‘I’m a little older than you, Toby. You don’t know that when I was young and studying abroad I married and we had a daughter, Meike. My wife chose the name – she was German, you see. We met at college before I qualified.
‘She died, Toby, little Meike.’
‘Oh God, Peter. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you, but there’s no need. It was a long time ago now. In another life, you might say. It was breathing difficulties, nothing to do with Stove – I never brought her within a thousand miles of these mountains.
‘We broke up afterwards, my wife and I. It can happen to a bereaved couple – you remind each other of the tragedy. She went back to Germany. She wrote to me a few years back. She’d married again, had two sons.’
‘Oh, Peter.’
‘No, I’m glad for her. It’s what people do. Other people, normal people.’
‘I really am sad to hear that.’
‘Don’t be. I remember my daughter with love. I don’t often speak of her, most of the town don’t know of her. But I wanted you to.’
The Doctor tapped his arm, ‘I had this done to honour her, so that if she was up there somewhere then she’d know she wasn’t forgotten. But that’s the point, Toby. Had she lived I would never have brought her here. Even risking my wife accepting our town’s secrets, I could not have watched little Meike growing up knowing what was to come for her. You’d never have met me, Toby. I’d never have returned.
‘So, maybe then I’ve done more good this way. Maybe something came of her death, that because of it I came back to Stove and helped others. And Toby, maybe if Andrew here just got better, he wouldn’t weigh on you so heavily to do what you have to do.’
Toby took those words on board, asking,
‘Is that common knowledge now?’
The Doctor only placed a hand on Toby’s shoulder, before he turned and left the pair of them alone.
Yet he paused at the door,
‘And maybe when you’re finished in here, you can tell me who your friend is you’ve bought with you?’
From the bedside Toby answered,
‘His name’s Jake. He’s an investigator.’
‘And what does he intend to do?’
‘He’s going to break the story, Peter.’
‘Is he really?’ said the Doctor, with the air of being told the Reverend was holding a craft fair in town that Saturday. ‘Good, good,’ he reflected, and left quietly.
‘I won’t let you down, Andrew,’ said the Sheriff now alone with the patient. ‘I’ll turn myself in for what I did to you. I’ll face the full force of the law.’
But Toby’s confessions were interrupted by loud voices in the main hall of the clinic. Turning and leaving to discover the source, Toby opened the door to find a stand off. On one side of the room, by the beds, was the Doctor. In the middle, by the drugs shelf, was Jake. And to the other side, standing by the door, were Janey and Job. Job had just arrived with the Hope and Strength girl over his shoulder.
All who were conscious turned to look at Toby, who spoke first, looking at the lost girl,
‘Is she all right?’
‘She’s not taking her food again,’ answered Job distractedly, as this was not the main issue in the room. As he spoke, so all eyes then turned to the tall Deputy, untroubled by the slumped figure over his shoulder. He finally asked what all were thinking, looking at Jake,
‘Who is he, Toby?’
‘He’s a friend, a friend.’
‘From out of town?’
‘Yes.’
Jake tried to make a gesture,
‘You’re Job, right? Don’t worry, I’m on your side.’
But this just made Job worse,
‘He’s just called me by my name. So how the hell does he know my name?’
Toby took charge,
‘Job, let’s get the girl to bed and we can...’
‘How does he know my name?’
It was Janey who answered, in her own question to Jake,
‘I think Toby mentioned you. You’re here to help us?’
‘If it’s in my power to do so,’ answered the investigator.
‘He’s going to break the secret,’ muttered the Doctor.
‘Toby..?’ Job’s voice was bearing signs of stress.
‘Job, get the girl on the bed.’
But he wouldn’t move, ‘Toby... Sheriff. Lord forgive me, but you tell me what’s going on right now.’
‘You trust me, don’t you?’ asked his boss.
‘But... ’
‘You trust me, Job?’
‘Of course, Tobe. Forever and a day.’
‘And you remember what the Reverend told you when you were a kid in Moral Instruction class?’
