The Edge of Town Read online

  DOROTHY

  GARLOCK

  The Edge of Town

  WARNER BOOKS

  A Time Warner Company

  This book is a work of historical fiction. In order to give a sense of the times, some names of real people or places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary, and the names of nonhistorical persons or events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical persons or events to actual ones is purely coincidental.

  HE EDGE OF TOWN. Copyright © 2001 by Dorothy Garlock. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For information address Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  A Time Warner Company

  ISBN 0-7595-9259-4.

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by Warner Books.

  First eBook edition: April 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

  Contents

  Julie's Dream

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  Epilogue

  The Edge of Town

  BOOKS BY DOROTHY GARLOCK

  Almost Eden

  Annie Lash

  Dream River

  Forever Victoria

  A Gentle Giving

  Glorious Dawn

  Homeplace

  Larkspur

  Lonesome River

  Love and Cherish

  Midnight Blue

  Nightrose

  Restless Wind

  Ribbon in the Sky

  River of Tomorrow

  The Searching Hearts

  Sins of Summer

  Sweetwater

  Tenderness

  The Listening Sky

  This Loving Land

  Wayward Wind

  Wild Sweet Wilderness

  Wind of Promise

  Yesteryear

  With Heart

  With Hope

  With Song

  After the Parade

  More than Memory

  To a very special lady, my editor,

  FREDDA S. ISAACSON

  Fredda,

  You have been my teacher and my guide during the 31 books we have worked on together. I could never have done it without you.

  With this dedication goes my appreciation and my admiration.

  The Edge of Town

  Julie’s Dream

  There’s loamy earth in Fertile, MO.

  Men who seed, reap what they sow.

  But where the dusty road grows narrow,

  The rocky soil resists the harrow.

  The yield is meager, profit down,

  Farming on the edge of town.

  If your name is Julie Jones,

  You’ve learned to stifle inward groans,

  Tending all your dead mom’s brood

  As a proper daughter should.

  You must not let it get you down

  Living on the edge of town.

  But in the night by gaslight’s glow

  Your fears come rushing as you sew

  That’s when the dreadful mem’ries rise,

  And bitter tears bedim your eyes.

  You cut a patch and mend a gown,

  Existing on the edge of town.

  From children’s beds comes dreaming laughter.

  This farm is not “forever after.”

  You smile with hope that someone strong

  Will someday, somehow come along

  To smooth away your troubled frown

  With loving on the edge of town.

  F.S.I.

  Prologue

  March 17, 1918

  FOR THE PAST WEEK SHE HAD FELT AN ACHE in her lower back but not as sharp as this one. When the muscles of her body relaxed, she lowered herself to the stool to start milking the cow. Her strong fingers grasped the cow’s teats, and streams of milk hit the bucket. It was only half filled when a sharp pain knifed through her abdomen, and she realized she could no longer ignore what was happening.

  Her time had come.

  Clinging to the patient cow, she pulled herself to her feet and then, holding to the stall railing, inched her way to the barn door. An agonizing spasm of pain brought her to her knees and she feared that she would never make it back to the house. She tried to push open the barn door but had no strength.

  Oh, Lord! It hurt so bad. She’d never dreamed that there could be such overpowering, racking pain. She fought to keep fear from clouding her mind. She was alone, and the baby inside her was tearing her apart.

  “Remember,” she muttered. “Remember to take deep breaths, remember to push down.”

  Oh, Lord, when it comes out, it will drop down onto the dirt floor.

  Grasping the rail, she dragged herself back past the two big friendly workhorses, who neighed a greeting. In an empty stall covered with fresh straw, she shrugged out of her old sweater and quickly pulled the loose dress off over her head. When the cold air hit her damp body, she scrambled to pull the sweater back on again. First she got to her knees, then rolled over onto her back with her knees raised. She panted for breath and tried hard to remember everything she knew about childbirth.

  Lord, help me!

  “Help me! Somebody help me.” She tried to shout, but her voice came out in a whimper. I can’t breathe! She began to panic and rolled back onto her knees and, holding the stall post, positioned herself with her feet far apart. She remembered Mrs. Johnson, their neighbor, saying that Indian women gave birth in a squatting position.

  The surge of water came first. From that moment on, her only reason for existing was to push from her body the thing that was causing the excruciating pain. She sobbed, she yelled, she prayed.

  “Why me, Lord? What did I ever do to deserve this?”

  She felt between her legs and realized the lump emerging from her was the baby’s head.

  She drew in quick, gasping breaths. Holding tightly to the railing to ease her cramping legs, she concentrated on pushing the child out of her. After what seemed an eternity, the wet, bloody lump dropped from her body.

  Sweating, exhausted and relieved, she hung there until she could get her breath. Movement alerted her to the live bundle between her knees. She picked it up, dug into its mouth with her finger to remove the mucus and saw with relief that it was breathing. The cord was still attached. Having nothing to cut it with, she severed it with her teeth and wrapped the baby in her dress. Too weak to stand, she squatted there, having completely forgotten about the afterbirth until she felt the surge of liquid between her legs.

  Not even checking to see the sex of the child, she hugged it in the dress against her body and pulled the sweater around it to keep it warm. She was cold and tired but knew that she had to get to the house and prayed
that she had the strength to climb the slight rise.

  Jethro Jones was standing at the cookstove when the door opened.

  “It’s about time. I was thinking ya hadn’t gone to milk yet.” He turned to look at her and saw her pale face and bloody clothes. “What the hell?” he exclaimed. His mouth remained open.

