Jack drove out to the cabin, the truck bed loaded with supplies. It was his third day in a row. When he pulled up, Cheryl came out of the house, onto the new porch. “Hey, Cheryl,” he called. “How’s it going? Almost done in there?”
She had a rag in her hands. “I need the rest of the day. It was a real pigsty. Will you be here tomorrow, too?”
He would. But he said, “Nah. I’m about done. I want to paint the porch this morning—can you get out the back door? I haven’t built steps yet.”
“I can jump down. Whatcha got?” She came down the porch steps.
“Just stuff for the cabin,” he said, unloading a big Adirondack chair for the porch, its twin in the truck bed.
“Wow. You really went all out,” she said.
“It has to be done.”
“She must be some nurse.”
“She says she’s not staying, but the place has to be fixed up anyway. I told Hope I’d make sure it was taken care of.”
“Not everyone would go to so much trouble. You’re really a good guy, Jack,” she said. She peeked into the truck. He had a new double-size mattress inside a large plastic bag lying flat in the bed. On top of that, a large rolled-up rug for the living room, bags from Target full of linens and towels that were new as opposed to the graying, used ones borrowed from Hope’s linen closet, potted geraniums for the front porch, lumber for the back step, paint, a box full of new kitchen things. “This is a lot more than repair stuff,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair that had escaped her clip around her ear. When he chanced a glance at her, he saw those sad eyes filled with longing. He looked away quickly.
“Why go halfway?” he said. “It ought to be nice. When she leaves, maybe Hope can rent it out to summer people.”
“Yeah,” she said.
Jack continued unloading while Cheryl just stood around. He tried to ignore her; he didn’t even make small talk.
Cheryl was a tall, big-boned woman of just thirty, but she didn’t look so good—she’d been drinking pretty hard since she was a teenager. Her complexion was ruddy, her hair thin and listless, her eyes red-rimmed and droopy. She had a lot of extra weight around the middle from the booze. Every now and then she’d sober up for a couple of weeks or months, but invariably she’d fall back into the bottle. She still lived with her parents, who were at their wits’ end with her drinking. But what to do? She’d get her hands on booze regardless. Jack never served her, but every time he happened upon her, like now, there was usually a telltale odor and half-mast eyes. She was holding it together pretty good today. She must not have had much.
There had been a bad incident a couple of years ago that Cheryl and Jack had had to get beyond. She had a little too much one night and went to his living quarters behind the bar, banging on his door in the middle of the night. When he opened the door, she flung herself on him, groping him and declaring her tragic love for him. Sadly for her, she remembered every bit of it. He caught her sober a few days later and said, “Never. It is never going to happen. Get over it and don’t do that again.” And it made her cry.
He moved on as best he could and was grateful that she did her drinking at home, not in his bar and grill. She liked straight vodka, probably right out of the bottle and, if she could get her hands on it, Everclear—that really mean, potent stuff. It was illegal in most states, but liquor store owners usually had a little under the counter.
“I wish I could be a nurse,” Cheryl said.
“Have you ever thought about going back to school?” he asked as he worked. He was careful not to give her the impression he was too interested. He hauled the rug out of the back of the truck, hefted it over his shoulder and carried it to the house.
To his back she said, “I couldn’t afford it.”
“You could if you got a job. You need a bigger town. Throw your net a little wider. Stop relying on odd jobs.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, following him. “But I like it here.”
“Do you? You don’t seem that happy.”
“Oh, I’m happy sometimes.”
“That’s good,” he said. He threw the rolled rug down in the living room. He’d spread it out later. “If you have the time, could you wash up those new linens I bought and put them away? Fix up the bed when I get the new mattress on it?”
“Sure. Let me help you with the mattress.”
“Thanks,” he said, and together they hauled it into the house. He leaned it against the wall and grabbed the old one off the bed. “I’ll go by the dump on the way home.”
“I heard there was a baby at Doc’s. Like a baby that was just left there.”
Jack froze. Oh, man, he thought. Cheryl? Could it be Cheryl’s? Without meaning to, he looked her up and down. She was big, but not obese. Yet fat around the middle and her shirt loose and baggy. But she’d been out here cleaning that very day—she couldn’t do that, could she? Maybe it wasn’t the Smirnoff flu. Wouldn’t she be bleeding and leaking milk? Weak and tired?
“Yeah,” he finally said. “You hear of anyone who could have done that?”
“No. Is it an Indian baby? Because there’s reservations around here—women on hard times. You know.”
“White,” he answered.
“You know, when I’m done here, I could help out with the baby.”
“Uh, I think that’s covered, Cheryl. But thanks. I’ll tell Doc.” He carried the old mattress out and leaned it against the truck bed. God, that was an awful-looking thing. Mel was completely right—that cabin was horrific. What had Hope been thinking? She’d been thinking it would be cleaned up—but had she expected the new nurse to sleep on that thing? Sometimes Hope could be oblivious to details like these. She was pretty much just a crusty old broad.
