Comes a Time for Burning (7 page)

“We must all turn a new page,” Hardy said. “You know, the time will come soon enough when you’ll bore all your friends and acquaintances with the sheer volume of your case experience. You’ll shake your finger in the air and say things like, ‘Why, in thirty years, I’ve seen too many cases to count.’” He looked at the long flight of stairs up which Thomas had already started. “The Otis?”

“It takes far too long,” Thomas replied. “Have you performed a mastectomy, Lucius?”

“On a patient or a cadaver? I have one hundred percent on specimens in the laboratory.” He grinned. “Otherwise, I’ve assisted in perhaps half a dozen. I told you, Thomas. I am not a surgeon.” He held out his hands as he plodded up the stairs after his tour guide. “With hams like these…now, the women somehow find them reassuring. It’s all in the touch, you see.”

“But the cases in which you assisted?” Thomas persisted.

“I have yet to experience the pleasure of seeing one survive.”

Thomas nearly missed a step and stopped, turning to look down at Hardy.

“None?”

“In three cases the carcinoma returned more vicious than before, completely inoperable. We could have saved the patients exquisite agony by not operating in the first place, leaving them to the morphine in their final months. In two others, sepsis was the villain. In another, suicide.” He slapped the banister. “But we don’t need to discuss those dismal statistics with your patient.”

“No, indeed not,” Thomas said fervently. Nurse Helen Whitman, a middle-aged, portly woman with frighteningly glacial eyes but a warm heart, met the two physicians at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Mrs. Whitman. I thought you had gone home.”

“Both Nurse Auerbach and I like to be here when the other staff arrives for the night.” She nodded deferentially at Lucius Hardy. At their introduction, the physician gave her the same stiff, almost dismissive nod with which he’d favored Bertha Auerbach.

“Miss Whitman,” Thomas said, “I’ve left instructions with Berti regarding Howard Deaton.”

“She explained the case to me, Doctor.”

“Good. If you would help us make sure that Mr. Deaton behaves himself? I want that therapy done exactly as I’ve described regardless of how busy we might otherwise become.”

“Certainly, Doctor.”

“Not a single missed session. On no account.”

“We’ll do our best, Doctor. And a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she added to Hardy.

Thomas saw a man and woman step briefly into the doorway of one of the private children’s rooms at the end of the empty ward. “Missy’s parents?”

“They’ve been with her all day,” Helen replied. “Such good people.”

His gaze swept the otherwise empty ward. “I understood that my wife is here as well? She said she would stay until I could walk her home.”

“I’m afraid that she returned to One-oh-one,” Mrs. Whitman said. “She tires easily nowadays.” She nodded again at both of them, and bustled down the stairs.

“Matilda Snyder has had a bilateral tonsillotomy,” Thomas explained. “She seems to be responding well. Somewhat at odds with the cocaine swab, but otherwise good. She’ll go home tomorrow.”

“Home tomorrow. That’s what a patient wants to hear. Your first?”

“No, certainly not.” Thomas grinned. “My
second
. John Roberts supervised the first case last spring at University.”

“Well, then, there you go. A veteran.”

Thomas stepped into the single room where he introduced Lucius Hardy to the child’s parents, both of them looking more haggard than the little girl. Flora Snyder, tall and thin, reminded Thomas of an undernourished version of Gert James, his housekeeper—without any of the healthy bloom that Gert enjoyed. Marcus Snyder hovered silently, overly deferential as he shook Hardy’s hand. His clothing carried a heavy fragrance, an odd mixture of fish and sawdust.

“May I?” Hardy indicated the patient.

“Certainly.”

Hardy sat gently on the edge of the child’s bed. Sharing the most unattractive traits of both parents, Matilda was thin to the point of emaciation, hair in straw-colored strands, hollow-eyed and buck-toothed. Hardy reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes with a touch so gentle the child never blinked.

