Texan's Touch

NINE

DAWN FINALLY FOUND its way to the alley and brightened the back windows of a building that had once been part of the original fort, Adam guessed, from the wide middle hallway and the square frame. Someone had taken the time a few years ago to add improvements, but now the place needed a fresh coat of paint and a bag of nails.

“Want another cup of coffee, Doctor?” asked the old nun, who’d helped him during the night, as she poured without waiting for a reply.

“Thanks.” Adam stretched back in his chair. “I think the boy’s mama might have a chance of making it.” He looked at the woman who’d been working by his side. “Thanks to you.”

She shook her head. “You were the blessing. I sent the boy to seek a doctor two days ago, but he said there was none to be found. I did what I could to help her. Which was a yard short of enough in this case.”

Adam watched her closely. She hadn’t had any sleep, but she looked the same as she had last night, spotless and efficient. She had a way of guessing what was needed a moment before he asked for it. “Are you with the mission here, Sister?”

She glanced away. “There is no mission near. I travel alone.” She straightened as if testifying before a judge. “I belong to a church no longer though I still hold the beliefs. I greatly dishonored my order. I’ve worn a habit for fifty years. I no longer belong in it, but this is all I have to wear.”

Adam clamped his jaw down to keep from asking the dozen questions that came to mind. How could this perfect image of a Sister of Mercy appear in the middle of nowhere and claim to have committed some great sin?

Before he could think of which question to ask first, she raised her head.

“Thank you for not demanding more of my story, for I can say nothing else.” The flavoring of a foreign accent added another unanswered question to his list.

“The boardinghouse belongs to Mrs. Jamison and her son, but I don’t know for how much longer.” The nun switched the conversation topic. “I’m told she and her husband managed to scrape out a living here before the war. With the war, there was no business. She told me he turned to outlawing.

“In ’63, he went to prison and died of a fever within a month. When they sent his clothes back to her, there was not a valuable among them.

“She tried to keep the boardinghouse going, but couldn’t. She’s not a strong woman and now without enough food or heat she grows sick.”

“How long have you been helping them?” Adam found it interesting that she could be so silent about her life, yet so talkative about Mrs. Jamison.

“Two weeks. I came to ask if I could stay a few days for I’d heard of the Jamisons and this house. When I saw how ill she was, I had to help. I’ve used up what little supplies I had. When the coffee’s gone, there will be nothing.”

The old nun crossed her hands in front of her and waited. It took Adam several seconds to realize, like a patient teacher, she was waiting for him to give her the answer.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any answers, Sister.” He stood and walked to the door. “I’m just passing through. The widow will need good food for weeks to get all her strength back.”

The nun didn’t move, she only waited.

Adam touched the doorknob. “I don’t even know where I’m headed.” He reached in his pocket. “I can leave enough-”

He stopped, realizing the little amount he could leave would only delay starvation, not prevent it.

“I’ll try to find someone.” Even as he said the words, he doubted there would be anyone to help. The entire country was full of widows and children without means.

“I’ll think about it,” he finally said, and managed to break the invisible hold this nun had on him. “I’ll be back later.”

He almost ran up the alley to the street. By the time he reached the hotel where he and Wes had taken a room, he was breathing hard and frustrated that he couldn’t do more to solve her problem.

When he opened the door to the room he’d rented, a bottle rolled out of the way and Wes’s snoring greeted him. Adam unstrapped his gun belt and pulled off his coat, telling himself he needed sleep. He’d worry about the nun’s problem in a few hours. Right now, all he wanted to do was relax in the first bed he’d seen in months.

As he pulled off his boots, he looked around the place they’d rented after dark. The room had two beds and an old dresser missing a third drawer. The washstand was grimy and the pitcher empty. Both windows had been nailed closed. It was hard to believe, but this operating hotel was dirtier than the abandoned one the boy’s mother lay dying in. Someone had yellowed the wallpaper in one corner to save going to the outhouse. Light, about bullet-hole size, shown through the walls in several places.

