Her Hesitant Heart (10 page)

Never mind. The O’Learys had assured her their son would be in the classroom in the morning, so Susanna would be there, too. The whole debacle probably would be over after one more day. Mrs. Dunklin would find a way to end the school.

Susanna lay on her cot, silent, relaxing gradually after she heard the O’Learys in their bedroom through the wall. She had heard them reciting the rosary on other evenings. This night, it was balm to her wounds, not because she had any idea what the Latin words meant, but simply because she knew there were good people through the wall.

She thought of the Rattigans, finding comfort in each other, and then of Private Benedict with his classroom in the commissary warehouse. Her mind lingered longest on Joe Randolph, who shouldered burdens even worse than hers.

As always, she thought finally of Tommy, home asleep in the big house in Carlisle, where life, if never completely pleasant, had been tolerable before Frederick Hopkins decided to fortify himself with alcohol and make his family suffer.

She did what she always did each night, whispering favorite nursery rhymes, then humming songs to Tommy far away. “Be a good son,” Susanna whispered, as she always did before closing her eyes.

Joe Randolph couldn’t help but feel that his constituents had failed him greatly that night. Not one of them came asking for help with babies due, or croup, or any little or large ailments that often kept him busy in those winter hours when Fort Laramie slept. After four years with Sherman’s army, and then Melissa’s shocking death, he had grown used to sleepless nights. Here he was, wide awake, and the only person who needed him would never ask.

Joe lay in bed, still dressed and still aghast at the coldhearted ruin of Susanna Hopkins. The monstrosity of what he had witnessed in the Dunklins’ parlor made the bile rise in his throat, until he had to get up and walk it off. Back and forth, from room to room, he tried to wear himself out. Instead, he revisited his own role in the deception, wondering if he should have gone immediately to Major Townsend and spelled out Emily Reese’s original lie. He concluded it would have made no difference, once Mrs. Dunklin—damn the woman!—had found a tale to bear and a bone to gnaw on.

Joe concluded that all he could do in the morning was go to Major Townsend after guard mount and lay the whole nasty matter before him.

“What will he do, Joe?” the post surgeon asked himself out loud as he made another circuit of his own parlor. “He will say it is none of his business, that this was a matter between a few families and the educator they contracted. He is right. God, how it galls me!”

Joe walked until his feet began to hurt. He threw himself down into his favorite armchair, relieving his legs—oh, surgeons and their legs—but getting him no closer to sleep than he had been hours ago. Grim, he watched dawn come, relieved to hear reveille finally.

Silent, he shaved and changed his shirt, then made his way up the hill for sick call. He was not inclined to suffer fools gladly that morning, which meant that the malingerers whose creativity he sometimes secretly admired found themselves snapped at and returned to duty almost before they had a chance to recite their ordinarily diverting symptoms.

Guard mount offered none of its minuscule attraction. Since even colder weather had clamped down, the band remained in the music hall and the time-honored ritual of guard relief and guard mount seemed to go in double-quick rhythm, to Joe’s tired eyes. Scarcely anyone moved across the parade ground, once the morning business concluded. Joe watched Sergeant Rattigan, in company with his corporals, hurrying toward the footbridge to Suds Row and their own families for breakfast.

A few minutes after the new guard had retired to the guardhouse and the cold soldiers had retreated to their mess halls, Joe saw Nick Martin leave Old Bedlam, where he must have started the usual fire, to warm up the classroom. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Joe stood at his front window and watched Mrs. Hopkins leave the Reeses’ quarters and make her way along the icy sidewalk to Old Bedlam. A few minutes later, both Captain and Katie O’Leary left their quarters, Rooney between them. From habit, Joe regarded Katie professionally, and decided he would be called upon soon enough to usher another army dependent into the world. God bless the O’Learys to give him his favorite army duty.

He stood by the window as the O’Learys returned. Joe noticed Katie’s head against her husband’s shoulder, his arm around her, consoling her. The sight made him angry all over again, which was probably a better emotion than the grim disgust at meanness that left him so hollow. Maybe it was more. Joe felt a strong urge to console Susanna Hopkins much as Captain O’Leary was consoling his wife.

“But here I stand, a coward,” he remarked to no one except himself.