He reached into the truck and hauled out the bags of linens. “Here you go,” he said to Cheryl. “Now get inside—I have to start painting. I want to get back to the bar by dinner.”
“Okay,” she said, accepting the bags. “Let me know if Doc needs me. Okay?”
“Sure, Cheryl.” Never, he thought. Too risky.
* * *
Jack was back at the bar by midafternoon with time enough to do an inventory of bar stock before people started turning out for dinner. The bar was empty, as it often was at this time of day. Preacher was in the back getting started on his evening meal and Ricky wasn’t due for another hour at least.
A man came into the bar alone. He wasn’t dressed as a fisherman; he wore jeans, a tan T-shirt under a denim vest, his hair was on the long side and he had a ball cap on his head. He was a big guy with a stubble of beard about a week old. He sat several stools down from where Jack stood with his clipboard and inventory paperwork, a good indication he didn’t want to talk.
Jack walked down to him. “Hi. Passing through?” he asked, slapping a napkin down in front of him.
“Hmm,” the man answered. “How about a beer and a shot. Heineken and Beam.”
“You got it,” Jack said, setting him up.
The man threw back the shot right away, then lifted the beer, all without making any eye contact with Jack. Fine, we won’t talk, Jack thought. I have things to do anyway. So Jack went back to counting bottles.
About ten minutes had passed when he heard, “Hey, buddy. Once more, huh?”
“You bet,” Jack said, serving him another round. Again silence prevailed. The man took a little longer on his beer, time enough for Jack to get a good bit of his inventory done. While he was crouched behind the bar, a shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the man standing right on the other side of the bar, ready to settle up.
Jack stood just as the man was reaching into his pocket. He noticed a bit of tattoo sneaking out from the sleeve of his shirt—the recognizable feet of a bulldog—the Devil Dog. Jack was close to remarking on it—the man wore an unmistakable United States Marine Corps tattoo. But then the man pulled a thick wad of bills out, peeled off a hundred and said, “Can you change this?”
Jack didn’t even have to touch the bill; the skunklike odor of green cannabis wafted toward him. The man had just done some cutting—pruning or harvesting and, from the stinky cash, had made a sale. Jack could change the bill, but he didn’t want to advertise how much cash he kept on hand and he didn’t want that money on the premises. There were plenty of growers out there—some with prescriptions for legal use, conscious of the medical benefits. There were those who thought of marijuana as just any old plant, like corn. Agriculture. A way to make money. And some who dealt drugs because the drugs would offer a big profit. This part of the country was often referred to as the Emerald Triangle for the three counties most known for the cannabis trade. Lots of nice, new, half-ton trucks being driven by people on a busboy’s salary.
Some of the towns around these parts catered to them, selling supplies illegal growers needed—irrigation tubing, grow lights, camouflage tarps, plastic sheeting, shears in various sizes for harvesting and pruning. Scales, generators, ATVs for getting off-road and back into secretive hideaways buried in the forest. There were merchants around who displayed signs in their windows that said, CAMP Not Served Here. CAMP being the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting that was a joint operation between the county sheriff’s department and the state of California. Clear River was a town that didn’t like CAMP and didn’t mind taking the growers’ money, of which there was a lot. Charmaine didn’t approve of the illegal growing, but Butch wouldn’t turn down a stinky bill.
Virgin River was not that kind of town.
Growers usually maintained low profiles and didn’t cause problems, not wanting to be raided. But sometimes there were territorial conflicts between them or booby-trapped grows, either one of which could hurt an innocent citizen. There were drug-related crimes ranging from burglary or robbery to murder. Not so long ago they found the body of a grower’s partner buried in the woods near Garberville; he’d been missing for over two years and the grower himself had always been a suspect.
You couldn’t find anything in Virgin River that would encourage an illegal crop, one means of keeping them away. If there were any growers in town, they were real, real secret. Virgin River tended to push this sort away. But this wasn’t the first one to pass by.
“Tell you what,” Jack said to the man, making long and serious eye contact. “On the house this time.”
“Thanks,” he said, folding his bill back onto the wad and stuffing it in his pocket. He turned to go.
“And buddy?” Jack called as the man reached the door to leave. He turned and Jack said, “Sheriff’s deputy and California Highway Patrol eat and drink on the house in my place.”
The man’s shoulders rose once with a silent huff of laughter. He was on notice. He touched the brim of his hat and left.
Jack walked around the bar and looked out the window to see the man get into a black late model Range Rover, supercharged, big wheels jacked up real high, windows tinted, lights on the roof. That model would go for nearly a hundred grand. This guy was no hobbyist. He memorized the license plate.
