The Summer Guest Page 28

  “You little bitch!”

  Joe turned toward me in the passenger seat. “Lucy—”

  “Got it!”

  The key found the ignition; the engine caught and held, and I shoved the car into reverse and hit the gas just as Hank, realizing he’d never reach us in time, launched the bat straight for us. I didn’t have a second to be afraid; I saw it coming, closed my eyes, and ducked. The hard, heavy end of it punched the front hood with a sonorous clang, pinwheeling the thing up and over the car like a majorette’s baton. In another instant I heard it strike the pavement behind us and bounce harmlessly away—just a child’s toy rattling in the street. A high, wild joy filled me as I swung out into the road and turned and sped away.

  We’d reached the corner when Joe finally spoke. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Pure instinct. You lived with that guy? Tell me you weren’t paying him, Joe.”

  Beside me, Joe said nothing.

  “Jesus, Joe. What happened to his wife?”

  “Gone. Last winter.” He looked at his hands. “It wasn’t so bad. Just twenty-five a week. Plus help with the groceries.”

  I figured it was worse than that but held my tongue. We passed through town; I realized I was speeding and made a conscious effort to slow the car to thirty-five. The streets were empty, just a few cars and pickups parked here and there, their fenders spangled with spring mud. Most of the tourist businesses were still closed for the season. As we passed the police station, a pang of dread quickened my heart: whatever else was true, hitting Hank Rogue in the head with a bourbon bottle was certainly against the law. All he had to do was wander down to the station and file a report, and I would be a wanted woman. But in another moment this fear left me. Who would believe that little Lucy Hansen had laid out the likes of Hank Rogue?

  “Well, I wish you’d told me,” I said. “Told somebody. I never would have let you stay there.”

  We reached the edge of town and the intersection of Highway 9. To the left, forty-five minutes away, thirty if I gunned it, lay the hospital in Farmington. Right would take us to the camp. It was just six o’clock, barely late afternoon that time of year, but in the half hour since I’d rolled into town, thick, doughy clouds had moved in from the north, sucking the light away. It felt more like deep fall than the June evening it was. I considered both options, and then a third: taking him back to Portland.

  “Joe, we have to get you to a doctor.”

  He shook his head. “No hospitals.”

  “Don’t be stubborn. You’re sick. On top of everything else, I think you might have pneumonia.”

  But the look on his face told me this line of argument would get me nowhere. I’d rescued him from Hank Rogue’s clutches; for now, that would have to do. I heard myself sigh.

  “Jesus, I really shouldn’t be doing this. Promise me you’ll let me call someone? At least let Paul Kagan have a look at you.”

  He nodded grudgingly. “All right.”

  The spring thaw had done its damage. The road to the camp, a tricky proposition even in the best years, was a minefield of potholes deep enough to make me worry about banging the oil pan; by the old stone bridge, where Forest Creek emptied into the river, a section had been so completely washed away I had to stop and let Joe direct me across it, the VW leaning so precariously I thought I was going into the drink for sure. It took us almost an hour to drive those last eight miles, and by the time we reached the camp, the rattle in Joe’s chest had blossomed into a nasty cough.

  I took the keys from him. “Let’s get you inside.”

  The building was dark, the shutters closed tight. The only sound was the soft whistle of the wind in the pines. The scene was so desolate to my eyes I might have been gone for years. A misty rain was falling into the lake, so light you might not have noticed except for the fanning shapes that drifted over its surface in the waning light. Holding the box of pills and clothes, I managed to get the door open and Joe inside and find a light switch. In the main room, I got Joe down on the sofa, then went to look at the kitchen. A bowl of something long hardened sat on the table, and beside it, a mug stained brown from evaporated coffee—Joe’s breakfast, the morning he’d had his stroke. The big fridge held only a quart of milk long soured, a package of American cheese, a few sticks of moldy butter, and a six-pack of Budweiser. The cheese was probably okay—hell, that stuff could last a year—and the beer was a welcome sight, but everything else was a total loss. I threw the milk and butter in the trash and opened the kitchen tap. A few puffs of air, a groan from somewhere below me, and a blast of brown water gushed from the spigot. I sipped a beer while I let the water clear over Joe’s six-month-old dirty breakfast dishes, then filled a saucepan and put it on the stove for tea. I found some not-too-stale crackers in the pantry, and melted the cheese over them in the broiler, then took it all out to the main room.

