Restoring Harmony

by Joëlle Anthony

  I started to pull on the handle and he stopped me. “You can’t really do it, Molly. We’re playing.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Grandpa walked me through pretending to back up, then shifting to D for drive, and then we were out on the open road. “Canada, here we come!” I yelled.

  “B.C. or bust!” Grandpa shouted.

  Maybe he was more excited about seeing my mom than he’d let on. We rolled down our windows, and I hung my left arm out. “Ahhhh, the wind’s in my hair. . . .”

  “Smell that sea breeze,” Grandpa chimed in.

  “Farmland and mountains are flying by!” I shouted.

  “Watch out for those cows!” Grandpa yelled, laughing.

  I laid on the horn, and it surprised us both by blasting out loud and clear. Not thirty seconds later, the door leading into the house opened and Brandy, Michael, and Grandma stood there looking at us like we were totally nuts.

  “Get in!” I called to them.

  The kids ran across the garage, with Grandma right behind them. They all climbed into the backseat, slamming the doors, yelling, and laughing.

  “Molly’s a crazy driver,” Grandpa said. “She almost ran over a whole herd of cows.”

  We were still goofing around fifteen minutes later when we heard a thud against the garage door behind us. For a second, I thought the car had somehow slipped into gear and we’d rolled back.

  “What the hell was that?” Grandpa asked.

  We all scrambled out of the car and ran through the house to the front door and out into the yard. I was the first to round the corner into the driveway. Doug sat slumped on the ground, leaning against the house as if he’d slid down it.

  When he saw me, he mustered up a wan smile. “Hey, Mol. Is the doctor in?”

  And then he passed out.

  26

  HE WASN’T UNCONSCIOUS FOR LONG, AND GRANDPA and I managed to get him on his feet while Grandma took the kids into the kitchen. At first, we thought he was drunk, but the way he howled when we tried to help him stand made us realize he was injured.

  “Owww! My ribs, my ribs!” he shouted. “Don’t touch my arm, either!”

  In the end, we let him shuffle along, and we walked on either side to make sure he didn’t fall. We took him into the master bedroom and eased him onto the edge of my grandparents’ bed. Then we cut his T-shirt off because he couldn’t raise his left arm more than an inch or two. I gasped when Grandpa peeled the cloth away and exposed skin that was already turning an ugly shade of purple.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Grandpa had gotten his doctor’s bag out of the closet and was listening to Doug’s heart.

  “Fight,” Doug said.

  “Fight or beating?” Grandpa asked.

  “What’s the difference?” he mumbled.

  Grandpa gave him a long look I didn’t understand and then he poked and prodded at Doug for a while, not saying much except “Does this hurt?” which Doug usually answered with “Hell, yes!”

  “Take a deep breath,” Grandpa told him. “Any trouble getting air?”

  “Not really.”

  “I don’t think it’s too serious,” Grandpa finally said. “Your vital signs are strong. The main thing to worry about is a punctured lung, but your breathing seems okay, so I think you’ve only bruised or cracked a couple of ribs.”

  “What about my arm?”

  “A bad sprain. Did you get hit in the head at all?” He shone a tiny light in Doug’s eyes.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good. Well, there’s no sign of a concussion.”

  “Don’t you think he should go to a hospital?” I asked.

  “Like I could pay for that,” Doug said.

  “They won’t do anything for broken ribs,” Grandpa told us. “They’ll just tell you to rest, Doug, so I’ll leave you to it.”

  Grandpa took my arm and led me out into the hallway. “Molly, I don’t like this at all.”

  “Me either,” I said. “I don’t want to take care of him.” I knew I sounded mean, but after Doug had abandoned me at the market, the last thing I wanted was to be his nursemaid.

  “What I mean,” Grandpa said, “is Doug is bad news. It’s not safe for us to have him in this house. We need to get him on his feet as soon as possible.”

  “What do you mean it’s not safe?” I asked.

