Dangerous Undertaking (2 page)
I opened my eyes to a small, dim, private hospital room. The institutional clock by the wall-mounted television read six
P.M.
My stay in the recovery room must have been textbook timing.
I tried to move and felt the bandages crossing my chest. My right arm was free, but the left was bound tightly to my side. A mound of dressing covered my shoulder and arm down to the elbow. My left hand rested on my stomach, and with cautious concentration, I wiggled each finger. Everything seemed to be in working order.
My mouth was so dry I thought my tongue was welded to the roof. Post-anesthetized cotton mouth makes swallowing a Herculean effort and chips of ice more precious than diamonds. I wanted a few slivers to melt down my throat and would have sold everything I owned to get them.
A service cart was adjacent to the right side of the bed, and on it sat a white Styrofoam water pitcher. The Holy Grail could not have been more desirable. I searched for a cup, but the nurse’s aide had forgotten to leave one. She had also forgotten to put the call button by my good arm, and no amount of stretching could bring it within reach.
Where there is a will, there is a way; and I figured water straight from the pitcher was better than no water at all. As I lifted it to me, the weight didn’t feel like water. Sure enough, only ice was inside. The aide must have left it just moments before I awoke. No melting had occurred.
I tipped the pitcher against my lips, thrusting my tongue out to snare this frozen manna from heaven. Nothing. The ice remained fused in the bottom half. I banged the rim against my teeth, hoping to shake loose a few crystals. Instead, the confined snowstorm broke loose, and the entire contents crashed into my face and tumbled down my neck and under the flimsy hospital gown. My “god-dammit” was followed by the sound of unrestrained laughter. I brushed the ice from my eyes and saw the blurry silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway.
“Well, if you nurses had any brains, you would have put the damn button within reach.”
The laughter abruptly halted.
Her voice took on the tone of one used to being obeyed. “And how many times do I have to tell you the nurses in this understaffed and underfunded hospital work their tails off? As for me, I didn’t have the brains to be a nurse. I had to settle for being a surgeon who carves up undertakers that are so foolish they let their clients shoot them.”
She marched over, bent down, and kissed me on the lips. Without another word, she began picking up the clumps of ice now melting through the sheets and gown. The chill had cleared my head enough to appreciate her delicate hands. I shifted my attention to her long neck and mahogany-colored hair. Dark brown eyes and pursed full lips gave evidence of the concentration and concern she brought to her work.
“Okay, Susan, you already know I’m a jerk. I had just hoped to keep you from discovering how big a jerk I am. I can only plead that I don’t get shot every day.”
She smiled. “I don’t often see my patients try to freeze themselves, and I don’t operate on my boyfriend every day.”
“I thought it was policy not to operate on loved ones?”
“Then next time I’ll just let you bleed till Dr. O’Malley drives back from Myrtle Beach. I suppose now you’re going to weasel out of our Friday night date.”
“Of course not. How big is this bed?”
She didn’t laugh at my joke. “Not nearly as big as your male ego. You’re going to be out of action for a while, Barry. That was a close call. You almost wound up in your own funeral home.”
Her words sobered me. “Tell me how it went. What’s the prognosis for patient Barry Clayton?”
“Good,” she said. “Mostly because of luck, not my skills. The mass of pellets missed you. The anesthesiologist shoots ducks and figures from the size of the pellets they were number one buck with about twenty in the shell. Only six struck your shoulder and upper arm. They hit head on and lodged in the joint space. We had to extract them and re-tie some of the muscles in the most traumatized area.”
“Movement restricted?” I asked.
“You’ll have reduced latitude. Sort of like you had a chronic dislocation problem only the damage wasn’t done by the bone popping out. It was the pellets tearing their way in. You’ll need six weeks for healing along with simple physical therapy to stretch the muscles we had to shorten. The shoulder will be sore and stiff for a while, but you can return to work in a week or two.”
“Oh, yes, work. Have you talked with my mom?”
“She and your uncle were here when you came out of surgery. A neighbor came over to stay with your dad. They went back about an hour ago. Your mom said to tell you Wayne has help coming from Wilson Funeral Home in Asheville. They’re handling the arrangements for the Willard burials.”
