ground out, and took the clothes. “Maybe I ought to look in on the girl and her baby once more.”

  “Miss Savannah’s with them just now,” Jacob countered easily. “You have your bath and get yourself some sleep. There’ll be another stage through tomorrow afternoon sometime.”

  Pres nodded, and then McCaffrey and the boy were gone. He peeled away his clothes—couldn’t rightly remember the last time he’d changed, let alone scrubbed himself down—and stepped gingerly into the tub full of water. It was cooling by then, but it still felt good.

  He soaked awhile, then scoured, soaked, and scoured again. Finally, he stood up and poured the bucket of now-tepid water over his head, for good measure. The floor was awash when he stepped out and reached for the towel; he dried himself and wrapped the bit of cloth around his middle. Except for the glow of the kerosene lamp burning on the bedside table, the room was black.

  He wouldn’t sleep, of course, with no whiskey to numb the edges of his mind, and he still wasn’t hungry, but he did feel a little better all the same. Downright inspired, he sharpened the razor against the strop, lathered his jaw with soap suds, and shaved. Time he got done, he was out-and-out handsome, in a rascally sort of way.

  The bed looked inviting, all of the sudden. He tossed aside the towel, put out the lamp, threw back the covers, and lay down, just to feel the clean sheets against his bare skin. The next thing he knew, sunlight was drumming crimson at his eyelids.

  *

  The homey sounds of clattering stove-lids and a woman’s voice, singing softly, awoke Savannah on that first morning at Springwater; for the briefest of moments, she thought she was back home in Kansas City, before her long fall from grace, that it was her grandmother on the other side of that wall, working her way through a vast repertoire of hymns and spirituals while she made breakfast. Then, of course, she remembered that she was far from that time and place, and blinked rapidly a couple of times before she got a hold on her emotions. Then she rose, put on her skirt and shirtwaist from the night before, along with a pair of soft kid slippers, and went out to face the day.

  A pretty woman with silver-streaked brown hair and bright blue eyes was standing before the stove, spatula in hand, and her smile washed over Savannah like a spill of bright sunlight. “Mornin’,” she said. “You must be Trey’s friend Savannah.”

  Savannah nodded, knowing without being told that this was June-bug McCaffrey, back from her mission of mercy to Granny Johnson’s place up in the foothills. June-bug told her who she was anyway, and Savannah was charmed; it was easy to see why the stationmistress was one
of Trey’s favorite people. There was a gentle competence about her, an innate grace, that warmed and welcomed.

  Mrs. McCaffrey laughed. “Set yourself down and I’ll pour you some coffee. Whew, but I had to hit the floor a-runnin’ this mornin’, we’ve got us such a houseful, ’tween the kids and the doc and that poor girl in there with her baby!” She seemed pleased to be cooking for a crowd, for her eyes were shining and her lovely skin was flushed with exuberant color.

  “How is Miranda? Has the doctor been to see her yet?”

  “Doc’s still sleepin’, far as I know,” June-bug confided, flipping half a dozen flapjacks in rapid sequence with a skillful motion of her wrist. “Miranda’s just fine, though. She’s already had some breakfast and her milk’s in, too, so little Isaiah-or-Ezekiel is right contented. You set down, now. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

  Well aware that she would lose any argument, Savannah sat down, and allowed June-bug to serve her coffee and then a plateful of pancakes swimming in brown-sugar molasses and fresh butter. She ate with her usual good appetite, and was just finishing up when Dr. Parrish appeared, looking clean and rested and therefore quite unlike his former self. He’d even shaved, and his clothes were a great improvement over the garments he’d been wearing the day before.

  He looked faintly surprised to Savannah, as though he’d expected to wake up somewhere else, or not to wake up at all. Like her, she deduced, in a flash of insight, he was used to being an outsider, never quite fitting in anywhere.

  “Morning,” he said, somewhat sheepishly, nodding to Savannah and then to June-bug. “I’m obliged for the use of these clothes.”

  June-bug’s expression was pensive, just for a moment or so, though there was nothing grudging in it. “I made that shirt for our Wesley, Christmas of ’59,” she reflected. “He took uncommon pride in his appearance.” She sighed. “It’s good to see somebody wearing it again.”

  There was a brief, weighted silence, then the door opened and Jacob came in. The children, apparently, had already left for school, as there was no sign of them anywhere about.

  “Well, now,” the Stationmaster said, looking Parrish over, “you cleaned up beyond my best expectations.”

  Savannah laughed, though secretly she was thunderstruck at the change in the doctor’s appearance. He was devilishly good-looking, for one thing, and carried himself with a sort of unconscious confidence in his own strength and abilities, a quality she had not seen in him before. Although she was still wary of him, she could admit, at least to herself, that she might have underestimated the man.

  June-bug rounded him up and shooed him to the table, like a mother hen gathering in a stray chick, and he sat down, remarkably, and looked at the plate of flapjacks she put in front of him.

  “Eat,” June-bug commanded. “You look peaky.”

  Savannah was past due at the Brimstone Saloon, where she hoped to meet up with Trey and hammer out some sort of work schedule, and she imagined Jacob had plenty of chores to do, yet they both lingered, curious about this stranger. It was almost as though someone vaguely resembling the doctor had slipped in during the night to take his place.

  Parrish sighed, picked up his fork, and took a cautious bite. Then he took another, and another one after that. It was somehow a momentous occasion, although Savannah could not have said why such a thing could be. When the doctor became aware that everybody was watching him, he looked a little indignant, and both Savannah and Jacob averted their eyes.

  Determined to put the day to good use, Savannah went into her rented bedroom to reclaim her handbag, then set out resolutely for the Brimstone Saloon. It didn’t take long to reach the place, since it was only a hundred yards or so down the rutted track that passed as a road. The brave little schoolhouse stood just opposite, reminding Savannah of an underling pitched to fling itself upon some brutish bully.