‘That trust doesn’t matter till its tested.’
‘And courage doesn’t count till it’s counted on. Well, be courageous, Job. You always have been, so trust me now.’
‘I will. You know I always will,’ and Job stormed off toward the nearest empty bed, with the girl over his shoulder and the Doctor in tow.
Chapter 73 – Bedside Conference
After the girl had been settled in her bed, Toby asked Job to ‘Go Mountain-side and find Fitch, then bring yourselves back here.’
It was with a look of deep uncertainty that Job left to do just that.
‘Can we trust him?’ asked Jake once he was gone.
‘Yes,’ said Janey, as the remaining four of them found themselves the centre of the main room, sometimes pacing around, sometimes taking one of the chairs left for visitors, before as quickly getting up again. ‘What we are doing is right,’ she added. ‘Deep down he knows it.’
‘He’s thinking of Council,’ added Toby as he joined the conversation, ‘when we are asked to speak up if we know of anyone who shouldn’t still be in town. He’s shocked that I lied there.’
The Doctor spoke,
‘He’s not the only one. You’ve had all winter to tell me, Toby. And there’s not a great deal that I haven’t told you.’
‘Yet you haven’t told Toby everything, have you, Doctor?’
Jake’s words were sharp, and made the Doctor silent. But Janey and Toby were left with the same thought – that is wasn’t Job they had to worry about.
The afternoon was still, and the ward was almost silent. Even the afflicted seemed to know to keep the groaning down. The air had gotten to be hazy, with the unseasonal heat they’d had that day. Soon the sun would be setting and the shadows lengthening, and they’d be reminded that it was still winter after all.
The four sat or stood among the beds, alone but for sleepers and the subdued suffering. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of people church-singing.
Janey broke the silence,
‘How’s Andrew Sippitz doing, Doctor?’
‘No worse,’ was the answer. But this only brought out the sadness that Toby had seen in him earlier, as he explained,
‘He’s well. Not improving, but stable. As well as can be hoped when we don’t have an MRI scanner. Because I don’t have an MRI scanner. How would I, up here in the mountains? And what kind of doctor keeps a brain-injured child two-hundred miles from the nearest scanner?’
The Doctor continued, ‘And I didn’t even ask myself the question of whether I should take him to find one. I let the town and its history and its Winter Restrictions decide for me. I simply took it for granted that the tools I had here were the only tools available. When, two months ago, or two weeks from now, I’d have a helicopter whisking him away to the nearest city. What have I become? What sham of a doctor?’
Toby couldn’t speak. The Doctor continued,
‘I won’t serve. I won’t serve. I can’t obey the Hypocratic Oath. I withdraw my services. I am no longer your doctor.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ When Toby spoke it came out as cold as the winter sun that poked around the edges of the curtains. There was none of the confidence the pair had enjoyed before.
The Doctor raged, ‘You have
the nerve to call me stupid? You, Sheriff, who wear that badge with a straight face?’
‘Now, come on.’
‘Killers! Killers!’
‘Doctor. You’re waking the patients,’ said Toby in an effort to calm him. But if the talkers were noticed by those around them, then they were barely acknowledged, as if their bed-bound state left them one-space removed.
By now the Doctor was standing and shouting,
‘You, me. We’re all murderers! Sweeney Todd. Doctor Crippen.’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Toby as he too stood.
‘At every point in history I’ll show you a doctor who was killing people...’
‘You’re not killing anyone!’
‘...deciding who should live and who should die. Hopeless cases thrown out in the battlefield clinic. Or kept alive just to suffer in the gulag. Or killed for purity and breeding and selection, to keep the strong strong and to weed out the weak. Is that it, Toby? Sturmbannführer in your widow’s weeds? Am I your Doctor Mengele..?’
