Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

Jim stood up slowly, and McCoy and Spock then did so as well. “I am Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise,” he said. “This is my medical officer, Doctor McCoy—” Natira looked at him, and he felt powerless to move, still overwhelmed by emotion. And did he see the side of her mouth curl upward ever so slightly when she looked at him? “—my first officer, Mister Spock.”

  Natira peered at Spock, then back at the captain. “For what reason do you visit this world?” she wanted to know.

  “We’ve come in friendship,” Jim said, and a sound like a thunder strike roared through the chamber. McCoy saw Natira flinch almost imperceptibly, and he felt the vibration through his boots. Suddenly, a bass male voice called out, seeming to emanate from all around.

  “Then learn what it means to be our enemy,” it said, “before you learn what it means to be our friend.” Again, a great din boomed, but then something like a shock of electricity surged through McCoy’s body. It happened with such speed that he could make no attempt to defend himself or flee. His back stiffened at the pain, his head tilted upward, his eyes slammed shut. In his mind, he cried out in agony, though he remained vaguely aware that he could not move, could not even open his mouth to scream. A tremendous buzz, like that of high voltage, filled his ears, and it came to him with great certainty that the year left to him by the alien disease would take too long to kill him; this attack, this pain, would claim him long before the xenopolycythemia did. With the agony permeating his body right now, death would be welcome.

  And then, mercifully, McCoy’s world went black.

  Nineteen

  1932

  When the rooster crowed for the first time in the morning, just after daybreak, Phil Dickinson rolled over onto his stomach and went back to sleep, a rare luxury. When Struttin’ Henry sent his cry up again an hour later, Phil woke again, this time to the mixed smells of coffee and bacon. He hadn’t heard Lynn rise, and so he rolled toward her side of the bed. He reached out to touch her empty pillow, but instead found the tangle of her hair.

  “One of these days,” she said, “I’m gonna wring that rooster’s neck.” Lynn said something like that nearly every morning, but sounded particularly serious on days like today—Sundays—when he didn’t have to get up and go to the mill, and neither one of them had to get up and work the farm. On more than one occasion, she’d threaten to serve Henry up for supper and might actually have done so by now, had the old bird not helped keep them in eggs.

  Phil heard Lynn sniff at the air. “Did you put on coffee?” she asked.

  “Yup,” he said, sliding over to kiss her cheek. “I’m also standing at the stove cooking up a rasher of bacon right now.”

  “Wh—?” she started, and then, obviously realizing he’d been joking, said, “Oh.” She slapped him lightly on the arm.

  “I guess your farm boy’s making you breakfast,” Phil teased.

  “I’m sure he’s making us breakfast,” she said. “And he’s not my farm boy.” Lynn looked at him for a second, and he saw that slight change of expression on her face that signaled tomfoolery. “He’s our farm boy,” she said, and they both laughed.

  “Kind of old for a farm boy, don’t you think?” Phil said as he threw the covers back and got out of bed. Even this early, he could feel the heaviness of the air, the stillness, and knew that it would be a scorcher. Even though summer had only officially begun a few days ago, it had arrived with midseason intensity. Fortunately, the afternoon rains had not let up, allowing the land to remain hydrated.

  “I don’t think he’s that much older than you,” Lynn said, referring to their unexpected houseguest. Well, Len’s stay could be considered unexpected in some ways, Phil thought, but not in others. Since he’d known Lynn, she’d had a hankering for taking in strays. Usually it ran to cats and dogs, sometimes to birds, and once, to an injured polecat, but it hadn’t really surprised him when he’d come home from the mill a week and a half ago to find that she’d let a vagabond into the house. That was just her way.

  “I don’t care how old he is,” Phil said, “if he’s gonna make us breakfast.” He poured water from the pitcher into the metal basin they kept atop the little table in the corner, then used a cloth and bar soap to wash up.