Preacher was rolling out pie dough when Jack went into the kitchen. “I just served a guy who tried to pay for his drinks with a wad of stinky Bens as big as my fist,” Jack told him.
“Crap.”
“He’s driving a new Range Rover, loaded, jacked up and lit up. Big guy.”
“You think he’s growing around town here?”
“Have no idea,” Jack said. “We better pay attention. Next time the deputy’s in town, I’ll mention it. But it’s not against the law to have stinky money or drive a big truck.”
“If he’s rich, it’s probably not a small operation,” Preacher said.
“He’s got a bulldog tattoo on his upper right arm.”
Preacher frowned. “You kind of hate to see a brother go that way.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Maybe he’s not in business around here. He could have been just scoping out the town to see if this is a good place to set up. I think I sent the message that it’s not. I told him law enforcement eats and drinks on the house.”
Preacher smiled. “We should start doing that, then,” he said.
“How about a discount, to start? We don’t want to get crazy.”
* * *
Mel got her sister, Joey, on the phone.
“Oh, Jesus, Mel! You scared me to death! Where have you been? Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“I’ve been in Virgin River where I have no phone and my cell doesn’t work. And I’ve been pretty busy.”
“I was about to call out the National Guard!”
“Yeah? Well, don’t bother. They’d never be able to find the place.”
“You’re all right?”
“Well... This will probably make you perversely happy,” Mel told her. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done this. I was nuts. As usual.”
“Is it terrible?”
“Well, it definitely started out terrible—the free housing turned out to be a falling-down hovel and the doctor is a mean old coot who doesn’t want any help in his practice. I was on my way out of town when—you’ll never believe this—someone left an abandoned newborn on the doctor’s porch. But things have improved, if slightly. I’m staying for at least a few more days to help with the baby. The old doc wouldn’t wake up to those middle-of-the-night hunger cries. Oh, Joey, my first impression of him is that he was the poorest excuse for a town doctor I’d ever met. Mean as a snake, rude as sour milk. Fortunately, working with those L.A. medical residents, especially those dicky surgeons, prepared me nicely.”
“Okay, that was your first impression. How has it changed?”
“He proves tractable. Since my housing was uninhabitable, I’m staying in the guest room in his house. It’s actually set up to be the only hospital room in town. This house is fine—clean and functional. There could be a slight inconvenience at any moment—a young woman who asked me to deliver her first baby will be having it here—in my bedroom, which I share with the abandoned baby. Picture this—a postpartum patient and a full nursery.”
“And you will sleep where?”
“I’ll probably hang myself up in a corner and sleep standing up. But that’s only if she delivers within the next week, while I’m still here. Surely a family will turn up to foster this baby soon. Although, I wouldn’t mind a birth. A sweet, happy birth to loving, excited, healthy parents...”
“You don’t have to stay for that,” Joey said firmly. “It’s not as though they don’t have a doctor.”
“I know—but she’s so young. And she was so happy, thinking there was a woman doctor here who could deliver her rather than this ornery old man.”
“Mel, I want you to get in your car and drive. Come to us. Where we can look after you for a while.”
“I don’t need looking after,” she said with a laugh. “Work helps. I need to work. Whole hours go by without thinking about Mark.”
“How are you doing with that?”
She sighed deeply. “That’s another thing. No one here knows, so no one looks at me with those sad, pitying eyes. And since they don’t look at me that way, I don’t crumble so often. At least, not where anyone can see.”
“Oh, Mel, I wish I could comfort you somehow...”
“But, Joey, I have to grieve this, it’s the only way. And I have to live with the fact that I might never be over it.”
“I hope that’s not true, Mel. I know widows. I know widows who have remarried and are happy.”
“We’re not going there,” she said. Then Mel told Joey about what she knew of the town, about all the people who’d been drifting into Doc’s house just to get a look at her, about Jack and Preacher. And about how many more stars there were out here. The mountains; the air, so clean and sharp it almost took you by surprise. About the people who came to the doctor bringing things, like tons of food, a lot of which went right across the street to the bar where Preacher used it in his creations; about how Jack refused to take a dime from either Doc or Mel for food or drink. Anyone who cared for the town had a free meal ticket over there.
“But it’s very rural. Doc put in a call to the county social services agency, but I gather we’re on a waiting list—they may not figure out foster care for who knows how long. Frankly, I don’t know how the old doc made it without any help all these years.”
“People nice?” Joey asked. “Other than the doctor?”
“The ones I’ve met—very. But the main reason I called, besides letting you know that I’m safe, is to tell you I’m on the old doc’s phone—the cell just isn’t going to work out here. I’ll give you the number.”
“Well,” Joey said, “at least you sound okay. In fact, you sound better than you have in a long time.”
