by Chloe Garner
“He means bullets,” Sarah said dryly, and he tipped his head up, then sat back in his chair. She crossed her arms, continuing. “I had friends in college with syndromes and conditions and anomalies. We haven’t got those in Lawrence. The people there don’t tend to live long enough to have one of those things kill them.”
He was nodding.
“Okay. So, trauma. I can focus on that.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“That’s in the past. I want you to look to the future. I want you diagnosing things that we’ve never heard of in Lawrence. That’s what civilization looks like. Not like bar fights where we need Doc to come glue people back together.”
“I can do that, though,” Sid said.
“So can Sarah,” Jimmy said, indicating with his head. “She’s probably better at it than you are.” Strange, the surge of pride she got at that, considering it was intended to be back-handed. “We need you doing the things that only a doctor trained in the last five years can do.”
“Show up to Lawrence and start handing out death sentences?” Sarah asked. Both men looked at her. “We know how people in Lawrence die. They get killed. Pretty simple. You show up with a bunch of fancy new equipment and ask people to come in to get diagnosed, all you’re doing is asking them to come find out something that’s wrong with them that they never would have known about, otherwise. Wouldn’t have ever been relevant.”
“But there are treatments available,” Sid said. “Quality of life improvements. Every day stuff. Like diet,” he said, motioning with his hand. “Make the right changes to diet and activity level, and someone with Ricca can live like anyone else.”
“Has he ever even heard of gremlin?” Sarah asked. Jimmy shook his head.
“They don’t use it for anything, out here.”
“Gremlin?” he asked.
“Primary grain in Lawrence,” Jimmy said. “They grow it themselves.”
“What else does a Lawrence diet look like?” Sid asked.
“Jerky,” Sarah said. “Gremlin. Maybe some stuff you pick from the other side of the wet line, if you’ve got the time and inclination.”
Sid looked from one to the other of them.
Then grinned.
“It’s all new,” he said. “No old diagnoses to fight with, no one looking for treatments because they heard it might help this odd thing they’ve got going on, nothing. I get to help people that no one has ever helped before.”
Sarah’s temper flared, and she saw Jimmy’s finger twitch. She shut her jaw hard, and Sid smiled.
“I’ve got a lot of research to do, but this is going to be the most important work of my career, I know it is.”
Jimmy nodded.
“As the population gets bigger, I’ll want to bring on a few more doctors, but for now, you’ve got a big project ahead of you.”
“But he works for Doc,” Sarah said. “That’s what you said.”
Sid nodded quickly.
“Oh, I’m not ready to head my own practice,” he said. “Having someone who knows the population and is aware of their issues is really important, starting out.”
Sarah shook her head, and Jimmy’s finger twitched again. A waiter showed up, and Sarah watched Jimmy as he ordered and looked at Sid. The young man glanced at the menu and blanched, presumably at the prices, then ordered as well. Jimmy looked at her, but Sarah hadn’t moved. He ordered for her as well.
“Do you have a messenger service?” Jimmy asked. “I have a set of messages I need to send out.”
“Yes sir,” the waiter said. “I can take those if you like and see that they’re delivered.”
Jimmy nodded, taking out a stack of black, glossy cards and handing them to the waiter. Sarah raised an eyebrow, and Jimmy gave her a little frown and shook his head. Not important.
Not that she’d take his word for it, at this point. He saw the way she reacted and the corner of his eye twitched. She almost came across the table at him.
“You aren’t really how they described you,” Sid said, unwittingly rescuing Jimmy.
“No?” Sarah asked, raising her eyebrows and turning to look at him. Jimmy sensed danger, but wasn’t in position to do anything about it.
“No,” Sid said. “I thought you’d be… bigger. I don’t know.”
“Dustier,” Jimmy supplied. She turned her attention back to him, and he gave her a flicker of smile. He might have been out of position, but he could still draw fire, if he needed to. Sid laughed.
“I never would have put it that way, but yes.”
“More… animal skin,” Jimmy said, rubbing his jawline with his thumb.
“Jimmy Lawson, so help me…”
“There,” Sid said. “Yes. That sounds like how Rich described you.”
Sarah frowned, letting her head roll to the side to look at him. He nodded again.
“And the glare. Yes.” He grinned. “Sorry. Like you said, I was just a kid. I saw these guys as kind of my own personal action squad.”
“It’s a term they use for…” Jimmy started.
“I know what it means,” Sarah snarled, and Sid laughed.
“And you… You were the add-on member who made them invincible, but that none of them could handle, so they broke up and accepted being defeatable because they were all too afraid of what you were capable of.”
Sarah paused.
Looked at Sid coolly, reflecting.
Looked at Jimmy, tipping her head. He picked up his glass of water and inclined it.
“Sid’s observant,” he said. “It’s why I paid for his school.”
She looked back at the kid, playing it all through once more.
“They were terrible to you, weren’t they?”
He nodded quickly, unfazed.
“Sure. Little Peter locked me in a closet once and it took my dad a day and a half to figure out where I was.”
