Lydia stood frozen as her son and husband moved closer, trying to make some sense out of the scene. Then she sprang to life and rushed out the kitchen door to meet them.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jack Durkin told her.
Lydia brought Lester’s head to her shoulder. His eyes were squeezed tight. What looked like paint was blood that had been smeared across his face. As she whispered to him, his mouth opened wide and he whimpered like a wounded dog. Thick strands of saliva dripped from his mouth onto her blouse. She rubbed her hand across his face wiping off tears, then started kissing his cheek, his eyes, his forehead, all the while telling him that everything was going to be okay.
Her husband repeated that it wasn’t his fault. “It happened so fast,” he said flatly, his expression vacant. “I didn’t know what was happening until it was over.”
She looked away from her son to her husband, her small eyes enflamed. “What did you do to my son?” she demanded, her voice shaking.
“Nothin’.” Durkin shook his head. “I didn’t do nothin’. It wasn’t my fault.”
Lester let loose a low cry. She gently took his hand and unwrapped the shirt that had been tied around it. Underneath was a bloody mess. She saw that his thumb was missing.
“It wasn’t my fault,” her husband insisted. “He was supposed to film me while I dug up one of the Aukowies. I heard something, looked over and saw he dropped the camera. Before I could stop him he reached down for it.”
“You monster,” she said to him, her voice still shaking and barely a whisper.
Durkin flinched. “There was nothing I could do,” he said.
She flew at him, beating him over and over again in the chest, her hands clenched into tiny fists that were no bigger than small Cortland apples. Durkin stood helplessly and took it.
“There was nothin’ I could do to stop it.”
“Where’s his thumb?” she cried. Tears streamed down her raisin-like face. “What did you do with it!”
“It’s gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
“The Aukowies got it,” he said.
“You bastard!”
“There was nothin’ I could do. They took his thumb. Next thing it was gone. Nothin’ left but a pink mist.”
She flashed him a look mixed with hate and disgust and utter contempt, then led Lester away from him.
“You better take him to the hospital,” he said, acting as if Lydia were still listening to him. “I can’t. I have to go back. I have to finish weeding.” There was a desperate pleading in his eyes. He waited for her to look back at him. She didn’t. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow, then under his nose. “Lydia, there was nothin’ I could do.”
“Go to hell.” She guided Lester into the passenger seat of their car and secured the seatbelt around him. She stopped for a moment to kiss him on the cheek and forehead, then got behind the wheel. She floored the gas, revving the engine to a high pitch. Durkin stood staring helplessly. He didn’t bother to move when she backed the car out at full throttle, coming within a hair’s breadth of clipping him.
“There was nothing I could do,” he repeated to no one. He stood and watched the car race down the dirt road and saw it barely miss spinning into a tree before Lydia regained control of the wheel. When it was out of sight, he turned and headed back to Lorne Field.
The nearest hospital was two towns over in Eastham. When Lydia arrived there with Lester, the doctor handling the emergency room gave her a funny look when he saw Lester’s hand. He wanted to get Lester into surgery, but before that he had questions for her. The first one was where was the thumb. All she could do was tell him she didn’t know.
He was checking Lester’s vital signs while a nurse attached an IV and another wrapped gauze around Lester’s hand. She recognized the nurse attaching the IV as Abby Huffman’s girl. She had never seen the doctor or other nurse before, knew they weren’t from her town. The doctor asked how the injury happened.
“I don’t know. My husband says it was an accident. That’s all he told me.”
“He was with your son at the time?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else with them?”
“Nope, just Lester and my husband.”
“What happened to the thumb?”
“All he said was it was lost. Anyway, I don’t have it and I don’t know where it is.”
“That’s too bad,” the doctor said. “It looks like a clean cut. The thumb probably could’ve been reattached.”
“H-how do you think it was cut off?”
“A knife.”
Lester was sedated when he was brought in. He started moaning. Abby Huffman’s girl told the doctor that the IV was in. He told Lydia that they were taking Lester to surgery. That not only did they need to operate on his hand, but his blood pressure was dangerously low and he needed a transfusion as quickly as possible. He looked away from her and told her that she would be escorted to a waiting area.
“I want to be with my son.”
He turned only partly to face her. He was a lean man in his early thirties with a face like a razor. The look he gave her had about as much warmth as a sheet of ice.
“We have certain rules we need to follow for cases like this,” he said.
“Cases like what?”
He ignored her, nodding instead to two orderlies standing nearby. They took hold of the gurney Lester was on and started wheeling it away. The doctor followed them. When Lydia tried to follow, the nurse that she didn’t know stepped in her way.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but I need to bring you to one of our waiting rooms.”
The nurse was a good forty pounds heavier than Lydia and had a thick neck for a woman. Her forearms were also thicker than Lydia’s thighs. Lydia felt very tired at that moment. Weak also. She nodded and followed the nurse to a small room that had only a table and two chairs in it. The nurse asked Lydia whether she could get her a magazine. Lydia shook her head, sat down and started to cry. She didn’t want to cry in front of this other woman but couldn’t help herself. She heard the door close as the nurse left.
While she waited, a woman from the hospital came to ask her questions. She was about Lydia’s age but looked much younger. She wore a turtleneck sweater and a long wool skirt, which seemed to Lydia like an odd choice for the summer. Most of her questions were about their family life. It was a blur to Lydia. She was only half-aware of her answers. A short time after the woman left, two local police officers came in to talk to her. They didn’t have many questions, mostly the same ones the doctor had, and a few about her husband. It was also like a blur with them. It seemed as if they were only there for seconds before they were gone. She knew it was longer, but that’s what it seemed like.
When Sheriff Wolcott walked into the room she was surprised to see that it was already a quarter to five. He looked ill at ease as he sat across from her, his skin color not quite right.
“Mrs. Durkin,” he said.
“Daniel.”
“I understand there was an accident?”
“Yes.” She looked again at her watch and slowly made sense of the fact that she’d been sitting there over two hours. “My boy should be done with surgery by now,” she said, her face crumbling as she expected the worst.
“I understand the surgery went well. A doctor will be in here soon to talk to you about it, but I understand it went well and Lester’s recuperating right now.”
“Thank God.” She started crying then, her sobs wracking her nearly skeletal frame. “Oh thank God for that.”
Through the sobbing she could see Wolcott studying her, his eyes queasy and his lips turned up into a forced look of sympathy. He looked like he wanted to bolt. She sniffed a few times, got control of her crying and wiped a hand across her eyes.