by Robyn Carr
He stroked her, kissed her and eventually made love to her again, as opposed to what he’d done before. This time sanely, but no less satisfactorily. At one in the morning he was searching around the floor for his pants.
“I thought you might be staying the night this time,” she said from the bed.
He pulled on his pants and sat on the bed to put on his boots. He twisted around and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I can’t,” he said. “But you’ll be fine now.” He smiled at her. “Think of it as a little sleeping pill.”
As he drove back to Virgin River he thought, It’s over now. I have to end it. I can’t do that anymore, not with a clear conscience. Not when something else has my attention.
Four
Jack drove out to the cabin, the truck bed loaded with supplies. It was his third day in a row. When he pulled up, Cheryl came out of the house, onto the new porch. “Hey, Cheryl,” he called. “How’s it going? Almost done in there?”
She had a rag in her hands. “I need the rest of the day. It was a real pigsty. Will you be here tomorrow, too?”
He would. But he said, “Nah. I’m about done. I want to paint the porch this morning—can you get out the back door? I haven’t built steps yet.”
“I can jump down. Whatcha got?” She came down the porch steps.
“Just stuff for the cabin,” he said, unloading a big Adirondack chair for the porch, its twin in the truck bed.
“Wow. You really went all out,” she said.
“It has to be done.”
“She must be some nurse.”
“She says she’s not staying, but the place has to be fixed up anyway. I told Hope I’d make sure it was taken care of.”
“Not everyone would go to so much trouble. You’re really a good guy, Jack,” she said. She peeked into the truck. He had a new double-size mattress inside a large plastic bag lying flat in the bed. On top of that, a large rolled-up rug for the living room, bags from Target full of linens and towels that were new as opposed to the graying, used ones borrowed from Hope’s linen closet, potted geraniums for the front porch, lumber for the back step, paint, a box full of new kitchen things. “This is a lot more than repair stuff,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair that had escaped her clip around her ear. When he chanced a glance at her, he saw those sad eyes filled with longing. He looked away quickly.
“Why go halfway?” he said. “It ought to be nice. When she leaves, maybe Hope can rent it out to summer people.”
“Yeah,” she said.
Jack continued unloading while Cheryl just stood around. He tried to ignore her; he didn’t even make small talk.
Cheryl was a tall, big-boned woman of just thirty, but she didn’t look so good—she’d been drinking pretty hard since she was a teenager. Her complexion was ruddy, her hair thin and listless, her eyes red-rimmed and droopy. She had a lot of extra weight around the middle from the booze. Every now and then she’d sober up for a couple of weeks or months, but invariably she’d fall back into the bottle. She still lived with her parents, who were at their wits’ end with her drinking. But what to do? She’d get her hands on booze regardless. Jack never served her, but every time he happened upon her, like now, there was usually a telltale odor and half-mast eyes. She was holding it together pretty good today. She must not have had much.
There had been a bad incident a couple of years ago that Cheryl and Jack had had to get beyond. She had a little too much one night and went to his living quarters behind the bar, banging on his door in the middle of the night. When he opened the door, she flung herself on him, groping him and declaring her tragic love for him. Sadly for her, she remembered every bit of it. He caught her sober a few days later and said, “Never. It is never going to happen. Get over it and don’t do that again.” And it made her cry.
He moved on as best he could and was grateful that she did her drinking at home, not in his bar and grill. She liked straight vodka, probably right out of the bottle and, if she could get her hands on it, Everclear—that really mean, potent stuff. It was illegal in most states, but liquor store owners usually had a little under the counter.
“I wish I could be a nurse,” Cheryl said.
“Have you ever thought about going back to school?” he asked as he worked. He was careful not to give her the impression he was too interested. He hauled the rug out of the back of the truck, hefted it over his shoulder and carried it to the house.
To his back she said, “I couldn’t afford it.”
“You could if you got a job. You need a bigger town. Throw your net a little wider. Stop relying on odd jobs.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, following him. “But I like it here.”
“Do you? You don’t seem that happy.”
“Oh, I’m happy sometimes.”
“That’s good,” he said. He threw the rolled rug down in the living room. He’d spread it out later. “If you have the time, could you wash up those new linens I bought and put them away? Fix up the bed when I get the new mattress on it?”
“Sure. Let me help you with the mattress.”
“Thanks,” he said, and together they hauled it into the house. He leaned it against the wall and grabbed the old one off the bed. “I’ll go by the dump on the way home.”
“I heard there was a baby at Doc’s. Like a baby that was just left there.”
Jack froze. Oh, man, he thought. Cheryl? Could it be Cheryl’s? Without meaning to, he looked her up and down. She was big, but not obese. Yet fat around the middle and her shirt loose and baggy. But she’d been out here cleaning that very day—she couldn’t do that, could she? Maybe it wasn’t the Smirnoff flu. Wouldn’t she be bleeding and leaking milk? Weak and tired?
“Yeah,” he finally said. “You hear of anyone who could have done that?”
“No. Is it an Indian baby? Because there’s reservations around here—women on hard times. You know.”
“White,” he answered.
