Sweet Everlasting (12 page)

Resting her notebook on the handrail, she wrote—hard, so he could read the message in the bright moonlight—
I’ll go on by myself now.

“No, I’ll go with you,” he insisted—rather shortly, she thought.

No, but thank you. Too far for you. I’m used to it.

He scowled. “You shouldn’t be out by yourself this late. What does your stepfather think? Doesn’t he mind it when you’re out alone at night?”

She almost laughed. She sent him a look, but in her notebook she just wrote,
No.

He muttered something, one side of his mouth twisting in disapproval. She thought he looked disgusted, and her spirits sank even lower. “I’ll go with you,” he repeated.

She shook her head vigorously.
No. Thank you. You might get a call
—
somebody sick.

He read that, and put the notebook back on the railing. “All right, then,” he said after a long time.

Another pause. The low, bubbling rush of the creek below the wooden bridge sounded cheerful and indifferent. A scuffling in the brush along the far bank might be a ferret, or maybe a weasel, and in the distance she could hear the eerie wheeze of a barn owl. Gradually the realization struck her that Dr. Wilkes had something to say, but for some reason he was having trouble saying it.

She wrote in her notebook,
What?

He bent close to read the word, and when he’d read it he almost smiled. “I’m not sure how to ask you,” he said.

She scribbled again.

“ ‘Just ask,’ ” he read out loud. He pulled on his earlobe. “All right. I saw you with Eugene, just now. I thought—I couldn’t tell if you were in difficulty or not. I didn’t mean to interrupt—something. If I butted in where I wasn’t wanted, I apologize.”

Carrie went pink again. How to explain? What had happened was new to her—a man’s touch, a man’s interest in her as a woman; she didn’t know the words to describe it even to herself. She wrote,
Never mind.
Lord, what a stupid thing to say!
Eugene,
she wrote—then crossed it out. She handed the notebook over, feeling idiotic, knowing that “Never mind” didn’t really get to the bottom of things.

He set the notebook down with a little slap. “Did you like it when he kissed you?”

She felt so relieved by the directness of the question, she shook her head violently—and was astounded when, for the first time since he’d found her in the street, Dr. Wilkes smiled. For the life of her, she thought he looked glad. An amazed warmth spread through her. A miracle might be happening. Dr. Wilkes might care for her.

She smiled back, lit up with hope and a fledgling joy. She couldn’t write what she was thinking. So instead she showed him. She put her finger to her lips, then reached out and touched it to his.

He looked floored. “You want
me
to kiss you?” he guessed.

Every ounce of her courage went into the slow nodding of her head, with a little left over to keep her from burying her hot face in her hands.

“Carrie. Listen.”

But he didn’t say anything after that, and the awful truth of what she’d done hit her like a fist. She got one long, panicky stride away before he caught her, first by one arm, then the other, and turned her back to face him. She’d never thought he could do a cruel thing, but he was making her look at him, making her show all the stupid, stupid shame she felt.
Let me go,
she begged him,
don’t look at me.

“Carrie, wait. No, listen.” Now he had her face in his hands, holding her still. “Believe me, because it’s true—there isn’t anything I’d rather do than kiss you.”

His face blurred because her eyes were swimming, but she was acutely aware of the soft brush of his lips on hers and the warm whisper of his breath on her cheek. She closed her eyes, feeling her heart pound and her blood race. A minute passed and she pulled back, thinking it must be over now. But he kept his hands on her face, touching her cheeks and her lips with just the tips of his fingers, and then he put his mouth on hers again.

This one was different. Better. He held her closer and his mouth pressed harder; she thought of Eugene’s kiss for half a second, then forgot about it. Dr. Wilkes stroked the back of her neck and slid his fingers into her hair, cradling her head while he kissed her and kissed her. She held onto his arms and tried not to shake, all the while a million different feelings streamed through her. His mouth glided to her jaw and then her throat. “What is that?” he whispered. “That sweet smell. It’s right here.” She felt his lips move at the back of her ear; his deep inhale sent a delicious shudder through her whole body.

She couldn’t stop trembling. She made a blind, one-handed grab for her notebook, to answer his question.

A low laugh rumbled in his throat. “Tell me later,” he murmured, and kissed her mouth again.

