The SEAL's Return

by Patricia Potter

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ll bring it back,” Gordon said.

  “Good guess. That’s an advance for materials. You owe me the labor.” He looked at his watch. “You better go now so you can report back with time to spare. I expect your sister will want you home for supper.”

  Gordon looked shell-shocked. He got on his bike and peddled away.

  He was back in forty minutes. “You got a ten percent discount, you being a veteran,” he said. “The guy I talked to said he needed to order the treated wood. Should be here by Friday. I picked out some metal trimming, too. That okay?”

  “It’s your bench,” Jubal said. “When it’s finished, I’ll tell you whether it’s acceptable.”

  “You’re a real hard-ass, aren’t you?” Gordon asked.

  Jubal just shrugged.

  “Here’s the rest of your money.” Gordon held out a now tattered envelop.

  “And you’ll be here Saturday to work on it.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  IT WAS AFTER six before Lisa left the office. She hadn’t had time to think about Jubal Pierce since she returned to a full waiting room. There had been several walk-ins along with her scheduled appointments. She suspected they were there to inspect the new doctor more than for the sniffles and rashes they reported.

  She walked the several blocks home. It helped with the nervousness she felt. Today was the first day of school, and she wondered how Kerry and Gordon fared. Would they find friends? Like the teachers? Be challenged?

  Kerry was on the sofa, reading a book with Susie curled up next to her. Obviously thinking it was her job to greet anyone who came to the door, the dog jumped down and ran over to Lisa.

  Lisa stooped down, and the dog rolled over on her back waving all four feet in the air.

  “She wants you to rub her belly,” Kerry said.

  Lisa complied, thinking it was nice to have at least one warm body happy to see her.

  “How was school?”

  “I liked it,” she said. “The kids were nice. They think it’s neat you’re a doctor, and they want to know what it was like to live in Chicago. I talked to the music teacher about trying out for the choir. She had me sing for her and said she definitely wanted me in it.”

  “I think that’s terrific,” Lisa said. “You do have a good voice. So did Mom. You must have inherited that from her.”

  “Yeah, maybe I did.” All of a sudden, tears welled up in Kerry’s eyes. “I miss her so much.” Susie crept up in Kerry’s lap and whined.

  “I know you do,” Lisa said. “I miss her, too.”

  Kerry’s arms went around the dog. “I’m so glad we adopted Susie.”

  “I am, too.”

  “And I’m glad we moved here,” Kerry added shyly.

  “I’m happy to hear that.”

  “I know you did it for Gordon. I didn’t like his friends. They scared me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were so busy...and he’s my brother.”

  Lisa nodded. Guilt again. She knew Kerry didn’t mean it that way, but she still felt it. She should have put off that last year of residency.

  She looked at her watch. “I knew he was going to do something for Mr. Pierce’s cabin today, but I expected him home by now.”

  Kerry shrugged. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too,” Lisa said. “Want to help me make supper?”

  “What are we having?”

  “Why don’t you make the salad and I’ll make Swiss steak and tomato gravy.” It was quick and everyone liked it, including Gordon. At least he did when their mother used to make it.

  Kerry nodded eagerly.

  They were nearly finished when Gordon strolled in.

  “Wash up,” Lisa said. “Supper’s almost ready.”

  Gordon merely nodded and went upstairs.

  A small miracle. Apparently a Jubal miracle.

  She knew she should be pleased. But she couldn’t ignore the apprehension she felt.

  They’d only been here a week, and one man had already made what felt like an oversize impact on her and her family. He’d told her Covenant Falls was just a way station for him. What if he left wreckage in his wake?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS NEARLY seven when the kid left. He wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but Jubal had become far more involved in Covenant Falls than he’d intended. Gordon and his sister. Luke and the ranch. A renewed friendship with Clint. That reminded him of the poker game tonight. He’d told Clint he would try to come. Now he regretted it, but Clint was a friend. The least he could do was go this one time.

  He looked at himself in the mirror and realized he hadn’t shaved that morning, although he’d taken a shower after lunch at Maude’s. The days-old bristle made him look like a biker.

  He took the time to shave, wishing he’d done so this morning before running into Lisa. Not that it should matter. In fact, it was probably for the best.

  Jubal walked to the community center for the veteran’s poker game. It was late, and there were a lot of vehicles in the parking lot, many of them pickups.

  Once inside the center, he followed the noise to the right room. He would have known the occupants were all vets, even though they appeared to range in age from midtwenties to sixties. There was an alertness, a confidence and an ease that he recognized. He mentally counted twenty-one people and three dogs, Andy’s Joseph, Clint’s Bart and Josh’s Amos.

  Andy was the only woman present. Clint and Josh stood nearby as the other men introduced themselves and named their branch of service. He was one of two navy guys. Most of the rest were army with a couple of air force vets thrown in.

  A beer was thrust in his hand, and he helped himself to some chips and dip before joining one of three tables for poker.

  Jubal felt instantly at ease. No one asked questions. No one mentioned SEALs. It was just navy. Conversation centered around the pageant, two recent queries about opening businesses in Covenant Falls, including a budget motel and a combination bakery/gift shop/bookstore. The latter was proposed by one of visitors to the pageant who was also interested in buying a lakeside home.

