One Shenandoah Winter (20 page)

Nathan gave a slow nod. “The other doctors, they were able to put it aside. I watched them, Connie. I know it's true, what I'm saying. They would leave the building and shrug off everything that was inside like they were taking off a lab coat.” He marveled anew at their ability. “I knew they were right when they said I needed to do it. But I couldn't. I tried. But the work and all those suffering little kids, they trapped me. I carried them and their parents with me everywhere.”

“You poor man.” She reached across the table and took his hand. Her fingers were solid and warm and real. “You cared too much.”

There in the restaurant, there with this woman, Nathan felt the old burning rise up once more. He felt the pain in his heart sear its way upward, and yet this time there was a rightness. He swallowed hard, and said, “They were such good kids, Connie. They deserved so much more than I could give them. They deserved a
life
.”

She did not respond, except to release his hand and sit back and give him the space to collect himself.

He inspected the darkening vista for a time, then turned to look out over the restaurant. The walls were huge panes of glass supported by broad stone sheaths. The wall opposite the kitchen contained an inglenook fireplace with a hand-beaten copper flange. The ceiling was high and supported by a dozen beams the length and breadth of large trees.

When Nathan finally turned back to her and started to grimace an apology, she cut him off by saying, “My folks were killed when I was sixteen. I suppose you've heard that around town. It was one of those senseless things, a logging truck took a turn too wide, clipped their car, and sent them off the ledge. One minute alive and the greatest parents anybody ever had. The next and . . .”

It was her turn to look out over the valley. Then, “I think I've been living from my own fair-sized rage ever since. Only now, when I need it most, I seem to have lost the ability.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Somehow it feels like Poppa Joe's taken the rage from me.” When Connie kept her gaze on the window and did not respond, he gave into the pressure of the thought welling up from inside. “I don't know if I can put this into words, but the whole time I was up there with him on the mountain, I felt like I was surrounded by a mystery. Everywhere I looked, I was seeing something I couldn't put into words. Something I wasn't actually seeing at all.” He stopped, shrugged helplessly. “That sounds silly, doesn't it?”

“I don't think it sounds silly at all.” She resumed her canted inspection of him. “He told me about how he was hoping you could help give him something to grant his passage meaning.”

“Another mystery, another challenge. He is one amazing old man.”

“You've got some amazements of your own.” Connie managed a small smile. “Letting an old man's ruminations bother you so.”

“I feel like he's settled this responsibility on my shoulders,” Nathan confessed.

“And you're not minding?”

“No.” Definite about that. “To be honest, I like it. Doesn't make it any easier to do, but the challenge itself feels, well, good.”

“It draws you close to him,” Connie murmured.

“Yes, it does.” Darkness had swallowed the hillside and the clouds and the surrounding mountains, until now all he could see was the beckoning earthbound stars, and a ribbon of light where the highway traffic continued to stream. He saw Connie check her watch and took it as a signal to say, “I suppose we'd better be going.”

The drive down was quiet and comforting. He took the curves easy, both because he did not know the road and because he was in no hurry to have the evening end. Finally he pulled into Connie's drive, cut the motor, and sat listening to the quiet winter night.

He said, “This has been great.” Then he wished he had not spoken at all, for the words were so inadequate for what he felt.

Connie stirred in the seat beside him. “I was just thinking about something Hattie said to me a while ago. It was back when I used to baby-sit Dawn. One night Hattie and Chad came in from an evening do somewhere, and she told me it had done them a world of good to just get away and talk.”

Nathan could only see her silhouette, a strong jaw, and an occasional glint of light catching her eyes. Eyes that held so much intelligence and life and down-to-earth common sense. He heard the sadness in her voice and started to reach out and touch her shoulder, but hesitated, not sure if she wanted it, not sure if she were still aware of where she was and who she was with.

