by John Dalmas
"Dad told us what you did, the day before yesterday at Severtson's camp. That was pretty remarkable."
"So's your dad. Getting shot and his arm broken like that, and back at work again already."
The girl turned and spoke to her grandmother in quick German. The old woman grinned and spoke German back to her, then turned and looked at Macurdy, sharp-eyed but smiling. "She says," Mary told him, "that you're a bloodstopper—a kind of magician. That's something country people believe in where she comes from. Dad said when you touched his arm, the bleeding stopped, just like that. To her, that makes you a bloodstopper. And to him too, but he'd never put it that way."
Uncomfortable with the subject, Macurdy shifted away from it. "It's a good thing your dad's tough. He's had a lot to do today, with that big fire. I hiked out to Severtson's office; they've sent their whole crew to fight it. I'd have gone, too, except I'm supposed to talk with your dad this evening."
The two of them talked for nearly thirty minutes, with occasional brief pauses while Mary summarized in German for her grandmother. They talked about the Hard Times and Roosevelt, the PWA and the NRA. Macurdy knew little about government programs; his parents, to save money, had stopped subscribing to the Louisville paper. And of course, he'd been out of the country till four months earlier, though he said nothing of that.
He decided Mary was older than she seemed. Her looks suggested seventeen or eighteen, but her poise and maturity suggested several years more than that. "What do you do?" he round himself asking. "You sure know a lot about what's going on."
"We get the Portland paper, and my grandmother can't read it, so she has me read the major parts to her. In German that is, translating. She's really interested. She..."
There were footsteps on the porch, then the front door opened and Fritzi came in, slumped and gray-faced. "Hello, Macurdy. Hello Mary. Heda, Mama. I'm sorry to be so late. All hell has broke loose in the woods. It is already the worst fire since 1910, and no one knows how much bigger it will get."
Klara spoke curtly to him in German and disappeared into the kitchen, Mary following. Fritzi lowered himself painfully, awkwardly into a wingbacked chair. "It looks like Severtson's camp will get burned out."
Macurdy thought of those magnificent trees, that awesome volume of timber. Fritzi talked briefly of other fires he'd known or heard about, then Klara called them to supper. The food was plain but good, like his mother's, Macurdy thought. Now that Fritzi was home, Mary left the talking to him. Macurdy wondered if it was the custom in Germany that the man of the house did the talking to male guests. When they'd finished eating, Fritzi got down to business.
"One question I got to ask. I should have asked when we talked in my office. Do you get drunk sometimes?"
"No sir. Never."
"Good. Earl asked Lars this morning, and Lars said he didn't think so. At least you never went to town."
Briefly they talked about the deputy job, and Macurdy agreed to take it. As soon as Fritzi heard from Washington County, hopefully the next day, the hearing could be held. After that he'd begin his training, on probation. Meanwhile he was to find a place to live, and move in. One of Fritzi's sisters-in-law was looking for a boarder.
Fritzi closed the conversation then: "I'm sorry, but I got to take my pills and go to bed. I hurt like hell. Be at my office at one." They got up from the table, and the last thing anyone said to Macurdy, except goodbye, came from Klara. No one interpreted for him, but Mary blushed brightly.
Walking back to his room in the Nehtaka Hotel, he wondered what the old woman had said. Something about him, he was sure. Whatever it was, he had something to think about, something that shook him, because he was strongly attracted to Mary Preuss. She wasn't beautiful like Varia, or sexy like Melody, but there it was as close to love at first sight, he admitted to himself, as he was likely to experience. And it troubled him, worried him, because so far he'd had no luck with love. Or—actually he had, up to a point. Varia had been a wonderful wife, for the weeks they'd been together, but he'd lost her. And Melody had loved him passionately, until she'd drowned.
And there was his life expectancy to consider. And Mary's age: Fritzi had mentioned her high school graduation as having been that spring; she was as young as she looked. But in a dozen or so years she'd probably look older than he would.
Maybe, he told himself, he was making a mistake, staying in Nehtaka. Maybe he should go somewhere else. But he knew he wouldn't. He'd stay and see what developed.
6
A Strange Courtship
Depositions by Fritzi, Axel, and several of the jacks who'd witnessed the death of Patsy Hannigan, all supported Macurdy's testimony. Not that there'd been any doubt, but now the law was satisfied. No charges were filed against him, and for a few days he was a local celebrity. It would have been talked about more, had it not been for the giant Cedar River Fire, busily devouring some quarter million acres of prime timber.
The last embers had hardly cooled before salvage logging began, with crews at first living in tent camps. Macurdy didn't envy them. On Saturdays they came to town telling of work clothes hopelessly blackened from charred bark, and of clouds of ash that rose each time a tree was felled. It was, they swore, the worst kind of logging in the world, even worse than logging blowdown.
Meanwhile Macurdy was discovering there was more to learn than he'd anticipated. Each day he went with, or stayed in the office with Fritzi or one of his deputies, learning by watching and doing. And each day he spent at least a couple of hours reading manuals and other books, while from time to time, Fritzi grilled him, the questions mostly beginning: "What do you do if...?"