  Several of the vets seized on Josh’s idea to develop an outdoor adventure business.

  “Would you have enough business to sustain it?” Jubal asked.

  “Not in the beginning,” Josh admitted as he dealt cards. “But it surprised the heck out of me how many people will drive even a hundred miles to see the pageant.”

  “Yeah, and now with Josh and Nate’s inn and several bed-and-breakfast places, we have to convince ’em to stick around for a few days,” chimed another vet. “We need the tourism.”

  “Andy is getting queries about activities,” Nate said. “Josh has been able to arrange some trips up to the abandoned gold camps with this old miner Clint befriended. And Luke’s not the only rancher offering trail rides, but they need some coordination and publicity.”

  Josh took up the conversation. “Maybe the answer is a cooperative effort. No one person has the time or money to start an ongoing program. But if a group of us, each with different skills...” He left the sentence dangling, his eyebrows raised.

  Jubal kept his mouth shut and listened. He would be gone before they got organized. He didn’t have a dog in this fight and didn’t want one.

  It wasn’t a bad idea, though. Visitors might be intrigued by an all-veteran/ex-soldier wilderness company. Might even feel more secure, as well.

  Several vets heard the conversation and drifted over to the table.

  “Could be a fairly inexpensive business to operate if a group got together,” one said. “Most of us have boats and camping equipment. It wouldn’t be a full-time job for
anyone but could bring in extra income.”

  The others nodded. “Something to think about,” someone added.

  The game resumed. Jubal won a few hands, lost a few hands and was up about seven dollars when the game broke up.

  He walked back to the cabin, still thinking about the conversation. He couldn’t seem to shake it. There was risk associated with any group going into business together, but these were veterans who were used to working as a team.

  None of his business, he reminded himself again as he went out to the lawn chair. Bed still didn’t welcome him, and he started to wonder if he’d ever be entirely comfortable with four walls around him again.

  * * *

  LISA HAD THOUGHT there might be slow days in a small-town practice.

  How wrong could she have been?

  She was busy ten hours a day her second week in Covenant Falls. On Monday, she had a nine-year-old with a broken leg from a bike accident. It was a compound fracture and because she didn’t have the operating facilities, she could only stabilize it and send him to Pueblo.

  Then on Tuesday, there was a patient who’d had a heart attack and had to be medevaced out. The following afternoon, a teenager collapsed on the way home from school. He had severe swelling on his face, lips and throat, and by the time he’d been taken to the clinic, his blood pressure had fallen precipitously.

  His name was Dan Waters, and mercifully, a motorist had seen him go down and drove him to the clinic.

  Her nurse immediately hunted down the family while Lisa gave him an epinephrine injection and found what looked like a bee or wasp sting.

  He improved quickly, although he was shaken. Weak. She asked whether he’d ever had a reaction before.

  “No, ma’am,” he said. He tried to sit up as his mother charged into the office.

  “He’ll have to always have a kit with epinephrine nearby,” Lisa said. “He’s very allergic and the next sting could be deadly.”

  After he left, the waiting room was full of patients waiting to see her.

  She finally left the office at six p.m., but she felt good about the day. The boy could have died without the injection. It wasn’t Chicago, but she might’ve saved a life, and the satisfaction was there.

  She was prepared to take her brother and sister to Maude’s, but to her surprise, Kerry had meat sauce simmering on the stove and a pot of boiling water ready for spaghetti.

  Kerry shrugged when Lisa started to thank her. “I heard what happened to Dan Waters and thought you might be late.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Just did this morning. He’s in the choir.”

  “Seems like he’s going to be okay. Is Gordon home?”

  “As usual, he’s in his room,” Kerry replied with another shrug.

  Lisa went to her room and changed into comfortable clothes, then went to knock on Gordon’s door. “You there?” He opened it. She was surprised to see what looked like a textbook on his bed.

  “Homework already?”

  He just shrugged. “Algebra. Chief Morgan said I had to keep my grades up.”

  “You saw him today, then.”

  “I just said I did.”

  Not exactly, but she would accept it. She wanted to ask more questions, especially about his project for Jubal Pierce, but she worried if she did he would completely close up. The fact he was studying without being prompted was progress. “Supper will be ready in about fifteen minutes.”

  He simply nodded.

  Gordon’s cell phone rang forty minutes later as they finished supper. She saw him check the number, then ignore it. After supper, Gordon and Kerry watched television for an hour, then Gordon said he was going for a walk. Kerry wanted to go with him, but he rudely rebuffed her. “Do you have to go everywhere with me?” he asked.

  Kerry gave him an indignant look and marched off to her room.

  Lisa knew her feelings were hurt. They were wounded easily these days. She went up to Kerry’s room and opened the door.

  “Let’s get some ice cream and go to the park,” she suggested. “Or do you have homework?”

  “Just a reading assignment. I already finished it.”

  “Good. We’ll take Susie with us. She probably needs the exercise.”

