Out Of The Deep I Cry (49 page)

She peeped in on the olders. She was worried about Lucy, as well, who had slept almost all of the day and had no appetite when awake. In the light from the kitchen, she could see where heavy, rust-tinged phlegm had run from her daughter’s nose and mouth to stain the pillowcase.
Oh, Lord, that doesn’t look good.
She was on her way to get a rag to clean it up when she heard the shot.

Oh sweet Jesus no
. Her body urged her to race out the door and find her husband. Her body told her to flee to the back bedroom and hide in the dark. Caught between impossible demands, she trembled, frozen, in the hallway. There was no other noise. There were no more shots. And then she heard it, the sound of footsteps and a man’s complaining, and, thank God, thank God, Jon’s voice, demanding to be let go.

The door burst open and the fancy suit came in, followed by two men she hadn’t seen before, controlling Jon with his arm twisted up to the middle of his back.

She clutched Mary to her. Her nightgown covered her more than many dresses, but it was still her nightgown, and no man other than her father and husband had ever seen her in one. She jerked her chin up. “Let my husband go.”

The man in the fancy suit laughed. “You got a spunky one there, mister. You ever have to wallop her one to make her mind?” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Take him in there.”

Jane scurried ahead of them. She shut the bedroom door and backed against it.

“What’s in there?” one of the men asked. He had a droopy mustache that could have belonged to a dime-novel cowboy.

“Two sick children,” she said. She was amazed her voice didn’t shake. “Who need to see the doctor.”

The fancy suit indicated his men should sit Jon at the table. They released his arm, and he rubbed his wrist, watching them all the while with wide, white-rimmed eyes.

“That’s what I mean. We’ve already been through this, but you didn’t listen. You’ve got kids. What do you do if they don’t listen to you?” He stared at her. “You wallop ’em.”

She hugged Mary so tightly the baby started to cry, a thin, mewling version of her usual full-lunged bawl. “Don’t you touch my children,” Jane said. “Don’t you dare touch them.”

The young man touched his chest. “What kind of a person do you think I am? I don’t hurt kids.” He nodded to the man with the droopy mustache, who grabbed Jon’s wrist and prized his hand flat. The fancy-suited man pulled a gun from beneath his jacket. Jane opened her mouth to plead, to shriek, when he reversed the gun in his hand and smashed the butt end against Jon’s index finger.

Jon screamed. The third man leaned against his shoulders, forcing him into the chair, while the droopy mustache pushed his hand open. Jane saw the young man’s arm rise, the carbon gleam of the gun’s handle, like a ball-peen hammer, and then he smashed it down again, shattering Jon’s middle finger.

Her husband screamed and wept and howled. Mary wailed breathlessly, and from behind the bedroom door, Jane heard Lucy cry out and Peter stumble from his bed. The man in the fancy suit looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Well? Go settle ’em down.”

She sidled through the door, closing it behind her. “Shh. Sssh.”

“Mama, I can’t see!”

“Get back into bed, Peter.”

Lucy’s voice was weak and clogged with phlegm. “Mama?”

“Daddy’s had an accident. He hurt his hand, but he’ll be all right. He didn’t mean to wake you up. Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep now.” She stepped through the door and latched it behind her.

Jon was rocking in the kitchen chair, hunched over his hand, moaning again and again. “Since we’re all friends, I’ll consider this a lesson learned.” The man in the fancy suit slid his gun back into its holster. “You’ve been good hosts over these past months, and this is a real good stop along the trail. I’d hate to have to kill one of you.” He looked at Jane. Smiled a choirboy smile beneath dead eyes. “So I trust this is the last time we’ll have to have this conversation.”

Jane nodded.

“Good. Let’s go, boys. Ted’s got the next watch, so we can catch some shut-eye.” He smiled at Jane. “I suggest you do the same, missus.”

Jack died at ten o’clock in the morning.

After that she stopped thinking, stopped feeling. She trundled around, a mechanical mother wheeling on a track; wipe off Lucy’s nose, coax Peter to eat something, balance Mary over the steaming pan, take one child to the privy, take another, clean up Lucy’s lunch after she vomited it all over the floor, bathe the baby to cool her fever, bring Peter paper and pencils.

She didn’t tell the other children about their brother. She lost track of Jon. He was insubstantial, somehow, a ghost flitting through the rooms. They were all ghosts, waiting for darkness to come and set them free.

