Dr. Cox placed salve over the sutured wound, then gently wrapped gauze around her finger. “I like my theory better.”
Bertie looked into the doctor’s sincere gray eyes. “I hope you’re right.” But he didn’t know enough about Red to judge.
“There you go, Roberta,” he told her as he finished bandaging her finger. He gave her final instructions for sutures to be removed in ten days.
She thanked him and walked back out to the waiting room, where she found Connie, the company nurse, reading a magazine and chuckling at a “Joe and Willie” war cartoon.
Connie looked up at Bertie and grimaced at the bandage on her finger. “Guess you’ll be put on special duty.”
“No need,” Bertie said. “I’m right-handed.”
Connie got up, shaking her head. “You don’t know Franklin Parrish, kiddo. Last gal who cut herself was transferred out of his department. He’s about as easy to work with as a porcupine. You may find that out soon enough.”
Chapter Five
The train slowed at a long uphill curve, and Red saw Lake Taneycomo gleaming in the sunshine out his window. Not much farther now. He started watching for familiar landmarks: the big cedar that’d been hit twice by lightning and lost most of its branches, but kept on thriving; the rocky cliff that looked like half a huge teacup—one of the area’s bald knobs, where it was rumored that the old vigilante gang, the Bald Knobbers, sometimes met when preparing to raid a farmer’s land.
He remembered riding the train to Springfield with his mother and listening to stories from old-timers about the places along the tracks that had been raided by that gang, the owners forced from their land with threats of beatings or burned homes—or death.
That had happened just before the railroad came in. It had become evident later that the vigilante gang had had inside knowledge about its course. Many men became rich when they later sold their ill-gotten land to the railroad.
Red closed his eyes, wondering when his mind would stop wandering to brutality and the ugliness of humankind. When he looked again, the first buildings of the tiny burg of Branson came into view.
The train continued toward the Hollister station, a short jaunt south. He wasn’t sure what kind of a ride his mother would’ve arranged, what with the gasoline rationing and so few cars in town, anyway. Could be she’d come for him with the horse and buggy, unless she was in a hurry to get back to the house, and was able to convince one of the neighbors to take a car out of hibernation long enough to drive her.
Lilly Meyer always said one of the big draws of the Meyer Guesthouse was her horse and buggy. In this new world of modern cars with all their speed and fancy buttons and gadgets, Ma believed her guests returned to Hideaway year after year because they wanted to be taken back to a time when life wasn’t so hectic.
Red knew how it felt to be lulled into a sense of peace by the clopping of horse hooves instead of a smoking tailpipe.
Many who did have automobiles in Hideaway had followed Lilly Meyer’s lead and parked their cars for the rest of the war. They rode their horses or bicycles to town when they needed to shop or have a haircut or deliver goods. The gasoline was left to the farmers in the rest of the country, who needed to supply food to the troops.
Most farmers around Hideaway still used mules as their power source for plowing and wagon pulling, cutting hay and reaping corn. This way they didn’t have to fret about the shortages as much. They could save for other things.
Red had discovered just how well-off he and his neighbors had been in Hideaway by talking to other soldiers who’d come from farms across the Midwest. His hometown had five hundred and fifteen of the best people he’d ever known. That was why the population had doubled in the past ten years, smack dab in the middle of the depression, and that was why it would keep growing long after the war ended. Why, he could even see it doubling again in time, maybe to a thousand or more.
The train stopped at the Hollister station. He looked out the window for signs of his ma. Other men in uniform left the train, including Ivan, who glanced back in Red’s direction and waved. They’d see each other soon enough. Ivan could never resist Ma’s cooking.
Red waited, watching happy reunions taking place on the train ramp. Two soldiers and an airman stepped off, uniforms proudly decorated, as Ivan’s was. Many were probably home for good after the victory in Europe.
Home. It was the one thing everyone in the field dreamed about and talked about most.
Until now, Red hadn’t been any different. He slid his left hand down the side of his thigh to his knee, where shrapnel had ripped into the muscle and bone. He’d been held in the stateside hospital for three weeks, with daily injections of some new drug called penicillin that was supposed to kill the infection.
He didn’t know how well it had worked. The surgeon had told him the bone looked good, the infection gone, but for some reason his brain didn’t seem to be getting the message he was healed. He couldn’t put all his weight on his left leg yet. Smart as the surgeon was, he wasn’t God.
Red still didn’t see his mother or anyone he recognized who might be here to pick him up. And so he stayed put, the darkness of the past few weeks haunting his thoughts.
Dark and heavy. Dark and hopeless.
Here he’d been thinkin’ that Bertie would be better off without him, but wouldn’t that be the same for everybody else, as well? Nobody needed a lame soldier taking up space, Ma least of all, with all the work she needed done.
The last of the passengers disembarked, and the crowd on the platform began to thin. Red looked on glumly as Ivan greeted his parents in the parking lot.
Ivan’s father, Gerald, broad-shouldered and smiling—teeth gleaming so brightly Red could see them from where he sat—gave his son a bear hug. Both men towered over the fair Arielle Potts, whose Swedish coloring Ivan had inherited.
Ivan gestured toward the train, and they all glanced toward where Red sat watching them from the shadows. He didn’t think they could see him, looking from the bright sunshine into the darkness of the railcar, but he waved back.
The three of them climbed into a shiny black Chevrolet.
After most others had left the train, Red hefted his duffle over one shoulder and reluctantly grabbed the cane, forcing away his brooding thoughts. He dreaded seeing the look on his mother’s face when she saw him with his cane for the first time.
Sure, Ma knew about the injury, but to see her youngest hobbling on a cane like an old man? No mother should have to witness that.
Finally, out of the window, he saw Lilly Meyer come riding up in a buggy pulled by the big bay gelding Seymour, and Red felt a rush of relief.
Ma’s broad, sun-reddened face showed him she’d spent a lot of time outside in the vegetable garden—one of Red’s jobs when he was home. She guided Seymour carefully through the crowd in the parking area, waving to several acquaintances along the way.
Even before the gasoline rationing of the war, Lilly Meyer had held with her horse. She wasn’t afraid of cars. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She just always loved her horses. Pa had tried to teach her how to drive when he was alive,
