The Harrows of Spring (10 page)

“Well,” Flame finally spoke up. “What do you say?”

“We have to consult with our town trustees,” Robert said.

Of course,” Buddy said. “Think you can make it happen this week?”

“Not sure,” Robert said.

“Our head guy is arriving tomorrow,” Buddy said.

“You're not the head guy?”

Buddy made comical face. “No-o-o-o-o.”

“Glen Ethan Greengrass,” Flame said. “Our mentor, teacher, and leader.”

Brother Jobe, who had been slumping deep in thought, perked up in his seat.

“Greengrass?”

“Then you've heard of him?” Flame said.

“I believe I've heard the name.”

“He's only the leading political thinker of our time,” Flame said. “Then you haven't read
Birthing the New Knowledge Economy
?”

“Well, no—”

“Sonny Boy,” Buddy said, snapping his fingers. “Green books.”

The young man took two books with green covers out of his shoulder sack and handed them to Flame, who in turn gave them to Robert and Brother Jobe. The two pretended to inspect them.

“He's a great man,” Flame said. “A genius, a bridge builder, a caring, tireless fighter for social justice, diversity, dignity, tolerance, income equality, gender fairness, and hopeful humanism.”

“Sounds like Superman,” Brother Jobe remarked.

“He's my father,” Flame said.

“Oh?” Brother Jobe digested the information. “I guess every man's a hero to his little girl.”

“Do I look like a little girl to you?”

“Anyways, I can't wait to shake his hand,” Brother Jobe said, opting to forgo further disputation.

“To be honest, he's not well,” Buddy said. “He's old and pretty frail. But he wanted to come on this outreach and see with his own eyes how the federation is taking shape. It might be his last journey away from home. And, well, we just love having him with us.”

“Is he here now?” Robert asked.

“Soon,” Flame said.

“Any day,” Buddy said. “But I'm so glad we were able to reach an understanding,”

“Uh-huh,” Brother Jobe said, looking to Robert, who nodded once.

“In the meantime, you know where to find us.” Buddy pointed overhead.

“That we do,” Brother Jobe averred. “'Night, gentlemen . . . and, uh . . . Ms. Greengrass, is it?”

Flame scowled and walked out first.

As the other two were making to leave, Ainsley Perlew tugged on Buddy's sleeve and whispered something in his ear. Buddy turned back to Robert and Brother Jobe.

“Do you happen to have any factory-made ammunition in town?” Buddy asked.

“Old-times ammo is hard to come by,” Brother Jobe said. “You might talk to Mr. Einhorn at his store. My people prepare some reloads—you know, recycled cartridges. What size?”

The young man whispered again in Buddy's ear.

“He can talk to me directly,” Brother Jobe said.

“Forgive him. He's extremely shy. Probably just a phase. Thirty-ought-six, he said.”

“I'll look into it. What's he want them for, by-the-by?”

“He's mad for hunting,” Buddy said with another of his incandescent smiles.

“Well, the deer population's way down. No wildlife enforcement nowadays and open season all year round and folks being hungry and all. I expect the situation ain't much different over in Massachusetts.”

“It doesn't matter,” Buddy said. “For him it's just about being out on the trail after something, whether it's really there or not. Well, thanks and good evening.”

“I think you forgot your money,” Robert said, pointing to the twin stacks of red bills on the desk.

“No, that's for the two of you. In consideration of your time and attention.”

“We don't do things that way.”

“Then redistribute it among the needy. Bye now.”

T
WENTY

Britney Blieveldt rushed into the tavern at the very height of the opening night festivities in desperate search of the doctor, Jerry Copeland. She'd gone first to his house and infirmary, but he wasn't there and his wife, Jeanette, attending to one of Robbie Furnival's log skidders who had been kicked in the knee by a horse, said her husband was at the opening festivities of the Cider Barrel. Britney hurried downtown to the new establishment, fought her way inside past smokers on the porch, and shoved through the crowd within, shouting for the doctor. She soon found him at the far end of the bar, drinking with Tom Allison, the former college VP who now ran a successful livery, boarding horses and renting out wagons, carts, gigs, and buggies, of which he was acquiring quite a collection. Britney ascertained almost at once that the doctor was very drunk.

“It's Sarah,” she implored him. “You have to come. She's having spasms. Please! I'm afraid it's serious.”

The doctor appeared to stare dumbly back at her, breathing through his mouth, weaving slightly on his bar stool. “All right . . .” he said. He got off his seat, took a few steps, and crumpled. Then he struggled to get back on his feet. Britney watched him, horrified. When others stooped to assist him, she felt a hand on her elbow and turned to see the massive figure of Loren, looming beside her.

