A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection Page 4

“How long should I sleep?” she asked.

  “Until Mess Call.” He made a face. “Wish it could be longer, but you know my kitchen skills.”

  She just smiled.

  “I’ll tend to Sick Call, and then make sure our patients are buffed and sparkling before I turn them over to you again,” he joked.

  “And?” she prompted, when he seemed to hesitate.

  “Ordinarily, I’d let you take another rest before Noon Mess, but I have to attend to the corpse in the dead house.”

  “Glory, Suh, do you embalm, too?”

  “I am a man of amazing talents, Ozzie. Learned that skill in the war, as well as others.”

  Suh took her arm and guided her to the side door, opening it onto a moonlit path. “Enough of that indelicate subject! I’ll wait right here until you go inside.” He indicated the two little buildings, pointing to the left. “That’s mine. The other one’s the dead house.” He chuckled. “Don’t mix them up.”

  She stopped halfway down the path and took a few steps back toward him. He met her, a question in his eyes.

  “Suh, I wonder just how successful Mr. Locke really is. His suit looks like it’s made of shoddy, and why on earth would anyone in Deadwood want to see King Lear?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” he replied. “D’ye think he’s putting on an act for us?”

  She shrugged.

  “If he wakes up with the chickens, I’ll see what I can learn. Go to bed, Ozzie. You’ve been more than kind.”

  True to his word, he watched her until she stood on the porch of his quarters. His solicitude touched her. It wasn’t more than a stone’s throw to his quarters, but there he stood until she turned the doorknob.

  “Lock the door,” he called. “This is still an army garrison.”

  He had left a lamp burning in the small parlor. Even though she was ready to drop from exhaustion, Ozzie took the lamp and peered into his even smaller kitchen, which was tidy to the point of appearing unused. Considering his culinary skills— something he obviously hadn’t learned in the war— she figured he ate his meals in the hospital, when the matron wasn’t suffering from lumbago.

  The other room was his bedchamber, with its narrow bed, three-drawer bureau, and a wash basin with a scrap of mirror at Suh-height for shaving. His night table had a lamp and two books: Les Miserables and the U.S. Medical Department Annual Report, more well-thumbed than Jean Valjean’s tale of woe and redemption.

  No pictures hung on the walls in either room. The only thing she had noticed was a calendar of fetching, round-bottomed women in the kitchen. Suh had no more family than she did, a realization that saddened her.

  Her eyes closed, Ozzie stripped down to her shimmy and crawled into bed. It was lumpy in all the right places, but the pillow smelled of that mysterious camphor. Her last thought was that she would have to ask him why on earth camphor.

  Everyone slept, giving Colm time for the paperwork so dear to his heart. He discovered it was less dear than usual, mainly because he was picturing Ozzie Washington asleep in his bed. He was an organized, rational, intelligent, and efficient man. Even during those fraught days at the age of fourteen, when he stood beside his commanding officer in K Company, 69th Regiment of the Irish Brigade, drumming out the commands to direct soldiers into battle, he had not flinched or failed anyone. And here he was at thirty-four, a non-commissioned officer commanding some respect— mooning over a woman.

  Dashed good thing I told you to lock the door, he thought in disgust. I am an idiot.

  He was also disgusted with himself, too shy and ill-equipped to even make an attempt to court Ozzie Washington, as much as he wanted to. Life in an orphanage after his father had run off and his mother had died, then the army at fourteen, had promised him no childhood and no way to learn about the finer things.

  Years had passed. The press of hospital work, the constant turmoil of fighting, and vast distances had meant no furloughs. The relative isolation of hospital life, and his neither-fish-nor-fowl rank as hospital steward, left him dangling in the vast gulf between enlisted society and the officer corps.

  He belonged nowhere and to no one, and the sad fact chafed him raw. He was too shy to speak to Ozzie Washington of anything beyond commonplaces. He, Colm Callahan, organized man of considerable responsibility, didn’t know where to begin.

