“I didn’t mean that,” he said darkly.
“Tell me something,” she asked. “What did Mike Dickson do to get himself in trouble?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you.”
“I don’t think Julianna wants to get a job other than the one she has, so—” John began to color, his cheeks slowly growing crimson. “Oh, no!” she said.
John nodded. “Mike commented that his wife didn’t want to work, she wanted to take care of him, his house and his children. Like his mother had.”
June erupted into hysterical laughter. “Five kids! An orchard, farmhouse and an extended family living on the property! God! Sounds like a paid vacation to me!”
“See, that’s the thing,” John said pleadingly. “It’s all semantics. That’s not what we meant.”
“John,” June said, tears beginning to show on her cheeks. “You guys need to go to remedial husband classes. The two of you are as dumb as a box of hammers.”
June was in the middle of a quiet Friday morning at the clinic when Mrs. Lundgren, a surgical nurse from Valley Hospital, called. She overheard Jessie trying to explain that she didn’t know where a patient who hadn’t kept an appointment for a surgical consultation might be. There were no patients in the waiting room, Susan was at her desk filling out a schedule and June was scribbling in a chart. Jessie put the caller on hold and looked at June pleadingly. “June, this is about Mrs. Mull, and I don’t know what to—”
“Here, let me,” June said, taking the receiver. “This is Dr. Hudson,” she said.
“Hello, Doctor, sorry to bother. Your patient, Mrs. Mull, hasn’t kept up her appointments for presurgical blood work or her appointment with the plastic surgeon who’s doing the next surgery. And, as far as I can see, there’s no phone number.”
“The Mulls have no phone,” June said. “But they live in town. Someone from our clinic could stop by and make sure she knows she has an appointment. Would that help?”
The secretary sighed impatiently. “I would think, since this is a charity case, that Mrs. Mull would be a little more courteous and conscientious.”
Prickles went up June’s spine and the hair at the base of her neck was electrified. “Mrs. Lundgren, do you have Jurea Mull’s chart?”
“Yes, it’s right here. With the appointment roster,” she replied, her voice brittle.
“Did you read it, or do you only know that she didn’t keep her appointment, that her surgery is free and that she was referred by me?”
“Dr. Hudson, I—”
“Let me save you a little time,” June said, her voice getting louder. “There are one or two additional facts you should know. Mrs. Mull is having plastic surgery because at the age of five she took the bad end of a claw hammer in the face when her father was in the back swing of driving a nail. She never saw a doctor or had treatment. She’s lived in the backwoods all her life, and for her to go to the hospital for major surgery probably took more courage than you or I will possess in a lifetime.”
Susan stood up from her desk in awe, and John came into the reception area to see what the upset was about. They all stared at June in amazement.
There was a moment of silence. June could hear herself breathe.
“I certainly didn’t mean to offend you, Dr. Hudson,” Mrs. Lundgren said.
“Don’t worry about me, but when and if you ever chance to meet or converse with Jurea Mull, treat her with the respect owed a person who has endured monumental challenges.”
“Of course,” she said meekly.
“And I will go to her house to find out why she hasn’t kept her appointment.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Mrs. Lundgren said.
June hung up the phone and thought, Well, I didn’t have any trouble speaking up that time. She frowned at herself. She was doing a lot of things lately that came as surprises to herself. Oh, Mrs. Lundgren probably deserved to be taken down a peg, and Jurea most definitely was entitled to a champion or two along the way, but the entire conversation could have been handled with a little less venom and a lot more diplomacy.
So why was she smiling? Had it felt that good just to chew someone’s ass?
She then noticed her entire staff staring at her.
“I’m becoming very strange,” she said to them. “And I think I like it.”
Eleven
The tiny two-bedroom house that the Mull family rented was not quite upscale enough to be called modest, but it was the finest thing they’d ever had. There was electricity and hot-and cold-running water— luxuries that had sent Jurea into an explosion of excitement. She had never dreamed she could live so well, which was an exhibition of perspective that many an American could use as a lesson.
Charlie MacNeil, the Veterans Administration counselor, had been able to fix Clarence up with a disability pension based on Clarence’s PTSD, clearly a by-product of the war. It was the first time the Mulls had had a regular income. Charlie also managed to get the family furnishings, kitchenware and clothing from the Vietnam Vets charity. And finally, the kids had worked with volunteer tutors all summer so that they could enter school in the fall. It turned out that Jurea and Clarence hadn’t done too badly with their ad hoc home schooling; Clinton was a mere two years behind and Wanda only one.
They had come so far, but as June pulled up to the little house she was reminded that, for Clarence at least, it had been too much, too fast. She hoped against hope that he had come back to the house in town, but his old truck wasn’t parked anywhere in sight. Already disappointed, June went up on the creaky porch, followed by Sadie.
Clinton answered the door, and he beamed when he saw her. “Dr. Hudson, I’ll be danged! What are you doing here?”
“I hope I’m not interrupting dinner or anything,” she said. “I was looking for your mom.”