“Like I said, there are patients. Challenges. I’m a little keyed up. The very first day, I was left alone here with the baby and the key to the drug cabinet and told to see any patients who wandered in. No training, nothing. About thirty people came—just to say hello and visit. That’s what you hear in my voice. Adrenaline.”
“Adrenaline again. I thought you swore off.”
Mel laughed. “It’s a completely different brand.”
“So—when you wrap it up there, you’ll come to Colorado Springs?”
“I don’t have any better ideas,” Mel said.
“When?”
“Not sure. In a few days, hopefully. Couple of weeks at the outside. But I’ll call you and let you know when I’m on my way. Okay?”
“Okay. But you really do sound...up.”
“There’s nowhere around here to get highlights. Some woman in town does hair in her garage, and that’s it,” Mel said.
“Oh, my God,” Joey said. “You’d better wrap it up before you get some ugly roots.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
* * *
Wednesday, Appointment Day, came and Mel watched the baby and saw a few patients with only minor complaints. One sprained ankle, a bad cold, another prenatal exam, a well-baby check and immunizations. After that there were a couple of walk-ins—she stitched up a laceration on a ten-year-old’s head and Doc said, “Not bad.” Doc made two house calls. They traded off babysitting to walk across the street to Jack’s to eat. The people she met at the bar and those who came into the doctor’s office were pleasant and welcoming. “But this is just temporary,” she was careful to explain. “Doc doesn’t really need any help.”
Mel put in an order for more diapers with Connie at the corner store. The store was no bigger than a minimart and Mel learned that the locals usually went to the nearest large town for their staples and feed for animals, using the store merely to grab those occasional missing items. There were sometimes hunters or fishermen looking for something. They had a little of everything—from bottled water to socks. But only a few items of each.
“I heard no one’s turned up for that baby yet,” Connie said. “I can’t think of anyone around here who’d have a baby and give it up.”
“Can you think of anyone who’d have a baby without any medical intervention of any kind? Especially since there’s a doctor in town?”
Connie, a cute little woman probably in her fifties, shrugged. “Women have their babies at home all the time, but Doc’s usually there. We have some isolated families out in the woods—hardly ever show their faces for anything.” She leaned close and whispered, “Strange people. But I’ve lived here all my life and have never heard of them giving up their children.”
“How long do you expect the social services intervention to take?”
Connie laughed. “I wouldn’t have the first idea. We run into a problem, we usually all pitch in. It’s not like we ask for a lot of outside help.”
“Okay, then, how long before you get in a new supply of disposable diapers?”
“Ron makes his supply run once a week, and he’ll do that tomorrow morning. So, by tomorrow afternoon, you should be fixed up.”
A teenage girl came into the store carrying her book bag—the school bus must have just dropped off. “Ah, my Lizzie,” Connie said. “Mel, this is my niece, Liz. She just got here—she’s going to stay with me for a while.”
“How do you do?” Mel said.
“Hey,” Liz said, smiling. Her full, long brown hair was teased up high and falling seductively to her shoulders, eyebrows beautifully arched over bright blue eyes, eye makeup thick, her glossy lips full and pouty. Little sex queen, Mel found herself thinking, in her short denim skirt, leather knee-high boots with heels, sweater tugged over full breasts and not meeting her waist. Belly-button ring, hmm. “Need me to work awhile?” Liz asked Connie.
“No, honey. Go to the back and start your homework. Your first day was good?”
“Okay, I guess.” She shrugged. “Nice to meet you,” she said, disappearing into the store’s back room.
“She’s beautiful,” Mel said.
Connie was frowning slightly. “She’s fourteen.”
Mel’s eyes grew wide as she mouthed the words silently. Fourteen? “Wow,” she whispered to Connie. The girl looked at least sixteen or even seventeen. She could pass for eighteen.
“Yeah. That’s why she’s here. Her mother, my sister, is at the end of her rope with the little hot bottom. She’s a wild one. But that was in Eureka. Not so many places to go wild around here.” She smiled. “If I could just get her to cover her naked body, I would feel so much better.”
“I hear ya,” Mel laughed. “May the force be with you.” But I’d consider birth control, Mel thought.
* * *
When Mel had her meals at the bar, if there was no one around she knew, like Connie or her best friend Joy, or Ron or Hope, she would sit up at the bar and talk to Jack while she ate. Sometimes he ate with her. During these meals she learned more about the town, about summer visitors who came for hiking and camping, the hunters and fishermen who passed through during the season—the Virgin was great for fly-fishing, a comment that made her giggle. And there was kayaking, which sounded like fun to her.
