Chapter Sixteen
Katie was a mess.
She’d bid Tavish farewell, his good humor turning what would have otherwise been a painful departure into a morning of smiles and laughter. Even the girls, still longing for their father, had giggled a great deal. Tavish brought joy everywhere he went. She missed that about him when he was away, and he was often away.
Why, then, in the two days since the men had left to take their crop to market, had her thoughts turned as often to Joseph as to Tavish? What kind of woman had a heart so fickle it felt pulled by two men at the same time? Tavish had been willing to give up so much for her. He had touched her heart, and that heart, she’d firmly believed, had chosen him. So why was there suddenly room in her thoughts and longings for Joseph?
There had been a time not long before when she’d admitted to growing feelings for both men, but she thought she’d put that confusion behind her.
What was she to do?
“Quit daydreaming and get back to work,” Mr. Johnson snapped.
Katie jumped at the interruption.
“Lazy foreigners,” Mr. Johnson muttered.
She quickly set back to sweeping the floor. Wind had driven dust in under the door the day before. Katie had been at work two hours and had done nothing but dust off tables, counters, baskets. She’d only just turned her attention to the floors. Two hours of working dirt out of the narrowest grooves of the furniture and still she was labeled lazy.
But I can speak two languages. That had been her silent response to all Mr. Johnson’s complaints lately. It never failed to calm her mind and set her at peace again. She found she could even smile.
Katie passed the tidy display of ankle boots. She’d taken to brushing her fingers along the leather upper-soles, letting herself dream for the most fleeting of moments that she could afford to buy herself a fine pair of new shoes.
“Don’t even think about stealing them.”
She looked back at her employer. “Stealing them? The shoes?”
“Did I say you could talk?”
Katie managed not to roll her eyes as she turned back to her work. He’d been very particular the last few days about her not speaking. The man was even more grumpy than usual of late.
“I’m making you shake out your shawl before you go,” Mr. Johnson said. “I can only guess how many things you’re planning to sneak off with.”
Katie didn’t comment. Didn’t defend herself despite the unfairness of the accusation. Ignoring Mr. Johnson and focusing on her work had seen her through many difficult mornings at the mercantile. It’d do again.
Marykate Kelly stopped to talk to her on her way home from the mercantile that day, thanking her for all she had done for the Irish. Katie had not had many conversations with Seamus’s wife, finding her a touch too embittered by the feud and their difficulties.
“’Tis more than merely keeping prices down,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Mr. Johnson is . . . well, not exactly friendly, but he seems easier to deal with.”
“I don’t know that I can take credit for that.” She’d not really noticed such a change, but hoped it was there just the same.
“Well, I cannot deny you’ve done something.” For the first time since Katie had known the woman, Mrs. Kelly’s expression lightened, as if the tiniest glimmer of hope was beginning to break through years of darkness. “Mr. Johnson’s changed a bit. More than that, even, the Irish are doing better.”
“Because of the prices?” They walked side by side down the Irish Road.
Mrs. Kelly half shook her head, half nodded. “You’ve given them reason to keep fighting. For the first time in memory, we’re not losing this battle.”
Those words stayed with her through the frustrations of working at the mercantile. Keeping in mind the difference she was making helped her survive. She put on a brave face every day before returning home. The girls didn’t need to know of her troubles. They were doing well, considering they still missed their father. Katie had warm biscuits ready for Emma when she reached the house after school each day; she walked to and from with Michael O’Connor and a few of the other Irish children.
The fifth morning after the men in town had left, Katie stood on the mercantile’s porch, sweeping. She paused in her work, watching Emma in front of the school. The children were playing. Some were skipping rope or chasing each other around the yard. Emma was walking about with little Marianne Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson’s eight-year-old daughter.
Marianne had shown herself a sweet-hearted girl. She offered a “hello” whenever their paths crossed, though she immediately clamped her mouth shut and sent a nervous look in her father’s direction. Clearly the little one had been warned against being friendly to the unwanted Irishwoman.
Katie had liked Marianne from the first time the child had smiled at her. There was something in the friendly greeting that was purely natural, untainted by the hatred around her. But to see that Marianne was a friend of Emma’s solidified her good opinion. Being blessed with a friend to walk about the schoolyard with and a sister who played with her at home and a father as loving and kind as Joseph, Emma would never be as alone in the world as Katie had always been.
She smiled, watching the girls chatter as they made a wide circuit of the schoolyard. If Marianne’s parents weren’t so set against the Irish, Katie would have eagerly extended an invitation for Marianne to come home with Emma so the girls could spend the afternoon together. But the Johnsons would never allow their daughter to set a single foot on the Irish Road.
