by Jim Nelson
"I'm really concerned he went without lunch today," Ruby said. "I'd like to make sure he gets a good meal." She held up the bag for him. It swayed like a tire swing from under her fist.
"That's…thoughtful." He turned to the woman nearest him and asked her to call Henry Weymouth to the office. "I assume you're a caregiver, then?" he said to Ruby.
"That's right. You know about Kyle's accident?"
"Oh, I'd say everyone in town knows about it. Let's step into my office. We can wait for Henry in there."
Forrester opened a swinging half-door built into the counter and ushered her through. She followed him into his office, bearing the distinct sense she'd done something wrong.
"How long have you been in Angels Camp?" he asked while closing the office door.
"Just a few days." He motioned for her to take a visitor's chair. "I'm still learning my way around."
When he sat, his short sleeve shirt bunched at the shoulders.
Ruby couldn't help herself any longer. She pointed. "Is that a Metallica tattoo?"
Forrester made a brash, self-deprecating grin through his beard. "I'll always be a fan." He clapped his opposing hand over the tattoo. "Usually, I wear long sleeves, but with this heat and all."
"I'm surprised."
"A principal with a tattoo? Or that the parents haven't run me out on a rail?" He spoke with a jocular, self-deprecating tone.
"No," she said, "that you would…you know—"
"That I would live in Angels Camp?" He grinned through his goatee. "We're not all rednecks up here. Libertarians, hippies living off the grid, loners and misfits—Jefferson has a little bit of everything." He dialed down his joking tone a notch. "Before Jefferson separated, a lot of folks from the coast moved here to get away from the cities. Some of us liked the fresh air, some of us wanted to grow our own vegetables, or write poetry…" He shrugged. "After the separation, we stuck it out rather than go back. This is my home, too."
"Did you support it?"
"Breaking away from California?" He pouted his lips and shook his head resolutely. "Terrible idea. It's only been two years and you already see the problems simmering."
"Like what?"
"Well, this business with the CHP for one," he said. "And they've been trying to make weed illegal again, but that'll never happen."
"Why?"
"Marijuana is the biggest cash crop in the northern counties," he said. "California got to keep Hollywood and Silicon Valley in the divorce. For Jefferson, though—there's nothing else bringing in the kind of money weed generates. So all that high-minded talk about making marijuana illegal again all-but-vanished." He laughed. "Jefferson broke away from California thinking it now had a blank slate to work with. Turns out instead Jefferson inherited all of California's blessings and curses." He leaned back in his chair and roared.
Thirty-six
Ruby said, "I didn't realize everyone in town knew about Kyle's condition."
"Angels Camp is a small town in a small county." Forrester repeated it like a mantra. "It was big news." He leaned forward. "Do you know the full story?"
"I know he was shot." It felt silly saying such an obvious thing. "I know Henry was with him. I know Henry carries a gun when he goes hunting with his father." It still chilled her. "I'm deeply concerned," she said. She expected sympathy in return.
"Why are you concerned?" he asked.
"Where I'm from, children shouldn't be holding guns."
He grinned. "Yeah. Yeah," he breathed out. "It can be unnerving if you're not used to it."
"You understand, right?"
"Sure," he said. "I was raised in La Jolla. Kids there don't go hunting. We walked to the beach every day. Here, you'll see guns everywhere. You know Jefferson is an open-carry state, right?"
"I don't know what that means," she said with some trepidation.
"It means it's legal for people to carry holstered guns in public."
She took that in. "I haven't seen that yet."
"You'll see it sooner or later." He leaned back in his chair. "Do you know Henry's role in his father's accident?"
"Oh God—" She went white. "Don't tell me he—"
"Oh, no, that come out wrong." He smiled two rows of off-white teeth through his goatee. "Henry didn't shoot his father. No, Henry saved his father's life. Henry got the tourniquet around his father's leg. The surgeons would have amputated if he'd not done that, assuming Kyle didn't die before he reached them. And Henry drove the truck down the mountain. Henry knows the back roads up there almost as well as his father does. It took forty minutes to get his father down the mountain and into the emergency room." He shook his head appreciatively. "It's a testament to Kyle's fortitude that he survived the trip, but his son deserves a heap of credit."