He hardly had time to think about Mary, let alone talk with her, until, in his third week on the county payroll, he went with Deputy Lute Halvoy in the paddy wagon to the Moose Hall, where a brawl was reported. He'd never seen anything like it. In the lot next door, a dozen or so loggers were punching, grappling, and rolling around grunting and swearing on the ground, while twice that many were cheering them on. Halvoy blew his whistle, but no one paid any attention at all, so he drew his nightstick and waded in, Macurdy a stride behind and to one side, whacking men on arms, shoulders, backs, to get their attention.
They did. Someone turned and punched Macurdy flush on the nose. It was the wrong thing to do. Macurdy dropped his nightstick, slugged the man in the gut, and delivered a crushing blow to the side of the jaw, dropping the logger like a sack of sand, then turned to the next man, and the next, doing essentially the same thing. This gained real attention. With a loud bellow in Norwegian, a man the crowd cheered as Big Erik squared off with Macurdy, and they began to fight. Big Erik might have been as strong—even stronger—but he lacked Macurdy's technique and quick hands, and when he went down, peace descended. The two deputies herded the crowd back into the club, then handcuffed those on the ground, locked them in the wagon, and started for jail. The idea was not to discover perpetrators or punish anyone, but to remind the loggers that public brawling was illegal in Nehtaka County, and to uphold the reputation of its sheriff's department.
Macurdy's nose had been bleeding freely, and while Halvoy drove, Macurdy silently exercised his bloodstopping skills. Meanwhile his nose and eyes were swelling, so Halvoy dropped him off at Sweiger's Cafe, where he could get ice to put on them.
Mary was there when he walked in. Mainly she worked there from 9 am till 2 pm, but this evening she was covering for Rudi Sweiger. At the moment there were no customers. She stared wide-eyed at Macurdy, at his swollen, discolored face and bloody shirt front. "Curtis!" she cried, "what happened?"
"We stopped a brawl at the Moose Club," he said, talking like a man with a bad head cold.
Quickly she got a large dish towel from the kitchen, wrapped ice in it, and brought it to him. He'd seated himself in a back booth where he couldn't be seen by people coming in. Now he held the ice to his offended features. Mary sat across from him, facing the door.
"You're all bloody."
"
I know."
She giggled in spite of herself. "I suppose you do. Did you hit anyone?"
He grunted. "Guess."
She laughed out loud, then sobered. "Is it broken? Your nose?"
"It's not the first time."
"I'd noticed."
He remembered what had happened after that first time: Melody and Jeremid had rescued him, taking him half conscious to Melody's cabin. He'd had a concussion, and she'd spent the night ministering to him in more ways than one. It occurred to him that he'd like Mary to do the same, and rejected the thought irritatedly. Mary and Melody were as different as Nehtaka was different from Oztown, and that was a lot of difference.
"Does it hurt much?" she asked.
"I wouldn't want someone to hit it again just now."
The towel was beginning to drip ice water, and Mary got another from the kitchen to wipe the table with. Then they sat and talked, their first real talk since the night they'd waited for her father.
"Mary," he said at last, "would you go to a movie with me? When my face looks better?" He'd lowered the ice-filled towel to look at her. Her face sobered instantly at his question.
"I'm sorry Curtis, but no. I like you, quite a lot, but I don't date."
"Have I said anything or done anything I shouldn't?"
"No no! Really you haven't. It's not you at all. But—I just don't date. I promised myself years ago that I'd never get married, so I just don't date. Especially someone I think I might like a lot."
He looked worriedly at her. "You can trust me. I wouldn't get rambunctious. Really. And I'm not someone that gets into fights ordinarily. This was in line of duty."
She reached for his hand, clasping his thick fingers. "Curtis, understand me. I do trust you. I can see more about people than most do, and I like what I see. It's me I don't trust, because I truly must not get married."
A couple entered the cafe. Mary took their orders, then went into the kitchen and made their burgers. Macurdy had the towel back on his face again. The ice had shrunk, but the towel was still cold. It seemed to him the swelling had gone down somewhat, though he supposed his face would be discolored for two or three weeks. It would look bad for a deputy to go around with a pair of black eyes like some drunk, at least it would in Washington County, Indiana. Probably, he told himself, there was a shamanic way to clear discoloration, though Arbel had never mentioned it. Maybe he could work something out from the treatment for fractures.
When the couple had their burgers, Mary came back to the booth and sat across from him again. "Let me see how it looks," she said, and when he showed her she nodded. "The swelling's already going down." She paused. "It's almost ten o'clock. I'm supposed to close then."
"Can I walk you home?"
She smiled, touching his hand again. "Of course. I'd appreciate it. It will save Dad coming after me."
He smiled wryly. "That's the only reason I asked. To save him the trouble."
She colored briefly, then phoned her father, telling him he needn't come and get her, that Curtis would walk her home. When her customers had finished eating and left, she closed the flue and draft in the big stove, put things in the refrigerator, the cash in a bag and the bag in the safe, then turned out the lights. Larry Sweiger would come in soon to clean up. After she'd locked the door behind them, they started east up Columbia Street. The whole downtown was dark now. After a block walked in silence, Macurdy spoke.
