Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

“I think it’s the black diphtheria,” she whispered.

“How could it be?” He lowered his voice as well, although the only creatures within earshot were the horses, standing stolid and disinterested in their harness. “The other kids-”

“Maybe they had something else. Or maybe they had it easy. Or maybe I’m wrong.” Her voice broke. She took a deep breath to calm herself. She had to stay calm. “We need the doctor to see him. Hitch Gig and Haley up and go fetch him.” Jon looked over to the silage barn. “Now,” she said.

She returned to the house while Jon took the horses to the barn. She propped Jack into the padded chair in the parlor, covered him with a quilt, and wheeled the butler’s table, one side extended like a tray, next to him. Upstairs, Mary had collapsed onto a quilt and fallen asleep, her fat cheeks red and streaked with the salt trail of tears. Jane eased her and her quilt off the rug and laid her in her crib, giving her a guilty kiss for leaving her alone to cry herself to sleep.

She set the kettle on to steam Jack and looked in on the olders. Peter was reading to himself from the fairy tales, and Lucy had fallen asleep. Peter looked up when she came in. “Mama, where were you?” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I heard you run out of the house, and Mary was crying and crying. It was really annoying.” At that moment, Jane could have kissed him for his seven-year-old’s inability to see past his own nose.

“Jack’s sick, and I had to get your daddy to go fetch Dr. Stillman. I’m back now. Let me know if you need me, but do it quiet. Lucy needs her sleep.”

In the parlor, Jack roused enough to protest when she draped him with a pillowcase and slipped a pan of steaming hot water beneath him. Beneath the clock chiming noon, she could hear Jon entering the kitchen. She hurried in. He was standing there, not reaching for his good coat, not taking a cup of milk before the road, not doing anything. Just standing there.

“For heaven’s sake,” she said. “Get a move on. And when you’re at the doctor’s, ask to use their telephone and call your parents. I’m going to need your mother to help me with nursing and taking care of the baby.” Still he didn’t move. “Jon?” He looked at her. “Jon, what is it?”

“I can’t go.”

She stared at him. She knew what the words meant, but they made no sense, any more than if he had said, “I can’t fly” or “I can’t leap over the barn.” He reached for her hands. “The bootleggers. They won’t let me go. They said they’re afraid the police will question me about have I seen ’em.” He looked out the window. “I guess maybe they’re afraid I’m chickening out.”

She pulled her hands from his. “That’s ridiculous. You’re not going to the police. You’re going for the doctor. Why on earth would we turn them in? We’ve made more money from sheltering them over the past twelvemonth than this farm’s earned in the last five years.” She looked up at him. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Are the horses hitched to the buggy?”

He nodded.

“I’ll go talk to them. You stay with Jack and make sure he doesn’t burn himself on the hot water. There’s more on the stove when his pan cools down.” She whipped off her apron, tossed it on the back of a chair, and strode out the door before Jon could answer.

Bright sunshine dazzled the whitewash on the barns and chicken coop but gave off no warmth. When she plunged through the door of the hay barn, the contrast between the light and the dark blinded her. She couldn’t hear anyone, although she could smell tobacco smoke and briefly wondered if any of the rumrunners was countryman enough to know that you don’t let sparks among the hay. “Who’s in charge here?” she said.

A man appeared at the edge of the loft above. She couldn’t make out his features, but he wore a fancy city hat that was as out of place as she would have been in a Broadway speakeasy. “You must be the missus,” he said.

“My husband’s harnessed up our team to go to town and fetch the doctor. He’s going to leave now. He’ll be back as soon as he reaches Dr. Stillman. He’s not going anywhere but Dr. Stillman’s and he’s certainly not about to go yapping to the police.”

“No one’s going anywhere.”

She looked up through the gloom. “I’m not going to get a crick in my neck arguing with you. Come down here and talk to me.”

The man laughed, but descended the ladder, taking care not to brush his suit against the rungs. She was surprised when he faced her. He was younger than she was, and looked as sober and respectable as Dr. Fillmore, the Presbyterian minister. His voice was the only thing that gave him away. “Here I am, lady. You can get me to move, but your husband ain’t going anywhere.”

“One of my children is very sick. He needs a doctor’s care. There’s no more or less to it than that.”

“The roads are swarming with cops on patrol. No one leaves this hay rack until I say so.”

“My son needs a doctor!”

“So does he.” He glanced toward the back of the barn. “Hey, Ted, bring Etienne out here.” Two more men walked from behind an ancient phaeton, dragging a third between them. The young man-scarcely more than a boy-was open-shirted, and his chest and shoulder were bound in a bloodstained bandage. The men holding him wore shoulder holsters stuffed with wicked-looking black-barreled handguns.

“Good Lord.” She covered her mouth.

“We’re not getting any help for Etienne, and you’re not getting help for your kid.” He grinned at her, the choirboy smile of someone whose worst sin was skipping school to catch frogs. “Don’t worry. Kids get sick all the time. And we’ll be gone tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow!” His words jerked her attention from the wounded boy. “We can’t wait that long.” She tugged on her dress, pulling herself together. They were, after all, in business together. After a fashion. And she could conduct business. “Even if my husband ran into the police on the road, there’s no reason for them to suspect him of anything more than what he is-a farmer going to town for the doctor. We’d be crazy to turn any of you in. We’re outside of the law ourselves, giving your people shelter all these months. Do you think we’d risk putting ourselves in jail?”

“Lady, maybe you’re not aware that Judge Jacob DeWeese is the fellow we’d come before if we was caught up here in Podunk County. DeWeese doesn’t like us gentlemen bandits, don’tcha know. Just last month he gave three guys from Avenue B ten years hard labor in Clinton.” He grinned at her again. This time, she saw the edge of his teeth. “My boys and me ain’t planning on sweating out the next ten years of our lives building roads and shoveling snow. We’re staying put. And you’re staying put.” He grasped her upper arm, a light and unthreatening touch that sent her skin crawling. “You been good hosts for our guys. I’d hate to have to hurt you or your husband.” He steered her toward the door. “Now, you run along. And as soon as we’re out of your hair, you can get the doc for your little fellow.”

He released her, and she stumbled out the door into the cold sunshine. She blinked. She swung around, but the door shut in her face. She didn’t know what to do. She took a few steps toward the cow barn. Gig and Haley waited in harness near the wide front doors. Could she snatch them and ride off? No, that was ridiculous. Those two couldn’t outrun a bullet. Maybe Jon could hike up the back forty to the woods? There were trails there that led through the mountains toward Millers Kill. Of course, Jon was no woodsman. She looked past the open fields and fences to the distant tree line. He’d be spotted long before he reached the shelter of the forest. She circled slowly where she stood. Everything was familiar to her, the house, the coop, the barns. The chickens pecking in their run, the horses waiting in their harness. It was as if she had never seen any of it before. She was a stranger here herself.