Copper River

3

A mile outside Bodine, Jewell DuBois turned off the main highway and bounced up the rutted road toward the old cabins. She was not happy. She’d been on an emergency call, a horse whose symptoms made her suspect tetanus. The last thing she wanted to hear that afternoon was that Cork O’Connor needed her.

She pulled her Blazer to a stop on the lane that ran between the guest cabins, grabbed her medical bag, and hopped out. Ren and Charlie were with him, sitting on the ground on either side. They didn’t seem upset. A good thing.

Cork was awake.

“Hope you don’t charge much for a cabin,” he said weakly. “The ground out here’s more comfortable than that bunk you had me in.”

Jewell addressed her son as she went down on her knees, asking sternly, “What happened?”

“He just opened the door and fell down the steps, Mom.”

“Where were you?”

“Out here,” Ren said.

“What were you doing out here? Why weren’t you with him like I told you?”

“Not his fault,” Cork broke in. “My own stupidity.”

Jewell drew the blanket back and examined the work her son had done. “Good job, Ren.” Then to Cork: “Why did you get up?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Cork smiled faintly. “The truth is I forgot where I was and panicked. Then I fainted.”

The sun was low in the sky, the afternoon going cool. Where the sun sliced between the trees that backed the cabins, the ground was still warm, but with sunset everything would chill quickly.

“Orthostatic shock, probably,” Jewell said.

Cork looked confused. “Orthostatic?”

“You got up too fast,” Ren said.

“Nothing to worry about. Your brain just needed more blood than it had at the moment,” Jewell explained. “Happens sometimes when people have been lying down for a while and stand up too quickly. We need to get you inside. Can you help us?”

“I’ll try.”

“Ren, Charlie, take that side. I’ll help over here.” To Cork she said, “Don’t put weight on that leg if you can help it.”

“Whatever you say, Doc.”

They positioned themselves and he sat up, then they helped him to his feet. Cork grunted as he came upright, and his pasty face went even whiter, but he didn’t buckle.

“Up the steps, one at a time,” Jewell instructed.

They mounted slowly. Cork struggled not to lean on his bum leg. By the time they got him inside and laid him on his bunk, they were all breathing hard and Cork was soaked with sweat.

A bag with a drip tube hung from the curtain rod on the window next to the bunk. “I see you pulled out your IV,” she said.

He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

“Ren, get my bag.”

Her son scurried out and came back a moment later with the medical bag and the blankets. He handed her the bag and laid the cleaner of the two blankets over Cork.

Jewell pulled the blanket back enough to expose the wounded leg. She cracked open her medical bag, took out a pair of bandage scissors, and cut away the gauze binding Ren had put on. “I need to sew it closed again. I’ll be here awhile. You guys hungry?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said quickly.

“My purse is in the car. Get what you need for a couple of burgers in town or whatever you want. Charlie, you can’t talk about this, you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Not to your father, not to anybody.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” She thought about Charlie and about something else. “It’s Saturday. You want to stay here tonight?”

Charlie shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”

“That changes, you come on over, you hear?”

“Thanks.”

“And, Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“When you go home tonight, do yourself a favor: take a good long shower, plenty of soap.”

“Whatever.”

“I mean it.”

“Right.” Charlie looked down.

Jewell watched the kids walk out the cabin door, then she turned back to her patient.

“Good kid, Ren,” Cork said. “Sure he won’t say anything?”

“I’m sure.”

“What about the other boy?”

She reached into her medical bag. “Charlie? Not a boy.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“She fools most everybody.”

He eyed the syringe she held.

“Local anesthetic,” she explained, and stuck him. “I should have put you in Thor’s Lodge with us last night so we could keep an eye on you better.”

“I’ll be fine here. Promise not to go wandering again.” He laid his hand gently on her arm. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t know where else to go.”

“A hospital, for starters.”

“I told you last night. I can’t do a hospital right now. They’d have to report the gunshot wound, and I’d end up a sitting duck for the people trying to kill me.”

“Who are they?”

“Professionals.”

“You mean like hit men.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Why do they want you dead?”

“They’ll be paid handsomely for it.”

“Who put up the money?”

“A man who believes I killed his son.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Why does he think that?”

“Circumstances.”

“You couldn’t just talk to him?”

“I tried. He wouldn’t listen. It’s complicated.”

“So what now?”

“There are people trying to prove I’m innocent.”

“That could take a while?”

“I don’t know. Look, as soon as I can, I’ll leave.”

She put on latex gloves, pulled an Ethilon nylon suture pack from her bag, tore it open, took out the curved needle and black thread.

“I don’t hear from you in forever, then you show up on my doorstep, shot, bleeding all over everything, expecting me to take you in. Christ, that’s just like a man.”

“You’ve cut your hair,” he said.

“Easier to keep out of my way while I’m working.”

When her hand, which held the needle, descended toward the entrance wound on the outside of his thigh, he looked away. “How are you doing?”

“How am I doing?” She squinted over her work. “I go to the clinic in the morning, come home late, fix dinner, help Ren with his homework, do laundry and what I can around the house, try to go to bed so tired I don’t have to think about anything. So I guess, all things considered, I’m doing pretty shitty.”

“Long time to be grieving.”

“What do you know about grief? Damn.” She shook her head at something she’d done. Cork didn’t look and was glad she’d numbed the area first. “I still miss him. Every minute of every day. You want to know the worst part? Sometimes I hate him. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m grieving or just royally pissed at him. There.” She clipped the thread.

“I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Because I’m good. Hungry?”

“A little.”

“I’ll fix something that’ll go down easy.” She closed her bag, stood up, and headed for the door.

“Jewell, thank you.”

She paused before stepping outside. “You can thank me best by getting better and getting out of here without bringing any more trouble around.”

“As long as no one knows I’m here, you and Ren are okay, I promise.”

“Good. I’ve had enough of people I care about dying.”

In the late afternoon air outside Cabin 3, she stood a moment, breathing out her anger, her despair, still feeling the hurt of a wound that hadn’t healed. In the cabin at her back, Cork O’Connor coughed.

Men, Jewell thought. All they’d ever brought her was trouble.