Chapter 20
The surgery burned every lamp it had until the sun came up. Then it burned them a while longer, because nobody remembered to put them out.
Seven men. Charles had known since nine the night before what he would do for each of them, and in what order.
When they came through his door, he did it.
Purdy's leg first, because it was the leg or the man.
Then Mott's ribs, which were three, and one of them had been near enough to the lung to make him sweat.
Then Tolliver's head. Then Kessler's brother's fingers.
The Dunne boys went in blankets by the stove with hot coffee until their teeth stopped.
Then the boy.
Olivia was beside him for all of it. He did not have to ask.
Now. Hold. Next. The next instrument was in her hand.
Once, over Purdy's leg, he said nothing at all, and she handed him the saw he had not yet decided he would need.
He did not need it. But she had known, and had it ready.
When he shook his head, she put it back without a word.
At six, he straightened up from the last bandage and found the room had gone quiet.
Seven men, asleep or nearly, on every bench and bed the house had. His wife at the basin with her sleeves to the elbow and her hair coming down, wringing a cloth. The stove ticking. Gray light in the window.
"All of them," he said.
"All of them."
"Not one." He had to say it twice to believe it. "Not one lost. I have never in eleven years brought seven out from under a fall and lost not one."
Olivia wrung the cloth, with her back to him.
"You didn't bring them out," she said. "She did. You'd best remember that when you're writing it up."
He watched her back. The button on her dress, which she had not taken off. Her hands in the basin, which were shaking now, at last, when there was nobody left to hold.
"Olivia."
"Not now, Charles." Her voice was quite steady. "I can't. Not now. She's asleep upstairs in her clothes with a torn coat on the floor. I have not yet been able to look at her without... not now. Go and sit down before you fall."
He went and sat down.
* * *
Toby Griggs would not meet her eyes.
Antonia brought him broth on the second day, because Mrs. Aldridge had said he was to have it and there was nobody else to carry it. He was in the parlor on the settle with his arm in a splint and a sling. When she came in with the bowl, he looked at the door, then at the window, then at the floor.
She set the bowl on the table beside him.
"It's hot," she said. "Mind."
The bowl stayed where it was. He sat looking at the floor with his big sandy head bent and his good hand in a fist on his knee. His ears had gone red, the way they had on the train when Miss Dunn caught him at mischief.
"You gave me water," he said to the floor.
She let that lie. There was nothing to answer.
"In the hole. You came to me last. I thought you'd not come at all. Then you did. You gave me water, and you never said a word." His voice was thick. "Not one word. You could have said plenty."
"I was busy."
He opened his mouth. Words were behind it; she could see that, big ones that had got as far as his teeth. Then his ears went redder still. He shut it again, and his good hand came up to cover his face.
Antonia stood by the settle with her hands folded and watched him.
On the train, in the church hall, at the schoolhouse fence, she had thought about what it would be like when Toby Griggs was sorry. Now he was. It was only a big boy on a settle with his arm broken, hiding behind his hand.
"Drink your broth," she said, and went out.
In the kitchen, Olivia was at the stove. She looked around as the child came in. One look at her face, and she did not ask. She held out her hand instead. Antonia came and stood inside her arm for a moment, quite still. Then she went to her stool.
That night, under Observations, she wrote: T.G. is ashamed. He did not say of what. I thought it would feel like something. Mrs. A. did not ask. I think she knew.
* * *
Eugenia Pemberton's parlor was the largest room in Galena Springs, and on the third day, it was full.
Olivia did not see it. Harriet did. She came up the hill after, and sat in the kitchen with her shawl still on.
"Every mine wife that lost a man at any camp, ever. Eleven of them. She had them in with tea and the good china. Then she stood at the mantel with that brooch on and made a speech."
Harriet's voice was low, for Harriet.
"Not a wicked speech. That's the trouble.
A sensible one. Fire after fire, she said.
A burned hand. A barn. And now a mountain.
Chance does not run in a line like that.
Providence does not send so many signs. The child is no doubt a brave child, she said, and no doubt meant no harm.
It makes no difference. In the morning, the girl came to the mine head.
At noon, the mine came down. That is the fact, and everything else is sentiment. "
"And the seven men who came out?"
"She said they came out. She said Teddy did not come out. She said it very quietly, Olivia, and the room went quiet with her."
Olivia sat with her hands flat on the table.
"She's written to the Society," Harriet said.
"The New York office. A letter demanding that the Jenkins child be removed from an improper placement in a household without the means or the character to control her.
She read it out. Six of them signed under her name.
It went down on the sledge yesterday, and there's nothing on God's earth to be done about it now. "
* * *
Brandt kept silent.
Charles went up to the mine on the fourth day, when the men in his surgery could spare him. Hollis was in the hoist house with the shift boss and a company clerk, going over the fall. The clerk had a book. He was writing down what everyone said.
"The girl was at the mouth," Brandt said. "That morning. I sent her off. Company property. That's all."
"Did she say anything to you?" Hollis asked.
Brandt's eyes went to the floor, and stayed there.
"Nothing I recall."
"Nothing about the ground. The timber."
"She's a child. She had some story about rats. Children have stories." He shifted his chew. "I sent her off the works, and I'd do it again. I'd a count to make."
Hollis studied him. Then he turned to Charles.
Charles said nothing. He had heard the child in the wagon, at the bend above the church, saying the rats, the timber, Mr. Brandt.
He had told her to sit back because the road was icy.
He knew what she had said. There was no way on earth to prove it.
Brandt knew that. The clerk wrote down nothing I recall, and shut his book.
Outside, the camp went on believing what it had believed on the trampled snow. Half of it. The half that had not been under the mountain. The other half kept its own counsel, with its men in bed, and said nothing to anyone.
* * *
The sledge came up on the nineteenth of March, and there was a letter from the Society.
Charles read it standing in the depot, the way he had read the Boston letters. It was on the printed paper, in Croft's neat train-creased hand.
Dr. Aldridge,
I write to inform you that the Society has received a communication from Mrs. Horace Pemberton of Galena Springs, and from certain other residents, respecting the placement of the child Antonia Jenkins in your household.
The communication alleges that the placement is improper and that the child has been the occasion of serious disturbance in the community.
I am directed to attend at Galena Springs with the opening of the passes, which I understand to be expected in the first week of April. I am to review the placement in person. You will appreciate that in the circumstances the Society must consider whether the child's removal to Denver is required.
I would ask that the child be made ready to travel, should that prove necessary.
He read it twice.
Then he folded it, put it in his coat, and walked up the gulch. He did not notice the climb. Nor Amos at the grille, nor the snow, nor the wheel turning again above the town as it had turned every day since the fall.
Made ready to travel.
He went up the steps and through the hall without stopping at the surgery door. Past it he went, to the kitchen, where his wife was. He stood in the doorway with the letter in his hand. His hand was shaking so badly that he could not hold the paper still.
Olivia turned from the stove.
Her eyes went to his face. Then to the letter. She asked nothing.
"Charles," she said.
"Read it." He held it out. "Read it, and then tell me what I am to do. Because I will not hand that child to a man with a satchel at the platform, Olivia. I will not. Not if I have to carry her up the mountain myself, put her in the rat hole, and tell him she is lost."
She took the letter. She read it, standing by the stove, with the spoon still in her other hand.
Then she set it down on the table between them, exactly where the ink bottle had stood for five weeks.
"Then we had better go and see the reverend," she said.