Читать книгу Watershed - Mark Barr - Страница 14

CHAPTER SIX

CLAIRE OPENED HER EYES AT THE COOLNESS THAT accompanied her mother peeling the sheet back from where it lay across her.

“She’s done it again,” her mother said.

Doc Peters appeared at her mother’s shoulder, frowned. “That’s going to happen. The infection has spread a good bit. She can’t tell when she’s going or not.”

Claire was dimly aware of relief, then the warm tang of urine. It was easier to close her eyes again, to let it be someone else’s problem. In a moment she was drifting, aware of being rolled to one side.

Doc Peters’ voice penetrated. “This blanket out here where she’s been sleeping? Why isn’t she in there sharing the bed with you?”

Her mother’s answer was less distinct, lost in the next room.

“There’s relief people in town that would give you a bed or two.”

Her mother’s voice, raised, came through clearly, “We ain’t relief!”

Now it was Doc Peters’ turn to talk in a low voice. Claire could hear the sound, but not the words. They were placating sounds, a call to reason. Then Doc’s voice rising, in command once again. “And you’re going to tend to these children and not tax her. I’ll drive her there myself. Besides, it’ll be easier for me to check in on her in town.”

The two carried their conversation out onto the porch, and Claire fell into fitful sleep.

Then, hands gripping the sheet beneath her, making a gurney of it, lifting her. Claire listing to one side. Doc’s voice, admonishing, and the sheet pulled level, the hands carrying her out into the yard, into the back of Doc’s car. Late afternoon, and the sunlight through the trees along the roadway strobed against Claire’s closed eyelids as they bumped along the road to town.

Claire’s saliva gone to paste. Stronger hands, more of them. Quiet, men’s voices.

Her aunt’s voice, “Bring her right in through here.”

“I thank you, Irma,” Doc said. “I’ll be back in the evening with those pills.”

Claire roused when the voices went away, when there was only the quiet, insistent sound of fabric rustling. She opened her eyes to find Irma making up the bed in her front room.

“Aunt Irma,” she said.

Her aunt looked over, kept working at her task. “Hush now, you rest. We’re going to set up a nice place for you here. Doc told me all about what happened. First your man and then your mother. Lord, girl, I’m about the only family you got left.”

“Mama didn’t throw me out,” Claire said.

“No, but she was going to let you sleep on that floor until kingdom come. Eliza was selfish when she was a child, and she hasn’t changed one whit.”

“Where are Tom and Nan?”

“Don’t worry yourself over them. Your mother is going to mind them until you are feeling more yourself. I spoke to her myself on that point. You just concentrate on getting yourself better. They’ll be fine.”

“I suppose,” Claire said. She shifted beneath the sheet and pushed a foot out to cool. Underneath her gown was wet again. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ll ruin your bed.”

“Hush now, you think you’re the first to wet the bed?” Her aunt pulled back the sheet that she was just tucking in to pat something that Claire couldn’t quite see from her position on the floor. “You remember Mrs. DeWitt? That son of hers? I had the hardware store cut me this square of tarp.” She patted the bed. ”If it can handle the DeWitt boy, it can handle you.” When she was finished, she covered Claire back up and went out into the hall. Claire heard her speaking to someone, and then four men in suits came back into the room with her. Claire began to protest, but the four quickly lifted her by the corners of the sheet and set her upon the bed.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” her aunt said, and the men went back out. Irma secured the door behind them and began stripping the wet clothes from Claire.

“I’m sorry for this,” Claire said.

“Hush, girl. Sometimes life hands you things. There’s nothing to be done but get through it.”

Her aunt brought in a pitcher of water and a glass and set them at the bedside.

“Doc said you’re to drink all of this,” she said.

“It’ll make me pee.”

“Don’t you worry about that. He’s bringing that medicine this afternoon. Called all the way to Memphis to chew on that pharmacist for taking so long. Turns out it’s been sitting in Corinth, just a few miles down the road. Postmaster down there was waiting for more mail to pile up before he sent it on.” Irma poured a glass of water and helped lift Claire upright. Claire drank it down, heard her stomach gurgle and move, realized that she hadn’t eaten all day. Her aunt heard it, too.

“If you think you feel up for it, I’ll bring you some dinner after I’ve got those men fed. For now, rest. There’s a bed pan under there, if you think you need to go. I’ve got to get dinner started or they’ll all be standing around grumbling.”

Claire nodded, drinking, and her aunt went out, closing the door behind her. She forced herself out of the bed. The room spun mildly from the effort, but she managed to get her nightgown up around her waist and squatted over the chamber pot on the off chance that this time she really had to go. She didn’t. The bed was soft when she climbed back into it. In a moment, she was asleep.