He watched as Jim O’Leary left his quarters and went down the row to Captain Burt’s home. He wondered what business Jim had there, and shook his head. The Burts had signed that pernicious letter, too.

Next he watched Mrs. Dunklin leave her quarters and stride with great purpose toward the admin building. Joe sighed to see all that misguided umbrage on the loose. He watched until the woman returned to her quarters, then it was his turn.

The snow squeaked and crunched underfoot, advertising just how low the mercury had retreated. He looked up at the snow dogs overhead, another frigid advertisement to January on the northern plains. January was the month when the Northern Roamers were commanded by Washington to move their families to reservations not far from here in Nebraska.
That will not happen and there will be premeditated war
, Joe thought.
No one will care that a competent teacher has been forced from her classroom by meanness
.

Major Townsend was waiting for him. Joe nodded to him and shut the door behind him. All Townsend did was hand him the letter that Mrs. Dunklin must have carried to him that morning, the one with all the signatures of indignant parents on it, except the O’Learys.

Joe barely glanced at it. “What happened shouldn’t have happened, Ed,” he said, calling on his years of friendship with the fort’s commanding officer to keep this painful discussion informal. “The Dunklins only have half the story, and their half is lies and character assassination.”

Edwin Townsend regarded him for a long moment, and Joe felt his heart sink even lower.

“She had no business trying to pass herself off as a war widow.”

“Emily Reese started that lie, heaven only knows why,” Joe countered.

“Mrs. Hopkins had every opportunity to deny it.”

“Did she? I earnestly believe she wanted to spare her cousin embarrassment. Ed, did you ever try to unbake a cake? Bring someone back to life after the autopsy? You can’t do it!”

“Sit down, Joe.”

The post surgeon sat. He hoped Ed would sit next to him in the empty chair, but the major sat behind his desk instead, choosing command over friendship. Silent, he rummaged through a stock of correspondence on his desk and pulled out one of the twice-folded documents with the government stamp.

“It’s already begun. General Crook and Colonel Reynolds will be here in February to lead a winter campaign against the Roamers. I’ll need that room at Old Bedlam for temporary quarters, so I probably would have evicted her, anyway.”

“Ask General Crook if he’d like to stay with me,” Joe said. “I know what it feels like to have lies and character assassination dished my way.”

He hadn’t meant for his voice to rise. He was going to be calm about this, except he couldn’t, not with Susanna Hopkins’s stricken face before his, and then the death of hope in her eyes that he
understood all too well, because he had a mirror over his bureau.

Major Townsend couldn’t look at him. He indicated the Dunklin letter again, which lay between them like a rank specimen in a pathology lab.

“Joe, I have no control over this situation,” Townsend said, his voice firm, even if he couldn’t look his friend and war comrade in the eyes. He jabbed the paper. “These families contracted with Mrs. Hopkins, and they are at liberty to break the contract, as they have done.”

Joe took his time. “I suppose that as this year’s administrative council head, you want me to shut her down. She’s teaching the O’Learys’ boy right now.”

“I’m sorry. What can I do?”

Joe contemplated his friend, remembering their shared Civil War fights. “Not much, obviously,” he said. He went to the door, wanting to jerk it off its hinges. As he stood there, Joe made up his mind. He looked back at the major, who was watching him now, wary. “I’m resigning my commission, Major Townsend.”

“Save your breath. You’re turned down, Major Randolph,” his commanding officer replied, biting off his own words. “We’re at war with the Sioux Nation, as of two weeks ago. You’re not allowed to resign.”

Joe walked to the hospital, head down. He mishandled paperwork until recall from fatigue, then walked down the hill to discharge his awful duty.

Mrs. Hopkins made it easy for him. As he approached Old Bedlam, she was coming out with Rooney O’Leary, holding his hand. She walked past Joe and took the boy up to his front door, giving him a hug and an affectionate swat on his backside when Katie O’Leary opened the door. Susanna shook her head at what must have been an invitation to come inside, then left the porch to stand by him on the boardwalk.

“Major, I have banked the fire and gathered the books on the desk,” she told him with the steely calm he wished he could have used in Major Townsend’s office. “Please return them to the officers’ families.”

“Susanna, I …”

She only shook her head, and her expression was kind. “Thank you for trying, Major.”

“It’s Joe,” he told her, feeling stupid and lame and impotent.