“What a way to get business. I’m sure Mom’s upset.”
“She’s just glad you’re alive. I sent her and Wayne out the back entrance to avoid the reporters.”
“Reporters,” I said, emphasizing the plural. “Has the
Gainesboro VISTA
assigned two? That must be half their staff. I can see the headline—‘Undertaker Nearly Conducts Own Funeral!’”
“Network reporters, Barry. CNN and at least one other. They’ve been calling the hospital switchboard trying to reach you.”
I stared at Dr. Susan Miller like she had just announced her Martian ancestry.
“I told the switchboard no calls,” she said, “and the floor nurses no visitors, except for family. Everyone understands I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She gave me another, and this time, lingering kiss.
The telephone rang, breaking the moment.
“So much for doctor’s orders,” she said. She lifted the receiver and spoke curtly, “Room 237, who’s calling please?”
Her face flushed with the slightest hint of red. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and offered me the phone. “She says she’s your wife. I think I’d better excuse myself.”
She left me alone to confront the voice of the woman who still managed to disrupt my life, even by long distance.
“Hello, Rachel.”
“My God, Barry. What happened? I heard your name on the news. The news here in Washington. Are you all right?” She sounded so genuinely concerned, I suppressed the sarcastic tone I usually used as defense against her constant criticism of my small-town life.
“Yes. Just got in the way of a little buckshot. I’m sure the press has exaggerated my involvement.”
“Don’t deny you could have been killed.” She sighed. “And people say the cities are dangerous.”
After a few seconds of long-distance hum, she went on, “I’m glad you’re all right, Barry.”
“I know you are, Rachel.” There was a knock at the door, and the face of a pirate leered at me. “Sorry, someone’s here,” I told her. “I’ve got to hang up. Thanks for the call. I’ll give your best to Mom.”
“And your dad too,” she added. “Even if he doesn’t understand.”
“Thank you, Rachel,” I said, and I meant it. She and I couldn’t live together, but there was still a basic bond of caring. In some ways, she had been the victim of my father’s Alzheimer’s as much as any of us. I had been forced to quit my job with the Charlotte police department and leave my graduate studies in criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in order to help Mom and her brother Wayne care for Dad and run the funeral home. Even Charlotte had been too small for Rachel, and there was no way she would survive in a mountain town the size of Gainesboro. The divorce had been sad but polite, and she had carried her life away to Washington.
The pirate bent over my bed. The upper edge of his black eye-patch cut diagonally across a bushy brown eyebrow, and from underneath it, a thin, pale scar sliced over the sharp cheekbone to the corner of a wide, tooth-filled grin. He fixed his one eye on my bandaged shoulder.
“Well, now, Barry,” said Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins in a gravelly voice. “Mighty thoughtful of you to get shot in a cemetery. Inconvenient as hell not to die. You feel like telling me why Dallas Willard wanted to take you out along with the rest of his family?”
“No,” I croaked.
“Hmm,” he grunted. “Sounds like you need a drink.” He looked in the empty Styrofoam pitcher, and then brought a glass of water from the bathroom. “Want to sit up?”
I nodded an “okay” and the sheriff pressed a control button that set motors whirring. The top half of the bed rose to a forty-five-degree angle and jerked to a stop.
“Here, sip on this.”
I took the glass and let the cool water seep between my cracked lips. I was acutely aware of the ache in my shoulder and just as acutely aware that Tommy Lee Wadkins would not be sympathetic if he thought I had any information he needed. Pulling a chair beside the bed, the sheriff straddled it backwards, took a notepad and pencil from the chest pocket of his desert tan uniform, and stared at me.
“What happened?” I asked, beating him to the question.
He smiled. “Not much. Just the bloodiest mess I’ve seen since ’Nam.”
Everybody in Gainesboro, or the whole of Laurel County for that matter, knew Lieutenant Tommy Lee Wadkins was a bona fide war hero. He had brought his ambushed platoon through a hellfire, refusing to leave anyone behind. Even though shrapnel to the face had taken an eye and slashed through his cheekbone, the young officer had dragged a dying comrade through the jungle and provided cover while the choppers evacuated his men. Hanging from the skid, he had emptied his magazine as the last chopper lifted him above the smoke and fire to carry him to safety and unwanted glory.
Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins never spoke of the war. In all the years I had known him, the word Vietnam never passed his lips until today.
“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” he said. “So, we’ve both been shot, but at least I knew why ‘Charlie’ wanted to kill me. You got any ideas?”
“Not a clue. You get him?”
Tommy Lee shook his head. “As soon as I got the word, we issued a
BOLO
.”
Since I’d served three years as a patrolman in Charlotte, Tommy Lee freely used cop lingo with me.
BOLO
. Be on the lookout for.
“Dallas and his truck have disappeared,” he said. “A manhunt is underway in four counties and the state has lent a chopper for aerial surveillance. There is no sign he returned to his cabin. He could have gone to earth anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. I figure that’s the travel time he had before we got organized.”
“He knows these hills,” I said.
“As well as anybody. For all we know, he may have an arsenal stored somewhere. I’m hoping this is just some family feud taken to the extreme and he’s not a danger to anyone else.”
I saw Dallas Willard smiling at me from across the casket. “But I’m not family. I suggest you learn what happened to Dallas Willard during these few days since his grandmother died.”
“I’ve already started. Did you know that last night Dallas filled up an answering machine tape at the mental health clinic?”
“No. Was he trying to reach Dr. Soles?” Dr. Alexander Soles was the psychologist who led a support group for families who were coping with Alzheimer’s. Mom and I attended, and Dallas, Norma Jean, and Lee had been a part of it until two weeks ago when Martha Willard’s condition took a sharp turn for the worse.
“No, not Dr. Soles,” said Tommy Lee. “Dallas Willard was asking for you.”
“Me? At the clinic?”
“Yeah, he said he had to reach you and that all he got at the funeral home was an answering service. He said he needed you to tell his grandmother something.” Tommy Lee scooted his chair forward as if closer proximity would somehow inspire me to find a sane answer to an absurd question. “Barry, why would Dallas Willard think you could talk to his dead grandmother?”
I shifted on the bed, trying for a more comfortable position that would clear my head. “I don’t know. The only times I ever spoke with Dallas were when he came to the Alzheimer’s meetings with Lee and Norma Jean.”
“You must have said something,” Tommy Lee said.
I took another sip of water as I tried to remember the few conversations I had with Dallas. “I first started talking to him a couple of months ago. During one of the sessions, Norma Jean told everyone how Grandma Martha had started calling him Francis.”
“Francis?”
“Yeah, for Saint Francis. Martha Willard thought he could talk to the animals. Dallas became very upset. He said that was private. Between him and his grandma. He stormed out of the room. I went after him to try and calm him down. I guess I felt sorry for him.”
Tommy Lee looked at his notes. “Alex Soles told me he suspects Dallas is a borderline paranoid/schizophrenic and believes his grandmother’s death may have triggered a full-blown psychotic episode.”
“Triggered is right.” I moved again and felt the pain in my shoulder. “I’d always sensed something odd about him. He had difficulty expressing himself in our sessions. The night he got so upset I found him leaning against the hood of his pickup, crying like a baby.”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“I told him not to let what other people said bother him. That it was obvious he had a special relationship with his grandmother just like I did with my father. He said he didn’t care about what other people thought. He just didn’t like to think of living without Grandma Martha. We talked for a while, and then I asked him to come back inside with me because I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. He followed me in as docile as a lamb. At the next meeting, he sat beside me. He would say hello and goodbye only to me and hardly anything else in between.”
“He’s always been a quiet one,” said Tommy Lee, “but then a lot of these mountaineers are. Since he was never in trouble, I never gave him much thought.”
“Then he stopped coming altogether. Must have missed three sessions in a row. I asked Norma Jean where he was and she said my guess was as good as hers. She said Dallas spent more and more time alone, wandering off in the woods. Two weeks ago, he came to the last meeting before Martha’s general health failed. He sat next to me, and as we were leaving, he caught my arm and asked to speak to me alone. ‘Mr. Clayton,’ he said, although he was only a couple years younger. ‘How do you think a person gets to Heaven?’”