Dinner that night was chicken and dumplings, a dish that Irma told them was one of her best. Nathan was late arriving, coming through the door just as the men were taking their seats. He hung his hat on a peg in the hallway and took a chair as Irma began to bring the first dishes out from the kitchen.

The men of the boarding house were a decent lot. There was Charlie Smithson, a master electrician out of Kentucky. He spent his days traveling with the advance team of the distribution crew. Beside him sat James Krebs, his face in his plate. Krebs was a surveyor. Each morning he stuffed his pockets with whatever was left over from breakfast, then set out on his day-long hikes through the countryside. He alone among the group challenged Nathan’s position as the one most often tardy for evening meals. Pugh was the group’s self-appointed social chair. Each evening he was first to propose smoking on the porch or a drink in the alley behind the neighbor’s outbuilding, where they were more or less safe from the view of Irma’s kitchen window. Across from him sat Hull. A salesman by trade, Hull was tasked with outreach and gathering customers. He dressed sharply in tailored suits, but in private conversation revealed a snide disposition that curdled any goodwill Nathan felt. Lastly, there was Woodsmansee, a tall man with glasses who seemed forever a beat behind the joke or conversation, blinking confusedly at the others from his seat at the end of the table. About half of the time there was one additional man, a serious-faced bureaucrat named Pennick. On alternating weeks, he traveled into the surrounding states for meetings, checking on the progress of distant projects. When in town, he spent his days at the drugstore, smoking cigarettes and waiting at the town’s one telephone. When the calls came he shouted his conversations while the locals stared, their errands forgotten. Had creatures from the sea or even Hollywood movie moguls arrived and taken to using the phone, the spectacle could not have more enthralled them than to see their government at work.

As they passed the food around, the men talked quietly about the goings-on at the dam, or, when Irma was out of the room refilling the serving plates, about the woman who had taken up residence in the downstairs bedroom. She had gotten herself into trouble, it was said, though none of them could agree on precisely what sort of trouble it was. Krebs guessed liquor, while Smithson told a story about a woman who had tried to stop a pregnancy by throwing herself down some stairs.

Nathan was enjoying the first bites of his chicken and dumplings when Pugh looked across the table to him and said, “Maybe it was this Miller fellow who knocked her up in the first place. That’s why they’re looking for him.”

Nathan suddenly had a great deal of trouble working down the bite of chicken in his mouth.

“What’s that?” he asked. Pugh smirked.

“The letter,” he prompted. When Nathan remained blank, he repeated himself. “The letter. The letter that Irma was asking about earlier.”

“I just got here in time for supper.”

“There’s a letter. Came in the post today for a Miller.” Pugh pointed a gravied fork in the direction of the entryway, where Nathan could make out an envelope on the mahogany end table. “Irma says she’s never had anyone by that name. Figures it’s some fellow who’s on his way. Asked us to keep an eye peeled.”

“Miller, you say?”

“Yeah, you know the guy?”

“No, no. I could ask in the engineering office, though.”

“There’s a sport. Only, there’s no room at the inn, so to speak. Irma says she takes anyone else in, they’re going to have to sleep in the broom closet. So tell Miller to try his luck elsewhere, if it suits him.”

Their talk drew Irma’s attention from the far end of the table. “Did you ask him about this Miller, Mr. Pugh?”

“Doesn’t know him,” Pugh said. “Nobody does. I’m thinking someone just got the wrong address.”

“Oh,” Irma said, “I was hoping someone had heard of him. I hate the idea of a letter going lost.”

“What’s the return address?” Nathan asked.

“It doesn’t have one,” said Irma. She retrieved the letter, brought it to the table.

“I say we open it,” Pugh suggested.

“You can’t do that,” Nathan said. “It’s against the law.”

Pugh shrugged. “It doesn’t look like it’s a bank draft or anything. Just a regular letter. If we open it, we might find out how to get it back to whoever sent it.” He nudged Krebs, beside him. “What do you think?”

“Don’t drag me into this mess,” Krebs said. “I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“This sounds like a bad idea to me,” Nathan said. Irma frowned, turning the envelope for some clue of its origin or purpose.

“Look, I’ll do it myself,” Pugh said, standing and taking the letter from Irma. “You all are exonerated when they send me to the gallows.” Ignoring their protests, he tore the seam open with his thumbnail and opened the envelope.

The others watched, waiting, but Pugh frowned, and turned the envelope on end. A scrap of paper fell onto his upturned palm.

“There’s nothing in it but this newspaper clipping,” he said.

“This Miller must be a newspaper man,” Smithson said. “Mystery solved.” He returned to his chicken and dumplings.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Pugh said.

“Maybe it’s research for something,” Smithson said. “Who cares?”