  “Doug wasn’t in any fight,” Grandpa said. “This was a warning from the Organization.”

  “What do you mean?”

  In the living room Grandpa sat down heavily in the swivel chair.

  “Are you dating this Spill fellow?” he asked.

  “What? Of course not,” I said. I sat down on the couch and looked at him like he was crazy. “Have you noticed me going out on any dates?”

  “Well, you could be sneaking out at night.”

  “I’m way too tired at night,” I said.

  “Yeah. . . .” He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt, even though they were sparkling already. “That’s what I thought. That’s why I wasn’t too worried about you being friends with him even though he works for the Organization, but this is different.”

  “What does Spill have to do with Doug?” I asked.

  Grandpa sighed. “Hopefully, nothing. But I’m guessing Doug owes on gambling debts and what the Organization did today,” he said, “this was just a reminder that they want their money. If they’d been serious, we probably never would’ve seen him again.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. “You mean he owed money so they beat him up?”

  Grandpa nodded.

  “What happens if he can’t pay?” I asked. “You think they’ll do worse?”

  “I’m afraid this is just the beginning.”

  Spill’s words about not letting Doug drag us down with him replayed in my mind, and I knew Grandpa was right. We had to get him out of this house. “Do you think the two of us can move him now?” I asked.

  Grandpa shook his head. “It would be pretty painful for him and difficult for us, but there is one thing that might work,” he said, and I swear he looked a little excited.

  “What?”

  “Well, a few years ago, a colleague of mine developed a treatment for this kind of injury. It’s a double injection,” he explained. “One dose causes an acute reaction to soft and bony tissues, which speeds up healing. The other injection shuts down the nervous system temporarily, giving extreme pain r elief.”

  He kind of lost me in the details, but it didn’t really matter. “Where can I get it?”

  “You can’t. It was never approved by the FDA,” Grandpa said. “Too risky.” He definitely looked excited now. His eyes had a kind of brightness to them. “But if you ride down to the pharmacy and get me the ingredients, I can mix it up.”

  “Make me a list,” I said.

  His excitement was suddenly overshadowed by hesitation. “I don’t know . . . Molly. It’s kind of dangerous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most of the time, it works fine,” he said, “but there are risks. You have to administer the injections at precisely the same moment. If the stimulator injection goes in first, the second one can cause paralysis.”

  “Permanently?” I asked.

  “Well, no. But for a good ten or twelve hours.”

  “That would serve Doug right,” I said, only half kidding.

  Grandpa took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt again. If he wasn’t careful, he’d wear a hole through the lenses. “There is the expense too.”

  I knew exactly where any money to pay for drugs would have to come from. My whiskey money. “Maybe Doug should just tough it out?” I said, even though the most important thing was to get Doug up and on his feet and away from us.

  Eventually, Grandpa wrote a prescription for the ingredients and gave me directions to the hospital, which he said was about five miles past the market. Legally, he was still a doctor, but I still had to wait at the pharmacy
for almost two hours while they checked out his credentials since he didn’t work there anymore. When I finally got home, Doug’s face was white as a chicken’s egg. It took Grandpa almost another hour to mix up the drugs in the kitchen sink and load the serums into each syringe.

  “I taped two syringes together so that I can inject them at exactly the same time,” Grandpa said, showing me.

  “Will it work?”

  He shrugged. “Hope so.” Back in the bedroom, he said to Doug, “This is going to hurt a lot, but in less than a minute, you won’t even remember it, I promise. Try to relax.”

  I thought Grandpa would inject it into the ribs, but instead he took off Doug’s boot. “We’re going to administer it between the toes,” he told me. “I need you to hold his foot down. If he jerks, we could have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” Doug asked.

  “Put all your weight on his ankle, Molly.”

  I leaned over Doug’s foot, pressing down. Grandpa spread his big toe apart from the next one and lined up the dual plunger. “On three,” he said. “One. Two. Three!”

