PERILS
Chapter Sixteen
"I know you feel bad," said Lena, "but Doctor, you can't fix everything. You can't change the whole world all at once."
"I am not used to not changing a whole world at once," confessed the Doctor.
Lena laughed. "You're a funny one, Doctor." She started to saddle Blossom, but the Doctor reached for the tack and did it himself. "You saved our lives, you know. You didn't even know us and you saved our lives. You just go ahead and be as funny as you want; we will still owe you our lives." She picked up the sack she had left at the barn door and divided its contents between two saddle bags, then folded up the sack itself and stored it likewise. "You'll roast in that coat, you know." The Doctor took off his coat and jumper and stood in his shirt-sleeves as he had the day before.
"I'm taller," said the Doctor, stuffing his duds in one of the saddle bags, "so you ride in front. Sorry. I know she's your horse but you wouldn't be able to see over my head." Lena mounted Blossom and then the Doctor hopped up into the saddle behind her. "You should take the reins, since you know where we're going."
"And where will your hands be, Doctor?"
"Oh, um, shoulders? Waist?"
"Shoulders, please." She took the reins, he put his palms on her shoulders, and then as Blossom set off for what they expected to be a three-hour ride, his fingers closed on them as well.
"Sorry."
"You're not hurting me."
"Good."
They rode in silence for a while. The rhythm of Blossom's hooves and the sway of her body were comforting. They used the dirt road some of the time, veered off other times to avoid being seen, although at that hour they found themselves alone most of the time until they reached Orlando, where some of the muddy roads were being replaced by brick. Blossom seemed to prefer the shallow mud to the hard brick. They hurried through and didn't stop to stretch, rest and tend to Blossom until they got out of town. Then they were on their way again.
They reached Eatonville at about four-thirty but Lena's big sister, Edwina, was expecting them; she was up, dressed and ready to show the Doctor to the settee in the parlor of her wood-frame bungalow, after which she and Lena unburdened Blossom, wiped her down, and saw her safely into a corral with a water trough, a supply of hay and a friend (a golden brown quarter horse named Toast). The two women brought the food Lena had put in the saddle bags into the house and finally sat down together in the kitchen to talk away the rest of the morning… or that portion of it that would not be occupied with feeding and seeing off her husband, William, a teacher at the Hungerford School, and their child, Sara, a fifth-grade student there. They tiptoed past the sleeping Doctor on their way out. When he awoke, Edwina was gone as well, to her job as a maid for a white family in Maitland. Lena was asleep on her sister's bed. The breakfast dishes had already been washed and put away, so the Doctor looked around for some other way to be helpful. The place was immaculate. He folded up the bedding on the settee, pulled The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh from one of many book shelves in the parlor and settled in a comfortable chair to read. It occurred to him to make lunch for Lena, but he didn't know what Edwina had planned for dinner and didn't want to use up anything she was saving therefore. Lena came yawning out to the parlor and gave the Doctor a peck on the cheek before heading to the kitchen.
"Oh, let me," called the Doctor, putting the book aside and following her. "Just tell me what to make and I'll make it. I can be quite handy in the kitchen. Rubbish at women's fashion, miserable at directions, but I can flip an omelette."
"Good shot, too," smiled Lena, bending to see what was in the ice box, then straightening to let the Doctor have a look.
"Are there any onions?" he asked.
"They grow them," said Lena, not without some pride.
"Leave this to me," he proclaimed. "I'm going to make us some lunch and for dinner I shall make you lot a quiche. Where in the world did your sister get bagels and lox?"
"I don't know if you will approve."
"Why wouldn't I approve?"
"She toted it."
"Toted?"
"She works for a Jewish family. She's tight with the cook. They take leftovers home and sometimes not only leftovers."
"Oh." The Doctor looked silently at the bagels and lox he'd placed on the cutting board.
"She makes eight dollars a week. That's more than anyone we know in the same position but it's still not much. William makes eleven." The Doctor looked up at her. "Her employers know about it. Sometimes they add things to the pan. They are not unkind. They helped William buy a car, a Pontiac High Wheel Runabout, 1908, old, yeah, but it works! It's spiffy, black with big red wheels! I am so jealous!" She giggled. "Not really, but… yeah, a little bit really! Anyway, we get chopped liver, too. When I first saw it I thought, what is this dross? But then I tasted it…."
"Good stuff," agreed the Doctor, adding a shmear to the second bagel. "And the car sounds fine, too!"
"Funny thing about the car, though. William was thinking of the Model T. Cheap, right? But Mister Wyner, that's Edwina's employer, said he didn't want to give Ford any money." The Doctor opened his mouth, then shut it again. There was no use mentioning Earth-history that was still in Lena's future. "He said he has relative in Detroit and one of them, I forget which one, tried to get a job with Ford. An employee took him aside and said Ford was only hiring Jews for manual labor."
"Sounds like Henry," muttered the Doctor, to himself. Then he asked Lena, brightly, "Do you like red onion?"
"Yes…." She handed the Doctor a small one, which he halved and peeled; he then set aside one half, and from the other he extracted two thin slices, setting the rest aside as well. "For the quiche," he explained, adding a slice to each bagel, now heaped with lox. Lena handed him two plates the size of saucers and he proudly set a sandwich on each, returning one to her. They sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed their lunch.
William and Sara both came home at about five-thirty that evening, as he'd had a meeting and she played clarinet in the school band, which practiced after the regular school day. By then, the Doctor had cleaned up after lunch, finished the book, helped Lena care for the horses, admired the runabout, finished The Complete Prose and Poetry of William Blake (while Lena called Tony to make sure he'd come and fetched Denny) and prepared the quiche. "Edwina will eat hers cold," explained William, "unless she eats there. She has to work until seven. Wow, that looks good! Egg pie?"