She shook her head again, her eyes still gentle. “I think not, sir. Friendship with me will not further your own cause. Good day.”

She walked past him and up the steps of the Reeses’ quarters. Miserable, he watched her as she stood a long moment, her forehead against the door, as though trying to work up her courage to turn the handle.

“Susanna, I know what it feels like to be where you are not wanted,” he said distinctly, so she could hear him.

“Perhaps you do, but you’re a man and you have
the ability to change your situation,” she told him as she went inside and closed the door quietly behind her.

“No, I do not,” he whispered to the closed door. “I can’t leave this place, either.”

I
will leave that lady alone
, Joe told himself for three days. It wasn’t difficult, he decided, even though he felt ashamed of his attitude. Maybe if he was not popping in to offer whatever puny commiseration he thought useful, Susanna and her cousin Emily would finally start to talk.

To his gratification, even though it hardly mattered now, Jim O’Leary told him of Susanna’s midnight visit and her confession. “She’s been too frightened to speak up,” O’Leary said.

His voice low, he told Joe what Susanna had said of her husband’s mistreatment of her. “She just took it, until she feared for her life,” he said, appalled at that kind of brutality.

Jim had told him of his visit to the Burts, where he minced no words, either.

“What was their reaction?” Joe asked.

“Shock. Revulsion. Uncertainty. No one knows
what to believe,” Jim said. “People have to know, though, even if Susanna is the last one who would ever tell such a sordid story.”

It
was
a sordid story, Joe knew, after Jim O’Leary bared that kind woman’s shame. He should have gone to her then, but it was easy enough to stay away because duty called, the kind of duty that he could cure with stitches or medicine. Susanna’s wounds were different. With something approaching relief, Joe treated a nasty forefinger avulsion in the stables, which would more than likely cause an infection that led to amputation; a trying childbirth on Suds Row; and a more pleasant one just down the row at the O’Leary household, which resulted in a lively little redhead much like Katie O’Leary herself. Then his contract surgeon left unwillingly for detached duty at Camp Robinson, and Captain Hartsuff decided he needed another week in Cheyenne doing God knows what. By the fourth morning after Susanna Hopkins had returned the key to the classroom, Joe began to worry.

He was thinking about it over breakfast—lumpy oatmeal with everlasting raisins—when he heard a timid knock at his side door, the one that dependents used when they needed his services. It was Emily Reese. He didn’t feel like looking at her, but Hippocrates overruled him as usual, and he ushered her inside.

“Mrs. Reese, what can I do for you?” He couldn’t resist himself then, because he knew his ill-mannered joke would fall on stupid ears. “Did
Stanley choke on a bar of soap after too much cussing?”

“Stanley is fine,” Emily said. She clutched Joe’s arm. “I haven’t seen Susanna in five days.”

“What?”

He hadn’t meant to shout. He took a deep breath. Surely he hadn’t heard her correctly. “You share a four-room house. What do you mean?”

She seemed to think
he
was the idiot. “I haven’t seen her.”

He thought about that before reacting this time, even as he felt a chill down his spine. “You must see her for meals, at least. And everyone has to, well, void, now and then. Surely you’ve seen her.”

Emily shook her head, and he noticed for the first time that her lovely eyes were wide with worry. “I have heard her go downstairs late at night and early in the morning, but she is always behind that blanket, otherwise, and there is never any food missing.”

“She’s your cousin, Emily,” Joe reminded her. “You couldn’t just pull back the blanket?”

Emily’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m afraid of what I will find now.”

Joe didn’t bother to grab his overcoat. He ran out of his quarters, his mind intent on what
he
would find. He took the steps two at a time, not even breathing heavily as he yanked back the blanket so hard that it fell from its rod.

Her hair a terrible tangle, and her face pale almost to parchment, Susanna looked back at him,
startled. Without a word, she turned on her side and faced the wall. Joe took her gently by the shoulders and turned her around again. When she closed her eyes wearily, he pried them open with his fingers, to reassure himself that they hadn’t started to settle back in her eye sockets just yet.

“Go away,” she whispered, her voice a croak.

“Not a chance, Susanna,” he said, his voice full of command. “Put your arms around my neck.”

To her credit, she tried, but she was too weak. He scooped her up anyway, standing still a moment to steady himself. He realized with a pang that she barely weighed anything.

