Virgin River (9 page)

There was a small table inside with a lantern on it. Sitting on short stools at the table were a man and a woman. Mel had to stifle a gasp. Their faces were swollen, cut and bruised. The man was perhaps thirty, his dirty blond hair short and spiky, and he twitched and jittered, unable to sit still. The woman, maybe the same age, was holding her arm at an odd angle. Broken.

Doc put his bag on the table and opened it. He pulled out and put on his latex gloves. Mel followed suit, but slowly, her pulse picking up. She had never worked as a visiting nurse, but knew a few who had. There were nasty hovels all around the poorer sections of L.A. where paramedics might be called, but in the city if you had a situation like this, you’d notify the police. The patients would be brought to the emergency room. And in the event of domestic violence, which this clearly
was, these two would both be booked into jail right out of the E.R. When there’s an injury in a domestic, no one has to press charges besides the police.

“Whatcha got, Maxine?” he said, reaching out for her arm, which she extended toward him. He examined it briefly. “Clifford,” he called. “I’m gonna need a bucket of water.” Then to Mel he said, “Get to work on cleaning up Calvin’s face, see if sutures are required, and I’ll attempt to set this ulna.”

“Do you want a hypo?” she asked.

“I don’t think we’ll need that,” he said.

Mel got out some peroxide and cotton and approached the young man warily. He lifted his eyes to her face and grinned at her with a mouth full of dirty teeth, some of which appeared to be rotting. In his eyes she saw that his pupils were very small—he was full of amphetamine, higher than a kite. He kept grinning at her and she tried not to make eye contact with him. She cleaned some of the cuts on his face and finally said, “Wipe that look off your face or I’ll let Doc do this.” It made him giggle stupidly.

“I’m going to need something for the pain,” he said.

“You already had something for the pain,” she told him. And he giggled again. But in his eyes there was menace and she decided not to make any more eye contact.

Doc made a sudden movement that slammed Calvin’s arm onto the table, hard, gripped by Doc’s arthritic hand. “You never do that, you hear me?” Doc said in a voice more threatening than Mel had heard before, then slowly released Calvin’s forearm while boring through him with angry eyes. Then Doc immediately
turned his attention back to Maxine. “I’m going to have to put this bone right, Maxine. Then I’ll cast it for you.”

Mel had no idea what had just happened. “You don’t want an X-ray?” she heard herself ask Doc. And her answer was a glare from the doctor who’d asked her to try not to talk. She went back to the man’s face.

There was a cut over his eye that she could repair with tape, no stitches required. Standing above him as she was, she noticed a huge purple bump through the thinning hair on the top of his head. Maxine must have hit him over the head with something, right before he broke her arm. She glanced at his shoulders and arms through the thin fabric of his shirt and saw that he had some heft to him—he was probably strong. Strong enough at least break a bone.

The bucket of water arrived—the bucket rusty and dirty—and momentarily she heard Maxine give out a yelp of pain as Doc used sudden and powerful force to put her ulna back into place.

Old Doc Mullins worked silently, wrapping an Ace bandage around her arm, then dipping casting material into the bucket, soaking it, and applying it to the broken arm. Finished with her assignment, Mel moved away from Calvin and watched Doc. He was strong and fast for his age, skilled for a man with hands twisted by arthritis, but then this had been his life’s work. Casting done, he pulled a sling out of his bag.

Job done, he snapped off his gloves, threw them in his bag, closed it, picked it up and, looking down, went back to the truck. Again, Mel followed.

When they were out of the compound she said, “All right—what’s going on there?”

“What do you think’s going on?” he asked. “It isn’t complicated.”

“Looks pretty awful to me,” she said.

“It is awful. But not complicated. Just a few dirt-poor alcoholics. Homeless, living in the woods. Clifford wandered away from his family to live out here years ago and over time a few others joined his camp. Then Calvin Thompson and Maxine showed up not so long ago, and added weed to the agenda—they’re growing in that semitrailer. Biggest mystery to me is how they got it back in here. You can bet Calvin couldn’t get that done. I figure Calvin’s connected to someone, told ’em he could sit back here and watch over a grow. Calvin’s a caretaker. That’s what the generator is about—grow lights. They irrigate out of the river. Calvin’s jitters don’t come from pot—pot would level him out and slow him down. He’s gotta be on something like meth. Maybe he skims a little marijuana, cheats the boss, and trades it for something else. Thing is, I don’t think Clifford and those old men have anything to do with the pot. They never had a grow out there before that I know of. But I could be wrong.”