  The ward was still shrouded in shadow, but Colm needed only one slat of light to assess his patients. He stood at the foot of the avulsed ankle’s bed, amused to see Ozzie’s careful handwriting— a contrast to his almost-doctor scrawl— listing each hour she had looked at the man and his condition.

  My dear Ozzie, you are nearly as precise as I am, he thought. Private Henry slumbered on, just the way Colm wanted to find him at five o’clock before Reveille.

  Private Jones was a different matter, tossing his head from side to side, the portrait of early-morning discomfort that Colm always associated with burns, his least-favorite injury. The soldier wasn’t quite awake yet, so the hospital steward pressed his hand on the private’s forehead. In a few minutes, he slept again. Funny how just a touch could calm. Some imp sitting on his shoulder suggested that he try touching Ozzie to see what happened. The thought made him roll his eyes.

  As he sat with the private, thinking he might have to debride the burn when the light was better, Colm glanced toward Lysander Locke. The actor watched him with what appeared to be considerable interest. When Private Jones drifted deeper into sleep, he tiptoed to Lysander Locke’s bed and sat down. After a whispered conversation— at least as quiet as a man with vocal pipes like an actor could whisper— and a moment with the bedpan, Lysander appeared disposed to talk.

  “She took good care of me. Uh, sergeant?”

  “No. Just Steward, or you may call me Callahan. Captain Dilworth does.”

  “No first name?”

  “Not in the U.S. Army.” It was early in the morning; maybe Colm could be forgiven for wishful thinking. “I can’t recall the last time anyone used my first name.”

  He didn’t say so for the actor to frown and feel sorry for him, but Mr. Locke did look touched at his pronouncement.

  “That’s wrong, my boy. What does Miss Washington call you?”

  He shrugged, glad that the gloom of early morning hid his blush, if the warmth of his face was any indicator. He thought about it, and suddenly realized that he had a nickname with Ozzie alone, their private name. “She calls me Suh. I told her I wasn’t a gentleman and shouldn’t be addressed as Sir, but that’s what she calls me.”

  “I like it.”

  “So do I.”

  There. He had said enough. His failure at doing what probably eighty percent of the population did by finding a mate was his problem, and not one to share with a bedridden, broken-down actor. He made as if to rise, but Mr. Locke put out his hand. Colm sat down. There was no reason for the man to take an interest in him, but that was what he appeared to do. Right or wrong, Colm couldn’t deny feeling flattered.

  Lysander Locke leaned forward like a conspirator, so Colm did too.

  “Did you know that her real name is Audra?”

  He didn’t. Audra. Audra. Just exotic enough to match her olive skin and beautiful eyes. He listened as the actor regaled him with information about Ozzie’s early life, obviously gleaned during a late-night conversation bearing some resemblance to this early-morning one. None of it was anyone’s business, but Colm wanted to know more about the woman sleeping in his bed.

  He listened, amused and then touched, to learn of Ozzie’s letters to herself. He couldn’t remember a time he had ever received correspondence from anyone except the U.S. government, and he admired Ozzie’s resourcefulness.

  But here was the old gent, clapping his hands softly, demanding attention. “I have an idea! You could write her a letter. Think how surprised she would be.”

  “Oh, I…”

  Lysander Locke was a professional at riding over someone else’s conversation, if Colm could call his own
mumble actual conversation. “Think how much you owe her. Just a note of appreciation.”

  Colm sat back. It would be a surprise for a lovely lady, just a note and a penny stamp.

  “Have you ever received a letter?” Locke asked.

  Colm laughed, then looked around when Private Jones stirred. “And who would write to an orphan from Five Points?”

  “Surely you made friends in… did you fight in the war?”

  “I was only fourteen when I ran away from St. Agnes,” Colm replied. “Enlisted as a drummer boy with the 69th.”

  “No friends, no comrades in arms?”

  It had been a long time; he nearly didn’t falter. “One died at Fredericksburg, and the other two in a wheat-field at Gettysburg.”

  Thank goodness Private Jones started to groan; Colm had a perfect excuse to tend to someone who needed him, and avoid more questions.

