Hurricane Nurse (11 page)

Donna flushed. "He's a friend, I suppose. I'm not planning to marry him, if that's what you mean."

Mrs. Frailey's eyes were wise. "Cliff's one gets what he wants. If I ain't forgot how to look for the signs, he wants you."

She picked up her son, lifted him to her shoulder and moved toward the door. "You had ought to be out there dancin' with the rest of them kids. Music sort of makes you want to dance, don't it?" She took several steps of a surprising grace, then made a face and shrugged again. "I'm too old for it, but you ain't. You get out there an' step with the rest, huh?"

For a moment, she stood in the doorway, sniffing audibly. "Say, this kid smells good. His pa ain't goin' to like havin' him smellin' like gals goin' to meetin'. Wouldn't surprise me none if'n he made me take the diaper off'n him an' wash off the stink."

Joey and his mother disappeared down the hall. Now that it had been called to her attention Donna did find the steady beat of the music hypnotically strong. Without intention, she followed it into the hall, then around the corner where the rhythm of it was stronger, louder. She stood with some of the older people on the edge of the group, watching.

The youngsters were doing the twist, rolling hips, lithe waists and shoulders, feet for the most part stationary, although several couples had intricately stamping feet as well. She had danced like that only a few months ago. Somehow, it hadn't seemed proper now that she was officially connected with a school. She and Hank had gone to more conventional places and when they danced had waltzed or two-stepped. It wasn't the same, and she knew now that she had missed it.

She had just reached that conclusion when Dusty appeared at her elbow. "Dance?" he inquired in his husky voice.

She turned toward him in amazement, and he hurried to add to his original invitation. "I ain't bein' fresh, like yesterday. Honest I ain't. But you—you was keepin' time to the music. I bet you're a good dancer an'— I'd sorta like to dance with you if you don't think I'm too much of a kid."

There was an almost childish eagerness in his face. She was sure that his ego would be hurt i£ she refused. Besides, she had never wanted so much to dance. She raised her arms and followed him onto the floor.

For a moment, they tried out each other's ability, steps. And then they were dancing. Dusty was good, there was no denying that. She had meant to remember who she was and where, but in a few minutes she was pouring her whole soul into the dance, enjoying it as she always had, being a kid again herself. She found her shoes hampered her and kicked them off. Dusty was trying steps she had never known before and she was following him easily. This was wonderful.

One by one, the other dancers dropped out. Clapping their hands to the beat of the music, they encouraged Dusty and Donna to wilder and wilder rhythms. The girl's face was damp and flushed. She was lifted out of herself. The music stepped up its speed, but still she found only exhilaration in following it.

At last it was done. She and Dusty stood alone in the middle of the floor, laughing and panting. The younger crowd was clapping and calling out to them. Donna would have danced again, but just then she saw the disapproving face of one of the parents. Her eyes moved to other faces on the periphery of the crowd. Here, too, she saw disapproval in hard adult faces, among them the shocked face of Hank Fincher.

"Golly, you can dance, Miss Ledbury," Dusty said with evident sincerity.

"I've scandalized the natives," she told him, "but it's been fun. I mustn't do it again. I'm a teacher, sort of." She bent, picked up her shoes and straightened.

It was then that she saw Cliff and Mary Hendley. Something in the way they stood assured her that they had been dancing when she had joined the group, dancing in a dignified, conventional fashion, she was sure.

She moved out of the crowd and back toward her office. No one spoke to her, and she would have hardly noticed if they had. She had discovered something about herself. She
was
Cliff Warrender's girl, if her unruly emotions had anything to say about it. She had probably been feeling like this ever since yesterday, only the dance had lifted the lid off her control and let her emotions boil over. And Cliff was no fool. He had known even when she didn't.

Mrs. Frailey had said that he got what he wanted. Men like that—wasn't that the type that didn't want what came easy? He had left her alone in her office a long time ago, left her feeling tender and moved by the tragedy of his youth. And he had not come back. He had sought out Mary Hendley and chosen her to dance with.

