Rebekah let the top of the door fall to waist level. Her arm muscles screamed for mercy. “I have to get you up these stairs, and I am going to have to do it fast.” She yanked as hard as she possibly could as she stepped backward through their open front door. The bottom of the door stretcher cleared the three steps with a thud.
Thank you, God.
Her muscles throbbed, but she could not sit him down yet. Glass shards glittered across the floor, and the living room couch, where she had nursed the bopplin only hours before, was covered with sparkling splinters of glass. “Oh Joseph, I am at a loss. What do I do now?”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she sniffled. “If I put you down, I fear I may never get you up again.”
Her legs began to shake, and she squeezed shut her eyes to keep the tears of defeat from spilling out in victory.
“My, my! You obviously need a hand, young lady,” a familiar voice said.
She opened her eyes and dared a peek at the door. “Fogarty! What an answered prayer.”
Thomas peeked out from behind him as the older man dashed to relieve Rebekah of her screen door litter. “I brought him as fast as I could,” Thomas whispered, “once he finished putting the leeches on Pa.” He shivered with disgust.
“Good job, little brudder. I did not know what I was going to do.”
“Where would you like him?” Fogarty asked.
Rebekah crumpled to the floor. “I…I…glass is on the living room couch, so we cannot use that.” She closed her eyes again, but this time out of pure exhaustion. “Upstairs? In our bed?”
Fogarty had her sick husband untied and upstairs before she could make her eyes properly focus.
“His leg,” she called weakly. “Both of them. Thomas…”
Something patted her hand. “Do not worry Sissy. I will tell him.”
She tried to answer, to tell them she was right behind them, but the truth of the matter was, getting Joseph into the house had exhausted her in a way she had never been exhausted before. I will close my eyes for just a moment, then I will be there.
The words swirled in her mind, but try as they might, could not find their way past her lips.
Chapter Seven
When Rebekah woke up, her eyelids may well have been made of stone. The sun had long set, and someone had helped her into a dining room chair. She vaguely remembered it but thought it had been a dream. In her dream, Fogarty, Thomas, and strangely Dawson, had helped her to a horse trough. After a few moments of standing before it, someone had dunked her head in, but she did not care. She kept it there. Dreams are funny like that.
Apparently, life had imitated her dream state. She had laid her head on the table and a puddle of drool marked where she’d slept.
Her heart began to thunder as she roused herself awake.
Joseph!
Dawson!
The glass!
Fogarty!
Thomas!
Her voice was a few steps behind her foggy mind. Thankfully, she was not alone.
“Well now. Did you have a good nap, young lady?”
As her eyes began to focus, Fogarty came into view. He sat across the table from her, in Joseph’s seat, with her happy sohn in his lap. Thomas, however, was nowhere to be seen.
“Mr. Fogarty, danke,” she tried to stand. Her legs refused to allow it. She sank back into the chair. “I hope he has not been too much trouble for you.”
“Quite the contrary. In my younger days, I went down Virginia way and fell in love with a pretty little lass named Julie Ann. Made her my wife, and life led us to Louisiana. She left this world before me, but not before she gave me two sons and a daughter.” His eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “We relocated here and there. Louisiana to Minnesota and everywhere in between.”
“What took you so many places?”
“Many reasons really. But the most notable of them all?” Fogarty chuckled. “Baseball.”
Rebekah wrinkled her nose. “Baseball?”
He nodded. “1876-1880. Cincinnati Reds.”
Rebekah’s tired eyes widened. “Is that so?”
“You are looking at their center fielder until a head injury took me out of the lineup. Not too terribly long after that, I moved to Minnesota and learned to barber.” He sighed. “Now, I am an old man and miss my grandchildren a great deal. So being here this afternoon has been as much of a blessing to me as it was for you and Joseph.”
“Joseph,” she began but was interrupted by a yawn. When the yawn finished, so did she with her spoken thought. “How is he? And how is Thomas?”
Fogarty stood up. “How about you come see for yourself?”
Slowly, Rebekah followed Fogarty up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with Joseph. There he lay, like a corpse, in the bed they shared. Their quilt was pulled up to his chin, revealing only a taste of the horrors it covered. His head, bandaged, and his face, ashen. A chair sat at the head of the bed with a sleeping Thomas holding it down.
“He has not left Joseph’s side for more than a minute or two at a time since I brought him up,” Fogarty said. “Said he promised you he would look after him and, as he said, he was a man of his word.” Fogarty chuckled. “And quite a little man he is.”
