Excerpt
Coy took the front steps of the tall yellow house two at a time and pounded on the door. The boy’s thin shoulders heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. “Doc Olsen! Hey, Doc Olsen,” he yelled.
Mrs. Olsen opened the door, but Coy squinted past her to the dining room where a tall figure leaned on the table toward a cup lifted in one hand. “You gotta git over to the Brennans’, Doc. Miz Brennan’s ‘bout to have her baby!”
Dr. Olsen took a hurried last sip and slid his chair back. Taking his coat off a halltree in the corner, he stretched his long arms into it as he crossed the front room in easy strides. “Daniel send you, Coy?”
“Yessir,” replied the boy. “Tol’ me to run and don’t stop till I got here.”
Dr. Olsen exclaimed what sounded like a cuss word and emphasized it with an impatient jerk of his head. The Bruces’ place was nearly three miles away. He looked down at Coy. “You gon’ be riding back with me?” he asked as he picked up his scuffed black kit and stepped out onto the porch.
“Naw, don’t reckon so, Doc,” smiled Coy. “‘Less you want me to,” he added. He hesitated, sparse blonde eyebrows raised in question.
“No, no,” the doctor assured him. “Whatever you want.” Coy smiled and turned and strode off toward Edmonds’ Store, and Dr. Olsen gave his wife a relieved glance. Coy was thirteen and not yet persuaded as to the virtues of full-body bathing.
In a matter of minutes Dr. Olsen was on the road to Daniel Brennan’s farm. He slumped forward, the reins firm in his big hands, and inhaled the tangy sweet smell of new growth rising to his nostrils. With one finger he shoved his hat back to allow a clear view of springtime’s velvet touch on this place he loved. Here in the rolling foothills of the ancient blue mountains of Virginia, summers were a swelter of heat and humidity, autumns were short and unpredictable and the winters harsh. Ah, but springtime made up for it all. From the erupting buds of the hardwoods to the creamy crosses of wild dogwoods blinking in their shelter, the land awakened, yawned and stretched out her branches to him. Beneath it all lay a carpet of emerging green that spread from the shadowy cool shade of the woods to the tops of the undulating, rock-strewn pastures. He smiled fleetingly to himself as he pushed his backside against the leather tufts of the buggy seat, then a frown settled between his gilt brows. He had taken over the practice from a friend of his father at the turn of the new century and now, three years later, his patients came from every corner of the county. Some of those families held a special place in his affection, like Daniel and Nora Brennan and their girls. It was to their farm he was headed.
He watched the vista approach and glide steadily by on either side, giving his faithful horse soft rein on the familiar road until the low mossy bank on his left opened up into a wide gap. Daniel had inlaid the rutted entry with stones many times over the years, but with each freeze or rain the soil heaved and sank, tilting the rocks askew till riding over them was a hellish threat to a man’s very teeth.
Dr. Olsen pulled back on the reins and Prince slowed, navigating the turn with a series of clumsy jolts, lifts, and rocking until they were safely across the worst of it. Up ahead, set back in a grove of oaks and maples, the two-story clapboard house shimmered in the April sunshine. “Get up, Prince,” he ordered and slapped the straps lightly against the horse’s rump. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened as he squinted toward the wide front porch.
Nora Brennan’s health had been a concern to him since he’d known her, a joyous, happy creature whose ebullient spirit resided in a somewhat less robust frame. When he’d warned her that two pretty girls were enough to dote on, she had simply laughed. A moment later her face was serious and he knew as well as she that it was not always a matter of choosing. Drawing nearer to the house, he could see its life lines more clearly. It was a happy, lived-in house where he felt comfortable enough to pull in on a hot summer’s day, park himself on the porch, and send one of the girls to tell their mama he was there and could use a tall glass of something cool. The grain of the boards was visible through the whitewash and the screen-door wire bulged outward above and below the crosspiece. Four weathered rocking chairs leaned face forward against the house wall on the porch. He drew in his rig, climbed down and wrapped the reins around the railing, grabbed his satchel and reached the door just as it swung open.
Kate Brennan, her young face drawn with worry, gestured anxiously toward the stairs. As she scurried nervously on his heels, her younger sister rushed out of the parlor. Kate whirled and hoarsely commanded, “Aunt Esther said for you to stay downstairs, Corrie!” She looked back at the doctor who was almost to the top of the stairs, gave her sister another fierce look, and turned and fled after him.
Corrie’s face was defiant. “I’m nine going on ten and everybody treats me like a child,” she remarked loud enough for the doctor to hear. Then, after the briefest pause, she ran up the steps behind Kate and the doctor and tiptoed to catch a glimpse into the bedroom before the door closed. All she saw was her father’s back. Huffing indignantly, she went across the hall and leaned against the doorjamb of the room opposite.
In the silence Corrie fretted that Kate would get to see the new baby before she did. Then there were all those elusive grown-up happenings that pricked her ears when she overheard conversations, like live things wafting through the air around her that she could never quite grasp. She had so many questions, but everyone always said, “You’re too young” or “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
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