The morning news reports in both papers and television were careful to state that local speculation was that it had been a revenge killing by the Colombian cartel, but there was no hesitation in publicizing the amazing bravery of Mrs. Francine Elmore, known throughout the Palms as the Duchess. ‘Alone, and armed only with a revolver her dead husband had given her for protection, she faced two hoodlums unafraid, killed one and wounded, perhaps mortally, the other.’ Flash pictures showed her in her French peignoir, heavy hunting coat and bedroom slippers. Much was made of her confident quote: ‘He won’t get far. I’m sure I hit him in the back.’
Actually, the second killer got quite far, speeding through the night north to the Georgia border. At dawn he had heard news of the killing on the car radio, and although he was safely out of Florida, he began to wonder whether he could possibly escape any farther because of the pain radiating out of his left hip, into which a bullet had lodged. He was losing a considerable amount of blood.
Driving into a small town south of Macon, he asked in a drugstore that had just opened: ‘Where can I find a doctor? Bad pain in my left hip.’ The druggist directed him to the emergency room of the little hospital nearby, then noticed a faint trail of blood along the floor where the customer had walked. Saying nothing to his clerk, an excitable young woman, he retreated quietly to his back office, dialed the police department and told the answering officer: ‘This is Forsby. Yes, Nathaniel. You’d better hurry over to the local hospital. Best if two, three men go well armed. It could be the killer they were broadcasting about. Yep. He looked Hispanic.’
At the hospital the doctor who’d had the night duty was preparing to go home for some sleep when the man came in with blood trickling from his left hip and in obvious pain, but since there was no clear sign that a bullet had caused the damage he saw no reason to inform the police, as he would have had to do if it had been an obvious bullet wound. But when the wounded man was stretched out on the bed, his street clothes still on, three police officers quietly moved into the next room and sent a nurse in to tell the night doctor that the patient down the hall was undergoing a cardiac arrest, whereupon the doctor said to his new patient: ‘I’ll be right back. There’s an emergency.’
Something about the way the nurse behaved or the ominous silence alerted the wounded man to danger, and he deftly withdrew his gun from his pants pocket. When the three policemen burst into his room, there was a crashing echo of gunfire which left the Colombian gunman dead and one of the policemen seriously wounded.
At that moment at the Palms the Reverend Quade was leading prayers for the two much-loved Colombian patriots. ‘They were,’ she said, ‘heroes in the fight for liberty and decency in their country and exemplars of Christian charity in their American refuge. It was the insidious arm of criminal revenge that hunted them down, and their death is a loss to us all. They had come here, like all the rest of us, to find peaceful days in which to end their lives. They could not have anticipated that they would die in this brutal manner. May their souls rest in that heaven which they tried their best to bring into being here on earth.’
When the short service ended with much weeping, three television cameras from the networks waited outside to photograph and interview the Duchess. She looked impressive, standing erect with camera lights framing her silver-haired head. But her confident pose was short-lived, for when what had happened since midnight sank in all of a sudden she was powerless to speak, so Andy and Nora led her quietly away. Krenek, who had witnessed much of what had happened and who had played a major role in identifying the probable background of the killers, substituted for her and gave a thrilling account of her bravery and foresight. ‘She even took down the license number of the car.’
At that moment, as the interview ended, word was received by the television people in contact with their home offices that the second cocaine runner had died in a shoot-out in a small Georgia hospital. When the Duchess heard the news, her voice returned and she cried triumphantly: ‘I told you I hit him in the ass! I don’t miss.’
When the turmoil over the murder of the Jiménez couple subsided, the federal agents having made their interrogations and departed, Reverend Quade, at the request of the residents, conducted a memorial service one evening after dinner. Her words were so apt that Mr. Krenek had them printed in a small brochure, which contained photographs of these two much-loved citizens:
Raúl and Felicita came to us as refugees from a dreadful tyranny which they had opposed with their courage, the loss of their property and the sacrifice of the high position they had held at home. In the very appropriate phrase I heard once in Missouri, ‘They voted with their feet,’ and found a good life in our country. With a degree of love hard to match, they managed to keep their family together, bringing members to our home here each year and with enormous difficulty. We knew their children and grandchildren as if they were our own, and they taught us the meaning of the words love and family solidarity and Christian values.
They died in the midst of the battle they had bravely taken upon themselves. They fought our struggles for us, and all who knew them well are indebted to them. We see him now, still among us, Raúl, tall, slim, urbane, a Spanish nobleman from another century, Felicita, the bubbling extrovert who could never allow herself to be dispirited. Listen, she is laughing with us once again!
How steadily in Gateways, our lovely, comforting home, are we forced to face up to the word death, but we do not want our days to be ended in hideous disease, tragic loss of mind or cruel murder. The actions of those gunmen, tracking down a man and his wife through two nations and across two oceans, were brutal and inhumane, but such death is also a part of life. Raúl and Felicita knew this when they chose to speak out for decency and freedom. I shall remember him playing bridge and glaring at me when, as his partner, I made what he considered a stupid error. I remember her as she knocked on my door with an offering of Toll-House cookies that she had baked for her neighbors.
