“You can have copies,” June said. “Several copies. You can give one to each of your kids, take one to your mother….”
“I’ll keep the original in your chart and medical records.”
“They won’t believe this,” she said, her hand trembling as she touched the scars on her face.
“They can believe it. I’m very good at what I do,” Dr. Cohen said. “Before you leave today, we want to get a photo that we can keep. And you can sit in the lounge and look through our scrapbook of before and after pictures of work we’ve done all over the world. This is a wonderful team.”
Clarence cleared his throat. “Charlie McNeil says you’re obliged to do this without pay? I like to pay my way.”
“Good, I’ll take you up on that. I’ll do the surgeries, you and Mrs. Mull do some work for the vets and other disabled groups. There are people suffering everywhere, and it helps them to hear the success stories of people who got help. More people will be made well and happy if they only know where to go and what to do, and have someone like you to tell them not to be afraid. But I warn you, Mr. Mull—if you make yourself available to help, you’ll be overwhelmed by work.”
“We could do that, Doctor,” Jurea said.
“When can you do the surgery?” June asked.
“First one in September. We’ll be back up here then. We hope to schedule about twenty operations in the local area.”
“Twenty people have scarred faces?” Jurea asked, aghast.
“No, no, Mrs. Mull.” He laughed. “This team of doctors includes internists, orthopedists, gynecologists, pediatric surgeons…a wide variety of medical personnel. We just want to help.”
“You are a godsend, Dr. Cohen,” she said with reverence.
“Only a craftsman, Mrs. Mull. But maybe God brings us together at the right time.”
June walked with them to the lobby of Valley Hospital. “I can’t believe this is going to happen,” Jurea said for the hundredth time.
“Believe it,” June said. “Medicine is a world of miracles.” She stopped to say goodbye to them at the hospital entrance. She shook Clarence’s hand. “I never thought I’d say this, Clarence, but finding you in my living room that morning not so long ago turned out to be one of the happiest days of my life.”
Clarence could hardly speak. He bit on his lower lip and looked briefly away, collecting himself. “Doc, I didn’t think I’d ever see the world through clear eyes again. I got you to thank.”
“Not really,” she said, shrugging it off. “I think it was your son who made all this happen for you. I just came along for the ride.”
When June arrived back at the clinic, the last patient of the day was just leaving. John was leaning over the front counter, writing in a chart, and she slid a copy of the sketch of Jurea in front of his eyes. At first he frowned as he looked at it, then slowly the dawning came and his eyes widened. Within seconds Charlotte and Jessica were leaning over John’s shoulders, looking at the drawing.
“Is that really Mrs. Mull?” Jessica breathed in wonder.
“Is that really possible?” John asked.
“Isn’t it amazing?” June concurred. “Four surgeries over the course of twelve to eighteen months. And Dr. Cohen thinks her eye may be fine, too.”
“They must be thrilled,” Jessica said, just as the office phone began to ring.
“A little overwhelmed, I think. But adjusting very nicely. They’re moving into town and Clarence is going to do some janitor work around here. I would never have guessed how nicely this—”
“June,” Jessica interrupted. “A Dr. Jim Stump, from Eureka?”
She frowned. “Can’t place him,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you get a message? A number?”
“Sure,” Jessica answered, going back to the phone.
“Anyway, I never would have believed all these things could come together—” She stopped short. Jim Stump? “Jessie! I’ll take that in my office!”
By the time she got to her phone, her heart was hammering. She lifted the phone carefully, afraid to even hope. “June Hudson,” she said.
“Hello, sunshine, Dr. Stump here.”
She burst into delighted laughter. “Dr. Stump?”
“I couldn’t say Post, now, could I?”
“Is this your new emerging identity?”
“I’m not good enough for you,” he said. “I haven’t been able to call, to come down. It’s been chaotic. These things sometimes take longer to clean up than to get busted.”
“I thought you’d forgotten me—and all your wild promises.”
“I’m a lousy boyfriend. You must regret the day you met me.”
“Not one call?” she asked.
“I went to jail,” he said. “Just for a few weeks. I had to follow up, you know. You can check if you want. Get that cop friend of yours to look into it. You should be sure you’re not involved with a liar. I mean, I’m a liar all right, but I don’t lie to you.”
“Jail?”
“As a captured grower. They had phones, but there was no way I was dialing your number from jail. So June…?”
“Hmm?” she said, smiling, leaning her head into her hand and beginning to get that silly, girlish feeling all over again.
“If you say this is too much, me and you, too ridiculous, too sporadic, too—”
“Oh, it is too much. Too good to be true also comes to mind,” she said softly. “When will I see you again?”
“You sure? Because I know how hard it was on you to say goodbye, and there will be a lot of those for a while yet….”
“I’m sure,” she said. “I may change my mind later, may kick myself for getting into this with you, but for right now, this is what I want.”
“When I leave here, in a week or so, I’m going to make an invisible pass through your little town. I’ll give you as much notice as I can.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll call you later, at home.”
“Okay,” she said again.
She had thought about this in the weeks since he’d left. She knew she’d been down, her heart hurt. Tom had noticed, and she suspected Elmer had, also. It was the ache of having had something that felt so right and was gone too soon. But she had come to realize that it was not better to be alone. It wasn’t better to have no one. Illusive as he was, he was exactly who she wanted.
“Having you there, knowing where you are, feels so right to me,” he said.
“Then it must be,” she agreed.
While driving home, Sadie in the cab of the little Nissan beside her, she saw a woman in the middle of the road, flagging her down. June slowed, and as she got closer, she recognized Mikos Silva’s granddaughter, Beth, at the end of the deceased farmer’s long drive.
