Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  And then there were helping hands everywhere, offering backboards and listening to Alan’s chest and taking his blood pressure, checking his pupils. Out in the road, the chopper from Carolina’s Medical Center in Charlotte, the area’s closest trauma center, landed in a ring of lights set up by the fire department, guided to the site by GPS.

  Bret grabbed me beneath the arms and pulled me through the windshield opening to freedom. The blanket that was still across my body and wrapped beneath my legs protected me from both battery acid and antifreeze dripping from the hood, and the sharp metal and glass below me.

  And then I was in open air, breathing in oxygen without fumes, being carried away from my cage by McDermott, held against his chest like a baby. The noise of the crash site decreased as one of the generators went off.

  Figures in flight suits slid down the hill, looking capable and proficient and in control. And clean. The squad was ready to lift the body of the car off Margie.

  "Jack gave orders you weren’t ever to go into a car," Bret said conversationally.

  "Jack. . . ." The anger I had been nursing against my dead husband erupted in the aftermath of adrenaline and fear. I struggled to be set down, out of Bret’s grip. He resisted. I ground out, "Well Jack’s dead and I’m here, and I don’t guess it makes too much difference what Jack thought, now. Does it?"

  Bret grinned again, his teeth shining white in the glare of the emergency lights. "No ma’am, it doesn’t. I always thought his orders about you were pretty stupid. You did a great job in there."

  I found myself leaning against a tree, dumped there, mud welling around my bottom as my anger dissipated. McDermott brought another blanket and draped it around me. Bret didn’t talk much. He didn’t need to. Instead, he pulled the trauma gloves off my hands, positioned a flash where it shined on my lap, handed me some report forms and a pen. And a cold Coke.

  I usually drank diet, but I didn’t argue. I knew I needed the sugar; I was a bit shocky myself. I drank the Coke fast, emptying the can and resting it on the ground beside me.

  "Thanks," I said, "for the Coke . . . and the compliment." Bret nodded and left me alone. My hands no longer trembled. I took a deep breath and expelled it. The half smile on my face was a strange sensation. I was calm and drained and oddly peaceful. For the first time since Jack left me, I felt good inside, thanks to Alan Mathison, a deadly car wreck, and Bret McDermott. It was a feeling I didn’t bother to analyze. I just sat back, the reports in my lap, and enjoyed the unexpected sense of peace for a moment.

  Mosquitoes, attracted by the smell of blood, swarmed in. The fumes had kept them at bay closer to the car. I swatted a few before giving up. I had paperwork to complete.

  Before the chopper took off with Margie Mathison, I was finished with the reports. Bret McDermott took them as silently as ever and disappeared, leaving me to watch the organized chaos of the accident scene. The coroner was taking pictures of the body on the branch. It didn’t look real in the flashing lights, more like a Halloween prop for the county haunted house. Cops and Highway Patrol Officers wandered around the site, taking notes and talking over the sound of the single generator still chugging away.

  An electrical whine started low, almost at the edges of hearing, and raised to a wail. The chopper blades began to turn. A slow thumping sound, like the beat of a heart filled the clearing. An artificial wind roared as the chopper lifted off. Margie went with them, which meant she was still breathing. The chopper didn’t take back dead bodies.

  A highway patrolman squatted at my side, his boots both shiny and muddy. I knew him too. It seemed a shame, suddenly, but I realized that I knew every person who ever responded to a disaster in Dawkins County. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have cried. I told my story to the patrol officer, and again to the coroner, gave an official statement, and watched as Alan Mathison was bundled on to a backboard and carried up to the road. I watched the crowd as it thinned. I watched McDermott as he lifted my red emergency supply box and carried it to his truck. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I didn’t really care.

  It occurred to me as I lay against the tree, my bottom cushioned by the cold mud, that I had worked in the hazardous confines of an overturned car, doing my professional best to save two lives. Alone. Without Jack. It was a curious moment, a peculiar feeling. I tested the fact of my success, mouthing the words, "Solo. Alone." I leaned back, the rough bark rubbing against my hair. I had done it. Without Jack.

