6
Charles curled on the bed. Dougie sat on his trundle bed, simply staring. Odd. “Dougie, there’s pie downstairs.” He didn’t move. She turned to Charles. “Pie is ready. Will you come down?”
Neither of them stirred. She bent over Charles, lowered his arm from his face. He rolled over, revealing a brown bottle he cradled to his chest. She smelled the spirits. He snored.
Jennie stumbled backward, making sense of what she saw. He was drunk, had to be. While Dougie was under his care.
My son! “Dougie?”
He looked up at her, eyes glazed.
“Douglas. Come to Mama.”
He mewed like a kitten and lifted his arms. As she picked him up, she smelled the vile scent of spirits on his breath. A child! Her husband had defiled their child.
She carried him down the stairs, him on her hip pressing against her ribs; her other hand on the wall to balance, gasping as she entered the kitchen.
“What is it?” Lucinda said. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s . . . I smell liquor. Charles is . . . out. Snoring.” Tears burned behind her nose. “I—how could he? I don’t know how much he’s taken.”
“Maybe Dougie just spilled it on himself.” Lucinda, offering an option that didn’t pierce with pain.
She had to think. Pretending would not help. “Chamomile. If we can get him to drink it. Maybe violet root. I’ve some crushed in a tin in the drying shed. It’s marked.”
“I’ll get it.” Lucinda lifted her skirts and ran.
Her father took Dougie from her arms. He stroked his grandson’s shoulders, rubbed his thin little arms. “There, there now.” Dougie burped. His eyes stayed open, but they did not focus. Still, he smiled, giving hope that he would be all right with time—and an expectorant to empty his stomach. Alcohol poisoning was as dangerous as arsenic.
“How could Charles . . . I can’t condone consumption like that, not for him and certainly not for a child.” She blinked back tears.
“Dougie might have gotten into it after—well, after Charles slept. It could happen to anyone,” Joseph said.
She wished Lucinda were present to listen to her husband’s defense of her abusive, neglectful-of-his-son, drunk-upstairs husband. “I can’t believe you’d defend what he did to a child.”
“He made a mistake, but we all do at some point in our lives. Even you, Perfect Jennie Pickett.”
“Here now, there’s no call for that,” Jennie’s father said.
Jennie touched her father’s arm to calm him. She frowned. Joseph’s mocking made no sense. She had never claimed to be perfect, far from it. Why would he even suggest such a thing. Unless her certainty about the vileness of alcohol was what he ascribed as her “perfection.” She was certain of that: alcohol was the perfect, heinous brew and she did perfectly condemn its use.
Lucinda returned with the root and Jennie crushed a small amount with calomel. Her little finger shook as she placed the mash on her son’s lips. “Lick your lips, Douglas.” Dougie pushed away, but his grandfather held him as Jennie urged yet a greater swipe with his tongue. At his grandfather’s urging, the boy licked, then chewed, then swallowed again.
“Feel bad, Paw-Paw.”
Her mother handed Jennie a bowl. Let the impurities leave him.
Dougie found the edge and vomited.
Gratitude mixed with fury at Charles raged through her, along with guilt at not having watched her son; with letting herself enjoy the possibilities of the new distillery; with having trusted Charles.
“We should get him to a doctor to bleed him,” her mother said.
“No, no bleeding. It weakens the body.” Jennie knew that much about modern medicine. “But we should take him anyway, make sure we haven’t missed something.”
She scurried then, grabbing a quilt to wrap him in.
George had come in. It was decided he would carry him and Jennie ride a second horse.
Dougie cried now. Were there bruises? Had he consumed something else? “Let the doctor check him,” her father reassured. At least this family offered hands she could hold in times of trial. They rode off, leaving her husband behind.
Evening had come upon them while she prayed for her son, for herself. Dougie vomited again.
“Oh George, I’m so sorry.” She pressed her horse up beside him. George’s red vest was splashed with brown.
“It’s nothing, Sister.”
“There, through those trees.” She pointed to the path.
The doctor wasn’t that one whom Charles had dragged back too late the night Ariyah was born.
“You did well with the expectorant applied.” He spoke to George, though Jennie had told him about the herbs she’d used.
“Speak to his mother. She’s the one who treated him.”
“I’m sure you offered direction.”
George shook his head.
“I suppose he grabbed an unwatched stein, did he?”
“We don’t rightly know. His father was watching him, but he’s currently . . . indisposed and not able to convey to us the circumstances of his son’s condition.”
“And his father would be—”
“Charley Pickett. Works at the prison.”
“Ah, yes. With Sloan.” He pulled Dougie’s lower eyelid down, looked at both pupils. “I think he’ll sleep now. Wake him every hour and have him drink water.” He put his stethoscope against her son’s chest. “Heartbeat steady. Looks like he’ll come through it. Waking and water and food in the morning. He’ll be hungry.”
They spoke good-byes, and this time George handed Dougie up to Jennie so she could hold him in her arms as they plodded toward home.
Home. She thought of what she could do, where they could go. She’d been so certain the distillery was the answer. But now, being alone with Charles and Douglas made no sense at all.
Or did it?
If she could get Charles away from Joseph, at least after hours, free of the prison talk; if she could be alone with him and Dougie, maybe they could still make a way as a family. She decided then: she would find a home, one that might even have a small drying shed where she could set up the distillery. She’d get Charles to help, let him be more a part of things. That was why he’d made the poor choice. He hadn’t meant to lose control like he had. He’d be sorry and ashamed.