“Standing around again?” Mr. Johnson stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He pointed a finger, jabbing it in her general direction with each word. “Lazy, every last one of y’all.”
Katie knew the rest of the complaint and said the words silently in her head, perfectly timed with his declaration.
“Lazy, no-good foreigners.”
He took a step out onto the porch. His gait swayed oddly. Was he unwell?
“I won’t take pity on your sniveling friends in exchange for you standing around all day doing nothing.” The words, slow and oddly toned, melted together a bit. “Is that clear, Paddy?”
Looking at his watery, red eyes and swaying posture, and noticing the unfortunate smell of him, something became even clearer than his threats. The man was drunk.
Katie had never seen him drink so much as a drop of spirits while working. He’d always been perfectly in control, entirely sober.
“’Tis quite clear, sir.” She watched him closely, confused by the change in him.
“Don’t say ’tis.” His words pulled and lisped awkwardly.
She kept quiet and nodded.
He stumbled back inside.
Blazing drunk, he is.
Though she had no high opinion of the man, seeing him walloped had her worried for him. A man of business wouldn’t risk being full drunk while open to customers. He was too responsible for such a thing.
Katie took up her broom once more, but her thoughts continually drifted inside. Was she working for a drunkard after all? She’d known a few people over the years who loved their liquor too much. Some became violent, others overly sad. What kind of drunk would he be? What if he made drinking a habit and proved himself a dangerous person to be around?
Placing herself in harm’s way day after day would be a steep price to pay for her neighbors’ well-being. Yet she couldn’t turn her back on their needs.
You’re getting quite far ahead of yourself there, Katie. No use greeting the devil ’til he’s knocking on your door.
Down the road, the school bell rang. Reverend Ford stood on the step outside the school building where church was held on Sundays. All the children made their way inside, some very slowly and reluctantly.
Katie watched Emma, smiling to herself as she did. Emma moved with more enthusiasm than most of the other children. She enjoyed school. She’d told Katie as much every day.
The preacher brought the children in from their lunchtime play at precisely the hour Katie’s time at the mercantile ended. She carried her broom inside, ready to make her way back to Granny’s house.
The shop was very quiet. Usually Mr. Johnson was moving about. Often he had a few choice words for her within moments of her arrival into his line of sight.
Nothing. He wasn’t even agonizing over his ledgers as he so often did. Perhaps she could just slip out without enduring his usual end-of-day lecture about all the ways in which she fell short of his expectations. ’Twould be a fine change from the usual.
Katie stepped lightly toward the storage room. If she didn’t make much noise, Mr. Johnson might not realize she was leaving. She set the broom in the storage room, then turned to tiptoe out of the mercantile.
But she caught sight of Mr. Johnson sitting on the floor behind the counter.
“Have you misplaced something, sir?”
He didn’t seem to be looking for anything, only sitting, his back to the cupboards, his head dropped into his hands.
“Leave me be, you filthy Paddy.”
A fine “thank you for your concern” that was. He sounded even more drunk than he did ungrateful. Perhaps it was the hard drink that had him sitting on the floor like a beggarman.
And he accuses the Irish of being drunken layabouts.
Katie shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all. She’d leave Mr. Johnson to his pitiful state.
She looked one last time at him, committing his position to memory so she’d have something to think back on when he was insulting and belittling her. Remembering this moment would do wonders for her pride.
There was something dark on his hand cupping his head. She looked a little closer.
Good heavens. It looks like blood.
Katie knelt near enough to him to get a better look. It was blood indeed.
“Sir? Have you hurt yourself?”
“Get away from me,” he growled, swatting gracelessly in her general direction with his clean hand.
“You have blood running out your fingers, Mr. Johnson.” It wasn’t exactly a flood of bleeding but enough to be worrisome. “Have you cut your hand?”
“You—” He pointed a finger in her direction, though it wove around quite a bit. “You left something out. You left it out, and I tripped on it. It’s your fault.”
Absolutely nothing was lying about on the floor other than him. He more likely than not had tripped over his own drunken feet. Wasn’t that just like a Red in Hope Springs—aye, like so many in America who were determined to blame their every problem on the immigrants from Ireland?
“I’ll just leave you to your bleeding and drinking, then,” she said and stood up. “A fine combination, that.”
Katie set her chin at a proud angle and pulled back her shoulders. For once she was not the one at a disadvantage. The man was likely too soaked to remember the moment come morning, but she’d enjoy it while it lasted.
“Miserable foreigners, all of you.” He pulled his blood-covered hand from his face for the first time, shaking his fist at her.
