Deep in the Valley (21 page)

“Some of this emotionalism has to do with the ovary and the surgery and—well, it’s like a huge does of PMS. Justine, I have to refer you to an oncologist, to treat the cancer. And I’m going to tell you right now that, even though we caught it early, in the very early stages, an
oncologist is likely to recommend a complete hysterectomy.”

She shook her head violently. “I won’t do it. I want another chance.”

“To have a baby?” he asked.

“That’s right. I’m young. There’s plenty of time.”

“On the one hand,” John said, “if you had lost that ovary to anything but ovarian cancer, there would be plenty of time. But your other ovary is like a time bomb, Justine. To anyone with a strong family history of reproductive cancer or an experience with it as a patient, doctors usually recommend a clean slate. Get rid of the cancer catchers.”

“You going to get rid of my breasts, too?” she asked, filling her hands with her own breasts.

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “But we’ll check them often. You can detect lumps in breasts, even feel lumps in the uterus. But ovarian cancer has no symptoms, and we can’t feel or see your remaining ovary.”

“What about that blood test? Dr. Hudson said there’s a blood test!”

“It helps, but the problem is that, by the time we can detect a growth by means of an ultrasound or blood test, the cancer can be advanced.”

“I won’t do it!” she insisted. “I’m going to have a baby!”

“Okay, settle down and let me explain something to you. You can’t conceive while undergoing chemotherapy. You’ll have to wait till that’s well behind you. And then the increased hormone level of pregnancy will put you at risk. But if you’re absolutely deter
mined, you should have your baby as early as possible, and then count yourself lucky to have gotten that far, and follow up with surgery so you’ll be around to raise him.”

She turned her face away and looked off into space. “Her,” she murmured.

“I’m sorry?” John said.

She looked back. “Her. It will be a girl.”

“Oh, I see.” He cleared his throat. “And Justine, don’t eliminate adoption as an option.”

A slow smile spread across her face. “Adoption? Do you think anyone would let us adopt a baby? A woman who’s had cancer and a seventy-year-old man?”

“Justine, you should talk to your family….”

“My
family?
My father? He won’t speak to me because of this scandal! And my sisters think I’ve lost my mind.”

“Then you’ve told them that—”

“I didn’t have to tell anyone anything! Everyone knows! That I thought I was knocked up by Pastor Wickham and now I have Sam and cancer and—”

John came abruptly to his feet. “Pastor Wickham?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Well,
you
didn’t mention—”

“I would’ve thought June—”

“We have so many patients—”

“Yes, it was Pastor Wickham, the shithead.”

“Whoa.”

“But that doesn’t change anything. I still have cancer, want a baby, am in love with a seventy-year-old man and have my whole family pissed off at me.” She sighed and added, “Well, it changes one thing.”

“What’s that?” John asked.

“Where I go to church!”

Leah had been bringing the younger boys to the café with her when she and Frank came to work in the morning, and from there they fairly scattered. Birdie took them home with her for lunch one day, they went off with the parents of friends from school another, and Ursula Toopeek took them home to play with her kids once. But the day came when Leah and Frank arrived at the café alone, not looking so good and having hitched a ride with Lincoln Toopeek.

“Uh-oh,” Tom said when he saw his father’s old pickup pull up to the front of the café. “This doesn’t look like good news.”

Leah and Frank jumped out of the back of the truck, brushed down their pants and headed around the café for the employees’ back door. Tom, on the other hand, went out the front door to the truck to speak to his father.

“What’s up?” he asked Lincoln.

“They were walking. It must be six miles. They could have called and I would have gone for them, but they were walking. I think things must be bad again.”

Inside, George Fuller was the first to see them. Leah had a large purple bruise rising on her cheek and Frank had a black eye and fat lip. “Oh God,” George said. “He came back, didn’t he?”

“What was your first clue?” Frank asked thickly.

“Anybody else out at the house hurt?” George demanded.

“No. We ran him off. We shot at him and he took the truck. So—”

“Did you call the chief?”

“No. We just wanted him to go.”

“But Leah, you were supposed to call the chief! Get him arrested again!”

“I know, I know, but—”

Tom burst in the back of the café where Leah and Frank were just pulling their aprons off the shelf. “Leah! I told you to
call
me! At once!”

She whirled and looked daggers through him. “He came in the dead of night, broke down the door, knocked us around a little, ripped the phone out of the wall and took the truck. I was hoping to hear he’d had a bad wreck…but no such luck.”

“Where are the younger boys?” Tom asked.

“Home. Watching the road. Jeremy has the rifle on the door.”