“Amazing,” she said.

“There are lots of little marijuana camps hidden back in these woods—some of ’em pretty good size—but you can’t grow it outside in winter months. It’s still the biggest cash crop in California. But even if you gave Clifford and those old boys a million dollars, that’s how they’re going to live.” He took a breath. “Not all local growers look like vagrants. A lot of ’em look like millionaires.”

“What happened when you grabbed his arm like that?” she asked.

“You didn’t see? He was raising it like he was going to touch you. Familiarly.”

She shuddered. “Thanks. I guess. Why’d you want me to see that?”

“Two reasons—so you’d know what some of this country medicine is about. Some places where they’re growing are booby-trapped, but not this one. You should never go out to one of those places alone. Not even if a baby’s coming. You better hear me on that.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a shudder. “You should tell someone, Doc. You should tell the sheriff or someone.”

He laughed. “For all I know, the sheriff’s department’s aware—there are growers all over this part of the world. For the most part, they stay invisible—it’s not like they want to be found out. More to the point, I’m in medicine, not law enforcement. I don’t talk about the patients. I assume that’s your ethic, as well.”

“They live in filth! They’re hungry and probably sick! Their water is undoubtedly contaminated by the awful, dirty containers they keep it in. They’re beating each other up and dying of drink and…whatever.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Doesn’t make my day, either.”

She found it devastating, the acceptance of such hopelessness. “How do you do it?” she asked him, her voice quiet.

“I just do the best I can,” he said. “I help where I can. That’s all anyone can do.”

She shook her head. “This really isn’t for me,” she said. “I can handle stuff like this when it comes into the hospital, but I’m no country practitioner. It’s like the Peace Corps.”

“There are bright spots in my doctoring, too,” he said. “Just happens that isn’t one of them.”

She was completely down in the dumps when she went back to the grill to collect the baby. “Not pretty out there, is it?” Jack said.

“Horrid. Have you ever been out there?”

“I stumbled across them a couple years ago when I was hunting.”

“You didn’t want to tell anyone?” she asked. “Like the police?”

“It isn’t against the law to be a bum,” he said with a shrug.

So, she thought—he didn’t know about the semitrailer. Doc had said it showed up not long ago. “I can’t imagine living like that. Can I use your bathroom? I want to wash up before I touch the baby.”

“Right back off the kitchen,” he said.

When she got back she picked up Chloe and held her close, breathing in the clean, powdery scent.

“Fortunately, you don’t have to live like they do,” he said.

“Neither do they. Someone should do an intervention out there, get them some help. Food and clean water, anyway.”

He picked up the baby bed to carry it across the street for her. “I think they’ve killed too many brain cells for that to work,” he said. “Concentrate on the good you can do and don’t gnaw on the hopeless cases. It’ll just make you sad.”

By early evening, Mel was coming around. She took her dinner at the bar, laughed with Jack and even Preacher cracked the occasional smile. Finally, she put her small
hand over Jack’s and said, “I apologize for earlier, Jack. I never even thanked you for watching the baby.”

“You were kind of upset,” he said.

“Yeah. I surprised myself. It’s not as though I haven’t seen plenty of bums and street people. They were frequent clientele at the hospital. I didn’t realize before today that in the city we’d clean ’em up, straighten ’em out and hand ’em off to some agency or another. In the back of my mind I probably always knew they’d be back picking out of trash cans before long, but I didn’t have to see it. This was very different. They’re not going anywhere and they’re not getting any help. It’s been down to Doc. Alone. Takes a lot of courage to do what Doc does.”

“He does more than a lot of people would do,” Jack said.

She smiled. “This is rough country.”

“It can be,” he said.

“Not a lot of resources out here.”

“We do pretty well with what we’ve got. But you have to remember, the old boys in that little camp don’t seem to want resources so much as to be left alone,” he said. “I know that’s hard to stomach, but most of this area is the opposite—thriving and healthy. Did that trip out into the woods make your desire to get out of here even more desperate?”