  “Leonard’s helped me out a lot since he’s been here,” Lynn said, sounding at least a bit defensive. “And it’s not costing us nothing to let him stay in the spare room.” With the help of some of the men in town—Gregg Anderson, Ducky Jensen, and the King brothers—Phil had added the second bedroom onto the house seven years ago, when Lynn’s mother had first gotten really sick. They’d bought an old mattress from Mr. Duncan up at the mill and put it down on the floor in the new room. Lynn hadn’t wanted to put her mother on the floor, though, and so they’d given their bed to the old woman, and they’d used the old mattress themselves.

  Mother Myra’s health had improved, though, at least enough for her to get around on her own and take care of herself without too much help, and so she’d wanted to go home. Actually, she’d never wanted to leave Pepper’s Crossing in the first place, where her beloved husband lay buried in the little cemetery on the outskirts of the town. So they’d bundled her into the wagon and taken her back upcountry.

  Since then, they’d used the spare room mostly for storage. They’d kept the mattress, though, and every now and then had even used it for guests. Phil’s brother came over from Chattanooga from time to time, and twice, Aunt Lee and Uncle Scott had come out from Nashville to visit. Of course, Phil and Lynn had it in their heads that they would one day use the spare room for a child, but that hadn’t happened yet, and at this point, it really didn’t seem like it ever would.

  “It might not be costing nothing to let him sleep here,” Phil said, “but he is eating our food.” He didn’t bother to tell her that, after what he’d thought about last night, Len would be also taking some of their money.

  “Now, Phil,” Lynn said, following him up out of bed. “Leonard’s been helping with the vegetable patch and with the animals and fetching water—”

  “I know, I know,” Phil said, picking both his regular clothes and his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes out of the dresser and tossing them on the bed. As he pulled off his undershirt and shorts, Lynn walked around the bed and over to the basin, slipping past him in her white peignoir and playfully pinching his bare hindquarters.

  “Hey, we’re going to church today,” Phil pretended to reprove her. “Don’t be sinning.”

  “Honey,” Lynn said in that arch way she had, “it would be a sin not to pinch them cheeks.”

  Phil laughed, something he did often around his wife of nine years. He finished dressing in dungarees and a red, short-sleeved shirt—they wouldn’t be going to church for a couple of hours yet—then took something else from a carved wooden box on the dresser and stuffed it into his pocket. He asked Lynn if he should wait for her, and she told him that he shouldn’t.

  In the kitchen, Len stood at the back window, peering off to the right it seemed, out toward the barn and, beyond it, the fields. He turned when Phil came into the room. “Morning,” he said amiably. In his hands, he held a white ceramic mug.

  “Morning, Len,” Phil said.

  “I thought I’d make some breakfast for you,” Len said. “I hope you don’t mind that I moved your puzzle.” Phil looked and saw that Len had moved the piece of plywood with the jigsaw puzzle he’d been working off the table in the middle of the room and over onto the floor by the side door.

  “Do I mind having a hot meal waiting for me in the kitchen while I wake up next to my wife?” Phil asked. “I’d say it’s a fair bit better than getting poked in the eye with a stick.”

  “Good,” Len said, moving over to the table and setting down his mug. Phil saw that two places had been set with plates and utensils. “I’ve got coffee brewed, bacon keeping warm in the oven, and it’ll take me just a couple of minutes to fry up some eggs. Is Lynn coming out soon?”

  “Yup,” Phil said. “She should be out in a minu
te or two.”

  “Coming right up then,” Len said, and he picked out a pair of mugs from one of the open cupboards. Moving to the cookstove, just to the side of the rear window, he lifted the percolator and poured the coffee. Phil walked over and took them from him, thanking him, then took a seat at the table. He watched as Len took a small tub of butter and a bowl full of eggs from the icebox. He dumped a hunk of the butter into a pan and heated it on the cookstove beside the coffee. Once the butter had begun to sizzle, he cracked the eggs and dropped their contents into the pan.

  “Len,” Phil said, “I want to talk to you about Doctor Lyles.”

  “Oh?” Len said, his attention clearly more on the eggs than on Phil.

  “Lynn told me that the doc’s fee for sewing up your leg was three dollars,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Len said. “Uh huh.” He reached up above the oven, which rose up from the range to the right of the cooktop, and grabbed a spatula lying there.