“I asked Hattie, how could she need time to talk, she and Chad were in that store together sixteen hours a day. Hattie told me this was different. When they got away like that, it felt as though for those few hours everything was right with the world. Their problems weren't just a thousand miles away, they belonged to somebody else entirely.” Connie turned to him then, and said softly, “I never understood what she was talking about. Until right now.”

Twenty-Three

O
n Monday morning, three days before Christmas, Connie pushed through the loveliest two doors in all of Pritchard County. The rosewood frames had been carved by old Mr. Langdon himself, Duke's grandfather. Art deco vines crept around the central lead panes, with hand-sized lilies sprouting in profusion. Overhead yet another carving, this one curved in a half-moon shape, framed the old gilt letters declaring this to be Langdon's Emporium. Poppa Joe and many of the other old timers still called this the Emporium, and remembered when it was the finest place for shopping this side of Charlottesville.

The store's marble-clad interior rang with the sound of Christmas. It was more bright joy than she had heard that season, almost more than she could bear. Connie walked straight up to the first shop assistant. She vaguely recognized the young lady from church, so she dredged up a semblance of a smile before demanding, “Is Duke around?”

“He's here somewhere, Miss Wilkes. I saw him earlier.” Her smile was as bright as her yellow chiffon dress. “Let me call upstairs.”

“Miss Connie?” Duke's voice spun her about. He walked over with a worried frown. “Something the matter with Poppa Joe?”

“Nothing more than usual.” She fought against the bloom of pain which his concern brought to her chest. Which was passing strange. People all over town asked about little else. “Can we talk?”

“Oh. Yes, ma'am, I suppose we can.” All the air left that big frame, spaced with the words. Duke led her toward the back. “It's about Dawn and me, isn't it.”

“Yes.” She knew her voice was clipped, and she found herself wishing for an instant that the familiar old anger was still there to draw on. But its absence had become a part of nursing Poppa Joe, as though the love she tried to show the old man dispelled her ability to fight against the world. And she would allow nothing to come between herself and his own last few days.

Which meant that when Duke ushered her through the back double doors and into the quiet coffee alcove for the store's employees, she felt as deflated as he looked. “Duke, what on earth am I going to do with you?”

“Miss Connie, I wish there was something I could say that would make it all right. I done everything I know how. I practiced all sorts of speeches, I prayed myself silly. I talked to the pastor, I talked to Hattie and Chad, I talked with Dawn until we're both sick of talking. I even talked with Poppa Joe.”

“What did he say?”

Duke turned shameful. “I wish you wouldn't ask me that, Miss Connie.”

“But I am.” Connie allowed herself to be settled into a chair by the corner table. “What did Poppa Joe tell you, Duke?”

The young man lowered himself into a chair opposite her and sighed another set of words. “He said you did just fine, for a lady who insisted on walking forwards while looking backwards.”

The insight cut like a knife, so much that she drew back. Duke looked at her, frightened now. “I didn't mean on telling you, Miss Connie. Please don't get any madder than you already are.”

“I'm not mad,” she said weakly.

“You're not?”

“Oh, Duke, I wish I could be. But I can't. Poppa Joe's robbed me of all my anger. He's left me nothing but my fears.” She couldn't even draw up a tear, just a hollow sense of defeat and a voice that rang flat in her own ears. “Do you really think it's right for you to marry Dawn?”

His face took on such a fierce resolution she found her breath catching in her throat. “Yes, ma'am. I do. And so does Dawn.”

“But she's so young.”

There was a trace of Poppa Joe there, a sense of looking back through time to the younger uncle she still remembered in the darkness of her lonely nights. “I know that. But I tell you something, Miss Connie. In some ways she's already got more in that head and heart than most women twice her age.”

Again Connie felt the commonsense strength pushing at her. When she did not respond, Duke went on. “I know what you see when you look at me. You see a country bumpkin. The only thing I ever did right in my life was choosing my folks.”

“Duke—”

“Now hold on, Miss Connie. You done let me get started. I won't take long.” Duke took a breath. “I'm not smart like you or Dawn. But I do know if I kept this store all to myself, I'd run it straight into the ground.”