  As the gawkers and the squad members cleared out, I thought about going home though I couldn’t leave just yet. My Jeep was still blocked in and I didn’t have the energy to ask anyone to move a car. Not until Jas and Topaz came crashing down the hill did I find the strength to stand.

  "Mama!" Jas shouted. "Yo! Where are you, Mama Ash?" Topaz shouted right behind. It came out Mamash. I had been Mamash ever since Topaz could talk. Topaz’s mother had been Mama Pearl to my daughter for just as long. It was an unconventional friendship by some standards, Topaz being half black, but Dawkins County had run off the KKK in 1907, and though there was still a great deal of racial prejudice on both sides, mixed race marriages and friendships were curiously common in this neck of the woods. And besides, in the Dawkins County way of the Chadwicks, Topaz was kin.

  I levered myself up off the ground and pushed away from the tree, glad of the blanket McDermott had draped around me. It hid both mud and blood. "Over here, girls. I’m fine," I added before they could ask.

  "You’re a hero for calling in the accident," Topaz said.

  "Yeah, Mama. Everybody’s talking about how you saw the whole thing and then crawled under a burning car and rescued two people." Jas eyed my clothing for burns, her expression dubious.

  My lips curled up. "The car wasn’t burning. And I didn’t rescue two people. But I did roll around in mud and a little blood for a while. Why aren’t you two in bed or at home or something?" I said, to take attention away from myself. I wasn’t a hero. It hadn’t been that dangerous to crawl under the car. Had it?

  "The road was blocked off for the chopper and so we couldn’t get home. And then we heard about you and so we waited for the roadblock to clear off and we came down here."

  "Well I need a shower." I looked down at my filthy clothes. "In the yard. With the hose pipe." I was a mess. I looked like I had been mud wrestling. Which I had been, sort of. I didn’t know if Margie would survive; I thought Alan would, complications notwithstanding.

  It was only then that I remembered I hadn’t checked him for head wounds. Some hero. Alan could die from the amount of IV fluids pumped into his system if he had a head wound and his brain swelled, but he could have died on the site without the fluids. I shrugged and held my arms out to my girls. Together, we trudged up the hill to our cars.

  Bret McDermott watched us from below, a briefcase open by his side, pages scattered in the mud. He waved once to us as we reached the Jeep. I nodded back. And headed the last half mile or so for home, to my empty house and cold, impersonal bed.

  An hour later, mud free and sipping a glass of wine, I wandered the house, trying to relax in the aftermath of the rescue. Barefoot on the wooden floor, I roamed from the master suite to the kitchen, back along the hall, past the answering machine with its insistent flashing red light, to the dining room, and the living room Jack and I had used for entertaining. I made my way out to the screened porch, where I finished my wine, sitting in the swing hung from the rafters.

  It was two A.M. and the dogs were sleeping beneath the back deck or in the barn, according to their preference. All except Cherry, the pregnant mixed breed terrier who had taken up residence with us since Jack died. She was a sweet dog, abandoned by her previous owners, probably due to her pregnancy. Disturbed from her sleep, she waddled up to me and licked my fingers before she returned to the box Jasmine had cut down to size for her.

  Jack had loved dogs, passing that love on to his daughter. Like Cherry, Herman and Hokey had just wandered up, lost and alone, finding a home here on t
he farm and a love for Jack that bordered on fanaticism. They missed him intensely, hiding out in the barn by night in the hopes that he would appear and give them a treat and a hug. And then there was Big Dog, another stray, but one Jack had trained to be my protector.

  My dog. Big Dog was part great Dane, part retriever, and part giant. In color and conformation he was a common enough mongrel for the area, blond, with medium-sized, flopped over ears and a long-haired tail; in size he was something else entirely. Sitting, Big Dog’s head came above my waist.

  His teeth were enormous wolf-teeth, gleaming yellow-white, looking sharp enough to pierce his careless tongue, a smiling threat. For all his training and ferocious looks, Big Dog was really an old softy, as gentle as a Teddy Bear. I could see him even now, meeting Jack in the drive, happy to have the master of the house returning from the barn late at night after bedding down the Friesians. Everyone had loved Jack. Especially Jas who, like Hokey and Herman, followed Jack everywhere, eyes adoring.