Adam closed his eyes in disgust. He didn’t like the idea of having to live in a place like this for months, maybe longer, while saving his money to open a practice. He hadn’t found a suitable location. Every town needed a doctor, so he guessed anywhere would do. Even Fort Worth.

As he crossed into dreams Nichole was by his side. Only she wasn’t sleeping next to him, but waiting for him to help the nun and the widow, and the boy. She seemed to expect it, as though that was the kind of man he was and nothing would change the fact.

Rolling awake, Adam stared at the empty space beside him. He remembered something his mother used to say about not looking for the right person to love, but being the right person. It was time he started being the man Nichole had thought he was. He might never see her again, but he’d know.

Three hours later Adam was standing in front of the boy again waiting to be admitted. The huge dog watched him from the corner of the porch, but didn’t bark.

“I’m not bringing charity,” Adam said for the third time. “I’m here to offer a deal to the man of the house, and I guess that’s you.”

The boy let the doorway open enough for Adam to enter with bundles dangling from his shoulders.

Adam nodded to the nun as he put the groceries down on the long kitchen table. “How’s our patient?”

“Resting, thanks to the medicine.” The nun watched him closely, only allowing her gaze to dart momentarily to the bags of supplies.

“I think I’ve found a solution.” Adam saw no hint of surprise in her eyes. He looked at the boy. “I’d like to rent the downstairs rooms of this place from you, sir. Besides this kitchen, I think I noticed four rooms, two small rooms on the side with the kitchen that I could use as living quarters and two larger rooms on the other side of the stairs and front foyer where I could set up a practice. The stairs, foyer, and kitchen would be common ground.”

The child started to shake his head.

“Hear me out. I need a place to stay and work. You and your mother can have all the upstairs. When I walked around last night, I think I noticed six rooms. You can live in them all or rent a few out if you like. This house is so large, you’d hardly notice me.”

Adam faced the nun. “Will you stay with them a little longer? The boy’s mother needs care, and I can use help. I can’t pay you, but you’ll have a roof and food. I’m sure they’d welcome you as their guest.”

“I’ll stay as long as I’m needed. I’ll accept no pay.” She folded her arms. “I help when I can, but I work for no man for pay.”

Adam looked back to the boy. “We’re not taking over your place, son. We’re just asking to be boarders. It’s up to you. You can turn us out on the street if you like. For payment, I’ll doctor your ma and provide food. Maybe I can pay rent once I open my practice.”

He knew the boy had no choice, but he admired the way the little fellow took his time considering.

“All right, but I help out, too,” the boy finally answered. “A man who’s healthy and don’t work shouldn’t oughta eat. And don’t call me boy or son. My name’s Nance, Nance Edward Jamison just like my pa.” He stood as tall as his five years would allow. “And my dog’s named Terry, Terry Jamison. He don’t have no middle name cause he’s a dog, but he’s a Jamison just like me.”

“Fair enough. I’m Dr. Adam McLain, but you can call me Doc, or Adam.” He looked up at the nun waiting for her introduction.

“I’m Sister…” Sorrow clouded her eyes. “Just call me Sister, Dr. McLain.”

Nodding, Adam moved to the table. He’d spent most of his cash buying food and supplies to be delivered later that day. He’d also sent word for the postmaster in Corydon to send his medical books. He hoped they arrived before his doors opened. He had his worries about treating anything except gunshot wounds.

Adam was so busy the next few days he saw little of Wes. His older brother spent his days sleeping and his nights drinking while Adam used every second of daylight to turn one side of the downstairs into offices and the other into a study and a bedroom.

Wes surprised him one morning when he stopped by to say good-bye. Though his eyes were red and his face dark with a week’s growth of beard, Wes still sat the saddle tall and proud just the way the military had molded him.

