Shade Harmon
crossed his arms, leaned one shoulder against the side of the building, and waited. From where he stood in the alley between the Market Street Commissary and the cream station, he could easily watch the doctor’s office. It was Saturday night. You could tell even if you didn’t already know by the faint sounds of rowdy music from a couple streets over. You’d think the office would be closed on a Saturday night, but the light still shone in the window.
An hour later, he was still watching. Although the shade at the window was pulled to the sill, he could see a flicker of shadow
—the manifestation of the doctor, he was sure. He could tell it was her by the way she carried herself, like she
was in charge of something important. Even in shadow, she appeared sure of herself. It was different to see a woman that way. Tuesday, when she’d treated him for his wounds, she’d looked him straight in the eye without as much as a blink, and her hands had been strong and steady when she worked. And whoa, Nellie, she was a looker with that dark hair and those gray eyes. What impressed him most, though, was that she didn’t ask his name
—like she didn’t give a hoot if he was the governor or Jack Sprat.
He liked to study people. Some might think he was too quiet, even standoffish
—like he cared what anybody else thought
—but the truth was, he was taking their measure. Like a snake hiding under a riffle, he was waiting to strike.
Working one finger between the buttons of his blue chambray shirt, he rubbed around one of his wounds. They itched worse than a mosquito bite, but he was afraid to scratch them. Scratching might start up the bleeding again.
The stench of sulfur in the alley bothered him. Coffee grounds, eggshells, and apple cores littered the area around an overflowing garbage bin. Unbound newspapers were piled on top of the bin
—just waiting for a storm to blow them all over town. People were so lazy. To his mind there was no excuse for being slovenly
—he liked things clean and orderly.
Shade reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch and a rolling paper. Tapping the pouch, he filled the paper with cut leaf, licked the edge, then rolled it in a tight spool. He cupped his hand to block the flare of the match he struck
against the building. Tar-paper shingles made a perfect strike plate.
Maybe he should go make another call on the good doctor. Hadn’t she told him to come back? He could claim he was still worried about gangrene. That would be a sad, lingering way to die, but when he’d pulled the packing, it didn’t stink. Surely gangrene would smell as bad as a lye-free outhouse.
He narrowed his eyes with the first deep draw on the cigarette. A smoke would take the edge off, and he needed something to do that. The edge on him was sharp as a whetted knife. Booze wouldn’t work. He had to keep alert.
Man, he was that surprised when he’d walked into the office and seen a lady
—and a pretty one at that. Since when did women become doctors? He leaned and spit in the dirt. She didn’t yammer on, either
—bossing him around like his wife did. No,
had done
. Just like his wife had done.
Bile and tobacco smoke backed up in his throat and he spit again. That was never supposed to happen, but Noreen had finally said one word too many. She’d stoked his anger like cordwood in a cookstove, chunk after chunk after chunk; who could blame him for what had happened? He’d kept his tongue and kept his tongue until finally he broke.
Shade was so tired he could sleep standing up. He hadn’t been able to rest since. Every time he closed his eyes, that rock came crashing down again. Why hadn’t he just walked away? If he could just turn back time like the poet wished
—“Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight.”
Although if he was going to wish for time to turn backward,
he might as well wish he’d never met Sweet Noreen. He could see the big
T
for trouble stamped on her forehead from across the street that night in Cincinnati. She’d been alone, standing in a puddle of gaslight outside the train station. The hack stand was empty, and it was freezing cold, spitting sleet. So what did he do? Like a white knight drawn to a damsel in distress, he crossed the street.
“Hey, little lady, what are you doing out here all by your lonesome?” he’d said as blustery as the weather.
“I’m minding my own business,” she shot back. “Who might you be?”
He swept the hat from his head and bowed. “Shade Harmon, at your service, ma’am. And you are?”
“Sweet Noreen,” she said.
“That it?”
“That’s enough for you to know, mister.” She fished in her handbag and pulled out a small pot of carmine. She rubbed its waxy surface and patted fresh color on her already-shiny red lips, then capped the pot and dropped it back inside her bag. “Say, do you have a smoke?”