Donna was angry enough with herself and practically everybody else in the schoolhouse, to slam the door of her office after her once she was inside. That waked Poague, whom she had entirely forgotten. He sat up, stretched and yawned noisily. Donna looked at him with all the displeasure that she felt at the world just then.

He was not at all embarrassed under her stern eye. "Say, I ain't in no bad condition," he decided, moving the muscles in one part of his body and then another. "Matter of fact, I feel pretty good. If I had a drink, I'd be good as ever I was." His bloodshot eyes turned on Donna with an impertinent question in them.

Donna ignored him, crossed the room and washed her hands at the sink.

"Ain't you got any liquor, lady?" Poague spoke aloud the question that had been in his eyes.

Donna took her time about answering, finished washing her hands and turned to dry them on a paper towel. "I don't have any. And nurses don't give whiskey to patients except on order from a doctor." She disposed with the whole matter in a crisp tone.

Gingerly, Poague came to his feet, stood a moment in uncertainty, wavering a little. Then he seemed to find assurance. "Looks like things is likely to be pretty dull in here. I might's well go back to the boys and get in on a game. Seems like you ain't the friendly type."

"No, I'm not," Donna agreed coolly.

"Well, thanks anyhow for lookin' out for me. When was it? Last night? This morning?"

Now that the matter of whether she was friendly or not was settled, Donna didn't find him quite so repulsive. He was simply another human being. "Both, really. Before day, but not much. Don't get in another fight."

He grinned. "No'm. Not unless somebody else starts it."

Left alone, Donna became once more conscious of the sound of the storm. Its shriek was vicious, its tone so high that her ears ached with it. She put her hands over them to shut it out.

She sat down and stared at the closed door, trying to sift out her feelings of a few minutes ago. She had danced with a feeling of triumph and release. She had been young and happy, careless of the tragic things that went on about them as the most carefree youngster turning and twisting near her. The music had dared her, had egged her on. She had made a spectacle of herself, and she had been unconscious as a child. She felt shamed by the scorn of the older faces, shamed and hurt as a child who does not quite understand why he is being punished is hurt.

But her hurt went deeper. Those critical people with their turned-down mouths and their hard eyes meant nothing to her. Even Hank's shocked censure was immaterial. But something else wasn't.

Cliff hadn't even bothered to disapprove. He wasn't watching her. He was looking at Mary; his hand was on Mary's shoulder. They were both smiling. They looked as if they had only that moment ceased dancing. She had never felt the least twinge of anything like jealousy before, but in that moment she had longed to slap both their faces. And that feeling had melted into a feeling of being lost in the great reaches of the universe, as lost as a child who knows not where to go and cries for his mother. Somehow it was in the midst of that feeling of being lost that she knew she was in love with Cliff Warrender.

Now, her emotions rather better under control than before, she told herself that such a thing was impossible. "I don't really know him. And what I do know I don't approve of. He flaunts the law, holds it lightly. Most of the people he knows seem to come from the near-slums. I can't be in love with him. It's because I'm tired and there's been all the excitement of the storm, and everything. I have more sense than to get a crush on a stranger. Even a crush. Certainly I wouldn't fall in love with one."

She had just reached this conclusion when her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Irritated by the intrusion, she called a sharp, "Come in."

It was Hank, a frown between his brows, consternation not quite gone from his face. "Good lord, Donna, what were you thinking of out there?" he demanded.

Her voice held an edge. "I wasn't thinking. I was dancing," she told him.

"Dancing with Dusty Hosey," he reminded her. "With a juvenile delinquent who wears a black leather jacket and races about on a motorcycle."

The edge was sharper this time. "A black leather jacket and riding a motorcycle make a delinquent?"

He looked at her, puzzled, as if he had expected to see a friend and had found a stranger. "No, of course not. But he was expelled from school and he won't hold a job. He's fresh, ignorant, lazy. That's what makes him a delinquent."

"He's a good dancer," she said meditatively.

"Certainly he is. He's the kind who has nothing better to do. But teachers don't dance with boys like that."

"And I'm not a teacher," she reminded him.