God give us the strength to carry on the good life in the many ways that they did and may we join them later in a more peaceful afterlife.
The morning after the memorial service Dr. Zorn disappeared for three days without informing even his new wife of where he was going, whom he was meeting or what he was doing. Krenek and Nora supposed that he had gone to Chicago to report to Mr. Taggart on the aftermath of the murders, but when the head office called the Palms to ask about that very problem it became evident that Andy was not there, nor had he been. Krenek assured Nora and Betsy that Andy had been in reasonably good spirits despite his recent resignation and he guessed: ‘I’d say he was out looking for a new job, maybe even interviewing, and he didn’t want to raise your hopes only to have them dashed if he didn’t find employment.’
On the fourth day Andy flew into Tampa International on a red-eye express from the west and immediately met in his office with Betsy, Nora and Krenek. After embracing his wife and apologizing, he took from his briefcase a substantial collection of pamphlets, posters and maps.
‘I apologize to all of you, especially Betsy, but I have serious problems to grapple with these days and I thought it best to fight this one alone.’ Shuffling among his papers, he found a medical journal in whose pages he faithfully followed recent developments in his profession, even though he was no longer a practicing physician. Turning to a page marked with a paper clip, he placed the magazine facedown and said: ‘I suspect Clarence Hasslebrook may have done me a favor in forcing me to leave this comfortable job. Betsy and I could have remained here and built a good life for ourselves and, I believe, for the residents in our care.’ He paused, then said slowly and with profound conviction: ‘But I want to be a doctor of medicine. I want to care for patients who need my assistance and knowledge. My work with Nora and Dr. Leitonen has shown me the path of duty. My visits to our Alzheimer’s patients remind me of the obligations of doctors. And when I stop by that horrible room holding Mrs. Carlson, I am torn apart by the question of what proper medical c
are is. I am a doctor. I’m not the manager of a posh hotel.’
His listeners understood the depth of his conviction and the steps by which he had decided to return to his permanent calling, but they had not a clue as to what secret steps he had taken to reenter his profession, but now he held the magazine with a finger marking the page he wanted and explained: ‘When I was forced to consider what I wished to do with the remainder of my life, I started reading the want ads in the medical journals—you know, the ones in which small towns in the hinterland advertise for a doctor to help them, and I stumbled upon just what I was looking for.’ He opened the journal, pointed to a small ad outlined in red ink, and passed it around. It said, in part, ‘Silver Butte, a town of 1,800 on the glorious Madison River in south Montana near Yellowstone Park, seeks a doctor. Free office space for one year, loan of a car, gasoline at a discount, and other perquisites. Finest landscape in America, mild winters.’
‘Is that where you’ve been?’ Betsy asked without betraying her response to his revelation.
‘Yep. Flew out to Billings, was met by a committee of the finest townsmen and -women ever, and rode with them over fascinating back roads to their town of Silver Butte. They made it clear before we got there that the settlement had been named in the last century in hopes there’d be silver. There wasn’t.’
‘Did it look feasible?’ Betsy asked.
‘For my purposes, yes.’
‘Exactly what are your purposes?’ Krenek asked, and he replied: ‘To be a doctor. To run the whole gamut. Building a small hospital. Bringing some young medical resident in to help me establish a countywide network. And to treat every sick person who can find the path to my door.’ He stopped, then clarified his dream: ‘To be the kind of doctor I imagined I’d be when I started out years ago in Illinois.’
Nora asked: ‘Is there a hospital of any kind in the area?’
‘There’s a small building they’ve been using as a first-aid center. Good hospitals in Bozeman, fifty-two miles away, and Butte, sixty-one, with helicopter services in the area. And absolutely first-class facilities in Billings, Montana.’
‘Any other doctors in the vicinity?’ Nora asked.
‘Two older men in towns rather distant, but each of them is thinking of quitting.’
‘Did the community look as if it could … I guess I mean’—Krenek fumbled—‘did it sound as if it could support a doctor? What do your medical associations recommend as the minimum population to support one doctor?’
‘Comes in, I think, at about twenty-four hundred.’
‘And this Silver Butte has eighteen hundred? Does that mean the doctor starves?’
‘It means, I think, that a good doctor can use that as a base and build a clientele.’
Now Betsy spoke: ‘Is the Madison as attractive a river as they said?’ and he turned to the rest of his publications and showed her the great prairies reaching out from the Madison, the nearby peaks of Yellowstone Park, all depicting the West at its best. Shrewd Nora observed: ‘All taken in the midsummer, I’ll bet. You have any shots taken in winter?’
Andy looked at his nurse and said: ‘I was about to ask you if you thought you could hack it because if I go I’ll want you to come with me.’
‘More better, I think,’ Nora said with a wide smile, ‘that you ask your wife first. Can she hack it? No amputee specialists in Silver Butte, I’ll bet.’
Andy looked at his wife, not pleadingly but eager to hear her response before he had an opportunity to defend his tentative decision to move out to Montana. She thought some moments, then said: ‘I think a doctor’s going to be more important in my case than an amputee wizard. What I’m really going to need is a reliable obstetrician. But then again, I married one.’
