by Nevada Barr
“Rest,” Patience said. “Lie back, Anna. Let yourself sleep for just a second. Nothing bad can happen in a second.”
“Fuck you,” Anna whispered. Taking a fold of flesh from the inside of her cheek, Anna bit down till she tasted salt, hoping this new pain would focus her mind, but it was lost in myriad others.
White light came, surrounded her, surrounded the Venture. Tendrils of fog glowed like fingers lifting her to the stars.
“Anna. Anna.” A sweet and gentle voice filled the illumined air; a voice bigger than anything human, a voice booming from all directions at once. A voice so kind Anna knew now, finally, she could let go of this world and glide into the next.
“Damn,” she said. “I’m in for it now.”
TWENTY EIGHT
“…Cut nearly in half. Look: it’s blood, blood in the sawdust.”
“Immortality is in your hands…”
“A needle and thread is all.”
“And a Dustbuster.”
“Put her down there, Dave.
“Carrie…”
Anna’s mind tuned in and out of the world around her. Twice she’d asked: “Whose blood?”
Tinker was there somehow. She’d answered, “Yours. Mixed with his.”
“Sawdust,” Damien had corrected his wife and Anna had lost the thread. She’d felt herself lifted easily, as easily as if she were a kitten, and knew it was not by Damien. Once she’d forced open her eyes and thought she’d seen Pizza Dave’s face, big as a harvest moon, floating above her.
“That can’t be right,” she’d said and heard vaguely someone saying, “Hush. Rest now.”
Somewhere in the distance she thought she heard Patience’s low voice pitched in persuasive tones as if selling something. “Don’t buy it,” she had mumbled, wishing she could speak more clearly.
Then there was Ralph’s voice and engines roaring. Anna came fully awake in a small compartment made up of equal parts noise and darkness. She stared up through a window. The sky was glittering with stars and a half-moon. Her feet were raised and stretched toward a panel lit by subdued, green, circular lights. She lay on her left side, her head lower than her feet.
Every part of her hurt. Her chest burned and sharp points of pain pierced her shoulder and knees. Tentatively, she wriggled her toes. They worked just fine. Over the years she had taken a few tumbles; bones had broken, muscles torn. The terror was always for the spine-paralysis. Again she’d gotten off lightly.
Then she remembered she’d not fallen off a Texas mountain, not been tossed from a horse. The lake had crushed her in its dark embrace. The damage would be internal, as dangerous and inexorable as the deep. “Oh dear…” she whispered.
“ ‘Bout time,” came a friendly voice.
Carefully, so as not to dislodge it from her shoulders, Anna turned her head to see who had spoken. “Ralph.” The District Ranger sat in the seat next to the board she was lashed to. She was glad to see him and felt bad that her voice sounded so dull. To let him know how welcome a sight he was, she tried to pat his knee, but her arm was tied down. “Ralph.” She repeated his name. It was all she could manage.
“It’s okay, Anna. You’re okay. We’re in the seaplane. Sid is flying low as he can so your decompression sickness won’t be made any worse. We’re almost to Duluth. There’s a medevac helicopter waiting there. They’ve got everything-even hot and cold running paramedics. They’ll be taking you to the hyperbaric chamber in Minneapolis. You’re going to be okay.”
“Backcountry…”
Ralph put a warm hand on her forehead to quiet her. “Lucas and I heard your little radio drama,” he said. “We just couldn’t call out. I was for going to bed and letting you fight off the forces of evil alone, but you know Lucas, he’s a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. Made us do a forced march out in the dark. We got there just as the kids were dragging the bodies back into Rock. Lucas got the perpetrator to take care of. I got you.”
For a second time Anna tried to touch him, to let him know she’d heard, understood, appreciated. “My arm,” she complained, encountering the bandages.
“Routine packaging,” Ralph reassured her. “There’s nothing wrong with your arm. I just bandaged it to keep you from moving it and opening the cut on your chest. Nothing too serious,” he went on. “You’ll still look terrific in a bathing suit. Just a scratch half an inch deep or so and about ten inches long. Looks worse than it is and it bled a lot. You were quite a mess of blood and sawdust when Lucas and I saw you.”