She shared her plan with her father when they got back. He’d waited up for them, checked on the essencier while they were gone. Her father bedded down in the main room too, where Jennie could watch her son whose clothes she changed. She’d wake him every hour. Her mother slept on the small day cot, Dougie beside her. George took his bedroll to the drying shed where he said he’d monitor the distillery as the lavender oil finished dripping into the beaker.
“We’d need a small place,” Jennie said as she fluffed up a feather comforter for her father’s use. “Not far from the prison so Charles can keep his job. We could rent or maybe find an abandoned cabin, take it over.” There were many tumbling-down structures left behind by those lured by the ’62 gold strike in Canyon City farther east.
“Would Charles agree?”
“I’ll make my case that his temper and his drinking are—”
“Temper? What’s that about?”
“He—it’s only happened twice. I . . . provoked him. He didn’t mean it. He sometimes grabs me to get my attention. You know how I don’t always understand. He doesn’t intend to hurt me.”
Her father frowned. “This drinking has happened before?”
“His—his temperament is hampered by us living with his boss, Lucinda, and the girls. Dougie and me. And the boarders. Joseph, as both relative and a superior, it’s too much for him. It’s as though he’s never free of that prison.”
“I don’t like what happened today.” He shook his head. “Don’t pretend, Jane.” He called her by her given name only when he was deeply concerned.
“I won’t, Papa.” She kept her voice light. “I don’t think I am. No. Today . . . it must be the pressures and perhaps how excluded he felt when I insisted we set up the distillery without him. I didn’t handle it well. I should have been more attentive to his feelings.”
“A man who uses his family as an excuse for his own moral demise doesn’t speak well of his future or his family’s. You remember that.”
“I’ll try.”
“And there is no excuse for his not protecting Douglas. That’s unforgivable. I’ll speak to him myself about that.”
“No, Papa. This is my trial.” She pulled the covers over her son. “I’ll deal with him and Dougie. I will.”
Jennie called up the stairs when Joseph and Lucinda and the girls came down for the morning meal. No one answered. She walked up, dreading what she’d find. Charles wasn’t there. He must have risen early and threaded his way through the sleeping people on the floor, as she’d heard nothing and no one else woke either. His uniform no longer hung on the hook and she was surprised at her relief. Until that moment she had worried he might leave out of humiliation for what he’d done and she might not ever find him. What if he didn’t come home?
Back outside, she checked on the oil, then woke Dougie and fed him, finished sending her parents and George off as Joseph and the boarders left for work.
Dougie talked with his cousins, seemed unaffected by what had happened. “Where’s Papa?”
“At work, I imagine. We’ll see him later.”
“Why don’t you take him for a walk,” Lucinda suggested. “Get some fresh air in him.”
Jennie should have thought of that. “Would you like to visit Aunt Ariyah?”
“All right.” The boy was docile as a lamb despite his sleep being interrupted every hour. “Carry me, Mama? Like last night?”
Her ribs still hurt. “Oh, no, you’re a big boy. Last night was special and I had your grandpa’s horse to help me hold you. Your uncle George too.”
“All right.” He let her take his hand and they made their way to Ariyah’s. Jennie had known this vivacious woman since their school days. She’d never teased Jennie when she’d struggled with her words, could make her laugh. She dressed and cooked with a flair. Ariyah lived with her parents, a happy arrangement. Jennie heard piano music as they turned up the path to the stone steps. That’s new. The ship from San Francisco must have brought the instrument. She hadn’t even known that Ariyah could play. Jennie chastised herself, always so wrapped up within her own world, her own wonderings. What else had been going on in Ariyah’s world that Jennie had missed?
She knocked on the door. Someone played a Bach concerto. Jennie could almost hear the violins and cellos as she’d heard them played in a big church back in Chicago before they’d headed west. She let herself get lost inside the music, stepping across the tops of the notes, whisking her from worry and uncertainty to momentary pleasure. Even Dougie held her hand and listened. It would be his first time to hear piano music of any kind. How lovely that Bach introduced him.
“Ariyah, I had no idea,” Jennie told her friend when she opened the door. “You have a piano and you play.”
“My new beau ordered it in.” The music began again. “And he’s the one making music.”
She motioned them to follow her, a blonde twist with black combs climbed up the back of her head. She stood nearly six feet tall. Striking. Her beau played beautifully. When they entered the spacious room with natural light falling on the dark piano wood, he stopped and rose, smiling at Ariyah as though they were alone in the room.
How Jennie longed for that look of devotion to be on her husband’s face; prayed for its return.
Ariyah introduced them to Peleg, her beau, his dark eyes and olive skin spoke to his Spanish heritage.
“How wonderful to hear piano music once again,” Jennie said. “I’d forgotten how much comfort it could bring.”
“Peleg seemed to know it was just what I needed too,” Ariyah offered.
“Love seeks to see always with fresh eyes,” Peleg said with a thick accent. “It is so, is it not, my Ariyah?”
“Fresh eyes, yes. And fresh ears too.”
She put her arm around Jennie’s waist, led Dougie to the second piano stool as Peleg sat back down. “Put your hand here.”
Dougie looked to Jennie for confirmation. She nodded.
“We give a little lesson, sí?” And the kind man placed his hands over Dougie’s and plunked a simple tune.
Her son looked up and smiled. “I play, Mama.”
“Yes, you do.”
Music might be a way to reach her son. People responded to different ways of mending. She considered telling Ariyah what had transpired in recent days but didn’t. She didn’t want her friend judging Charles. And she didn’t want to watch Ariyah’s eyes grow sad with Jennie’s news. She’d keep the pain to herself and find a way to bring Charles to a restorative place. Wasn’t that what families did for each other?