Ricky introduced her to his grandmother who made a rare dinner appearance. Lydie Sudder was over seventy and had that uncomfortable gait of one who suffered arthritis. “You have a very nice grandson,” Mel observed. “Is it just the two of you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I lost my son and daughter-in-law in an accident when he was just a little thing. I’d sure worry about him if it weren’t for Jack. He’s been looking out for Ricky since he came to town. He looks after a lot of people.”
“I can sense that about him,” Mel said.
The March sun had warmed the land and brought out the buds. Mel had a fleeting thought that seeing this place in full bloom would be glorious, but then reminded herself that she would miss it. The baby—little Chloe—was thriving and several different women from town had stopped by to offer babysitting services.
She realized that she’d been here over a week—and it had passed like minutes. Of course, never getting more than four hours of sleep at a stretch tended to speed up time. She’d found living with Doc Mullins to be more bearable than she would’ve thought. He could be a cantankerous old goat, but she could give it back to him just as well, something he seemed to secretly enjoy.
One day, when the baby was asleep and there were no patients or calls, Doc got out a deck of cards. He shuffled them in his hand and said, “Come on. Let’s see what you got.” He sat down at the kitchen table and dealt the cards. “Gin,” he said.
“All I know about gin is that you mix it with tonic,” she told him.
“Good. We’ll play for money,” he said.
She sat down at the table. “You plan to take advantage of me,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he confirmed. And then with a smile so rare, he began to tell her how to play. Pennies for points, he told her. And within an hour she was laughing, winning, and Doc’s expression was getting more sour by the minute, which only made her laugh harder. “Come on,” she said, dealing. “Let’s see what you got.”
The sound of someone coming through the front door temporarily stopped the game and Mel said, “Sit tight, I’ll see who it is.” She patted his hand. “Give you time to stack the deck.”
Standing just inside the front door was a skinny man with a long graying beard. His overalls were dirty and the bottoms frayed around filthy boots. The edge of his shirtsleeves and collar were also frayed, as though he’d been in these particular clothes a very long time. He didn’t come into the house, probably because of the mud he tracked, but stood just inside the door twisting a very worn felt hat.
“Can I help you?” she asked him.
“Doc here?”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Let me get him for you.”
She fetched Doc to the front door and while he was chatting with the man, she checked on Chloe. When Doc finally came back to the kitchen, he was wearing a very unpleasant expression. “We have to make a call. See if you can rustle up someone to keep an eye on the baby.”
“You need my assistance?” she asked, perhaps more hopefully than she wished.
“No,” he said, “but I think you should tag along. See what’s on the other side of the tree line.”
Chloe stirred in her bed and Mel picked her up. “Who was that man?”
“Clifford Paulis. Lives out in the woods with some people. His daughter and her man joined them a while back. They have regular problems. I’d rather you just see.”
“Okay,” she said, perplexed.
After a few phone calls had been placed with no success, the best they could do for the baby was take her across the street to Jack’s with a few diapers and a bottle. Mel carried her little bed while Doc managed the baby in one arm and his cane in the other hand, though Mel had offered to make two trips.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” she asked Jack. “You might have to change her and everything.”
“Nieces,” he said again. “I’m all checked out.”
“How many nieces, exactly?” she asked.
“Eight, at last count. Four sisters and eight nieces. Apparently they can’t breed sons. Where are you off to?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Paulises’,” Doc said. And Jack whistled.
As they drove out of town, Mel said, “I don’t have a good feeling about this. Seems everyone knows about this family except me.”
“I guess you deserve to be prepared. The Paulises live in a small compound of shacks and trailers with a few others—a camp. They stay out of sight and drink a lot, wander into town very rarely. They keep a supply of pure grain alcohol on hand. They’re dirt-poor, miserable folk, but they haven’t given Virgin River any trouble. Clifford says there was a fight last night and there’s some patching up to do.”
“What kind of fight?”
“They’re pretty gritty folk. If they sent for me, it must’ve been a good one.”
They drove a long way into the woods, the dirt road a narrow, bumpy, one lane before it finally broke open into a clearing around which were, as Doc had said, two shacks and a couple of trailers. Not mobile homes, but camper shells and an itty-bitty trailer that had seen better days, along with an old wheelless pickup truck up on blocks. They circled an open area in the middle of which was a crude brick oven of sorts. There were tarps stretched out from the campers and shacks with actual furniture under them. Not outdoor furniture but household—tables and chairs, old sofas with the stuffing popping out. Plus old tires, a couple of small trucks, unidentifiable junk, a wringer washer lying on its side. Mel peered into the trees and blinked to clear her vision. There appeared to be a semitrailer, half buried in the ground with camouflage tarps over the top. Beside it was, unmistakably, a gas-powered generator.
Mel said, “Holy shit.”
“Help if you can,” Doc said. “But try not to talk.” He peered at her. “That’ll be hard for you.”
