Extreme Measures

EPILOGUE
June 7

The sign, painted in uneven black letters on a two-foot length of weathered side, read: CHARITY, UTAH. POP. 381. It was pocked by bullet holes and wedged upside down between two dense juniper bushes.

Marilyn Colson would have missed the sign if she hadn't tripped over a root and fallen heavily onto the hard, dusty desert ground. The discovery distracted her from the newest in a growing array of bruises and scrapes, and kept her-at least momentarily-from another outburst at her husband.

Their four-year marriage was on the ropes even before they blew their vacation on this latest monument to Richard's self-centeredness.

Now, as far as she was concerned, it was down for the count. The Jeep he had insisted an renting for their "four-wheel journey to nowhere and everywhere," the Jeep that Richard said he could repair with his eyes closed, had broken down God-only-knew how many miles from nowhere. And of course, the part that had gone was the only one Richard hadn't counted on. Some psychologist! The man could never see any point of view but his own.

Marilyn picked several burrs from her T-shirt.

When-if, for Christ's sake-they ever made it back to L.A she was going to call Mort Gruber and tell him to go ahead with the divorce.

And that, she decided as she pushed herself angrily to her feet, was that. She pulled the sign free, blew some of the dust off it, and held it up for her husband to see.

"I give you'!-she swung the barnside around in a grand gesture to the barren, roiling, shrub-covered landscape-"Charity, Utah. Home of the largest, most complete Jeep-repair center this side of-" "Marilyn, can't you lay off just this once? I said I was sorry."

"No, you didn't."

"I did, dammit. That's all I ever do with you. Here, let me see that sign."

He studied it for a moment, then tossed it aside and pulled a frayed, sweat-stained map from his knapsack.

"It's not here," he said.

"Richard, in case you hadn't noticed, it's not here either.

"God, you are snide."

"No, Richard. What I am is lost. I'm lost and filthy and hurting and hungry and angry and… and cold."

She glanced toward the hazy sun sinking into the horizon.

"Dammit," she snapped suddenly, "I don't care what it takes. I'm getting the hell out of here. I work hard-as hard as you do. Harder.

It's my vacation, too, and I want to eat in a French restaurant and I want to sleep between clean sheets, and take a fucking bath in a tub with a JacuzzL" She turned and stalked up the stony slope of one of a chain of modest hills that seemed to stretch to the horizon on either side.

"Marilyn, will you get back down here. I tell you, we're not lost. Give or take a mile, I know exactly where we are. We can camp here tonight, and then keep heading east first thing tomorrow. By noon we'll be on Highway Fifty. You'll see… Marilyn?"

The woman stood motionless at the crest of the hill. Then, slowly, she turned back to him.

"Richard," she called out, "maybe you'd better hike on up here. I think I may have just found Charity, Utah.

The town, half a mile or so to the south, was nestled in a valley ringed on all sides by hills. It appeared to consist-of an unpaved main street, starting and ending at the desert and crossed by two or three smaller streets. To the east and north, fields of some sort stretched into the desert. The buildings lining the streets glowed eerijy in the fading daylight, looking more like a Hollywood set than a functional village.

"Do you suppose it's a ghost town?" Richard asked as they dropped down the slope and into a dry arroyo, out of sight of the low brick and clapboard buildings.

"Could be, but there are people there right now. I swear I saw lights in two of the windows. God, am I going to be pissed if they don't have a place with hot water."

"You are really a princess, Marilyn. Do you know that?"

"And you are… well, let's forget what you are.

Look, couldn't we call some kind of a truce, at least until we get out of this?"

"Sure, but you're the one who-"

"Richard, please…"

They followed the and streambed for a while and then trudged up a gentle rise that ended, suddenly, in a small, well-planted field of corn-perfect rows of stalks as high as their heads, surrounded by closely strung barbed wire.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Richard mused.

Marilyn had already reached the far end of the field.

"Richard, come on," she called back.

"Where in the hell do they get the water?"

"If you'd hurry up, you could ask them," Marilyn said, gesturing toward the road where, twenty or thirty yards ahead, two men were walking casually away from them. Save for the men, the neatly swept street was deserted. No cars, no bicycles, no other people.