“It sure opened my eyes. I thought small-town medicine would be peaceful and sweet. I never thought it had that other side—as hopeless as some of our worst inner city problems.”

“Don’t know that it is,” he argued. “The sweet and peaceful will far outnumber the hopeless. I swear on
it. You’re welcome to see for yourself and call me a liar. But you’d have to hang around.”

“I made a commitment to stay till the baby is placed,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t promise more.”

“No promises necessary. Just pointing out the options.”

“But thank you, for taking care of the baby for me.”

“She’s a good baby,” he said. “I didn’t mind at all.”

After she’d gone back to Doc’s, Jack said to Preacher, “You okay here? I’m thinking about a beer.”

Preacher’s bushy black brows shot up in surprise, but he didn’t say it. Didn’t say, “Another beer? So soon?” He finally said, “I’m okay here.”

Jack knew that if he didn’t say anything at all to Charmaine for a few weeks, she wouldn’t know there was anything to be said. He also knew that despite the fact Mel had captured his thoughts, it didn’t mean anything would ever happen, didn’t mean she’d make it even another week in Virgin River. That wasn’t really the point. The issue was that it was wrong to go to Charmaine at all, ever, if he wasn’t into Charmaine. It was a point of honor with him. Even though he never thought in terms of commitment, he certainly didn’t think in terms of using someone.

Then there was another matter. A fear that he’d be having sex with Charmaine and behind his closed eyes, see another face. That couldn’t happen. That would insult both women.

When she saw him walk into her tavern, her first reaction was one of pleased surprise and she smiled at him. Then she immediately realized how unprecedented this visit was and her smile vanished.

“Beer?” she asked him.

“Talk?” he answered. “Can Butch cover for you for ten minutes?”

She actually took a step back. She knew what was coming and sadness seeped into her brown eyes. Her face actually fell. “Is that all it’s going to take?” she asked. “Ten minutes?”

“I think so. There isn’t too much to say.”

“There’s someone else,” she said at once.

“No. There isn’t. Let’s take a table.” He looked over his shoulder. “That one over there. Ask Butch.”

She nodded and turned from him. While she spoke to Butch, Jack moved to the table. Butch took the bar and Charmaine joined Jack. He reached across and took her hands. “You’ve been a wonderful friend to me, Charmaine. I never for one second took that for granted.”

“But…”

“My mind is on other things,” he said. “I won’t be coming to Clear River for a beer anymore.”

“There can only be one thing,” she said. “Because I know you. And you have needs.”

He’d thought about this long and hard on the way over, and it wasn’t in his mind to lie to her. But there wasn’t anyone else. Mel wasn’t someone else—and might never be. Just because she’d taken over his consciousness didn’t mean it would ever materialize into something more. She might stick to her word and leave Virgin River at the first opportunity, and even if she didn’t, you don’t show your hand this early in the game. His reason for breaking this off wasn’t just about having Mel, but about not misleading Charmaine. She was a good woman; she had been good to him. She didn’t
deserve to be strung along while he waited to see what the other woman was going to do.

The cabin in Virgin River might be ready, but Mel sure wasn’t. The baby at Doc’s was keeping her in town for now, but it was impractical to think of her caring for Chloe out at the cabin—there was only the one Plexiglas incubator, no car seat for traveling back and forth, no phone. Of course, it was no punishment to have her living right across the street. But he wanted her in the cabin he’d renovated, he wanted that real bad.

Charmaine was so right—he had needs. But somehow when he looked at this young Mel, he knew it would never be like this—an arrangement for sex every couple of weeks. Jack had absolutely no idea what it might become, but he already knew it was going to be more than that. He had a very long history of not getting hooked up, so this disturbed him. The chances were real good he was casting adrift in a sea of sheer loneliness. Because Mel had complications. He had no idea what they were, but that occasional sadness in her eyes came out of the past, something she was trying to get over.

But he wanted her. He wanted all of her; he wanted everything with her.

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I have needs. And right now I think what I need is completely different from what I’ve needed in the past. I could easily keep coming here, Charmaine. I sure don’t suffer, you’re awful good to me. But the past two years when I’ve been here, I’ve been here completely. It shouldn’t be any other way.”