Firefly (4 page)

She didn't know why she resented everyone today.  No one had ever helped her serve the meals, and there was no reason to expect any assistance now.  Oh, they helped themselves when it came to filling their plates or garnishing their pie with whipped cream, but it was always Julie who carried the dishes to and from the steaming kitchen, who served herself last, almost as though she were a servant relegated to the scullery--and the left-overs.

Maybe it was the weather.  She had known heat like this in Kansas and even in Indiana, but rarely so early in the season and never so early in the day.  Someone in church had said the thermometer at the post office registered ninety-two degrees at sun-up.

And then to be forced to stand in the kitchen, with a pork roast sizzling in the oven of the monstrous cast-iron cook stove, and bake a strawberry pie: Yes, it must be the heat that made her so angry that even when she was hungry enough to eat a horse, she could barely down a bird's portion.

She poured three cups of coffee, none for herself, and then Willy called for more lemonade.

The words of resistance hovered on the end of her tongue, daring her to spit them out.  Willy had two perfectly healthy legs and two perfectly healthy arms.  There was no reason why he couldn't excuse himself from the table and refill his own glass from the pitcher in the cooler.  Instead, he held the empty glass out to his sister.

And by the time Julie had done her brother's bidding and returned to the dining room, Hans had helped himself to the last of the whipped cream--which she really didn't care about--and the last slice of strawberry pie--which she did.

* * *

It was too hot to walk far, but Julie consented to stroll with Hans for a while after she had finished washing, drying, and putting away the dishes.  She would have done just about anything to get out of that kitchen for a while.

At the north edge of Plato, where the street narrowed to a dusty track before it began its rise to the mountains, the cottonwoods grew thick along an icy, spring-fed stream.  Here there was some respite from the sweltering sun, from the glare and the breathless heat, but not from the internal fire.  Julie fumed with each step she took, though she kept a smile on her lips.

"I still can hardly believe you are here, Julie," Hans said quietly as they passed the church and the iron-fenced cemetery.  His accent had thickened as the volume of his voice dropped.  She strained both to hear and to understand him. "Soon I will have what I have waited so long for."

Julie swallowed hard and glanced down to the dust at her feet.  She had expected this conversation last Sunday, but Hans had been too enthusiastic over the breeding of his precious cows and had not broached the subject.  Now he had nothing to distract him from his purpose.

"I have spoken to your papa, Julie.  He says we should wait and see how things are now that you have come to Arizona. It has been a long time, and he thinks we might not feel the same as we did then."

She wanted to run but knew he would stop her, and she did not think she could bear his touch.  His emotional declarations did no harm, and the presence of a solitary mourner in the graveyard assured her that Hans would only plead his cause, nothing more.

"My feelings haven't changed, Julie, except maybe they are stronger.  I think we should get married very soon, so I can take you to the farm and--"

"Sssshhh," she whispered, raising a finger to her lips and nodding her head in the direction of the man who knelt by one of the graves, his back to the couple under the trees.  Hans bowed his head with a crimson blush, but Julie had to refrain from letting out a long sigh of relief.  She had already heard quite enough.

Hans, however, had much more to say.

"I have thought of this for so long that I do not want any more time to pass.  I have dreamed of us, Julie, of you and me making the farm something to be proud of to pass on to our sons the way my father could not do for me."

In his enthusiasm, Hans had raised his voice again, despite Julie's repeated cautions, and this last statement carried to the man in the cemetery.  He rose, anger in his movement, and turned to face the people who had disturbed his communion.

Now Julie blushed.  In the dappled shade and from a distance of perhaps fifteen yards, she could not possibly see his eyes, but she didn't need to see them to remember their eerie green and the way Del Morgan could level them at her.  He stared only for a moment, no more than a handful of long seconds, and then he returned to his contemplation of a grave Julie could see was carefully tended, with a lovely red rose bush blooming riotously beside a small headstone.

That stare had sufficiently cowed Hans as well.  The burly farmer backed a step or two away from Julie and said nothing. She took advantage of the opportunity to whisper, "I think we should go back.  We've disturbed that gentleman." She ignored the blatant inappropriateness of applying the term to Morgan.  "And Mama may need me."

She tried to ignore the guilt she felt at using her mother's injury, toward which she held a mounting resentment, as an excuse to escape Hans' attentions, but it was much easier to imagine Del Morgan a gentleman than to clear her conscience.

Guilty feelings or not, she continued in the same vein.

"I could not even think of leaving Mama until her arm is healed and she can handle some of the housework."

"That is only five more weeks.  She said so herself.  Surely you could speak to your papa and at least start to make some plans for the wedding," Hans said in an almost whining tone.

Julie turned to walk towards home.  She didn't particularly want to go back there, back to waiting on her mother and listening to her father, but neither did she wish to spend any more time with Hans.  Especially not with Del Morgan to watch her with his leering green eyes.

"I will think about it," she told Hans, feeling her spectacles start to slide again.  "But you must remember that my mother is not well and she needs me to help her.  And I owe my parents much more than I can ever repay.  It would not be right for me to walk out on them suddenly.  I must not be ungrateful or put any more burdens on them."