Emily stood at the bottom of the stairs, crying. Joe watched her a moment. She started to twist her hands, as though trying to clean them of something—responsibility, remorse. He didn’t know, and he suddenly didn’t care.

“Mrs. Reese, you’re useless,” he snapped as he carried Susanna out the open door.

Joe stopped on the porch, wondering what to do. He couldn’t take her to the hospital, because his one small ward was occupied with soldiers. He thought about the Rattigans, and knew she would be welcome there, but he didn’t relish carrying her across the parade ground under everyone’s prying eyes. There was only one place for her, and the odd humor of the situation took over.

“Susanna, I’m going to ruin your reputation and take you to my quarters,” he told her as he hurried
along the icy sidewalk. “But you have no reputation to ruin, and neither do I. Any objections?”

She had none. In fact, her eyes were closed in exhaustion.

“I thought not.”

He set her in his armchair, the old thing that M’liss had threatened not to take along, on their last journey together. Without a word, he covered Susanna with a blanket, felt her forehead and then hurried to his dependents’ clinic across the hall.

Susanna offered no protest when he unbuttoned her shirtwaist, pulled aside her chemise and pressed his stethoscope at her heart. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, which reassured him. Her pulse was a little too slow to please him, but at least it wasn’t thready. He had felt worse.

“Thirsty or hungry?” he asked, his voice gentle. The last thing Susanna Hopkins needed was one more bully in her life.

“Let me die,” she said finally.

He shook his head. When he spoke, his words were so cheerful that he even surprised himself. “Sorry. You can’t do that on my watch. It’s not allowed.”

“I am tired of being told what to do.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute, but it’s too bad. I’ll get you some milk. When you finish that, I’ll have my warmed-up oatmeal for you.”

“You’re not listening,” she said, clearly irritated.

“I never do when my patients talk twaddle,” he assured her. “Susanna, you are going to live and
thrive.” He leaned closer until his lips brushed her ear. “I’m surprised someone as bright as you never learned that living well is the best revenge.”

He left her there, angry at him, and spent enough minutes in the kitchen to produce warmed milk, courtesy of Gale Borden, and some thinned oatmeal, well sugared.

“I’m no cook,” he told her when he returned, happy enough to see that she hadn’t bolted from his quarters. But where could she go? He handed her the mug of warm milk, holding his breath. He let it out slowly when she drank it down without a pause.

She took the oatmeal from him with no comment, spooning it down. She handed back the empty bowl and shook her head when he offered more. It took her another moment, but she finally looked him in the eyes.

“After two days, I wasn’t really hungry.” She shook her head sorrowfully. “It was easier not to face anyone.” She put her hand on his arm and he felt her tremor. “All I wanted was to start over.”

“I know,” he said, covering her hand with his own. “You’re not asking for the moon. Shall we try again?”

“Not here.”

“Yes, here.”

He was acutely aware that she was a single woman in a single man’s quarters, even though he was a physician. For all he knew, word of what had just happened had spread all over the gossip-prone
garrison, where so little happened that even the smallest deviation would be talked about for weeks. This was no small deviation. But, as he had pointed out earlier, she had no reputation to worry about.

He stood up, ready for action, even if it did embarrass her. “I am going to draw a bath for you in my kitchen. You need one. When the water’s ready, you’ll go in there and bathe. I’ll get a change of clothing from the Reeses and leave it here in the parlor.”

He glanced at her, happy enough to see spots of red in each cheek, where before she had been almost ghostly white. “While you are doing all this, I’m going to talk to Major Townsend.”

“He will not listen,” she said quickly.

“He will,” he replied, sure of himself. “I left him feeling guilty this morning. My dear, great are the uses of guilt!”

Joe glanced at her again, just in time to see a fleeting smile. “I am going to make Major Townsend let you to teach in Private Benedict’s school.”

“I won’t!”

“You will, if I have to drag you there,” he assured her.

“You are as bad as everyone else!” Her voice had some bite to it now.

“I am worse,” he said, relieved to hear some fight in her. “I will not waste a perfectly good human life. What would Hippocrates say?”

Joe concluded it wasn’t going to be much of a bath, but she was smaller than he was and could fold more of herself into his tin tub. While Susanna glowered in the parlor, her arms folded across her chest, he found a clean towel and washcloth, and his last bar of soap. He draped the towel over a chair in the kitchen and set the soap in a saucer.

