“Ned,” Mr. Tippen said.
“Uncle Turnip. Aunt Tillie,” Ned replied while patting Darrell dry with a clean cloth.
Mrs. Tippen gasped and covered her face with her apron. “He looks bad,” she said, her voice muffled. “How’s he going to make it with one leg?”
Mr. Tippen shook his head and looked askance at Ned.
Lilly touched her shoulder. “Come and look, Mother.”
She guided the woman to the foot of the bed and turned back the cotton sheet to show Darrell’s swathed lower extremity. “See, he still has his foot. You can touch his toes.”
Mrs. Tippen put out her hand as if to touch her son but pulled it back. “It’s purple as an eggplant. Why’s it swole up like that?”
“We expect the swelling, and the color is the result of—”
Mrs. Tippen’s wailing cry cut Lilly off midsentence. The woman sank to her knees on the floor at the foot of the bed and folded her hands. “Oh, Lord,” she prayed, “spare my baby. Take me instead.”
“Here we go,” Mr. Tippen said. “The storm’s a-coming in.”
Lilly took the measure of Tillie Tippen. She’d seen her sort before—no matter what the circumstance or how dire the situation, women like Tillie could somehow steer all the attention straight to themselves like they were the only ship on a rolling sea. She swabbed the thermometer with alcohol and stuck it under Darrell’s arm again. After several minutes, during which Darrell’s mother heaved and sighed, she read the line of mercury.
“Much better—99.8. Good job, Ned,” she said, her fingers seeking Darrell’s pulse.
“Is that normal?” Mrs. Tippen asked as she got up from the floor.
“It’s very close and really quite good, considering,” Lilly said.
“But it’s not normal?” Mrs. Tippen’s voice rose like the crest of a wave. “So he’s probably going to die. Is that what you’re saying?”
Darrell’s pulse quickened under Lilly’s fingertips. “Mrs. Tippen, your son is doing very well, but he needs his rest. You need to step out now.”
“But . . . but I should be here. I’m his mother.”
Mr. Tippen took his wife’s elbow and led her to the door. “We sure thank you, Doc,” he said. “Our boy’s in good hands; I can tell.”
“I don’t much like her attitude, Turnip,” Mrs. Tippen said before the door closed behind them.
Ned shrugged. “Sorry about that. Aunt Tillie is a handwringer.”
“She’s just worried. I would be wringing my hands too if this were my son. He’s in real trouble if gangrene sets in, but I didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” Lilly placed a clean top sheet over Darrell and then expertly removed the soiled one from underneath so that he was never exposed.
“If she’d of seen his ankle afore you put it back together, she’d not be vilifying you.” Ned fanfolded the top of the sheet across Darrell’s chest.
“You’re good at this,” Lilly said.
Ned’s face colored under the compliment. “You think so?”
“Yes, I do. Someone taught you well.”
Ned turned in his chair. He pulled back one britches leg and thumped his wooden leg. “Same thing as happened to Darrell happened to me.”
“Goodness,” Lilly said. “I never even noticed. How long ago . . . ?”
“Three year now.”
“Do you still work in the mines?”
“I cain’t make myself go back, but I’m going to have to. Since Daddy died, I’m my family’s main support.”
Lilly liked Ned’s quiet manner. He had a good turn about him. “What have you been doing since you left the mine, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“This and that, mostly tending to folks who don’t have family to take them in.” When Darrell stirred, Ned offered him a sip of water. “I took care of Cholly Bright for going on two years. Folks said Cholly was tetched, but he was only old.”
Darrell moaned, “Hurts.” The sheet fell away when he lifted his injured foot.
Lilly went to the pharmacy cupboard and turned the key in the lock. She’d give Darrell some morphine to ease the pain.
“Why don’t you stretch your legs?” Lilly asked, then clamped her hand over her mouth. “Gracious, Ned, I’m sorry.”
Ned just laughed and got up. “I’ll go have a smoke and stretch the one I’ve got. Be right back.”
Shortly after the morphine injection, Darrell quieted. His eyes fluttered open.
“Are you comfortable?” Lilly asked.
“Will you marry me?” he said, clutching her hand.
“Well, not tonight, Darrell.” Lilly smiled when he drifted off and the grip on her hand relaxed.
Narcotic medication made folks say the strangest things. Once she’d assisted at a difficult posterior delivery. Dr. Coldiron had been expert with the forceps and liberal with the drugs. When the young mother had swum up out of a laudanum fog, she grabbed Lilly’s hand just as Darrell had done. “I have to tell you something,” she’d whispered in an exhausted voice. “This baby is not my husband’s.”
Lilly had hoped it was the pain medication talking.