  “There’s a mess in the barn that’s got to be cleaned up before the boys go out to do chores.”

  She walked stiffly through the kitchen and across the hall to the bedroom.

  Chapter 1

  Fertile, Missouri

  July 1922

  LILLIAN RUSSELL’S DIED!” Jill made the dramatic announcement and waited for her sister to comment. When Julie continued to wash the dishes and drop them in the rinse pan, she said, “All the wonderful women in the world are dying. First Nellie Bly and now Lillian.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Ruby May told me last night. Lillian was so beautiful, so elegant. All the men loved her.” Jill lifted her arms in a circling motion. “I’m going to be just like her.”

  “You’ll have to grow some,” Julie said dryly. “She had quite a bosom. They were out to here.” Julie held her cupped, wet hands out six inches from her slender body.

  “And a tiny waist.”

  “Helped by a tight corset.”

  “She was beautiful—”

  “And old enough to be your grandma. Dry the dishes while you’re grieving for her.”

  Jill took a plate from the hot rinse water, dried it and set it on the table.

  “The men who gave her diamonds must have liked a woman with a big bust. Diamonds show up best lying on soft white flesh.”

  “Soft white flesh? Glory be! Well, don’t worry about it. You’ve got a good start for a fifteen-year-old.” Julie slid a greasy skillet into the sudsy water.

  “Jack said they were like half an orange stuck up there.”

  Julie looked at her sister and frowned. “Why would Jack be making a remark about his sister’s breasts?”

  “I asked him.”

  “Justine Jill Jones!”

  Jill rolled her eyes on hearing her full name. “I hate it when you call me that.”

  “It’s the name Mama gave you.”

  “I’ll never know why she added Justine to it.”

  “She didn’t. She added Jill.”

  “Kids at school laugh about our names. They say if Mama’d had more kids, she’d probably have named them Jericho and Jerusalem.”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  “Nothing. Kathy Jacobs said she should’ve named two of us Jenny and Jackass.” Jill giggled.

  Julie’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. It didn’t bother her that all their names started with a J. She rather liked it.

  “I never asked Jack about my bosom,” Jill said after she placed a stack of clean plates on the shelf. “I asked him if the boys at school thought I was pretty.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said …oh, he was so mean!” Jill flipped her long blond curls over her shoulder and tilted her freckled nose. “He said only the dumb ones thought I was pretty. He said my hair was like straw, my nose was so turned up he was surprised I didn’t drown when it rained.”

  Julie laughed in spite of the serious look on her sister’s face.

  “Never ask your brothers if you’re pretty. If you were a raving beauty they’d not admit it.”

  “That’s when he said my breasts were the size of a half an orange.”

  “It’s a pact made between brothers to tell their sisters that they are ugly as a mud fence even if they are as pretty as Mary Pickford.”

  “I hate brothers!”

  “Mable Normand is pretty.”

  “She’s in Molly O at the Palace. I want to see it, but Papa said picture shows cost almost as much as a pair of stockings and I needed stockings more.” Jill sighed heavily.

  “Julie, Julie, guess what?” Ten-year-old Jason came into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him. He always shouted when he was excited—and at times when he wasn’t.

  Since their mother’s death four years before, Julie had become the person her brothers and sisters came to with news, hurts and needs.

  Jason stumbled onto the back porch, yanked open the screen door and bounded into the kitchen, shutting the door just in time to keep the shaggy brown dog, his constant companion, from following him. Besides being small for his age, Jason had been born with a deformed foot that made it necessary for him to wear a special shoe.

  “Julie, guess what?” He was breathless.

  “Well, let me think for a minute. Is it something exciting?” Jason nodded his head vigorously. “Land-a-livin’! I think I know! Bananas are growing out of the old stump out by the woodpile.”

  “Ah, Julie, you’re so silly sometimes.” Jason stood as tall as his slight frame allowed. His muddy shoes were firmly planted on the clean kitchen floor.

  “Ju-lie! Look at his shoes!” Jill sneered with sisterly disgust.

  “Shut up.” Jason turned on his sister. “Open your trap again and I won’t tell ya!”

  “What’s your news, Jason?” Julie poured water from the teakettle over the dishes in the pan.

  “Joe … said that we’re havin’ a baseball game tonight. The Birches, the Humphreys, and Roy and Thad Taylor … Justine. Maybe the Jacobses and Evan Johnson. He helped at the Humphreys’ today, though he ain’t expecting no payback.”

  “Who cares about him?” Jill snorted.

  Jason knew he would get the full attention of his younger sister when he mentioned the Taylors. Jill had been eyeing both Roy and Thad Taylor even though Thad was Joe’s age.

  “Joe told me to get out the bags we use for bases. I hope mice ain’t chewed ’em up.”

  “Haven’t,” Julie corrected. “When was it decided to have a ball game?” She stopped working on the greasy skillet to give her full attention to her brother, who was inching toward the door, eager to be away.

  “I dunno. They’ll be done hayin’ by midafternoon. Pa said to tell ya they’d noon at the Humphreys’.”

  “Then I’ll go to town this afternoon. We’ll have a light supper.”

  “Can I go?”

  “No. You can help Jill watch Joy.”

  “That’s … girl work!” Jason snorted.

  “Just right for a sissy-britches,” Jill said snippily and took a handful of forks from the rinse pan.

  “Shut up, Jus-tine!” Jason drew out the hated name because he knew that it would irritate his sister. “You’re so dumb, you stink. I gotta go.”