The men left half an hour before midnight. Three trucks, lights out, rumbling over the lane and away down the road. As soon as they were gone, she and Jon went to the barn and harnessed the horses. They worked quickly, silently. She didn’t want to talk with him, and she didn’t want to think why. It was important, the most important thing in the world, that he be gone, that he fetch the doctor, and once that happened, everything would be all right. Everything would fall into place again.

“Janie,” he said, perched on the buggy seat. There was that in his voice that would shatter her like the bones in his fingers. If she let it.

“Hurry,” she said, and turned to the house. Inside, she stoked the stove, put the kettle on, opened another can of liniment to rub into Mary’s chest. She was up in the nursery, and even from the kitchen Jane could hear her, rattling and choking, fighting for each breath.

She checked in on the olders before heading upstairs. Peter was sleeping. His breathing was easy, and except for his pallor and his listlessness, she thought him well on the mend. More rheum had run from Lucy’s mouth and nose onto her pillow. Jane swiped it off-she had changed the pillowcase three times during the day-and laid a hand on Lucy’s forehead.

She was cool. Jane crouched down beside her daughter’s bed. She put her other hand on Lucy’s chest. Which was silly. Cool flesh was a good sign. No fever. She waited. She waited for Lucy’s chest to rise and fall. Nothing happened.

“Lucy.” She shook the girl. “Lucy, wake up.” She shook her harder. “Lucy.” She sat on the bed, scooped her daughter into a sitting position. Lucy’s arms and head flopped. “Lucy.” She shook her, hard, and pressed her ear to her daughter’s mouth. Nothing. She pushed Lucy’s hair, sticky from the phlegm and greasy from days in bed, away from her face. Her sweet face. The girl was so proud of her thick brown hair. She would have to wash it, Lucy would hate to-but she couldn’t see anymore, not the dirty hair, not the still face, as the tears blinded her eyes and she curled around her little girl and sobbed.

Sometime later, she came to herself again. The kettle was singing on the stove. She tucked Lucy into bed, flipping the pillow around so her head rested on the clean side. She took the liniment from the kitchen table and went upstairs. Mary was lying in her crib, her eyes open but unfocused, the way she looked some mornings right after she had awoken. Beneath her gown, her chest and belly flexed. Dragging a breath in. Forcing a breath out. Jane opened the gown, rubbed the liniment in with firm strokes, and lifted her from the crib. She wrapped her in a light quilt and settled into the rocking chair, cradling her baby girl. She had nursed her in this very chair. Not so many months ago. She looked down. In the shadowed light, Mary’s eyes met hers. Her little body eased as she relaxed into her mother’s arms. Soon, the doctor would be here. Soon, everything would be all right. Jane cuddled her baby close. The weight, the heft of her. The life of her. She began to rock.

After Officer Durkee had removed Allan Rouse to the station for booking, Clare, backed up by the just-arrived Lyle MacAuley, insisted Russ get checked out at the hospital. He left, under protest, in his deputy chief’s care.

She wanted Mrs. Marshall to go, too. “I don’t think you should be alone,” she said. “And I certainly don’t think you ought to be driving home this late at night all by yourself.”

The older woman patted her arm. She had actually hugged Allan and Renee as they left, a shining example of Christian forbearance Clare wasn’t certain she could have emulated. “I’ll be fine, dear.”

“You’ve had a pretty big shock. Please, at least just let me call Mr. Madsen and have him take you home. You can wait here until he comes.” She looked around at the Rouses’ well-made furniture, their family pictures, the books and magazines in the glass-fronted cases. She wondered what had been earned, and what had been stolen from Jane Ketchem’s money.

Mrs. Marshall did that mind-reading thing again. “What am I going to do with the trust money?”

Clare didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Money isn’t good or bad in and of itself. It’s what you do with it.”

Mrs. Marshall bit her lip, scraping a spot in her lipstick. “It might as well have been a blood payment for my brothers’ and sisters’ lives. For my parents’ lives.”

“However they earned that money, whatever your mother did, surely she sacrificed enough to make it clean.”

“You’d think so.” The older woman’s voice regained some of its tartness. “Unfortunately, for thirty years it’s benefited the Rouse family instead of the clinic. That’s not what she wanted. I feel…” She took Clare’s hands. “I feel as if I owe it to her to do something with it. Owe it to all of them.”

“Something… that’s not the church roof?”

“Not all of it. Would you think it terrible of me if I only put in enough for the immediate work? If we had to rely on fund-raising to make up the rest?”