"Excuse me," she called out. "Hey, you two up there, excuse me…

The two men glanced back at her and then continued walking.

"Richard, for crying out loud, win you help me out?"

Without waiting for a response, Marilyn started after them. At that moment a bell began chiming through a series of speakers mounted on poles along the street. Almost instantly people began emerging from several of the buildings to plod after the two men.

Marilyn stopped short. To her right, a woman stepped onto an open porch from beneath a sign marked simply STORE. She looked to be in her late forties, although her stoop-shouldered posture and unkempt jet hair made that only the roughest guess: She wore a short-sleved print housedress over a pair of khaki fatigue pants. A patch with the name MARY embroidered in gold was sewn over one breast.

"Excuse me," Marilyn said.

The woman looked at her impassively.

My name's Marilyn Colson. That's my husband, Richard. We're from Los Angeles, and we were on a camping trip, and. Marilyn, studying the blank expression on the woman's face, stopped in mid-sentence. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I… understand… you," the woman said.

"And can you help us out? Direct us to a hotel?"

"Hotel…?"

"Yes. A place to stay."

Marilyn waited several seconds for a response, then turned to her husband.

"Dammit, Richard, will you come over here and help me out? There's something wrong with this woman."

"She's an addict," Richard said simply.

"What?"

"Look at the needle tracks on her arms-She's Probably stoned to the gills-either that or — totally burnt out."

"What should we do?"

"Well, for starters I think we should be a little less aggressive."

"Go to hell."

"And next, I think we should find someone else to talk to."

"You can star by talking to me," a voice behind them said.

The Colsons whirled. Marilyn gasped. standing not ten feet from them was a man, tall and lean, wearing jeans, a plaid hunter's jacket, and a baseball cap Strapped to his waistband was a two-way radio.

The double-barreled shotgun cradled on his right arm was aimed at a spot just in front of them.

"You go on in to dinner now, Mary," the man said.

"Else you'll get nothin' to eat tonight." Without even a gesture of acknowledgment, the woman shuffled off.

"My my name's Marilyn CoLRon," Marilyn said, clearing the fear from her throat "This is my husband, Richard. We… we're lost." She smiled inwardly at her husband's likely confusion with the direction "Our Jeep has broken down about half a day's walk in that direction. We were hoping someone in your town might be able to help us get it towed in and fixed."

"How'd you get here?"

"I just told you, we walked from where our-"

"No, no. I mean here." The man gestured to the spot where they were standing.

"We came from the north," Richard said, stepping forward. "Over those hills, then down along an arroyo, and up into your cornfield.

I'm amazed at how you can get irriga-"

"What do you want?"

"Want?" Marilyn echoed with a hint of anger.

"What about someone to talk to who isn't pointing a gun at us?"

The man lowered the shotgun a fraction.

"And then we could use a place to stay and some help with our Jeep.

Isn't there anybody in this town who does cars?"

"This ain't no town," the man said, spitting through a gap between his front teeth.

"Town?"

"I said, this ain't no town." He spat again, then added matter-of-factly, "It's a hospital… a mental hospital.

"Richard?"

"Okay if I move my bed next to yours?"

"Sure."

"I'm sorry for the way I talked to you today. I was upset" Marilyn Colson pushed her metal-frame bed close to Richard's and lay on her side, staring through the window of their bungalow at the infinity of stars spattered across the ebony desert sky. Slowly she slid her hand up her husband's leg and began stroking him the way he liked.

The day, one of the worst in a marriage fun of such days, had taken a marked Turn for the better.

After a tense few minutes with the "mental health worker," as Garrett Pike, the shotgun-toting man, called himself, they had,been escorted to a low cinderblock building-the clinic and turned over to Dr. James Barber, the director of the Charity Project.

Barber, a psychiatrist, was a balding, cheery man, with an open smile and manner. And although he had explained little of the project, beyond that it involved the reclamation of an old ghost town and was a federally funded experimental installation for dealing with the criminally insane, he had made them feel welcome. Further, he had promised assistance with their Jeep as soon as his maintenance man returned from a trip to "the city" with the only four-wheel-drive vehicle the project owned. His only requests were that until that time-probably by the following monday stay within the confines of the clinic and its fenced-in yard, and that they ask no further questions about the operation.

