They passed a group of natural-born girls, some of them only four or five years old, spread out on the patch of grass between two trailers playing Mother-may-I. They were being watched by some teenagers in white scarves. “Are any of these yours?” Rhonda asked.
The reverend pointed out a girl of about three or four, in matching green shorts and top. She held hands with one of the older white-scarf girls. “That’s my youngest.”
“Ah! The one that almost killed you.” The reverend had been on bed rest for the last five months of the pregnancy, her blood pressure through the roof. Two minutes after giving birth, she suffered a minor stroke. The right side of her face was briefly paralyzed, and she’d slurred her words for months. Even now her right arm was still weak, and she walked with a limp.
“A beautiful girl,” Rhonda said. “Now is that one of Jo Lynn’s daughters she’s holding hands with?”
“No, that one’s Marsha’s daughter. I’m sure Rainy and Sandra are around here somewhere.”
“I hope they’re fitting in all right. It must be hard, coming back into the fold. Especially with what those white-scarf girls think of their mother.”
“That’s all history.”
“Oh, hon, that kinda hate don’t go out of style. When those girls found out about Jo Lynn’s operations”-that was the politest word Rhonda could think of-“you’d have thought she’d been caught eating newborns for supper. And then when she tried to introduce birth control-”
“I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
“Jo committed the unforgivable sin,” Rhonda said, lowering her voice. “Maybe those white-scarves think that expelling Jo wasn’t punishment enough. People are saying, who knows what those girls are thinking?”
The reverend turned to face her. Her red face was smooth, almost unreadable. “People?” she said.
“It’s just rumors, Elsa. You know how people talk.”
“The DA said it was a suicide. They don’t believe the DA?”
“Of course they do! Some of them. Probably most of the town. Now you and me know that Roy Downer couldn’t find his butt cheeks with both hands, but the public, what they don’t know… Well, I’m just saying. If one of your girls, or God help us, Tommy Shields, had anything to do with this…”
“That’s enough,” the reverend said coldly. “Tommy loved Jo, and you know it. And these girls wouldn’t hurt a fly-it’s not in their nature.”
They’d almost reached the entrance to the farm. Everett stood next to the Caddy, talking on his cell phone, but he was looking at them. “Get the air-conditioning on,” Rhonda called. “I’m about to die of stroke.”
The reverend touched Rhonda’s arm, and Rhonda turned to face her. The reverend said, “I hope you aren’t riling people up, Mayor. It’s irresponsible and hurtful. If you go around accusing people-”
“Oh, I’m not accusing,” Rhonda said, her voice calm. “I’m advising.”
“What advice is that, exactly?”
“If your people had anything to do with Jo’s death, Elsa, then you better take care of it.” Rhonda patted her arm. “But I’m sure none of them did, did they?”
Everett drove slowly over the rutted drive. He waited while she dabbed the sweat from her forehead, but when they reached the gate he said, “So?”
“I didn’t see any laptop sitting out,” Rhonda said. “And I didn’t really have a chance to poke around.” She was sure that the reverend had grabbed Jo Lynn’s computer. Rhonda had had Everett search the church, to no avail. It was really too much to hope for that Elsa would leave the thing sitting out in plain view. “She’s got it somewhere,” Rhonda said. “Or Tommy has it. They were first into the house after the paramedics.”
“And what about our little bet?”
She allowed a little smile and put away her handkerchief. “Oh, most definitely.”
“Huh! She tell you that?”
“I gave her plenty of openings, but she wasn’t having any of it. Still, there’s no hiding it. The reverend is pregnant again.”
Everett shook his head admiringly. “You win,” he said. He accelerated away from the Co-op. “So now that I’m paying for lunch, where do you want to go?”
“Just drive out to Lambert,” Rhonda said. “And stop at the first place with a buffet.”
Chapter 8
HIS FIRST SENSATION was of his own mass, the vast bulk of his body stretched out across the dark like an unsteerable barge. It took him some time to realize that he’d been awakened by the noise of someone moving about the room.
He tried to open his eyes. The light was very bright. He squinted and began to make out shapes.
A woman stood on the other side of the room, her back to him. She seemed vaguely familiar, but then again, so did everything in the room.
“Heh,” he said. He’d been trying for “hello,” but his voice had snapped off like a rotted board. His throat ached, and he was terribly thirsty.
She glanced at him, and didn’t seem surprised that he’d spoken. She was in her midthirties, a thin, pale woman with blotched cheeks and forehead, as if she’d scrubbed her face with lye soap. She wore khaki pants, a plain collared shirt. Definitely an outsider.
“Good morning, Mr. Martin.”
Mr. Martin? For a moment he was confused-the name seemed to fit and not fit at the same time.
“I can’t believe you’re at a loss for words,” the woman said.
He tried to lift his arm and discovered it was tied down. Both arms were restrained. “Wah,” he said. He swallowed painfully and made a tipping motion with his captive hand. “Water.”
“I think we can do that.”
He blacked out before she returned.
He came awake a second time with someone bending over him. At first he thought it was Aunt Rhonda, and he grunted in surprise.
The chub girl-not Aunt Rhonda, a young girl maybe only twenty years old with bright red hair-put a hand on his forehead and said, “Shush, Paxton.” Her voice was a whisper.
That’s right. His name was Paxton. And he was-where was he?
The girl slowly moved a warm washcloth across his chest, and as she leaned over him the neck of her blouse gaped to reveal a large pair of breasts straining at a white bra, threatening avalanche.
“Doreen!”
The girl jerked away from him. “Doctor F, I was just-”
“I think he’s clean enough now,” a woman said. It was the pale woman from before.
“I’ll just dry him off and-”
“Doreen.”
The red-haired girl left the room. The doctor pulled down his smock from where it was bunched around his neck and covered him with the bedclothes. “Sorry about that,” the doctor said. “She’s not herself. It won’t happen again.”
“Okay,” he said. Wondering what exactly had happened.
“I’ve brought you some lunch,” the doctor said. She pulled a sliding table up to his bed.
“Lunch,” he said. “Right. Thanks.” He thought he sounded reasonably sane. In control.
The doctor moved aside a plastic water pitcher and cup, then set out items she pulled from a white sack: a plastic-wrapped sandwich with the Bugler’s Grocery tag still on it, a fruit cup, and a chocolate chip cookie. Supplies for a sixth-grade field trip.
He wasn’t at all hungry. His throat still felt raw. It felt like hours had passed since he’d asked for water, but it could have been days.
Pax realized his arms were now untied. He started to push himself up, and Dr. Fraelich put a hand on his shoulder, then worked the bed’s remote until he was sitting upright. How long had he been in this bed? Someone, this woman or the chub girl, must have changed him, emptied his bedpan, wiped his ass.
“I’m sorry if I was…” Embarrassment made it hard to find the words. He shook his head. “You’re who?”
“I’m Dr. Fraelich,” she said. “You’re at my clinic, Mr. Martin.”
“Please, call me Pax.” A hazy memory came to him: Deke carrying him into a waiting room, setting him down in a plastic chair. At some point-the next hour? the next day?-he’d been put in a bed. Everything else was a blank.