The Calling (5 page)

She asked to be dropped off at the station house.
They sat in the idling car. 'I can drive you home,'
Greene said. 'You should go home.'

'My car's in back.'

'I know you. You go in there and you won't come
out until tomorrow.'

'I just want an hour to think,' she said.

He stroked the wheel, looking out the wind-shield.
'There's nothing a CO would be able to tell
you right now that you don't already know.'

'Don't read my mind, Ray. It's creepy.'

'I'm just saying.'

She twisted in her seat to face him. 'I should be
able to lead this investigation without worrying
there's no one in there to look after the shop.
That's what a commanding is supposed to do. Did
Central think this would never happen? That there
wouldn't come a day when something would
happen in this town that would need my full
attention?'

'I wouldn't use the word
think
in connection
with Central.'

'Six years, Ray. And counting. And if we guff
this, Mason will use it as proof that we should be
amalgamated.'

'So let's not guff it, Skip. You have me and a dozen
good men and women in there who will put in the
time and effort. And, hey, you have Spere too.'

'Don't remind me.' She opened the door. 'You
going home?'

'Eventually.'

'Uh-huh,' she said. 'Thanks for the pep talk.'

She watched him drive south toward Main
Street. His house was north. South was the
Kilmartin Inn and the horse track.

Back in her office, she put a call through to the
operator and asked her how to bypass a direct
connection to someone's line and get right into
their voicemail. She wrote down the method and
then dialled into Gord Sunderland's messages. 'Oh
hi, Gord,' she said. 'I'm sorry I missed you. In any
case, I'll be making a statement on the station
house steps Monday morning at nine. I'll see you
there.' She hung up and grinned at the silent
receiver.

Sunday, 14 November, 7 a.m.

He passed out of Westmuir and into Renfrew
County to the east. As the sun was coming up, he
was within fifty kilometres of the Linnet County
border, the last county before Quebec. The towns
in all of the province were much like the ones he'd
encountered in British Columbia and the Prairies –
outside of the cities, the villages appeared like
beads on a string along two-lane country roads, one
perhaps every fifteen or twenty kilometres, about
the distance between where you might have last
rested your horse and where you might want to stop
again. The villages were small, tiny even, some
with nothing more than a church, a store and a
Victorian post office long since converted to
another purpose: a pub now, a bed and breakfast, an
antique store. Here, in Humber Cottage, where he
pulled over after driving in a mainly easterly
direction for three hours, it was a small café. He
was tired and in need of something to eat.

He'd sat with Delia until two in the morning,
doing his ministrations, cleaning up after himself,
and wandering around the house. Just before two,
when she was ready, he brushed her hair, sat her up
on the couch, and photographed her. He thanked
her then, blessing her, and took to the road. He
spent the rest of that day, Saturday, 13 November,
in a roadside forest, praying and resting. At 4 a.m.,
he'd got back into his car and started east again. At
6 a.m., he'd switched to smaller roads, and now, an
hour later, a predawn gloam was spreading a fan of
thick orange light over the few buildings that lined
this part of Highway 121 – the hamlet of Humber
Cottage – where he would breakfast.

As he came to the door of the café, a pretty
woman in her mid-thirties unlocked it for him.
'Early riser?' she said.

'Just passing through.'

'Coffee isn't even on yet. Come in though.'

He told her he didn't drink coffee, not to make
any on his account, that if she would bring him
some hot water, he would make his morning drink.
She brought him a little teapot, stained from years
of the hard water in this part of the province, and
watched him drop a pinch of grey leaf into the pot.
He swirled it around and poured it out into a cup.

'Imported stuff, huh?' she said. 'I have a cousin
who has a teashop in Cottingham, just back twenty
or so klicks. You should visit her.'

'I grow my own,' he said. 'This is damiana. A
natural tonic.' He sipped it. 'Have you any fruit?'

'I can make you cottage cheese with berries in it.
That's a good breakfast.'

'If you don't mind, miss, I'd rather just the
berries. Nothing else.'

She shrugged her shoulders good-naturedly and
turned for the counter. 'I don't mind anything,
hon, but you look like you could use a proper meal.'

'It's early for a full breakfast,' he said, 'but thanks.
Put the hot water on my bill of course.'

'Wouldn't think of it,' came the reply.

She disappeared into the kitchen, where he presumed
she was now slicing his breakfast. He hoped
she might bring strawberries with the tops still
attached; the greens were rich in astringent, and
his gut felt damp and heavy. But it attracted strange
looks, a man who ate something destined for
compost. We are all destined for compost, he
thought, and smiled to himself. We are but clay.

