The Charity

by Connie Johnson Hambley

  She saw something on his arm. What was it?

  The blade flashed as it neared her stomach. “Ah, look. Ya’ll made her faint,” Rowdy said holding the slumped figure up by her arms. “Damn! Her being out takes all the fun out of it fer ya, eh?”

  Jessica exploded from her curled position by thrusting her feet into the killer’s stomach. With the same motion, Rowdy was pushed back to the window, and she raked the old nail down his arm, ripping free from his hold. He fell backwards trying to protect himself from the pain, and she used the moment to spring into the opened door above her head and to quickly pull her legs to safety. Slamming the heavy panel on the fingers of one of the men, she wedged the panel shut as best as she could. The action was followed by grunt of pain and footsteps running out of the room.

  Get out of the house! Get to the barn and to one of the horses. They would not be able to reach her once she was on a horse. She scrambled her way through the crawl space and rolled under the eaves. She stood up in the larger expanse of the attic over the main house. It was pitch black, and she felt along the walls trying to find the little window above the long slant of roof. The sound of pelting rain on glass signaled its location.

  The window had not been opened in years. It was painted shut and would not budge. Men shouted, and footsteps pounded in the hallway toward the attic door. She took the bottom edge of her sweater and pulled it up so that a double layer of thick wool encased her shoulder. She rammed her shoulder against the small window, shattering glass and splintering wood. The sound alerted the men, and they closed in on her. Jessica’s blood froze as she heard the inhuman laughter coming up the stairs after her.

  Jessica clawed her way out the window and grasped the overhang of roof with her fingertips. A flash of lightning broke into her vision, illuminating a forty-foot drop to the ground under her dangling feet and another section of shiny slate roof over her kitchen to her left. The kitchen roof offered a shorter drop to the ground and was her only option. The slate roof overhang was slick with rain and age and her fingers fought for any hold. Finally feeling the soggy and half-rotted wooden gutter she grabbed the punky wood with two hands and tested it with her weight. The old horizontal lip of the gutter sagged as she shimmied hand over hand spilling gallons of water on her. Clapboards moaned as the gutter pulled away from the house. A rain downspout was ten feet away, and she hoped she could shimmy down it to the lower roof. She took in one last deep breath and swung herself with all of the power she could summon to the downspout.

  The lightning was followed by a loud bang of thunder and sharp pops. Her flight was shorter than she needed, and she clawed at the ancient pipe eventually finding a grip. She was able to slither down only a few feet. She looked down and estimated over twenty-five feet to the ground. The roof was still too far away. She heard voices and excited shouting and continued her slow progress. The corroded copper brackets separated from the walls of the house and the roof. Careful! Keep going. She clung desperately to the shifting pipe. A few more feet and she could drop to the kitchen’s roof and run to the barn. C’mon! Just a little more!

  She heard more voices. Much closer this time. Terrified, she leaned her body away from the house, testing the distance. The rotting pipe finally crumbled under her weight. As she fell, she made a last attempt to grab the roof as it slipped past out of her reach. The laughter of a hyena forced her downward.

  Clouds swirled. Lights flashed. Tiny. Like shooting stars. First white. Then red. Wind whined its way up the mountainside letting out a long wail that reached a crescendo then faded. The blackness began to pull back, starting from the center and rolling its edges outward. White. The void was beginning to be filled with pain. The wind wailed again. Red. Instead of thunder, an urgent murmur of voices was creeping its way into Jessica’s consciousness. Along with rain, she felt something else caress her face. White. A wail.

  “Tess? Tess!”

  No. Not Tess. Jessica. The protest came out as a moan.

  “Tess! Don’t try to move. You’ve had a bad fall. The ambulance is here now. Take it easy.” Jessica heard the reassuring tone of Michael’s voice and felt the touch of his hand as he stroked her forehead. He looked down as her eyelids fluttered open, and her eyes rolled back in pain. He clenched his jaw.

