The Drifter

by Susan Wiggs

  Jackson felt an absurd surge of pride. He admired the way she faced down her accuser with a mixture of defiance and audacity. She was tough and vulnerable at the same time. And even in the middle of the crowd, she seemed completely alone, like an island.

  “Who’re you going to listen to?” Gillespie went on. “This lady quack or James Gillespie? My family settled the island forty years ago. Our children have grown up together. You folks know me. I wouldn’t sell you poisoned meat.”

  “I’m not saying you did it on purpose,” Leah said in a clear voice that carried across the listening crowd. “But I am saying that this family is suffering from trichinosis—and the bacteria that causes it is in the ham you sold them.” She gestured at a platter on the table. “It was ill prepared and ill stored. Something must have gone wrong in the smoking process.”

  The women began to murmur and stare at the platter, then at the butcher.

  “I know my business,” he said. “I been preparing hams since before you were born, missy. Don’t be telling me I sold these people tainted meat.”

  Leah’s chin lifted. “I’m certain you didn’t mean to, but—”

  “But nothing. This town needs a proper doctor, not some female busybody who doesn’t even know how to keep house like a real woman.”

  Her eyes flashed, but she made a visible effort to control her temper, taking a deep breath and clasping her hands together. “Sir,” she said. “It’s my duty as a doctor to inform these people that you’ve sold them tainted meat.”

  “Ha! What do you expect from a lady doctor? No one will associate with you except that—that...” He gestured contemptuously at Sophie Whitebear. “She’s a squaw who had too much firewater, that’s what she is.”

  Jackson felt his hand clench into a fist at his side. Easy now, he told himself, keeping a weather eye on the sheriff. No need to draw attention to himself. While waylaid on this island, he’d best stay out of other folks’ business.

  Leah Mundy spoke up again. “Don’t you dare cast aspersions on Sophie. You may call me anything you wish, but you will not spread lies about my assistant.”

  “Fine, then I’ll call you what you deserve to be called. A meddlesome female who thinks she can do a man’s job. You know what I think, lady? I think you gave the whole family some tonic to make them sick, then pretended to get them better just so’s you could collect a fee. You wouldn’t be the first quack to do that.”

  The crowd grew ugly then, muttering and glaring at Leah.

  “You ought to lock her up, Sheriff,” Gillespie called. “Put her someplace where she won’t bother people.”

  St. Croix scowled beneath the brim of his fine bowler hat. It was then that Jackson noticed a shiny patch of healed skin high across his forehead. Only once before had he seen a scar like that—on the head of a man who had been scalped, but lived to tell the tale.

  He gritted his teeth. None of his damned business. The deputy—a skinny Scotsman called Caspar MacPhail—leaned forward and said something to him, and the sheriff nodded. His manicured hand brushed the butt of his gun.

  Jackson had had enough. Leah made him move outside himself and his own caution. She made him take risks because she was so alone. Scene or no scene, it was time to step in. “Folks,” he called in a lazily reasonable voice, “what’s all this?”

  “Lady doctor’s making trouble for this family,” someone said. “And trying to ruin the butcher’s reputation.”

  Jackson turned to Leah. She regarded him strangely, distrustfully. As if she wasn’t certain whose side he was on. “Is that right?” he asked her. “I got here late. Maybe you could fill me in.” He kept his voice neutral. Let her present the facts so folks could make up their own minds.

  “Last night, everyone in the family ate this ham, and by morning they were all suffering from the same symptoms—violent vomiting, eruptions of the bowels. I diagnosed trichinosis.”

  Jackson looked at a black metal instrument on the table. “What’s that?”

  “A microscope. If you’ll have a look, you can see the trichina bacteria in the fibers of the meat.”

  The butcher started forward. “Now just a doggone min—”

  “Is that so?” Jackson stepped in front of Gillespie. No one saw how hard he shoved his elbow into the burly butcher’s ribs, but he heard a gratifying rush of breath leave the man. “Show me how it works, Doc.”

  She lifted one eyebrow—he’d always wondered how she did that—but nodded at the microscope. “You simply close one eye and look down through here.” She demonstrated, silky dark hair escaping her braid and falling forward.

  For a fraction of a second, Jackson had a glimpse of her as an eager young student in medical school, thirsting for knowledge, earnestly pursuing her studies. How he’d longed for the things Leah had—an education, a worthy profession.

  But that profession was getting her into trouble at the moment. He bent and closed one eye, looking into the eyepiece as if sighting down the scope of a rifle. He saw a small circle of...something. And even smaller somethings squirming around in it.

  “The striated fibers are the meat itself,” Leah said. “The little live organisms are the trichinae.”

  “She’s double-talking us!” Gillespie objected.

  “Those are the microbes that cause the bellyaches,” she said in layman’s terms.

  Jackson gave a low whistle. “I’ll be damned.” There was enough fascination in his voice to rouse the curiosity of the onlookers. “You know, Dr. Mundy here didn’t really get up this morning intending to put the butcher out of business. She found a sickness and she found the cause. So instead of calling her names, maybe you’d best take a peek at this and then make up your own minds about the meat.”