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation,” the private gasped between rapid breaths.

  “Easy now,” Colm said, happy to devote his attention to something he was familiar with. Letters? He had decided years ago that they were for others.

  Colm removed the loose bandage, and the private sucked in his breath. Eyes wide, he stared at the mess that was his own forearm.

  “No fears. I’ll have you fine in a few days.”

  And he would. Colm had seen the same worried look on other men with burns. Speaking low and keeping his explanation simple, he told Jones what he would do for the burn to heal properly. “A little morphine will make it easy enough to bear. A few more days, and I’ll send you back to the bakehouse.”

  “To work?” the private asked, uncertainty in his voice.

  “To rest. Don’t you have quarters off the storeroom? Perfect place to recuperate.” Colm rested his hand on the private’s shoulder. “Trust me, laddie. I’ve seen worse.”

  By the eternal, he had. How curious that he had found his life’s vocation in a burning aid station on the second day at Gettysburg. After his commanding officer ordered him to beat retreat through the wheat-field, then sank to his knees with a minie ball between his eyes, Colm had done the sensible thing. He beat retreat as ordered, then unhooked his drum and left it there in the wheat-field. He took up his other duty as stretcher-bearer and carried out a wounded lieutenant, only to have him burn to death when the nearest aid station took a direct hit from a cannonball. The ether exploded into fireballs, and Colm dragged out the wounded, his own hair singed and stinking.

  He went back in, and that made all the difference. When the battle ended two days later, he could debride burns, hold retractors, and throw in a simple suture. He never went back to find his drum, and no one in the Irish Brigade complained.

  “Steward?”

  Startled, he looked down at his patient. “Sorry, I was doing some rare remembering.” He patted the man. “Can you rest now?”

  The private obediently did as he was bid. Colm looked back to see Lysander Locke’s eyes on him, maybe with admiration in them. With a sigh borne of too little sleep and more recollection than he wanted, Colm again sat beside the actor’s bed. To his chagrin, Lysander Locke had not lost the thread of their whispered conversation.

  “Well done, Callahan. Do I gather that you have never received a letter either?”

  “You gather right, except for memos from the Medical Department.”

  Colm started to say something else equally inane, but he sniffed the air instead. Good Gadfreys, was that sausage? He couldn’t imagine anything less suitable for a low diet, but since Captain Dilworth was not there to enforce the prescribed nutrition for sick men, he, Colm Callahan, was not about to quibble.

  “I think I’ll check on breakfast,” he said to the ward at large. He rose, but Lysander took his hand and tugged it.

  “I think you should surprise her with a letter.” He gave Colm a calculating look. “Even a shy man can write a letter.”

  Colm smiled at his patient— Mary and Joseph, but Locke was nosy— and sauntered down the hall to the kitchen.

  With the same concentration that he devoted to medical matters, Ozzie was subduing a rank of fat sausages.

  “Where in the world did you find those?” he asked by way of greeting.

  She pointed to the ice chest. “You should inventory that sometime.”

  She wore a different dress, and had tried to curb the exuberance of her hair, tying back the mass of curls with a bit of elastic midway up the back of her head. The effect, while disorderly, struck him as charming. He cleared his throat, and screwed up his courage— a different kind of courage than what he had shown on the nighttime field at Fredericksburg, or the Gettysburg aid station.

  “I owe you a thousand thanks,” he said.

  She turned around with a smile. “You need me,” she said simply, then immediately returned her attention to the sausage, which made him suspect she was shy too.

  Perhaps putting trust where she should not, Audra handed Colm the long fork and told him to keep turning the sausage. Meanwhile, she prepared oatmeal and stirred it, standing close to him because it wasn’t a large kitchen range.

  Audra stopped. Her face was warm, surely from the steam spiraling off the porridge. She took a step away from Colm Callahan, who stared with fierce concentration at the sausages.

  When the porridge was subdued into the occasional glop glop, Audra set it at the back of the range and found some brown paper so Colm could spear out the sausages to drain them.