Katie felt her eyes widen in shock. A wide, gaping cut marred his forehead, blood trickling from it. The man was truly hurt, and it appeared to be no small thing. She snatched a rag from the basket where she kept the clean ones.
“Sir.” She retook her position, kneeling on the floor in front of him. “Press this to your wound, sir.”
Either he was in a great deal of pain or he’d rattled his brain, because he obeyed her instructions without comment. Katie took a good look at his state. She wasn’t at all easy with what she saw. He’d clearly been bleeding a lot, the front of his shirt splattered by it, his hand and arm covered in trickles. His coloring was pale to the point of worry. He had most likely hit his head on the countertop, an unforgiving and thick bit of solid wood. It would have dealt him a severe blow indeed. Perhaps it was not only the alcohol slurring his words and wreaking havoc on his movements.
Blood hadn’t yet seeped through the rag, a good sign he wasn’t about to bleed to death there on the floor. Still, she’d seen the cut and knew it was nothing to be ignored.
“I’ll be back directly, sir.”
He muttered words she couldn’t make out.
She moved swiftly to the door that connected the shop to the Johnsons’ home behind the mercantile. Mr. Johnson needed care, but Katie couldn’t be certain her assistance would be welcomed. She couldn’t simply leave him there.
“Mrs. Johnson, ma’am?” she called out. “Mrs. Johnson?”
She looked back at her employer. He still sat with his back against the cupboards, rag pressed to his bleeding head.
“Mrs. Johnson?” she tried again, louder.
The woman, moving slow with the weight of her wee one growing inside, stepped into the sitting room from the room beyond. “What is it?” Hers was not a patient expression.
“Your husband’s fallen, ma’am. His head’s bleeding a great deal, and I’m worried for him.”
She’d not finished her explanation before Mrs. Johnson rushed toward the shop. Katie followed close on her heels.
Mrs. Johnson gasped, her hand pressed to her heart. “Dear heavens. All that blood.”
It was an alarming sight now that Katie truly looked. Why was it wounds on the head always bled so very much?
“Jeremiah.” Mrs. Johnson sat next to him. “Let me see your head.”
She pulled back her husband’s hand. The underside of the rag had turned a bright red. Mr. Johnson’s wound looked worse than it had before.
Mrs. Johnson’s eyes fluttered shut a moment. She made the tiniest of whimpering moans.
“Ma’am, are you unwell?”
She shook her head. “Blood tends to make my head spin a bit, is all.”
“Do you need smelling salts? I know where they are.”
“No. I’ll be fine.”
Katie looked closely at Mr. Johnson’s cut. He glared at her, but she ignored it. His wife wasn’t holding up and he needed attention. She was all he had.
The cut was quite wide. “This may need stitching up.”
Mrs. Johnson’s whimper was her only answer.
Katie fetched a new rag and traded it for the bloodstained one, instructing Mr. Johnson to press it against his cut again. She scooted across the floor until she was positioned next to Mrs. Johnson. The woman hadn’t always been kind to her, but Katie couldn’t bear the look of worried pain on her face.
“Mrs. Johnson?”
She looked at her, a reluctant pleading in her eyes. She seemed to know how much she and her husband needed Katie, though she disliked the needing very much indeed.
“I can see to the stitching, if it’d help. But I don’t think the floor of the mercantile is the best place for sewing up wounds.”
Mrs. Johnson’s face cleared. She adopted a look of purpose and rose to her feet. “Let me lock up the shop so we won’t have any interruptions.”
A moment later, she’d returned.
“Between the two of us,” Katie said, “I think we could get him to the house. We’d best set him on a sofa or a bed or wherever would be easiest for you to look after him the rest of the day.”
Mrs. Johnson’s brows pulled in, her eyes looking off in the distance. “I think the sofa in the sitting room would be best, then I needn’t climb the stairs more often than need be.”
“That’ll do, ma’am.”
Mr. Johnson’s eyes were scrunched tight. He hadn’t lodged a single complaint about Katie talking too much nor insulted her heritage since before his wife arrived. She knew from experience Mrs. Johnson’s presence didn’t generally make him more civil. She’d wager pain was the silencer this time around.
Together Katie and Mrs. Johnson managed to help him to the sitting room sofa. He was aware and strong enough to keep the rag pressed to his wound as his wife slipped a pillow beneath his head and eased him back.
“Have you a sewing kit?” Katie asked.
Mrs. Johnson fluttered about a bit before pulling herself to her purpose. She retrieved a sewing kit from beside a chair near the front window.
“And a bit of good strong soap?”
Mrs. Johnson nodded and set the sewing kit in Katie’s hands. She made her way as quickly as her swollen middle would allow. Katie pulled a tasseled ottoman over next to the sofa and sat.
