The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Ayers! Phone call!”

  Martha looked up, and then down at her watch. It was far too early for LeDonne to check on her. He usually waited until eleven at night, when the rates went down. Besides, he had called day before yesterday, which meant that it was Martha’s turn to phone him. She couldn’t think who else it could be.

  “Martha! It’s Jennaleigh.”

  Martha felt her throat tighten. This wasn’t a social call. The new dispatcher was not a close friend of her predecessor; they would have nothing to say in a long-distance chat. “What is it, Jennaleigh?” Martha’s voice was brisk. Her mind had fast-forwarded through half a dozen tragedies in the moments it took her to ask the question.

  “Is everything okay with you in the training program?” asked Jennaleigh. “We got your postcard. Listen, LeDonne would skin me if he knew I was calling you, but I figured you’d want to know. Men just don’t understand about that, do they?”

  No, thought Martha, but they get to the point quicker. “What is it?” She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  “The sheriff has been hurt. He’s in the hospital in Johnson City. LeDonne is in a state about it, and he had me calling all over creation today, but he said you weren’t to be disturbed.”

  “What’s the matter with Spencer?”

  “—On account of your training and all,” said Jennaleigh, as if she had not been interrupted. “If you miss any days of classes or whatever, you have to start right back at the beginning, and that will take another six weeks, so—”

  “I know about the course requirements,” said Martha. “What I don’t know is what happened to Sheriff Arrowood. Now are you going to tell me, or do I have to call Joe?”

  At the mention of LeDonne, Jennaleigh gave a little gasp. “You can’t let on I told you.”

  Martha waited.

  “He got shot.”

  “Spencer? How?” He was cleaning his gun, and he got himself in the foot, Martha thought. Surely in a place as calm as Hamelin, nothing menacing had happened. And not to Spencer, for God’s sake. LeDonne bristled most of the time, spoiling for a fight, to feed the combat high he missed so much from his Vietnam days. To hear that LeDonne had been wounded would be logical; Martha had long been afraid that someday somebody would take him up on the tacit invitation to fight that was in his every look and gesture—but Spencer? He’d lock up a drunk, and then buy him breakfast the next morning. What enemies could he have? None, of course. The badge did, though. She could imagine a lot of young toughs who would shoot at a khaki uniform without knowing or caring about the man who wore it. “Tell me how it happened, Jennaleigh.”

  “You know the Stallards? Live up the mountain a ways?”

  “Yes.” She remembered Tate from high school. But there hadn’t been any other sons, and surely Mr. Stallard was past seventy now. “Go on.”

  “Well, they lost their farm to back taxes. There was an auction, and Mr. Whitescarver from the realty bought the place, but I guess the Stallards wouldn’t leave, so he made Sheriff Arrowood go up there and kick them out.”

  Martha winced. He’d rather shoot himself in the foot than have to do that, she thought. “When was this?”

  “This morning. Seems like weeks ago, though, with all that’s happened. Anyhow, we got a call from Mr. Stallard saying that Spencer had been shot. By Dovey Stallard. A white female, age—”

  “I know her,” said Martha. She said nothing about Jennaleigh’s lapse into jargon. At least the girl wasn’t hysterical. She might make a dispatcher yet, Martha thought. “How bad is he?” she asked.

  “Well, the doctors say critical, but they always say that to cover their butts in case somebody kicks off unexpectedly. The sheriff got hit side-on, as he was trying to throw Mr. Whitescarver to the ground, so he’s hit in the side, and he’s got internal injuries. He’s still unconscious, last I heard.… Listen, I can’t talk long. LeDonne is turning this place into a command center. He’s got all kinds of people coming in to help.”

  “Help with what?”

  “The search. Didn’t I tell you? Dovey Stallard fled from the scene. She’s armed, and she hasn’t been apprehended. There’s a big search going on, with officers from Unicoi and Carter coming in to help, and some city police from Erwin and Johnson City. LeDonne even had me call the ATF to ask them to send in their heat-seeking plane in case we have a night search.”

