Burn What Will Burn (14 page)

“Who's the medical expert here, Bob?”

“I'm sure a lot of your patients have asked that same question, Doc.”

The curved needle slipped into my head, the string pulled through my scalp.

“I take that back,” I said, ripped the table paper.

“Sorry I couldn't locate the deadening accoutrements, Bob. I'm at a loss without Nurse, you know.”

The needle, the string ran their course again, the second naturally following the first. My toes curled in my walking shoes.

“You said, two, Doc. Just two stitches.”

“Several, I said, Bob. And you know I'm an old-fashioned doc, always erring on the side of conservative policy. Better to overdo some things than underdo them. You wouldn't want those fine brains of yours spilling out in your sleep, would you, Bob?”

The needle went in, the needle went out. The cold steel was not getting any warmer.

“That's it,” I declared, started to get up.

Doc pressed me back onto the table.

He was surprisingly strong for an old man.

“You ever hear the one about the duck at the bar, Bob?”

“I told you that one.”

“Just thinking of what Voltaire said about physicians.”

I felt a tug at the base of my skull.

“That the art of medicine consists mainly of amusing the patient while God effects the cure.”

“I don't know about god,” I said, “but you need to work on your jokes, Doc.”

Doc tied off the stitches, severed the string between us. I stood and felt the bristling on the back of my head, below my bald spot.

“You tell that buddy of yours, Sam Baxter, the fellow that sapped me to unconsciousness, that if I'd needed one more stitch on the back of my head I would have sued.”

Doc straightened up his paraphernalia.

“I doubt that was a wound from a leather sap, Bob.”

“Meaning?”

The Poe County Medical Examiner stripped off the old white paper and rolled a fresh sheet out, pulled it tight and clipped it to the sides of the table.

“The wound on your head is not consistent with the description of a wound suffered from a policeman's leather sap.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“The skin was broken. In a jagged fashion. Not serious, but inconsistent with the profile of a sap wound. I cleaned out some rock dust and fragments as well.”

“A rock?”

“You could have fallen. Sam says you did.”

“What exactly is the sheriff's version, Doc? I know you're tight with Baxter. I guess you've known him since he was a baby.”

“I delivered Sam,” Doc said. “In that house I helped his daddy build, the one across The Little Piney. Helped Samuel plant his apple trees and press his first batch of cider. Melissa introduced him to Frances Roberts.”

Doc switched off the examining room lights, held back the frosted glass door for me. I passed out of that room and into the waiting area, looked again at the doctor's Wall of Fame, at the cast of Locals, the babies delivered, the football hero High Sheriff, his momma, his daddy, the doctor's dead wife, the doctor's diplomas, Tammy Fay as a child, the dead man in The Little Piney with a tattooed forearm around her waist, Miss Ollie Ames's hulking son Warnell.

“It's right here, isn't it, Doc?” I asked. “The story is right here.”

“It's really a local matter, Bob.”

“And the sheriff's version of today's events?” I repeated my earlier query.

“Sam had you dead to rights trespassing. You resisted arrest, fell and knocked yourself out. He released you because he wants to keep all his options open, Bob.”

“Options?”

Doc turned off the lights.

“Sam might want to press murder charges.”

*   *   *

Doc pulled onto Main without checking for traffic, as if he knew no one would be in his way.

“You're looking very peaked, Bob.”

“Who did I…? Who was I supposed to have killed, Doctor? Can you tell me that?”

“The man in The Little Piney was Joe Pickens Junior,” Doc informed me. “I can tell you that much.”

“Joe Junior? He was…”

I stopped myself.

“Who identified him?” I asked.

“I did. Known Junior since he was born.”

“Who found him?”

“Warnell Ames discovered the body. Facedown on the gravel shoal just south of the bridge over The Little Piney. Very near your home. Warnell walked up to Jacob Wells's place and Jake called the sheriff, who called me. While he was in the area, Sam decided to check on his property, that spread behind the cyclone fence on the other side of the river.”

“We struggled?” I asked. “I fell and bumped my head. Sheriff Baxter put me in jail.”