As she pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose, Hans mumbled an apology.

"I have been unfair," he said as they stopped just outside the fence enclosing the Hollstroms' yard.  "But it is six years since I first spoke to your papa about our marrying, and that is a long time to wait for a wife.  Promise me it will not have been in vain."

Julie remained silent for a dozen heartbeats or more, trying to devise a promise that could be honorably broken. There had never been a formal betrothal all those years ago in Minnesota.  Julie had given Hans no promise then and she had no intention of doing so now.

"I will abide by my father's wishes," she told him finally.  "I will do what is best for all of us."

It was a weak vow, one she worried he would easily see through, but Hans seemed happy to accept it.  With a clumsy flourish, he took both her hands in his and clasped them tightly.  A broad grin lit his face, and Julie thought he intended to dance with her right here in the street.  She glanced quickly to see if anyone in her own house or those nearby might be watching, but all the windows were curtained against the heat.

When Hans planted a wet kiss on her cheek, Julie resisted the urge to wipe it off, not with her hand but with a handkerchief or the corner of her apron.

"Now I am happy," he sang, reluctantly releasing her hands.  "You talk to your papa, and next Sunday, when I come for dinner, we will have it all decided.  Good-bye, Julie!"

He looked as though he might give her another kiss, but he only smiled with a bright blush on his cheeks.  Twice he turned as he walked in the direction of the hotel and waved to her, and Julie forced herself to wave back the second time, but with little enthusiasm.

She passed through the open gate and walked up the steps to the porch, never realizing she had wiped her hands vigorously on her skirt before Hans was even out of sight.  Nor did she see Del Morgan walk through the cemetery gate and shut it quietly behind him.

He squinted in the sudden brightness and quickly clapped his beaten hat to his head.  His knee hurt from a small stone that had somehow gotten under it while he was visiting the graveyard, and he rubbed the sore spot with a relatively clean hand.  Other aches were not so easily disposed of, like the one that stung his eyes and another that tightened in his chest.  Much as he disliked sitting home with no other companion than a full bottle of cheap whisky, he had no choice.  The Castle was closed on Sunday, and none of his drinking cronies allowed him in their homes.

He watched the girl, noted the way she rubbed her hands against her skirt as though to rid them of something unpleasant or dirty.  Then he let his gaze follow the blond, heavily built farmer who had disturbed the cemetery's solitude with his outburst.  Morgan shook his head.  Hans passed the hotel and walked into the narrow alley between the Olympia House and the boardwalked shops of Plato, and if Julie Hollstrom didn't know where her future husband was headed, Del Morgan did.

Chapter Three

Julie hefted the big wicker laundry basket to her hip and trudged toward the house.  Her spectacles slipped; she pushed them back where they belonged and sighed with Monday morning weariness.

But the morning was almost over.  The kitchen smelled of fresh bread, frying sausages, and potato pancakes.  Julie dropped the basket onto the table and hurried to check her father's lunch.  The sausage had just browned and the potato pancakes, set over to the side of the stove, were barely golden on the underside.  It hadn't been easy to do the laundry, bake bread, and wait on Mama, but Julie had accomplished it all and not so much as burned her father's lunch.

She fixed the usual tray with silverware wrapped in a napkin, coffee cup, and a small pot of freshly brewed coffee. She wondered how he could drink the stuff on a day like this. Already she had downed four or five glasses of water and still felt thirsty.

As soon as she had delivered Wilhelm's meal, she could come home to her own lunch.  Katharine had breakfasted late and was back asleep, and Willy had gone fishing with some of his friends.  Julie dared to hope she might sit down and eat her meal undisturbed.  If the heat left her any appetite.

Not that there wouldn't be plenty of work waiting for her after lunch.  Her bed and Willy's needed to be made with these clean sheets, and she hadn't even started the dusting, a daily ritual in this land of arid winds and clouds of fine grit.  Of course she'd have dishes to wash and supper to cook.  If Willy brought home a mess of fish, she'd scale and gut them before she fried them nice and crisp for tonight's meal, but she wasn't sure the luxury of fresh fish was worth the gruesome task of preparing them.

It would be much better if he came home empty-handed. Then there'd be no gory dressing of the catch, as well as no congratulations.  Willy would be praised for enticing a stupid fish to swallow a dead cricket and thereby impale itself on the hook, while the lightly seasoned breading with which Julie coated those fish would be taken for granted and not a single word of praise ever come her way.  Besides, she wanted that brand new fishing pole to fail.

She picked up Wilhelm's lunch tray and pushed her jealousy of the fishing pole out of her mind.  She had envied Willy his possessions before and she probably would do so again quite frequently in the future, so there was no sense ruminating about it now when work waited.

The dining room was as cool, on the shaded north side of the house, as the kitchen was steaming, but Julie walked quickly through to the front door and out to the porch.  She blinked to adjust her eyes to the brightness of noon sun on white dust, and then she stepped sturdily down the stairs and towards the street.  Just as she kicked the gate open, the boys came running.

"Julie, Julie, Julie!" Willy wailed.  His short legs pumped unsteadily as he charged through the trees behind the cemetery.  "Help me, Julie!"