“Sawdust?” Anna remembered hearing the word before. It had made as little sense to her then as it did now.
“Yeah. What were you doing with a teddy bear stuffed down the front of your dry suit anyway? Patience cut it in half. The suit was full of stuffing. Worked, though. She would have done a lot more damage with that fish gaff, maybe killed you. The bear took the blow, then the sawdust stopped your bleeding. Tomorrow I’ll put in a wire to the LAPD. Body armor is out. Toy bears are in for officer safety.”
“Oscar.” Anna turned her head away, felt the tears stinging her eyes, rolling down into her hair.
The paramedics on the medevac helicopter were efficient and kind. Anna was unsurprised. In her brief stay in the northern Midwest, she had found most Minnesotans to be efficient and kind. The helicopter-an Augusta, she was proudly informed-covered the distance between Duluth and Minneapolis in just over an hour.
Ralph stayed beside her. Demoted from primary care-giver to companion, he was strapped into a seat at the foot of her stretcher. “I feel like the mother of the bride,” he joked.
Anna’s mind could not make sense of the remark. “Why?” she demanded.
“Just something to say,” Ralph soothed her. “Seeing you all in white and fussed over, nobody knowing where to put me. Take it easy, Anna. I won’t try to be funny anymore.”
“Good.” As she drifted off, she heard him laughing.
When she reasserted herself in the conscious world, the helicopter was setting down.
“We’re there,” said one of the paramedics, a strong, handsome woman with big teeth and hair badly in need of re-perming. “Ninth floor, Hennepin Medical Center. We’ll have you in Jo’s submarine shortly.”
“Lost my sense of humor,” Anna apologized wearily, guessing the paramedic, like Ralph, had made a joke. The woman just smiled and squeezed Anna’s shoulder gently.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said.
“Submarine” was an apt description of the hyperbaric chamber. An oxygen mask on her face, Anna managed to sleep out most of her seven-hour stint as the pressure was dropped and slowly brought back up. The last thing she remembered clearly was a friendly smile and the woman behind it saying, “Relax. We work well under pressure.”
Hospital rooms always put Anna in a foul mood. Even more so when she was the inmate. Disconsolately, she stared out over the roof scape. Black asphalt sent up shimmering curtains of heat. Turkish-domed ventilators and galvanized aluminum excrescences completed the monotony. Minneapolis’s ultra-urban skyline blotted out most of the blue. A thin line of green trees advertised Marquette Avenue but so feeble an outpouring of life in the concrete only depressed Anna further.
To cheer herself, she contemplated a shopping spree when the doctors turned her loose. Cities were for Things. Anna began to list all the things she would buy. On a GS-7’s twenty-two thousand a year, the list was necessarily short and only kept her amused for a couple of minutes. Channels 4, 5, 9, and 11 didn’t hold her attention that long.
Boredom had set in so solidly that when a nurse poked her head in the door Anna was actually glad to see her. Even a shot or a pill would be a diversion. The news was better yet: “You’ve got visitors,” the woman announced and was replaced by Christina Walters.
“Thank God!” Anna said. “A person, a real, live human being who doesn’t smell like antiseptic. Come here and let me smell you.”
Christina laughed and crossed the room to kiss Anna’s cheek.
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br /> “Ahhh.” Anna collapsed back against her pillows. “ ‘White Shoulders.’ So much more pleasing on females than benzene.”
Ally bounded up on the opposite side of the bed. “Smell me, Aunt Anna.”
Anna grabbed the little girl by the ears and sniffed deeply on the top of her head. “Hmmm… What is that divine scent you’re wearing?” She sniffed again. “Rotting squirrel guts? No…” Ally squirmed and giggled. “ ‘Eau de Road-kill’? No… I’ve got it! ‘Essence of Dog Vomit’!” Ally squealed with delight.
“For heaven’s sake,” Christina sighed. “Ally will be completely beyond redemption by the time she’s old enough to drive.”
“You must be ladylike or the boys won’t like you,” Anna intoned ominously. “No more bat-dung hair mousse.”
