The Witch of Hebron (35 page)

SIXTY-SEVEN

Coming over the crest of the hill, Brothers Seth and Elam spied Jasper right away and swapped knowing glances. Elam gave heel to Atlas just as Jasper pulled himself up and attempted to run away. Because the defile was walled-in, he could not run into the woods. Elam caught up to him, dismounted fluidly, and seized the boy by his clothing, while Seth followed in the wagon.

“You’re the doctor’s boy,” Elam said.

Jasper did not reply. He recognized the men, not so much by their faces as by the costume of the New Faith order and their extraordinary size, like giants out of folklore.

“That’s him,” Seth said, ratcheting up the hand brake and jumping down from the driver’s box. “I’m sure of it.”

“We’ve been looking for you,” Elam said.

“Where all have you been?” Seth asked.

“You know who we are, don’t you?” Elam said, squatting down to the boy’s level.

Jasper’s terror was so overwhelming, he was unable to speak, let alone come up with a credible lie. He nodded his head.

“We’re bound to bring you back to Union Grove,” Elam said. “I’d prefer to not have to tie you up. We’ve got a long road ahead. Maybe two days’ travel. What do you say?”

“Please don’t tie me up,” Jasper croaked.

Meanwhile, Seth’s attention was distracted by what he’d noticed up along the rock wall. He marched fifty yards back up the road to where Perry Talisker lay beneath the body of the dead mountain lion. He squatted down to marvel at them.

“Woo-wee, will you look at this!”

Elam let go of Jasper’s sweatshirt and hitched the mule’s reins to the wagon. He and the boy walked together up to where Seth squatted beside the bodies.

“Lord have mercy,” Elam said as Seth pried the animal’s jaws open to free Perry Talisker’s head. Then he put both hands around the cat’s hindquarters and dragged its body off to the side. Elam kneeled beside the dead man and drew down his eyelids.

“Were you with him?” he asked Jasper.

“No.”

“We had information that you were traveling with someone.”

“Not him.”

“How’d you come to be with him here now?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“He was just there.”

“Just there?” Seth said. “He come out of nowhere?”

“Yes.” Jasper said. “He saved my life.”

“But you don’t know him?”

“I know him,” Jasper said.

Elam and Seth swapped glances again.

“You’re confusing me, son,” Elam said.

“I know him from town.”

“Who is he?”

“The hermit,” Jasper said. “He lives in a shack by the river.”

“So that’s the hermit,” Seth said. “We heard about him. You weren’t with him all this time, you say?”

“No.”

“He’s a long way from home, isn’t he?”

Just then, Brother Jobe gave out a groan from down in the wagon.

Jasper had been unaware that there was someone lying in the cargo box. Now that he was uphill of it, he could see someone swaddled under a quilt down there. Another groan, this one elongated, brought both the men to their feet.

“Who’s that?” Jasper asked.

“That’s the boss,” Seth said. “Something’s laid him low all of a sudden. Cancer of the guts, he says.”

“We were up this way searching for you, son,” Elam said. “This sickness come over him last night.”

“I’d like to skin out that panther awfully much,” Seth said.

“We’re not toting any stinking pelt all the way home,” Elam said. “You’ll have to come back for it, if you can get leave to do so.”

They dragged the bodies of the man and the cat to the side of the road, arranged them side by side, like sweethearts, and hurriedly covered them with rocks from the loose ones at the base of the scarp. They enlisted Jasper to help. Elam was about to speak a few sparse words over the hermit’s body when Brother Jobe gave out a yet more desperate cry below. The men slapped the dust off their hands and hurried down to him and the wagon. Jasper followed.

“You all right, BJ?” Seth asked.

“No, I ain’t all right.”

“We found what we were looking for,” Elam said. “Lookit here.”

He grasped Jasper around the midsection and hoisted him up like a shoat so that Brother Jobe could inspect him from where he lay.

“I’ll be jiggered.”

“It’s him all right,” Seth said.

“You boys better get me down to his daddy as fast as you can,” Brother Jobe said, gasping between his words. “I need a doctor.”