"I don't want to badger you or anything, but I really hope you'll tell me more about not wanting to date or marry."
She didn't answer at once, and when she did, it was stiffly. "There's nothing to tell."
Her aura reflected not so much irritation, though, as an unpleasant mix of emotions he couldn't sort out. For the next block and a half he thought about his old mentor Arbel, remembering how the shaman had questioned people who didn't know why, or wouldn't tell why, they felt or thought or did as they did. But mostly Arbel's patients were interested in freeing themselves of whatever devils or disorders troubled them, while seemingly Mary didn't. She might not even have any.
How might he apply what Arbel had shown him? It took him two more blocks to speak again. "Can I ask some questions? To help me understand?"
This time Mary's aura did show irritation, and she stopped, about to tell him "no" again, emphatically this time. Yet somehow the word "yes" came out. "But not here," she said. "We can sit on the porch at home and talk."
They turned south down a residential street lined and darkened by Norway maples and Douglas-firs, the air cool and damp off the nearby ocean, smelling of salt and kelp instead of the smoke that had made the air so pungent recently.
The sheriff's two-story frame house stood in a large lot, well back from the street, dark with the shadows of trees and hedges, and lit dimly by a single light somewhere inside. They turned up the walk, went up the steps and onto the porch, where they seated themselves in wicker chairs, facing each other. It was hard to begin. He wished he had a shaman drum or flute, but even if he had, he could hardly start thumping a drum on the sheriff's front porch in the middle of the night. Nor had Varia used one to spell him when they were newlyweds, and she'd wanted to activate his ylvin genes.
For a moment he turned inward, gathering shaman focus, then turned that focus on Mary and spoke quietly. "I got it that you don't want to date or marry, but tell me—tell me something you could like about marriage."
She frowned. "About marriage."
"Right. Tell me something you could like about marriage."
She might have told him it was none of his business—it occurred to her—or that she didn't want to talk about it. But there was something compelling in his question. She spoke even more quietly than he had. "Well—it would be nice to have someone to talk with, and go places with."
"Okay. Now tell me something you wouldn't like about being married."
There was a long lag before she answered. He wished he could see her eyes. Arbel had taught him that eye movements and color shifts could tell more about some things than auras could. "Children," Mary said at last. "I wouldn't like to have children."
That was it; that was the key. Her aura left no doubt. "All right. What is there about children that you don't want?"
She was facing him, looking past him. "I couldn't stand to have children."
"Fine. What specifically is there about children..." Then, in his mind, he saw the picture that was stuck in her own, hidden from her by trauma. "That's it," he said. "What is that?"
"Nothing. There's nothing." Her voice was little more than a whisper.
"Is that lady in bed your mother?"
He felt her rush of emotion, followed by a sense of brittleness, as if she'd turned to glass. Then the brittleness dissolved, and she began silently to cry. Briefly he let her, then said, "Tell me about it."
"She—she died—because of me."
"All right. How did that happen?"
She shook her head. "I don't know, don't remember. I was just a little child. A baby, really."
"Ah. Look earlier, and tell me what you see."
"I don't see anything. There's nothing there."
"Okay. A minute ago you could see a lady in bed. Your mother. What I want you to do now is see what happened before she was in bed."
That picture came through too, for him as for her. "I see—I see her flopping around on the floor. Jerking. Howling." Mary's voice remained little more than a whisper. "I run out of the house to Mrs. Nelsen's next door." Mary's focus left the scene she'd described, shifting to Macurdy. "Mrs. Nelsen called the doctor. Mama had cancer of me brain. She died a few weeks later, maybe a few months, and they wouldn't let me see her while she was dying. They thought it was too terrible for a child to see. She'd have convulsions, and scream, and say terrible things."
Macurdy took a deep breath. "All right." He paused. "Did you do something to make that happen?"
Mary grimaced through her tears. "Me? What could I have done?" Abruptly her voice intensified. "She ha
d cancer! In her brain! Don't you understand?"
"How old were you?"
Her anger subsided. "I was three when she died. On my birthday. So, two-something when she—got sick."
"Okay." He continued quietly, with a calm learned from Arbel. "Look a little earlier, to before her convulsions started, and tell me what you see."
She frowned, peering inward, then her aura sparked and swelled like a threatened cat, while her face began to slacken as if entering a trance.
"What do you see?" he nudged.
"I—see—a little child. Me. I'm playing with a dish, a bowl, and drop it. It breaks in pieces. Mamma's bowl that her isoäiti gave her. I start to cry, and mamma hears and comes in, and cries hard, and scolds me because her grandma is dead, and spanks me so hard! So hard! And screams at me because I broke her grandma's beautiful bowl she gave her before she died, that I knew I wasn't supposed to touch. And I'm so scared, and she spanks me so hard, I pee on her lap when she spanks me, and she throws me on the bed and falls on the floor, and begins to jerk and scream!"