When he came to his own name in the crew rolls, he skipped over it.
Seventeen
1932
Lynn Dickinson walked to the beginning of the last unplanted furrow, the canvas sack slung over her shoulder so much lighter now that she’d emptied it of most of its contents. She couldn’t believe that today she would finally finish getting the seed into the ground—late, but not too late. This year’s sowing season had taken longer than usual, even though she and Phil had begun preparing the land on time back in February. But when Mama’s health had taken a bad turn—awful bad—there’d been no choice for Lynn but to head on up to Pepper’s Crossing and see her. She and Phil had worried about the planting and had talked about going up at a later date, but she’d had a feeling that Mama might not make it to the summer. As it turned out, she hadn’t even made it to the spring.
Now, only a couple of months after that last visit to Pepper’s Crossing, the picture of her dying mother came back easily to Lynn, and she shook her head as though she might be able to joggle it loose and get rid of it that way. The image wouldn’t go, though, and so instead she simply tried to forge ahead with what she’d been doing. Reaching into her sack, she scooped her hand through the remaining cottonseed, the fuzzy kernels both soft and prickly against her skin. She bent to drop the seeds into the narrow trench, but then tears blurred her vision, as often happened these days when she thought about either one of her parents.
That’s enough, she scolded herself, standing straight again. She tried to remember that she really had no reason to weep. Mama had been sick and in pain for a long time, and truth be told, had been ready to meet her Maker ever since her husband—Lynn’s beloved Pa—had drowned in the Saluda River fifteen years ago. Back then, Mama had stayed strong, raising her teenage daughter on her own, but she’d never stopped missing her man.
Lynn had never stopped missing him either. Standing alone in the south field, she suddenly felt lonely for her girlhood, for the days their little family of three had spent in their Pepper’s Crossing farmhouse. She reminded herself that, since God had called Mama home, her parents had reunited and now lived happily together again, just not here on Earth. “You cry only for yourself, missy,” she said.
Lynn dropped the cottonseed back in the sack and wiped her eyes. Resettling her straw cartwheel hat atop her head, she peered down the length of the final furrow, the slim trough in the raised ridge running out toward the east side of the valley. The sun had burned off the morning haze on its way up the sky, and the temperature had risen into the seventies, maybe even to eighty. The air felt heavy with moisture, and patchy clouds promised thundershowers this afternoon.
That thought got Lynn moving again. She wanted to complete the final planting before the rains came. She reached back into the sack and pulled out another handful of cottonseed, then started along the furrow, dropping them into the dirt. When she at last reached the end of the row, she trudged over to the barn, where she harnessed up Piedmont and brought her back out to the south field. There, Lynn walked the mule between the freshly planted furrows, guiding a flat board over the ridges to push a light layer of earth over the seeds. Halfway through, darker clouds appeared off in the distance, throwing down forks of lighting and pushing low rumbles of thunder across the land.
It took Lynn until the late afternoon to finish, but she managed to lead Piedmont back into the barn before the first raindrops fell. As she used a pitchfork to load hay into the mule’s stall, the peals of thunder neared, and soon the skies opened. The rain beat down loudly on the roof of the barn, the sounds of individual drops lost in the deluge. Lynn used the time to feed the other animals—the horses, goats, dairy cows, chickens—and then to brush down Piedmont.
Afterward, she stood inside the barn’s large doorway and gazed outside. The day had turned ruggedly gray, but from her vantage, she could see brilliant shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds on the other side of the valley. The rain had already tapered down to small, widely spaced drops. Normal for this time of year, the heavy downpour had lasted only a few minutes, but had still cooled the temperature. The air smelled of lightning, a scent almost like that of burning metal.
Lynn waited until the rain had stopped, and headed toward the house. Phil wouldn’t be home from the mill for a couple of hours yet, and so she would actually have some time to herself before she needed to start cooking supper. She could finally begin reading the novel that Mrs. Slattery had let her borrow months ago. According to the schoolteacher, The Good Earth told the story of a farming family, not in America, but in China. Although Lynn didn’t often have much time for books, she liked to read, particularly about exotic people and places that she knew she would never get a chance to visit herself.