  Joe was sleeping where I’d left him, facing the cold hearth. His face was flushed with fever; I stood and watched him, listening to the wet clutter of his breathing and second-guessing my decision not to take him down to Farmington General. But the hour was late, the road was too bad to try again in darkness, and I figured this was a discussion that would have to wait till morning.

  “Joe?” I showed him the tray. “I made you something to eat.”

  He roused himself and did his best to nibble at the crackers, his crooked mouth sputtering crumbs when the coughing took him, then gingerly sipped the tea. The room was clammy as a ship at sea; I’d have to look into lighting the furnace, too, or at least get a fire going. When he was done I took the tray and put it aside.

  “Off to bed with you now.”

  Upstairs, I stripped his bed and remade it with fresh linens, and waited outside his door while he undressed. I’d brought all his medicines upstairs, and when he was ready, I carried them in and helped him with the bottles: seven of them, each containing a different-colored pill the purpose of which I could only guess at. When he was done he lay back on the pillow, and I drew a heavy blanket over him.

  “What happened to you, Lucy?”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. All day I had been running on adrenaline, and just the feel of the mattress beneath me left me suddenly exhausted. I could have put my head down and instantly been asleep.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Were you with Joey? It’s all right if you were. I know he comes back to see you.”

  I nodded. “For a while, at Christmas. I told my parents I was visiting a girlfriend in Boston, but it was Joe. After that I was in Portland.”

  “How did he look?”

  For almost four years, we had never spoken of these things. I thought his question strange, but then I didn’t. The Joe he remembered was a boy, or nearly. By now his son was somebody else entirely.

  “Stronger. A little sad. It’s hard for him up there. I think he wants to come home.”

  “Your parents were worried, Lucy.”

  I felt a familiar shiver of guilt move through me, the same one that had dogged me for months. “I know they were. I’m sorry about that. But there wasn’t any helping it.”

  “What did you do in Portland?”

  The rain was rattling the metal roof outside his window; I let my mind drift through the memories of my time away, listening to the sound the rain made.

  “Nothing all that interesting, though I guess it felt like it at the time. I waitressed at a restaurant on Commercial. I swam a lot too. I had a little apartment.” I shrugged and made an effort to smile; already I sounded nostalgic. “It’s not important. Let’s just think about getting you well.”

  As I’d spoken, a deeper stillness had enclosed him. His breathing was slow and even, and I thought for a moment he had fallen asleep. I rose and tightened the blanket around his chest. I was about to shut out the light when he spoke again, the words seeming to come from deep inside him.

  “I didn’t know what I would do without you here, Lucy.”

  I bent down, fingered
his hair aside, and kissed him on the forehead, something I had never done before. The heat of his fever lingered on my lips and fingers, like a faint electric charge; it would be a long night, I knew.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I said quietly, and shut out the light. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I spent most of the night in a chair by his bed, finally moving down to the sofa just before dawn. A little after eight, I telephoned the doctor. Paul Kagan had been the town’s only physician as long as I could remember, the sort of cradle-to-grave practitioner you think exists only in movies: gruff, wise, and beloved, a man who on any given day might see a toddler with an earache or somebody in their eighties with enough problems to sink a battleship. He kept his office in the back of his small, shingled house by the post office, and as a child the thing I always liked best about it was the big tank of tropical fish in the waiting room.

  I told him about what I’d seen at the Rogues’, the cough and fever, and my suspicion of pneumonia.

  “If he’s as you say, you should take him down to Farmington.”