Doc nodded. “Pretty much like that, Bob.”

“Warnell hasn't left Doker in years,” I said.

Miss Ollie had told me that a hundred times, sniffed sadly about it a bit on several occasions when she misread my silence as sympathy. Her son didn't even know how to drive a car or even ride a bicycle.

“I have never once seen him down by the creek. Not in the ten months plus I've lived here,” I told Doc Williams. “All Warnell ever does is sit on that stool and watch the Old Lion, looking out for Tammy Fay.”

But Warnell was not out front of EAT as I spoke.

Miss Ollie, however, was staring out the front picture window but as Doc drove us past the café she backed out of sight and the
OPEN
neon above the entrance was extinguished.

When we were abreast of the Old Lion I asked Doc to stop. He did.

“Maybe Tammy's got my truck ready, Doctor, and I can save you a trip to Rushing.”

The single garage work bay was empty, the rack lowered. Tammy Fay's tow truck was gone. I mounted the steps to her upstairs apartment and could see through a parted curtain that the upstairs apartment was its usual mess and seemed empty. Stank wasn't there either. Maybe the dog was still roaming the streets looking for some affection.

I got back into the station wagon, scratched the itch at the back of my head.

The doctor pulled onto Main Street without looking behind him, as was his privilege apparently.

“It just doesn't make any sense, Doc. What in the world was Warnell Ames doing at The Little Piney, that far from home?”

“Warnell said he was fishing.”

“Fishing?”

“That is the story, Bob.”

I scratched at my head some more.

“Who's going to tell Malcolm?” I asked. “About his daddy?”

“This is not yet for public broadcast, Bob. I shouldn't have said anything about this.”

He sped out of Doker, only slowed when crossing the narrow bridge over South Slough, an elongated depression that was not quite a creek and not quite dry land but just perpetual thin mud with a bridge depended over it.

My very expensive binoculars were sunk in South Slough.

The doctor braked the County meat wagon and eased off the State Road and onto County Road 615, hurried down the dirt. The wind whistling by us was hot and dry.

“So, what killed Joe Pickens Junior, Doctor?”

We passed Pick's UPUMPIT! There was nobody in the yard and no lights on in the store. My truck was gone, so I guessed the Right Reverend Mean Joe Pickens Senior had had it towed off as he had done on several previous occasions.

“Gunshot killed Junior, best I can tell at the present moment. Very large caliber. In the back.”

“I don't even have a gun.”

“Well, Bob, you maybe might would think that is a point in your favor,” Doc allowed.

“Malcolm's going to take this hard.”

Doc shrugged philosophically.

“Malcolm sees what he sees, Bob, so the child can entertain some fantastic notions very seriously. He'll probably invent a story where his daddy's the hero,” Doc suggested. “Anyway, I don't believe that Malcolm has seen Joe Junior in several years. Perhaps that will make the situation easier on him.”

I was not sure about that. Whether it would make it easier or harder on Malcolm and whether the kid had seen his daddy recently or not. I suspected Malcolm had seen his daddy, down by the creek, indeed had been supplying Joe Pickens Junior with potted meat and cigarettes and Coca-Colas for at least a couple of days judging by the trash I had seen around the creekside fire pit.

“Was Joe Junior always a problem, Doctor?”

“He wasn't a ‘bad kid,' if that's what you're asking, Bob.” The doctor considered. “Junior was just a wee bit too stupid to be smart and a wee bit too smart to be stupid, if you understand what that means.”

I nodded since the same might be said of me.

“Junior used to attend Melissa's summer camp, Camp Osage, along with pretty much all the rest of the cast of young characters around here and it was just remarkable how Junior could figure out games and crafts and get along fine with people and then he'd do something so stupid it would be remarkable. The main problem with Joe Junior was that he was just smart enough to get himself in serious trouble and too stupid to get himself out of it.”

“Not like Warnell?”

