Skip Rock Shallows
By JAN WATSON
TYNDALE HOUSE PUBLISHERS, INC.
Copyright © 2012
Jan Watson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4143-3914-6
Chapter One
1908
Stanley James knew there'd been an accident before the blast
of the whistle shattered the stillness of the morning. He
felt the slightest tremor against the soles of his feet when
he bent to lace his high-top work boots. His arm jerked
and the rawhide string snapped. Coffee sloshed from his
cup and ran across the table like a tiny river overflowing its
bank. It dripped onto the knee of his just-ironed coveralls.
Stanley swore.
"There's no call for that purple language in my kitchen,"
Myrtie said in that disapproving way she had. She mopped
the spill with a bleach rag before he had a chance to move
out of the way.
"Wake the gal," Stanley said.
"It's early yet, Stanley, and she was up late last night."
It would be right pleasant, Stanley thought, if just once
Myrtie would do what he asked instead of throwing a wall
of words up against him.
Myrtie's eyes grew round as the first warning shrieked.
She covered her ears as if it came from right next door and
not a mile up the road.
"I'll go get her," she said, folding the rag on the tabletop.
Pausing at the door, she looked back. "Will you have time to
eat your breakfast?"
Stanley was at the cupboard getting down a box of carbide.
"Wrap up some biscuits and fix a thermos. We'll carry
it with us."
Myrtie hesitated.
"Wake the gal first, Myrtie. Tell her to shake a leg."
"Stanley, you've got no call to remark on her limbs."
"It's a saying!" Stanley shouted over the alert. "It means
hurry up."
"Don't be telling me what to do, Stanley James. I'll go as
fast as I want to."
It didn't much matter, Stanley thought. What good would
a slip of a gal be against an explosion or a cave-in?
* * *
Lilly Gray Corbett was awake. She liked to get up early and
climb partway up the mountain to attend to her devotionals
under a stand of regal pines. The trees looked down over the
valley, where wood-sided shotgun houses jostled each other
for elbow room. She leaned against the rough bark of one
of the trees, enjoying the fresh green scent of its needles,
searching in her Bible for a verse in Isaiah, the one about
being called.
When she heard the far-off whistle, her mouth went
dry. It was one thing to study about accidents and mangled
bodies, quite another to actually attend to one. Carefully, she
retraced her steps toward home.
Last night had gone well, though. The baby girl she'd
delivered slid into the world without as much as a thank-you.
The young mother would have done just as well without
Lilly's assistance. If you didn't count the number of births
she'd attended with her mentor, Dr. Coldiron, this had been
her first delivery—or baby catching, as her mother would say.
Maybe folks were beginning to trust her a little. She'd
been here at Skip Rock for two weeks, opening the doctor's
office daily, but last night was the first time she'd been
called out.
When she reached the end of the one-cow path, Mrs.
James met her. "Better hurry, Dr. Corbett. Stanley's in a
dither."
Lilly would like to see that—Mr. James in a dither. She'd
never seen him break a sweat. He was as deliberate as a plow
mule, and he worked just as hard.
Mrs. James ushered her around the side of the house like
she was a birthday present. "Lookee here, Stanley. I found her."
Mr. James looked Lilly up and down. "Them skirts ain't
going to work."
"Stanley James!"
"Get the gal some overhauls," he said, while fitting pebbles
of carbide into a small, round lamp. "We might be going down
in the hole."
Dressed and ready, Lilly hurried to catch up to Mr. James.
She nearly had to run to match his long stride. He didn't want
her there, she knew. In his world, women weren't doctors and
they didn't belong in the mines.
Lilly wasn't so sure she didn't agree about the mine part.
If her stepfather could see her now, he'd have a heart attack.
The overalls were too long and she kept tripping over
the hems. Mrs. James had cinched the waist with a piece
of twine, but still they ballooned around her. "I'll fix them
proper when you get back," she'd said. "Next time we'll be
ready."
Next time? Lilly swallowed hard. What had she gotten
herself into?
It seemed to Lilly that she was predestined to be a doctor.
Her mother was a natural healer. Her father and his father
had been medical doctors. It was in her blood, if not yet in
her bones.
She had earned her degreeat the end of May and before you
could say
whippersnapper was on her way to the mountains
to gain some experience. Sadly, the elderly doctor she was to
shadow had died just days before she arrived.
It was no wonder Mr. James's face had fallen when he met
her at the train station. He'd stared at the paper in his hand
and looked again at her. "Says here you're a man."
She set her hatboxes on the platform and stuck out her
hand. "I guess you can see I'm not."
Instead of shaking her hand, he waved the piece of paper
under her nose. "Larry Corbett? Larry's not a gal's name, and
a gal ain't a doctor."
"I'm Lilly, not Larry," she said. "Dr. Lilly Corbett." Doctor?
Would she ever get used to using that title?
Mr. James held the paper at arm's length, as older folks
do. "Humph," he said.
She picked up the two round, beribboned boxes and lifted
her chin. "Shall we proceed?"
What could the poor man do? He stuffed the paper in
his pocket and reached for the traveling trunk the porter
wheeled out. He said not a word on the buggy ride to her
lodgings and kept his face straight ahead. But every so often
his eyes would slide sideways as if he was taking her in. It was
obvious he found her wanting.
Mrs. James, on the other hand, seemed delighted to see
her. She fussed over Lilly as if she were a prodigal daughter as
she showed her to the one-room tar-paper shack out behind
their house. She even helped Lilly unpack, exclaiming over
each garment she hung from pegs beside the door.
"If this ain't the prettiest," she said when she unfolded
Lilly's long silk gown and her matching robe. She laid them
across the bed. "I ain't never seen the like."
"Thank you," Lilly said. "It was a gift from my aunt Alice.
I guess she thought I was going to Boston or New York."
"I never heard of them places," Mrs. James said. "Are they
over round Lexington? My sister's been to Lexington."
"They're just cities. Just big places." Lilly moved to one of
the two windows on either side of the door. "Does this raise?
Do you have a screen?"
Mrs. James's face colored. "No, I don't have such, but
I could tack a piece of greased paper over it, if you want it
open. It's clean. I washed it myself."
Lilly felt bad that she had embarrassed her benefactor.
The Jameses were kind to provide room and board for her in
exchange for a smallish stipend. It was all arranged through
the medical school and the mining company. Lilly would be
here for the summer practicing her trade.
"Goodness, no, this is fine," Lilly said. "I was thinking I
might like some fresh air, that's all."
"Best leave the winders down and the door closed. The air
here ain't as unsullied as it once was—it gathers in your lungs
and sets up like wallpaper paste. But you know, beggars can't
be choosers. We're that glad for the work. As Stanley says, it's
a clean breath or a day's pay."
Mrs. James took a snow-white rag from her apron pocket
and wiped the windowsill. "You can push it up after dark if
you want. Seems like the night dew settles the dust. I'll have
Stanley see if the company store carries ary winder screens."
Opening the door, she shook the rag out over the stone
stoop. "We're saving up, though. I got a money jar hid
behind the grease can." A wistful note crept into her voice.
"Soon's as we get a bit together, we're fixing to buy a place
over to Stoney. They ain't any mines besmirching the mountains
there."
Coming out of the memory, Lilly stopped for a second and
rolled up her pant legs. She would take scissors to them herself
when she got back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Skip Rock Shallows
by JAN WATSON
Copyright © 2012 by Jan Watson.
Excerpted by permission of TYNDALE HOUSE PUBLISHERS, INC.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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