Once Ned had stretched his leg, Lilly walked home. The air felt cool and good. She breathed it deep into her lungs, chasing the dregs of coal dust away. She wasn’t as tired as she should have been. The events of the day and the continued concern for her patient had her wound as tight as an eight-day clock.
Fumbling with the knob, she almost missed the cage sitting by her door.
“Goodness, where did you come from?”
The canary huddled forlornly on the floor of its pen. Lilly carried it inside and lit the lamp. She poured a little water into a saucer and put it on the floor of the cage with a crumble of dry corn bread left over from her supper. The bird shook his feathers and hopped onto his perch. A tiny cloud of grit lifted up, then sifted back down over the teeny creature like a pall.
Stepping outside, Lilly dipped a clean cloth into the rain barrel sitting under the eave. The wooden barrel held the heat of the sun, so the water was still lukewarm. She thought of Darrell’s earlier remark about the wiggle tails, but it was too dark to check for worms. Myrtie was so particular, Lilly figured she’d never let her rainwater go bad. She wrung the cloth nearly dry before going back to the canary.
The bird didn’t resist when she cupped it, but she could feel the nervous trill of its heart against her palm. “Poor little biddy,” she murmured. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
The wall clock chimed three before she climbed into bed and pulled the soft quilt under her chin. The bird chirped thrice as if he were mocking the clock. Lilly didn’t hear if he did the same at four.
Chapter 4
Tern Still couldn’t believe his luck. And it was all because of a roof fall. His granny always said, “Even a thorn tree casts a shade,” but he wasn’t sure he’d believed her until today.
Long about midnight, he gave up on sleep. He went to the window that overlooked the street and tried his best to raise it. He started to pound the stuck sash with the heel of his hand but thought better of it. He didn’t want to wake the other souls in the boardinghouse, especially Mrs. DeWitt. She’d have his head on a platter. That woman ran a tight ship.
He should have taken his bedroll and slept out under the trees. It would have been more comfortable than this stifling little room with its garish cabbage-rose wallpaper, threadbare rug, and lumpy mattress. Boardinghouse life. Tern was tiring of his vagabond ways, and he’d never thought that would happen. The food was good, though.
Quickly he dressed, sitting on the side of the iron bedstead to pull on his scuffed boots. His blue work shirt and jean trousers were cheap stuff and he disliked the feel of them, but if he was going to pass for a miner, he had to look like one. It wasn’t as if he’d never done the work. Much like that boy Billy, who hung around the tipple each morning hoping for work off the books, he’d started working down the mines when he was seventeen. Boy, he knew the work, all right.
He plucked his billed cap off the bedpost where he’d hung it, eased the door open, and stepped out into a narrow hallway that led to a set of stairs. In seconds he was outside. If it weren’t so late, he’d go by the livery station and get his horse—take a long ride out to where the air was still clean and the mountain streams still pure. He settled for a mindless walk around town. Somebody’s hound tracked his trail, but it didn’t bark. Dogs never took him for a stranger.
Of course, he wound up right where he didn’t mean to go, a little ways up the mountain on a path that put him directly above the tar-paper cabin in back of the James place, where Lilly Gray Corbett was staying. Just the thought of her and his heart was beating like a trip-hammer.
He should be sleeping instead of spying. It had been a rough day, and tomorrow promised more of the same. Sometimes he didn’t recognize his own intent.
When the roof caved this morning, he’d stayed put while everyone else ran for their lives. He couldn’t make himself leave Darrell Tippen—not even to save his own worthless hide. The others were right to run, trying to stay ahead of the dreaded black damp that dropped you in your tracks or the methane from firedamp and the explosion that could blow you right out the mouth of the mine—if you were lucky. At least that way your family had a body to bury. But noxious gases hadn’t formed. The bird didn’t die. Men were soon trooping back in and shoring up the roof with timbers until Bob made most of them leave again.
Tern got some odd looks from the other miners for hanging back. That had been a dumb move. It wasn’t like he really knew the Tippen guy. He needed to be careful, really careful. He had to blend in with the others or else he might stir suspicion. Right now, all anybody knew was what he wanted them to know. He was just a fellow down on his luck, just passing through Skip Rock, just trying to make a few bucks until the next town. He wasn’t any different on any given day from Billy or Charley or Buck.
The mating calls of insects waxed and waned with the fall of his feet, but when he hunkered down on the path, the noise became incessant. It was music to his ears. If you paid attention, you could hear that each bug played a different winged instrument. The black field cricket’s chirp faltered in and out like a pulse, but a tree cricket’s tune was long and steady. If he had to pick a favorite night song, though, it would be the katydid’s.
Kay-tee-did, kay-tee-did.