Susanna’s militant expression had not changed.

“Up you get, madam.”

She ignored him. He jerked the blanket from her with one motion and started on her buttons. With a gasp, she pushed away his hands and went into the kitchen, closing the door louder than he usually closed it. A smile on his face, Joe listened outside the door until he heard her step into the tub. Good.

Emily would probably have given him her cousin’s entire wardrobe, so great was her own guilt.

“Just a change of clothing,” he said. “Take it to my quarters and leave it in the parlor. I have business with Major Townsend.” He jabbed his finger at her. “Don’t you
dare
utter one word about this to anyone!”

Terrified, Emily shook her head.

Joe couldn’t overlook the wary expression on Major Townsend’s face when he sat down again in the post commander’s office. Calmly, Joe explained precisely what had happened, starting with what Susanna had told the O’Learys and ending with her sitting in a tub in his kitchen. “Mrs. Hopkins tried to starve herself to death, rather than have to face anyone—anyone!—in this garrison.”

“I can’t change people’s minds,” Townsend protested, but there was no denying the shock on his face.

“I’m not asking you to change anyone’s mind, Ed,” Joe assured him. “What I want you to do is authorize Mrs. Hopkins to teach with Private Benedict in the commissary storehouse.”

“Joe, you know general funds only cover one teacher for the enlisted men’s children, and it’s paltry enough. Government regulations.”

“I know.
I’m
going to pay her salary. It’ll come out of your office every month, and you won’t say a word about this to anyone,” Joe told him. “Since I cannot resign—something I should have done years ago, by the way—I’ll just have to make things better here.”

“People will talk.”

“Not if you keep this financial arrangement silent,” Joe replied. He couldn’t help himself; he pounded on the major’s desk, feeling the heat of anger on his own face. How many years had he just been existing? “Mrs. Hopkins has lost everything—her dignity as a wife, her child, her home, her respectability. We are going to change that woman’s luck.”

His commanding officer stared at him. “Why do I have the feeling that you would do this even if I did not give my permission?”

There was only one reply. “It’s the right thing to do. That’s all.”

Both men looked at each other. Ed Townsend looked away first.

“Very well. What will you pay her?”

“Twenty dollars a month,” Joe said. “It’s far less than the contract, but she already knows how much an enlisted man gets for teaching at Fort Laramie. Paying her more would make her suspicious. She must think the U.S. Army is paying her salary.”

Joe stood up. Without a word, he turned on his heel and left Major Townsend’s office. Outside, he breathed deep, catching just a whiff of rot from the venerable sinks behind the enlisted men’s barracks. He reckoned it was a sign of spring, when he would have to authorize a general police of the old place to discard the outhouse rubbish of winter. He thought about Paris and studying with Pasteur and realized, as he stalked back to his own quarters, that for the first time since M’Liss died, he was making plans.

Susanna sat in the tin tub, her knees drawn up to her chin, even more angry with Major Randolph than with Mrs. Dunklin.

Rational good sense finally triumphed. She washed herself thoroughly, embarrassed now that a man had seen her in five-day-old dirt, she, the most meticulous of persons. Come to think of it, he had seen her at her worst from Cheyenne on, she reckoned, and scrubbed harder. Then she just sat there, her forehead resting on her drawn-up knees, because she was too tired to move.

After some effort, Susanna stood up, frightened at her own weakness. She wobbled there in the tub a moment, then wrapped the towel around her, shivering even though the small kitchen was warm. It chafed her that she had to lean on the chair to step from the tub, but that was the consequence of thinking she could starve herself to death. She sat there and decided she had done enough foolish things.

She was still sitting in the chair, towel wrapped around her, when she heard the post surgeon open his front door. Even though the kitchen door was closed, she felt a little puff of cold air around her bare ankles. She wanted to stand up and dress herself, but her clothes were still in the parlor, where Emily must have dropped them off.

“Susanna?” he called.

When she didn’t answer promptly, he opened the door to the kitchen and stood there, giving her what looked like a professional appraisal.

“I didn’t have the energy,” she said finally, her face hot with humiliation for him to see her in a towel.

“I’ll help you.”

She shook her head, embarrassed at her weakness. “If you’ll just get my things …”