Skip Rock Shallows (5 page)

Lilly woke with a start. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. The room was deep in shadow. What time was it?

The bird gave a rusty chirp like he was tuning up for something. Time to get up—that’s what time it was. She hurried to the washstand to begin her morning toilet by dipping her damp toothbrush into a tin of Colgate’s dental powder.

Once she was dressed and her hair neatly combed, she cracked the door to let in some air. A chill morning mist swirled like smoke around her ankles.

A tap at the door signaled that Myrtie James stood on the other side with her breakfast.

“Oatmeal,” Myrtie said. “I should have asked if you take it with brown sugar or sorghum. I didn’t know, so I brung ye both.”

Lilly tipped a small white pitcher and poured a copious amount of thick yellow cream into her mug of coffee. She didn’t have the heart to tell Myrtie she would prefer tea. “Mmm, this is bracing, just what I needed this morning. Thank you, Myrtie.”

A sheer film of dawn’s first light fought the shadows and, dominating, set the bird to singing. His tiny chest puffed out and his head thrown back, he saluted the morning. He sang with such vigor Lilly was surprised he didn’t fall off his perch.

Myrtie nearly dropped the pint jar of sorghum she was twisting the lid from. “Well, I never,” she said. When Lilly declined the sorghum, she put it back on the tray and bent over the cage. “A bird in the house brings bad luck. Where’d it come from anyway?”

“He’s the bird from the mine. I carried him out yesterday, and then someone left him on the stoop last night.”

“You don’t say. You mean this here’s the forewarning bird.”

The bird hopped to the floor of the cage and pecked at the corn bread scattered there. “Forewarning? I guess so,” Lilly said.

Myrtie’s hand closed around the cage’s thin wire handle. “Well, I’ll just take him to the house. Stanley ain’t left out yet. He’ll want to take him back.”

“Take him back? Surely not. The little thing almost died yesterday.”

“Well, honey, lots of folks almost died yesterday,” Myrtie said with a frown. “This bird’s job is to caution—give the men a chance to get out before the black damp overcomes them.”

The cereal she’d just swallowed formed a painful lump in Lilly’s throat when she watched the canary’s cage swing to and fro as Myrtie carried it across the yard to the main house. Myrtie’s words made her feel like a scolded child, and she fancied the little budgie was looking back at her, waiting to be saved once again.

Oatmeal congealed in the bowl while she skimmed some Scripture and hurried through her prayers. She hoped God wasn’t offended when she prayed for the bird after she prayed for Darrell. Animals had always been her weakness.

As she headed toward the small hospital, she wondered who had left the bird at her door. She hoped she soon found out, for obviously they were like-minded, and she could sure use a friend.

Skip Rock was a hard place, so unlike Troublesome Creek you wouldn’t think they were both situated in the mountains of Kentucky. Even church here was hard. She’d gone with Myrtie Sunday last, and even in Myrtie’s company, folks barely acknowledged her. But she had smiled and soldiered through. Maybe next Sunday would be different.

A woman swept her wooden porch. She leaned on her broom, her face lost in the shadow of a shapeless bonnet, watching as Lilly passed by.

“Good morning,” Lilly said.

Her reply was a barely audible “Morning.” She turned her back, brushing vigorously at something under the porch swing with the stub of a straw broom.

A white-and-tan dog sauntered up, sniffing at Lilly’s heels. She stopped and offered her hand. He looked up at her with soulful brown eyes before taking a tentative sniff. When she walked on, he followed. All along Main Street, dogs popped out from underneath porches and behind houses, happily joining their parade. She might as well have been the mayor. All they needed was a brass band.

One of the dogs was sleek and muscular with a blue-black coat. She figured him for a coonhound. He edged out her first companion, asserting his authority, strutting next in line behind her. A hapless cat saw the procession coming and quick as a wink darted up an ash tree. The coonhound peeled away and treed the cat, baying like it was the full of the moon and the cat was a masked raccoon.

Poor kitty, Lilly thought. She’d check on it when she came back this way. The dog would surely get bored by then. She’d have to remember to keep a biscuit in her pocket for her morning companions.

“Get!” Stanley James yelled as he joined her, swinging his booted foot at the dogs, carefully not making contact. One by one they slunk away back to their outposts, back to their private territories.

“I didn’t mind their company, Mr. James,” Lilly said.

“Always liked dogs myself,” he said.

“I didn’t think you and Mrs. James had any pets.”

“Lost Sam round about a year ago now. He was a smart one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s the way, ain’t it?”

Lilly took three steps to his every one. He might have joined her, but much like the coon dog, he was dominating. “What happened to Sam?”

“Took on the wrong varmint. Dog’s no match for a bear.”

Lilly’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, dear.” She had to suppress the urge to touch Mr. James in sympathy. “Will you get another?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Ain’t ready to take on that sorrow yet.”

“But don’t you think the joy of having one outweighs the grief of losing one?” Lilly asked.

“Yeah . . . well, I ain’t certain sure of that. Sounds like you been there yourself.”

“I once had a beagle. I named her Steady and she was just that. She never let me out of her sight. She was the truest friend I’ve ever had.”