He heard the familiar sound made when the insect rubbed the ridge of one thinly veiled green forewing against a scraper on the other. Tern quieted his mind and listened hard to hear the sound most folks never did.
Kay-tee-did-not,
the leaf on legs trilled.
Kay-tee-did-not.
The buzzes, clicks, and rasps of the night serenade lulled him. The town and the mine seemed far away and of little significance from where he sat on his heels—until a door opened onto a stone stoop far below, and a young woman stepped out into the night.
Lilly. He’d known it was her the moment he first saw her in the yellow light of the lantern that morning. He had dared to cradle her elbow in his cupped palm, supporting her as others carried Darrell Tippen to the surgery suite in the doctor’s office. Of course he’d heard the gossip that there was a new doctor staying with the Jameses and that it was a woman, but he’d never imagined it was Lilly.
Obviously, she hadn’t recognized him. That was good. His momentary lapse could have given it all away. The feel of that small elbow in his rough hand made him out of heart, ill with the lovesick longing of the boy he thought was long since buried in the deepest recesses of his mind.
As he watched now, she walked briskly, stepping with purpose into the puddles of light cast by the lantern she carried. He supposed she was going back to the office. But why was she taking the long way around instead of walking down Main? A woman like her wasn’t safe alone at this time of night. There were some rough characters working in the mines and living in shanties or pitched tents on the outskirts of town, men imported for their backs and their brawn and their closed mouths. Like him, they’d be here today and gone tomorrow. They would go wherever a new mine opened or an old one paid better wages. He would go whenever the government sent him.
Tern felt compelled to follow along, making his way among the trees in the dark of the moon until the long, waving frond of a blackberry bramble reached out to impale him. It was so unexpected that he almost cried aloud as thorns raked his side through the fabric of his shirt. He pulled the bramble loose and flung it away. It snapped back, bringing more with it, circling his forearm like a witch’s bony talons. Taking a deep breath, he stopped to extricate himself. If he was right-natured, this never would have happened. Usually he was sure-footed as an Indian scout, more at home in the forest than in a house, but he’d walked right into the prickly, unforgiving shrubs. He shook his head.
Man, get a grip on yourself.
She went where he figured she would. A small group of folks stood back as she opened the door to the doctor’s office and closed it behind herself. He could hear rumblings of discontent. People didn’t like that she had replaced Doc Jones. They acted like she was a spider in their dumplings. Stupid. They had held the old doc’s wake days before she arrived. But of course, their minds were set against any woman being in the belly of the mountain. People had a right to their superstitions, but Tern wished they could have seen Lilly at work this morning. It might have made some inroads into their false notions. Way he saw it, any doctor was better than no doctor.
Stanley James was coming up the street and heading toward the set of people. Hands in pockets, Tern stepped backward, fading into the shadows while keeping his eyes on Stanley. If anybody figured him out, it would be Mr. James. The heel of Tern’s boot caught on something, throwing him off-balance. A bird squawked as its cage tipped over and rolled like a tin can toward the mouth of the mine. Tern scrambled to stop the blasted thing, sure everyone would be staring at the commotion.
As luck would have it, a woman in the crowd set to bawling at the same time the bird set to squawking. Tern breathed a sigh of relief as he righted the wire pen. He remembered seeing Lilly carry it out. She must have forgotten about the bird in all the chaos that ensued.
He’d better get out of here before somebody noticed and wondered why he was hanging around. Mr. James would look after Lilly.
Tern picked up the cage and slipped away. Halfway to the boardinghouse, he stopped under a gas lamp and looked inside the cage. What would he do with a bird? He could take it back to the mine in the morning, but that might give him away. Folks might wonder why he had it in the first place. Besides, Lilly Corbett saved it for a reason.
Images of a girl flickered in his mind. Plain as if it were yesterday, he saw her climbing the low rock wall that divided her family’s land from his. She was maybe twelve then—not much younger than he had been. Clearly, he’d caught her infringing on Still property. But when he’d told her of her insult, she’d sassed him with a surety of self he had never witnessed in a female.
When he was a boy, he thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Heaven help him, she still was.
The first time he’d seen Lilly, she was trespassing. The last time he saw her, she had kissed his cheek. A lot of terrible things took place between that trespass and that kiss, and they were all his fault.
His heart dropped with the realization that he could never act on his feelings for her. It was just as well he was a man living a secret life—just as well Lilly Gray Corbett would never have to know who he was or who he had been. He was the last person on earth she would ever want to see again. If he was sure of anything, he was sure of that.
He put the birdcage on the stone stoop outside her lodgings and walked away, wishing he could discard his secret longings as easily as he’d discarded the caged bird.