"He's a hero," Ruby managed to say.
"Some would say that. But I'm still worried about him."
"I am too," Ruby said. "I'm not just here to nurse Kyle. I'm also here to make sure Henry is fed and healthy. I'm taking care of both of them."
"Well," Forrester said, taken aback. "That's good to hear. You know Henry's mother was killed a few years ago, right?"
"I heard about it."
"Henry was in the car when they were struck," Forrester said. "Drunk driver plowed into them. He got banged up, but nothing serious. His mother, though… Henry was trapped in the car with his mother for two hours. She was unconscious but breathing most of that time," Forrester said grimly. "He watched her die and there wasn't a thing he could do about it."
Ruby felt ill.
"He was a pretty good student before that happened," Forrester said. "He kept up his grades. Quiet, solitary type, but a good student. After his mother died, he withdrew. He's become very reserved. It's difficult to get through to him."
"He doesn't talk much," she said.
"He never talked much," Forrester said. "Got that from his father, I'd say. But now it's different."
Ruby put the timeline together. "His mother died six years ago?"
"That's right. He's not been the same since." He added, "My partner is a teacher at the junior high in town. That's how I know about Henry before and after the car accident."
"But he saved his father's life," she said, brightening. "Certainly that should lift him."
Forrester shook his head. "It doesn't work that way," he said. "It certainly hasn't in Henry's case. I couldn't imagine him withdrawing further, but he's done exactly that since his father's accident."
"It's only been four weeks," she said. "There's a chance he'll change."
"I'd like to think that," Forrester said.
"Are his grades okay?"
"No," Forrester said. "He's doing quite poorly. Even before the shooting, his grades had suffered. Tell me, are you here to complement Alice's nursing?"
"I'm taking over her duties," Ruby said. "I'm a live-in nurse. But I'm also here to take care of Henry."
He hesitated. "Look, I'll be blunt. Kyle's a bit of a ghost here in Angels Camp. He's known around town but not seen often. For most folks, that's fine. Most people mind their own business. But his teachers have come to the conclusion Kyle's not pushing Henry hard enough academically. Before the accident, I advised him to push Henry. Make sure he's doing his homework, make sure he's prepared every day for school, and so on. Now, with his condition, well…I'm not in a position to tell Kyle what his priorities should be."
"I'll do it," Ruby said automatically. "I'll make sure Henry does his homework every night."
"That would be a welcome change," Forrester said. "I'll also tell you we have counselors on staff Henry can talk to. We've offered already, but Henry didn't respond."
"I'll talk with him about that too," she said. After a moment, she said, "You're the first person to tell me about the shooting. What happened?" She sensed Forrester's discomfort and added quickly, "Kyle didn't shoot himself, did he?"
"I cannot imagine Kyle shooting anyone by accident, including himself," Forrester said. "No, there was a third
person on that hunting trip. He'd hired Kyle for the weekend. You know that's how Kyle makes his living, right? Leading hunting trips?"
She nodded she did. "But I'm still surprised Henry was with him."
"Henry is Kyle's assistant on many of these trips," Forrester said. "Over the summer months, he and Henry are up there, oh, weeks at a time." He added, "Around here, people make ends meet in all kinds of ways. You learn to be accepting. The economy here isn't good, and it never was. Well, Kyle was leading a three-day hunting trip. He pulled Henry out of school that Friday to make it happen. It was the other man who shot Kyle." Forrester looked Ruby in the eyes. "You've really not heard any of this?"
Ruby shook her head. "I would like to know."