Now, after a hot shower, a meal of chicken-fried steak and red wine, and an after dinner conversation in which Barber believed himself to be well-read and thoughtful in a number of areas, they were alone in the guest bungalow, just behind the clinic.

"Richard?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think this is sort of romantic? I mean, how many of our friends have ever done it in a mental hospital?"

Richard continued to lie on his back, hands locked behind his head, unresponsive to her touch.

"Something's wrong," he said finally.

"What are you talking about?"

"Just what I said. Something's not right here.

Remember after dinner when I mentioned StackSullivan's theory on maturation inversion in traumatized children?"

"Actually, I don't, no."

"Well, I described it completely backwards."

"You what?"

"I amp;rely for the sake of discussion. And Barber just agreed with what I said. He's either an absurdly uninformed psychiatrist, on"

"Richard, let me get this straight. Here's this man, being incredibly hospitable to us, and you're running a goddam test on him?" She pulled her hand away. "I can't believe you!"

"Yeah," he whispered. "Now, I don't think we should talk about it anymore. For all I know, this cabin is bugged."

"This is crazy, Richard. He probably just wasn't paying much attention to you. God knows I wasn't.

You're not exactly riveting when you get going with that psych theory shit of yours."

Richard's response was cut short by a fit of coughing. He sat up on the side of his bed, hands on knees, until it subsided.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'm having a little trouble catching my breath. I had asthma as a kid, but nothing for years."

"Maybe there's some mold in here or something.

Or maybe it's unexpressed stress."

"I'm going out into the yard for a bit."

"Should we go see the doctor?"

"I tell you, he's no-" Once again a spasm of coughs cut him off.

He pushed to his feet and stepped out of the bungalow into the cool night air.

Marilyn lay alone on her bunk, wondering how she ever could have thought the two of them were the match for a lifetime. Well, the hell with it, she decided.

She had given it her best shot. Now it was time to move in other directions. Unable to get comfortable, she rolled over, and then rolled back. She bunched the pillow beneath her head. The air felt heavy and sweet. Finally she went to the armoire and brought back a second pillow, which she bunched on top of the first.

Better, she thought as she lay back in bed. Much better.

One minute passed, then another. She began to feel calmer. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed and seemed to come more easily. The last sound she heard before the darkness of sleep drifted over her was her husband's coughing.

It was seven-thirty by her watch when the loudspeaker bell woke Marilyn from shallow, fitful sleep. She had been up for most of the night, in part from Richard's entering and leaving the bungalow several times, in part from his spasmodic racking cough, and in part from her own increasing shortness of breath-better when she sat up, more marked when she lay back.

She was alone in the cottage. The morning sun washed through the east window, highlighting a dense, shimmering mist of suspended dust.

Marilyn found the mist reassuring. Small wonder they had had such a difficult night. She pushed herself off the aware of a persistent, unsettling tightness in her chest-a band that seemed to prevent her taking in a full, deep breath.

"Richard?"' She called his name, waited a moment, then stepped into the small courtyard. He was seated, facing away from her, in a high-backed wicker chair.

"Richard, you should see all the dust in the air in there. It's no wonder-" She crossed in front of him and stopped in mid-sentence.

Her husband was awake and meeting her gaze, but she had never seen him look worse. His color was an ashen, dusky gray; his eyes, hollow, flat, and lusterless. His breaths, drawn through cracked, pursed lips, were rapid and shallow. It was as if he had aged decades in just one night.

"I'm sick," he managed to say.

"I can see that. Richard, I'm going to get Dr. Barber." Before he could reply she hurried off. By the time she had reached the clinic, not fifty feet away, she had to stop and catch her breath.

Barber, wearing a white lab coat over his sport clothes, listened to her account with concern.

"It's almost certainly an allergic reaction," he said. 'Last year a congressman who came out to check on the program had a similar reaction.

The mold, probably. I'm a psychiatrist, but I have some training in internal medicine as well. I'll have a look at your husband. Some Benadryl, and maybe a little bit of Adrenalin, and hell be better in no time."

Within a few minutes of receiving the medication Richard did seem better, although Marilyn was not certain whether the improvement was due to Barber's treatment or the news that the mechanic had arrived back with Charity's Land Rover and was confident he could repair their Jeep.