Nearing the side porch, Lynn stopped to wipe the mud from her boots onto the grass. As she did, she noticed a figure walking down the dirt road that passed by the front of the farmhouse. She watched, trying to make out who it might be. Phil would be coming home in their truck, but even if it had broken down and he’d had to walk, he’d be coming from town, which sat in the other direction. More than that, Tindal’s Lane didn’t really go anywhere, leading only to a pair of abandoned farms farther down the valley. Locals sometimes went out that way looking to scrounge something or other from the broken-down houses and barns there, but they most likely wouldn’t go there on foot.
Curious, Lynn continued to watch as the man drew closer. At some point, even though she still couldn’t make out the details of his face, she realized from his gait that she didn’t know him. He moved at a snail’s pace and walked with a noticeable limp. As he finally neared the house, she also saw that he carried a small bundle over one shoulder.
A vagabond, she thought, and wondered if he’d hopped a freight and then gotten off somewhere near here. The tracks passed not far from the end of Tindal’s Lane, and she’d heard a train whistle today, just after dawn. Over the past couple of years, a number of strangers had appeared in town, mostly looking for work. They never received much of a welcome, since most of the folks in Hayden just got by themselves, and none of them ever stayed for long.
One man had left his mark on the town, though, Lynn remembered. After leaving Hayden one afternoon, he’d doubled back that night to try and rob the Seed and Feed. The owner, Gregg Anderson, had caught him and they’d fought. Although Gregg had eventually run off the would-be thief, a lamp had gotten knocked over during their skirmish and the store had caught fire before anybody knew. The men in town had doused it pretty quickly, but not before a dozen sacks of grain and part of one wall had burned. Gregg had rebuilt part of the wall, but part of it still remained blackened.
Recalling that incident, as well as the general misgivings folks around here had about strangers, Lynn briefly thought about running into the house and getting Phil’s shotgun. But strangers didn’t bother her nearly as much as they bothered others. And assuming the worst about people even before you got to know them didn’t seem to her like a particularly Christian way to behave. So when the man had gotten close enough that she could call to him, she waved her arm. “Howdy,” she said.
The man stopped in the middle of the road and looked around. He had a head of short, dark hair, she saw. When he spotted her, he called back, “Howdy to you.” He didn’t raise his free arm to wave back, but he did start walking again. He moseyed over to the side of Tindal’s Lane closest to the house, and when he reached the front yard, she saw that his right arm rested in a sling. The man swung the bundle he carried with his other hand down to the ground, then leaned heavily on the post-and-rail fence that ran along the property line. “I don’t suppose you could spare some water, ma’am,” he said politely.
“Why, yes, of course,” Lynn said. “Come on up while I get some for you.” She quickly ran up the crooked steps of the side porch and then into the house. In the kitchen, she threw her wide, circular hat onto the table—where Phil’s latest jigsaw puzzle still sat on a piece of plywood, half finished—the
n dipped a tall cup into one of the buckets of water she’d collected from the well this morning. She went back outside, expecting to find the stranger there, but saw that he hadn’t moved from the front fence. She strolled across the grass toward him, holding out the cup of water when she reached him, and said, “You could have come on up to the house.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, “but I’m not sure I could’ve gone much farther.” He reached across the fence to accept the cup from her and then eagerly drank from it.
The man had a nice face, Lynn thought, with bright blue eyes and a nice smile. A series of bright red scratches marred his features, though, and a long gash, encrusted with dried blood, snaked out from beneath the right side of his hairline. He appeared eight or ten years older than Phil, who would turn thirty-one next month, and though the stranger stood a little downhill from her, she guessed his height about the same as Phil’s, about five or six inches taller than her own, maybe five-ten or five-eleven.