"You're part of the school faculty. It's a part of your duty to uphold the dignity of the school. And there you were, dancing the twist! Dancing barefoot!"

"I had on my stockings!" she snapped. She had never put her shoes back on. She glanced down at her feet and noted with an impersonal eye that both of her stockings had runs in them.

"You can't do things like that, Donna. Not with school patrons looking on." His voice had pain in it.

Donna wasn't sure the pain was for the outraged dignity of his school or for her not knowing what was expected of a school nurse. She was about to make a sharp reply when she remembered that he was the youngest principal in the county and that he was extremely proud of his school and of being the principal of Flamingo Elementary. She spoke gently, apologetically. "Let's not quarrel, Hank. I didn't mean to do anything that would cause either of us to be criticized. I didn't quite realize—I wanted to dance, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I didn't think about the school patrons until I looked up and saw their faces—and yours. I'm sorry I disgraced myself and the school."

Hank flushed. "Oh, it wasn't that bad. But Dusty isn't the sort of person you should associate with, and the twist—well, let's say if a teacher or school nurse wants to indulge, she should do it in a place where none of her audience is patrons. I'm not angry."

She nodded. "I know. You were anxious about the reputation of the school."

"And I wanted to protect you from criticism, too, Donna. No man likes a girl he—" What the verb might have been Donna never learned. Baby LaRue appeared in the open door, her round face without its usual smile.

"Miss Ledbury, honey," she began worriedly, "you know where Toby's food is? I've put it down somewhere and —"

"Toby?" Donna echoed, her mind a thousand miles from the problems of Baby.

"My parrot. He's squawking for food and I'd got so wrapped up in the Little Stranger that I'd put him clean out of my mind, the poor old buddy-boy. And I can't find the box I brought his seed and stuff in."

Donna stood up and looked about her. "Is that it, Baby?" she asked, pointing out a square pasteboard box still sitting on the floor in the closet where the bird had been hidden last night.

Baby darted in and picked up the box, holding it to her bosom as if it were all the treasures of Ali Baba. Her dimples were back now and her round face wore a pleased flush. "I left it there myself. You know, I'm always misplacing things. Sometimes they're lost for good. I make it a rule never to worry about anything I can't find for three days. By that time, it's either turned up or I'm sort of used to being without it. Only, Toby wouldn't let me leave his dinner lie. Listen to him squawk!" She sounded honestly proud of the ungodly noise the bird was making. "I guess I'd better go over there and feed him before he decides to snap up the Little Stranger."

She ran squarely into the arms of Mary Hendley as she went out, and when apologies had been made, Mary, her face excited, came in to take her place.

"My goodness, Donna," she began admiringly, "I didn't know you could dance like that. You could have opened a dance studio, or gone on the stage or something."

"Thank you, but I'm not that good," Donna said mildly. She and Mary had seen little of each other either at school or since they had come to Flamingo for the storm. She determined that she wouldn't let Mary know that she'd had that attack of jealousy out there in the hall if it killed her. She'd be as cordial as anyone could possibly expect. "I do appreciate your thinking so, though." She accented the "your" a little.

Hank was looking at Mary with something very like disgust. "You're probably undermining everything I've been trying to do, Mary," he accused. "You at least have been teaching long enough to know that patrons don't like teachers behaving like that in public places."

Mary's reply echoed Donna's earlier one. "But Donna's not a teacher, Hank. And she's young enough to do the things that the rest of the young people do."

Hank looked as if he would like to swear. "You both should know how people feel about all the faculty since they deal with their children," he accused with a primness that belied his usual understanding of other people's problems and opinions. "I'd better get to work," he finished, and left the room with a huffiness that was entirely unlike him.

Mary giggled. "Poor dear. He's so used to most of the teachers agreeing with him, especially me. Hank has a way of rushing the most attractive new teacher every year. I was the one two years ago, and I got a real crush on him. Silly of me. Just this weekend, I've begun to see how silly." She broke off, laughing softly. "Only, it isn't a weekend, is it? It just seems like it because there's no school."