She brought out the fruit – blackberries, strawberries
without their greens, raspberries. She had
brought a couple of slices of honeydew, which he
would not touch, as it broke down in the
mouth and caused anything in the stomach to
ferment, and he did not touch alcohol. 'Nothing
else, then?' she said.

'Not for now.'

She stood by the side of his table, regarding him
with a gentle look. 'Are you some kind of a doctor?'
she said, her head tilted with curiosity. 'You have
the look about you of a doctor.'

'And what does a doctor look like, my dear?'

'A little tired from saving lives.' She laughed at
herself. 'Have you been saving lives all through the
night, Doctor?'

This one was very charming, he thought to himself.
Sweet, even-tempered. But very young. 'I
have, in fact, been saving lives. So you can pat
yourself on the back for a good guess, miss.'

'What kind of doctor are you?'

He crunched a blackberry between his back
teeth. The juice was flat, without its electrics. He
was disappointed. 'I'm not really the kind of doctor
you might be thinking of. I'm more of what you
would probably call a naturopath. I treat the soul as
well as the body.'

'Ohhhh,' she said, knowingly. 'You're an herbalist.'

'I do use herbs,' he said. 'But I use many things.'

'And they work?'

'They do. Usually. If it's not too late.' This last
statement seemed to sting her, and she laid her
hand on the chairback across from him. When he
looked up at her face, she was staring past him, out
the window and onto the road. 'I've upset you
somehow,' he said.

'No. You haven't. But it's sad to think that it
could be too late for anyone.'

'You can't unsalt a soup,' he said.

She smoothed the back of the chair and then
patted it, as if it were an animal she cared for. 'I
have a niece. They keep her at home now because
she has seizures. She stiffens up and falls over, as
if she's dead.'

'That sounds very serious indeed.' He poured
more hot water into his cup. They come to me, he
thought. I am called. 'Has she seen a doctor?'

'A raft of them.'

'Bring another cup, Miss ...'

'MacDonald. Grace MacDonald.'

'I'll make you a cup of my tea, and we'll discuss
your niece.'

She protested mildly – it was impolite of her to
harass him like this at 7:20 in the morning – but he
insisted, and she went back behind the counter and
got herself a cup. He put a tiny amount of the
damiana in it and covered it with hot water. 'It
tastes like camomile,' she said.

'Very much like camomile,' he replied. 'Now tell
me about this girl.'

When Grace called her sister Terry, it was still
before eight in the morning. She told her that she
wanted to bring someone over to see Rose. Terry
sighed on the other end of the line. Rose was sleeping,
at last she was sleeping. But Grace pressed her:
she'd had a visitor in the café and she felt he could
offer something none of the doctors could. 'He
gave me a tea that makes you feel like Wonder
Woman,' said Grace. 'You should meet him. He's
like a shaman.' She could hear the exhaustion in
Terry's voice – Rose's attacks happened around the
clock. She would shriek in surprise while in bed,
and Terry would rush into the child's room to find
her stretched out stiffly on the floor, quaking, or
standing in the corner, a look of stark terror on her
face. It was like having a newborn in the house
again, a haunted newborn.

'I don't want a visitor right now, Grace. I look
like hell.'

'He won't care, Terry. I have a feeling. Let us
come over.'

She came back to the table with a look of elation
on her face. 'You are such a good man to do this,'
she said. 'You have no idea what my sister has been
through. First her divorce and now this. She and
Rose go back and forth to Toronto for tests – they
stick her inside of every machine you can think of.
Can you imagine?'

'I can.'

She lowered her voice. 'She lives in that house
as if her daughter is already dead. As if she's already
mourning her. They need some hope.'

'Let's see what we can do,' he said.

The house was only two blocks from the café. He
took his valise out of the back of his car, and tugged
on the bar fridge door, a habit. He checked the
cable from the fridge to the lighter outlet. Then
they walked together under the fall sun, now fully
up over the horizon and casting a lemony light over
the road. Terry greeted them at the door with a
tired smile. 'It's very kind of you to come, sir.'

'I was just passing through. It's pure coincidence,
if you believe in such a thing.'

'Do you?'

'No, I don't. Is she awake?'

'She is now.'

Terry led her sister and the stranger into the
house, a lovely old building raised more than 150
years ago. Travelling across the country, he'd seen
the materials used in houses get older and older.
Here, in Ontario, the farther east you went,
the greyer and rougher the stone got. Miss
MacDonald's sister lived in a house that in the city
would have been an estate for a barrister. Here it
was common. He cast his eyes around the stale-smelling
home. A framed sampler hung on the wall
over the piano, a shibboleth. It meant that, in that
town, the family went back generations. The
television was on, but it was muted. On it, a
woman in an apron stirred a white paste in a bowl.

