by Rick Hautala
Marty was positive his father didn’t believe a word of what he said, but now that he had started the lie, he had to stick with it.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “They were wicked thick, and the knife went way into them ‘cause Al had thrown it pretty hard. I know I should’ve made him get it. He was the one who threw it.”
Glancing at his watch, Bill scowled and shook his head. “It’s too early for Doc Kimball to see you. I think we’d better go to the emergency room at Maine Med. Those cuts look infected.”
Marty shook his head and gently pulled his arm away from his father’s grip. “Do we have to? I washed it really good last night and put peroxide on it. It’s not so bad.”
He wondered if the strain in his voice gave away the lie. The truth was, the throbbing had intensified so much his eyes were starting to water. Between his panic and his pain, he was barely able to keep from crying out.
Kip’s toast popped up, making him jump. He got the butter and peanut butter from the refrigerator and, turning his back on his father and Marty, kept himself busy, slathering the toast until it was dripping. His knife scraped over the crust so hard it pushed the peanut butter through to the other side. The sound grated on his nerves.
His ears continued to burn because he couldn’t stop thinking about Marty’s knife. Of course, once Marty had come out of the caves bleeding, Kip had never had a chance to go back and get the knife so he could sneak it back into Marty’s bureau. But now, scarier thoughts filled his mind.
—What if someone else finds the campsite while I’m not there?
—What if they find the knife and take it?
—What if Marty goes to his room to get the knife and can’t find it?
—What if…what if…?
“Frankly, I don’t care what you think,” Bill said sternly. “I don’t want to take a chance of this getting worse. It looks pretty bad already. Come on. We’re going to the hospital. Kip, you get dressed too. We’ll have lunch in Portland, and you can go to Dr. Fielding’s from there.”
“Aww—” Kip said, shaking his head. “Do I have to go?”
Because it was summer vacation, he had thought he was through with his shrink, too.
“Yes. You have to go,” Bill said. “I’ll call the office and tell them I’ll be late.”
He was reaching for the kitchen wall phone when it rang, startling him and making him jump before he snatched up the receiver.
“Hello,” he said gruffly.
“Mr. Howard?” said a female voice on the other end of the line. “This is Suzie LaBlanc. I’m sorry to call you so early, but I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Bill frowned as he walked around the edge of the table and leaned against the wall. Marty shifted uncomfortably in his chair before carefully pulling his sleeve down. Then he resumed eating his cereal, which had already gotten soggy.
“What is it, Suzie?” Bill asked.
He knew Suzie from around town: She was a short, fairly attractive blonde who struck him as nice enough, but certainly not the brightest girl around. He also knew Woody had beaten he up last week, and she was pressing assault charges against him.
“It’s—uh, it’s about...you know, what happened between me and Woody.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “You do realize I’m Woody’s lawyer in this case. It would be a conflict of interest if I were to—”
“I realize that,” Suzie said. She sounded like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “I know all that. I want you to help me with something.”
“Has Woody been bothering you?” Bill asked. “Has he been giving you any trouble about pressing charges?”
The long pause on the end of the line indicated that that was exactly what had happened, but Bill wanted to draw her out if he could. He had to hear it from her.
“He...uh. I’ve been—I mean, I’ve seen him a couple of times since then, if that’s what you mean. He hasn’t—you know, like, hurt me or anything. It’s just that I want...I think I want to drop the charges.”
Bill shook his head, glancing first at Marty, who had apparently abandoned his soggy cereal, and then at Kip, who was just standing there, staring out the kitchen window as he ate toast and drank orange juice.
“If that’s what you want, you would have to speak with your attorney about it. Although, in a case like this, I think you’ll find it isn’t quite that easy. I mean, you can’t just say: ‘Oops. Sorry. I guess I don’t want to go to court.’ In a case like this, it’s actually the county that’s pressing the charges, really. You, being the person who was assaulted, are simply the key witness.”