“Will you face the light and open your mouth for me, my dear?” he whispered, as if sharing a secret for the child’s ears only. Thomas turned up the gas lamp, and Hardy pivoted the child’s head this way and that, peering into the tiny throat. “Beautiful,” he announced, and glanced at the enameled pan on the small table near the bed. “You have plenty of ice, my dear?”

“Yes,” the child whispered. “Miss Whitman said she was going to find me some ice cream.”

“Then she shall.” Hardy stroked her face once more and rose. He extended his hand to the child’s parents. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said. “What a delightful child. You’re with the timber industry?”

Snyder looked flustered, and glanced at Thomas as if he needed permission to speak. “No, I’m a fisherman,” he said. “Do some sharpening on the side.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“My wife here works at the Clarissa,” Snyder added. “She’s been with them since the hotel opened, goin’ on twelve years now.”

“Ah, the Clarissa,” Hardy said. “Well, my good people, you have a delightful child.”

Feeling as if he’d just completed rounds with a senior physician, Thomas followed Lucius Hardy from the room.

“Puzzling that parents can be so blind,” Hardy muttered. “Why in God’s name don’t they
feed
the child?”

“I have Miss Whitman putting together a prescribed diet for her,” Thomas said. “I think that in this case, it’s a combination of ignorance, poverty, and the mother’s own constitution. As you saw, she is a wraith herself. But we’ll see what we can do.”

“There’s a limit, I suppose.”

“So I’m continually reminded.”

“So…” Hardy took a deep breath as if to remove an abundance of stale air from his lungs. “You put a great emphasis on privacy,” Hardy said. “That’s both interesting and commendable.”

“Privacy is an inexpensive enough commodity,” Thomas replied. “Something else learned from the past few months.” He pulled out his watch. “I’m distressed that Alvina chose to walk back to One-oh-one by herself, but that’s a good example. What’s the expression? She marches to her own drummer, Lucius.”

“And you must love her all the more because of that.”

“To be sure. And you will join Alvi and me for dinner? We don’t want you ending up looking like the Snyder child, a mere shadow of your former self. Here you’ve just arrived, and we haven’t even given you a moment to settle into your room up at the house. Did Alvi…?”

Hardy held up a hand to interrupt. “We are ahead of you,” he laughed. “I am to lodge in the third floor of this marvelous clinic. I’m told it’s a truly magnificent suite, with a marvelous view. Alvina has given me the key.” He look upward and then back at Thomas. “I took the liberty earlier of carrying what little luggage I have to the room. I must say,” and he took a deep breath, “one sight of that magnificent feather bed proved a powerful attraction.”

“Anything else that you might need…”

“Ah, not a thing. Not a thing. The suggestion that I join you for dinner is wonderful. I passed by the hotel’s kitchen door on the way up the hill from the coach this morning, and it smelled like they were roasting kelp. At what time shall I reappear this evening?”

“At eight, then? Unless, of course…I’m planning a ride out to one of the leases this very afternoon. If you’d care to accompany me?”

“That’s a temptation, but I confess that, after twelve days of constant travel, what appeals to me right now is motionless unconsciousness. Let me join you for dinner tonight, and we’ll map out a strategy for the days to come.”

“Of course. How stupid of me. Eight it is, then.”

He watched Hardy take the stairs two at a time toward the third floor.

When Thomas turned away, he found Bertha Auerbach regarding him.

“So, what do you think?” Despite their earlier conversation, it didn’t surprise him that Berti responded only with the faintest of unreadable smiles.

Chapter Nine

Sunshine was warm on Thomas’ shoulders, so warm that he could smell the sweat from the gelding as Fats plodded through the acres of slash, the hard outlines of stumpage softened by steam rising from the baked duff.

In another twenty minutes, he reached a valley rank with grasses, sedges, berry bushes and tinny saplings in soft groves. The meadow had been logged long ago, and since then the stumps had been continually hacked and trimmed for firewood until most of them now were stumps the height of a footstool.