“I’ll call Corsica, have her pick them up. And get your phone repaired. You two go across the street and get checked over by June before you work.”

“Forget about it,” Frank mumbled.

“No,” Tom said. “I want you to get something to bring down that lip and help the eye…or Tanya won’t give you a second glance. Jesus, Leah, I’m sorry about this. I should’ve taken better care—”

“What can you do? He’s bent on destruction. He’s a mean cuss, and he won’t rest till he kills us all.”

“Well, I’ve got him now. He violated the order and can go back to jail.”

“In and out, in and out…” She looked not only battered, but defeated. “He’ll just get to us again. One way or the other.”

“Not this time. This time you’ll have up to five years
to get yourself together. I’ll hunt him down, and in the process, get you your truck back.”

“You know, Tom,” Leah said, the sound of tears in her voice, “maybe you ought to just let it be. He said all he wanted was his truck and to be free of our aggravation. I can live without a truck…and he can go drink himself to death somewhere else.”

J
une had a headache, unrelated to the injury she’d had in her car accident. Well, maybe not completely unrelated—she couldn’t seem to find herself a vehicle. Her insurance company, which was always johnny-on-the-spot when nothing was wrong, was acting like a miserly mistress now that she wanted to collect on a fully loaded Jeep, complete with ambulance gear. She was using a rented Nissan truck with a first aid kit, portable oxygen tank and her medical bag until she could work something out. And on her clinic desk she calculated over and over, and over again, how much this whole thing was going to cost.

She rubbed her temples. There was a knock at the door.

“What?” she said tersely. Sadie, who preferred to sleep under the desk and underfoot, squirmed out at the testy tone in her voice.

John peeked into the room. “Got a minute?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, let me know when—”

“Come in, come in, I’m just in a foul mood. I’ll get over it. What’s on your mind?”

He entered and closed the door. He sat in the chair facing the desk, facing her. “Something you said the other day…when we were wrapping up after Justine. I said you were older, didn’t want children, and you said something. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“You want to talk about that?”

“Why would I?” she countered.

“It’s one of my functions,” he said, shrugging. “This is something I’m used to talking to my patients about—their choices regarding parenthood. Birth control, et cetera.”

She leaned toward him. “I’m not your patient.”

“Whew, you are in a foul mood. Maybe we can do something about that PMS while we’re at it.”

“I repeat—”

“All
right!
Jesus. I was just trying to be friendly. But if you don’t want to talk…”

Want to talk? Boy, did she want to talk! About the way the town had gone a little crazy lately. About the fact that she was impatiently awaiting word from Tom on what he was finding out about John, but Tom was a little busy, considering Gus had gotten out of jail, beat his wife and kids and was now on the run. Or how about the fact that she hadn’t heard a word from the illusive Jim Post, and she was positively
aching
for him? But she settled for, “I’m sorry, John. I’m having trouble with the insurance company and I need an equipped vehicle for this clinic. In fact, I’m thinking I need two vehicles.”

“Why is that?”

“I need an emergency vehicle to make calls in, and now that we’re working together and sharing the on-call duty, we should share an emergency vehicle. Which means the clinic should have an emergency vehicle and each doctor should have their own car.” If it wasn’t John in the clinic with her, it would have to be someone. She couldn’t handle it alone anymore. “I’ve talked to the dealers in the area and no one is going to work with me until I get some positive feedback from the insurance company.”

“I thought you were going to lease something?” he said.

“I did. I leased a little truck. That was about what I can afford on my income.”

“But when the insurance pays off the Jeep—?”

“I’ll still be a little short. It’s pretty expensive to get the largest sports utility vehicle and load it with ambulance gear.”

“What’s pretty expensive?” he inquired.

“Around ninety thousand,” she said.

John whistled and said, “That’s gonna take a bake sale or two. June, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I heard through the grapevine that Mrs. Claypool funded the clinic. Had you thought of asking her for a little help? Or maybe a loan?”

“Sure I’ve thought of it. But, the price of the clinic notwithstanding, I have no idea how well fixed my aunt is. She might be well off, she might be struggling to get by. The cost of the clinic might have wiped her out. It can’t have escaped her attention that I have no vehicle…and I’m sure if she could help, she would. But
damn it, John, the cost of taking care of this town shouldn’t always fall to Aunt Myrna. There are plenty of other people around here with money, too.”

“Are you sure it’s just a tension headache, June?”

“I’m sure there’s enough tension around here to account for it.”