  She wondered whose brilliant idea it had been to build two such institutions face-to-face that way, and decided within the confines of that self-same thought that it didn’t matter to her. After all, there they were, set solid on their foundations, each one holding its ground.

  It was both a disappointment and a relief to Savannah that there were no children playing in the overgrown grass surrounding the school. She loved kids, but she’d learned a long time ago to be careful about speaking to them, at least in the presence of their parents. Too often, the mother or father would drag the child back from her, as though she were some sort of monster, ready to pounce, or the carrier of some dread disease.

  So, with a faint and familiar sadness weighting her heart, Savannah turned her back on the school and stood looking up at the building into which she’d sunk every cent she’d saved over the ten years since she’d sung her first song in a saloon. She was good with money, and not overly fond of trinkets and gee-gaws like a lot of the women she’d known, and for those reasons, she’d managed to put by a good deal. She’d made wise investments, too.

  She rested her hands on her hips, surveying her plain clapboard purchase, with its swinging doors and hitching rails and the glass windows that were bound to be broken in the first good brawl. What, she wondered, in a state of sudden and keen despair, had she been thinking of, tying up her life savings in such an enterprise?

  Savannah sighed. It hadn’t been Trey Hargreaves, though God knew, he was everything a man ought to be, and then some. No, try as she might, she’d never come to care for Trey, except as a friend, and that had probably been fortunate, since he’d felt pretty much the same way about her.

  Just then, the doors swung open and Trey came out onto the wooden sidewalk, grinning that grin that had set so many female hearts to fluttering, from there to Choteau and probably well beyond.

  “It’s about time you got here, pardner,” he said. He wore a tailored coat, even though it was full summer—a hundred shades of green and yellow were daubed against the distant timber like paint—and the temperature was someplace north of hot. There wasn’t a drop of sweat on him. His shirt was white and fancy, and his vest was a rich blue brocade, with a gold watch chain dangling from the pocket. Black, well-fitting trousers and shiny boots completed the picture. “I pour a good glass of whiskey, but my singing voice ain’t exactly memorable.”

  Savannah smiled at her friend. “On the contrary,” she retorted, “nobody who heard you sing would ever be able to forget the experience, try though they might.”

  He laughed as he crossed the sidewalk, his boot heels resounding against the new, raw wood. Reaching her, he took her shoulders in his hands and stooped to plant a brotherly kiss on her forehead.

  “Come and meet my wife,” he said, and started to pull her toward the schoolhouse.

  Savannah balked. “Now?”

  “Yes, now,” he replied, with mock impatience.

  “Won’t we be interrupting?”

  Trey narrowed those legendary silver eyes of his. “What burr’s gotten under your saddle?” he wanted to know.

  Savannah’s throat ached. She looked up toward the station and then toward the springs, which lay in the other direction, and saw that no help was likely to come from either. “Trey, I’m a saloon woman,” she reminded him, in an anxious whisper. “There are folks who’d be real upset to learn I’d been in the same room with their children—”

  Trey gave her arm a gentle jerk to get her moving again. “Well, to hell with them, if that’s their attitude,” he said. “Come on. You’re going to like Rachel. Just a little bit of a thing, but she’s sure got me buffaloed.”

  Savannah bit into her lower lip, but she allowed herself to be pulled across the road, through the deep, fragrant Montana grass, up the step to the schoolhouse door. Trey knocked lightly, and all too soon, the rough-board panel swung back on creaking hinges, revealing a small, dark-haired woman with exquisite features and a gleam of intelligence in her eyes.

  “Rachel,” Trey announced proudly, “this is my partner, Savannah Rigbey. Savannah, my wife.”

  To say tha
t Rachel was surprised would not have sufficed to describe the expression that crossed her face, however momentarily. Trey, damn his insensitive masculine hide, had neglected to tell his bride that his business associate was a woman, that much was vividly clear. Savannah was mortified; her knees felt watery and conversely, she wanted to turn and flee toward the hills, which was downright silly since she’d done nothing wrong. Not where Trey Hargreaves was concerned, at least.

  “Hello,” Rachel said, and put out one small, cool hand.

  Savannah nodded. “Hello,” she said lamely. “I know you’re busy with your students, so I’ll just go—” She turned on her heel, but Trey took another hold on her elbow and held her fast.

  “I hope you’ll join us for supper tonight,” Rachel Hargreaves said. “Say, six o’clock?”

  Savannah’s breath had gone shallow. She was not used to being invited to supper, and had nearly forgotten how one responded to such requests. “Well,” she murmured.

  “She’ll be there,” Trey told his wife, with a smile, and a look passed between the two of them that fairly crackled. Even Savannah, a mere bystander, felt the flash of heat.

  Rachel gave her husband’s partner one last thoughtful glance, nodded, and closed the door.

  “You didn’t tell her!” Savannah accused, in an angry hiss, as the two of them crossed the street again, headed for the saloon.

  “Tell her what?” Trey asked, and he looked and sounded genuinely confused.

  “That I’m a woman! Damn it, you lunkhead, you don’t just spring something like that on a person!”

  Trey chuckled, but he still seemed mildly baffled. “I told her I had a partner, coming in from Choteau. She didn’t ask any questions.”

  “That’s because she naturally assumed I was a man,” Savannah sputtered. “She was probably expecting some portly fellow with a gold incisor, a big cigar, and a bald spot!”

  Trey laughed at that image and, since they had gained the doors of the saloon, reached out to hold one open so she could step in ahead of him. Although there were no horses or wagons out front, the place was doing a surprisingly good business, especially for so early in the day. Savannah didn’t know whether to feel chagrined or encouraged by the fact.