CHAPTER
twenty-five
Reed sat bolt upright in bed. The window shade had somehow loosened itself and rolled up with a loud whap in the wee hours of the morning. Daisy was still sound asleep. Something was off. Something was out of place. He checked his watch—3:00 a.m. Earlier in the evening, he had opened the back door to let in a breeze from the screened porch. That’s where the trouble was. Out there.
He quietly stepped onto the porch and listened. Movement—in the woods maybe? When he turned on the outside light, it stopped. Silence. He stood there and listened, but it was gone. Just to be on the safe side, he closed the door and locked it before lying back down and falling asleep.
Dolly looked out the window and peered into the early morning darkness. She and Si were getting dressed for their morning chores.
“Somethin’ wrong, Dolly?”
She clasped her hands together beneath her chin and gave a little shiver. “I can’t shake the feeling that somethin’s . . . I don’t know . . . goin’ on out there.”
“That’s the trouble—I got no idea. You know what worries me the most, Si? Little Mama always said bad things come in clusters. That means more’s comin’. Why’d somebody as special as Daisy have to be number one?”
“Why anything, Dolly? We don’t get to see the whole map. We just have to cover our stretch o’ the road best we can.” Si kissed her on the cheek and offered her his arm. “Shall we make our way to your skillets and my milk cow, madam?”
Reed woke up and looked at his watch—5:30 a.m. He turned over to find Daisy awake and staring at him, groggy but wide-eyed.
“What in the . . . Sam Hill . . . happened?” she asked, her words slurring from the drugs.
“Nothin’ happened—I mean, well, a lot happened—I just got really tired and had to sleep for a while.” He got up as quickly as he could, limped around the bed to Daisy’s side, and sat down next to her.
“You’re walkin’ . . . terrible.”
“I know.” Reed laid his hand on her forehead to see if she was still hot.
She was looking around, trying to get her bearings. He could tell she was still in a morphine fog. Suddenly, her mouth flew open. “What am I . . . doin’ . . . in your broom—I mean, your room?”
He blotted her face with a cool cloth. “You’ve been fightin’ a fever since yesterday afternoon, but it looks like it finally broke. Do you remember a snakebite?”
“A shnake bite? When did . . . what?”
“Yesterday. When you and Anna were in the garden.”
Daisy rubbed her eyes as if that might help her focus. She looked at Reed and thought for a minute. “It bit me . . . on my foot?”
“That’s right.”
“Hurts.”
“I know. I did what I could for you and then Anna called a doctor. He told me to give you morphine every four hours to keep the pain under control. You’re due for another shot right now.”
“Wait . . . I’m so blurry.”
“Okay. But you need to let me know before it gets really bad.”
Daisy nodded. She was frowning at him as if she were trying hard to figure out something on his face. “Can we back up?”
“Sure.”
“Me and Anna were pickin’ beans . . .”
“That’s right.”
“Snake bit me.”
“A copperhead.”
“It hurt . . . real bad . . . burned.”
“Are you hurtin’ bad now?”
Daisy shook her head. “I was . . . scared . . . You said . . . breathe slow.”
Reed nodded.
“And you cut me.”
“To get the poison out.”
“How’d . . . how’d I get here?”
“I carried you.”
“Musta . . . hurt . . . your leg.”
“I really didn’t have time to think about that. Here, while you’re awake try to drink some water.” Reed raised her up in the bed and let her lean against his shoulder while she drank as much as she could, then got her settled back down on the pillows.
“Why . . . am I . . . in here?”
“This was just the quickest place I could find to lay you down. After the doctor saw you, Dolly and Evelyn and Anna stayed in here with us till suppertime. Then Dolly and Evelyn left, but Anna slept next to you till about one o’clock this mornin’. I sent her off to bed to get some rest till you woke up. Those are her quilts you’re buried under.”
Daisy gave a weak smile. “She always . . . wants to make it butter . . . I mean batter . . . Dang . . . my foot hurts, Reed.”
He was giving her another shot when Anna came into the room. “I’m your relief,” she said. “And I’m kicking you out. Go get some breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Reed left Daisy in her friend’s care. He could hear the morning chatter as he approached the dining room. Once again he struggled with the strangeness of it—pain and morphine in one room, coffee and conversation in the next—and wondered if he would ever be able to reconcile the two.
“Anna?” Dolly softly called as she opened the door to Reed’s bedroom, where Daisy was sound asleep and Anna was blotting her forehead with a damp cloth. “Honey, I’ve got somethin’ for you.”
“What is it, Dolly?”
Anna could see that Dolly was holding a small package about the size of a shoebox, wrapped in plain brown paper.
“Looka here,” Dolly said. The package had “To Anna” written across the top.
“For me? Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know. It was on the front porch when I went out to water my ferns.” Dolly handed the box to Anna.
“Let’s see what’s inside.” As Dolly sat down in a rocker by the bed, Anna tore the paper off the package. She opened the box, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my gosh, Dolly, could this possibly be what I think it is?” She reached into the box and pulled out a leather journal. “I don’t think I’ve got the nerve to open it.”
“Sure you do, honey.”
Anna opened the book and read, “‘April 20, 1844. Dear Self . . .’”
For a split second, she and Dolly stared at each other, but then they were both hugging, trying to contain their excitement so they wouldn’t make too much noise and wake Daisy.
“Oh, honey, I’m so happy for you!” Dolly loudly whispered.
“But Dolly, who gave this to me? There are no markings on it anywhere.”
“I don’t know, but that don’t make it any less real. You gonna read it?”
Anna thought it over. “No. Not until we can all read it together. Not until Daisy’s up to it.”
Dolly smiled. “You’re a mighty good friend to have, Anna. Your mama raised you right.”