Bloodstream (4 page)

“Noah Elliot!”

He froze, his hands still trapping Taylor’s wrists. Slowly he turned his head and saw the principal, Miss Cornwallis, standing over them. The other kids had all backed away and were watching from a safe distance.

“Get up!” said Miss Cornwallis. “Both of you!”

At once Noah released Taylor and rose to his feet. Taylor, his face by now almost purple with rage, screamed: “He shoved me! He shoved me and I tried to defend myself!”

“That’s not true! He hit me first!”

“He threw his skateboard!”

“I didn’t throw anything. It was an accident!”

“Accident? You liar!”

“Both of you, be quiet!” yelled Miss Cornwallis.

There was shocked silence in the schoolyard as everyone stared at the principal. They’d never heard her yell before. She was a prim but handsome woman who wore suits and low heels to school and kept her blond hair neatly tucked into a French twist. To see her shouting was a revelation to them all.

Miss C. took a deep breath, swiftly recovering her dignity. “Give me the skateboard, Noah.”

“It was an accident. I didn’t hit him.”

“You were pinning him on the ground. I saw it.”

“But I didn’t hit him!”

She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Noah walked over to his board, lying a few feet away. It was well-worn, one chipped edged crisscrossed with electrician’s tape. The board had been a birthday gift when he turned thirteen. He’d added the decals underneath it—a green dragon with red fire shooting out of its mouth—and had broken in the wheels riding the streets of Baltimore where he used to live. He loved this board, because it reminded him of everything he’d left behind. Everything he still missed. He held it for a moment, then, wordlessly, handed it to Miss C.

She took it with a look of distaste. Turning to address the other students she said, “There’ll be no more skating on school grounds. I want all the skateboards brought home today. And if I see any boards tomorrow, I’ll confiscate them. Is that clear?”

There was a silent nodding of heads.

Miss C. turned to Noah. “You’re in detention until three-thirty this afternoon.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“You come to my office now. You’re going to sit and think about what you did do.”

Noah started to argue, then swallowed his words. Everyone was looking at him. He glimpsed Amelia Reid standing by the track field, and his face flushed with humiliation. In silence, head down, he followed Miss C. toward the building.

The other skaters sullenly parted to let them through. Only as Noah was walking away from them did he hear one of the boys mutter:

“Thanks, Elliot. You screwed it up for the rest of us.”

If one wished to take the pulse of the town of Tranquility, the place to go was Monaghan’s Diner. This was where the Dinosaur Club met every day at noon. It was not really a club, but a coffee klatch, six or seven retirees who, for want of a job to go to, hung around Nadine’s counter, admiring the pies under the plastic bells. Claire had no idea how the club got its name. Her guess was that one of the men’s wives, in a fit of pique over her husband’s daily absence, one day blurted out something like: “Oh, you and that bunch of old dinosaurs!” And the name stuck, as good names do. They were all men, all well past sixty. Nadine was only in her fifties, but she was an unofficial Dinosaur because she worked behind the counter and had the good humor to tolerate their bad jokes and cigarette smoke.

Four hours after the thigh bone was found, Claire stopped in at Monaghan’s for lunch. The Dinosaurs, seven of them today, all wearing blaze orange over flannel shirts, sat in their usual place, the far left barstools near the milkshake machine.

Ned Tibbetts turned and nodded as Claire came in the door. Not a Warm greeting, but gruffly respectful. “Mornin’, Doc.”

“Morning, Mr. Tibbetts.”

“Gonna be a mean wind blowing in today.”

“It’s already freezing outside.”

“Coming out of the northwest. Could have snow tonight.”

“Cup of coffee, Doc?” asked Nadine.

“Thank you.”

Ned turned back to the other Dinosaurs, who’d variously acknowledged her entrance, and were now back in conversation. She knew only two of them by name; the others were merely familiar faces. Claire sat alone at her end of the counter, as befitted her outsider status. Oh, people were cordial enough to her. They smiled, they were polite. But to these natives, her eight months in Tranquility was but a temporary sojourn, a city girl’s fling with the simple life. Winter, they all seemed to agree, would be the test. Four months of snowstorms and black ice would drive her back to the city, as it had driven off the last two doctors from away.