  “I’ll come back,” said Martha.

  “No! That’s just what LeDonne was afraid of. Why he wouldn’t call you. Listen, it’s more important than ever for you to finish that course now. Don’t you see? Even if Sheriff Arrowood does recover—I’m sure he will, Martha. Honest!—he’ll need time to recuperate. That means we’ll need another deputy, because we can’t run this department with only one officer. You have to stay and get qualified.”

  The fact that Jennaleigh was right made Martha even angrier. Of course she needed to get qualified, but she also needed to be searching those hills for Dovey Stallard before LeDonne went and got himself killed by an armed suspect. He would be spoiling for a confrontation now. This foolish frightened young woman had shot Spencer Arrowood. Joe LeDonne wouldn’t want to take her alive.

  “I have to go now, Martha,” said Jennaleigh in a hoarse whisper.

  “I need to talk to LeDonne.”

  “He’s not here right now, but some of the other officers are beginning to arrive.”

  “Okay. I’ll try to reach him later.” Martha hung up the phone and leaned against the wall. She had to stay here at Walters State, and try to keep her mind on her work. Spencer would order her to stay, if he could. She would have to trust Joe LeDonne—something she had got out of the habit of doing.

  * * *

  No time. No time. The operating room team knew the drill, without anyone having to spell it out. The surgeon was scrubbing now; prep had to be done in minutes and seconds. The circulating nurse dumped the betadine straight from the bottle over the patient’s chest and abdomen. No time to scrub him, or to remove the body hair from the area to be operated on. The drape was placed over the body, covering all but the skin of the belly.

  “He’s having some difficulty breathing.”

  Peter O’Neill nodded to the resident who had spoken. “All that blood in his abdominal cavity is impeding the movement of the diaphragm. Let’s see where it’s coming from.” He made a midline incision from the tip of the sternum to the pubic symphysis. As the abdominal cavity opened, the surgeon stepped back a pace as the anticipated gush of blood spurted out. O’Neill waited while the staff cleared it away with sucker tips—tubing connected to suction bottles in the wall. He probed the left kidney, the renal arteries and renal vein. “So far so good,” he muttered. “Bullet missed the kidney. Ah, found the gusher. Lacerated spleen. Kelly clamp.”

  The surgeon explored the cavity, tossing palm-sized blood clots on the floor, finally exposing the injured organ. Now that the pressure of the accumulated blood had been removed, the spleen began to spew more blood.

  “This is the Wake County sheriff,” the resident remarked as he watched the surgeon work. “And the shooter is still at large. If we lose this patient, they’ll be turning east Tennessee upside down in the manhunt. Roadblocks everywhere.”

  O’Neill grunted. “He should consider a less hazardous line of work.”

  It would only take four minutes to remove the spleen, but they seemed long enough when the patient was in shock from a gunshot wound. Working with methodical haste, Peter O’Neill clamped off the spleen’s attached vein and artery, and severed them. Then it was a few moments’ work to remove the injured organ. It landed with an inelegant plop, ignored by all those present. They went on with their tasks, while O’Neill continued to suction and tie and sew.

  The bleeding had stopped. Now they could see if there was anything else to worry about. O’Neill paused and took a deep breath, before probing for other injuries. Liver, pancreas, diaphragm, aorta, left kidney again. It checked out. “He’s lucky,” he told
the staff. “Bullet nicked a rib on the way in, and missed most of the good stuff. Found it!” He fished the reddened bullet out of the abdominal cavity, and held it up. The nurse held out a shallow metal pan, and the surgeon tossed the bullet into it with the flourish of a free-throw shot. When it landed with a resonating clang, there was a brief silence. This ballistic tympany was a tradition with Peter O’Neill, picked up from westerns, perhaps, or old medical movies.

  He was about to tell the chief resident to close.

  “He’s in v-fib!” There wasn’t time for the anesthesiologist to say “ventricular fibrillation.” No time. No time.

  Somebody called for a crash cart.

  “Want me to stand back?” asked O’Neill.

  They swarmed around him. “Packs! Packs!”

