Fire Along the Sky
Page 21

Lily and Jennet were coming along the path now, swinging a basket between them. Jennet was ten years Lily's senior but at this moment, with the summer sun bright on her head of cropped blond curls and her cheeks flushed with running, she looked no more than seventeen. Hannah took a deep breath and then another.
“All right then,” she said finally. “I will offer my services.” And then: “And who's the other patient you're worried about?”
Richard lost his smile. “Dolly Wilde.”
It would have come as no surprise if Hannah had been thinking like the doctor she was trained to be. Since she had come home Hannah had seen Dolly only once, and at first she had not recognized her.
They had grown up together, sat next to each other in Elizabeth's classroom, picked berries together, and on the rare occasion that Dolly was free to play, they had spent that time together too. But the Dolly she had known held no resemblance to the woman who went by that name now.
Hannah tended to think that the things she had experienced during the wars to the west had robbed her of the ability to be surprised, but Dolly had proved her wrong. Hannah had crossed her path at twilight, a woman wandering through the village like a lost spirit. Her unbound hair was streaked with white and it floated around a face blank of all expression. And in her eyes Hannah saw something she had hoped never to see again: Dolly reminded her of men left to die of their wounds on a battlefield where they had fallen. The stunned, placid look of the almost-dead.
“You're thinking there's no treatment for dementia,” Richard said.
Hannah might have corrected him, but Lily and Jennet were close enough to hear. They came running up, full of laughter and good spirits.
“Sister,” Hannah said. “Maybe you had best take Jennet to see the meetinghouse instead of coming with us.”
Lily's glance darted from Richard to Hannah and back again. “You're going to see Dolly.”
“And the Widow Kuick,” added Richard.
The small mouth twitched. “All right then.” She touched Jennet on the arm. “We'd only be in the way. Come, there are better things to see.”
On the way to the Wildes', walking through the orchards so lovingly tended, Richard told Hannah the little there was to say about Dolly's history and condition. There was nothing surprising in the story: a difficult pregnancy, a hard birth followed by prolonged melancholia and a general decline into senselessness.
“The worst is her tendency to wander away,” Richard finished. “Once it took a day and a night to find her. Since then Nicholas has been locking her in her room at night.”
“Not all the time. I saw her in the village at dusk, not three weeks ago.”
The air was filled with the hum of wasps feasting on fallen fruit, and from somewhere on the far side of the orchard the sound of men singing.
On the day Cookie and her two grown sons had received their manumission papers they had all come to work for Nicholas. In the village folks liked to joke that Nicholas Wilde would pay Levi and Zeke any wage they asked, just as long as the three of them could sing together while they worked. Like a heavenly chorus come down to earth, Anna McGarrity had told her, and now Hannah heard it for herself.
The cabin was visible now, small and well kept, with shutters closed against the sun. Dolly sat in a rocker on the porch, her hands folded in her lap and her daughter at her feet. The girl's eyes, sharp and bright, watched them as they came closer. She took after her mother, dark-haired and round of face, but instead of having her mother's sweet temperament she seemed to bristle.
“There's a child who never learned to smile,” said Richard while they were still out of earshot.
It surprised Hannah to hear him say such a thing. Richard looked at the human body as he would at a mechanical clock that needed repair. In her experience he put little importance in a patient's state of mind.
She said, “Smiles won't get her through the world she was born into.”
Richard grunted his agreement.
The little chamber that was Dolly's alone was crowded with people: Cookie, who stood nearby with her arms crossed at her waist; Callie, who sat next to her mother and held her hand; Nicholas, his hat crumpled in his hands and his work clothes wet with sweat. All of them were watching Hannah as if she had some magic that would fix the woman who sat silently on the bed, staring at a pebble she held in her hand.
Richard stood back and said nothing while Hannah examined Dolly. She seemed content to be touched, smiling vaguely when Hannah said her name or asked her to turn, like a friendly stranger from another land, without the language or any understanding of the customs of the place where she found herself.
Physically Hannah could find nothing seriously wrong with Dolly: she was thin, and her muscle tone was poor, but her heart was strong and steady and her lungs and eyes were clear. While Hannah gently probed her liver and spleen and abdomen Dolly turned her face away.
Cookie was watching closely, and now she spoke up.
“She ain't in any pain, if that's what you looking for.”
Hannah turned to her. “How do you know?”
Callie was stroking her mother's hand. “She cries when something hurts.”
Very evenly Hannah said, “Does she ever try to harm herself?”
Nicholas cleared his throat and studied his shoes before he raised his head to meet her gaze. “I don't think she means to cause herself harm . . .” His voice trailed off.
“She likes to swallow pebbles,” Callie said. “She knows she's not supposed to, but she still does. And sometimes she eats dirt, if we don't watch her.”