“Where's Robert?” she asked.

“I don't know. He was here a while ago.”

“Something's terribly wrong with Sarah,” she told him, struggling to be heard above the din. “I don't know what to do.”

Loren saw the doctor fight off those assisting him only to end up sprawled on the floor.

“Oh Christ,” he said. “Maybe Jason LaBountie can help.”

Britney's face screwed into a mask of contempt. “He's a goddamn vet!” she said.

“I know,” Loren said. “But he's what we've got.”

The doctor struggled onto all fours just in time to vomit on his friend's shoes.

Britney watched in disgust as the doctor slipped in his own vomit attempting to stand up.

“Oh God!” she shrieked. “Where
is
Robert?”

Bonnie Sweetland, standing close at hand, too, said, “They're looking for him now. He's not in the tavern.”

“Go home,” Loren told Britney. “I'll fetch Jason and bring him over.”

“Please hurry!” Britney said, her face torqued in anxious exasperation. She pulled the wool shawl back over the top of her head and sidestepped the spectacle the doctor was creating to make for the exit.

Loren hurried to Jason LaBountie's substantial Queen Anne–style house on River Street, a storybook heap of bays, turrets, and oriels with an American flag hung conspicuously on the wide porch and the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence on a sign board beneath it. The paint job was chipped and fading like most houses in town, even those of the better-off citizens. Candles burned deep within the first floor. The town's sole veterinarian had been playing a game of eight-ball pool in the library with his fifteen-year-old son when he answered Loren's knock on the door. Loren rapidly explained about Britney's sick child and the doctor's unfortunate condition.

“He's a goddamn disgrace,” LaBountie said.

“His responsibilities get him down,” Loren said.

“We're all carrying a heavy load these days, Reverend. In the old times, they'd take away his license.”

“Will you go over there or not?”

“Yes. But there may be little to nothing I can do.”

“I guess we'll just have to see about that,” Loren said. “I'll meet you over there.”

Before Loren could step away LaBountie caught his sleeve.

“We take a vow, too, you know,” he said.

“I know,” Loren said. “Do what you can. But don't delay.” He snatched his arm away and hurried off down the dark street.

Britney had left the door open. Loren knew the house well and hurried directly upstairs. He entered the small, stuffy room to find the eight-year-old girl's head cranked way back, her face thrust upward with her mouth stretched into a tortured grimace, teeth clenched and hands desperately clutching at the bedsheets. She made sounds that were not quite language but just desperate squeals and grunts. The room smelled of eliminations.

Britney knelt at the side of the bed with one hand on Sarah's shoulder and the other beneath her head. The child's hair was sopping wet with perspiration. Sarah's midsection suddenly bowed upward, straining unnaturally, like a yoga position carried too far.

“This is what's been happening,” Britney told Loren.

“Oh, dear,” he said, not a little frightened by it. Just then, LaBountie entered the house and called up the stairway. Loren and Britney replied and he clattered up with his own veterinary doctor's kit in a canvas mason bag.

Britney looked up pleadingly at the two big men. “Do something! Please!”

LaBountie asked Britney to give way and told Loren to hold two candles over the bed. He examined Sarah, palpated her face, neck, and shoulders, took her pulse, and pressed his ear to the center of her chest. He examined both of her hands closely.

“What are you looking for?” Britney asked impatiently.

“Signs,” LaBountie said. Then he turned down the bedclothes, drew up the hem of her nightgown, and examined her feet. Her legs were thrashing so violently that he had to clamp them under his arm one at a time to have a look. He eventually found the small infected puncture wound between the big and second toe on her left foot.

“There it is,” he said.

“What?” Britney cried. “There's what?”

LaBountie didn't reply directly. He quickly drew down Sarah's nightgown again and covered her legs.

“What is it?” Britney pleaded. “Tell me.”

“Tetanus, I believe,” he said.

Britney appeared both stricken and confounded. LaBountie stood upright and chewed on his lower lip.

“There must be something you can do,” Loren said.

“Did she ever have a tetanus shot?” LaBountie asked Britney.

“Of course not,” she said. “There are no more shots. Don't you know that?”

“Yes, I know that,” LaBountie said. “I thought maybe when she . . .” He trailed away. He knew Britney was going to implore him again to do something and he knew of only one possible treatment. He turned to Loren. “Hurry over to Jerry's,” LaBountie said, “and ask his wife if he has any TIG, tetanus immune globulin. She's a nurse, she'll know what it is. TIG.”