  “Right.” He put wet laps—rectangular gauze pads—where the spleen used to be, and removed all retractors from the wound. “Want me to crack the chest?”

  The anesthesiologist was injecting drugs into the art line. He waited a moment, and then checked his machine. He nodded to the surgeon. “Flat line. Get in there.”

  We’re losing him.…

  No time. No time.

  * * *

  Spencer Arrowood felt as if he were drifting. Sometimes on summer afternoons when he was a kid, Spencer and his brother Cal had gone to the river with huge black inner tubes from truck tires. On still summer afternoons when the heat blurred the air over the valley, they had gone tubing down the river to cool off. A long stretch of the Nolichucky was smooth and deep, and you could lay back in the inner tube and float slowly and soundlessly along, dangling your feet in the water, lulled to sleep by the cool serenity of the shady river.

  He felt that way now. As if he were on an inner tube, being pulled along on a steady current to nowhere in particular.

  “Hello,” said the old man.

  It seemed odd to be able to see the old man, and yet not any of the surroundings, the river or whatever it was. Spencer’s mind seemed to be moving as slowly as the inner tube. He tried to think of something companionable to say to this elderly stranger, who seemed far too old to be floating on the river. He wondered where his brother Cal was.

  “He’s up ahead,” said the old man, so Spencer thought that perhaps he had spoken aloud.

  “Peaceful out here, isn’t it?” said Spencer. He wondered if he knew the old fellow. He looked like somebody from these parts: short and wiry, with sparse white hair, and blue eyes with squint lines at the corners. Some farmer from back up the hollows, surely.

  “Peaceful. Yes. It’s supposed to be.” The old man smiled at him. “I’ve been out here a while, to where I’m used to it.”

  Part of Spencer’s mind was trying to remind him that Cal had died in Vietnam, and that he was the sheriff of Wake County, not a skinny teenager who should be tubing on the river. He couldn’t feel the water on his legs, somehow. And it was March, wasn’t it? Somewhere … it was definitely March.

  “Rapids up ahead,” the old man remarked. “Picking up speed. Feel it?”

  He did feel something, an urgency about the current beneath him, and at the same time a feeling that he should fight it, make his way back upstream.

  “You’re meant to go back,” said the old man.

  “What about you?”

  “Got some people waiting for me on the shore down there. Waiting to pick me up. My sister. She may be angry with me. I need to tell her I’m sorry about some things. But I don’t think there’s anybody meeting you. Not yet.”

  “Maybe you could give me a lift home,” said Spencer. Had he left dry clothes somewhere on the riverbank? Had he ridden his bike?

  The old man smiled and shook his head. “Your people are waiting upstream.”

  The conversation was broken abruptly by noise and lights, and a feeling that people were poking him. Spencer felt as naked now as a boy in the river, but the wetness was in his chest and shoulders, not his legs. Before he had time to puzzle out what that meant, he dropped back into a dreamless state of oblivion.

  * * *

  Jane Arrowood wondered if people always stood up when a doctor came out into the hall to tell them the news. It wasn’t respect or awe for the physician, she thought, but some sense of the enormity of the message—that it should be received standing, with as much stoicism as one could muster. Prisoners stood in the courtroom when sentence was passed on them. It was something like that.

  She had been waiting a long time in the waiting area reserved for loved ones of those in surgery. She had crumpled her good winter coat into a pillow, and there were coffee stains on the skirt of her gray wool dress, but she was not concerned now with her appearance. Surely doctors saw nothing but the eyes of their patient’s family: the staring, pleading eyes that waited to hear what sentence would be pronounced on their loved one.

  “Mrs. Arrowood?” He was a youngish man, and he looked tired, too. He could have done with a bath and a shave. The name tag on his white coat said: Peter O’Neill, M.D. “Sit down, please.” He waved her to a plastic chair and took the one next to her.

  “How is he?” Jane felt as if most of her were still standing.

  “Spencer is out of danger now, I think. The bullet missed a lot of chances to really mess him up. All he lost was his spleen.”