Doc got out of the truck, hefting his bag. People started to drift into the clearing—not from within their homes, such as they were, but more like from behind them. There were just a few men. It was impossible to tell their ages; they all looked like vagrants with their dirty and worn dungarees and overalls. They were bearded, their hair long and matted, like real sad hillbillies. Everyone was thin with sallow complexions; they were not enjoying good health out here. There was a very bad smell and Mel thought about bathroom facilities. They would be using the forest; and it smelled as if they didn’t get far enough from the camp. Their facilities were minimal. It was like a little third-world country.
Doc nodded to people as he pressed forward, getting nods back. He’d obviously been here before. Mel followed more slowly. Doc ended up in front of a shack outside of which Clifford Paulis stood. Doc turned to make sure Mel was with him, then entered.
She felt their eyes on her, but they kept their distance. She wasn’t exactly afraid, but she was nervous and unsure and hurried behind Doc to enter the shack with him.
There was a small table inside with a lantern on it. Sitting on short stools at the table were a man and a woman. Mel had to stifle a gasp. Their faces were swollen, cut and bruised. The man was perhaps thirty, his dirty blond hair short and spiky, and he twitched and jittered, unable to sit still. The woman, maybe the same age, was holding her arm at an odd angle. Broken.
Doc put his bag on the table and opened it. He pulled out and put on his latex gloves. Mel followed suit, but slowly, her pulse picking up. She had never worked as a visiting nurse, but knew a few who had. There were nasty hovels all around the poorer sections of L.A. where paramedics might be called, but in the city if you had a situation like this, you’d notify the police. The patients would be brought to the emergency room. And in the event of domestic violence, which this clearly was, these two would both be booked into jail right out of the E.R. When there’s an injury in a domestic, no one has to press charges besides the police.
“Whatcha got, Maxine?” he said, reaching out for her arm, which she extended toward him. He examined it briefly. “Clifford,” he called. “I’m gonna need a bucket of water.” Then to Mel he said, “Get to work on cleaning up Calvin’s face, see if sutures are required, and I’ll attempt to set this ulna.”
“Do you want a hypo?” she asked.
“I don’t think we’ll need that,” he said.
Mel got out some peroxide and cotton and approached the young man warily. He lifted his eyes to her face and grinned at her with a mouth full of dirty teeth, some of which appeared to be rotting. In his eyes she saw that his pupils were very small—he was full of amphetamine, higher than a kite. He kept grinning at her and she tried not to make eye contact with him. She cleaned some of the cuts on his face and finally said, “Wipe that look off your face or I’ll let Doc do this.” It made him giggle stupidly.
“I’m going to need something for the pain,” he said.
“You already had something for the pain,” she told him. And he giggled again. But in his eyes there was menace and she decided not to make any more eye contact.
Doc made a sudden movement that slammed Calvin’s arm onto the table, hard, gripped by Doc’s arthritic hand. “You never do that, you hear me?” Doc said in a voice more threatening than Mel had heard before, then slowly released Calvin’s forearm while boring through him with angry eyes. Then Doc immediately turned his attention back to Maxine. “I’m going to have to put this bone right, Maxine. Then I’ll cast it for you.”
Mel had no idea what had just happened. “You don’t want an X-ray?” she heard herself ask Doc. And her answer was a glare from the doctor who’d asked her to try not to talk. She went back to the man’s face.
There was a cut over his eye that she could repair with tape, no stitches required. Standing above him as she was, she noticed a huge purple bump through the thinning hair on the top of his head. Maxine must have hit him over the head with something, right before he broke her arm. She glanced at his shoulders and arms through the thin fabric of his shirt and saw that he had some heft to him—he was probably strong. Strong enough at least to break a bone.
The bucket of water arrived—the bucket rusty and dirty—and momentarily she heard Maxine give out a yelp of pain as Doc used sudden and powerful force to put her ulna back into place.
Old Doc Mullins worked silently, wrapping an Ace bandage around her arm, then dipping casting material into the bucket, soaking it, and applying it to the broken arm. Finished with her assignment, Mel moved away from Calvin and watched Doc. He was strong and fast for his age, skilled for a man with hands twisted by arthritis, but then this had been his life’s work. Casting done, he pulled a sling out of his bag.
Job done, he snapped off his gloves, threw them in his bag, closed it, picked it up and, looking down, went back to the truck. Again, Mel followed.
When they were out of the compound she said, “All right—what’s going on there?”
“What do you think’s going on?” he asked. “It isn’t complicated.”
“Looks pretty awful to me,” she said.