“Ma ain’t here, but come on in and sit. Say hello to Wanda.”
“Can Sadie come in, Clinton? She’s well behaved.”
“Sure. We’ve been talking about getting us a dog. Come ahead.”
He turned to lead the way into the house. Her powers of observation kicked in and she studied his gait. He had a prosthetic leg and foot made necessary by the below-the-knee amputation done in the spring. He did well on it; his stride was strong and even.
Clinton led her into the kitchen where Wanda sat at the table with her schoolbooks out. There was bread, cookies and chips open on the counter as though they’d had a cold supper while they did their homework. Wanda smiled at June, but her expression beamed with delight when she saw Sadie. She immediately kneeled on the floor so she could pet her. Here was a girl who could do with a pet, June thought.
“How’s school going, Wanda?” she asked.
“It’s going a little fast for me, but Clinton gets most of it and helps me. I got to try harder than most, you know.”
“But do you like it?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, it’s the best thing. I even have a friend to listen to CDs with.”
“Wanda’s in love with the Backstreet Boys,” Clinton teased, grinning.
“Am not!” she protested, coloring a little.
“Sit a spell, Dr. Hudson. Have a cookie with us,” he invited, grabbing the package and unceremoniously plopping it on the table.
“Okay, but don’t let me have more than one,” she said, pulling out a chair. “I get going on these things and can eat the whole bag.”
“You can have as many as you want,” he said. “Ma’ll be sorry she wasn’t here for your visit.”
“I need to see her, Clinton. When will she be back?”
He shrugged. “I got no way of knowing.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“She’s back in Shell Mountain with Daddy,” he said.
“For the day?” June asked.
“No, ma’am. For the time being.”
June sighed and chewed on the cookie. They weren’t getting anywhere fast. “Clinton, help me out here. She had an appointment with the plastic surgeon
to schedule her next surgery and she didn’t show up. The hospital couldn’t call and remind her since you don’t have a phone yet. Maybe I could give her a lift to the hospital tomorrow?”
Clinton shrugged again, as if he didn’t get what June didn’t get. “I don’t know if she’ll be back tomorrow. She said she had to see about Daddy because he’s having a hard spell.”
A cold dawning came over June. “Clinton, when did she go back to your old place in Shell Mountain?”
Clinton rolled his eyes upward, remembering. “Let’s see. Right about two weeks ago now.”
“But you didn’t go. Why?”
“Oh, Ma didn’t want us to go back there. She knew we were both intent on school and living in town. Besides, it’s Daddy can’t take change, not us.”
“We like it in town,” Wanda said.
A flash of squeaking fur streaked across the kitchen and under the cupboard. Sadie bolted after the little mouse but didn’t stop fast enough; she skidded to a stop and banged her head into the cupboard door. When June found her breath again, she asked, “You don’t have any rodents bigger than a field mouse, do you, Clinton? Because you know they carry disease.”
“That’s just Algernon, Doc. He lives mostly under the sink and we keep the food sealed up in that icebox. We had to keep our wits on the mountain so as not to get run out by the mice.”
“Good, that’s good. I hope Algernon doesn’t invite his family in.”
“I like the little fella, but I’m not above doing what I have to if he gets pushy.”
“So, you and Wanda have been on your own for two weeks? What are you doing for food? For money to buy food? Rent payments? That sort of thing?”
“Ma showed us where to sign Daddy’s check and Mr. Fuller at the café gives us the money for it. He said he’s glad to do it, but we should think about banking. Ma doesn’t like the idea of banking, but I think Mr. Fuller is right. He said after I get settled in at school, if I get good enough grades, he’ll let me have some part-time work.”
“Mr. Fuller is right, you have to get settled into school first, see how it goes. Now here’s my next question. Do you have any idea how long your mother plans to stay on the mountain with your father?”
“No, ma’am, only that she said we’re all right and he’s not, so he needs looking after.”
“What about her face? Her surgeries? Did she mention that?”
“She did, Dr. Hudson. She said there’d be time enough for that when Daddy can abide it. She said he’d never have left her scared and sick, so she wasn’t inclined to do that to him.”
“Hmm. I suppose I could go out to Shell Mountain and pay a visit.”
“You could,” Clinton said uneasily. “But you’ll want to have a care. I can’t say what kind of temper Daddy’s in. I don’t know if he’s het up or quiet. He’s much like he was before we came to town.”
“He’s not taking his medicine, is he?”
“I don’t rightly know, Doc. Mr. MacNeil said that sometimes medicine like that can stop working, too, and has to be changed. But it’s like starting over if it stopped working. You know what it took to get Daddy to try it in the first place. I’d’ve sooner wrestled a bull to the ground.”
“I know,” June said. She was saddened to know Clarence was having his old troubles again, but knowing Jurea had gone to him was even worse. They might begin to feed off each other’s disabilities again, as they had done in the past. That they had produced these children with few emotional problems, remarkable courage and relatively healthy self-esteem was miraculous.
“Clinton, you know Mrs. Rios, don’t you? The social worker?”