  “I think you should pay it,” Phil said. He’d been thinking about it all week, and even though he knew that Doc Lyles often didn’t take money for his services these days—since so few people had any cash to spare—he still felt that restitution needed to be made.

  Len didn’t respond, and Phil chose not to push the issue, not until they could speak face to face. When Len finished cooking, he retrieved the plates from the table and slid the eggs onto them, then added the bacon that had been warming in the oven. When he brought the breakfasts over to the table and set them down, he spoke before Phil did.

  “I intend to pay the doctor,” he said, “just as soon as I have the money.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Phil said. “Because that means you can give him something today.” He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out the four half-dollar coins he’d taken from the carved box in the bedroom. He jangled them in his cupped hand for a moment, then reached forward and dropped them on the table. One of the coins rolled partway across the table before spiraling down onto its side.

  “Phil, I appreciate the offer,” Len said, “but I can’t accept it.”

  “You can accept it,” Phil said. “You will accept it.” Although he and Lynn hadn’t known anything of Len McCoy before he’d limped past their house almost two weeks ago, it had been Lynn who’d called on the doctor, and the two of them who now provided the stranger with a place to stay. To Phil’s way of thinking, that made them responsible. He hadn’t yet said that to Lynn, but he knew her well enough to know that she would feel the same way.

  “Now, look here,” Len said, anger seeming to creep into his voice, “this is a debt I incurred, not you—”

  “Len, Len,” Phil said, holding his hands up, palms out. “I didn’t mean this as an insult.”

  “Didn’t mean what as an insult?” Lynn asked, and Phil turned in his chair to see her standing in the doorway. She hadn’t yet dressed for church either, he saw, and he guessed that she’d be working out in the barn after breakfast.

  “I wanted to give Len two dollars so that he could pay most of what he owes Doc Lyles,” Phil explained. Lynn’s mouth blossomed into a smile, slowly, as though she could not contain it. Phil had seen that expression before and understood that the gesture he’d made to Len pleased her.

  “I don’t see how anyone could find that insulting,” she said, crossing the room to the table. “Is this for me?” she asked, referring to the meal across from Phil’s.

  “It is,” Len said. Lynn sat, and without another word, began eating. Len looked as though he didn’t quite know how to respond, a reaction Phil had seen her inspire in many a man. Len walked away from the table, over to the rear window.

  Nobody said anything for a few moments, and then Lynn asked, “Aren’t you going to have breakfast, Leonard?”

  “I already had a little something to eat, thank you,” he said without turning. Then he seemed to gather himself, pacing back to the table. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” he said. “Quite the opposite: I am very grateful. But you two have already taken me into your home, gotten me medical treatment, given me food…I don’t want to take your money too.”

  “It’s a good thing this isn’t about what you want then,” Lynn said. “It’s about what’s right for us, and Doctor Lyles, and the whole town, really.”

  “How’s that?” Len asked, and he looked as unconvinced by Lynn’s claim as Phil himself felt.

  “The doctor is a good man,” Lynn said. “A good Christian. He doesn’t take money for his services from people who can’t afford it. But if nobody ever pays him, them maybe he won’t be able to stay in Hayden. And the town needs to have a doctor.” Phil couldn’t imagine Doc Lyles moving away—he’d lived here for a long time, had even delivered quite a number of babies in Hayden who had already grown into adults—but he thought that Lynn’s argument sounded good.

  “Well…” Len said.

  “Please, take the money,” Lynn said. She set her fork down on the edge of her plate, reached forward, and pushed the four coins toward Len. Phil hadn’t even realized that she’d seen them there. “If it’s that important to you,” she added, “then you can just work the money off around the farm.”

  “You’ve already given me room and board for eleven days,” Len said, “and I’ve hardly done enough work to repay even that.”

  “Well, then,” Lynn said, “I guess we’ll just have to work you harder.” She didn’t look up from her breakfast, but shoveled a bit of egg into her mouth. Phil could tell from her manner that she knew she had won the argument.