“I remember that,” Jimmy said softly. Sid nodded.
“And Rich and Wade used to take anything I had with me and throw it back and forth over my head until they got bored, and then they’d ruin it.”
“That sounds like them,” Sarah commented and Sid nodded.
“I adored them. They were so tough and none of them cared about anything anyone else thought.”
“I’m not sure you’re the right person to be the doctor in Lawrence,” Sarah said. “Look. I get… No, I don’t even. I don’t understand why you want to take care of people. They’re needy and short-sighted, and they’re all too willing to dump all their problems on you at once the moment they figure out you’re willing to take any of them. But Lawrence isn’t the kind of place you go when you’ve got pretty ideals and aren’t willing to take care of yourself when no one else will.”
Jimmy made a strangled coughing noise, looking out over the sea.
“How long have you had that cough?” Sid asked, looking at him. Sarah gave Jimmy a dry look.
“Oh, he’s had that as long as I’ve known him. Comes from being too smart for his own good.”
Jimmy chuckled without looking at her, and she looked back at Sid and shook her head again.
“Lawrence isn’t the place for a kid like you. I’m sorry.”
Sid pressed his lips between his teeth, finally tearing his attention from Jimmy and looking at her with startlingly clear eyes. He smiled.
“I’m sorry I’ve given you the wrong first impression,” he said. “They say that when you go to spend time with people from your past, you revert to who you were when you spent real time with them, and that one of the hardest things to do is force that relationship to mature. I was a gangly, gawky kid when I knew Jimmy. I assure you, I am a professional, I am capable and competent, and I’ve evaluated many options, concluding that this is the one I want to pursue.” He smiled again. Jimmy still wasn’t watching. “I’m eager by nature. That’s not going to change. But I know what I’m getting myself into.” There was a pause. “Jimmy called you the best of them. Said all the time that they’d left the
best of them behind. I see what he meant.”
Sarah looked at Jimmy, who finally turned his face to let her see it.
“You left,” she said. “You left me, even knowing, even then.”
He nodded.
“It was the only choice.”
She shook her head.
“There’s never only one choice,” she said. “You’re endangering his life, even asking him to come.”
“He has a debt,” Jimmy said. “After that, he’s free to do whatever he likes.”
“Debts to Jimmy Lawson have a habit of turning permanent,” Sarah said, and Jimmy shook his head, taking a sip of his water and turning to look at the ocean again. The setting sun set his skin gold, and his eyes were wide, seeing everything.
“I am a fair man, Sarah. I may not always be honest with people who would just as soon lie to me, and I put my family first, but I’m not taking him prisoner. When his time is paid, he’s free to go anywhere he likes.”
She shifted as the food arrived, watching Sid as he dug in, watching Jimmy as he pointedly ignored both of them, then she turned her head to catch the sea breeze, to take in the spectacular view, one that only the very wealthy could access.
Sid would doctor the folk of Lawrence, and Sarah had no doubt he would do it to the very best of his capability. The folk of Lawrence wouldn’t know what to do with a doctor with his type of opinions, but she’d leave that between Sid and his new patients. She wondered what Doc thought of the whole idea, if he even knew about it.
Jimmy was calm, quiet, through the rest of the meal, and Sarah and Sid had little to say to each other, so there was almost no additional conversation until Jimmy paid. He shook hands with Sid.
“I have business up north. We should be ready to leave in four to five days. Is that enough time?”
“More than enough,” Sid answered. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go ahead without you? I could have everything set up by the time you got back, potentially.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“No. Say what you will about Sarah’s outlook, she’s not wrong that the town is going to be less than receptive to you. Best if you arrive with us.”
Sid nodded.
“I’m not afraid, Jimmy.”
“Because you don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into well enough to be afraid,” Sarah murmured, though neither man answered her directly.
“You’re going to do fine,” Jimmy said. “I’ll call you. Be ready.”
“Always,” Sid answered.
--------
They walked, hand in hand, from there to the hotel, about an hour. Jimmy had made separate arrangements for their bag, which was waiting for them in the entry to the huge room.
“This is too much, Jimmy,” Sarah said as he let her in ahead of him. “Last time was too much. This is just…”
“This is flexing,” Jimmy said. “Nothing more.”
She shook her head, walking across the marble floor to the four-wide doorway that had a large patio balcony overlooking a curated park.
“That we could live with less doesn’t mean that we have to,” Jimmy said, following her through the open doors and standing next to the rail alongside her.
“This is silly money,” she said. “I know that same as you.”
“We have silly money,” he said. “I came back to Lawrence with enough money for us to live like this for the rest of our lives, and just with the half you got from Descartes’ claim bid, you’re worth more than I was. We pick up our money tonight, and you walk away with half of it.” He glanced at her, then relaxed back over his elbows on the railing. “You won’t make the top ten most valuable people I know, but only because of who I know. You’re going to be a wealthy, wealthy woman, Sarah.”