  A couple of the women bent to look through the eyepiece. Within moments, everyone else wanted to have a look.

  Gillespie the butcher fumed. “This doesn’t prove a damned thing. The ham’s fine. I know my business.”

  Casually, Jackson took out his buck knife and pretended to study the blade. “Then I guess you won’t mind eating a nice big piece of it right now.”

  Gillespie blanched. “This is none of your business, stranger.”

  Jackson couldn’t agree more. What the hell was he doing, attracting the attention of the whole town with the sheriff looking on? “Maybe not,” he said to the butcher. “But it’s your business. Now, have a bite.”

  “Get away from me with that—”

  His patience gone, Jackson shoved Gillespie up against the porch rail. “You going to eat this or not?”

  St. Croix took a step forward, then stopped, apparently finding the situation more interesting than dangerous.

  “What were those symptoms again, Doc? Bowel eruptions?” Jackson mused. “We’ll watch the butcher, and if he gets sick, then we’ll know.”

  “Mr. Underhill,” Leah said, “that is tantamount to poisoning.”

  Christ, there was no pleasing the woman. He ignored her. “So how about it? You going to eat this ham?” he asked the butcher.

  “I won’t do a thing at your say-so.”

  “Then how about ours?” The pastor’s wife gestured with a furled umbrella. Jackson fancied he could feel the sentiment sway in his favor.

  Gillespie must have sensed it, too. His shoulders sagged, and Jackson let him go. “I didn’t do nothing on purpose.” The butcher pushed past Jackson, scowled at Leah, and left.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said, hurrying away. “I’ve got some meat I’d better bury in the midden.” Several others left with similar comments. To Jackson’s relief, the men dispersed, too, the sheriff, his deputy and the army drifter among them.

  Leah went into the house. He could hear her giving instructions to the patients. She spoke in a clear, authoritative tone. The lady of the house answered in a slightly angr
y and pain-filled voice. Hardly the grateful patient saved from doom by the compassionate physician.

  By the time Leah came back out, Sophie Whitebear had cleared the table and disposed of the bad meat, and everyone else had gone. Jackson waited at the bottom of the steps. Leah didn’t appear to see him as she stepped out onto the porch. She closed the door carefully behind her and then leaned against it, releasing a long, shuddering sigh. Her hand shook as she lifted it to brush a strand of hair out of her eye.

  So vulnerable, he thought. But no one in the town knew that. They couldn’t know that. Because they didn’t look at her. They didn’t look into her eyes and see the lonely soul inside.

  He shouldn’t, either. But he couldn’t help himself.

  “I’ll walk you home, Doc,” he said, drawing her out of her reverie.

  She started. “Mr. Underhill. I didn’t see you there.” She came down the steps, and he stuck out his hand. She passed him her brown leather medical bag, and they fell into step together.

  “Now you’ve seen for yourself what I’m up against,” she said, a twist of irony in her voice. “Ignorance and prejudice.”

  “I guess,” he said carefully. “But you’re also up against fear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many kids does the butcher have?”

  She thought for a moment. “Oh, at least five, I’d say.”

  “Five mouths to feed. And what you did today might run him out of business. That’s why he got mean, Doc. Because he was scared. Not because he doesn’t believe in female doctors.”

  “But I was right,” she insisted. “I told the truth—”

  “You did. In front of the whole town.” He took her hand in his, ran his finger over her knuckles. “This is the hand of a healer,” he said. “But sometimes you use words like a sledgehammer.”

  She stopped walking, snatched her hand away. “Dear God.”

  “What?”

  “My God.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “Of course. Don’t you see? I’m the ignorant one. I do this too often for my own good. I fail to see things from another point of view. All I saw was the bacteria making that family sick.” She started walking again, quick, agitated steps. “I pilloried that poor man before the whole town. I should have gone to him in private and told him the meat was tainted. I should have given him the chance to make things right on his own. Damn.”

  It felt funny, hearing her swear.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she said. “I’ll never learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “To believe what Dr. van Braun once told me back in my student days. Medicine is an art, not a science.” She looked helplessly at Jackson. “It’s my worst failing. I don’t know when to let go of facts and figures and let instinct rule.”

  He suppressed a smile. When it came to her work, she analyzed herself endlessly—and ruthlessly. “Sure you do,” he said. “And here’s your chance.”

  “Where?”

  “Carrie. I want your opinion.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is she really cured, or is it all just an act?”

  * * *

  Leah prayed for the right words to come. She sat in her office, the battered oak desk a heavy barrier between her and Jackson. His long, lanky frame dwarfed the chair he sat in. His wrists lay balanced on his knees.

  “Well?” he prodded.

  “The only honest thing I can say to you at this point is that I’m not certain.” She pressed her hand on the sheaf of papers and journals in front of her. She’d spent hours poring over them, searching for answers that weren’t there. She picked out an extract from a journal and read aloud, “‘Not poppy, nor mandragora/Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world/Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep/Which thou owedst yesterday.’ Shakespeare wrote that. Sometimes I think he’s the wisest of the lot.”