Nadine slid a steaming cup of coffee in front of Claire. “Guess you know all about it, don’t you?” she said.

“All about what?”

“That bone.” Nadine stood watching her, patiently waiting for her contribution to the community pool of knowledge. Like most Maine women, Nadine did a lot of listening. It was the men who seemed to do all the talking. Claire heard them when she walked through the local hardware store or the five-and-dime or the post office. They stood around and gabbed while their wives waited, silent and watchful.

“I hear it’s a kid’s bone,” said Joe Bartlett, swiveling on the stool to look at Claire. “A thigh bone.”

“That right, Doc?” another one asked.

The other Dinosaurs turned and looked at Claire.

She said, with a smile, “You already seem to know everything about it.”

“Heard it was whacked up good. Maybe a knife. Maybe an ax. Then the animals got at it.”

“You boys sure are cheerful today,” snorted Nadine.

“Three days in those woods, raccoons and coyotes clean your bones straight off. Then Elwyn’s dogs come along. Hardly ever feeds ‘em, y’know. Bone like that’s a tasty snack. Maybe his dogs’ve been chewing on it for weeks. Elwyn, he wouldn’t think to give it a second look”

Joe laughed. “That Elwyn, he just plain doesn’t think.”

“Maybe he shot the kid himself Mistook it for a deer.”

Claire said, “It looked like a very old bone.”

Joe Bartlett waved at Nadine. “I made up my mind. I’ll have the Monte Cristo sandwich.”

“Whooee! Joe’s goin’ fancy on us today!” said Ned Tibbetts.

“What about you, Doc?” asked Nadine.

“A tuna sandwich and a bowl of mushroom soup, please.”

As Claire ate her lunch, she listened to the men talk about whom the bone might belong to. It was impossible not to listen in; three of them wore hearing aids. Most of them could remember as far back as sixty years ago, and they batted the possibilities around like a birdie in play Maybe it was that young girl who’d fallen off Bald Rock Cliff. No, they’d found her body, remember? Maybe it was the Jewett girl— hadn’t she run off when she was sixteen? Ned said no, he’d heard from his mother that she was living in Hartford; the girl’d have to be in her sixties now, probably a grandmother. Fred Moody said his wife Florida said the dead girl had to be from away—one of the summer people. Tranquility kept track of its own, and wouldn’t someone remember if a local kid had vanished?

Nadine refilled Claire’s cup of coffee. “Don’t they just go on and on?” she said. “You’d think they was planning world peace.”

“How do they know so much about it, anyway?”

“Joe’s second cousin to Floyd Spear, over at the police department.” Nadine began to wipe down the counter, long, brisk strokes that left behind a faintly chlorinated smell. “They say some bone expert’s driving up from Bangor today Way I figure, it’s gotta be one of those summer people.”

That, of course, was the obvious answer—one of the summer people. Whether it was an unsolved crime or an unidentified body, the all-purpose answer served. Every June, Tranquility’s population quadrupled when wealthy families from Boston and New York began arriving for their lakeside vacations. Here, in this peaceful summertime colony, they would linger on the porches of their shorefront cottages while their children splashed in the water. In the shops of Tranquility, cash registers would ring merrily as the summer folk Pumped dollars into the local economy. Someone had to clean their Cottages, repair their fancy cars, bag their groceries. The business from

those few short months was enough to keep the local population fed through the winter.

It was the money that made the visitors tolerable. That and the fact that every September, with the falling of the leaves, they would once again vanish, leaving the town to the people who belonged here.

Claire finished her lunch and walked back to her office.

Tranquility’s main street followed the curve of the lake. At the top of Elm Street was Joe Bartlett’s gas and garage, which he’d run for forty-two years until he retired; now his daughter’s two girls pumped gas and changed oil. A sign above the garage proudly proclaimed: Owned and Operated by Joe Bartlett and Granddaughters. Claire had always liked that sign; she thought it said a lot for Joe Bartlett.

At the post office, Elm Street curved north. Already that northwest wind was starting to blow in across the lake. It blasted through the narrow alleys between buildings, and walking along the sidewalk was like passing through a series of icy wind tunnels. In the window above the five-and-dime, a black cat gazed down at her, as though pondering the stupidity of creatures out in such weather.