“Warnell's intelligence is about on par with a box of hair stored in the back room,” the doctor said. “But that is not his fault. Warnell was dropped on his head several times,” the doctor said. “I actually once dropped him myself when he was just a few days old.” Dr. Williams nodded. “But Warnell, defective as he is, has at least been with the program around here. Not like Joe Junior, who had to go off and do his own thing and never did get with the program around here.”

“Never got with the program,” I repeated.

“Some people just don't, Bob. Some people just stay stupid and don't ever get with the program and just won't change their ways.” The driver looked sideways at me, then looked back at the road. “I won't mention any more names, Bob.”

“People don't change much, do they, Doctor?”

“Unfortunately just a few things that I've noticed really change people, Bob—drug addiction, electroshock and the Conversion Experience. Not much else seems to make a fundamental difference.”

“Including summer camp?”

“The women, my wife especially, thought they were making a positive difference in those kids' lives, Bob. I was hardly in the position to tell them they weren't. To look at those kids all grown up now you would have to say Camp Osage did not exactly turn out as the women planned.”

“What does, Doctor?”

“Exactly, Bob.”

The physician smiled nostalgically.

“But it did have its moments, Bob. Camp Osage surely did have several of those.”

The graveyard going by on our right was a collection of upstanding white stones.

“What do you mean, Doctor?”

“It's not something I want to discuss right now, Bob. It really is local business, which means it is not your business and the only reason I have given you as much information as I have is to impress upon you the importance of personal space.”

“Personal space?”

“You might want to expand yours, Bob. Say, to Hot Springs. I understand you are partial to Hot Springs.”

“I see,” I said.

The doctor stopped in front of the First Rushing Evangelical True Bible Prophecy Church of the Rising Star in Jesus Christ where these promises still held forth:

WELCOME ALL, SERVICES AT 8:30 AM SUNDAY, THE LORD'S DAY. THE CORRECT AND GOOD NEWS AS PROCLAIMED BY THE GOSPEL AND DELIVERED BY THE RIGHT REVEREND JOE PICKENS, SENIOR, MINISTER OF THE FAITH.

I looked at Doc. He seemed to be dismissing me.

“I just thought you maybe might would appreciate the little walk home from here, Bob. Stretch the old legs out.”

I opened the door.

“Thanks for the ride, Doc. And the information.”

“Hot Springs is nice, Bob. Just what the doctor ordered, I believe.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, it is, Doctor.”

“Let a word to the wise suffice, Bob?”

“Sure, Doctor.”

I got out of the ME's car, shut the door.

Doc drove off.

I headed home with that wise word ringing in my ears.

 

CHAPTER 9

I walked in the middle of the road. The blister on my heel was a dull throb.

Jacob Wells's cows in my unfenced fields shuffled and lowed. I stopped and threw rocks at them until my sore shoulder gave out, then I went on.

The air was hot in my lungs and my body was hot, flushed as if I had been working all day in the garden. Chinos chafed my legs and my T-shirt clung to me like a second, dirty skin. I peeled it off and wiped the sweat from my face, my scalp.

The late-summer sky was tilted fully at night, the gibbous moon inserting itself like a bookmark through a hazy, dark book of clouds.

My chickens would be glad to have me safely home. I heard their scratching on the warped boards of the front screenporch.

A dog growled when my loafers crunched on the driveway. I picked up a handful of pea gravel to throw, thinking it was one of the Wellses' mutts escaped their pens and gone awandering.

From the shadows under the porch hobbled a short-one-leg hound.

“Stank?”

The old bluetick barked once, bent her head into my knee, whined. I scratched her ass, looked up the sideyard and saw the scabrously rusted propane tank, saw my Cadillac. And saw the gleaming grille of a big, well-tended tow truck.

“Tammy Fay?”

Stank hobbled toward her mistress's vehicle. I followed.

My mechanic was asleep in the front seat of her truck. Her arm was crooked and propped on the open window, the sleeve of her coveralls rolled up above her biceps to expose the white skin of her elbow.

The soft flesh on the inside angle of her left arm was tracked with the scars of intravenous drug use. Years' worth of heavy use and a fresh dot of congealed blood.

That didn't surprise me. We are all attracted to types.