A White Room (32 page)

He dodged its snapping jaws repeatedly and swung around it while rising to one knee in an attempt to escape. It lunged for him, but he dodged it and slid back down on the ground.

“Papa!” I screamed.

The dog veered toward the three of us and started at a gallop. Its teeth clomped as it barked.

My father quickly grabbed it by the hindquarters and dragged it away from us. It turned on him, and he tried kicking it away again and again, but it kept coming at him.

Again he got behind it, only this time instead of trying to flee, he lunged onto the beast, wrapped his right arm under the neck and his left arm on top, pinned the animal and jerked his arms down and back, causing a great big snap. The snarling dog went limp, and my father fell on top of it. He panted there for a moment before finally rolling over and gasping for breath.

The three of us ran to him. He saw us and moved away from the dog just in time to catch all three of us in one big hug. A moment later, Florence was on top of us and my mother just behind her.

“Did it bite you? Did it bite you?” she demanded, frantic.

“No.” He breathed heavily, still hugging us. He stood and squeezed my mother hard while we hugged his legs. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

She clung to him. “I was so scared. Oh my God, Charles.”

“I’m all right. The children are all right.”

That night Mama and Papa let us all sleep in the same room, so we all cuddled up together, two to a bed. We wondered and whispered about the unknown until my father came in and sat on the bed Lillian and James shared.

“Are you girls all right?” He patted my brother’s arm. “James, I know you’re a tough lad.”

James brightened a little.

“I’m tough, too,” I said and squeezed Florence around the waist.

“Of course you are.” He smiled gingerly and lowered his gaze. “Lilly?”

James spoke up. “She doesn’t understand why you hurt the dog.”

We all stared.

“It could have killed you.” He stroked Lillian’s hair. “It wanted to hurt us, all of us.”

“Why did it want to hurt us?” I asked.

“It was rabid. It had a disease. It didn’t know what it was doing.”

“It didn’t know it wanted to hurt us?”

“Something like that.”

I knew Papa had saved us, but it seemed wrong to feel so happy when the dog’s neck had been cracked and it lay dead. “I still don’t understand—”

“Thou shall not kill,” Florence said in a soft voice.

We all looked at her and then at our father. She’d summed it up.

“Oh. I see.” He sighed. “Girls—and James—I’m really proud of you for recognizing the contradiction in what happened today. God commanded us not to kill, but sometimes we have to choose to do something that seems wrong in order to do something right. I had to kill that dog if I was going to keep all of you safe.”

“So we can break the commandments?” James asked.

“If there is something that is extremely important like a life at stake, then yes, you can break a commandment. You can’t break a commandment just because you feel like it.”

“And we won’t go to hell?” I asked.

“You won’t go to hell if you break a commandment for something of the utmost importance. It has to be something so important that you would risk anything for it, even if that means risking your own standing with God.”

“Then how do we know we won’t go to hell?”

“Do you think I’m going to hell for what I did today?”

We all shook our heads.

“If it is the right thing, so right you can break a commandment, then you’ll know it. I didn’t doubt for one second whether or not to kill that dog. I was going to protect you no matter what.” He grazed Lillian’s cheek with his thumb. “Besides, the disease that dog had would kill it anyway. It might not have looked it, but the animal was suffering, in pain. It was good to end it.”

I’m not sure if any of us blinked, imagining it happening all over again.

“Does that make sense?” he asked.

“I think so,” James said.

Lillian nodded.

“Yes,” Florence said.

My father lifted his chin to me to acknowledge me, his face serene. “Emeline, does that make sense?”

I hesitated and then nodded.

Thirty

September 1901

Labellum, Missouri

T
he next request I received was from a woman whose symptoms suggested pregnancy, and Lottie was able to accompany me this time. As we approached a small house in a poor congested area on the outskirts of town, Lottie told me what she knew. “I never actually spoke to her. She heard about you through different people who knew me and gave me the message.” She pointed. “This one.” Lottie knocked on the door. The house was a run-down little thing, but in better shape than some of the others I had seen.

Understanding Lottie’s dilemma and having seen Annie’s less than a week ago, I didn’t want to tell a poor woman she was pregnant. I couldn’t imagine the news being anything other than bad, as the woman would either already have too many mouths to feed or be so thin and unhealthy that pregnancy would likely be a death sentence. Death was a risk with pregnancy even with the healthiest of women. Even upper-class women with the finest physicians were at risk of dying during childbirth.

“Come in,” a male voice responded. The husband?

Inside, I could tell that whoever lived there wasn’t of high standing but was still aware of the finer things in life and had attempted to acquire some of them. She had furnishings, poor-quality and well-worn but furniture at least. She had a grandfather clock, a writing desk, and a china cabinet, although it was empty. Maybe that meant the couple would do fine with a child. I didn’t see any other children. We stood there waiting for someone to greet us.