Loren left right away. As he did, Sarah's whole body strained and arched upward again, more strenuously than before, her agonized grunts becoming awful animal shrieks. LaBountie knew there was nothing he could do in the meantime besides clean the small wound on her foot, which would do little to alter the course of the disease. He gave Britney his pocketknife, opened to the small blade, honed razor sharp, and told her to boil it and bring whiskey and clean rags back with it.

T
WENTY-ONE

The scene over at Dr. Jerry Copeland's home had turned chaotic as the doctor was trundled a few blocks from the tavern in a wheelbarrow pushed by his friends. And then when Tom Allison, Danny Russo, and Walter McWhinnie tried to get him inside, the doctor let loose cursing and striking at them with his fists, doing everything he could to resist being manhandled, while his wife, Jeanette, and their two children stood by weeping and humiliated. When Loren arrived on the scene he watched in amazed fury for a moment before he shoved Walter and Danny out of the way and seized the doctor by the shoulders and hollered an inch away from his face to get a hold of himself. Loren being a large man the doctor shrank from him and gave up struggling. They were good friends through the years of hardship, but Loren had put a lot of time and effort in trying to help the doctor with his drinking problem and his anger now was sharp. Meanwhile, the doctor slumped back in the wheelbarrow. Loren was not sure if he had passed out.

“Can you hear me, Jerry?”

“Didn' you tell me to shuddup?” the doctor mumbled.

“The little girl at Robert's house is very sick with tetanus, we think. She's convulsing. Jason is with her. He sent me over for TIG. Do you have any TIG in your office? Do you hear me?”

The doctor nodded his head but then commenced blubbering.

“I hear you,” he said.

“Tell us where to look.”

Now the doctor just shook his head. “I can't help you,” he moaned.

Loren looked to Jeanette. “Do you know where he keeps this TIG medicine?”

“We don't have any more,” she said, and she put her hand over her mouth as if shocked that her words had escaped from there.

“Are you sure?”

“I'm absolutely certain,” she said in a voice still inflected with the tones of her native Normandy. “I remember when we used the last of it. A young man on the Schmidt farm. More than a year ago.”

“Wake the fuck up, Jerry!” Loren hollered. He smacked him smartly on the face, but the doctor appeared to be truly unconscious.

“Stop it!” twelve-year-old Jasper screamed. “Leave him alone!”

Loren left the doctor and reached for Jeanette's hand. “You have to come help,” he said. “Right now.”

“Okay,” she agreed and hurried away with Loren in the direction of Robert's house. The boy followed them down the street a little way but Jeanette admonished him to go back and stay with his little sister, Dinah, while the other three men resumed their struggle to get the doctor inside the house to his bed.

T
WENTY-TWO

Just a little earlier, Robert and Brother Jobe lingered over whiskeys in the office behind the hotel desk after the Berkshire delegation had left.

“They puttin' the grift on us,” Brother Jobe said. “Subscription! I never heard such bushwah. We gonna have to let them know we won't be pushed around.”

“We can just say the trustees met and decided to take a pass on joining their so-called federation.”

“They going to put the strong-arm on us somehow. You know, my rangers Seth and Elam, they went and parleyed with these jokers at their bivouac. Said they was just a bunch of Kumbaya kids, and many of 'em was girls. But I think that's some kind of diversion. I think they got some other backup out there we don't know about.”

“Maybe we should think about raising our own people into some kind of defense force,” Robert said. “We could get fifty men from town if we had to. Don't know where we'd find firearms, though.”

“Don't worry about that, ole son.”

“You've got weapons?”

“'Course we do. Plenty of iron and ammunition. Something I been working on all year on my travels, whenever I could work it into some bidness.”

“We should bring Bullock's people in on this,” Robert said. “He's got some very capable men over there.”

“I wouldn't depend on that sumbitch to show up for a Sunday school fund-raiser,” Brother Jobe said. “Anyways, I can't tell Bullock on the one hand don't display no dead bodies of pickers and robbers and such along the River Road, and by the way now we got to put the fear of judgment on this pack of grifters that come to steal the town's money—”

Just then, young Brother Jonah knocked on the door and they told him to come in.

“Your wife was looking for you in the tavern, Mr. Robert, sir,” he said.

For a startled moment, Robert flashed on his wife, Sandy, who had died three years earlier in the encephalitis epidemic. Then his head jerked back as he realized that was not who Jonah meant. He was a little horrified to realize that he had not thought about Britney and Sarah all evening.

“Tell her I'll be right out,” he said.

“Oh, she already left,” Jonah said. “With your minister. Something about a sick girl at home.”