Next to the five-and-dime was the yellow Victorian where Claire had her medical practice.

The building had once served as Dr. Pomeroy’s business and residence. The door still had the old frosted glass with the lettering: MEDICAL OFFICE. Although the name
James Pomeroy, M.D.,
had been replaced by
Claire Elliot, M.D., Family Practice,
she sometimes imagined she could see the shadow of the old name lingering like a ghost in the pebbled glass, refusing to yield to the new occupant.

Inside, her receptionist, Vera, was yakking on the phone, her bracelets clattering as she flipped through the appointment book. Vera’s hairstyle was like her personality: wild and woolly and a little frazzled. She cupped her hand over the receiver and said to Claire, “Mairead Temple’s in the exam room. Sore throat.”

“How’s the rest of the afternoon look?”

“Two more coming in, and that’s it.”

Which added up to only six patients all day, worried Claire. Since the summer tourists departed, Claire’s practice had contracted. She was the only doctor with an office right in Tranquility, yet most of the

locals drove the twenty miles to Two Hills for medical care. She knew why; not many in town believed she’d last through one hard winter, and they saw no point getting attached to a doctor who’d be gone by the following autumn.

Mairead Temple was one of the few patients Claire had managed to attract, but it was only because Mairead owned no car. She’d walked a mile into town, and now she sat on the exam table, still wheezing slightly from the cold weather. Mairead was eighty-one and she had no teeth or tonsils. Nor did she have much deference for authority.

Examining Mairead’s throat, Claire said, “It does look pretty red.”

“I coulda told you that myself,” Mairead answered.

“But you don’t have a fever. And your lymph nodes aren’t swollen.”

“Hurts wicked bad. Can’t hardly swallow.”

“I’ll take a throat culture. By tomorrow we’ll know if it’s strep. But I think it’s just a virus.”

Mairead, her eyes small and suspicious, watched Claire peel open a throat swab. “Dr. Pomeroy always gave me penicillin.”

“Antibiotics don’t work on a virus, Mrs. Temple.”

“Always made me feel better, that penicillin.”

“Say ‘ah.”

Mairead gagged as Claire swabbed her throat. She looked like a tortoise, leathery neck extended, toothless mouth snapping at the air. Eyes watering, she said: “Pomeroy was in practice a long time. Always knew what he was doing. All you young doctors, you coulda learned a thing or two from him.”

Claire sighed. Would she always be compared to Dr. Pomeroy? His gravestone sat in a place of honor in the Mountain Street Cemetery. Claire saw his cryptic notes in the old medical charts, and sometimes she sensed his ghost dogging her on her rounds. Certainly it was Pomeroy’s ghost that now came between her and Mairead. Dead though he was, he would always be remembered as the town doctor.

“Let’s listen to your lungs,” said Claire.

Mairead grunted and tugged at her clothes. It was cold outside, and she had dressed for it. A sweater, a cotton shirt, thermal underwear, and a bra all had to be pulled free before Claire could set her stethoscope on her chest.

Through the thump-thump of Mairead’s heart, Claire heard a distant tapping and she looked up.

Vera stuck her head in the room. “Call on line two.”

“Can you take a message?”

“It’s your son. He won’t talk to me.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Temple,” Claire said, and went into her office to take the call. “Noah?”

“You have to pick me up. I’m gonna miss the bus.”

“But it’s only two-fifteen. The bus hasn’t left yet.”

“I’m in detention. I can’t leave until three-thirty.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it now.”

“I’m going to find out anyway, honey”

“Not
now,
Mom.” She heard him sniffle, heard the tears break through his voice. “Please. Please, can you just come and get me?”

The phone went dead. Haunted by the image of her son, crying and in trouble, Claire quickly dialed the school back. But by the time she reached the secretary, Noah had already left the office, and Miss Cornwallis was not available to speak to her.

Claire had an hour to finish with Mairead Temple, see two new patients, and drive to the school.

Feeling pressured now, and distracted by Noah’s crisis, she stepped back into the exam room and was dismayed to see that Mairead already had put her clothes back on.

“I’m not quite finished examining you,” said Claire.

“Yeah, y’are,” grunted Mairead.

“But Mrs. Temple—”

“Came for penicillin. Didn’t come to get no Q-Tip shoved down my throat.”