Seth climbed back in the driver’s box. Elam lifted Jasper into the saddle on Atlas, mounted up behind him, and tossed the boy’s backpack in the wagon box. They rode behind the wagon to keep an eye on Brother Jobe, who seemed to come in and out of consciousness as they made their way down the road from the elevations. After an hour, Seth halted his team and climbed down to take a leak. Brother Jobe lay groaning in the wagon, turning his head from side to side and sweating heavily, though it was fifty-four degrees at two o’clock in the afternoon. Elam and Jasper remained in the saddle while Seth emptied his bladder at the side of the road.

“I think I know what’s wrong with him,” Jasper said.

“How would you know what’s wrong with him?” Elam said.

“My father is the doctor.”

“And you’re but a child.”

“I’m a child who knows doctoring.”

“What do you know of doctoring?”

“I’ve assisted my father with patients since I was eight years old.”

“That so?”

“Including surgeries.”

“He says he’s got the cancer.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What ails him, then?”

“Set me down to examine him and I’ll tell you for sure.”

“Can’t you tell from up here?”

“I’ll know for sure if you set me down.”

“Don’t even think of running off,” Elam said.

Seth had finished relieving himself and was buttoning up as he walked back to the wagon. Elam hoisted Jasper out of the saddle and lowered him down to the road.

“What’s up now?” Seth asked.

“The boy’s going to have a look at BJ.”

Seth made a skeptical face.

“He thinks he knows what’s ailing him,” Elam said.

“How would he know?”

“He says he’s been helping the doc with patients since he was eight.”

“You think we ought to let him?”

Elam hesitated a moment, glanced right and left, and nibbled his lip. “Yes, I do,” he said.

In the meantime, Jasper had climbed up the running board into the cargo box of the wagon. Brother Jobe lay on his mattress in a state of tentative consciousness, muttering fragments of Bible patter, imagined commands to subordinates, and sundry disconnected words. His eyes opened for moments and then closed again as he babbled.

“I’m going to examine you, sir,” Jasper told him.

Brother Jobe did not respond.

Jasper pressed the back of his hand to Brother Jobe’s damp brow, pressed his ear against his chest to listen to his heart and lungs, and took his pulse at both the wrist and the neck.

“Now I’m going to loosen your trousers and touch your abdomen,” Jasper said. He undid several buttons and drew out Brother Jobe’s shirttails so that his generous belly was exposed. With his fingertips overlapping each other, as he had watched his father do many times, he pressed on a spot about one-third of the distance diagonally between the crest of the hip bone and the belly button. Though the pressure was gentle, Brother Jobe gave forth a howl. Satisfied, Jasper lowered the shirttails back over Brother Jobe’s belly but left the trousers unbuttoned to relieve the pressure on his belly. Then he climbed out of the box and stood between Seth and Elam.

“Brother Jobe has got acute appendicitis,” he told them.

“What makes you think that?” Seth said.

“You can tell by pressing on a spot. It’s called McBurney’s point.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve done it with my father.”

“You sure?”

“Yessir. It’s this spot here.” Jasper showed them on his own abdomen.

“What’s it mean?” Elam said.

“He needs an appendectomy.”

Seth flinched. “You mean, like, an operation?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, we got to get him down there to your father.”

“I don’t think there’s time for that,” Jasper said, looking up at Elam. “Didn’t you say we’re more than a day from Union Grove?”

“Yes,” Elam said.

“Maybe we might hurry it up more,” Seth said.

“We can’t jostle him all to heck—that can’t be good,” Elam said, looking to Jasper.

“That wouldn’t be good,” Jasper said.

“You sure it’s the appendix?” Seth said.

“I’m pretty sure,” Jasper said.

“Are we fools to look to a child for medical advice?” Seth said, drilling his eyes into Jasper’s.

Jasper shrugged.

“One way or another, it’s going to be coming on nightfall in a few hours,” Elam said.

“I say let’s see if we can hurry it up a little,” Seth said.

“All right,” Elam said and extended his hand down to Jasper to hoist him back into the saddle.