“Boys. Ish.” Ally tossed her head with such disdain that Anna and her mother laughed.
“Ally, settle down,” Christina said comfortably. “Get your Aunt Anna her present and then we’ll see what can be done with her. If anything.”
Alison thumped off the bed and ran to dig through the oversized shoulder bag her mother had dropped just inside the doorway. She returned with a paper sack and climbed back up onto the bed.
“Don’t bounce Aunt Anna,” Christina cautioned her. “She’s been saving the free world. It’s not as easy on her as it used to be.”
Anna sniffed.
“It’s in the bag,” Alison said. “We didn’t wrap it because it’s not your birthday or anything.”
Anna reached into the proffered sack and pulled out a plastic-wrapped package.
“Pajamas,” Ally announced.
Anna ripped them free of the cellophane. “They’ve got little Garfields on them,” she complained ungraciously.
Christina arched a perfect eyebrow. “Ally picked them out,” she reproved. “She thought the orange cat motif would keep you from missing Piedmont.”
“Nobody wants to be sick without a cat,” Ally added.
“I love them,” Anna said. “Almost as much as I love you.” She captured the child and covered her head with loud smoochy kisses.
“Stop!” Ally cried, but she was holding tightly to Anna’s neck. “Put ‘em on,” she demanded when the attack was subsiding.
Dutifully Anna took off her hospital gown. The ten-inch slash was exposed. The bandages had been removed to let the air get to it. Encrusted black with blood, the edges pale, the laceration ran from her left shoulder almost to her right nipple.
“Oh, honey…” Christina ran out of words. Even Ally was quiet.
Sympathy unmanned Anna. So far, sheer cantankerousness had kept her from feeling sorry for herself. Ralph had been wrong. She wouldn’t be admired in a bathing suit. Not unless her date was Freddy Krueger.
“Boy, Aunt Anna,” Alison breathed. “Like Zorro. Will it make a scar?” she asked hopefully.
“Alison!” her mother exclaimed. “Whose little girl are you?”
“We can keep our fingers crossed,” Anna laughed, feeling suddenly better.
“I have news, but it can wait.” Christina took charge of the situation. “The nurse here may be efficient, but they have no sense of aesthetics. You look like last season’s prom dress. Get me my bag, honey.” Somewhat subdued after her mild reprimand, Alison fetched the shoulder bag without comment. Chris took out what she deemed life’s necessities: a natural-bristle brush, a lipstick, cream rouge.
“Last time I landed in the hospital you played the role of administering angel. Doesn’t it get a bit old?” Anna asked.
“Very old,” Christina retorted crisply. “Take better care of yourself in the future.”
In a high, piping voice, Ally began to sing: “Button up your overcoat…”
Anna relaxed. Christina knew the best medicine. Healed in body by antibiotics and the hyperbaric chamber, healed in soul by well-dressed hair and a little cheek color. Healed in soul, Anna admitted as the other woman deftly brushed and French-braided her hair, by knowing someone was genuinely glad you had lived.
“What’s your news?” Anna asked when Christina, satisfied with her efforts, was stowing away the hairbrush and makeup in her capacious bag.
“The Houghton police found Donna Butkus’s body,” she replied without preamble.
“Jesus!” Anna sat up straight and felt the sudden pull of the torn flesh of her chest.
“He didn’t eat her up after all,” Alison said disappointedly.
“Where?” Anna demanded.
“In the police station of all places.” Chris sat down in the vinyl armchair beside the bed.
“Nitrogen narcosis.” Anna rubbed her eyes. “Does this make sense to you?” she appealed to the five-year-old Alison who, ensconced at the foot of the bed, was folding the pajama wrapping into a transparent fan.
“Yup. She wasn’t eaten at all. She wasn’t even dead. She was only hiding.”
“Once Roberta made a formal missing persons report to the police, they started looking. Donna got nervous and came back to Houghton to get Bertie to hush things up. Scotty was-” Christina shot a look at her daughter. Ally seemed absorbed. “Beating Donna.”
“I guessed that.”
“Oh. Anyway, Donna told Bertie it was only when he drank and it wasn’t too bad-”
Anna snorted her disgust.