  “C’mon! Somebody get over here! Now!” His voice carried through the wind. “I want the house, woods and barn combed for anything that moves.” He barked several more commands. He stepped aside as the emergency medical technicians moved in to do their work.

  Jessica looked at the blur of people around her. The light of the ambulance blended with the lights in her head. She tried to focus, but the pain kept drawing her back into its void. She glimpsed Michael’s face. It was set in a hard mold of black anger.

  But there was something else. A flash. Jessica winced as the medic moved her arm. She could not breathe.

  Michael’s face was closer now. “Take it easy Tess. You’re safe now.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes and forced them to focus. There! Hovering below the oval of Michael’s face, she saw the glint of something.

  A badge. He was a cop.

  The edges of blackness curled back in.

  “What are you doing around my daddy’s car?” The little girl’s face melted into a white mist. A screech of tires turned red against a road. An animal laughed on the hillside. Clouds rolled back.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” Margaret hovered over the gray earth and faded away. Horses grazed on crystals. They lifted their heads to whinny and smiled with jagged teeth. Their laughter shattered the crystals.

  “You should have done something.” Jim’s eyes seemed to encompass his whole face. “It’s your fault.” He faded back into the mists.

  “Jessie! Jessie!” another little girl, younger than the first, skipped down a hillside.

  The scene grew whiter. It glowed with a blue-white shimmer. “You should have done something. You know everything.” Gus’ voice broke into a harsh laugh.

  A forearm with a knife drifted in the air. Bees darted at the clover.

  Teeth appeared surrounded by a crooked smile. Slate gray eyes faded away.

  The black edges curled back out. Soft murmurings of hushed voices drifted past her ears. The glaring light began to separate into different colors and then into moving forms. One blob drifted in front and stayed there. Eyes? Yes. A face. A pleasant drifting feeling kept the face just far enough away.

  Dr. McCarthy stood beside the bed and looked down at his waking patient. His athletic frame was dressed in wool trousers, open neck shirt and a worn sports jacket. The night he was summoned to this patient was a vicious one and not his usual on-call night. The case was special enough that the other doctors were not to handle it. As a highly regarded orthopedic surgeon, his presence was not questioned.

  Harlan County Hospital was a typical small city medical facility, and he was one of its most skilled physicians. The hospital was located near the southeastern heel of Kentucky, so he had seen more than his share of fall victims from those who were fool-hardy enough to hike the Cumberland Gap without sufficient preparation. The rolling peaks and lush vegetation put a kind face on dangerous terrain. He assumed when he got the call that some hiker had not read the storm well enough and tried to tackle the mountain anyway. It was only when he arrived that he learned that the patient was a young woman. The story was she had apparently fallen off her roof trying to repair it.

  He looked at the deep blue eyes trying to focus through the haze of narcotics. “Miss White. I’m Dr. McCarthy. I’ve been overseeing your case since you arrived. You suffered a fall, and you are in the hospital now. We’ve given you some pretty strong painkillers. Do you understand?”

  The face had a voice. Understand him? Yes. Jessica tried to open her mouth to respond and could not. She looked at the figure with widening eyes.

  Dr. McCarthy understood the look. “If you
understand, blink your eyes slowly once.” He watched as the eyes sluggishly closed and reopened. “Good. I’m just going to ask you a few questions. Respond if you can.”

  He drew his finger in front of her nose and asked her to track it with her eyes. He grabbed her bandaged hands and asked her to squeeze. He poked and prodded her toes. After several more routines, he stopped and smiled at her.

  “You are one very lucky lady, even though you might not feel so lucky right now. You have some cracked ribs, a pretty bad concussion and a lot of abrasions and lacerations, but right now I don’t see any serious neurological or spinal cord damage. We are going to keep you here for a few more days. Do you have anyone you want us to call? You won’t be able to do much for a while, and you’ll need some help.”

  The doctor’s face bobbed and weaved before her. For some reason, Jessica found this all slightly humorous. She took a breath and tried to laugh. The effort forced her shattered ribs to move. Pain spliced to her mind. A gasp escaped from her swollen mouth.