  Jane felt tears spill onto her cheeks. “Is that bad?”

  “He can live without it. The spleen is like a big sponge. It holds an extra amount of blood in case your body happens to need it for emergencies. So he’s lost that, and maybe he’ll be more susceptible to colds and things. Nothing major. If that bullet had hit him on the right side, it would have been a different story. Then it would have taken out the liver, and we’d have lost him.”

  “But he’s all right?” Jane kept asking it. She could not hear the answer often enough.

  “He is. He’ll be on a ventilator for a while, so he won’t be able to talk even if he comes to, but it’s only for support. We’ll remove it when he regains consciousness, which should be sometime after midnight, if all goes well. He’s had a rough day.” The surgeon let out a deep sigh, and patted Jane Arrowood’s shoulder. “We all have.”

  Something in the doctor’s voice made her wary. “Is there something else?”

  He sighed, and ran a hand over his unkempt hair. “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Arrowood, we almost lost him in there.” He nodded toward the operating room. “He had been in shock a long time before they got him off the mountain and into the operating room, and it was almost too much for his system. We got a flat line for close to a minute, and we had to work to bring him around. But he’s young and fit. He came back strong, and we got the bullet out. Removed the spleen. He’ll have a good long scar for the rest of his life, but that’s about the worst of it. He’s in recovery now, still unconscious, of course.” He looked at her worn face and reddened eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d consider going home?”

  Jane shook her head. She had been dreading this night for a long time—ever since her son was first elected sheriff. She had nightmares about it sometimes, and the memories were always mixed up with those of her older son, Cal. She hadn’t been able to keep a vigil over his dying. Two uniformed army officers had come to her door one spring night in 1966 to tell her that, half a world away, her boy was dead. Bad enough to have to go on living after that. Then Spencer had gone into police work. He must find a job that risked his life every single day. She wondered sometimes if he were still competing with his older brother—if getting shot at were the whole point of it for him. And now it had come.

  She had lived through this vigil many times in her imaginings, and she would not abandon it now that it had come. “It’s safe for me to leave for a while. You’re certain?”

  “He’s going to have to take it easy for a while, but I think he’ll make it through this without any permanent damage. Try to see that he’s not a damned fool about going back before he’s ready.”

  Jane bowed her head. There were no words for the magnitude of her
relief.

  Dr. O’Neill glanced around the waiting room. “I should let the sheriff’s department know that he’s out of danger, shouldn’t I? I’m told that they have been calling regularly”—he permitted himself a wry smile—“almost constantly, in fact, to ask about your son’s condition. Will you call them, or shall I?”

  Jane felt suddenly tired. She had been in the hospital since early afternoon, and she couldn’t remember whether she had eaten or not. “You call them, please,” she said. “You may have to leave a message, though. I think they’re out searching for the person who did this.”

  Dr. O’Neill frowned. “I hope they’re not drumming up more business for me.”

  “I hope not, either,” said Jane Arrowood. She meant, but did not say, that when it was over, she hoped that the officers in the search party would come out unscathed, and that the person they were looking for would be past needing the services of Peter O’Neill, M.D.

  * * *

  Kayla pulled her coat more tightly around her. It was getting dark now, and an occasional gust of wind would find them in the trees, making her shiver. They had been walking uphill for a long time. Kayla wasn’t sure which way home was now or how far they had come, but she was tired. She was hungry, too, but she could tell that it wouldn’t do any good to ask for food. There plainly wasn’t any. Kayla had some jelly beans in her pocket, but she hadn’t bothered to eat any. She might need them worse later.

  The lady with the gun had let her sit down on a rock for a few minutes to catch her breath. Then they would walk some more. “I don’t reckon we can build a fire?” Kayla said softly.

  Dovey Stallard shook her head. “No. We shouldn’t talk, either. Somebody might be close enough to hear us.”

  “Nah,” said Kayla. “Posses are pretty noisy. They got dogs and flashlights, and walkie-talkies, and they yell all the time. If they were coming up on us, we’d know it.”