Toby stepped forward and punched the Doctor in the face. A messy punch, with all the impact and none of the effect. It caught the nose and not the chin, did more damage than expected, caused a gamut of spit and blood, and all without hardly calming the Doctor down. Though he did crumple to his knees, and then into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor. And his voice became lower and his babbling less coherent,
‘What you do best,’ he muttered. ‘This is what you do best.’
Janey fell down to tend him; as Jake said,
‘Don’t worry, Doctor. He has a habit today of beating on his friends.’
Toby only flexed his knuckles and looked around glaringly. He caught Jake’s eye, imagining him saying as if telepathically, ‘You’re becoming the uniform, Toby. Becoming the uniform.’
But Jake said nothing. He didn’t need to. Toby knew that Jake was watching him disintegrate. Toby kneeled down beside his bleeding friend, saying quietly,
‘Doc, doc.’
‘Can’t you give him a minute?’ asked Janey.
The Doctor turned on Jake standing over him, suddenly lucid,
‘You. Outsider. I know what you’re thinking. Billy Meting, Old Man Orell. The mess that was Crawley in that cell. What did I do for any of them?’
‘You couldn’t do anything for those three,’ answered Jake. But the Doctor went on,
‘And then your mind is casting back to four winters ago, and to my part in the Worst Year. Well, what’s left to tell? Two boys didn’t die as I said they did. I signed the forms, I lied in court.’ The Doctor fixed Jake in a glare. ‘And if you’re worth your salt as an “investigator” then you’ll already know that.’
He added, ‘But don’t forget, it was me who wrote to Toby to tell him. Me who risked the wrath of the town to get him back.’
At that, the Doctor seemed to fall into himself, common sanity leaving by the side-door. Janey took a gentle hold of him, to help him get his senses back.
Chapter 74 – Friends in the Snow
Standing in the middle of the room, near the collapsing Doctor, Jake turned to Toby, speaking quietly,
‘We’ll get nothing more out of him now. And who knows if we’ll ever have another chance to find out who the second boy in the car was.’
‘Margaret mentioned him today,’ remembered Toby, as if in passing.
‘Oh?’
‘But nothing we can use. It was nonsense, saying how no one knew who he was, and that the letters you were sending to his family ended up at her house.’
‘Christ. So the Tascos never were at that address. Sarah said as much after she got her letter.’
‘She was making less sense than the Doctor, talking about a shot being fired in the Sheriff’s Office. And telling me to “check the school registers.” As if you and Sarah wouldn’t already have done that.’
‘I have checked the school registers,’ confirmed Jake. ‘There wasn’t another child missing, Toby. Not a single one.’
‘Then that’s that,’ said the Sheriff. ‘And it rather feels like Domesday to me. That when I go outside, there’s only one thing left to do.’
‘Then don’t spend these moments with me,’ said Jake.
Unnoticed by Toby, at some point Janey had settled the Doctor and had stood again to join them.
As Jake moved away to leave them together, he instead turned and asked,
‘Toby, are you sure Margaret said “school” registers? Not any other sort?’
‘I... can’t remember now.’
‘For there is one other sort,’ said Jake. ‘You’ve told me all about them yourself in our night-time talks. The sort you fill in every winter upon returning. The Register of Special Deputies, for those of you who volunteer to don the winter uniform.’
‘I didn’t think you kept a record?’ asked Janey.
Jake answered, ‘Oh, there’s no record of what they actually do. But any town would be expected to enlist extra men at winter, to dig people out of drifts and help old folk across the snowy roads. How old’s your youngest trainee, Toby?’
‘Eighteen, nineteen.’
‘Young enough for the Doctor to list them as a year or two younger when he filed his phoney death certificate?’
Toby took the lead,
‘If he was over the sickness age, then he might have already left Stove. He might have been a Returnee. He could have been living in another town or city all the rest of the year. Had a job or college course to go back to there.’
Jake slapped his leg, ‘And that’s why no one in Stove missed him come the spring.’ He looked around him at the town in general, ‘Damn, you were a clever bunch.’