  The doctor’s face moved closer. “Try not to move. We kept you under sedation for a time to give your body a chance to heal. Miss White, we would like to notify your family for you. While you were sedated, you called out for someone named Erin.”

  Jessica closed her eyes and let the blackness pull her back in.

  Jessica did not remember much of the next few days, and her memories of that night were inaccessible. The concussion and the narcotics did their best to muddle her thinking.

  She gave herself a thorough inventory and reluctantly agreed with the doctor. Like it or not, she was in no condition to do anything for a while. The only thing Jessica wanted to do was to pack her bags and get out of town and hide. But from what? It hurt to think. She closed her eyes and drifted.

  A moment went by before she was filled with a sense of desperation. Michael. Michael was a cop. Did he have something to do with this? She was stupid to think she could settle down. Now she could not run because she was hurt. Damn!

  “Tess?” The name was spoken softly in an effort not to disturb. “You awake?” The voice grew a little bolder.

  Jessica rolled her head on the pillow toward the voice. Electra stood in the door with an armload of flowers.

  “Tess! Sweetheart! How are you, child? My heavens what a fright you gave us!” Electra charged around the room, plopped her flowers in front of others that had arrived earlier and pulled a chair up next to the bed. She gave Jessica a light kiss on the cheek, enveloping Jessica in a cloud of fine perfume.

  Jessica managed a smile. “Hi.” She fumbled for the bed’s controls with her bandaged fingers. Finding the correct button, she winced as the bed whined up to a sitting position. The room swirled, and she pushed her head back into the pillow. “I guess I made it into the paper this time, huh?”

  “You certainly did! Tess, you did nothing that helped your reputation as being a stubborn loner. In case you haven’t heard, the pioneer days are over. What on earth were you doing fixing your roof in the middle of that storm?” Electra clucked her disapproval.

  Jessica paused. “What?”

  “You heard me. Well I think, and half the town agrees with me, that it was utter foolishness for you to try to repair that roof in a storm like that. The only thing I can think of is that you must not have been aware at how bloody strong the wind was blowing up and around on that mountain.”

  What Electra said did not make any sense. Jessica tried to remember why she was in the hospital. What had Dr. McCarthy said? That she had fallen off the roof. Did she? Jessica sensed more than remembered that she was running from something that night. But what? She had to wait for the drugs to wear off. She looked at Electra with blank eyes.

  Electra continued her admonishment. “Lainely Smythe is just beside herself with worry. She said she tried to warn you about how hard life is up on that farm. Why, hearing that you were taken way in an ambulance, it was all she could do to contain herself. You know, of course, that her aunt and uncle both died up on that mountain, don’t you? This incident has just dredged up all of those terrible memories for that poor child.”

  Lainely? What was it that Lainely had said that made Jessica think that one of the deaths might not have been an accident. She could not remember. Or did Lainely say anything like that at all? The narcotics were still with her. Nothing was making sense.

  “And poor Hoyt and ClaireAnne. Why you would think that the way Hoyt is carrying on that he was the one who practically pushed you off that roof. He just blames himself for not forcing you to hire some of the good carpenters we have in town. Well, he was just so taken with you wanting to do everything yourself, and all. I guess he was beginning to look forward to your little ‘how to’ talks that kept bringing you into his store.”

  Jessica closed her eyes and thought back through the past events. She recalled waking in the hospital and being sedated and before that seeing Michael’s face above a badge. She pushed her feelings aside and sifted further backwards. The gutter was loose, and it gave out under her weight. Was she trying to fix it? No, something was forcing her to move. She could only feel the chill of terror as the gutter finally let go. And she recalled the laughter of an insane animal.

  Electra placed her hands lightly on Jessica’s. “Oh Tess. Listen to me rattle on so. I am so sorry. Please, tell me how you’re feeling and when you can go home?”