The three others in the room stared at her in amazement, and when no one spoke, she added: ‘Dr. Farquhar was sure I was pregnant, but he sent me to a specialist who ran tests. There’s no doubt.’ Then she poked her husband in the arm and said: ‘So while you were keeping secrets from me in Montana, I was having my secrets from you here at the Palms.’
‘A baby—that’s wonderful! But that does change things,’ Andy said, visualizing an entire constellation of new problems, but Betsy eased his mind at least temporarily by asking: ‘How big is Butte?’
‘About forty thousand.’
‘It’ll have a decent hospital, I’m sure. I think it could be handled.’
Andy spread maps of Wyoming and the American West before them, and showed them how the Madison River began almost in Yellowstone, then ran north to join the Jefferson and Gallatin rivers before they became headwaters of the great Missouri River which flowed for more than two thousand six hundred miles before it joined the even greater Mississippi. As his finger traced this tremendous river system, one of the glories of North America, his three listeners could see that he was truly enamored of the idea of moving west and becoming part of that majestic section of America.
They spent some time studying the printed materials and trying to see what Silver Butte was like, but none of the colored shots in the expensive brochures created any real sense of the remote frontier town.
However, Andy had borrowed a camera from the local druggist, who had been one of the welcoming committee, and with two rolls of film he had captured the essence of what might become his and Betsy’s future home. When the seventy-two photographs were spread on the desktop, they presented an honest portrait of a small Montana town, and it was not entirely inviting. Nora asked: ‘What building was it you said they used as a kind of first-aid station?’ and he pointed to a stonewalled structure that he had inspected, where the druggist kept oxygen, a respirator, ammonia for shock and a shelf of standard medications, none requiring a doctor’s prescription. Near this building there was a level place for a helicopter to land. But no matter how forgiving one was in surrendering to historical nostalgia, Silver Butte was clearly not in the mainstream of the modern world.
A decision to move west was of such importance that Zorn decided to consult with Dr. Farquhar, who was near at hand, and he wished that down-to-earth Dr. Zembright were close by and not up in Chattanooga. Farquhar was pleased to talk and quickly put the problem of moving in its proper perspective: ‘If you were twenty-six I’d advise against it, for the moment. At that age a young man profits enormously from having older physicians in the area to talk with, to consult with on difficult cases. You learn by listening. But at your age, already having had the benefit of talking with your elders, you have a store of knowledge to build on. If you feel strongly inclined, and they’ll give you the perquisites to help you get solidly started, I’d say go for it.
‘But I can assure you of one thing, Andy. I’ve known for some time that you wanted to get back into real doctoring. The way you’ve worked with Leitonen. Yes, we other doctors heard about it and applauded. We wanted to do what you did but hadn’t the courage. And your intense interest in your Alzheimer’s cases. I could see it, and even your Nora—bless that woman’s heart, it’s a big one—told me you were ready to go back to the real job.
‘You’ve completed your task with us at the Palms. With Krenek staying on, and some good younger man coming aboard, we’ll take care of ourselves. I’m optimistic about the Palms and thank you for your help. Keep in touch when you get settled in Montana, and make friends with all the doctors in your area, no matter how far apart they are.’
Reassured by such talk, Andy was inclined to send the people at Silver Butte a firm acceptance, but he was not yet sure of Betsy’s honest opinions. That she was pregnant there was no doubt, and it was obvious that she was a heroic woman, but the shift from tropical Florida to Montana was so vast that he was uncertain as to whether she could manage it. In the meantime she studied the literature on the place and daydreamed over the big maps and step by step resolved each of her doubts.
One day as Christmas approached she greeted Andy with a broad smile when he returned to their apartment for lunch: ‘About an hour ago I visualized all our
problems clearing up. Montana, here we come! Andy Zorn, you’re to be a real doctor again,’ and their mutual anxieties evaporated.
The radical move to Montana did not occur because of a stunning counteroffer that came from Chattanooga.
When Oliver Cawthorn and his influential friends in that city learned that Dr. Zorn had surrendered his position at the Palms, they accelerated plans for a project they had been seriously contemplating ever since Betsy went to Florida. Putting architects and draftsmen on overtime, they now had in their possession precise plans for a major effort. Cawthorn assembled the other four major participants in the venture—Dr. Zembright the medical expert, Chester Bingham the builder, Lawrence Desmond the real estate investor, and Charles Gilman the lawyer and financier—and they flew to Tampa in their private jet and, hiring a car, sped out to the Palms. They summoned the Zorns and cleared the big table in the office Andy would soon be vacating. On it they spread an aerial photograph of wooded and mountainous land on which red-inked lines had been drawn showing the plots of land they had recently purchased.
Chester Bingham began to speak: ‘We were fortunate in being able to start with five hundred acres of choice land that Desmond already owned. Show them where it is, Desmond,’ and the proud owner traced his land, explaining as he went: ‘This fine mountain land over here abutting mine to the east is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, preserved forever, but more or less available to use for nature trails and so on. Chester, you carry on.’
‘So, the rest of us, with that beginning, banded together to buy about eight hundred additional contiguous acres here, here and here.’
Recessional: A Novel Page 54