Forrester nodded. "Like I said, Kyle's a bit of a ghost in these parts, but he's a religious man. We don't see much of him year-round, but when he's in town, he makes a point of going to church on Sundays. And Lea, his wife, well, she attended every Sunday. She taught Sunday school and helped with the Thursday-night dinners and Christmas pageants. Very active in the church, both she and Henry when he was little." He added, "You've got to understand. Church is big here. Most folks go regularly. For many, it's the center of their social life. Everything revolves around the church."
"Kyle hasn't mentioned church yet to me," she said, thinking back. God, yes, but not church.
"Has he mentioned Benton Hargrove to you? He's their pastor."
Ruby, absent due to absorbing Forrester's information, brightened. "They could help us! The church. Right?"
He made a face she didn't comprehend, a wince of some kind of imaginary pain she had somehow inflicted. "They did help," he said. "After Lea died, the church really came through for Kyle and Henry. They raised money for the funeral and took hot meals over to their house. The church came through for Kyle and Henry."
"That's good to hear," Ruby said. "Her death must have destroyed Kyle."
"Kyle's a hard man to read." He spoke philosophically. "No one expected him to fall apart at her funeral or weep uncontrollably on her coffin, but he was…well, it's as I said. Kyle's a hard man to read."
"I'm sure it tore him apart inside," she said. "How could it not? He talks like they were close."
"High school sweethearts. In fact, they both went to this high school." He thumped the desk with his forefinger. "That was before I moved to Angels Camp, of course. They both attended that church their entire lives."
"We're a little strapped right now," Ruby said. She was already unconsciously referring to the household as we. "I've been trying to think of ways we could come up with some extra money to get us through this patch. Certainly the church would help us now." She spoke over Forrester's reply. "They helped back then, certainly they could see Kyle needs their help again." Wait, she suddenly thought—Why hasn't anyone from the church come by the house?
"Cynthia, you need to appreciate the situation." He spoke in a low, grave voice. "Benton Hargrove was the third man on that hunting trip. Kyle was shot by his pastor."
Thirty-seven
Forrester opened the door to his office to show her out. "I meant to ask where you hail from."
"Santa Barbara." Another of her lies.
"Beautiful town," he said. "Up here is quite a change of pace. How did you come into taking care of Kyle and Henry?"
She'd kept in mind the cover story Dr. Benford had devised. "I'm part of an order that cares for teens at risk," she said, miming the language she often heard at shelters and charities. When she was living on the street, moving from one Southern California town to the next, she heard many times from social workers she was at risk. It was never spelled out to her what she was at risk of. It got so she wondered if any of them could explain it.
"Kind of a long way to come," he said.
She noticed Henry was seated on the bench beside the office entrance. All she'd heard in Forrester's office had stirred up many conflicting emotions within her. Before he could rise from the bench to full height, she put her arms around him and squeezed. He responded coolly, stiff and wide-eyed.
"I brought you a lunch." She offered him the meal she'd improvised out of the back of the truck. "I hope you're hungry."
"I'm fine," he said.
"I mean, I hope you're not hungry," she said with a wide grin. "You know what I mean."
He accepted the plastic bag. "Thank you."
She turned to look back at Forrester standing behind the counter. "Where can he eat?"
Forrester peered at his wristwatch. "There's a fifteen-minute break coming up. He can eat between classes."
She was gripping Henry by the shoulders. "Can you do that?"
"Okay."
She looked in his eyes. "Bring home all your books tonight," she said. "We're going to sit down and go over your homework together. I want to know all the classes you're taking."
He was puzzled by this. "Why?"
She felt self-conscious having this conversation in the office. "I'm here to take care of you and your father," she said evenly. "Your father will back me up on this one." I'm pretty sure, she thought.
He twisted his shoulders to loosen her hands. "Can I go now?"
It bruised Ruby. She reached to brush back a lick of hair that had fallen to his eyebrow. He held his face away from her.
"Go on back to class," Forrester said to him. He stared at Ruby with a querying look, one eyebrow raised. "Thank you for coming by."