“I just don’t want any more trouble,” Suzie said, sniffing loudly into the phone.
“Any more trouble?” Bill said. “You make it sound like he’s still giving you a hard time.”
“Sort of,” Suzie said, sniffing loudly again. “I mean, like I said, he hasn’t hit me or anything—he hasn’t even threatened me—but it’s just...I...I don’t want any more trouble. I—” She paused, and it sounded like she took a sip of something. “I don’t want to—you know, have him so mad at me that he might do something.”
“You have a restraining order against him. That means if he even comes anywhere near you, you can have him arrested.” Bill was trying his best not to let her know how much he detested working for someone like Woody. It took quite a bit of effort. If wishes were made in heaven and lawyers could pick their clients, he’d represent her and try his best to see Woody locked up for at least a century.
“I have talked to him, Mr. Howard,” Suzie said, “and I don’t think he meant to hurt me…not really.”
Right, Bill thought. No one punches someone in the face three times and really intends not to hurt them!
“He’d been drinking that night…maybe a little too much, but—I dunno, maybe I said some things I shouldn’t have. Maybe I deserved it.”
Bill literally had to slip his tongue between his teeth and bite down on it rather than tell Suzie that she had just provided a perfect definition of “victimization.” If Woody was so low that he actually was able to convince this woman she was responsible for his beating her up, then Bill thought he’d enjoy making as convincing an argument as possible in court for imposing the death penalty in this case of assault and battery.
Marty finally gave up on his breakfast and went over to rinse the remains into the “pig-in-the-sink.” Kip was still standing there, lost in thought as he slowly ate his toast while staring out the window.
“Look, Suzie, I have an emergency I have to take care of,” Bill said, glancing at his watch. He had to call the office and let them know he’d be late, especially if there was a long wait in the emergency room.
“If you decide you can’t testify against Woody—well, that’s a decision you’ll have to make. But it would most certainly weaken the state’s case, and I’d be willing to bet Woody wouldn’t serve any time in jail because of what happened.”
Bill found himself hoping the Portland cops would still be able to pin the attack on Officer Doyle on Woody. If they did, he’d tell Sidney Wood, Senior, that he could find himself another lawyer to defend his reprobate son. All Bill wanted was to wash his hands of the whole damned family.
“I guess I…I just don’t know what to do, Mr. Howard,” Suzie said, nearly whining.
“Look,” Bill said, shaking his head, “if you’re afraid Woody might try to hurt you again, talk to Chief Parkman. He can keep an eye on you. I really do have to go, but give me a call tonight and let me know what you decide.”
“Okay, Mr. Howard. Thank you for listening,” Suzie said, and then she hung up.
The receiver was buzzing as Bill replaced it on the hook. Looking at Marty, who was leaning against the counter watching him, Bill said sharply, “Come on. Get into the car. You too, Kip.”
Kip shook his head as if he was coming out of a daze. “Huh?”
“I said get moving. Get your sneakers on and get into the car.”
Oh, well, he thought, feeling resigned to his fate.
Maybe later today...
2
“Pricker bush, you say?” the emergency room doctor said more to himself than to Marty as he leaned close and inspected the wound. His name tag read Simpson. Bill was standing close to the door while Kip remained in the waiting room, flipping through old issues of National Geographic.
A young nurse—not too bad looking, either, Marty thought—stood on the opposite side of the examination table where Marty, stripped to the waist, was sitting.
Before the doctor had come in, she had taken his temperature and blood pressure. Throughout the preliminary examination, he’d had quite a bit of difficulty keeping up the lie of how he had gotten hurt.
The bright lights in the room reflected off the polished chrome tray next to the examination table, bright enough to hurt Marty’s eyes. Squinting, he turned his head to one side and nodded.
“Yeah. I lost my—uh.” He paused and cleared his throat as he glanced quickly at his father. “I lost my hunting knife in the brush.”