  “You sleep all right?” he asked.

  “Never better. Except…”

  “It’s a lumpy bed,” he said, apologizing for his mattress.

  “It’s not that. The lumps are in the right places.” She transferred the porridge to individual bowls and sugared it well, wondering why she couldn’t leave well enough alone and say nothing more.

  But he was looking at her, curious and interested. “Colm, I mean Suh, why does your house smell of camphor? It’s all over your pillow.”

  She put her hands to her face, amazed she had mentioned something as intimate as a man’s pillow. You are merely curious, she reminded herself. “I… I sniffed it on you yesterday, Suh.”

  The range must have been hotter than she thought, because Colm was red faced too. At least that much color would never show on her face.

  He chuckled then, apparently deciding not to be embarrassed. “It’s this, Audra: I know it’s silly after all these years, but the smell of blood makes me queasy. When the bugle summoned me to the ambulance yesterday, I didn’t know what I would find, so I dabbed camphor on my upper lip. I can’t smell anything else with camphor there. D’ye mind?”

  She shook her head. “I just wondered why.” She opened her mouth and closed it, wondering why she was turning so nosy.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “You called me Audra.” There, she said it. Audra waited to feel nervous or embarrassed, but she did not. Maybe she could tell this man anything.

  He gave her with the kindest expression, even though his face flamed now. “Blame Lysander Locke.” The lilt to his voice was more pronounced, as though he was conscious of every word he spoke to her. “What did he do but tell me all about you this morning, how… how you were beaten when you told that little girl your name was Audra and not Ozzie.”

  “I’ve never told anyone before,” she murmured, wondering what it was about the actor that drew out her secrets. Maybe it had been the late hour. “No one wants to hear such things.”

  He continued to look at her, measuring her in some way. “It’s no shame,” he said finally.

  To her amazement, he turned around and pulled his woolen shirt out of his trousers and lifted it high enough to show wicked-looking scars on his back. “I was not the most obedient orphan at Saint Agnes,” he said, as he tucked his shirt in again. “You’re not the only one, Audra. Why us?”

  Shocked, she willed herself to calm, with no idea how to reply. There was no need to say anything. Mumbling something about checking on the
corpse in the dead house, Colm hurried from the kitchen.

  Her mind in turmoil over what had just happened, Audra served breakfast silently.

  Serving, always serving, she thought, distressed with herself at time a-wasting. For the first moment in her parched life, she allowed herself to think of fixing breakfast for just one man, of eating with him, and discussing this and that, as she had seen the Chambers do for years. She knew she wanted those things, but Colm had to make the move. It wasn’t something women did, and certainly not maids of color.

  She shook her head when Lysander requested that she visit with him, and retreated to the kitchen. She banged the dishes around, blaming them for her misery. She took out her irritation on herself— over the shy hospital steward she loved, with the whole unfair universe— by sweeping the floor with impressive vigor.

  “Stop it, Audra,” she muttered, and leaned the broom against the wall.

  “Beg pardon?”

  Suh stood in the doorway.

  “I was talking to myself,” she said, monumentally dissatisfied with herself.

  “Sounded more like a rare scold,” he replied with a half-smile. He cleared his throat, and the now-familiar blush rose up his neck from his uniform collar. “Audra, I’m sorry I pulled up my shirt like that. Where have my manners gone?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Maybe I needed reminding that mine was not the only hard life.”

  “That’s not why I did it,” he said, coming closer. “I wanted you to see that you and I are not so different. Neither of us had a childhood. I know you’re tired, but please watch our patients. I have to embalm that poor coachman.” He left, even though the camphor lingered in the room.

  Audra dabbed her eyes and returned to the ward, skipping Private Henry, because two of his bunkies must have sneaked away from a work detail to visit the sick and afflicted.

  Private Jones lay staring at his bandaged arm, chewing on his lip. Audra sat beside his bed. “You’ll have a scar, but that’s all,” she assured him.

  “I have a sweetheart…”

  “She’ll still love you,” Audra teased.