“Keep an angel on your shoulder!” Wes yelled the familiar farewell with a hint of their father’s Irish accent as he turned his horse away.

“And your fist drawn till you brother covers your back,” Adam finished the line. He waved, watching Wes ride out. A part of him wanted to go with his brother, but Wes was a loner who guarded his solitude. And Adam liked things settled. Living out of a saddlebag had never appealed to him. He preferred waking every morning and knowing everything would be where he left it the night before.

He returned to his chore of patching the roof. Wes was in as much hurry to start his life as Adam found himself to be. It was time to start catching up on the years they lost.

Once he decided to plant a few roots, there was no stopping Adam. He figured he could have an office open in a few weeks, and by spring would have completely forgotten about Bergette and all the plans he’d dreamed with her. She’d have a fit if she knew he was opening an office between a whorehouse and a saloon. But somehow, he figured, Nick would be proud of him.

Nichole wouldn’t be quite as easy to erase from his mind, he realized. Most nights he found himself reaching for her in his sleep, like she’d spent more than two nights in his arms, like he needed her. She was somewhere deep in Tennessee, fighting for her land beside her brother. She wasn’t thinking of him, he told himself repeatedly, and he wasn’t thinking of her.

The nun offered little help in conversation. She answered no questions, not even that of her name. She also took no orders, but was good at guessing what Adam needed. If he asked her to hand him a hammer, she’d say she didn’t have time, but if he left his dirty shirt out, she managed to find an hour to do the wash. She cleaned and cooked and listened.

By the end of November, Adam had told her every thought and dream he’d ever had, and she’d told him how to make potato soup.

He’d spent hours trying to guess what she’d done that was so terrible that she’d left her order and couldn’t speak of it. The only thing he’d learned about her was that if cleanliness is next to godliness, she must be heaven’s next-door neighbor.

As December blew in bitter cold from the north, two letters came from Daniel. Both were full of facts about the growing twins he still hadn’t named, and nothing about him. Adam decided his brother and the nun were bookends.

Slowly, the townfolks started calling to test the new doctor. As he’d expected, they paid in trade, but not in money. Farmers with cuts, housewives with complaints of dizziness, children with colds. One chapter at a time, Adam learned how to treat each ailment. Mrs. Jamison and the boy kept to themselves upstairs most of the day. She was feeling strong enough to come down each afternoon and help the nun cook supper. Though not out of her twenties, the widow Jamison seemed a sad, broken woman with little of life’s light in her eyes.

She spoke of her husband sometimes, telling of how dashing he was and how foolish. He and his partner had been carpenters after their enlistment was finished in the frontier army. About the time they settled in Fort Worth, the war came. Her husband and his partner turned their energy less to repairing the house and more to robbing. One day they made plans for rebuilding the street of dilapidated houses, and it seemed the next day they were arrested.

Adam found his work challenging and read far into the night of the new theories in medicine that Doc Wilson kept sending. After a few weeks of burning a lamp late into the midnight hours, people began tapping on the back door. They were the folks who lived in shadows, the drunks, the prostitutes, the beggars. Adam found himself with two practices, one by day, one by night. Though some of the after-dark callers offered to pay in trade, Adam insisted they wait until they could pay him back some other way.

He found himself wishing he could tell Nichole some of their stories. In a way, she was one of them, a creature of the night.

By March of 1866, Adam began to relax and enjoy the challenges of life in Fort Worth. Folks on both sides of the street spoke to him and more books were coming every week for him to study.

Then, on Tuesday, March 22, Nance opened the door and the wind blew in trouble.

“Telegram for you, Doc.” The young man from the new telegraph office ran in all excited to have been allowed to bring the doctor something he was sure must be important.

“Thanks for bringing it by, Harry.” Adam wiped his hands on a towel and opened the note expecting to hear word from Wes or Dan.

The message read: Request debt payment. Shipment arriving by stage. Guard with your life until I can pick up. Wolf.