“It is awful. But not complicated. Just a few dirt-poor alcoholics. Homeless, living in the woods. Clifford wandered away from his family to live out here years ago and over time a few others joined his camp. Then Calvin Thompson and Maxine showed up not so long ago, and added weed to the agenda—they’re growing in that semitrailer. Biggest mystery to me is how they got it back in here. You can bet Calvin couldn’t get that done. I figure Calvin’s connected to someone, told ’em he could sit back here and watch over a grow. Calvin’s a caretaker. That’s what the generator is about—grow lights. They irrigate out of the river. Calvin’s jitters don’t come from pot—pot would level him out and slow him down. He’s gotta be on something like meth. Maybe he skims a little marijuana, cheats the boss, and trades it for something else. Thing is, I don’t think Clifford and those old men have anything to do with the pot. They never had a grow out there before that I know of. But I could be wrong.”
“Amazing,” she said.
“There are lots of little marijuana camps hidden back in these woods—some of ’em pretty good size—but you can’t grow it outside in winter months. It’s still the biggest cash crop in California. But even if you gave Clifford and those old boys a million dollars, that’s how they’re going to live.” He took a breath. “Not all local growers look like vagrants. A lot of ’em look like millionaires.”
“What happened when you grabbed his arm like that?” she asked.
“You didn’t see? He was raising it like he was going to touch you. Familiarly.”
She shuddered. “Thanks. I guess. Why’d you want me to see that?”
“Two reasons—so you’d know what some of this country medicine is about. Some places where they’re growing are booby-trapped, but not this one. You should never go out to one of those places alone. Not even if a baby’s coming. You better hear me on that.”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a shudder. “You should tell someone, Doc. You should tell the sheriff or someone.”
He laughed. “For all I know, the sheriff’s department’s aware—there are growers all over this part of the world. For the most part, they stay invisible—it’s not like they want to be found out. More to the point, I’m in medicine, not law enforcement. I don’t talk about the patients. I assume that’s your ethic, as well.”
“They live in filth! They’re hungry and probably sick! Their water is undoubtedly contaminated by the awful, dirty containers they keep it in. They’re beating each other up and dying of drink and...whatever.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Doesn’t make my day, either.”
She found it devastating, the acceptance of such hopelessness. “How do you do it?” she asked him, her voice quiet.
“I just do the best I can,” he said. “I help where I can. That’s all anyone can do.”
She shook her head. “This really isn’t for me,” she said. “I can handle stuff like this when it comes into the hospital, but I’m no country practitioner. It’s like the Peace Corps.”
“There are bright spots in my doctoring, too,” he said. “Just happens that isn’t one of them.”
She was completely down in the dumps when she went back to the grill to collect the baby. “Not pretty out there, is it?” Jack said.
“Horrid. Have you ever been out there?”
“I stumbled across them a couple years ago when I was hunting.”
“You didn’t want to tell anyone?” she asked. “Like the police?”
“It isn’t against the law to be a bum,” he said with a shrug.
So, she thought—he didn’t know about the semi-trailer. Doc had said it showed up not long ago. “I can’t imagine living like that. Can I use your bathroom? I want to wash up before I touch the baby.”
“Right back off the kitchen,” he said.
When she got back she picked up Chloe and held her close, breathing in the clean, powdery scent.
“Fortunately, you don’t have to live like they do,” he said.
“Neither do they. Someone should do an intervention out there, get them some help. Food and clean water, anyway.”
He picked up the baby bed to carry it across the street for her. “I think they’ve killed too many brain cells for that to work,” he said. “Concentrate on the good you can do and don’t gnaw on the hopeless cases. It’ll just make you sad.”
* * *
By early evening, Mel was coming around. She took her dinner at the bar, laughed with Jack and even Preacher cracked the occasional smile. Finally, she put her small hand over Jack’s and said, “I apologize for earlier, Jack. I never even thanked you for watching the baby.”
“You were kind of upset,” he said.
“Yeah. I surprised myself. It’s not as though I haven’t seen plenty of bums and street people. They were frequent clientele at the hospital. I didn’t realize before today that in the city we’d clean ’em up, straighten ’em out and hand ’em off to some agency or another. In the back of my mind I probably always knew they’d be back picking out of trash cans before long, but I didn’t have to see it. This was very different. They’re not going anywhere and they’re not getting any help. It’s been down to Doc. Alone. Takes a lot of courage to do what Doc does.”
“He does more than a lot of people would do,” Jack said.
She smiled. “This is rough country.”
“It can be,” he said.
“Not a lot of resources out here.”
“We do pretty well with what we’ve got. But you have to remember, the old boys in that little camp don’t seem to want resources so much as to be left alone,” he said. “I know that’s hard to stomach, but most of this area is the opposite—thriving and healthy. Did that trip out into the woods make your desire to get out of here even more desperate?”
“It sure opened my eyes. I thought small-town medicine would be peaceful and sweet. I never thought it had that other side—as hopeless as some of our worst inner city problems.”