“Are you planning to poke me with pins?” Mr. Johnson grumbled. “Torture me while I’m already suffering?”
“That, sir, is not the Irish way of doing things.” She pulled out a spool of thick black thread and the sharpest needle she could find. “If you’ll forgive me for saying so, drinking yourself into a stupor doesn’t strike me as your way of doing things.”
He looked annoyed. “It’s been a difficult day,” he muttered.
Katie snipped the thread into just the right length for sewing a few knots in the man’s forehead. ’Twas an odd task to be preparing for.
“Was the day difficult before you burst your head wide open, or mostly afterwards?” She threaded the needle and set it on the highly polished end table, laying out the other lengths of thread next to it.
Mr. Johnson examined his bloody rag. With a deep and shaky sigh, he pressed it back to his head. Katie could almost feel sorry for the man.
“Today is my brother’s birthday.” His words were still slurring badly.
And that was reason to get drunk as a wheelbarrow? Perhaps it was a tradition in the South where he came from.
Mrs. Johnson returned with a cake of soap and a fine blue-and-white porcelain washbowl. “I have a teakettle heating on the stove,” she said. “I’ll fill the bowl just as soon as the water is hot.”
Mrs. Johnson glanced uneasily at her husband. Her eyes lingered on his wounded forehead. She took a deep breath in through her nose. “I am sorry. I am not usually this overwhelmed by . . .” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, even as she laid her other hand on her belly.
Poor woman. She had quite enough to be dealing with just then. “Clean cloths would be quite helpful also,” Katie hinted.
Mrs. Johnson gave her a grateful look and quickly left the room.
Into the uncomfortable silence, Katie attempted to undertake a bit of light chatter. “Your brother with the birthday—is he older or younger than you?”
“Gabriel is dead.”
’Twas a quick end to a very short conversation, but it did explain a great deal. Tavish had previously told her that Mr. Johnson’s brother had died fighting an Irish regiment at Gettysburg; likely the brother he was mourning that day. The pain of his loss was driving him to drink. Katie had never indulged in liquor. She’d seen too many footmen and stable hands and masters of the house change in terrible ways under the influence of hard drink. But she’d also been told that alcohol numbed the heart and mind. Perhaps Mr. Johnson was grieving too hard to endure it without something to take the sting out.
“I am sorry for that, sir. ’Tis a hard thing to lose a family member.”
“And what do you know of it?” he snapped.
“What do I know of losing a loved one?” ’Twas such a ridiculous thing she couldn’t help staring at him a moment. “You know, Mr. Johnson, if you’d step away from your determination to hate everyone you think’s different from you, you just might discover we’ve a few things in common.”
He didn’t answer, but lay there, petulant and frowning.
“I had three brothers and a sister myself,” Katie said.
He eyed her sidelong. “Had?”
“Aye. We’d a famine in Ireland, a Great Hunger. The food we needed ran out and the people starved. My brothers left, one by one, their bellies and their pockets empty. They left in search of work, because, though so many here in America prefer to think otherwise, the Irish are willing, eager even, to work for what we’re given, be it food or money or a roof over our heads.”
He didn’t look at her, but she could tell he was listening. She’d likely never have another opportunity to tell the man how wrong he was about so many of his neighbors.
“I never saw any of my brothers again. Not a single one. They were gone from us forever.” The loss still hurt, but she pushed on. “And my wee little sister, so tiny and frail, she starved to death in front of our very eyes. She starved full to death, Mr. Johnson. And still there was not food enough for my parents and me. They found me work and left me, so I lost them as well.”
Something that almost looked like sympathy shone a moment in his eyes, though she refused to believe it entirely.
“You ask what I could possibly know about losing someone I love. I assure you, sir, I know that pain well. I know it far too well. I lost every single person I loved. Every one.”
Mrs. Johnson returned with a stack of fresh cloths and set them on the table beside the washbowl. “I think the water is probably hot enough,” she said and slipped out again.
Katie sat quite still, focusing on her coming task. She’d never sewn together a wound before, though she’d seen it done a few times. Servants didn’t warrant the cost of a man of medicine. When they were ill or injured, they physicked each other. ’Twas precisely how her feet had become so terribly deformed. No surgeon had been sent for when frostbite and infection turned her toes black. The blacksmith had undertaken the removal, and he’d done an unsightly job of it.