“Doesn’t justify this,” she answered. He smiled out at the view, then twisted his head to look at her without standing up.
“What else are you going to do with all of it?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what that kind of money buys.”
His forehead creased as he turned, leaning against the railing now and looking at her.
“Why did you want it, then? You were a pain in my side over you getting your half and the Lawsons only getting the other half. If you don’t know how to spend it…?”
“Didn’t want the Lawsons getting it,” she shrugged, seeing with some satisfaction the impact as she said it. The tightening down the side of his face. Anger, frustration, bewilderment. “It’s a wrestling match, Jimmy. Between us two. I may not know what to do with that money, but I’d rather I have the leverage than you.”
He scratched his chin.
“That’s how it’s always going to be, isn’t it?”
“We’re on the same side,” she said, allowing herself a long pause to evaluate the words that came next. “I think we always will be. But it doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to spend the entire time wrestling over who gets the reins.”
He nodded, then turned sharply to look out again, so she couldn’t see his face.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, I’m going to need you to start carrying your weight,” he said.
“In what way, exactly?”
“There are expenses to this thing,” he said.
“You want me to ante up for your young doctor friend?” she asked. He laughed, a dark, private laugh that came at stark contrast to the familiarity they’d had walking here.
“No, I’ll cover that out of pocket,” he said. “Building isn’t cheap. Security isn’t either. Getting people’s attention is expensive.”
“Those all sound like your job, to me,” she said, not letting him get to her. She went to sit on a chair, then, patting her pockets, stood and went back into the room, coming out with a leather bag full of gremlin and a stack of papers that she slid into her back pocket.
He looked back at her, watching until she was settled again, then came to sit across from her.
“I’m not your slave,” he said. “It isn’t my job to make things work while you watch on.”
She raised an eyebrow, then lit her cigarette and sat back in her chair.
“Is that what you think I’m going to be doing?”
“Your plate looks pretty empty, from here.”
She laughed.
“You would see it that way. You and your big sky dreaming. You come to a place and you see a blank sheet of paper and your big dreams.” She shook her head, and he put his hand out. She handed the cigarette over to him and leaned back again. “Believe it or not, Jimmy Lawson, there are an awful lot of people living underneath that sheet of paper, and it takes more work than you’d imagine to keep them alive and willing to go along.”
“Ah,” he said. “You manage Lawrence that was, and I work toward Lawrence that will be. Is that how you imagine we divide ourselves?”
“You may have money,” she said. “But it takes people to make your projects happen.”
He spread his hands in front of him.
“People seem to be the one thing I have more of than I need.”
“Not healthy ones,” she said. “Not the kind you can count on when you need them.”
He grinned and leaned out over his knees, unable to contain himself. Wolfish, that grin. Hungry.
“That, Sarah Todd, is what you’re good at. I tell you I need something done, you point at the man I can count on to do it. You don’t see good in anyone just because you want it to be there.”
“Make your point, Lawson,” Sarah said.
“The town needs a sense of structure,” he said. “I see that. But it isn’t going to get that by sticking to the way things have always been and hoping that the change doesn’t wipe them out. We need medical facilities. We need educational facilities. We need housing and recreation, a jail, power, water, and sewer infrastructure. People working all of those things. Those take professionals who know what they’re doing, and they take men who want to work a job and come home every da
y rather than dig in the ground and hope for luck to rescue them. We need a place that women are going to come to find opportunity and stability. Lawrence can’t offer any of those things, and the path between here and there… Everything just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and if this is about control, about power, you don’t get to have an equal say in how we do things without paying your share of it, too.”
“Is that really what this is about?” Sarah asked. “Money?”
“No,” Jimmy said, finally taking a drag on his cigarette and leaning back into his chair again. “It isn’t.”
He turned to face the balcony again, and she frowned.
“What is it about?”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I know what I want. I can see it. I can taste it. But it isn’t going to work if you aren’t with me. It would. If you weren’t there at all, I could do it. But if you’re pushing against me, it’s all going to blow up and I’m…” He shook his head. “It feels right being back in Lawrence. I missed it. There’s money up in the mountains, and it just flows right across that town, like the flood, and it’s a question of catching enough of it and keeping it there, and if we can do that… Sarah, we can do anything.”
He finally looked at her again and she shrugged.
“You know I can’t promise you anything.”
He sighed.
“I never know what to make of you. I trust you more than my own brothers, but I know that when I tell them to do something, every one of them is just going to do it. They might say something stupid about it, but I know they’re going to do it. You…”
“Better than all of them,” she said. “If you wanted someone who did what you wanted, you wouldn’t put up with me. You wouldn’t even like me. You need someone who engages you at the idea stage, tells you you’re wrong and makes you prove it, makes you make it work.”
He laughed, finishing his cigarette and smashing it under his heel on the cement.
“How about you?” he asked. “Why do you need me?”
She took her time answering, feeling squeezed. Admitting she needed him was still novel, hard, still felt against her best interest. It was asking her to reveal a weakness, even if they both already knew about it.