At Barber's insistence, she allowed herself to be checked over and dosed with two capsules of Benadryl and a shot of Adrenalin.

Then, after packing their knapsack and taking a supply of Benadryl from Barber, they set off in the Land Rover to retrace the to the Jeep indicated by Richard's careful notes and compass readings. The mechanic, a taciturn Native American who gave his name only as John, seemed to know the desert well.

"Nine mile," he said. "That is how far you walked."

"Seemed farther," Richard managed before yielding once again to a salvo of violent coughing.

"Nine mile," John said again.

Marilyn reached over and wiped a bit of pink froth from the corner of her husband's mouth. His complexion had once again begun to darken, and his fingernails were almost violet. Still, he sat forward gamely, following his notes as, one by one, they passed the landmarks he had noted. Watching him, Marilyn sensed a rebirth of the pride and caring that had long ago vanished from her feelings toward the man.

"John, will you direct us to the nearest hospital?" she asked, aware of the band once more tightening around her chest.

"St. Joe," the Indian replied. "TWenty-five, — six mile due east from where your Jeep will be."

"Half a day?"

"Maybe. Maybe more."

Struggling to ignore her own increasing shortness of breath, Marilyn wiped off the sheen of dusty sweat that covered Richard's forehead.

"Richard, maybe we should go back to the clinic."

"No… I'm okay," he rasped, coughing between words. "Let's just get… the Jeep fixed… and get… the hell… out of… here."

Marilyn washed another Benadryl down with a swig from their canteen, and then helped him do the same. Minutes later, in spite of herself, she, too, began to cough.

The nine-mile drive over roadless terrain took most of two hours.

The repair of the Jeep took considerably less than one. Richard tried to help, but by the time John had finished, Richard had given and was slumped in the passenger seat, leaning against the door, bathed in sweat.

"Okay, Mrs." John said. "Start her up."

The engine turned over at a touch.

"Could You follow us for a ways?" she asked, fighting the sensation in her chest with all her strength.

"Ten, twelve minutes is all. Dr. Barber needs me back. There's a dirt road nine, ten mile due east.

Impossible to miss. Turn south on it. Go ten mile more to Highway Fifty. Then right. I hope your husband feel better soon."

Marilyn thanked the man, attempted unsuccessfully to pay him, and then drove off as rapidly as she could manage, trying at once to keep track of the compass, Richard, and ruts in the hard desert floor.

Strapped into his seat, Richard had mercifully fallen asleep.

After one-half mile by her odometer, John tooted, gave her a thumbs-up sign, and then swung off to the south.

She hadn't driven another half mile when the tightness in her chest intensified. Relax, she urged herself. Don't panic…

Don't panic. An audible gurgling welling up from her chest began to accompany each breath. Fear, unlike any she had ever known, swept her restive. She stopped the Jeep.

"Richard, wake up," she gasped. "I can't breathe. I can't-" She reached over and touched his arm. His hand drop to his side.

Richard!"

The name, though she screamed it, was barely audible. She grabbed her husband by the chin and turned his face around to her. It was puffed and gentian; his eyes were open but sightless. Thick pink froth oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Marilyn undid his web belt. As she staggered around the Jeep to the passenger door, she felt liquid percolate into her throat She stumbled and fell heavily to her knees at the moment she pulled open the door.

Richard's body toppled from the seat and landed heavily on her, pinning her to the ground. She struggled to push him aside, but her strength was gone. Soon, her will was gone as well. She slipped her arms around him and locked her thumbs in his belt loops.

Directly above her the sun drifted into view and passed across the sky without hurting her eyes or even causing her to blink. Over what seemed minutes, but might have been hours, she felt a strange peacefulness settle in. With that peacefulness came another feeling-a connection to Richard, a sense of closeness to him more intense than any she had ever known.

And she was sure, as she felt the weight of him lessen and then vanish, that he was alive. He was alive, and he knew she was there with him.

Marilyn's breathing grew less labored. Inwardly, she smiled.

Outwardly, the sun had set A chill evening wind rose from the west, sweeping a film of fine desert sand over the Jeep and the two inert figures locked in embrace on the ground beside it.