The timber camp stretched half the length of the valley, favoring the upper end where the stream burbled out of the timber. In total, Thomas counted thirty-five structures—tents, tent-shacks, rude little cabins of slabwood.

Although he knew that timber camps came and went as cutting crews moved, this one appeared impossibly ramshackle, as if the simplest creature comforts meant nothing to the loggers. And perhaps they didn’t. Home at dark from a day of danger and toil, the loggers uncorked the bottle, gambled, and then fell into bed. They rose at dawn, off for another day in the timber.

Their dwellings were ordered in loose groups. Most of them were within staggering distance of the creek, and here and there, bathing pools had been scooped and dammed.

The largest structure in the valley, tucked up close to the tree line on the far side of the meadow, had managed slabwood all the way up to the eaves, with cedar shakes on the roof. Two bent stovepipes thrust up through the shakes with no visible thimbles to prevent the hall from bursting into flames.

Fifty feet uphill from the hall, a large privy had been constructed, long enough for five or six holes, and like most of the other buildings that showed signs of carpentry, not a straight line graced its architecture.

Thomas drew out his watch and saw that it was nearly three. In another hour, the sun would be obscured by the promontory west of the camp. Between that hill and the blockade of timber to the east, days here would be short—a late dawn through the timber, and no lingering sunset.

A man emerged from the doorway of the large hall and pitched a basinful of water into the grass, then ducked back inside. A slender tendril of fragrant cedar smoke issued from one of the chimneys. Not another soul stirred in the camp, and Thomas urged the gelding forward, taking the shortest route across the meadow.

When he dismounted in front of the mess hall, he took a moment to turn and survey the camp again. Thomas recalled some meadows in Connecticut that had smelled divine—so sweet that they begged a man to lie down and stretch out, listening to the symphony of bees and birds. This meadow, home to a hundred hard working, hard playing loggers, wasn’t one of those. It stank.

The privy stank. The mildew on the canvas walls stank. What should have been a bubbly, happy little brook stank in half a dozen ponds daisy-chained the length of the clearing.

“You lost, friend?”

Thomas turned and found he was being surveyed from head to toe by a stout fellow. His enormous beard perfectly mirrored the thickets of salt and pepper hair on top of his head. The usual woolen trousers and the gray top of his long johns were much mended, touched here and there with interesting stains or remnants from the kitchen.

“Good afternoon,” Thomas said. “I’m Dr. Parks, from the village.”

“Yep.” The man retreated into the hall, apparently assuming Thomas would follow. The physician did, but stopped just inside the door. Fifty feet long, twenty wide, the structure included only two windows high on the south end, neither with glass. Twenty-four slab wood tables with benches were arranged in two rows, and the end of each was graced with a stack of tin plates and a scattering of forks and spoons, as if in tribute to the possibility of organization. Half a dozen oil lanterns hung from ceiling cross-beams.

At the opposite end of the hall, an enormous iron cook stove presided with a high table beside it. Thomas could feel the heat rolling from the cast iron stove, the cedar snapping in one of the chambers. At the table, a young man worked, and when his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Thomas saw that the lad, perhaps fourteen at most, was working his way through an enormous colander of onions, mincing them into another blackened pot. His left arm was withered, with an elbow that didn’t work properly. The arm was useful enough that the clawed left hand could hold the onion steady for the flailing knife.

“You want coffee?”

“No thanks, sir. Your name?”

“Name’s Lawrence.”

“Actually, sir, I was looking for a young fellow. Buddy Huckla? I was wondering if you could tell me which cabin was his.”

Lawrence stepped back to the doorway, and as Thomas drew closer, he almost recoiled from the man’s odor—an amazing amalgam of kitchen and foul hygiene. Food poisoning was not a distant possibility.

“See the second bath?” the cook asked, pointing at the puddles where the stream had been dammed. “Just up yonder from it is where he stays.”