  A kind man, was my Jack. A man who knew how to inspire love and confidence from animals and men alike. A man whose eyes crinkled up in ready laughter. A man who knew about blackmail and conspiracy and murder. I set down my empty glass and pushed off with my toe, sending the swing swaying. Jack had been a good man. Jack had slept with Robyn.

  Robyn who had never married. Who had been in the midst of a long overdue, three-month vacation in Europe, backpacking and biking from country to country when Jack died. We had talked once, long distance from Italy, when she had checked her messages in Atlanta. She had been shocked, weeping, sorry for me. And perhaps for herself.

  Jack and Robyn. My swinging stopped. Jack and Robyn and murder. And Bret McDermott beneath the body of the car, helping me save a life. Had he known about the murder? Had he been responsible for the death of the inspector in Jack’s letter?

  Quietly, I picked up my empty glass and walked inside to listen to the messages on the personal machine. I knew what I would hear. With the volume turned down low, so Jas and Topaz couldn’t hear, I hit PLAY. Bill’s gruff voice growled into the phone. "Jack. It’s Bill. We have to talk. Damn it, don’t make me come out there. There’s no reason for your wife and kid to know about this. Call me."

  Wife and kid. Well, I did know. But Jas never would, not if I could help it. Thoughtfully, I erased the messages so Jas would never hear, turned off the lights and went to bed. Jack and Robyn. Jack and Robyn and murder.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Though Lynnie Bee, my supervisor at the emergency room, told me I wasn’t ready for a full schedule yet, I disagreed, clocked in and worked a split shift, eleven A.M. to eleven P.M. the next three days. Taking more than my fair share of patients, I answered all the in-house codes and buried myself in paperwork.

  The night following the accident, Bret McDermott walked into the emergency room still dressed in his banker’s black, and asked for the key to my Jeep. He bore only a marginal resemblance to the man who had pulled me to safety the night before. In his usual silent way, McDermott restocked the jump kit, put it back in the Jeep, brought me my keys, and left the ER without waiting for thanks. It was a courtesy, the kind of thing I had come to expect from Bret.

  He had always been a quiet, kind man, sweetly attentive. Although I hadn’t been able to think about the problems with Jack’s business, I couldn’t see Bret having anything to do with the investor’s letters I had discovered. Bret wouldn’t hurt a flea, let alone be involved with murder.

  I would have to make some kind of decision about DavInc, Jack’s business. I couldn’t continue to ignore the office and the answering machines, letting the problems multiply at the development. I couldn’t keep my head buried in the sand forever. Yet I couldn’t force myself to walk through the door of Jack’s office and listen to the machine. Not again.

  Instead, I worked long hours, straining my body to carry out the farm chores once shouldered by my husband, followed by long hours at the hospital. I spent my few quiet moments trying not to think about the letter Jack had written, the letter ending with murder.

  But, when security ran off someone trying to break into my Jeep one night in the employee parking lot, I realized just how alone I was. I had to make the decision to call the police or not. I had to inspect the Jeep for damage. And I had to do it alone. Still, I persevered. And as I faced one small challenge at a time, both at home and on the job, I began to feel more alive, more energetic, more like my old self. Maybe in some ways, better. I was alone. I was making it. And next time, I wouldn’t leave a pair of good gold hoop earrings on the dash to tempt a criminal. I was learning, finding the courage to face my life. Eventually, I would find the courage to face Jack’s.

  Mornings, before I went in to work, I cleaned. Not the house, as the cleaning crew took care of that; I had never cared a lick about housework in the first place. Instead, because Jimmy Ray was off on another binge and Jas needed to work the horses, I cleaned the barn. Shoveling manure was mindless drudgery, numbing my thoughts and tiring my body, the steady scrape, lift, toss rhythm totally engrossing.

  With Jas leaving for college in the fall, I’d have to hire more help at the barn or make other arrangements for the breeding stock. The Friesian’s were Jack’s dream, not mine. I couldn’t handle the farm alone, so until Jas could decide what she wanted to do about the horses, I would have to make some temporary decisions. Until then, there was work to do.