“Don’t know that it is,” he argued. “The sweet and peaceful will far outnumber the hopeless. I swear on it. You’re welcome to see for yourself and call me a liar. But you’d have to hang around.”
“I made a commitment to stay till the baby is placed,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t promise more.”
“No promises necessary. Just pointing out the options.”
“But thank you, for taking care of the baby for me.”
“She’s a good baby,” he said. “I didn’t mind at all.”
After she’d gone back to Doc’s, Jack said to Preacher, “You okay here? I’m thinking about a beer.”
Preacher’s bushy black brows shot up in surprise, but he didn’t say it. Didn’t say, “Another beer? So soon?” He finally said, “I’m okay here.”
Jack knew that if he didn’t say anything at all to Charmaine for a few weeks, she wouldn’t know there was anything to be said. He also knew that despite the fact Mel had captured his thoughts, it didn’t mean anything would ever happen, didn’t mean she’d make it even another week in Virgin River. That wasn’t really the point. The issue was that it was wrong to go to Charmaine at all, ever, if he wasn’t into Charmaine. It was a point of honor with him. Even though he never thought in terms of commitment, he certainly didn’t think in terms of using someone.
Then there was another matter. A fear that he’d be having sex with Charmaine and behind his closed eyes, see another face. That couldn’t happen. That would insult both women.
When she saw him walk into her tavern, her first reaction was one of pleased surprise and she smiled at him. Then she immediately realized how unprecedented this visit was and her smile vanished.
“Beer?” she asked him.
“Talk?” he answered. “Can Butch cover for you for ten minutes?”
She actually took a step back. She knew what was coming and sadness seeped into her brown eyes. Her face actually fell. “Is that all it’s going to take?” she asked. “Ten minutes?”
“I think so. There isn’t too much to say.”
“There’s someone else,” she said at once.
“No. There isn’t. Let’s take a table.” He looked over his shoulder. “That one over there. Ask Butch.”
She nodded and turned from him. While she spoke to Butch, Jack moved to the table. Butch took the bar and Charmaine joined Jack. He reached across and took her hands. “You’ve been a wonderful friend to me, Charmaine. I never for one second took that for granted.”
“But...”
“My mind is on other things,” he said. “I won’t be coming to Clear River for a beer anymore.”
“There can only be one thing,” she said. “Because I know you. And you have needs.”
He’d thought about this long and hard on the way over, and it wasn’t in his mind to lie to her. But there wasn’t anyone else. Mel wasn’t someone else—and might never be. Just because she’d taken over his consciousness didn’t mean it would ever materialize into something more. She might stick to her word and leave Virgin River at the first opportunity, and even if she didn’t, you don’t show your hand this early in the game. His reason for breaking this off wasn’t just about having Mel, but about not misleading Charmaine. She was a good woman; she had been good to him. She didn’t deserve to be strung along while he waited to see what the other woman was going to do.
The cabin in Virgin River might be ready, but Mel sure wasn’t. The baby at Doc’s was keeping her in town for now, but it was impractical to think of her caring for Chloe out at the cabin—there was only the one Plexiglas incubator, no car seat for traveling back and forth, no phone. Of course, it was no punishment to have her living right across the street. But he wanted her in the cabin he’d renovated, he wanted that real bad.
Charmaine was so right—he had needs. But somehow when he looked at this young Mel, he knew it would never be like this—an arrangement for sex every couple of weeks. Jack had absolutely no idea what it might become, but he already knew it was going to be more than that. He had a very long history of not getting hooked up, so this disturbed him. The chances were real good he was casting adrift in a sea of sheer loneliness. Because Mel had complications. He had no idea what they were, but that occasional sadness in her eyes came out of the past, something she was trying to get over.
But he wanted her. He wanted all of her; he wanted everything with her.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I have needs. And right now I think what I need is completely different from what I’ve needed in the past. I could easily keep coming here, Charmaine. I sure don’t suffer, you’re awful good to me. But the past two years when I’ve been here, I’ve been here completely. It shouldn’t be any other way.”
“The last time was different,” she said. “I knew something was wrong.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s really the first time my head wasn’t connected to my body. You deserve better than that.”
She lifted her chin and gave her hair a toss. “What if I said I didn’t care?”
God, he felt so bad doing this. “I do,” was all he could say.
She got teary. “Okay, then,” she said bravely. “Okay, then.”
When he left he knew it was going to be a while before he felt all right about what he’d just done. That business about playing it fast and loose, about having no ties or commitments, that wasn’t really how it was. All that no commitment bullshit meant was that you didn’t talk about it, you never took it to the next level. He had had a contract of sorts with Charmaine, even if it wasn’t a formal one, a legal one, even if it was pretty casual in the give-and-take department. She had stuck to the contract; he had just broken it. And let her down.