Dorothy Garlock [Dolan Brothe After the Parade (epub)

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.Now that he was here, what was it but one small lonely speck in all the vast universe?Johnny watched the sun sink slowly beneath the horizon before he made a move to go into the house.The craving for a drink of cold well water stirred him to his feet.He removed the key from a small pouch in his bag, unlocked and pushed open the door.Oh, Lord! It was so dearly familiar that it brought moisture to his eyes.The green overstuffed chair and couch he and Kathleen had bought a week after they married were just as he had left them.The table where the battery-powered radio had sat now held a kerosene lamp with a shiny chimney.Electricity still hadn’t made its way to the Circle H.A large framed picture of a covered wagon on the trail west hung on the wall over the couch.On the opposite wall was a picture of an Indian on a tired horse.Kathleen said it was called Trail’s End and, because she liked it so much, had named one of the stories she wrote for the Western Story Magazine after the painting.Johnny eased his duffel bag down to the floor and took off his sailor hat.From the peg on the wall he lifted the battered Stetson and rolled it around in his hands for a long moment before he set it on his head.It felt strange and…big.He returned it to the peg.In the doorway leading into the kitchen, he stood for a long while, letting his eyes take in every familiar detail.The room was spotlessly clean.The windows shiny.The blue-and-white checkered curtains were freshly ironed.On the table was a square cloth with flowers embroidered in the corners.A mason jar with a ribbon tied around the neck was filled with yellow tiger lilies and brown-eyed daisies.A note was propped against it.Johnny’s fingers trembled when he picked it up.Welcome home, Johnny.I am truly thankful that you came home safe and sound.We will need to meet soon and tie up the loose ends of our lives so we can get on with whatever is ahead.I have an apartment above the Stuart Drugstore.Your dinner is on the stove.Adelaide made your favorite chocolate cake.KathleenJohnny replaced the note carefully against the jar as if he hadn’t touched it.She was in Rawlings and hadn’t come to the depot to meet him, nor had she showed her face in the crowd that lined the street.You are a stupid fool, John Henry.Get her out of your mind.It is over.He went through the kitchen to stand in the doorway of the tiny room she had fixed up as a place where she could write her stories.It, too, was spotlessly clean.What caught his eye first was the table he had given her for her typewriter when she first came to Rawlings.The typewriter was gone, as was every other trace of her.He went back through the kitchen to the bedroom.The fluffy white curtains Kathleen had bought were freshly washed.The white chenille spread with a spray of blue and pink flowers in the middle covered the bed without a wrinkle.The multicolor rag rug was still at his side of the bed.Kathleen had put it there after he had complained about putting his bare feet on the cold floor.Nothing of Kathleen’s remained in the room, not even their wedding picture, which had stood on the bureau.But she had been here, cleaned the house, and taken her things.Had she taken the picture? He went to the bureau and opened the top drawer.There it was, facedown, on the folded flannel shirts.She hadn’t wanted it.He gazed at the smiling faces for a long while.He was wearing a dark suit, the first one he had ever owned.Kathleen’s dress was blue with short puffed sleeves and a V-neckline.His wedding present, a locket in the form of a book, hung from a chain around her neck.Inside the locket, he remembered, were their faces.Kathleen had cut them out of a photo taken at a rodeo.Her hair, fluffed on top, hung to her shoulders in soft curls.Her eyes were laughing, her lips parted and smiling.He remembered how proud he was that day on a street in Vernon when they met a cowpuncher he knew who worked the rodeos, and he introduced her as his wife.The man couldn’t take his eyes off her.Johnny looked at himself in the photo that had been taken the day after they married; the second happiest day of his life.He had lived two lifetimes since that day.Had he ever been that young and happy and so crazy in love that he foolishly believed he, with his trashy background, would be a fit mate for a woman like Kathleen?He looked up at his image in the mirror above the bureau.Crinkly lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.The skin on his face stretched over his high cheekbones.He had never looked more like his ancestors who roamed the plains hundreds of years ago than he did now.His hair was still thick but shorter than when he left for the service.Some of the men in his battalion had lost their hair in the hot, humid jungle.Suddenly feeling the pressure of his lonely homecoming bearing down on him, he set the photo on the bureau and took one more glance around.His eyes were drawn to the bed where he and Kathleen had spent endless, wonderful nights making love.Did she miss the cuddling, the whispers, the slow loving kisses, and the passion they had shared? Did she have it now with someone else? The thought sent shards of pain knifing through him.Shaking his head to rid his mind of the thought, he went quickly to the back door and out of the house.Chapter TwoKathleen watched the parade pass, unaware of the tears that wet her cheeks.Her eyes fastened on Johnny until he was out of sight.He looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but sitting on that hayrack being paraded through the town.He appeared older, thinner.Was it the tight, sailor uniform that made him look so thin? He had seen and done unimaginable things in the jungles of the Pacific; they were bound to have taken a toll on him.She had tried to make his homecoming more pleasant by cleaning his house.When she went to collect her personal things, she had found the house littered with mouse droppings and covered with layer upon layer of red Oklahoma dust.After packing her car with what she intended to take with her, she had begun scrubbing and cleaning the house, handling with loving care the things she and Johnny had bought the first few weeks after they were married: a tin measuring cup, a mixing bowl, and a set of glasses.She washed the multicolor Fiesta dishes given to them by the McCabes for a wedding present and returned them to the shelves.The second day she had brought out the washtubs and, while crying what she was sure was a bucket of tears, washed the clothes he had left behind.She laundered bed linens, towels, and curtains.As soon as she took the dried clothes from the line she sprinkled and ironed them, put them away and rehung the curtains at the windows and on the strings that stretched across the kitchen shelves.The chore brought to mind how Johnny hated her having to use the scrub board and had insisted that they buy a washing machine with a gasoline motor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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