  “I don’t think he’ll go.”

  I heard Paul sigh. Given the general crustiness of his clientele, half of them holed up in trailers and shacks miles from anything you might call a respectable road, this was a conversation he probably had five times a day.

  “Well, I’m seeing Sarah Rawling later this afternoon. She’s out your way, more or less. I guess I could come then. Woman’s got congestive heart failure, and she won’t go to the damn hospital either.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  He chuckled. “Hardly, but spread it around. Where you been keeping yourself, Lucy? Your mother said you’d gotten some great new job someplace. Sort of thought maybe we’d seen the last of you.”

  “Just needed to get away for a bit, I guess.”

  “Don’t we all. Course, I never will. You should come in and see the fish. I got some new ones just last month, real beauties.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Think three o’clock, maybe a little earlier. He gets any worse, though, no fooling—you get him down to Farmington, don’t wait for me. He’s not as tough as he thinks he is.”

  I returned to Joe’s bedroom. He was resting quietly—the worst of the coughing had abated for the moment—and I decided not to rouse him. I was wearing the same jeans and blouse I’d put on a day ago in Portland, and would have liked a shower, but even this seemed like work. For a while I dozed in the chair. Sometime in the night the rain had blown through; a weak, unhurried sun, the sun of illness, pulsed in the drapes. For lunch I made the last of the cheese and crackers, though Joe ate just a few bites, and I finished what was left. How would I get into town for groceries? I wondered; what would become of us, stranded out here? And, a dark thought I couldn’t push away, much as I wished to: what would I do if he died?

  I was in the kitchen, taking stock of the larder—not much, just a few cans of soup and some stale spaghetti I thought I might be able to do something with for dinner—when the phone rang. I hoped it might be Paul, but the voice on the other end was a woman’s.

  “I know it’s probably too late, but do you think we could get a reservation for the last week in July?”

  For a second I was lost. “I’m sorry. The camp’s closed.”

  “Oh.” The woman seemed not to believe me. “Really? We were there last year, and my husband just loved it.”

  “Like I said, we’re closed. You might want to try the Lakeland Inn.”

  I gave her the number and hung up the phone. Not five minutes later it rang again. The voice this time was a man’s.

  “Is this Crosby’s?” Before I could answer he charged ahead. “I’ve been trying to get through for days. Listen, Joe said he’d hold the same week in August for us, party of four, name of Gaudio. I was wondering if we could move it up a week. We’re taking the boy off to college, and I didn’t realize he’d have to be down there before Labor Day.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Gaudio. The camp’s closed. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be open this season.”

  “Closed.” Like the first caller, he paused, taking this in. “Closed, like out of business?”

  I didn’t really know the answer. The question seemed too large. “Why don’t I take your number?”

  “And do what with it?” he huffed impatiently. “See here. We had an agreement, young lady. Are you people going to live up to it or not?”

  “No,” I said, and hung up.

  It went on like this. Over the next couple of hours I fielded three more phone calls, each replaying more or less the same conversation: a question about a reservation and my news that the camp was closed, followed by incredulity, various forms of bargaining (one man actually asked if we would be selling off any of the furniture), more apologies, expressions of anger and disappointment, and so on, until one of us hung up on the other. It was all perfectly understandable—who wants to hear that the rug’s been yanked from under their one week of reliable fun?—and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this before. Usually the camp opened two weeks after Memorial Day. What would happen when people who had booked the year before just started showing up?

  I was fretting about this when I heard a car outside, and then, below me, Paul Kagan’s heavy steps in the main room.

  “Lucy?”

  I went to the top of the stairs and called down. “Up here!”

  He met me on the landing. Paul Kagan was probably close to retirement, but like many fixtures of small town life, he seemed ageless, a permanent fifty-five. He appeared a little flustered at the sight of me, not certain if he should kiss me hello or not, and we settled on an awkward hug.

  “How’s the patient?” He was carrying an instrument bag, old leather so crinkled it looked chewed.