‘Up yonder’ could have been any of a dozen tents. “You mean the one right by the creek?”

“Yep. He ain’t there right now, though. He come back from town all distressed, and after I helped him take off that damn thing he was wearing on his hand, well, he went out to where the flume crew is workin’. That’s where he’s supposed to be.”

“He took it off? The bandages and splint?”

“Yep.”

Thomas stared at the cook in wonder. “Whatever did he—” He bit it off. “Have you seen his partner? Ben Sitzberger?”

“Saw him early this morning. Not since then.” The cook turned away from the door. “I ain’t looked, though. What do you want with him?” The man’s large brown eyes, surrounded by abundant wrinkles that hinted at laughter when called for, gazed at Thomas without much interest.

“Early this morning, when he brought Mr. Huckla to the clinic, it appeared that he was ill. Huckla suggested it was something he ate.”

“Well, that ain’t strange.”

“I thought to check on him while I was here. And on Mr. Huckla at the same time.”

“They’re out in the timber someplace. Most likely at the flume. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you.” Lawrence wiped his beard, drawing it together before releasing it like a tangled spring. “They’ll all be here at dark, if that’s what you want.”

“Perhaps you can direct me.”

“Direct you?”

“To the flume project. If it’s not far, I’d like to visit the construction.”

Lawrence frowned, and stepped to the doorway again. “Nice horse you got yourself, Doc.” Thomas couldn’t tell if the man was assessing the animal as transportation or for victuals. “You see right off that way? Right past Larson’s tent, there. The last one? Well, right there’s a trail big enough for an army. Just get on there and it’ll take you where you want to go.”

“How far is it?”

“Don’t know. I suppose one, maybe two miles. Ain’t never measured it.” He turned back inside. “I got bread risin’, so if you get lost, just ask somebody.” Lawrence plodded off toward the stove, scratching the small of his back as he walked. Thomas shook off the nauseating image of those hands kneading the bread dough.

“Thank you, sir,” Thomas muttered. He turned to his horse. “You probably know right where it is, don’t you, nice horse.” The gelding’s ears wandered in opposite directions, and the physician laughed.

Lawrence was perfectly correct, however. The trail had been beaten into a fair road by the ebb and flow of a hundred loggers, and Thomas made rapid progress. After half an hour, he reached the bluff. In the distance, he could see the great billows of fog rising off the inlet, but the beehive of activity below him drew his astonished attention.

The skid troughs snaked here and there out of the timber, sometimes just gouges in the hillside, sometimes logs laid side by side, sometimes a corduroy roadway for mules or oxen. The wasteland where the harvest had been completed reminded Thomas of photographs taken of a Civil War battlefield after a week of unrelenting bombardment.

The flume below was nothing more than an enormous gutter, like one of the eaves troughs on his father’s Connecticut house. The structure originated at a two acre holding pond, fed by waters from three creeks that spilled into the valley. Sometimes supported by sturdy trestles, sometimes running on grade, the flume was the simplest of structures—bottom planks assembled to form a shallow V, heavy timbers rising to form the sides.

The boom of logs, or what Thomas had learned the loggers were fond of referring to as ‘sticks’, floated in the pond, waiting their turn to be nudged through the sluice gate at the end of the pond for their ride down the flume. The sluice gate blocked the logs, but not much of the water overflow from the three eager streams. The flume, nearly full, dripped and leaked its entire length.

Far off on a hillside, he heard shouts and then the protracted roar of one of the spruce or fir giants crashing to earth. Rather than riding into the middle of the confusion, he nudged the gelding down the slope toward the holding pond where, standing near the sluice gate, he saw two men who appeared to be doing nothing other than relaxing in the sun.

One of them, his hat pushed back on his head and a big grin on his face in response to some personal joke, was Buddy Huckla. And even as Thomas watched, the man bent over the gate and slid his bandaged hand into the water.