Before, she had seen him as a vacuum dressed up in a handsome form and a fine face and a shock of dark hair. But there was a keenness to his voice and his gaze that startled her. Here was one who held to hillfolk honesty, even when the sharpness of fair observation cut like a skinning knife.

Duke continued, “Dawn, now, she's got the smarts for both of us. And she loves me for what I am.”

“What are you, Duke?” And she meant it. Connie no longer felt as though she knew. As though up to now she had only seen what she had feared—a threat to her tenuous position with Dawn.

“I'm a simple-hearted mountain boy. I love these hills and this valley and this town. I love the Lord, and I love my Dawn. I aim on doing right by all of them. All my life long.” He sat up straight, and in that moment his shoulders looked broad enough to bear the burdens of this entire town. “But I need help. I need somebody who'll have the brains to teach me what I can learn, and help me through what I can't. Dawn's like that, Miss Connie.”

“I know,” she murmured, and swiped at the burning at the edges of her eyes. Why now? Why should she feel so defeated and crushed? How was it possible to try so hard to do what was right, and end up getting one thing after another so horribly wrong?

Duke leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees. His eyes were fired with a direct force, undimmed by years or disguise. “Miss Connie, Dawn's gonna be my right hand here in Langdon's. My folks want to retire, and they been worried about what's gonna happen once I take over. Leastwise, they were. But we've spent a lot of nights talking, the four of us. They're settled in their thinking now. Dawn's showed 'em. She's as good with them as she is with everybody. They love her, Miss Connie. They've taken to calling Dawn the daughter they didn't ever have.”

But what about me
, Connie wanted to cry.
Who's going to be my little girl?
But she could not speak. There was nothing to be said. Nothing at all.

Connie forced herself to her feet. “I have to be going. Tell Dawn I'm happy for her. And for you.”

“Miss Connie, please—”

But she could not take any more right then. She had to get away and think about it. She spoke, though the words felt like dust to her tongue. “Tell Dawn my Christmas gift to the both of you is my blessing.”

Twenty-Four

T
he daily change in Poppa Joe grew ever sharper. When Nathan arrived on Christmas Eve he tried to keep his anxiety trapped inside, but both Connie and Hattie clearly noticed how Poppa Joe's decline rocked him. The old man was scarcely able to sit upright in the wheelchair. His face looked as if it belonged on a cadaver.

Connie greeted him with a voice twisted by worry. “You come in here and talk some sense to him.”

Nathan stepped into the parlor and squatted down by the wheelchair. Poppa Joe looked at him with eyes both weak and determined. “They're having the evening service to mark our Savior's birth. I ain't missed it in fifty years. More.”

Nathan started to speak, started to play the role he had been trained for. But something in that face stopped him. “You really want to put yourself through this?”

Up close the doddering was constant, the stress caused by keeping his head upright painfully evident. Poppa Joe murmured, “Help me, son. Please.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Distressed,” came the rasping reply. Even this close to the end, the eyes probed with focused passion. “Sorely distressed. Wish I knew what I'm gonna take to set before my Lord.”

He patted the old man's arm, the movement in time to the carillon toll of his own heart. In that instant he realized the plea for assistance was not just over going to church that night. Nathan could see the ticking of the clock, the draining away of any opportunity to respond to the old man's challenge, there upon his ravaged features. “You don't want an injection now, I take it.”

A fraction of a headshake. “Only put me to sleep. Maybe the Lord'll speak to me in His house. Got to be awake to hear.”

Nathan swiveled around to where Connie and Hattie stood with shoulders touching, taking comfort from each other's closeness. He watched Connie wring her hands, striving to hold to her composure, seeing how she wanted to yell and order and push her weight about. Yet he sensed she was held by the same force that was directing him.

Nathan asked, “Who do we know that has a truck and won't have left for church yet?”

The question caught them both off guard. Hattie recovered first and glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Duke Langdon was coming by our place to pick up Dawn in about five minutes.”