  “Carrie seems so much better,” he insisted. “Happy, rested. Hasn’t had a bad night in days.”

  Leah’s gaze touched on the photograph of her and her father. Odd, the glass seemed to be missing from the frame. She wondered when it had broken and why she hadn’t noticed it until now.

  “Mr. Underhill, the allure of the drug is strong. I can’t promise you Carrie won’t be tempted. I’ve sat up night after night in this office, studying everything I could get my hands on about the disease of addiction. Dr. Penelope Lake, my associate, has supplied me with the latest extracts on the topic.”

  “And?”

  “And the alienists who treat mental disorders claim that therapy should be sustained for a lifetime.”

  “Jesus Christ, Doc—”

  “But the physiologists assert that once the brain chemistry is rebalanced, no further treatment is needed.”

  “And what do you think?” he asked.

  She drummed her fingers on the stack of papers. Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t she simply treat this like another medical case?

  She looked into Jackson’s eyes and saw her answer. She cared too much. Far too much.

  “There is one point upon which all the experts agree, Mr. Underhill. The safest course for a patient like Carrie is to institutionalize her.”

  He stiffened as if someone had stabbed him in the back. “You mean lock her up.”

  “I mean put her in a place where she can rest, where she’ll come to no harm. I know of a residence called Messenger House on an island to the south.”

  His gunmetal eyes snapped with fury, and his face grew cold as stone in winter. “A madhouse,” he said.

  The very word made her shudder. When she was doing her ward studies she had visited places for the insane and had been shocked by the conditions there. Too often, the disturbed found themselves in hellholes of shrieking humanity.

  “No,” she insisted. “There are private facilities where the treatment is humane. Places like Messenger House.”

  Jackson came out of the chair. “I’m not locking Carrie up.”

  “That’s why I suggested Messenger House,” Leah said. “I’ve visited the place myself. There are no bars. Just doctors and nurses who specialize in nervous disorders.”

  “But she’s better, damn it. She’s herself again.”

  Leah felt an actual physical pain in her heart. “I want it to be so, Mr. Underhill. I truly do. Please, just consider a sojourn for her at Messenger House. You can even stay with her for a while—”

  “No. As soon as the boat’s seaworthy, we’re leaving.”

  “What’s your hurry?”

  “I’m getting tired of sanctimonious people looking down their noses at me.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” Leah was relieved. She preferred to have him think her sanctimonious than to know the truth—that he fascinated her, made her heart beat faster, that the sun shone brighter when he was around. Dear God, what was happening to her?

  “If that’s what you think,” she said, “then you’d better leave.”

  He didn’t bother to reply, but turned on his heel and left the room.

  Neatening the stack of already neat papers on her desk, she turned down the lamp. She couldn’t read any longer, not when terrible thoughts plagued her. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that some small, evil part of her wanted Carrie gone.

  Gone, so that Leah could be alone with Jackson.

  “No,” she said aloud, jerking to her feet. It was wrong, she was wrong, and she shouldn’t think such a thing. But all that night, it bedeviled her sleep, and when she awakened and realized what she’d been dreaming of, she buried her head in her hands and trembled with guilt.

  * * *

  “Just a day and a night,” Jackson said. “That’s all the time I’ll be gone, Carrie.”

&nbs
p; She stood with him on the porch of the boardinghouse. She wore a pretty dress the color of cherries and her favorite red shoes. “I know you’ll be back. You always come back.”

  “You’re right about that, sugar.” He came for her when no one else would. When no one else cared.

  Her china-plate eyes regarded him solemnly. “Adam will keep me company while you’re gone.”

  “Will he?” Jackson felt a twinge of...what? Jealousy? Guilt? “Honey, you hardly know the man.”

  “I know him better than I know you,” she insisted, her voice rising. “During all the long days of my recovery, what do you think I did while you were off working on your boat? Talked to the walls? Talked to the furniture?” She clutched her little fringed parasol. “I talked to Adam.”

  “I’m sorry, Carrie. You should’ve said you wanted company. I would have dropped everything. I love y—”

  “Don’t, Jackson.” She held up a dainty hand clad in a crocheted glove. “You’ve always said so, but you’re confusing duty for love.”

  “Damn it, Carrie, I know my own mind.”

  “Yes, but do you know your own heart?” She looked at him steadily, her eyes wide and unwavering, as clear as the summer sky over Puget Sound.

  “I know I spent years looking for you.”

  “And you found me. You kept me safe.”

  It always came back to that. Safety. She craved it with a desperation that Jackson knew was not normal, but he couldn’t blame her. Snatched from her family at age nine, sold into prostitution at age twelve, what else could mean so much to her?

  She stepped forward, putting her gloved hand on his cheek. “I’ll never forget what you did for me. I’ll never forget...Rising Star.”

  Even now, all these months later, he still felt a rush of dread. “I wouldn’t think so.” He tried to swallow past the dryness in his throat. “Do you think about it a lot?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  She looked so distant, as if she sat behind a wall he couldn’t penetrate. He wondered if he’d ever really know her, this icon, this woman he called wife. “Honey, do you ever think of the baby you lost?”