The girl was waiting in her bedroom, still in her
nightdress. She looked at him with black-ringed
eyes, inured completely to the appearance of
doctors and specialists who came to the house to
study her, or saw her in their offices, syringes ready
for filling with her blood; machines primed to take
pictures of her insides; and their hands, always
their clasping, palpating, compressing hands. 'Are
you going to stick me, mister?' she said.

'With a needle you mean?'

'Which arm?' She offered to him the insides of
her elbows. Her skin was pitifully white, her veins
a pale blue beneath her skin.

'I don't need any of your blood, Rose. I just want
to talk to you. Maybe look at your tongue and your
eyes.'

'Co-operate with this nice man,' said her mother
from the doorway. 'He's agreed to take time out of
his busy day to have a look at you.'

Rose nodded, resigned, and lowered the sleeves
of her nightdress. She sat back down on the edge of
her bed. 'I probably have a great big stinking brain
tumour,' she said.

'
Rose
...'

'Did a doctor tell you this?' asked Simon.

'No, he told Terry
something
,' said the child,
looking at her mother. 'She won't tell me—'

'You're going to be fine, honey,' said Terry
Batten.

'—but I know. My head is like a computer that
someone has smashed with a rock.'

He looked back to the doorway, where both
women stood watching them. He smiled at the
mother. 'I very much doubt that,' he said. 'Would
you be comfortable being alone in your room with
me, Rose? Without your mother or your aunt?'

'Alone?' said Terry. 'I'm not sure if I—'

'I don't care, Terry,' said the girl. Neither woman
reacted to this odd familiarity.

'We can bring you some hot water, Doctor. If you
think you'll need any.'

'I'm not a doctor,' he said, turning sharply to
Grace in the door. 'I told you that.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I want hot water, but not scalding.'

The two women closed the door. He heard them
walk to the top of the stairs and start down. He
returned his attention to the child. 'You fall down,'
he said.

'One doctor told me I'd be safest in bed, but I fall
out of bed too.'

'Of course you do,' he said. He took one of her
little hands in his and ran his fingertips over the
thin veins on the inside of her wrist. 'Tell me, Rose,
what happens before you have an attack? Do you
see light? Do you smell or hear anything?'

'I sometimes smell something.'

'Hmm,' said Simon. He held her chin and
gentled her mouth open. 'What is the smell?'

'Scrangle eggs.'

He released her jaw. 'Do you like scrambled eggs,
Rose?'

'Not any more.'

He laughed, soothingly. 'Do you like tea?'

'I'm only eight. I don't drink tea.'

'Perhaps today you will.'

He looked at the girl's eyes. The eyes of children
were usually clear, as if made of polished glass.
Rose's brown eyes looked pale, the irises had the
aspect of a watercolour painting that had been
tainted with a drop of fluid after drying. They were
runny.

Grace knocked on the door and he opened it,
taking a tray from her. She glanced anxiously at her
niece, but Simon stepped in front of her to block
her view. He listened again to her footfalls in the
corridor. 'Think of your body as a garden,' he said
to Rose. 'Does your mother keep a garden?'

'She does.'

'What happens if weeds grow?'

'The plants don't get water.'

'That's right,' he said. He opened his valise and
traced his fingers over the vials attached to its sides
with elastic ribbons. He pushed the hammer on its
side to get to a row near the bottom. Mistletoe.
Across from it, powdered yew-berry seed, a poison.
He took them both out and unscrewed their lids.
'Would you like to smell?'

Rose leaned forward and put her nose into the
mouth of one of the vials. She screwed up her face.
'Horrid,' she said. 'I'm not drinking any tea made
from that.'

'I will adulterate it –
slightly
– with honey. Just
for you.'

'I don't want it,' she said, and he simply smiled
at her, a smile from the world of adults, saying your
disobedience will be allowed in theory, but not in
practice. She watched him crush a couple of tiny
green leaves between his thumb and forefinger, and
sprinkle it into the cup her aunt had brought up on
the tray. Then he dropped in a minuscule pinch
of the white yew-berry powder. He poured steaming
water on it.

'The leaves are mistletoe, like you have at
Christmas. Do you know it, Rose?'

'You kiss because of it.'

'Indeed. But that is a silly application of
mistletoe. It is a much more noble plant than that.
The Druids practically worshipped it.' She shrugged.
'It grows on the bark of certain trees – a true parasite
deriving one hundred per cent of its nutrient from
living flesh. The Druids would climb an oak tree
under the first full moon of the new year, and cut a
piece of mistletoe from the bark with a golden knife.
It was considered a protective herb. If so much as a
leaf fell on the ground during the ceremony, they
would wail and cry out that their great nation would
become victim to misfortune. You can imagine how
tightly the man in the tree held it.'