Between Earth and Sky(58)

She visited Charles each afternoon in the infirmary, spoon-feeding him broth and relaying whatever bits of gossip she thought might raise his spirits. He rarely smiled. Pain and despondence deadened his eyes. George had been right on one account. Charles needed his family.

Today, on her way from the kitchen with Charles’s lunch tray, she stopped at her father’s study. “Any news of Charles’s family?”

Her father looked up from the stack of newly opened letters on his desk. “What?”

“Charles’s parents. It’s been two weeks since the accident. Surely they’re on their way.”

“I thought it best not to worry them. Dr. Austin says the boy’s condition is stable.”

“They don’t even know?” Her fingers clenched around the tray. “He’d benefit so from their company.”

“What do you suggest? Have his family journey two hundred miles—in midwinter no less—when all they could do here is fret?”

She realized in that moment how glib her remark—the white man alone being able to heal Charles’s injury—must have sounded to George that night by the well. Doc Austin saved the boy’s life, it was true. His injury would heal. Nothing in the doctor’s black bag could heal his melancholy, though. “Think of what comfort it would bring him to have his family by his side.”

Her father’s attention drifted back to his letters. “The Lord comforts his people and will—”

“I know. Have compassion on his afflicted ones.” Alma sighed, still hovering by the doorway. “Couldn’t we send Mr. Simms with the sleigh?”

He groped for his magnifying glass, speaking even as he read. “The school could hardly do without him for so many days.”

“Oh, Father.” She stomped to his desk, set down the tray, and grabbed his silver-rimmed glasses. Soup sloshed from the bowl. “Just use your spectacles.”

“The writing here is terribly small. How is one ever expected—” He reached for his glasses, but Alma kept hold. At last, his eyes ventured upward. “Sit down, kitten.”

She dragged forward a plain straight-backed chair. He took her hand and patted it. “You’ve always been such a sweet girl. Your concern over Charles does you credit. But he will be just fine. The Lord is watching over him. We are his family now.”

“But his arm . . . perhaps if his parents cannot make the journey to Stover, Charles could be taken to them once he is well enough to travel.”

Her father stiffened. “No, such talk is out of the question. If he were to go to the reservation now, it’s likely he would never return. And what would he do there? Without an arm he would become nothing more than a beggar, wallowing his life away on the agency’s doorstep.”

Her father’s blue eyes had grown wide and cold. She looked down. Her free hand fell to her side, her fingers sliding over the chair’s unvarnished wood.

“But—”

“After Charles heals we’ll start straightaway teaching him a skill, a trade he can perform, limited as he is. That’s what’s best for him, for his future, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. I know the event was traumatic. I’m sorry you were there to see it.” He let go of her hand and turned his eyes back to the pile of correspondence. “Keep Charles in your prayers and encourage the other girls to do so as well. That’s the best thing you can do for him.”

A splinter pricked the pad of her thumb. She pulled it out and sucked away the blood. Why couldn’t he see?

“The boy’s soup, Alma, it’s getting cold.”

She returned the chair to its corner—this time without scraping its legs atop the floor—and crept from the room with Charles’s tray. Before closing the door, she looked again at her father. He sat straight now, spectacles in place, his finger tracking his place on the paper. Naught but the dinner gong would break his attention. He’d grown stout these years. Veins the width of thread crisscrossed his cheeks beneath his waxen skin.

Inside the infirmary, Charles lay beneath a shrouded window in the corner. Two other beds crowded the tiny room. Other students, hacking and feverish, intermittently filled them. Today, they both lay empty.

Alma set the tray atop the bedside table and pulled back the curtains. Charles squinted in the onslaught of light and scooted up into a semi-seated position. His face had regained only a hint of color. The hollows of his eyes were dark and sunken. It was hard for Alma to look at him and not recall that night—the blood, the screams, the saw. For his sake, she hoped Charles remembered none of it.

She drew the room’s lone chair up beside the bed and reached for the soup.

“I can feed my own self, Azaadiins.”

“Yes, of course.” She perched the food tray on a pillow atop his lap.

With a shaky left hand, he grabbed the spoon and sank it into the soup. His other limb was nothing more than a bandaged nub. Alma looked down but watched him eat through the corner of her eye. The spoon wobbled, but the yellow broth did not spill.

“I used to do everything with this hand until I came here and Miss Wells made me learn it all over again with my other. She’s vicious with her ruler stick.” A smirk flashed across his face. “She won’t have no more choice now.”

Alma had no reply.