Sitting on the ground beside him, the man’s round bundle looked like nothing more than a torn, dirt-stained green cloth wrapped about a heap of clothing. His sling, she saw, had been tied together out of a grimy shirt. In fact, the clothes he wore—dungarees and a denim shirt—also appeared shabby and soiled, as thought they’d been dragged through the mud.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the man said again when he’d finished downing the water. “I surely appreciate it.” He handed the cup back to her, and for just a second, her fingers touched his.
“You’re cold,” Lynn said, and she guessed that he must have been caught out in the rain. She peered more closely at him—at his hair, his clothes, the bundle at his feet—and saw the truth of her realization. “And you’re wet,” she said. She pointed to the sack of clothing. “Is there anything dry in there?”
“Everything’s pretty well soaked through,” the man said.
Lynn quickly bent over the fence, grabbed the bundle, and hefted it up over her right shoulder. “Come on up to the house,” she said, gesturing toward the opening in the fence. “You can put on some of my husband’s things while I hang all of this out on the line to dry.” Without waiting for a reply, she strode back across the grass, this time to the front door. On the whitewashed porch that faced the road, she turned to see the stranger following, limping along slowly. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you need some help?”
“I can make it,” the man said.
Lynn nodded and carried the bundle into the parlor—at least she fancied it a parlor, and had tried to decorate the small room in a way that would be welcoming to guests—and dropped it on the floor just inside the door. She then crossed the hall on the other side of the room and went into the kitchen, where she put the cup down on the table and picked up one of the straight-backed wooden chairs there. By the time she’d carried it out into the front room, the stranger had climbed the steps and come inside. “Here you go,” she said, setting the chair down before him. She didn’t want him sitting on the davenport or in either of the Victorian tub chairs with his dirty clothes. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
As the man fell into the chair, apparently exhausted, she headed into the hall again, this time following it toward the other two rooms of the house. In the bedroom, she searched through the chest of drawers, pulling out some of Phil’s older clothes that he seldom wore anymore. She brought them back out into the front room and gave them to the stranger. “The kitchen’s through there,” she said, pointing. “There’s water and soap, so you can wash up if you like. There’s also a spare room at the end of the hall, on the left. You can get dressed in there, and then I can clean out that cut on your forehead.”
“You’re very kind,” the man said. “I’m very appreciative, ma’am.”
“Lynn,” she said. “My name is Lynn Dickinson.”
“McCoy,” the man said. “Leonard McCoy. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I’m pleased to make yours,” Lynn said, offering a quick curtsy. Mr. McCoy spoke like a southern gentleman, she thought, though he certainly didn’t look like one, at least not at the moment.
“May I ask where I am?” he said.
“You’re in Hayden,” she said.
“Hayden,” McCoy repeated, and then asked, “In Georgia?”
“Not quite,” Lynn said. “We’re in South Carolina.”
McCoy nodded, then rose to his feet. “Well, I should take you up on your offer and clean myself up,” he said. With Phil’s old clothes in hand, he walked toward the hall, but he seemed shakier now, his limp more pronounced. Lynn looked at the leg he favored and saw a long, frayed tear running up from the left cuff of his dungarees. She also thought she saw splashes of red on some of the white threads hanging down.
“Is your leg hurt badly, Mister McCoy?” she asked.
“I…had a hard fall today,” he said. “I landed on it.”
Lynn walked over to him. “May I take a look at it?” she said, concerned.
McCoy gazed at her silently for a few seconds, and then admitted, “It’s been cut open.”
“May I see?” she asked again.
“All right,” McCoy said. Lynn kneeled down and lifted his ragged pant leg. A length of torn fabric, the same dull green color as that holding his bundle of clothing together, had been wrapped and knotted tightly around his calf. A large red stain discolored the crude bandage. Lynn touched it gently, and her fingers came away wet with blood.
She stood up and faced McCoy. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” he said.
“You need a doctor.”
“Yes,” he agreed again.
“All right,” Lynn said. “You get cleaned up and get dressed and then just wait here. I’ll go into town and get Doctor Lyles.”