She slipped her arms around his neck and pressed into him. Her lips parted under his. He drew his breath in with a sudden hiss and pulled back.

Oh—now it was over, she realized, and tried to steady herself, get her feet on the ground again. Breathing hard, she gazed up at him, searching for a clue to what it had meant to him. But his face was a mystery, she couldn’t read it. She took his hand from her shoulder and laid it against her cheek; she kissed his fingers, then his warm palm.

He pulled his hand away—gently—and she understood that kissing was all right with him, but cherishing was not. She took a step back.

“Yes,” he said in a low voice, “you’d better go. It’s late.” She started to turn. “Carrie.” He rubbed his neck with one hand. “I—” She waited, watching him. “I beg your pardon. That should not have happened. It was entirely my fault. I’m very sorry.”

She fumbled for her notebook, wretchedly aware that he must be sick and tired of waiting for her to write her little notes. She shouldn’t write anything—she should run—she’d made a fool of herself tonight as many times as she could stand.

She scribbled in haste, tore out the page, and thrust it into his hand. Without waiting for him to read it or—worse, worse—say anything back, she turned and walked off fast. But she thought of her message all the long way home.
I’m sorry you are sorry. It was so lovely to me. Good-bye.

“Y
OU’RE SAYING BRING ’EM
all?”

“All.”

“All six?”

“And bring your husband, too.”

“Willis? Hah! Now I know you’re kiddin’ me, Doc.”

He wasn’t, but he could see her point: Willis Haight was snoring on his back in a patch of sunlight on the Haights’ falling-down front porch, passed out from corn liquor, and apparently it was no uncommon occurrence. Getting him and his six children to come down off the mountain for diphtheria inoculations understandably struck Mrs. Haight as a joke.

Tyler gave her a bracing pat on her mammoth arm. “I’ll see you next Tuesday afternoon—that’s when I’m doing vaccinations. In the meantime, speak to Willis again about the new well. As long as you’re using the old one, you can expect Bad and the others to get these intestinal ailments again and again. And they might not recover as easily as Bad did.”

He bent over the sleeping two-year-old with the unfortunate nickname. Bad was quiet now, but a few hours ago he’d been convulsing with a temperature of 105. Castor oil, two enemas, and continuous bathing had settled him down; salol and bismuth had finally put him to sleep.

“I can ask ’im till I’m blue in the face, and he’ll still say we ain’t got money for a new well.”

“He’ll have to find it somewhere.”

“And we can’t keep askin’ Carrie for spring water.”

Ty straightened. “How’s that?”

“Carrie Wiggins brings buckets o’ water from her place sometimes, but if her pa found out she’d catch it. Heck—if Willis found out
I’d
catch it.” Mrs. Haight hitched seven-month-old Gracie higher up on her huge, apron-covered hip and blew a flutter of dirty hair out of her eyes. “I reckon we could use the crick till Willis thinks of something. And that’s just what I need, Dr. Wilkes, one more extra chore to do around here.” Her baleful glare conveyed the clear implication that this was all his fault.

He began to put his medicines and instruments back into his case. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else to tell you. The well’s bad, and it’s making your kids sick.” He glanced around the dirty, cramped cabin. Over the course of the long afternoon, he’d gotten used to the smells of garbage and sewage, dirty linen and unwashed bodies; but the clutter and filth still shocked him, even though the Haights were hardly the first—and not even the worst—mountain family he’d visited whose house looked more suitable for pigs than human beings. Mrs. Haight sewed her scabby, undernourished children into their “winter clothes” every November, after which they wore them day and night, without bathing, until she “cut ’em out” in March. There were no screens on the windows, no ice, no sanitation. The miracle was that the Haights weren’t all dead, or sick constantly instead of only half the time.

“Ma! Ma! Hey, Ma!”

Harried mothers had a wonderful way of ignoring their children. Gillie Haight kept yelling at his mother from the doorway until Tyler was ready to ask him what he wanted himself.

“What?” Mrs. Haight finally barked, straightening up from wedging the baby between two pillows in the center of the sprung couch. Immediately the child started to wail.

“Look what Carrie brung.”

“What.”

“Come an’ look.”

“I said
what.”

Gillie pointed at something out of sight on the porch. “Great big kettle o’ berries.”