  A cool breeze relaxed Lisa as they walked to Maude’s, ordered two cups of chocolate ice cream with fudge and wandered down Main Street toward the park. It was a gentle evening. A light breeze. A parchment half moon rising.

  A car full of teenage boys went by with one leaning out, yelling something to Kerry.

  “Who was that?”

  “A boy from school,” Kerry said. “I don’t like him, but he hangs around Gordon.”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Susan says he’s trouble. She’s in my classes and the choir. She was in the pageant, too.”

  “What’s the boy’s name?”

  “Earl,” Kerry said. “Earl White. Susan says his father’s a truck driver and is never at home. “He kinda gives me the creeps. Like...” She stopped.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t like him...”

  Lisa didn’t like the sound of that, but Kerry was clearly uncomfortable and didn’t want to say more. They reached the community center, and Lisa was amazed at how quickly the area behind it had become a park again.

  They had just finished their ice cream when she saw Jubal Pierce running down Lake Road toward the park.

  Susie started barking and straining against her leash.

  Lisa’s breath caught in her throat. He was dressed in sweats but there was power in every stride he made. He’d looked up when Susie barked. She saw him hesitate, then come running toward them.

  “Hi,” he said. He reached down and scratched behind Susie’s ears. “No more flights for freedom?”

  “No,” Lisa said. “I think she learned her lesson.”

  She feared she was staring at him like a besotted teen. He really was, as the kids said, super hot. “Do you run every day?” she asked to break the spell.

  “I try.”

  “And swim?”

  He gave her a rueful smile. “There really isn’t any privacy here, is there?”

  “I’m discovering the same thing,” she said, then glanced down at Susie, who was climbing all over his running shoes. “It’s the opposite of Chicago, where you don’t know the neighbor two houses down.”

  “Not used to a small town, either?”

  “I’ve never lived anywhere but Chicago. I attended college and medical school there even. Culture shock.”

  He straightened, nodded. “Have a nice evening,” he said, and took off before she could say anything else.

  “He seems nice,” Kerry said.

  He’d seemed nice, if quiet, to Lisa, too, but his abrupt departure made her wonder if she’d said or done something wrong.

  “I think we had better get home,” Lisa said. “I have paperwork to do.”

  Most of the stores were closed and traffic had dwindled to the occasional car as they walked back. An alien world to her. And apparently for Jubal Pierce. It was the only thing they had in common except, perhaps, for Gordon, but she didn’t feel good about that.

  Gordon’s job for him was temporary. A bench shouldn’t take long to complete. Then her brother would be caught up with school and, hopefully, school activities. She tried to convince herself of that as they reached their home.

  * * *

  THE WEEK FLEW by for Jubal. He spent most of his time at Luke’s ranch, improving his riding, learning more about what it took to raise horses and the pitfalls of running a ranch. There were a lot of them.

  But each day he spent with the horses was sheer pleasure. It had been a long time since he’d felt a
nything like it. The more comfortable he became in the saddle, the more he wanted horses to be part of his life. For some reason, he felt at home in the saddle, as if it connected him with the boy who had been torn away from the father he worshipped.

  But he knew the risks were high. He could lose everything he’d saved. A disease, a failure to breed winning horses or just plain bad business decisions could wipe him out. Luke did not dance around the problems.

  At the end of the day on Thursday, Luke drew him to a large stall where a mare stamped nervously. “Ever see a birth?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “Melody’s about ready to foal. Want to stay and watch?”

  “Yeah, but how do you know?” Jubal asked.

  “See the muscles around her tail head that have kind of slumped in and hollowed?”

  Jubal nodded.

  “They’re relaxing so they can handle the stretch when the foal comes out. And her udder’s bagged up. She’s dripping colostrum. She’s sweating some and keeps walking around her stall. She’s in labor, but that doesn’t mean she’ll foal in the next twenty minutes, or the next twelve hours, for that matter. They’ll wait until your back is turned, then drop it. Or wait ’til the middle of the worst storm of the year to foal. Crazy mares. You sure you want to wait?”

  “Yeah, I do. Is Stephanie on call?”

  “She knows about it and will be available if there’s a problem, but most of the time there’s no need for a vet. My wife and I have birthed a lot of colts and fillies. It never ceases to awe me.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Need to lay the straw in the birthing stall and get her moved while she’ll still come with us.”

  “Why straw?”

  “Cleaner, for one thing, and doesn’t stick all over or get up the foal’s nose like wood shavings.”

  Jubal worked with Luke’s ranch hand, Tim, to add to the straw at the bottom of the stall. Luke then led the mare into the stall. Without warning, the mare kicked her left hind leg straight out, barely missing Luke, then turned her head and bit at her side.

  “She’s feeling the contractions. We’re pretty close. We’ll stay here with her tonight,” Luke said. “Pull up a bale of hay and settle down in the aisle. Foaling usually occurs between ten p.m. and four a.m. It’s instinctive. In the wild, that means they have a few hours of darkness before the foal has to be up and running with the herd. Most of the time, they don’t need help but there’s always the possibility of a breech birth. Then we have to reach in her and turn the foal. We don’t have but twenty minutes for the whole thing. No time for a vet to drive out from town.”