  The questions brought Jessica back. “The doctor says I’ll be able to go home tomorrow if I’m up to it. I won’t be much good though. My ribs will need some time to heal. The bandages will come off my hands today. I guess I really tried to hold on.” Jessica examined her wrapped fingers. “I won’t be able to ride for a while.” She looked at Electra with a start. “What about the horses? Who’s taking care of them? The hand I hired isn’t up to caring for the horses unsupervised.”

  “Don’t you worry about them. I have sent my stable hands up to supervise and to assist in exercising the horses. They will follow your guidelines exactly.” Electra settled into her role as commander, puffing up her shoulders and lifting her head. She looked at Jessica with an air of unquestionable authority. “And, you will stay at my house until you are able to be on your own.” With victory close at hand, Electra let out a small chuckle.

  A sense of hopelessness fell over Jessica. Only hearing that her animals were getting good care brightened her. “What about Pete?”

  “Pete?” Electra looked at Jessica with alarm.

  “Yeah, Pete. My dog. Has anyone been feeding him?” Jessica almost forgot she had another animal under her care. She looked at Electra’s expression. Cold dread invaded her.

  “Pete’s run off, Jessica. No one has seen him.” Electra looked at the expression on Jessica’s face and read it as rejection. “He was nothing but an old stray mongrel anyway, Sweetheart. He must have run off shortly after you came here. With no one to feed him, he just wandered away.”

  Jessica’s head began to ache. “No. No. That’s not right. Something else happened to him.”

  “What then?”

  “I... I can’t remember.”

  Electra’s expression changed into one of understanding. “Tess. I am sorry to have to tell you that. I looked for Pete myself before coming here. No one has seen him.”

  “Electra, thank you for looking for him and for your invitation to stay at your house. I would really prefer to mend in my own house, if you wouldn’t mind. I am in no condition to be so close to your social vortex.” Jessica tried to force as much merriment as she could into her words. She looked toward the door where the tall figure of the Dr. McCarthy was standing reviewing her chart. “And I’m sure the Doctor will agree.”

  “I see you’re making good progress, Tess. Now what is it that I’m supposed to be agreeing with?” He wrote more notes on the chart and only cocked his head in the direction of the women for an answer.

  “Mrs. Lavielle thinks
I should stay with her at her social epicenter to recuperate and I said that I thought my nice, quiet little house would be much better for me.” Jessica and Electra exchanged teasing glances at one another.

  “Mrs. Lavielle?” The doctor finally raised his head up from the chart and looked at Jessica’s visitor. “Electra Lavielle?” Electra nodded. The doctor extended his hand. “I’m Doctor David McCarthy. I have always heard about you and read your columns. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Electra accepted his introduction with the practiced air of someone accustomed to such greetings. “The pleasure is mine, Dr. McCarthy.” Her voice oozed warmth, and she looked at the young doctor approvingly. “Now, could you settle this disagreement between us?”

  Dr. McCarthy ignored her. “I knew I heard your name before. Aren’t you the Tess White that won the Harvest Hunter Pace?” It was Jessica’s turn to acknowledge the recognition. “I set Chad Bleauvelt’s leg. He told me all about how you worked with his horses and saved the day for him. That’s really quite an amazing story.” He looked at the case of cracked ribs lying in the bed before him with increased interest. “How on earth did you know that hack was capable of jumping back over the ravine?” He folded the chart to his chest and keenly awaited the response.

  “Um, I really didn’t.” Jessica began modestly. “I just sensed that Gapman could make the leap and told him I believed in him.” She stopped as she realized how silly that sounded and brought the conversation back to the point she wanted him to make. Fixing him in her dark blue eyes, she asked, “So where’s the best location for me to recover?”

  “Oh. Ah, the quieter the better. I don’t want you feeling like you have to get up for company or anything. Your house is probably best if you can get some help for a couple of weeks. Maybe longer.”

  Sensing defeat, Electra broke in. “I would be happy to arrange for some meals to come up to you. In fact, I know of a group of women in town that organize to bring meals and a set of helping hands to people who have been sick, hurt or just need some extra help for a bit. I’ll make sure to call them today.” She paused then added, “Of course I’ll be there daily to make sure everything is running smoothly.”