Clare shook her head. “I was never wild about the idea of taking the money away from the clinic. Do you want to set the trust back up again? Make payments to the board of aldermen this time, to keep it all out in the open?”

“I don’t know. The clinic’s gotten along without it perfectly well all these years. I believe I’d like to find something more personal.”

Clare smiled slowly. “Let me introduce you to Debba Clow.”

“The one who won’t vaccinate her child?”

“We’re working on that. Maybe hearing your parents’ story might help. I have her number in my-” Clare slapped her pockets, reflexively patting for her cell phone, until she remembered where it was. Her clothes were half dried by now, and smelled of mildew. “Never mind. She has a son, Skylar, who could benefit from someone with deep pockets taking an interest in him. She wants to teach him at home, and they could use aides, autism specialists, extra speech and occupational therapy-you could make a difference. And it would be”-she smiled a little-“personal.”

With a little more pressing, Mrs. Marshall agreed that they should call Mr. Madsen, and the elderly attorney seemed happy enough to be of service. “When you’re my age,” he said, “you don’t sleep all that much anyway.”

By the time they dropped Clare off in front of the historical society to retrieve her car, she was pretty well dried off. She sat behind the wheel for several minutes. Debating: Rectory? Or the hospital? She didn’t surprise herself when she went for the hospital. If Russ had been released, she’d be on her way without much time lost. If he was still there, and awake, they could talk. She could picture herself, sitting on the edge of his bed. Maybe holding his hand. And they would talk.

Her clericals did the trick again, getting her past admissions after hours. Although the security guard in charge did look strangely at her. Walking past the dark plate-glass window of the gift shop, she saw why. In addition to the reek and the damp wrinkles, her black blouse and pants were streaked with dried mud, and her hair was-well, better not to think of it. Russ didn’t care.

She took the elevator up to the third floor. “I’m here to see Russ Van Alstyne,” she said to the charge nurse. “Downstairs, they told me he had been admitted?”

“That’s right.” The nurse, a twenty-something man with curling hair, flipped open a chart. “He had to have his leg recast. And he had some signs of fluid in his lungs, so he’s being kept overnight for observation. But I’m afraid he’s asleep now.” He looked at her clerical collar. “Are you his…?”

She smiled over her disappointment. “Just let him know that Clare Fergusson stopped by to see him. Thanks.” She pushed away from the nursing station’s counter.

“Excuse me?” A voice hailed from down the hall. “Are you Clare Fergusson?” Clare turned. A pocket goddess-there was no other word for her-was walking toward her. She smiled and waved. “I was just coming out to grab another cup of tea and I heard your name.” She was tiny, curvy, with a tousle of Marilyn Monroe hair and a flawless complexion. She reached for Clare’s hand. “I just had to say thank you.” Up close, she had soft-edged lines around her eyes and overlapping front teeth that made her smile charming instead of perfect. “I’m Linda Van Alstyne.”

Clare moved her hand up and down, propped a smile on her face, said something.

“Mother Van Alstyne told me you were the one who got Russ out of the woods and to the hospital when he broke his leg. I’m so grateful. He just goes out and does these crazy things, you know.” She laughed. Musically, of course. “So I’m glad he has friends looking out for him.”

Clare said something else. She thought she might melt into the floor, like the Wicked Witch of the West. She was the Wicked Witch. She deserved melting.

“Were you visiting someone from your church?”

Clare’s mouth worked.

“Well, it’s great to finally meet you. I’ll tell Russ you said hi, okay?” She gave Clare’s hand a final squeeze and glided back up the hall to the kitchenette like the woman in the Roethke poem. Describing circles as she moved.

Clare felt her way to the elevator. Sometime later, she found herself in the chapel room. She sat for a long time in the half-light, staring at the nondenominational wall hanging at the front of the room. Just sitting. Then she thought. Then she prayed. After a while, she rose from her seat and went into the family lounge next door, which had vending machines, a coffeemaker, long sofas-and a writing desk, stocked with hospital stationery. A sixtyish couple slept on one of the sofas, he stretched out with his head in her lap, she sitting, her head tipped, snoring. Clare pulled the desk chair out as quietly as possible. She sat, head bowed, over the tablet of writing paper. Then she wrote. It wasn’t a long letter. It fit on a single sheet of paper. When she was done, she folded the sheet into an envelope and printed Russ’s name on it.