The wound looked worse than it had this morning. The edges of the slashes were puffy and white, and the yellowish fluid was thicker and stickier. Although at this moment his arm wasn’t throbbing—at least not too badly—on the drive to the hospital, he thought his fingers were going to burst from the pressure that was building up in his hand.
Dr. Simpson straightened up and frowned deeply as he walked over to the wall cabinet. From the top shelf, he took out a syringe and a small bottle of clear liquid. The nurse picked up a wad of cotton and a bottle of alcohol and approached Marty.
“It looks as though you cleaned it out fairly thoroughly,” Dr. Simpson said as he stuck the needle tip into the bottle and, holding the apparatus up high, filled the syringe. “But the infection is pretty bad. I want to give it a good scrubbing. Was there much time between when you got cut and when you cleaned it out?”
Marty shrugged. “Not long,” he said. Dread gnawed in his stomach when he looked at the needle. He hated getting stuck with needles. “Maybe an hour or two.” He looked away suddenly as the nurse took hold of his arm and splashed his biceps with alcohol. Turning away, the light reflecting off the chrome once again lanced his eyes. He turned back around when the doctor grabbed his arm and raised it.
“I usually save this for last, a little going away present,” he said. “It’s just a little tetanus shot, but...a pricker bush, you say?” Marty was positive he—like his father—didn’t believe him. “Anyway, it’s been open too long, so I won’t stitch it up.”
“No stitches?” Marty said, then winced as Dr. Simpson pinched up a fold of skin and jabbed the needle tip into his arm.
Bill shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable at seeing one of his kids have to deal with pain. One of his most cherished memories was when Kip, no more than four years old, had been suffering with the flu. When out of sympathy Bill had said he wished he could be sick instead of Kip, Kip had looked up at him with fever-bright eyes and moaned, “I wouldn’t want you to feel this bad, Dad.” It had brought tears to Bill’s eyes then, and even now, watching Marty take the shot, his eyes started to sting.
Dr. Simpson pressed the plunger all the way in with his thumb and then slowly extracted the needle tip once the barrel was empty. Immediately the nurse pressed a gauze pad over the spot. “No worse than a bee sting, right?” she said, smiling.
Marty shook his head to clear it and forced a smile. Bill let his breath out and reached up to scratch his neck; he couldn’t get over the feeling of wanting to be right there beside Marty, comforting him, but now that Marty was a teenager, there was no way he would have put up with that.
It’s just so damned hard, seeing their childhoods pass, Bill thought. A lump formed in his throat when he thought about how Lori should have been there with them. He missed her intensely at the strangest times.
“I want to clean this out some more before I dress it,” Dr. Simpson said. “And I want you to make an appointment with your family doctor so he can have a look at it in a day or two. I don’t want to take a chance of this infection spreading.”
Marty sat stiffly on the examination table while Dr. Simpson went back to the cupboard for a bottle of Betadine and more gauze. When he came back, he held Marty’s wrist, gently extended the arm, and set to work thoroughly cleansing the wounds. The nurse assisted when she could, but mostly she just stood beside the doctor and handed him clean gauze whenever he needed it.
Several times, the doctor spread the skin apart where it had begun to grow back. When he did, waves of fiery pain shot up Marty’s arm. Marty tried to convince himself that the pain wasn’t as bad as when he had received the wounds, but it actually seemed worse. He shivered with the memory of reaching into the crack in the cave wall, feeling around for the bag of marijuana, and then suddenly feeling sharp points sink into his arm like a nest of fish hooks, shredding his skin as it pulled away.
The whole time he worked, Dr. Simpson was frowning. He paused every now and again to look closely at the gashes, gingerly probing them with his fingertips.
“If I was a betting man,” he said, finally looking Marty squarely in the eyes, “I’d say these cuts were made by an animal...or maybe a bird’s claws, like a hawk.”
He shook his head as though not satisfied as he went to the cabinet for the materials to dress the wound. With a spray can of disinfectant in hand, he applied sterile gauze and then taped the bandage into place with long strips of adhesive.