  I didn’t see what Grandpa did, but Doug screamed so loud I was afraid he’d ruptured my eardrum. His leg jerked violently out of my grasp too. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I held him as best I could.”

  “I think we’re okay,” Grandpa said.

  “Maybe you are!” Doug yelled. “What the hell kind of doctor are you?”

  “Do you think it worked?” I asked.

  “We’ll know in a minute or two,” Grandpa said. Sweat dripped down his forehead.

  “Hey! What’s wrong with my leg?” Doug said. “It’s gone all funny and warm.”

  Grandpa smiled. “That means it’s working. The heart is receiving blood and sending it by way of arteries to the rest of the body.”

  The pain on Doug’s face began to ebb away, replaced with a dazed look. “This feels pretty good,” he said. “As long as you didn’t kill me.”

  Unfortunately for Doug, it wasn’t me and Grandpa that he had to worry about.

  27

  September 23rd-World Seed Collection & Distribution Organization established.

  AFTER THE WARNING, GRANDPA DECIDED WE BETTER go to Canada right away. Even though Spill said he was going to be busy for a while, Grandpa didn’t think we should wait for him to come back, and he sent me out every day to look for him.

  I’d seen Randall several times at the market, but I was afraid to talk to him about Spill in case I got him in trouble with the Boss. On my eighth cold morning of no luck, I decided I didn’t have a choice.

  Randall was making his rounds, talking to each vendor, collecting money, and I followed him around for ten minutes, trying to work up my nerve to speak to him. Finally he stopped, turned, and smiled.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You want to talk to me?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “So talk.”

  He was still smiling, and my courage surged a little. “I need to find Spill, er . . . Robert.”

  “He’s away on a job.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’ll be back soon,” he said. “I’ll send him around.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “Oh, and Randall?” I said. “Thanks for, you know . . . the day with the whiskey and everything. Thanks for giving Robert my money too.”

  “What else would I have done with it?”

  “Keep it?”

  “Nah. It was yours. Besides, I took my share.” He tipped his hat at me. “The house always wins, Molly. Remember that.”

  “I will. Thanks again.”

  Two days later, I was standing in the living room playing a classical piece on Jewels that Grandpa had taught me. He and Grandma were sitting in chairs, their eyes closed, smiles across their faces, when someone tapped on the French doors and then Spill stepped into the room.

  “I knocked on the front door, but I guess you couldn’t hear me, so I came in the back way through the creek,” Spill said.

  I kept playing, but I smiled at him and nodded.

  “That was beautiful,” he said when I finished.

  “Nice job, Molly,” Grandpa said. “There are a couple of spots I’d like to go over with the piano, though.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I messed up a little.”

  “So, anyway,” Spill said. “Sorry to interrupt. I won’t stay long. I just wanted to see if tomorrow is good for you to go and sell the whiskey? I have a trailer full of my own stuff, so it would help me out if you come along and haul the whiskey yourself.”

  “Sure, but I don’t have a cart.”

  “I borrowed one for you. It’s in the driveway.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “I should be able to get you in to use a computer too. So you can email home.”

  “That would be fantastic,” I said.

  It had been over two months since I had contacted my family, and I was hoping they’d sent me emails back by now telling me how Mom was doing. Also, tomorrow was Katie’s wedding. At least if I couldn’t be there, I could send her an email.

  28

  September 26th-Fear those who do not fear God.

  -Iranian proverb

  BY THE TIME DAWN PEEKED OVER THE HORIZON, I was already waiting for Spill in the driveway with the trailer hitched to my bike. When he did ride up, he caught me by surprise because he was dressed in a dark suit and a felt hat.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked, laughing.

  “Hey! I look good.”

  “Yeah, but a suit? You look like Randall.”

  “I’m way better looking than Randall. Let’s go.”