Thirty-eight
She unpacked the groceries with great haste. She started preparing a late lunch for Kyle. He was sleepy when she arrived home. It was a side-effect of the antibiotics and the other drugs he'd been prescribed. As he dozed, she checked his pain medication. It did not appear he'd taken a tablet since she Alice showed her the pill bottle the day before.
He was still sleeping when lunch was ready, so she left it on the stove. She spent the afternoon mopping the kitchen floor and scrubbing the downstairs bathroom clean. She went through the den and tidied up around the hospital bed. When he came to, she was standing at the foot of the staircase with her hands on her hips, considering which room would be her next cleaning project.
"What's that smell?" he said groggily.
"Spaghetti," she said.
"Aw, that sounds great."
She brought him a serving with a fork and soup spoon. He twirled up the noodles and greedily devoured them.
"I'm gonna get fat lying around all day eating your good cooking," he said, mouth full.
"Don't you worry about that." She'd pulled the chair up to his bedside. She watched him eat. "I took Henry a lunch today."
"That's good of you," he said. "I've been on him to make his lunches in the mornings, but he never does."
"What does he eat?"
"The school takes his credit card for hot lunches," he said. "I think he usually buys pizza."
"I don't want him eating pizza every day."
"What we all should be eating more of is the meat in the freezer," Kyle said. "Have you looked through it?"
"I don't know what most of those cuts are," she said warily. She wasn't sure she did want to know.
"Organ meat," he said. "Liver, stomach, and kidney, for the most part. Very healthy."
"From the animals you killed."
"Some of it," he said. "Some of it I bartered for from the butcher in town."
She made a helpless smile. "Don't deer make steaks too?"
"Sure," he said. "But I can sell those cuts for good money. And I have to pay for the butchering, which isn't cheap for a whole deer."
She grimaced. He snorted out of impatience.
"Look, you could save us a bit of money if you started cooking those cuts. They're just going to go to waste otherwise."
He took up his key ring from the table beside his bed. He twisted a stubby steel key off the ring and offered it to her.
"There's a coffin freezer around back," he said. "Next to the shed."
"A 'coffin freezer'?"
"There's enough
meat in the back freezer for all of us."
Organ meat, she thought.
He said, "I don't mind you buying a little sliced ham and the like for Henry's lunches, but if we're going to make do without an income, we have to stretch what we got."
She rubbed the steel key between her thumb and forefinger. "You're right," she said softly.
In the kitchen, she went through the refrigerator freezer once more. Each of the wrapped cuts had a word or two written across the frosty butcher paper in black felt tip. Liver. Stomach. Deer kidney. Five-star restaurants in Santa Barbara and San Francisco would pay top dollar for these cuts. She was letting them develop freezer burn while she spent what little money they had on potato chips and strawberry jam.
She found a shelf of old Betty Crocker cookbooks in the pantry, most likely Lea's. At the table, she flipped through them for recipes using organ meat. Her grandfather used to order liver and onions and a Scotch and soda whenever they went to an old-fashioned steak house on San Francisco's Van Ness Avenue. It seemed a place to start.
She stored the remainder of the spaghetti in the refrigerator. Henry could eat it for a snack when he got home from school. She went through the groceries she'd bought and decided to make a kidney stew with potatoes, carrots, and onions. She'd serve it with a spinach salad. After dinner, it was homework with Henry at the kitchen table. The stew would take hours to cook, especially since the meat was still frozen. She put four kidneys in the microwave and started chopping the vegetables.
When the school bus dropped off Henry, Ruby hurried to the front door to watch him climb the hill from the highway. "How was your day?" she asked, her hands buried in a dishtowel.
"Can I watch television?"
"Go see your father," Ruby said, and closed the door behind him.
Alice arrived at four o'clock. She dropped her nurse's bag and purse unceremoniously on the chair beside the bed. "Looks like you've been busy since this morning." She pointed at the line of empty plastic urine bottles on the bed rail. "He's peeing, I hope?"