He resisted the urge to brush sleet from her hair. She was just about the most intriguing creature he had ever seen, and that was saying a lot.
“I know a place a couple of streets over. We could go there
—grab some coffee, get out of the weather.”
“All right,” she said, “as long as you mind your manners.”
“Ah, Sweet Noreen, my mother taught me how to treat a lady.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” Noreen flipped the long braid of his hair off his shoulder. “Why didn’t your mama teach you not to wear your hair like a girl?”
Suddenly, the night lit up like the Fourth of July. He liked a gal with a little sass. Or so he’d thought, that cold winter’s night in Cincinnati.
Yawning, Shade dropped his smoke and ground it under the heel of his boot. He had to stop thinking about Noreen.
What’s done is done.
The shadows were still playing on the window shade across the street. Maybe he’d rest just a minute
—take a load off. He took a few sheets of newsprint from atop the trash bin and spread them on the ground. Lowering himself, he crossed his legs at the ankle and let the rough tar-paper wall support his shoulders. If he kept his head turned to the side, he could see the doctor’s office just fine.
The next thing he knew, a booted foot was tapping his leg.
“Move along, buddy,” someone said. “Go home and sleep it off.”
Glancing up, he saw moonlight bouncing off a six-pointed star. Keeping his head down, he scrambled to his feet. He was a real smooth operator, letting the sheriff catch him sleeping on the job. “Sorry,” he mumbled, moving away, pretending to stumble over his own feet. Hopefully, to the sheriff, he was just another drunk.
Shade kept walking, swaying ever so slightly so as not to appear too intoxicated. The last thing he wanted was to
spend the night on a jail bunk. He could feel the eyes of the law boring into his back
—tattooing
murderer
between his shoulder blades.
Two streets over and he was at the only place to buy spirits in the one-horse town.
Sally’s Teas and Fine Chocolates
, the sign out front said. It should have read,
Teahouse by day and blind tiger by night
. The sturdy back door of the fine tea emporium sported another small hinged door through which money could be exchanged for whiskey or pure locally distilled moonshine. Like most other alkie-free burgs he’d been in, the law turned a blind eye to such establishments if they turned off the lights before midnight on a Saturday. There’d be no drinking on Sunday.
He wasn’t interested in spirits. That wasn’t his particular vice. But where you found alcohol, there was sure to be a furtive game going on
—another thing the law turned a blind eye to in most mining towns as long as you kept it on the q.t. The men who played craps were mostly burned-out miners looking for a bit of action to stretch thin paychecks. Some of them weren’t half-bad at turning a dime into a dollar. Except for that one fellow
—he was the unluckiest gambler ever to pitch a die. Shade had never seen him win a single penny, yet he kept pulling money from his pocket, and like a rube, he blew on the dice before they rolled from his hand.
Shade was careful not to seem expert. So far, on the few nights he’d played with this particular group, he placed wins and losses. No one had caught on that he was biding his time, like that snake under the riffle.
Yep, there they were under the light from the bar window: Hoppy, Happy, and Grunt, hunched on the ground like toads waiting for bugs. Shade liked to assign names to people he didn’t know, and never hoped to, based on their actions. It was a way to keep people straight in his mind. Hoppy jumped like a gigged frog when he was lucky. Happy kept a grin on win or lose, and Grunt never said a word you could understand without effort. Shade could predict what a person would do by the moniker he gave them. Except, that is, for Sweet Noreen. Her goal in life had been to keep him guessing.
Happy had just won playing a single roll on the hop, so the fellows made room for Shade. He hunched down, calling out bets in turn, his money a short stack of indulgence. Grunt rattled the dice, blew on his babies, then rolled them against the stair stoop they used for a backstop. One die bounced off into the sparse grass ringing the packed-dirt playing field. Short roll
—didn’t count. Grunt found the die and rattled both again. Hoppy leaped and settled on his haunches when he won.