He stood and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck—a helpless gesture. “If you think of any way I can help…”

“Thanks, John,” she said, at once feeling the inadequacy of the word. He had done so much! He’d served well beyond his role in taking care of her, most certainly had saved at least one life in diagnosing Justine, and was already dearly loved by the town—by a town that didn’t love anyone too soon. June’s gratitude should be overflowing. Flooding! She should give him a damn party! But she held back in wait of a final word. A verdict of not guilty.

He left her office and
she
felt guilty. He seemed so guileless. She should have talked to him, should have told him about Dr. Feldtbrow.

But she hadn’t. And now it seemed the only thing she could do was wait.

School was out, the sun set later and later, the moist heat of late June settled over the crops and the mountains, and Tom Toopeek spent a long day combing the roads near the Craven farm, looking for clues about what direction Gus might have traveled. Or a spot where he might have camped, close by, in wait for his middle of the night attack. Tom finally went home for dinner with his family, but decided to go out again after dark.

Lincoln read a paper in the living room, the children were roaming or doing chores, and Tom sat in the kitchen with a cup of coffee while Philana and Ursula put the finishing touches on dinner.

“You should see what he managed to do to the house in the short time he was there,” Tom said. “Aside from sweeping up glass, Leah doesn’t plan to make any repairs until I can find him and lock him up.”

“Knowing he’s going to jail for a long time, don’t you think he’s gone?” Ursula asked.

“I would prefer that scenario, even though it would cost Leah a truck. To think of him gone… Easy on the temper, in my case.”

“You have no temper,” Ursula said with a laugh.

“I have a foul temper, it turns out. I had serious homicidal thoughts while driving Gus away from the jail.”

“Aren’t there four kinds of murder?” Ursula asked. “And isn’t one of them praiseworthy?”

“I am drawn to the Craven house,” he said. “They are so broken. Despite all our efforts—mine, Ricky’s and Lee’s—we couldn’t keep them safe from him. How did we fail so miserably?”

“Tom, he must have hidden on the land and waited,” Ursula said. “It wasn’t what you expected him to do. Poor Leah. Will she never escape?”

Tom looked out the kitchen window and saw Tanya ride up on her bike, which she walked into the shed behind the house. “Where has Tanya been?”

“Baby-sitting.”

“They don’t drive her home?”

“She volunteers to ride. For the exercise. Young girls are vain about their figures.”

There was something not right, and it all seemed oddly connected. Her hair was loose; it was hard to ride a bike with long hair loose and whipping in the wind. And there was the trouble at the Cravens—the broken glass, the missing truck, the family’s stoic acceptance of their lot.

When she entered the kitchen Tom bolted to his feet with such furor that his kitchen chair fell over.

“I fell!” she said defensively. “Off my bike!”

“Oh Tanya, let me see,” Ursula said sympathetically. She pushed the girl’s hair away from her face and saw her blackened eye. “Goodness,” she said, wetting the dish towel to put on the bluish spot. Tom glowered blackly and Ursula didn’t know why. “You’ll be—”

“Save me something,” he barked. “I’ll eat later!”

He whirled away angrily, letting the back door slam behind him as he left the house. Tears coursing down her cheeks, Tanya fled after him, crying out for him to stop. “Daddy! Daddy!” He waited at the opened door of his Range Rover. She stood before him, all five-foot-two of her. Petite and beautiful, flawless but for her blackened eye. “Please, Daddy, don’t make trouble for them now. I’m never going to be around him again, I swear.”

“You defied me and your mother,” he said.

“I did. I’m sorry. I was foolish to think I knew more than my parents. And I won’t defy you again. But Daddy, there is nothing you can do but make things worse. Please.”

He crouched down to look closer at the dark bruise, to look into her tearing eyes for final clarification. “He hit you?”

She nodded miserably. “He didn’t get his way,” she said.

“Did he do anything else to hurt you?” Tom asked.

“No, this was hurt enough. And now I see that you’re right. He is not of my culture, and by that I don’t mean Native or tribal. I know that now, Daddy. Please don’t do anything to him.”

Tom put a large hand under her chin, lifting her face. He turned it to and fro, examining her for marks. Though it didn’t show on his face, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction in hearing her wisdom. He knew, because she was fifteen, that he couldn’t count on it being a long-lasting wisdom, but a father would take what he could get.

“Go inside and tell your mother the truth about your bruise. And don’t lie to her again, Tanya. Those things are so hard to repair.”

“I know. Daddy, please don’t—”

“Don’t what, Tan? Hurt him? Arrest him? What do you think I would do?”

“I don’t know,” she said skittishly.

“Do you think I have no wisdom of my own?” he asked her.

“I know you do. I just want it all to go away.”

“For you, it already has.”