“You know, when I’m done here, I could help out with the baby.”
“Uh, I think that’s covered, Cheryl. But thanks. I’ll tell Doc.” He carried the old mattress out and leaned it against the truck bed. God, that was an awful-looking thing. Mel was completely right—that cabin was horrific. What had Hope been thinking? She’d been thinking it would be cleaned up—but had she expected the new nurse to sleep on that thing? Sometimes Hope could be oblivious to details like these. She was pretty much just a crusty old broad.
He reached into the truck and hauled out the bags of linens. “Here you go,” he said to Cheryl. “Now get inside—I have to start painting. I want to get back to the bar by dinner.”
“Okay,” she said, accepting the bags. “Let me know if Doc needs me. Okay?”
“Sure, Cheryl.” Never, he thought. Too risky.
* * *
Jack was back at the bar by midafternoon with time enough to do an inventory of bar stock before people started turning out for dinner. The bar was empty, as it often was at this time of day. Preacher was in the back getting started on his evening meal and Ricky wasn’t due for another hour at least.
A man came into the bar alone. He wasn’t dressed as a fisherman; he wore jeans, a tan T-shirt under a denim vest, his hair was on the long side and he had a ball cap on his head. He was a big guy with a stubble of beard about a week old. He sat several stools down from where Jack stood with his clipboard and inventory paperwork, a good indication he didn’t want to talk.
Jack walked down to him. “Hi. Passing through?” he asked, slapping a napkin down in front of him.
“Hmm,” the man answered. “How about a beer and a shot. Heineken and Beam.”
“You got it,” Jack said, setting him up.
The man threw back the shot right away, then lifted the beer, all without making any eye contact with Ja
ck. Fine, we won’t talk, Jack thought. I have things to do anyway. So Jack went back to counting bottles.
About ten minutes had passed when he heard, “Hey, buddy. Once more, huh?”
“You bet,” Jack said, serving him another round. Again silence prevailed. The man took a little longer on his beer, time enough for Jack to get a good bit of his inventory done. While he was crouched behind the bar, a shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the man standing right on the other side of the bar, ready to settle up.
Jack stood just as the man was reaching into his pocket. He noticed a bit of tattoo sneaking out from the sleeve of his shirt—the recognizable feet of a bulldog—the Devil Dog. Jack was close to remarking on it—the man wore an unmistakable United States Marine Corps tattoo. But then the man pulled a thick wad of bills out, peeled off a hundred and said, “Can you change this?”
Jack didn’t even have to touch the bill; the skunklike odor of green cannabis wafted toward him. The man had just done some cutting—pruning or harvesting and, from the stinky cash, had made a sale. Jack could change the bill, but he didn’t want to advertise how much cash he kept on hand and he didn’t want that money on the premises. There were plenty of growers out there—some with prescriptions for legal use, conscious of the medical benefits. There were those who thought of marijuana as just any old plant, like corn. Agriculture. A way to make money. And some who dealt drugs because the drugs would offer a big profit. This part of the country was often referred to as the Emerald Triangle for the three counties most known for the cannabis trade. Lots of nice, new, half-ton trucks being driven by people on a busboy’s salary.
Some of the towns around these parts catered to them, selling supplies illegal growers needed—irrigation tubing, grow lights, camouflage tarps, plastic sheeting, shears in various sizes for harvesting and pruning. Scales, generators, ATVs for getting off-road and back into secretive hideaways buried in the forest. There were merchants around who displayed signs in their windows that said, CAMP Not Served Here. CAMP being the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting that was a joint operation between the county sheriff’s department and the state of California. Clear River was a town that didn’t like CAMP and didn’t mind taking the growers’ money, of which there was a lot. Charmaine didn’t approve of the illegal growing, but Butch wouldn’t turn down a stinky bill.
Virgin River was not that kind of town.
Growers usually maintained low profiles and didn’t cause problems, not wanting to be raided. But sometimes there were territorial conflicts between them or booby-trapped grows, either one of which could hurt an innocent citizen. There were drug-related crimes ranging from burglary or robbery to murder. Not so long ago they found the body of a grower’s partner buried in the woods near Garberville; he’d been missing for over two years and the grower himself had always been a suspect.
You couldn’t find anything in Virgin River that would encourage an illegal crop, one means of keeping them away. If there were any growers in town, they were real, real secret. Virgin River tended to push this sort away. But this wasn’t the first one to pass by.
“Tell you what,” Jack said to the man, making long and serious eye contact. “On the house this time.”
“Thanks,” he said, folding his bill back onto the wad and stuffing it in his pocket. He turned to go.
“And buddy?” Jack called as the man reached the door to leave. He turned and Jack said, “Sheriff’s deputy and California Highway Patrol eat and drink on the house in my place.”
The man’s shoulders rose once with a silent huff of laughter. He was on notice. He touched the brim of his hat and left.
Jack walked around the bar and looked out the window to see the man get into a black late model Range Rover, supercharged, big wheels jacked up real high, windows tinted, lights on the roof. That model would go for nearly a hundred grand. This guy was no hobbyist. He memorized the license plate.