Toby was going over the details,
‘Yes, that’s what Margaret said, “Look at the registers of the next year, and see who wasn’t there.” She meant Deputies!’
Janey groaned,
‘Oh no,’ Toby comforted her. ‘Don’t feel bad. It’s all over now, it’s in the past. I’m ending it right now.’
But Jake chipped in,
‘I don’t think she means that, Toby. You said that Margaret heard a shot? Then who was it who shot him? Remember the words, Toby. Exactly what Margaret told you.’
But the words wouldn’t come, not exactly. And then there was a banging on the door.
The singing from the church had stopped, and had been replaced by other voices. These had been building outside, but were something no one inside had yet been able to give their full attention to.
Janey grabbed her man, almost manic,
‘Stay, Toby. See out the winter. We’ll drive down to the State Capital with Jake in the spring.’
But Toby looked at the shattered frame of the Doctor on the floor; at the unconscious girl of Hope and Strength on her drip; toward the door behind which Andrew Sippitz rested; and to the other, heavier door behind which lay the bodies in the cold store. And finally he looked down at the shaking, limping figure of himself. And said,
‘No, Janey. Look at us. This has to end.’ And then he held her.
But even as she held him, she asked,
‘How can you love me when you know what we did that year? We stood by and let them do it.’
But he only held her harder, expressing more than he could have in words.
From the other side of the room Jake asked Toby, not needing an answer,
‘Have you ever gotten over your guilt at not being there to stop it?’
Somewhere in the ward an old man groaned. But Toby only continued to hold Janey; until the point when he had to draw away. She wouldn’t let him though. And so Jake stepped in, taking her shoulders, half-holding and half-comforting her, as Toby bid farewell to those standing, and to the Doctor sitting, and to the patients now awake in their beds.
He only asked one last thing,
‘Jake, before I go out there, promise me. Matthew Tasco, although his name wasn’t Matthew Tasco. The second boy in the car. Find him out. Find his mom and dad, his aunts and uncles, w
hoever there is. Whether they’re in Stove or wherever. And you tell them that he didn’t just stop calling and writing.’
‘I will.’
‘And you find his friends in the town he left that autumn and never returned to, and you tell them he didn’t leave them. That he would have been back in the spring.’
‘I will, Toby. Sure as certain.’
And with that assurance, Toby left the room.
Chapter 75 – Le Damné
A moment’s calm just then would have benefited them all. But it was the mean season, and it wasn’t to be. As Toby opened the door a fraction there was a rise in volume in the voices outside, and even an angry muffled shout.
Toby braced himself, not knowing what he’d see outside. It could have been anything from a firing squad with their guns raised, to a gallows pole driven into the hard ground.
Instead it was just a smattering of locals, knowing he was in there and waiting to know what was going to happen.
And then?
And then total personal annihilation.
‘Good morning,’ he offered uselessly. ‘Sorry, good afternoon now.’
They were silent for a while, before a man broke rank, and once he had then they all started,
‘We heard about the Meting boy, Sheriff.’
‘...And the Orells.’
‘...And the Sippitz boy, still in his coma.’
‘...And young Tort. What did you do to help him?’
Toby stammered, ‘Tort... was out of my reach.’
They became bolder:
‘We’ve got no Deputies left.’
‘...No one’s watching the children.’
Toby spluttered, ‘We’re... certainly down in numbers.’
‘Then what are you going to do about it, Sheriff?’
‘...We don’t want this no more.’
‘...No, no,’ those gathered murmured.
‘...Some of us haven’t wanted it for years.’
‘...If ever!’
‘Treason,’ whispered Toby so only he could hear. ‘They’re not scared any more.’
‘What are you saying, Sheriff?’
‘I’m saying: No. No, I don’t want it anymore either.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going down the mountain. I’m handing myself in.’
There was a gasp – this was new for Stove. The people had to adjust.
‘How?’ asked one of them, quieter.
‘I don’t know. And I do know. We get the truck and the snowplough. Get the children. Is it really that simple?’