“Anyone there?” Lottie called out.

“Yes,” a man’s voice said, and he appeared from an adjoining room. It was a young man in a fine suit. It was Dr. Walter Bradbridge.

“Walter?”

“Emeline?”

Silence. Stunned silence.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I, uh, must ask you the same,” I said.

“I—no,” he fumbled, taken aback. He refocused. “Why are you here?” He eyed Lottie and then my bag.

I feared my inability to answer would prove my guilt. “I—I—uh…”

“It’s my fault, sir,” Lottie said. “I recommended a friend to serve at Mrs. Dorr’s dinner party, and I coulda swore this was her house. Forgive us for intrudin’ on
whatever
business you have here.” She said it in an odd way, with a suggestive tone.

“Oh.” I gasped a little and covered my mouth as if assuming a scandal. “We should leave.” We turned toward the door.

“No, no.” He reached out and took a step forward.

We halted and slowly turned around.

“This is Mrs. Crawford’s home. She let me borrow it for the day.”

“Oh,” Lottie said.

“Forgive me—um—Mrs. Dorr, I can explain.”

We stared at him.

“We’ve become aware of a colored woman practicing illegal medicine for the poor and others around town.”

“No!” Lottie slapped her hand to her chest, overacting.

I cleared my throat.

Walter continued. “Mrs. Crawford lent me her home so I might lure this practitioner here. We really weren’t sure it would work. All we had was someone who claimed to have known someone who knew a relative who used her. We sent a distress call through that line.”

“Oh my.” I could hardly feign shock, on account of my rapidly pounding heart and fear of his seeing it. “Well, we really should leave you in case this woman shows up.”

“Yes, yes, you are right.” He opened the door for us. “I’ll make sure to let Mrs. Crawford know you stopped by, Miss…?”

Lottie waved a hand. “No need, got my houses mixed up is all.”

“Forgive me again for the confusion.”

“Not at all,” I said.

As soon as the door shut behind us, Lottie and I exhaled and looked at each other.

“Do you know Mrs. Crawford?”

“Conniving rat of a woman,” she said.

“Was that excuse due to another award-winning detective novel?”

She grinned. “That was all me.”

“Your knack for intrigue is extraordinary.”

“It comes to me naturally.”

After we walked away from the house, I realized something. “Wait.”

She halted. “What?”

“They know about me.”

Lottie shook her head. “They don’t know it’s you.”

“But they’re trying to find me. If I coincidently show up at another fake call, they’re going to figure it out. And if they realize you’re involved at all…”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. We need to be extremely careful. He said, ‘
We
know of a person.’”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Probably his ma and pa.”

“We don’t know that. It could be something to do with Mr. Coddington’s practice. It could be Mr. Rippring or my husband.”

She brought her hand to her chin. “I ain’t got a clue.”

I didn’t know either. I tried to think. How could I find out who had put Walter up to this? “Well, someone else has to be involved. Dr. Bradbridge has to return to that person at some point to report what happened. He will probably go right after he has given up here.”

“What? No,” Lottie squeaked. “We jus’ barely got away.”

“Come on, it will be like your detective books. We have to. It’s the only way to know who is behind it, and we can come up with distractions or a patsy or something—false clues.”

Lottie threw up her hands. “What’s the point? It won’t stop ’em.”

“Lottie, where’s that adventurous spirit?”

“It’s cowerin’!”

“We have to know.”

Her cheeks puffed up as she blew out air. “How?”

I scanned the area. “His carriage isn’t here. He obviously walked. We can follow.”

She sighed. “If we get caught, I’m blamin’ you.”

I grinned.

I told Mr. Buck to meet us at the general store because we were near Hill and North Main streets. Lottie and I crouched behind a wall of unkempt honeysuckle bushes. All the berries had fallen off and lay shriveled on the ground around our feet. There we waited for Walter to give up on the fictional Mrs. Freeman. It was late afternoon when he stepped out.

“Look,” I whispered. “There he is.” I peered through a little opening I had made in the honeysuckle. Walter left the run-down house holding his briefcase. At the road, he looked right and then left before taking a sharp turn back in the opposite direction. He rushed along the side of the house and around to the back near our lookout. We crouched lower. I stiffened, thinking he’d see us, but he passed by.

I felt a rush of relief and then an urge to follow, but I waited until he had walked far enough that our rustling would not be noticed. “Let’s go.” We took off in his direction. I held my heavy skirt and petticoats up but still felt the occasional snag.

“Miss, be careful. Your dress,” Lottie said trailing behind me.

We caught up with him. “Slow down.” I put my hand out behind me, and Lottie stopped. “We can’t let him hear us,” I whispered. I stopped behind a tree. Lottie bent over to catch her breath. We watched Walter cross from behind the houses into an alley.