The game continued. Shade glanced at his pocket watch; it was 11:55, time for one more roll. The heat was on. Bets were placed. Grunt hadn’t won a cent all night but he threw down a ten spot. It was like taking honey from a dead bear. Shade called a hard way and won with boxcars just before the light over the window winked out. He raked in his money and stood. No sense saying adios. He’d see them again Monday night unless he hit pay dirt in another way.
He walked down the passway between the bar and the bank. The incongruity was not lost on him. Both took your money and then turned a cold shoulder. He should know. Once he’d been a regular working stiff, putting his earnings into an account bearing interest. He was saving for the house with the white picket fence his first wife yearned for. It took him five years to save that money, but the look on Betsy’s face when he turned the key to the front door of that five-room house made it worth every single day he toiled for the Man.
Then the business hit the skids and the Man let him go. He could have found another job easy, but Betsy was sick. There wasn’t anybody else but him. Two months was all he was behind, but the bank was hiding under the riffle. They called in the mortgage, and he lost Betsy’s white picket fence and her five-room house. She died in one of those rooms as he was packing up their belongings. He couldn’t help but believe that her broken heart hastened that sad day.
It wasn’t good to think about Betsy, but she’d had these eyes the color of bluebonnets and hair such a pale yellow, it was almost not a color. Her face and eyes and that silky hair refused to fade from his memory.
“Don’t forget me, love,” she’d pleaded that long last night, her voice fading away to a whisper. With effort, she’d put her frail hand over his too-full chest. “Keep me here. Don’t forget.”
Toward morning, he’d bathed her with rose-scented water before dressing her in the soft cotton chemise she’d had him buy for just this purpose. He hadn’t expected it to be so
difficult, maneuvering the lilac-printed nightdress over her lifeless frame. She’d wanted hose, so he wrestled them up over her knees before tucking her feet into the backless slippers he’d given her for Christmas. Last he brushed her pale hair.
Afterward, all the while he walked to the undertaker’s, he was sure he could hear the invalid bell that had begged his attention for days that bled into weeks. How could he live without her want, her need?
It was noon when the hearse came. He’d helped lift her into the simple wooden casket, making sure she was exactly like she’d wanted to be, her gown arranged just so, her cream-colored hair loosely gathered with lavender ribbon, streaming over one shoulder, and a sprig of lilac tucked into her folded hands.
There was no funeral, for who was there to mark her passing but him? A minister, called out by the kindly undertaker, he supposed, said a few words at the graveside that very afternoon. And it was done. Shade was free of Betsy’s need and Betsy’s illness, but what was he to do with that freedom?
The preacher offered a ride home, but Shade walked. He wanted to walk a thousand miles, but it was only three to the big house that Betsy no longer craved. He’d gone straight to the kitchen and pulled out a chair, sitting heavily, relishing unending time without the tiresome tinkling of the bell, without water boiling for tea too weak, without burned toast needing to be scraped, without butter too cold to spread, without honey turned to crystal in the jar.
He tried to think of something he’d done right for her as
death crept into her body a sickly inch at a time. But her illness was a wall he could never scale. Everything about it was a rebuke to him who had promised before God and man to care for her
—what was the word that had so easily slid off his tongue?
Cherish
. He had promised to cherish her.
Finally, when it got too dark to see without a lamp, Shade rose from his chair. He’d finish packing
—tidy up the place before morning, when the bank would put him and their things out on the street. They’d tack a cardboard Foreclosed sign on the door that was no longer his anyway. Let them have it.
It wasn’t as bad as he might have thought. The broom and the dustpan ordered the chaos in a soothing way. He’d finished the kitchen
—pans all in a box, dishes wrapped in newsprint, icebox wiped clean
—and headed for the bedroom. The bed needed stripping, small amber vials of medicines needed pitching, windows needed raising so the room could be aired.
He hadn’t stepped a foot across the threshold before he saw it lying there in the gloom of the fading day
—one lonely slipper on the throw rug. He hadn’t even managed to bury her right. He would have walked on hot coals for her if it would have helped. He hoped she knew that. But all he could do was let the fire of his grief char ashes to ashes and dust to dust.