To her surprise, McCoy smiled. “You don’t even know me,” he said.
“I know that you’re hurt,” Lynn told him. “For right now, that’s all I need to know.”
“Thank you,” McCoy said.
“I’ll be back with the doctor as soon as I can,” she said. She walked back through the kitchen and out the side door, where she broke into a trot. In the barn, she pulled Belle Reve out of her stall, saddled the horse as quickly as she could, and then climbed up onto her back. Seconds later, Lynn put her head down and raced along Tindal’s Lane, headed for town on her errand of mercy.
The sound of an approaching engine woke him.
McCoy looked up at the front door from where he sat on the wood floor, his back against the plush maroon fabric of the large sofa, his leg elevated and resting atop what remained of his duffel bag. He didn’t know for how long he’d been asleep after cleaning up and changing into the clothes that Dickinson had provided him, but through the front window, he could see that the afternoon had begun to fade into evening. His body ached in a way it had not when he’d awoken aboard the boxcar this morning, the muscular soreness caused by nights spent sleeping on hard surfaces nothing compared to the many and varied injuries he’d suffered on his plunge down the wooded hillside.
The vehicle stopped outside, and McCoy heard a door open and close. Moments later, footfalls pounded up the front steps, and then Dickinson pushed her way inside. She spied him sitting on the floor, and said, “I’ve brought Doctor Lyles.” Her southern accent stretched the long i of the name into a short a: Lahls. “He’ll be right in.” Raht in. McCoy found her drawl a welcome sound to his ears. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Better now that I’ve washed and changed,” he said. Afterward, he hadn’t bothered to use the sling he’d made for himself. He’d have to be careful, but his shoulder felt much better now.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Dickinson said. She wore dark blue denim pants and a green, patterned blouse, which covered a slender, fit figure. She had striking blue eyes and elegant, almost royal features: smooth, creamy skin; high cheekbones; full lips; and a slim, button nose. Auburn hair framed the top half of her face in large curls.
Another door opened and closed outside, and then a second set of footsteps approached. Dickinson moved aside to allow an older man, presumably the doctor, to enter. Very tall but with a stoop to his posture, he had silvery hair and a rugged, lined face. He wore a suit of gray material, a black tie, and eyeglasses with large lenses and heavy, black rims. Had McCoy met him in the twenty-third century, he would have estimated his age at over a hundred; in the rural American south of 1932, he guessed that the old doctor must be in his sixties or seventies. He carried a small black bag in one hand, not unlike the pouch McCoy had used in Starfleet, or before that, in his civilian practice.
“Doctor Lyles, this is Leonard McCoy,” Dickinson said, motioning toward where he sat on the floor.
The doctor eyed him, seemingly with unconcealed suspicion. “What’s happened here, Mister McCoy?” he said, his words marked by a thick twang.
“He’s had a bad fall,” Dickinson said, and the doctor glared at her without any apparent attempt to hide his annoyance. He’d evidently wanted to hear McCoy’s version of events.
Peering down at his prospective patient, Lyles asked, “Can you get up and sit on the sofa?”
“I can,” McCoy said. He gingerly lifted his left leg from where it rested on his erstwhile duffle, then lifted himself up onto the sofa.
Lyles looked around the room, then asked Dickinson to bring over the wooden chair she’d earlier retrieved for McCoy to use. She did so, and the doctor took it from her and set it down opposite the sofa. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the back of the chair, then dropped onto the seat himself. He placed his black bag beside McCoy before reaching forward and taking hold of his wrist. Lyles consulted a pocket watch, obviously measuring McCoy’s pulse rate, then opened his bag and pulled out an old-fashioned stethoscope.
It’s not old-fashioned now, McCoy thought. Even after living in the past for two years, he still often thought in terms common to his own time. Of course, stethoscopes still existed in the future, though in a slightly different form. He had trained on them, as well as on other manual medical equipment, both as learning tools and so that he could use them in situations when powered devices might not be available.
Crucible: McCoy Page 22