Chris touched her arm. “We don’t all have the courage of a lion or a big gun to back it up with.”
“I know,” Anna apologized. “Go on.”
“Then he started having-” Again the look at her daughter. Ally showed no sign of interest. Chris continued in a lowered voice: “Impotency problems. The beatings got bad then. Denny’s wedding really set him off. I guess he thought Donna was pining or something. He beat her bad. She ran off. Pizza Dave found her and took her to Thunder Bay in his boat.”
“In the taxpayers’ boat,” Anna corrected. “Dave doesn’t own a boat. It’s a firing offense. That must have been why he didn’t tell me what had happened to Donna.” Then she remembered the short exchange over the racket of Dave’s tractor. He had tried to tell her Donna was all right.
“Donna asked him not to tell anyone,” Christina said. “She was afraid Scotty would find her.”
“And Scotty told lies because he was afraid we’d all find out his pretty young wife had run out on him.”
“Donna’s staying with her sister,” Chris finished. “Bertie was going to help her with the divorce papers and everything.”
“The old stallion is destined for the glue factory,” Anna said unsympathetically.
Around four o’clock Christina and Ally deserted to go shopping. They placated Anna with the promise of another visit the following day before they started the long drive back up to Houghton.
Anna was left with her new pajamas, two glossy fashion magazines, a bundle of mail Chris had brought down from the park headquarters office in Houghton and, because Chris truly loved her, a Leinenkugel smuggled in past what Christina had been sure were vice cops in the uniforms of hospital orderlies.
Camouflaging the beer in a moderately clean sock, Anna began to sort through her interoffice mail. Lucas had put out another FYI memo regarding the status of the Denny Castle murder. The case had been officially closed with the arrest of Patience Eva Bittner on suspicion of murder, attempted murder, assault on a federal officer, theft of federally protected historical artifacts, vandalism, and diving without a permit. At the bottom of the memorandum, written in the Chief Ranger’s hasty scrawl was a note: “Carrie Ann’s been shipped off to her dad in Redwood, CA. J.T. offered to look after her till plane time-” Anna smiled. She’d read enough of Lucas Vega’s memos to recognize the dash. He used it as a literary version of putting his tongue in his cheek.
Anna shuffled through the tedious bits: a flier announcing the July 25 Chrismoose festivities, a copy of the Superintendent’s schedule, minutes from the last safety meeting. Government offices always seemed anxious to put in writing and circulate all information of no interest or value. T
he important things had to be discovered through the grapevine.
A plain white envelope with “PIGEON” printed on it in block letters looked promising. Anna ripped the end off and tipped the contents out into her lap. There was a clipping from the Duluth paper with a yellow Post-it note stuck to it. “WHATEVER WE CAN THINK UP, SOMEBODY IS OUT THERE DOING IT. F.S.”
Anna removed the note and read the clipping. Federal Agent Frederick Stanton had made his drug bust. He’d nailed the captain of the Spirogyra on two felony counts. The man had been purchasing peyote for resale as part of the entertainment experience on Spirogyra party excursions, and, as a sideline, transporting cocaine across international boundaries.
“Go Frederick,” Anna said. She had nothing against the Spirogyra, but the excitement generated by the bust would knock the 3rd Sister out of the local gossip ring. Hawk and Holly deserved a break.
The following morning Anna was told by her doctor that she’d be incarcerated in Hennepin County Medical Center for another day and a half. On hearing the news, it was her intention to give way utterly to sullen peevish depression. The ninth-floor nurses were spared this event by the arrival of Christina and Ally. They brought in apple turnovers and fresh-ground deli coffee just as Anna was preparing to complain about her breakfast.
When they left, she was in such a good mood it lasted till her next visitors arrived in midafternoon.
As Student Conservation Associates, Tinker and Damien had only a six weeks’ long season. They’d come to Minneapolis to catch a plane to Damien’s mother’s place on Nantucket Island.
“Nantucket,” Anna remarked. “So you did know how to drive a boat.”
“Yes. When we didn’t hear from you, we fetched Pizza Dave,” Damien told her.
“He was the largest person we could think of,” Tinker explained.