Now she was preparing herself to act as doctor for a man of means who deeply hated her. She could make her efforts quite painful for him, pulling and tugging more than necessary. She could also make large, inexpert stitches that would do little to pull the wound together. He’d be left with a thick, unsightly scar that would likely not heal quickly. She could do all those things. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t because, no matter how horrible he was to her, no matter how unfairly he treated the Irish in Hope Springs, purposely hurting the man would be wrong.
“Hot water.” Mrs. Johnson came in. She poured steaming water into the washbowl, before rushing the kettle back to the kitchen.
Katie set to washing the dried blood from Mr. Johnson’s head. She could see he was as uncomfortable with the arrangement as she was. Sworn enemies make awkward sickroom companions.
She took a new cloth, dipped it in the hot water, and rubbed the cake of soap along it. “I’ll make my apologies now, sir, for I know quite well this is going to hurt.”
He winced as she cleaned the cut itself with her soapy rag. To his credit, he didn’t curse at her or swat her hand away. Perhaps he’d make it through the stitching without tears.
Mrs. Johnson returned, hovering about the sofa with a look of complete uncertainty.
“Perhaps,” Katie suggested gently, “you might sit here and hold his hand. You needn’t look at the wound.”
“Would you like that, Jeremiah?” Mrs. Johnson asked hopefully.
“I would, sugar.”
Sugar? Katie had never heard the Johnsons use pet names for each other. Knowing they did made them seem . . . sweet.
Mrs. Johnson sat on the edge of the sofa with her husband’s hand in hers. ’Twas a loving sight.
Katie finished cleaning the cut as best she could, then set to washing the needle and threads. “Again, sir, I’m sorry for the pain of this.”
He gave a quick, silent nod and closed his eyes.
As the needle jabbed his skin, he sucked in a loud breath. Katie pulled it up through the other side of the wound, then tied the thread in as strong a knot as she knew how to make. She washed the needle again and set to rethreading it.
“I’m sorry about your family,” Mr. Johnson said.
His words hovered between them a moment. Her mind refused at first to accept them whole. But he’d said them. He’d said them without provocation, without reluctance.
“And I’m sorry about your brother.” She made another stitch.
“He was a soldier.” Mr. Johnson spoke quietly, his words not entirely steady.
“In the war between your states?” Though she knew the answer, she sensed in him a need to tell the history himself.
He made a noise of agreement. “He fought for the Confederacy, and he died at Gettysburg.”
“The O’Connors lost two sons at that same battle.” She tied off the stitch, grateful he had some topic to distract him.
Mrs. Johnson sat silent, her eyes firmly fixed on her husband’s hand held between her own.
Katie made a third stitch. His wound would likely need two more.
“Gettysburg was a bloody affair,” Mr. Johnson said.
“Everything I’ve heard of that battle purely horrifies me.”
Just as she was preparing to begin a fourth stitch, a tiny cry sounded. Was there a child at home? Katie knew the Johnsons had an older son—Joshua, who was seventeen or eighteen years old—and she knew of Marianne and the wee babe not born yet.
Mrs. Johnson’s eyes raised to the ceiling before shifting to Katie. “That’ll be Thomas waking from his nap. I probably should go get him.”
Katie nodded her understanding.
Mrs. Johnson kissed her husband’s hand and promised to return quickly.
Katie had only ever thought of them as horrible, hateful people. But they were so sweet and loving just then. ’Twould likely make them harder to dislike.
“Gabriel was a good man,” Mr. Johnson said into the silence. “And brave. A better man than I am.”
Katie didn’t know if the drink or the pain had brought this unusual humility to the surface.
“I know that feeling well. My sister was an angel.” She tied off the thread. “Far better than I.”
He opened his eyes and met her gaze. Something uncomfortably close to understanding passed between them.
Katie finished her work and cleaned up as best she could, considering she didn’t know where to put everything, and suddenly found herself increasingly anxious to be on her way. She was perfectly willing to help Mr. Johnson, but she wasn’t at all prepared to feel a kinship with the man.
Mrs. Johnson came in the sitting room after a while with a small boy clutching her skirts. The sleepy-eyed little one could not have been much older than three years old. He looked a great deal like his dark-haired father.
“I’m sorry to leave you a bit of a mess,” Katie said, “but I don’t know where to put everything.”
Mrs. Johnson shook her head. “I can take care of it. Let me walk you to the door.”
They’d reached the door to the mercantile when little Thomas spoke. “Why is one of them here, Mother?”
One of them. Katie knew precisely what the child meant. What was an Irishwoman doing in their home?
“Father hurt himself. Miss Katie was helping him.”
He looked confused. “Do they help people?”
Mrs. Johnson looked uncomfortable. She glanced at Katie, face blotchy with embarrassed color. “Yes, Thomas,” she finally said. “They do, indeed.”