Part 9
All of them
were relieved when Ezra slept peacefully through the night with his fever
staying down throughout. The next
morning, Josiah had replaced Chris in the clinic, so that Nathan, Buck, and
Josiah were now watching over the sick man.
Josiah had
taken over from Buck, sitting at Ezra side and gently wiping his forehead with
a damp towel, for while his fever was way down, he still had a slight one and
they didn’t want to give it a chance to catch hold of him again.
“So blind,”
Josiah murmured quietly.
Buck, who had
been lost in his own thoughts, muttered a startled, “Huh?”
Josiah didn’t
turn from his contemplation of the man that had been revealed as so much more
than they had thought. “Just thinking,
that he’s asked me so many times not to call him son, yet because he never gave
me a direct reason, I paid him no mind.
Thinking back now, I can see the pain in his eyes whenever I’d say
it. How could I not have seen it before? Or was I so convinced I was right, that it
didn’t matter to me?”
Nathan sighed
as he nodded in agreement. “Yeah, me too. I can
remember times when I’d accuse him of not liking my color or rail at him about
something, and he’d just stare at me with a pained expression on his
face.” Nathan looked embarrassed as he
confessed, “I always thought he was faking it.”
Both Buck and
Josiah glared at the dark-skinned man.
“If Ezra had judged us on first impressions, what would he have thought
of us?” Buck challenged.
Nathan winced
as he thought of that first meeting in the saloon. Even though it had been a toss up whether who
was conning whom, at the time, they had nearly stood by while a man was
mutilated or possibly killed over a few dollars. Thankfully Ezra had been able to pull another
one out of his hat, or sleeve as the case might be, and get out of it.
“As men that
stand by while others are badly hurt,” Nathan finally responded, when Buck kept
staring at him to get him to answer.
“Exactly,”
Buck said, but before he could continue Ezra started to moan softly and his attention
was diverted. Unsure of how Ezra would
be when he awoke, Nathan backed away a little as Buck and Josiah drew
closer. Nathan didn’t want his presence
to disturb him.
Buck nearly
cheered when Ezra opened his eyes and looked at them, but his elation soon
faded as Ezra simply continued to stare at them with a frighteningly blank
expression
“Ezra?”
Buck said quietly.
Ezra slowly
looked over at him, proving he could hear, but he still didn’t say a word.
Getting very
worried, Buck asked, “Ezra, can you understand me?”
Ezra stayed
silent for a few moments, before quietly answering, “Yes.”
Casting a
nervous glance back over his shoulder at Nathan, Buck tried again, “How are you
feeling, Ez?”
Again Ezra
was silent for a while before answering.
When he did, though, all he said was, “Okay.” Seemingly he lost interest in Buck and looked
back at Josiah, who had remained still so far.
When Josiah didn’t say anything right away, Ezra continued his survey of
the room, his gaze finally coming to rest on Nathan. Buck and Josiah saw a momentary flicker in
Ezra’s eyes when he saw Nathan, but it was gone too fast for them to identify
what it had been.
Finally
Josiah spoke, “Ezra?” Ezra brought his
gaze back to Josiah, but made no sound in response.
“Nathan?” Josiah looked over at the healer as he asked
a multitude of questions in that one word.
Not the least of which was, ‘Is he all right?’ This extreme quiet was so foreign that all three
of them were getting very worried. Ezra
might have been withdrawn before, but this was way past that.
Nathan,
deciding that Ezra was at least aware enough that he shouldn’t react to him as
violently as he had before, started forward to check him out. However, as soon as he started to reach out
to touch him, Ezra jerked away from him.
“Ezra, it’s
all right. I just want to make sure
you’re okay,” Nathan soothed, again reaching for the ill man. This time Ezra allowed the contact, staring
up at the tall man with a look of confusion on his face.
After a few
moments Ezra shook his head, as if to clear it after a blow. Looking back up at Nathan, he squinted into
the glaring morning light. “Nathan?”
Ezra asked, his voice filled with a combination of
hope and uncertainty.
“Yeah, It’s
me, Ezra,” Nathan answered as he went on with his examination. Ezra’s wound looked like it was finally
healing properly, but Nathan hadn’t up to this point been
to sure about his mental state, not withstanding the reassurances he had given
the others. That Ezra was able to figure
out who he was, was a good sign.
“You weren’t
there,” Ezra suddenly stated with conviction. “You’re a good man. You wouldn’t have helped them. I know you wouldn’t.”
“You’re
right, Ezra. I wasn’t there, but you’ve
had a high fever for sometime and it’s dragged up a lot of memories. You need to put them away again, Ezra,”
Nathan told him, trying to coax him back into the present.
Ezra’s only
response was a mumbled, “Oh,” and a thoughtful look.
When the
silence stretched on for several minutes, Buck suggested, “Ezra, it might help
if you tell us what happened.”
Ezra looked
back and forth among the three men standing around him for a few moments before
coming to a decision. “Chris.” With that he turned over and started to stare
at the wall behind the bed.
For a moment,
Buck was confused, but it quickly dawned on him what Ezra meant. “I’ll get
Chris,” he volunteered, then headed out of the clinic to retrieve him. He was back with Larabee in tow in less than
five minutes, to find Josiah and Nathan had arranged four chairs around Ezra’s
bed.
Ezra had
stayed in his position facing the wall, so Josiah gently touched his shoulder
to get his attention. When Ezra looked up at him, he spoke, “S…Ezra, Chris is
here.” Josiah wanted to kick himself for
almost slipping. Thankfully Ezra didn’t
seem to take notice, and just turned over to where he could look at them as he
spoke.
Taking a deep
breath as he gave each of them one last look, he plunged headlong into the
history that had tortured him for the last few weeks.
“After the
war was over, I longed for my home. Not
the cities that Maude loved so much, but the country side of
“I had only
been back a few weeks when I met Rachel.
When we met, it was love at first sight, and we married within six
months. To us, the difference in the
color of our skin was no difference at all, and we could see no reason it would
be anyone else’s business. Her heart was
big enough for the whole world, even a white Southern gambler. We had twin boys
a year and a half later, Jonathan and Josiah.
We always said that those boys were the Lord’s healing, for both of
us. We were so proud of them.” Ezra’s face had taken on a beautiful smile as
he spoke of the woman he had married.
Ezra might usually hide his emotions, but right now, all the love he had
felt for his family was on display for the entire world to see.
Suddenly the
smile dropped from Ezra’s face, and all four of them knew they were not going
to like what they were about to hear.
“Rachel and her
family had been part of the Underground Railroad since long before the war, and
when the boys were three years old, a man they had helped to the North came
back, with the intention of marrying Rachel and taking her with him out west. She refused him, of course, declaring that
she loved me and would never leave me.
My brother-in-law was there at the time and made sure that he left
peaceably. A couple of days later,
however, some drifters came to town and started to mouth off like the one Buck
and I saw in Harvest Hills.
“Except that
no one in our town had the guts to tell them to shut up. Jacob, the man that Rachel had known before,
told them that I was away and not expected back for a
few days. He even went with them to
help.” By now, Ezra was crying again,
not the heaving sobs of a few days before, but silent tears streamed down his
face as he spoke.
“I had come
home early to surprise Rachel because it was her birthday and found them in the
house. I tried to fight them, but they
out numbered me seven to one and over powered me rather easily.
“They made me
watch as they tortured and murdered my family!”
Finally Ezra completely broke, curling up into a ball on his side, Ezra
tried to hide his face from them as he sobbed.