  On the fourth morning after the accident, I was rolling a wheelbarrow full of manure out to the front pasture, stinking of sweat and sunscreen, my hair in a mussed ponytail, my face flushed with exertion. Nana was driving the John Deere across the front twenty acres, dragging a manure spreader to fertilize the ground. I was bringing her raw material when Senator Vance Waldrop pulled up in the yard. He was unaccompanied by his usual retinue, no secretary, no aides, no security personnel. Just good old Vance, driving his wife’s old, dark maroon Lincoln, with the tinted windows and the private citizen’s license plate.

  Vance and I met at the back of the house, the dogs sniffing at the senator’s shoes and crotch, barking, or standing back, emitting a low, menacing growl, depending on their level of training or personal inclination. He shooed them and said my name, the word a question, as if he wasn’t certain the dirty apparition was really me. I grunted in acknowledgment of his presence, gave Big Dog the hand signal to sit and stay, and kept on with my work. I bore little likeness to the genteel Southern lady my mother had tried so hard to nurture, the one who had graced Jack’s side at political and social functions for years. I was surprised the senator even recognized me.

  Vance followed in my wake, avoiding the occasional meadow muffin that tumbled from the overloaded wheelbarrow. Big Dog didn’t like Vance’s attention, but he sat, his eyes on the senator, his tongue lolling comically. Big Dog looked harmless, but I had seen what he could do to an attacker.

  Nana nodded to Vance as she drove past, her weathered face stiff with disapproval, her dark blue eyes hidden beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. Vance nodded back, lifting a hand as Nana turned the big tractor and pulled the manure spreader back toward the road. It was the same thing she had been doing for the last hour, yet somehow, this time, Nana managed to make the turn an insult. She didn’t like Vance or his politics and didn’t much care who knew it. I hid a smile.

  Vance turned back to me, watching as I tipped the wheelbarrow up and made a fresh pile. Seeing him was unsettling. He had never come to the house alone when Jack was alive, and in light of the letters he had written to Jack about problems out at Davenport Hills, his appearance was worrisome.

  Senator Vance and Jack had been neck deep in something that neither would have wanted made public. Because I hadn’t been back in Jack’s office in days, I still didn’t know what the problem was. I would find the courage to face the company’s problems eventually, but I resented the senator’s arrival before I had done so.

  Returning the empty wheelbarrow to its upright position, I nodded Vance to the house. "You
want some tea, Vance?" Unlike Nana, I couldn’t be rude to the man. Jack’s presence was still too strong, my mother’s training too powerful. And so, frankly, was my own rather morbid curiosity. Perhaps I could learn something from this unexpected visit.

  "Thank you, Ashlee, that would be most appreciated." The senator was perspiring, sweat beading in his receding hairline, high on his pink scalp. Silently, we went to the house, the wheelbarrow leading the way, dual wheels squeaking. Vance was deep in thought, his hands clasped behind him, his lips slightly pursed. It was the same expression he wore when pondering a brash reporter’s impertinent questions, an expression I had often privately thought looked a bit sneaky, as if he were picking and choosing between lies. Like Nana, I didn’t trust the politician.

  Neither did Big Dog. He was stiff with displeasure, the ruff standing up on his back, his eyes attached to the soft skin of the senator’s neck, where he would like to sink his teeth. I warned him off, but Big Dog only stared harder at the senator, his growl a faint rumble.

  I had no idea how I should respond to Vance. A wife has many duties totally separate from the job description of income-bringer—homemaker, hostess, businesswoman, mother, doctor to sick babies, cook, lover, friend. With Jack gone, I suddenly had no clear picture of the role I was to follow with Senator Vance Waldrop.

  I wasn’t dressed for the role of hostess. I wasn’t yet a businesswoman ready to deal with Jack’s myriad corporations and investments, and certainly none of the other hats I routinely wore would work for Vance. The thought of treating him like a sick child or trying to entice him with lacy night clothes could have made me smile, but didn’t.

  I had married Jack, an older man, right out of nursing school, becoming a mother within the year. All the roles I played in life had been based on Jack or Jas or the hospital. Predictable. Dependable. Unchanging. That was Ash Davenport—just plain dull.