Bill could barely stand watching Dr. Simpson as he probed the edges of the wound before covering it. The inflamed skin around the raw edges looked even worse after all the scrubbing. Marty wasn’t complaining, though, and that made Bill feel a little bit better.
Dr. Simpson and the nurse worked together in silence, carefully covering up each of the slashes. When the job was done, Simpson straightened up, pressed his fists into the small of his back, and took a deep breath.
“There you go,” he said as he scooped the remnants of the job into a plastic-lined wastebasket. He stripped off his rubber gloves, took the clipboard the nurse had used for her initial report, and began scribbling notes.
“I’ll give you a prescription for an antibiotic so we can keep that infection in check. Duricef should do the trick.” He wrote something and handed a sheet of paper to Bill.
Marty sat silently on the edge of the examination table, staring at the thick wad of bandages on his arm. He kept flexing and unflexing his fingers, surprised they still worked.
“The wound itself isn’t all that serious,” Dr. Simpson said, glancing at Bill. “Even without stitches, I don’t think there’ll be much of a scar because there hasn’t been much ripping. But like I said, I’m concerned about the possibility of the infection spreading. It’s just that—” He tapped his pen on the clipboard before sliding the pen back into his shirt pocket. “If you hadn’t told me how you got them I would have assumed those wounds were caused by an animal of some kind.”
“I did it in a pricker bush,” Marty said, his voice tight and shaky as he shot a nervous glance at his father.
“I’m not saying you didn’t.” Dr. Simpson shook his head as he looked at Marty. “But if an animal had done this, my first concern would be rabies. With cuts like this, especially at your wrist, where it looks like there was some subcutaneous bleeding, I’d want to make sure.”
The mere mention of rabies made Bill stiffen. He took a step toward the examination table.
“Marty,” he said, his voice low and controlled, “if there’s something you’re not telling us, I think now might be time.”
Marty pur
sed his lips and shook his head, his teeth pressing down so hard on his lower lip it turned white.
“Rabies is nothing to fool around with,” Dr. Simpson said evenly. “Do you know what the treatment is?”
Marty shook his head, but Bill made a low grunt in his throat; he’d heard about how painful the series of shots was. A cold prickle of fear ran up his back.
“Well, we’ve done what we could,” Dr. Simpson said as he slung the clipboard under his arm. With a swift motion of his hand, he indicated that Marty could get off the table. Marty hopped to the floor and tried to pull his sweatshirt on over his head, but the bandage made it difficult for him to move, so Bill came over and helped him ease into his shirt.
Once Marty was dressed, Bill said, “I want to thank you for taking care of this.”
Dr. Simpson smiled and glanced at Marty. “Just make sure you stay on the Duricef until it’s all gone. Change the dressing often, especially if you get it wet, and if you get a little fever, take some aspirin or Tylenol. And make an appointment with your doctor, like I said.”
“We will,” Bill said as he swung the door open so
Marty could walk out into the corridor first. He turned as the door was swinging shut and got a quick glimpse of Dr. Simpson and the nurse. He waved just as the heavy door whooshed shut, but before he started down the corridor, he heard the doctor on the other side of the door say, “Those cuts were made by a pricker bush, and I’m Krusty the Clown.”
3
Kip had been bored...bored...bored in the waiting room for nearly an hour while Marty and his dad were in the examination room. The Two Towers was, like everything else he valued, out at the campsite. He’d lucked out, though, and found a cool National Geographic article on South Pacific islands with a couple of great shots of native women.
His boredom and agitation grew all the more because, rather than going straight home and missing his appointment with Dr. Fielding, his father—after stopping at Laverdier’s to fill Marty’s prescription—decided to take them out for lunch in Portland. They parked on Exchange Street and had specialty sandwiches and Cokes at Carbur’s. Marty took his first pill at the restaurant, washing it down with gulps of ice water.