“So what happened to steady Steady?”

“Old age sneaked up on her, but she was happy right to the end—chasing rabbits in her dreams.” Lilly sniffed. Steady always brought tears.

“Humph.” Mr. James cleared his throat and walked ahead. Lilly wondered if he was discomfited to be seen having a conversation with her. It might put him at a disadvantage with the other men. Women in their place and all that. She was swimming upstream here for sure. She wondered if she would ever find her place among these people.

Darrell’s face was lathered for a shave when Lilly got to the clinic. Ned Tippen was sharpening a straight razor on a leather strop. He ran his thumb over the razor’s bright edge. “I wrote down what the thermometer told me this morning,” he said, glancing at a scrap of paper on the invalid tray. “It was 99.8.”

“That’s the same as last night,” Lilly said. “Very good.” After taking the pearl-headed pin from her hat, she took it off, stuck the hatpin into the crown of the castor-brown felt, and hung it on the coatrack just inside the door. She slipped a fresh apron over her head, tied it at the neck and waist, and then peered into a hanging mirror to smooth her hair. She liked everything tidy.

“Reckon it’s all right if I open the curtains?” Ned asked. “I might slit Darrell’s throat shaving him in this gloom.”

Lilly opened the curtains. The room brightened.

The lather on Darrell’s face cracked around his crooked grin. “I feel like a new man this morning, Doc.”

“Stop talking, Darrell, else I’ll have to soap you up again,” Ned said, hanging the strop on a tack in the wall.

Lilly busied herself counting supplies and wiping down the counters with bleach water.

“I’ll do that, Doc,” Ned said, “soon’s as I get done beautifying Darrell here.” He nudged Darrell with his elbow. “Might take a right smart while to pretty this mug.”

“Don’t you have any toilet water?” Darrell said. “Good barbers always finish with a slap of good-smelling toilet water.”

“Well, Cuz, I reckon you’ll have to make do this morning,” Ned said.

Lilly enjoyed their banter. It reminded her of her brothers and sisters. Darrell had to be doing much better if he could participate in Ned’s teasing. It seemed her worry had been for naught. She recalled the words of her mentor, Dr. Coldiron. “Don’t get emotionally involved,” he counseled his students. “Fret and worry only get in the way of sound medical practice. Do what you can, do it well, and then let it go.”

Now all she had to do was put the wise professor’s saying into practice—easier said than done.

It had been a long day, and it was nearing dusk before Lilly made her way up the winding mountain path. Her devotional time had gotten short shrift this morning, and she hoped to make up for it now. When she reached her favorite spot, she spread a shawl on which to sit. A profusion of common purple violets carpeted the ground around her, and just under the trees, a few trilliums still bloomed brightly red. Her daddy called trilliums wake-robins because their blossoms heralded the return of the orange-breasted birds in the spring.

From her seat, she picked a bunch of violets, winding one long stem round the others to make a posy. With the tiny bouquet in her lap, she opened her Bible to Psalms and began to read.

“Hey! Hey, you,” someone blatted loud as the psalmist’s trumpet.

Sighing, Lilly turned to see who was disturbing her peace.

A flash of color caught her eye from the far side of a beech tree before a girl stepped out onto the trail several feet distant. Lilly guessed her to be fourteen years old. Tall and narrow as a boy, she had not yet developed a feminine figure. Her light-brown hair was plaited in two braids unadorned by ribbon. She wore a red-print feed-sack dress and over that an apron that tied at the neck but hung loose at the waist.

Lilly laid her Bible aside and stood. The posy tumbled to the ground. “Might you be looking for me?”

“Depends,” the girl said. “Are you that doctor lady?”

“Depends,” Lilly shot back. “Who’s asking?”

“Armina Eldridge’s asking, if ye need to know,” the girl said as she stepped closer.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Corbett,” Lilly said. “What do you need of me, Armina?”

“I don’t need nothing,” the girl replied.

“Then why were you looking for me?”

Armina’s forehead knit into a frown. “’Cause you’re that doctor woman. Right?”

Lilly nodded. “Um, yes. That would be me.”

“Well then, listen here. I want to know how come you ain’t stopped by to see my aunt Orie. Old Doc never missed a Wednesday.”

“I’m sorry, Armina, but I don’t know anything about your aunt Orie.”

Armina’s light-colored eyes looked out from her freckled face with the sharpness of daggers. “That’s plain dumb. How can you not know of Orie Eldridge? Ever’body knows of her.”

“Is your aunt Orie ill?”

“Huh! You reckon Old Doc come every Wednesday for the tea and crumpets?”

Lilly forced a slow breath. If the doctor was making weekly calls, this case didn’t sound emergent. “It’s nearly dark. If you give me directions, I’ll come and see your aunt tomorrow.”

Confusion clouded Armina’s thin face. “But tomorrow’s Thursday.”

“Yes . . . so?”

“Aunt Orie expects her doctoring on Wednesday.”

“I’m sorry, but tomorrow’s the best I can do.”