He frowned. “Could be I met her in the hospital, but Mr. MacNeil’s been doing most everything for us—like helping us into this house, getting us our clothes to go to school…”
“I know. He’s a great guy, isn’t he? Mrs. Rios is a wonderful woman, and she’s a friend of mine. I’m going to have to tell them, Clinton.”
“Tell them what?”
“That you and Wanda are staying here alone, signing your father’s disability checks.”
Clinton’s face went immediately rigid, all trace of happiness or comfort gone. “Will they say I can’t? Ma told me to, and I’m doing just as she said.”
“I don’t know what they’ll say, Clinton. I imagine they’ll want to talk to you about how you’re getting on. And I want you to know, up front, that I’ll be mentioning it, so you don’t get upset and excited if they show up at the door, offering suggestions to help you out.”
There was definite pain in his eyes and June stole a glance at Wanda, who had been silent so long. She was back to stroking Sadie, but she had grown pale and looked afraid.
“Doc Hudson,” he said gravely. “Don’t go making trouble. All we want’s to go to school.”
John Stone was walking on eggshells around Susan. He had very little contact with Mike Dickson these days, but when they last talked, Mike confirmed he had not had a warm breakfast in weeks, and his bed was about the same temperature. Frosty.
June had left the clinic early to go see the Mulls and John putzed around until Jessie left. He then took a steadying breath and approached his wife. Coward that he was, he approached her from behind. She was busy filing charts. He took a long, agonizing look at her slim waist, her shapely legs. When she had to bend to put a chart in a low file drawer, he almost gasped. In days past, before he allowed himself to speak his mind, he might have taken this opportunity to grab her, spin her around and make lewd suggestions about new examination techniques. “Susan,” he said to her back. “I need to come home. I’ll do anything you want, but I have to sleep in my bed again.”
She slowly rose and turned to face him, the sweetest smile on her face. For a second he thought he’d finally been forgiven. “Of course you can come home, John. It’s your house. And in thinking about it, I suppose the bed is big enough, so we won’t get in each other’s way.” She gave his hand a pat that a dumber guy would mistake for encouragement. “I don’t think it’s good for Sydney that we bicker.”
“What do I have to do?” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. Didn’t I say I was sorry?”
“John,” she said patiently, as though speaking to someone mentally impaired, “I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be changed. Cast off that old cloak of Victorian misogyny,” she said dramatically, gesturing as though casting a cape off her shoulders, “and don the garment of the twenty-first century.”
“I’m trying,” he said pathetically. “But you spoiled me. And I’m forty now.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you, John. You’re not going to somehow make this my fault.”
“Why can’t we just kiss and make up?” he wanted to know.
“Well, first of all, we tried that a couple of times. And you somehow dug your hole again. So, letting bygones be bygones isn’t going to work, I guess. The better course of action is for us to go about our business, get along as well as possible for the sake of our daughter, and when you get your ass out of the seventeenth century, we’ll get along all that much better.”
“We need counseling. Should we call a marriage counselor?”
“Excellent idea, John. But give me a little time, please.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying, but I’m still pissed.”
How could she say that with a smile on her face? The past few weeks had been torture for him, and as each day ticked by she seemed to grow more beautiful, her scent more fragrant, her laugh more musical. Pretty soon he was going to die of wanting her.
“Okay,” he said. “Should we go see Jerry? Or do you want to check out the new minister?”
“Well, Jerry thinks he was abducted by aliens, doesn’t he?”
“He’s not as insistent about it anymore, since people are kind of sketchy about getting counseling from him, but yeah. He admitted that to me.”
“And the new pastor is divorced…so tell you what? Why don’t you just work on you, I’ll
work on me, and when things cool off a little, we’ll talk about marriage counseling.”
“Shew,” he said, losing his head and reaching for her.
She put up a hand to stop him and the sweet smile vanished instantly. “Don’t get any ideas, John, or you’ll be booking a room at the bed-and-breakfast.”
He was getting smarter; he backed off immediately. “Want me to go pick Sydney up?” he asked with a tentative smile.
“Nope. I’ll go. I want to check on Julianna. She has a very full day, not working with five kids.”
Zing. Well, he deserved that, but Mike deserved it more. Mike was the one who said his wife didn’t want to work. John’s stupidity ran to the other extreme. He had learned to like having everything done for him so he could go about the pursuit of being the man of the family. His regret was enormous. Susan kicked the file drawer closed and picked up her purse to leave.
“I really am sorry,” he said. “I am, and I do know what I did.” She listened to him patiently. “I’m going to make this up to you,” he finally said.
She gave his cheek a gentle pat. “Good, John. I’ll look forward to it.”
Tom Toopeek used the key that Burt Crandall had given him to get into the back of the bakery. He carried a flashlight and thermos of coffee and, without turning on any lights, found his way to Burt’s untidy little office. It was good that the September nights were chilly because he’d need the coffee to stay awake and he hated drinking hot coffee on boring stakeouts on long summer nights. He had left a book and a battery-powered book light earlier in the day when he’d met with Burt.