June was just putting away the last patient chart she’d been working on when Jessica came running into her office, jumping up and down frantically. “June, June, they’re fighting in the street! Come quick!”

“Who?” she asked as she ran down the clinic hall to the front door. But Jessica didn’t answer; she just
bolted. And there they were, as advertised—Pastor Wickham, Standard Roberts and Sam Cussler. It was a little hard to tell what Sam’s role was in this fisticuffs; he might’ve been trying to hold Stan off of Jonathan Wickham. But just as June thought that, Pastor Wickham delivered a mean right hook to Sam’s cheek. They fell in a pile of bodies and a cloud of dust. Sadie barked in protest, but stayed firmly at June’s side.

“Call Tom,” June told Jessica.

They must have begun their argument in the church and spilled out onto the street because they were at the bottom of the church steps. Sam was the oldest of the three, but probably the strongest. Stan must be nearly sixty, and Jonathan, though considerably younger at about thirty-eight, was the trimmest in muscle and least likely to sustain any damage. But if someone didn’t separate them soon, the pastor might get his clock cleaned.

Jessica came back out to the clinic’s front stoop. “Tom’s gone home to dinner, but Ricky’s coming down.”

“If he doesn’t hurry, we’re going to have to stitch and mend all through our dinner,” June said absently.

“Oh great! I’ll help!”

She cast a suspicious glance at Jessica. Help?

Ricky drove down the block with his lights flashing and siren whirring. It was his clever way of drawing attention to the fight so that anyone left in the café could come help him pry these men apart. Indeed, he managed to alert George and his oldest son, two hearties who came instantly to Ricky’s aid. One man each.

June crossed her arms over her chest and looked at the threesome in disgust.
Children.
Sam was cut on the chin, Stan had a nice lump growing on his forehead and the pastor was spitting what might have been teeth. Their knuckles were damaged and their clothes rent. “All I can say is I’m glad Justine isn’t around to see this. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” June declared.

“Ashamed?” Standard echoed. “I see two men who can share the shame, but me? That’s my daughter they tinkered with!”

“I haven’t tinkered a damn, you old goat,” Sam said. “I’m the only one’s been there for her in her time of need. You weren’t anywhere to be found!”

“I’m not likely to be sharing the waiting room with a white-haired old man who has designs on a girl a third his age!”

Jonathan Wickham spat blood on the ground. “There’s no pregnancy! It’s all just a slander! Ruining my good—” Sam and Standard looked at him first in shock and then furiously pulled against the restraints of their respective custodians.

“Stop it!” June shouted. They obeyed at once. “What is the matter with you? Ricky, boys, get them in the clinic so I can patch them up. And mind, you make one aggressive move in my clinic, I’ll sedate you! You won’t wake up for a month!” She turned on her heel and angrily strode back inside.

“Jessie,” she said, “set up the treatment room with a suture kit and get yourself some gloves.” Jessica smiled briefly and brightly before going to do as she was bidden. “Ricky! Bring them all back here. Line ’em up
on these stools.” When her order had been carried out, June added, “Okay, you can leave them. But wait up front, will you? If there’s any trouble back here I’ll need some help holding them down while I fill them full of Thorazine…or some other equally powerful tranquilizer. I think I might have some veterinary tranks on hand.”

“You sure, June?” George asked worriedly. “’Cause if you want me to stay right here—”

“I’ll take it from here. I want to talk to these idiots alone, if you don’t mind. But don’t leave the clinic just yet, huh? Hang around till I’m done?”

Three men echoed, “Sure thing, June.”

She washed her hands, put on some gloves and smacked a chemical ice pack against the counter to get it started. The ice went on Stan’s head, she pressed a gauze pad against the cut on Sam’s chin and moved his hand to hold it in place, and then told the pastor to open his mouth.

“You know, Jonathan, you would test the patience of the very saints.” His eyes jerked up to hers in surprise. “Ah, so you recognize your tag line? You’ve created serious trouble for yourself in this town. Your credibility is shot—at least with the women, that’s for sure.”

He began to mumble something and June pulled her gloved finger out of his mouth. “There’s no evidence that I—”

“Oh shut up,” the room said in unison. Even Jessica.

“There, you see?” June asked. “Just in case you think people don’t know, you can rest assured everyone is onto you. And it’s your own damn fault. But that’s
not even the worst of what’s going on here. Have the three of you ignorant jackasses forgotten that Justine is in the hospital, recovering from cancer surgery?” June wadded up a gauze strip and stuck it between the pastor’s teeth. “Looks like you just lost a bridge, Jonathan. It could have been so much worse. Bite down on this. It’ll help you keep your mouth shut.