“Well, bring it in, don’t just stand there. Shoot. Never mind, I’ll do it myself.”

The floorboards shook under her thunderous footfalls. Tyler understood the dietary causes, but it still amazed him when he encountered people as grossly overweight as Mrs. Haight, in families so poor they had barely enough food to keep from starving.

“Is Carrie here?” he asked Gillie, who was poking a finger at the screaming baby.

“Nuh uh.”

“Where is she?”

“Gone home.”

“When was she here?”

“Huh?”

“Was she here just now?”

“Yuh.” He scratched his rear end unselfconsciously. “She seen your buggy and writ a note. Took off.”

“She wrote a note?”

“Yuh.” The blank look in his vacant face sharpened with glacial slowness. At last he reached into the pocket of his filthy, hand-me-down dungarees and withdrew a folded piece of paper.

Exasperated, Tyler all but snatched it out of his grubby hand. But the sight of Carrie’s loose, graceful scrawl had him smiling to himself before he’d read the message.

“Dear Dr. Wilkes,

Yesterday Artemis stepped on a nail at the mill and it looks bad but he won’t have a doctor. Since you are here and so close, would you please pretend you are stopping by in a friendly way and then look at his foot if he says you may? Thank you for your trouble.

Sincerely yours,

Carrie Wiggins.”

Hoyle Tabor had rented Tyler a mule today instead of a horse. It wasn’t Poison, but the animal was almost as lazy and dim-witted. As a consequence, Tyler had plenty of time to think about Carrie on the half-mile journey between the Haights’ cabin and the Wigginses’.

He’d never had any intention of touching her that night at the bottom of Dreamy Mountain. He thought of the kiss, of how it had gotten away from him at the end, and of her bittersweet note afterward. What a callous lout he’d been, to kiss her and then
apologize
for it. But she’d misunderstood his apology. It wasn’t the kiss he’d been sorry for—that had been nothing but a pleasure; in ten days he hadn’t quite gotten it out of his mind. What he’d meant to apologize for was leading her to think there could be something between them, something serious. There couldn’t, of course. He liked her; he’d never met anyone remotely like her; he was attracted to her. All the same, a romantic relationship was out of the question. Carrie was barely more than a child, and they had nothing in common. They were worlds apart in every way, there was no conceivable future they could share—but exchanging intimacies on a bridge in the moonlight must have conveyed a very different message to her.

He’d tried to correct his mistake afterward, but all he’d done was hurt her.
I’m sorry you are sorry. It was so lovely to me.
To him, too—but that was beside the point. He’d had no right to take advantage of her innocence and her loveliness, and then insult her by apologizing for it.

The sturdy little cabin came into view; it was situated in a cluster of pine trees behind an ancient, crumbling stone wall. Today he would set things right with Carrie, Tyler promised himself. Return their relationship to the pleasant, casual footing it had been on before he’d spoiled it. She’d been his friend, after all, albeit a shy, reclusive one, and until now he hadn’t realized how much he’d enjoyed their friendship. Today he’d repair the damage. He pulled the slow-footed mule to a halt in front of the cabin’s tidy, slightly sagging front porch.

The door was open; Carrie appeared in it a second later, neat as a pin in a faded pink dress with a high white collar. All her clothes had a homemade, handed-down look; he suspected she was the original seamstress and she handed them down to herself, with alterations, time after time as she outgrew them. She’d tied her reddish hair up in the usual careless knot on top of her head, from which a few thick strands had fallen and now hung on her shoulders. Her serious face was a study: she looked worried, nervous, guilty, and glad to see him all at the same time.

He felt like a conspirator himself. “Miss Wiggins!” he called out, springing down from the buggy. “I was hoping to find you in. I’ve a message for you from Eppy Odell.” He stood in front of her in the doorway and said in a loud voice, “She told me she spoke to you about sitting with her children one day next week. Well, now she says to tell you she won’t be needing you after all, she’s not going to—wherever it was she was going.”

Carrie looked impressed, and under the concern in her sober gray eyes he detected a hint of amusement. She mouthed,
Thank you,
and he couldn’t resist reaching for one of her hands and giving it a quick squeeze. Her smile was instantaneous and dazzling. Whatever constraint was between them melted away as if it had never been; with a queer twist of pleasure, he knew they were friends again.