Seth climbed aboard his wagon and geed up his team. But trying to drive faster on the broken road, with its fissures, potholes, and loose chunks of pavement, only made the wagon bounce around more violently, which caused Brother Jobe to cry out louder and more frequently. After fifteen minutes of it, Seth brought the team to a halt again. This time Elam dismounted and went over to Seth and had words with him out of earshot of Jasper, who remained in the saddle. Then they both came over and stood at the mule’s withers, looking up at Jasper.

“Just how much time does he have, anyways?” Seth asked.

“Twelve hours, maybe,” Jasper said.

“What’s going on in there?”

“Inside Brother Jobe?”

“Yes. How does this sickness work?”

“It’s an infection. There’s this little sac that comes out of the bowel. It fills with pus and it can burst. Then the infection spreads in the abdominal cavity and that’s generally what will kill a person.”

The two men exchanged looks of alarm.

“What are you saying here, son?”

“He could die from this,” Jasper said.

“Unless he gets an operation,” Seth said.

“Yessir.”

“But we don’t have time to get down to your father who would do the operation.”

“Probably not,” Jasper said.

“So he’s going to die, then.”

“He doesn’t have to die,” Jasper said.

“How can that be if he don’t get the operation?”

“I can do the operation,” Jasper said.

The two men glanced at each other again in utter incredulity.

“You can do it?” Seth said. “How’s that possible?”

“I’ve done it with my father.”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know. Five, at least.”

“And that makes you qualified?”

“I’m not qualified,” Jasper said. “But I know what to do. Do you know how to do it?”

“’Course I don’t,” Seth said.

“How about you, sir?” Jasper asked Elam.

He made a face and shook his head.

“I can’t guarantee it’ll come out okay,” Jasper said. “But it’s probably the only thing that will keep him from dying.”

Elam took Seth by the elbow and dragged him about ten yards forward, where they consulted privately again. Of the two, Seth appeared particularly exercised, making large gestures of exasperation. Then they returned to Jasper.

“This here’s a very grave matter,” Elam said. “The question is, how can you do an operation out here on the road, with night coming, and alls we have is a few candles, and you don’t even have proper instruments, nor barely enough water to even boil a knife in. What in heck are we talking about here, son?”

“I know a place we can go,” Jasper said. “It’s a fine clean house, not far from here. A very kind woman lives there and I believe she can help us.”

“Is that so?” Seth said.

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

“I was there last night.”

The two men both appeared to search the treetops for guidance.

“How far is it?” Elam asked.

“We can get there by dark,” Jasper said.

“Lord,” Seth said, returning to his seat on the wagon. “If this is a bad dream I’d appreciate it if you could wake me up now.”

They lost no more time getting under way again, nor did anyone say another word until they arrived at their destination about two hours later.

SIXTY-EIGHT

Barbara Maglie came out of her barn with a milk pail at the sound of the horses and the wagon. She stopped for a moment in the gray twilight, set down the pail, and then, seeing Jasper up in the saddle with Elam, hurried over to them.

“We’ve got a very sick man here, ma’am,” Elam said. “We’d like to bring him into your house, if you don’t mind.”

Barbara nodded her head. Elam swung off of Atlas and Seth stepped down from his seat in the wagon. The two of them wrangled Brother Jobe, mattress and all, out of the wagon box, brought him into the kitchen, and set him on the floor for the moment. Barbara and Jasper followed behind. Then the two men took Barbara across the big room and spoke to her in low tones while Jasper remained standing beside Brother Jobe’s boot heels. Barbara nodded as they spoke, but more than a couple of times she shot a worried glance across the room at Jasper, who merely shifted his weight from one foot to the other. When they were done huddling, the three grownups stepped over to Jasper.

“Can you really do this surgery?” Barbara asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“On your own, without your father?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“It could kill him, you know,” she said.

“I know,” Jasper said. “But without it he’ll surely die.”

The three adults looked to one another to give the go-ahead.

“Can you tell us exactly what to do to help you?” Barbara asked.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get started, son,” Elam said.

“I’ll go settle the animals in,” Seth said. He hurried out. Elam and Barbara watched him leave and turned back to Jasper.

“Clear off that long table by the stove,” Jasper said. “We’ll put him up there. Get as many lamps and candlesticks and stands as you can. I’ll need a mirror to focus the light. You have to fire up the stove and boil several pots of water. Have you got any strong liquor?”