Susan Wiggs - The Drifter

Every so often, it was possible to feel respectable, just for a minute or two.

As he was leaving the bathhouse, he happened to glance into the bathing chamber. Leah had managed to get the boy out of his clothes except for a pair of drawers for modesty.

“Sophie’s away, so it’s just the two of us,” she was saying. “Can you hang on to my neck?” She burrowed her arms around and under him.

Bowie complied, linking his bony wrists behind her neck. “Where’s Sophie?”

“She took the side-wheeler to Port Townsend.” Leah lurched as she stood up with the boy in her arms.

“Here, let me help,” Jackson said gruffly, striding toward them.

A flash of surprise lit her face. She gave the briefest of nods. “Just take Bowie’s legs and we’ll ease him into the bath.”

The legs were even paler than the rest of him, flaccid from lack of use. Jackson took careful hold and slowly bent, easing Bowie into the water.

“Too hot for you, son?” Jackson asked.

“No. Just right…sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir. Call me Jackson.” It just slipped out. Here he was, running from the law, and he was supposed to be keeping a low profile. Being friendly only brought a man trouble. The lesson had been beaten into him by all the hard years on the road.

The boy seemed happier once he was in the bath. He rested his head against the edge of the basin and waved his arms slowly back and forth.

“You like the water?” Jackson asked, hunkering down, ignoring Leah as she seemed to be ignoring him.

“Yup. I keep telling Mama I want to swim in the Sound, but she says it’s too dangerous.”

Leah scooped something minty-smelling out of a ceramic jar and started rubbing it onto Bowie’s legs. “It is too danger—”

“Just make sure you’re swimming with someone real strong,” Jackson cut in.

“Don’t put ideas into the boy’s head,” Leah snapped.

“If a boy doesn’t have ideas,” Jackson said, “what the hell is he going to think about all day?”

“And don’t swear,” she retorted.

Hell’s bells, she was a bossy stick of a woman. “Did I swear?” Jackson asked. “Damn, I never even noticed.”

He found a sea sponge and playfully tossed it to Bowie. The boy looked baffled for a moment, then tossed it back.

“Anyway, son,” Jackson continued, “when I was your age, I was full of ideas.”

“What sort of ideas?”

Like how to escape the orphanage. How to forget the things fat Ralphie made him do in the middle of the night. How to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the younger boys…

Jackson thrust away the memories, hid them behind a broad grin. “Ideas about sailing off to paradise. I had me a favorite book called Treasure Island. It was by a man called Robert—”

“—Louis Stevenson!” Bowie finished for him. “I know that book. He wrote Kidnapped, too. Did you read that one, Jackson? I have heaps of books. Dr. Leah always gives me books, don’t you, Dr. Leah?”

“You’re never alone when you’re reading a book,” she murmured, and Jackson looked at her in surprise.

For the remainder of the bath, he and Bowie discussed all sorts of things from storybooks to boyish dreams. Jackson couldn’t believe he’d actually found something in common with a little crippled boy who spoke properly and owned a roomful of books. And all the while, Leah Mundy looked on, her expression inscrutable.

She probably disapproved. He didn’t blame her. She didn’t know him, and what she’d seen of him did not inspire trust. He’d taken her away at gunpoint, would have kidnapped her.

In a way, he was glad it hadn’t come to that. The idea of spending days with her cooped up aboard the schooner gave him the willies. Still, a sense of urgency plucked at him. The past was nipping at his heels.

“Ever been sailing?” he heard himself asking.

“No, sir.”

“It’s a fine thing, Bowie. A damned fine thing.” Jackson shot a glance at Leah. “Of course, you have to make sure you don’t have a mutineer aboard who’d sabotage the steering.”

“Who’d do a thing like that?” Bowie asked. “Pirates?”

“A crazy woman,” Jackson said casually.

Bowie laughed, thinking it a great joke. Leah ducked her head, but Jackson noticed the hot color in her cheeks. She didn’t look half so harsh when she was blushing.

“One time,” Bowie said, “Mama was going to take me on the steamer to Seattle, but she changed her mind. Said it was too far from home.”

“Maybe your daddy—”

“His father’s been dead for years,” Dr. Mundy said. She spoke with a peculiar icy calm that sat ill with Jackson.

He kept his eyes on Bowie. “Sorry to hear that. But be glad you have a place to call home. Maybe you’ll go swimming in the Sound one of these days.”

“Maybe,” Bowie said, slapping his palms on the soapy surface of the water.

“I’d better go.” Jackson lifted him out of the bath, and Dr. Mundy wrapped him in a towel. “You keep reading those books, you hear, youngster?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Mundy.”

“Good day, Mr. Underhill,” she said stiffly.

He left the bathhouse, shaking his head. What the hell was it with her? She’d gotten her way, forced him to stay here on this remote green island, yet she refused to drop her mantle of self-righteousness. Something about her taunted him, challenged him, made him want to peel away that mantle and see what was underneath. He told himself he shouldn’t want to know her. He wondered why her opinion of him mattered.

Damn. He’d met scorpions and prickly pears that were friendlier than Dr. Leah Mundy.

By sunset, Leah had finished with Bowie, lanced a boil for the revenue inspector, visited elderly Ada Blowers to check on her cough, and set a broken arm for a drunken lumberjack who swore at her and refused to pay a “lady sawbones” for doing a man’s job.

But Leah’s long day wouldn’t end until she paid a visit to her newest patient. She stood for a moment at the bottom of the wide hardwood staircase, resting her hand on the carved newel post and listening to the sounds of the old house at evening.

Perpetua hummed as she worked in the kitchen, a little worker bee at the heart of the house. In the parlor, the boarders sat after supper, the men smoking pipes and the women knitting while they spoke in muted voices.

This was Leah’s world, the place where she would spend the rest of her life. The light from the lowering sun filtered through the circular window high above the foyer, and to Leah it was a lonely sight, the symbol of another day gone by.

She didn’t know how to talk to these people who lived under her roof, didn’t know what dreams they dreamed, didn’t know how to open her heart to them. And so she lived apart, working hard, keeping to herself, an outsider in her own house.

She smoothed her hands down the front of her white smock. The starch had wilted somewhat during the day, and she knew the ribbons straggled down her back.

Have a care for your appearance, girl. No wonder you haven’t found a man yet.

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. She wished she could close out the memory of her father’s voice. She had loved him with all that was in her, but it was never enough. Even at the end, when he’d lain helpless and needy on his deathbed, her love hadn’t been enough. She couldn’t save him, couldn’t make him say the words she’d waited a lifetime to hear: I love you, daughter.

Pressing her mouth into a determined line, she climbed the stairs, her skirts swishing on the polished wood. She tapped lightly at the door.

“Mrs. Underhill? Are you awake?”

The sound of a male voice—his voice—answered her, but she couldn’t make out the words.