  “All right,” Len said, giving in to her. He leaned forward and swept the coins off of the table with one hand, depositing them in the other. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lynn said, at last peering up from her plate.

  Len looked at Lynn for a moment, and then over at Phil. Finally, he turned and pointed to a pair of large buckets sitting over in the corner. “I guess I’d best start working harder right now.” He went over and collected the buckets, then headed out the side door, obviously heading toward the well out back.

  When the door thumped closed behind him, Lynn peered over at Phil. “I’m proud of you, Philip Wayne Dickinson,” she said.

  Phil felt his own mouth widen into a smile. Nothing made him happier than the love and respect of his wife.

  Even with the sound of church bells filling the air, McCoy heard the door whine open, as though it remained attached to the body of the truck by rust alone. He stepped out of the cab, then turned to help Lynn out, but saw that she’d sidled over in the opposite direction. On the driver’s side of the vehicle, Phil took her hand and helped her down into the parking lot. McCoy pushed the door closed—it creaked loudly again—then walked around the truck to Lynn and Phil. Though he could barely hear it because of the chimes, he still felt the gravel crunch beneath his feet.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in with us?” Lynn asked him, leaning in close. She wore a floral-print dress that reached to her calves, while Phil had donned gray trousers, a white shirt, and a dark jacket and tie.

  “No, thank you,” McCoy said. He thought to make the excuse that he hadn’t dressed well enough to attend church, nor could he, given the currently limited nature of his wardrobe. He decided against it, though, concerned that his new friends might then give him some clothes so that he could accompany them next week. “I’d really just like to see Hayden,” he said.

  “All right,” said Phil, who’d also moved in close, to hear and be heard over the bells. “We’ll see you back here in about an hour then.”

  “Actually, I don’t know how long I’ll be wandering around,” McCoy said. “I thought I might just walk back to the house this afternoon, if that’s all right with the two of you.” The ride into town hadn’t taken more than ten minutes, and so the Dickinson’s farm couldn’t be more than six or seven kilometers away, at the most.

  “Are you sure your leg will be all right?” Lynn asked.

  “Oh, it’s fine,”
McCoy said. “Doctor Lyles did a fine job.” To emphasize his words, he lifted his leg and flexed it. Though it still seemed surreal to him that a physician had sewn catgut into his body, he had checked the results daily, and his wound had healed quite well.

  “All right,” Phil said. “We’ll see you later then.” He and Lynn crossed the lot, weaving through several scores of vehicles parked there. They greeted other churchgoers along the way, and McCoy supposed that such a small town allowed for few, if any, strangers.

  Feeling conspicuous, he eased toward the far front corner of the parking lot, moving out of the bright sunlight and into the shade provided by a cluster of tall trees. From there, he turned and peered out at the town of Hayden. The church sat at the end of a long, grassy square, separated from it by a hard-packed dirt thoroughfare named, practically but not inventively, Church Street. He gazed in both directions and saw more motorized vehicles—automobiles and trucks—parked along the sides of the road, as well as quite a few horses and carriages. From the various conveyances, numerous people made their way toward church, some clad in nicer outfits, like Lynn and Phil, and others in everyday farm clothing. Most walked in couples and groups, and none seemed to notice him.

  McCoy waited there for about ten minutes, until people stopped arriving, the bells stopped ringing, and the doors of the church swung closed. Then he walked across to the square. Bounded on all four sides by dirt streets, the green of the commons stood out dramatically. Footpaths wound among leafy trees and colorful flowers, with benches scattered off to the side here and there. At the far end of the little park, a gazebo rose like a monument to small-town life.

  Meandering along the gravel-covered paths, McCoy looked around at this main section of Hayden. A few people roamed about, and he seemed to draw the attention of some of them, though they did nothing but look his way. A row of one-story buildings lined the streets—Mill Road on the north and Carolina Street on the south—on either long side of the commons, most of the façades attached one to the next, while a larger, official-looking structure sat on the other short side, opposite the church. Raised wooden sidewalks marched up and down before the long frontages, between the row buildings and the streets.