Preacher was rolling out pie dough when Jack went into the kitchen. “I just served a guy who tried to pay for his drinks with a wad of stinky Bens as big as my fist,” Jack told him.
“Crap.”
“He’s driving a new Range Rover, loaded, jacked up and lit up. Big guy.”
“You think he’s growing around town here?”
“Have no idea,” Jack said. “We better pay attention. Next time the deputy’s in town, I’ll mention it. But it’s not against the law to have stinky money or drive a big truck.”
“If he’s rich, it’s probably not a small operation,” Preacher said.
“He’s got a bulldog tattoo on his upper right arm.”
Preacher frowned. “You kind of hate to see a brother go that way.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Maybe he’s not in business around here. He could have been just scoping out the town to see if this is a good place to set up. I think I sent the message that it’s not. I told him law enforcement eats and drinks on the house.”
Preacher smiled. “We should start doing that, then,” he said.
“How about a discount, to start? We don’t want to get crazy.”
* * *
Mel got her sister, Joey, on the phone.
“Oh, Jesus, Mel! You scared me to death! Where have you been? Why didn’t you call sooner?”
“I’ve been in Virgin River where I have no phone and my cell doesn’t work. And I’ve been pretty busy.”
“I was about to call out the National Guard!”
“Yeah? Well, don’t bother. They’d never be able to find the place.”
“You’re all right?”
“Well... This will probably make you perversely happy,” Mel told her. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done this. I was nuts. As usual.”
“Is it terrible?”
“Well, it definitely started out terrible—the free housing turned out to be a falling-down hovel and the doctor is a mean old coot who doesn’t want any help in his practice. I was on my way out of town when—you’ll never believe this—someone left an abandoned newborn on the doctor’s porch. But things have improved, if slightly. I’m staying for at least a few more days to help with the baby. The old doc wouldn’t wake up to those middle-of-the-night hunger cries. Oh, Joey, my first impression of him is that he was the poorest excuse for a town doctor I’d ever met. Mean as a snake, rude as sour milk. Fortunately, working with those L.A. medical residents, especially those dicky surgeons, prepared me nicely.”
“Okay, that was your first impression. How has it changed?”
“He proves tractable. Since my housing was uninhabitable, I’m staying in the guest room in his house. It’s actually set up to be the only hospital room in town. This house is fine—clean and functional. There could be a slight inconvenience at any moment—a young woman who asked me to deliver her first baby will be having it here—in my bedroom, which I share with the abandoned baby. Picture this—a postpartum patient and a full nursery.”
“And you will sleep where?”
“I’ll probably hang myself up in a corner and sleep standing up. But that’s only if she delivers within the next week, while I’m still here. Surely a family will turn up to foster this baby soon. Although, I wouldn’t mind a birth. A sweet, happy birth to loving, excited, healthy parents...”
“You don’t have to stay for that,” Joey said firmly. “It’s not as though they don’t have a doctor.”
“I know—but she’s so young. And she was so happy, thinking there was a woman doctor here who could deliver her rather than this ornery old man.”
“Mel, I want you to get in your car and drive. Come to us. Where we can look after you for a while.”
“I don’t need looking after,” she said with a laugh. “Work helps. I need to work. Whole hours go by without thinking about Mark.”
“How are you doing with that?”
&n
bsp; She sighed deeply. “That’s another thing. No one here knows, so no one looks at me with those sad, pitying eyes. And since they don’t look at me that way, I don’t crumble so often. At least, not where anyone can see.”
“Oh, Mel, I wish I could comfort you somehow...”
“But, Joey, I have to grieve this, it’s the only way. And I have to live with the fact that I might never be over it.”
“I hope that’s not true, Mel. I know widows. I know widows who have remarried and are happy.”
“We’re not going there,” she said. Then Mel told Joey about what she knew of the town, about all the people who’d been drifting into Doc’s house just to get a look at her, about Jack and Preacher. And about how many more stars there were out here. The mountains; the air, so clean and sharp it almost took you by surprise. About the people who came to the doctor bringing things, like tons of food, a lot of which went right across the street to the bar where Preacher used it in his creations; about how Jack refused to take a dime from either Doc or Mel for food or drink. Anyone who cared for the town had a free meal ticket over there.
“But it’s very rural. Doc put in a call to the county social services agency, but I gather we’re on a waiting list—they may not figure out foster care for who knows how long. Frankly, I don’t know how the old doc made it without any help all these years.”
“People nice?” Joey asked. “Other than the doctor?”
“The ones I’ve met—very. But the main reason I called, besides letting you know that I’m safe, is to tell you I’m on the old doc’s phone—the cell just isn’t going to work out here. I’ll give you the number.”
“Well,” Joey said, “at least you sound okay. In fact, you sound better than you have in a long time.”
“Like I said, there are patients. Challenges. I’m a little keyed up. The very first day, I was left alone here with the baby and the key to the drug cabinet and told to see any patients who wandered in. No training, nothing. About thirty people came—just to say hello and visit. That’s what you hear in my voice. Adrenaline.”