  I was still smiling as we maneuvered our way along the dark road. He was right. Randall was short and stocky and probably forty years old. Spill was slender and had a nice smile, and even though I wasn’t exactly sure how old he was, he definitely wasn’t over twenty-five. Probably younger. Probably closer to my age, in fact.

  Still, it unnerved me a little that he was wearing a suit and hat because that meant that this was official business. My stomach turned a little queasy, but what could I do? I had to sell the whiskey or we’d never get home.

  The sun climbed over the hills on our right, promising another glorious fall day. Summer had lasted longer here in Oregon than at home, the hot days carrying over well into September, but the mornings had turned crisp, and for the first time, I remembered that I should be in school already.

  I’d be home soon, though, and it probably wouldn’t be that hard to catch up. This was my last year anyway, but I almost felt too grown up for school. Maybe I wouldn’t even go back. I laughed to myself. Wouldn’t my highly educated family have something to say about that? No, I’d definitely be back in class soon. Hopefully in less than a week.

  We’d ridden north for more than an hour when we came to a wide river. Spill turned east onto a gravel road that soon narrowed into a dirt track. We followed it, twisting through a dense forest. Just as I was about to drop dead from exhaustion, Spill stopped under a fir tree.

  “Listen,” he said, “when we get there, I want you to do exactly what I say and try not to talk to anyone, okay?”

  “What is this place, anyway?”

  “This is a trading post. Just try to keep a low profile, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  We pushed our bikes the last twenty yards and walked out into a large open space. My heart was racing. In the center of the clearing stood a metal barn about ten times the size of ours at home. There was a line fifteen deep of men with bikes and carts who were waiting to get inside. Larger wagons hitched to horses stood in the shade of the trees. Two men in suits guarded either side of the entrance, checking IDs. One of them was Randall.

  “Follow me,” Spill said.

  He cut to the front of the line and wheeled his bike up to the enormous double doors, and I hurried behind him. Randall nodded at him and opened the door for us. No one said a word about us cutting, which I
knew must mean that Spill was someone special.

  “Okay,” he said. “ Try to be invisible.”

  When I stepped through the doors, I was almost blinded. Hanging from the rafters were endless rows of lights, flooding the room with an eerie glow and a lazy buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees. The entire roof must have been covered with solar shingles to power that many lights.

  I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Two men came up to Spill, and he let them lead our bikes and trailers away. On one side of the room were tables loaded with everything you could ever want. Solar phones and computers, bananas, apples, pears, vegetables, clothing, shoes, bikes, wagons, jewelry, canned goods, fresh meat, guns, live rabbits in cages, electric lamps, and a lot of stuff I didn’t recognize.

  On the other side was obviously where you sold stuff. Men in suits sat behind tables and each one had a guard in mirrored sunglasses standing on either side of them. Behind the tables were crates and cartons of whatever they’d purchased that day. In the back of the room were more double doors like the ones at the front, but this time the two guys were taking a “cash donation” to let you out.

  “Don’t stare,” Spill whispered. “You look suspicious.”

  I stared down at the ground. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  He led me over to a long table with about ten computers on it. Most of them were in use, but halfway down the row was a vacant workstation. “I have to go get your money and take care of my sales,” he said. “I’ll be about ten or fifteen minutes. You can use that computer over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  I sat down and Spill vanished into the crowd. When I got my inbox open, I was excited to see I had fourteen messages. I started reading them instead of sending an email. I knew I didn’t have much time, so I skipped over most of the ones asking if I was okay.

  What I wanted to know, though, was about Mom. There was good news, and there was bad. James had come back from his summer job at the winery, and he’d been able to talk Mom into going to bed until the baby came. He’d done what none of us could do, so maybe he was right and he was the favorite. Either way, I was glad. The bad news was the midwife, Mrs. Rosetree, was concerned Mom was now showing signs of gestational diabetes. I’d have to ask Grandpa more about it and find out how dangerous it was.