A sudden wind stirred their skirts and sent Armina’s apron flapping. Holding it down with one hand, she looked Lilly over. “I’ll come by and fetch you directly after breakfast,” she said. “It ain’t a place easily found.”

Turning her back, Armina hiked up the steep trail, sure-footed as a mountain goat. Before she angled away around a bend, she stopped to fetch something from the tall grasses beside the path. “Come on, Bubby,” Lilly heard the girl say as she plopped a roly-poly baby on her nearly nonexistent hip. “It’s a-fixing to come a frog strangler.”

Dozens of grasshoppers whirred down the trail from where Armina had disturbed them. Lilly watched their progress from one clump of brush and weeds to another. One of the long-legged insects landed on her wrist, cocking his wee brown head, studying the bit of flesh beneath him before, with a short burst of speed, he jumped to test the yellow fruit of a horse nettle.

Lilly laughed. “Hurry up,” she said as the marble-size globe bobbed under his weight. “Your friends are leaving you behind.”

The coming rain gave warning with its clean yet earthy scent. Lilly wrapped her Bible in the shawl and hurried down the mountain. With a laugh she ran across the yard and into her house, beating the rain by seconds. Her still-warm supper sat waiting on one of Myrtie’s prized tea-leaf plates: a ham steak, corn pudding, baking soda biscuits, and green onions fresh from the garden. A cold glass of milk and a slice of apple pie finished her repast. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be as fat as the baby Armina had hefted to her hip.

It was still dark and misting rain the next morning when she rapped lightly on the Jameses’ front door. She wanted to let Myrtie know not to bring her breakfast round. The apple in her pocket would suffice.

The tantalizing smell of bacon teased her resolve when Myrtie opened the door. “Goodness gracious,” she said after Lilly told her she was on her way to work. “Why so early?”

“I’ve got to make a house call this morning,” Lilly said, “but I have to see about Darrell first.”

“If you’d of told me last evening, I’d of brought your breakfast before I fed Stanley.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think of it until just now.”

Lilly could see Mr. James sitting at the table. His fisted hands, a fork in one, a knife in the other, rested beside his empty plate. “Step in,” he said. “It don’t take but a minute to eat an egg.” He put his fork down and, without moving from his seat, pulled out a chair for Lilly.

Feeling like a child, Lilly took the chair. She really shouldn’t let Mr. James direct her time, but Myrtie was already stacking silver-dollar pancakes and two over-easy eggs on her plate. Her stomach rumbled at the sight. Mr. James slid a pitcher of syrup across the table with one hand and cut into his stack with the other.

Myrtie watched from the stove. Lilly wished she’d sit down and eat with them. As soon as Mr. James emptied his coffee cup, Myrtie was there with the pot. She refilled the cup, then stirred in a splash of cream and two teaspoons of sugar, although the sugar bowl and cream pitcher sat right in front of Mr. James. He never had to ask for a thing. Myrtie anticipated his every need. Lilly was appalled. Myrtie was being treated like a servant. In Lilly’s home on Troublesome Creek, her daddy was as likely to fix her mother’s cup of tea as her mother was to pour his coffee.

Lilly couldn’t help but notice a folded one-dollar bill tucked under the rim of a saucer. It must be for Myrtie’s money jar. She wondered if her landlady was getting close to her goal. Probably not if Mr. James gave her only one dollar at a time. Of course, he might not want to move; maybe that was just Myrtie’s dream.

“How’s Darrell holding up?” Mr. James asked.

“He’s doing very well. I’ll send him home to finish his recuperation soon, barring complications.”

“I heard his mother pitched a fit on you,” Myrtie said as she packed bacon and leftover pancakes into Mr. James’s lunch bucket.

“You wouldn’t be fishing for gossip, now would you, Myrtie?”

“I’m just asking, Stanley, not telling. Gossip’s like jam; it don’t bear fruit if you don’t spread it.”

Lilly sipped her coffee. She felt caught in the middle by the couple’s teasing. “Darrell’s family has been quite helpful. They bring meals for both him and Ned, and his mother keeps a kettle boiling doing up the wash.”

“Good cook is she?” Myrtie asked.

“Give it up, Myrtie,” Mr. James said as he pushed back his chair and bent to tie his shoes. “Where are you off to?” he asked.

Lilly wiped a drip of sticky syrup from her chin. “I’m going to call on Orie Eldridge. Her niece is coming to show me the way.”

“Orie Eldridge, you say?”

“Yes, I met Armina yesterday when she came by to say I’d missed a visit. She was quite insistent.” Lilly placed her knife and fork across the top of her plate and tucked her folded napkin under its edge. “I’ll visit in her home this time, but next week her family will need to bring her by the clinic.”

Mr. James exchanged a look with Myrtie. “That ain’t likely to happen.”

Standing, Lilly bit back the question that sprang to the tip of her tongue. Mr. James would have to learn that she was in charge of her patients and she would decide how to deal with them.

As she left, she heard Myrtie scold from behind the screen door, “You should have told her, Stanley.”

“Gal seems bent on doing ever little thing by her lonesome,” he said. “She’ll find out soon enough.”