  “His temperature’s 101. And he won’t eat a thing. The cough’s gotten a little better though.”

  We entered the room together. Joe was sitting up against a pile of pillows, his face white as paper. I realized for the first time that he was afraid, though I didn’t know how much of this was caused by his illness, and how much by the prospect of being examined by a doctor.

  “How we doing, Joe?” Paul said loudly. He sat on the bed and opened the bag at his feet, removing a thermometer, which he began to shake down.

  Joe stifled a cough. “Been better.”

  “Oh, you don’t look so bad to me. Don’t know what Lucy’s so worried about. Let’s see about that temperature.”

  He nimbly popped the thermometer into Joe’s mouth, then took his wrist and counted off his pulse. Paul had unusually large, long-fingered hands, which I knew he kept soft with a bottle of moisturizer stationed on his desk.

  “You’ve been taking your pills?”

  “Hm-mm-hmm.”

  “No need to talk, just nod.”

  Joe nodded. Paul released his wrist and bent at the waist to take out his stethoscope and blood pressure kit from the bag. He placed the head of his stethoscope in the crook of Joe’s elbow and listened as he pumped the little bulb, his eyes turned up to the ceiling, away. The cuff gave a little hiss of gas as he released the pressure. He pulled the thermometer from Joe’s mouth and peeked at it quickly, frowning.

  “All right, handsome, off with the shirt so we can hear those lungs.”

  With slow fingers Joe undid his pajama top and leaned forward from the pillows for Paul to reach behind him.

  “Deep breath now. That’s it.” Paul padded the stethoscope up and down his back. “So Lucy tells me you were staying with Hank Rogue.”

  “For a bit.”

  Paul paused to listen, then moved the stethoscope again. “Funny thing. I suppose you could call it a coincidence, but guess who came in yesterday afternoon with a nasty cut on his head?”

  My whole body clenched with alarm. “God. Was he all right?”

  Paul’s mouth dipped in a frown. “Light concussion. Took a few stitches, but no permanent damage.” He pulled the stethoscope
from his ears and gave me a dark, knowing look. “Just between us, couldn’t have happened to a nastier son of a bitch. You do what I do, you learn a few things about people.”

  I thought of Hank’s hand groping downward, his eyes gone soft where he stood in the door, and about his daughter, gone to Texas without a trace. Little girl. A cold shudder of revulsion snaked through me.

  “Okay, all set here. You can button up, Joe.” Paul gave Joe’s leg a solid pat, rose from the bed, and tipped his head toward the door. “Lucy?”

  We stepped into the low-ceilinged hallway, sealing Joe’s room behind us with a muffled snap.

  “Well, I think you’re right,” Paul said quietly. “I’m hearing some fluid, mostly on the left side. The temperature has me worried. We really should get films.”

  “Films?”

  “I’m sorry.” He circled his hand over his chest. “An X ray, to see what’s going on in there.” He shrugged. “As for the rest, it’s hard to say. He’s got a touch of malnutrition. You see this in stroke patients. It’s hard to eat, so they just give up on it.”

  “I really don’t think he’ll go.”

  Paul nodded gravely. “I figured that. Okay, let’s run a course of antibiotics, just to be on the safe side. It’s a question of whether he improves in the next twenty-four hours. He could turn a corner, or this could all gather fast into a real emergency. Keep him warm, give him lots of fluids, and watch his temperature. Any signs of trouble, any, and I want you to get him down to Farmington.”

  Downstairs, he wrote out a prescription for penicillin and gave me a bottle he kept in his bag to get Joe started.

  “Like I said, mind that temperature. And try to get him to eat something. I know it won’t be easy, but do your best.” He cleared his throat. “His boy’s still away?”

  I took the prescription from his hand and nodded.

  “You’ll be all right out here by yourself?”

  “Have to be, I guess.”

  He frowned with concern, holding my eyes with his. “Well, you’ve got the number. Don’t be afraid to use it.”