LITMIR.BIZ

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relaxed, I can work better.”

      “Do you see many more patients now that so many doctors are helping in the war?”

      “I sure do. Two of the other doctors with offices in this building are on hospital ships somewhere in the Pacific.” He looked at her. “I love hearing stories from my patients, especially those involved in the war effort. Now,” he said, fixing her with a pointed stare, “you were telling me about Red?”

      She smiled at him, relaxing further, enjoying the chance to talk about her favorite subject. “Before Red’s father died, the Meyers had two hundred acres of prime farmland along the James River. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Meyers sold off a parcel of land every couple of years to the town, which was expanding and needed more room.”

      “To help get her family through the depression?” the doctor asked.

      “Yes, even though Red warned her not to sell. He feels they could’ve gotten by without selling. It would’ve been worth more with the James River becoming part of a new lake, with a dam south of a tiny burg called Branson. That would’ve made her property lakefront. Now I guess it doesn’t matter, though, since they had to put the plans on hold for the dam when war struck.”

      “Sounds as if Red is a smart man.”

      “Yes, but he comes by it honest. Lilly, his mother, opened their big house to paying guests. She did so well with it she was able to help send her two older kids to university in Kansas City.”

      “What about Red’s education?” Dr. Cox asked.

      Bertie shrugged. “He didn’t go to college.”

      “Why not?”

      “He knew his mother needed help with the guesthouse. He loves working with livestock, and he’s won blue ribbons at the state fair for the cheese he cultured from their cows’ milk.”

      “So he gave up his opportunity to go to college to help with the family business,” the doctor said. “He sounds like quite a man. It looks to me as if you and your young man are a perfect match.”

      She shrugged, studying the neat work the doctor was doing on her hand.

      Dr. Cox paused for a moment, frowning at her. “Am I detecting some hesitation about him?”

      She shrugged. “We only started dating a few weeks before he went off to war.”

      “Maybe it took the war to show him how much he cared about you.”

      Then why had Red stopped writing now that the war with the Germans was over? “I know why everyone suddenly wants to see stardust,” she said. “Life’s too scary right now. When all this began, a body didn’t want to think he might go off to some strange land and die without ever knowing if someone besides his folks could love him. Later, when he comes back alive and whole, he might change his mind. He might find someone he likes better.”

      Dr. Cox placed salve over the sutured wound, then gently wrapped gauze around her finger. “I like my theory better.”

      Bertie looked into the doctor’s sincere gray eyes. “I hope you’re right.” But he didn’t know enough about Red to judge.

      “There you go, Roberta,” he told her as he finished bandaging her finger. He gave her final instructions for sutures to be removed in ten days.

      She thanked him and walked back out to the waiting room, where she found Connie, the company nurse, reading a magazine and chuckling at a “Joe and Willie” war cartoon.

      Connie looked up at Bertie and grimaced at the bandage on her finger. “Guess you’ll be put on special duty.”

      “No need,” Bertie said. “I’m right-handed.”

      Connie got up, shaking her head. “You don’t know Franklin Parrish, kiddo. Last gal who cut herself was transferred out of his department. He’s about as easy to work with as a porcupine. You may find that out soon enough.”

      Chapter Five

      The train slowed at a long uphill curve, and Red saw Lake Taneycomo gleaming in the sunshine out his window. Not much farther now. He started watching for familiar landmarks: the big cedar that’d been hit twice by lightning and lost most of its branches, but kept on thriving; the rocky cliff that looked like half a huge teacup—one of the area’s bald knobs, where it was rumored that the old vigilante gang, the Bald Knobbers, sometimes met when preparing to raid a farmer’s land.

      He remembered riding the train to Springfield with his mother and listening to stories from old-timers about the places along the tracks that had been raided by that gang, the owners forced from their land with threats of beatings or burned homes—or death.

      That had happened just before the railroad came in. It had become evident later that the vigilante gang had had inside knowledge about its course. Many men became rich when they later sold their ill-gotten land to the railroad.

      Red closed his eyes, wondering when his mind would stop wandering to brutality and the ugliness of humankind. When he looked again, the first buildings of the tiny burg of Branson came into view.

      The train continued toward the Hollister station, a short jaunt south. He wasn’t sure what kind of a ride his mother would’ve arranged, what with the gasoline rationing and so few cars in town, anyway. Could be she’d come for him with the horse and buggy, unless she was in a hurry to get back to the house, and was able to convince one of the neighbors to take a car out of hibernation long enough to drive her.

      Lilly Meyer always said one of the big draws of the Meyer Guesthouse was her horse and buggy. In this new world of modern cars with all their speed and fancy buttons and gadgets, Ma believed her guests returned to Hideaway year after year because they wanted to be taken back to a time when life wasn’t so hectic.

      Red knew how it felt to be lulled into a sense of peace by the clopping of horse hooves instead of a smoking tailpipe.

      Many who did have automobiles in Hideaway had followed Lilly Meyer’s lead and parked their cars for the rest of the war. They rode their horses or bicycles to town when they needed to shop or have a haircut or deliver goods. The gasoline was left to the farmers in the rest of the country, who needed to supply food to the troops.

      Most farmers around Hideaway still used mules as their power source for plowing and wagon pulling, cutting hay and reaping corn. This way they didn’t have to fret about the shortages as much. They could save for other things.

      Red had discovered just how well-off he and his neighbors had been in Hideaway by talking to other soldiers who’d come from farms across the Midwest. His hometown had five hundred and fifteen of the best people he’d ever known. That was why the population had doubled in the past ten years, smack dab in the middle of the depression, and that was why it would keep growing long after the war ended. Why, he could even see it doubling again in time, maybe to a thousand or more.

      The train stopped at the Hollister station. He looked out the window for signs of his ma. Other men in uniform left the train, including Ivan, who glanced back in Red’s direction and waved. They’d see each other soon enough. Ivan could never resist Ma’s cooking.

      Red waited, watching happy reunions taking place on the train ramp. Two soldiers and an airman stepped off, uniforms proudly decorated, as Ivan’s was. Many were probably home for good after the victory in Europe.

      Home. It was the one thing everyone in the field dreamed about and talked about most.

      Until now, Red hadn’t been any different. He slid his left hand down the side of his thigh to his knee, where shrapnel had ripped into the muscle and bone. He’d been held in the stateside hospital for three weeks, with daily injections of some new drug called penicillin that was supposed to kill the infection.

      He didn’t know how well it had worked. The surgeon had told him the bone looked good, the infection gone, but for some reason his brain didn’t seem to be getting the message he was healed.

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