Krebs held out his hand for Pugh to pass the paper to him. “What’s the clipping about? Let me see it.”

Pugh scanned the article. “Some people died in Memphis. Fire of some sort. Look at this, someone has underlined the sentence ‘Pinkertons have been called in’.” He shook his head. “Screwy, if you ask me. I can’t make sense of it.”

Now Woodsmansee gestured for the clipping to be passed to him. “I remember this. A bank building burned down. There was a bit of a scandal after it came out the firm that built it had taken some shortcuts. It was all over the papers back home for a couple months.” Pugh passed it over.

“Are you from Memphis, Mr. Woodsmansee?” Nathan asked.

“Born and bred,” he said and smiled like he’d said something clever. He read the clipping through to the end. “Sad story. I remember this young woman. She kind of put a face to the whole thing.” He tapped the article’s photo and passed the clipping on to Nathan. Slowly, the clipping made its way around the table. Krebs took his turn and then returned the clipping to Irma.

“Well, we’d need to know more than ‘Memphis’ to get this back to whoever sent it,” he said.

Smithson looked up, chewing. “I say put it in the trash and let’s get back to supper.”

“We oughtn’t to have opened it, I’m afraid,” she said.

“Trash,” Smithson repeated, and this time Irma nodded, though with a solemn air she returned the letter to the end table in the hallway. Just as she was placing it, there was a loud rapping at the front door that caused her startled hands to fly up from her sides.

“Gracious,” Irma said, and went to answer the door. The hallway wall screened Nathan’s view of who the evening caller was, but Irma’s voice was hard when she spoke. “What do you want? There’s nothing for you here.”

“I want to talk to her,” an unseen man said.

“You can’t. You’ve been drinking, I take it?”

The answer was muffled.

“You go on out of here. You come back tomorrow sober, I might let you in if she wants you, but I can’t see how she would.”

Pugh got up from the table and went to the door.

“Friend, you’re not wanted here. Irma’s made that clear enough, so why don’t you leave?”

Irma released her hold on the door and stepped aside just before it burst open, and Nathan recognized the large man from the site: Travis. He had Pugh by the neck with one hand, and drove him across the hall. He gave a shove and Pugh tumbled.

“Claire! Claire!” Travis yelled. He ranged raggedly to the right and then left, at a loss for where to go now that he’d gained the house. The rest of the table was on him at once, though he threw them off until three of them managed to get his arms and pull his feet out from under him. Nathan and the rest were then able to lift him, still screaming out the name, through the front door. They dropped him roughly in the yard and he got up and rushed the house again. Travis blacked Kreb’s eye. Smithson caught a muddied boot to the head. Again, the whole of them overwhelmed the large man and carried him bodily out into the yard. This time he simply lay where they dropped him, and they retreated back into the house and locked the door, though there wasn’t a man among them that thought the small measure would stop him. They stood gathered in the front hall, anxiously watching until Travis got up and went back to his car.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Irma said, and excused herself to the lower bedroom to check on the new guest.

A few of them returned to their plates. Another got Smithson up and walking again, though the master electrician complained that his jaw wasn’t working right and went to bed early. The rest sat down around the dining table in their shirtsleeves to smoke.

After a while, Nathan went up to his room and spread out his work on the secondary controls he’d promised Maufrais, but the air was hot and still, and he found himself squinting in the weak light of his small lamp. As he struggled with it, he heard the sounds of the household turning in. He worked on until a splinter of pain began to press its way through his skull and he had to abandon the drawings. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his face, then stood and went to the door, listening. The house was silent. As quietly as he could, he opened his door and slipped out.

The moon was not yet risen and the town was quiet and dark, with only the small lights of oil lamps inside the houses. The orange glowings of cigarettes and cigars shown on the front porches where people silently regarded him. Here and there a breeze kicked up, and he could hear the murmur of conversations. Behind a picket fence, a dog wore itself out barking.

Nathan followed the street into the town proper, passing black and silent stores.

He came once more to the elm where the children had been looking over the wreck a few days before. In the night it was a hulking black thing, its trunk thrusting upward into the darkness. He felt around its girth with his hands until he found the cuts that the car had left in it. They were dry now, the wounds stanched by the hardened sap. The crickets were singing, and the scents of summer flowers drifted in the air.

His hand went to his jacket pocket and withdrew the envelope with the newspaper clipping. It was too dark to see, but he remembered her face clearly. The newspapers had gotten their hands on the photo from her employment file. In it, her expression was serious.

Had another car come along like the first and missed the curve in the road, its headlights would have found Nathan Miller sitting at the tree’s base, his head low, the clipping that had been addressed to him in his hands. But there were no more cars that night, and he was alone and unknown, swaddled by the complete darkness.