“Beth?” she questioned.
“Oh June, come quick. It’s Matt. We came out here to pick up some of the old baby things Grandpa had stored in the attic. One of the rungs on the attic ladder cracked and Matt fell. I think he’s broken his leg. And there’s no phone! And—”
“Jump in, Beth. Let’s go have a look.”
Matt was lying on the bed in the downstairs parlor that Mikos and his wife had both used in their final months on earth. June cut his jeans up to the hip and saw that his thigh had a kinked and unnatural crimp in it. “Yep, very little question about that. But it’s not a compound fracture.”
He groaned loudly, gritting his teeth, and twisted the bedspread in one hand.
“I’ll give you something for the pain first, and then I’m going to call the paramedics.”
“Can’t I just take him in the car?” Beth asked.
“He needs a splint and a lift, Beth. And maybe an IV. If I had the Jeep, I could load him in the back, but I’ve just got a little truck. I don’t think you want to drag him out to the truck bed and toss him in.” All the while she talked, she filled a syringe with Demerol, then quickly administered it. “That will begin to take effect soon. Beth, sit with him. I’m going to call from
the front porch. And don’t worry, he’s going to be all right.”
When she stood on Mikos’s porch, she saw Sadie way across the yard at the tree line, wagging her tail fiercely. A short, stocky man, bent at the waist, was petting her. June squinted. It couldn’t be. Couldn’t couldn’t be. It looked like Mikos. He was wearing the overalls that Mikos had always worn and the soft, faded blue chambray shirt, rolled up at the forearms. And his dark curly hair was spun with silver. He stood, looked across that wide yard toward her, lifted his arm in a wave and turned away. He disappeared into the forest.
June was frozen. Sadie sat on the ground, her back to June, staring patiently into the trees. Then she got up, slowly turned and started toward June at a nice trot. It actually looked as though Sadie was smiling.
“Phew. Who says we don’t have angels here!”
Twenty-Seven
Jim had gone to jail with some of the captured growers to see if he could gather any more information about escaped suspects, other encampments, and anything that would enable the law to make more arrests and convictions. The Trinity bust made national news—not because of the size of the cache, but because of the difficulty of pulling it off and reclaiming the land.
“But,” he told June in a long evening phone chat, “there will always be a problem with growers back in those mountains. It’s just the best place in the world to hide and grow.”
“Will you go back there?”
“No, I’m done with that crowd. On to bigger and better things.”
“Aren’t you getting tired?”
“Of the work? No. Of the way I sometimes have to live to do this work? There are times. There are times. Lately, all I can think about is you.”
“Don’t let yourself be distracted,” she said, surprising herself.
“Are you afraid to operate, since we’ve become a team?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.
“My father thinks I’ve become moody. Distant.”
“Is it true?”
“It’s not your fault, but it is true. I’ve had so many things on my mind lately. The town is going through a big change. We’ve grown, maybe too fast. Birdie, my friend, says the town is less tender than it was, that we’re not taking very good care of each other these days. I think she might be right.”
“You take good care of the town,” he said.
“But lately it’s been hard. Since my Jeep burned up and I haven’t been able to replace it, I’ve been having terrible worries about money. I never worried about money before—not that I ever had any—but we always managed to keep the town, medically speaking. And I have a new doctor in the office who was trying to help a young, battered wife. Instead of realizing it and supporting him, I became suspicious of his motives, like my instincts, usually good, were cracked. I had him investigated! I’m surprised he’s forgiven me.
“Then we were able to help this disabled vet and his morbidly scarred wife with medical aid, and that’s good, but in the same month, we ran off our preacher! I don’t know, Jim…. I always thought of our town as small and old-fashioned, but I think it’s getting a little wacky. Am I just getting old?” she asked.
“Would you like to go dancing?” he asked out of the blue. She felt a warmth flood through her and all her worries briefly disappear.
“I wish you could come to the Fourth of July parade and picnic,” she said. “My aunt Myrna is in charge of the parade. She organizes the young people and they create floats out of cars, bikes and wagons, wear costumes, play kazoos. And then comes the greatest Fourth of July picnic in the world.”
“Don’t go to the kissing booth,” he said. “If you do, I’ll know.”
The best part about the parade was the excitement that preceded it. Bleachers were brought out from the high school and erected on Valley Drive between the clinic and police department, across the street from the café. The Presbyterian Women, undaunted by the absence of the preacher, set up trestle tables in front of the church and sold baked goods and lemonade. Behind the café and church was a park that stretched all the way back to Windle Stream, where Sam sometimes fished if he had loaned out his truck and couldn’t get far. There George and the other men would set up the huge grills that had been brought to Leah’s farm.
At two o’clock sharp the high school band, or what was available of them with so many on vacation, would strike up a marching song and lead the parade.
June arrived early and parked behind the clinic. She saw that the bleachers were already starting to fill up with parents. John and Susan were down in front, sitting beside the Dicksons. Julianna held the new baby in its knapsacklike carrier.
“Well, I assume all the children are with Mrs. Claypool and her entourage?” June asked.
“This is our first parade,” John said, beaming. “Princess Sydney is going to be pulling the float.”
“Ah yes—that would be the yellow Caddy at the end of the parade,” June said.
“Oh, you ruined it!” Mike Dickson said. “We wouldn’t tell him!”
“Oops. So, how’s our newest Dickson?”
“Perfectly all right, as far as we know,” Julianna said. “There’s no explanation for what happened to him. When I do put him down, which isn’t often, he sleeps on a monitor. I usually enjoy these baby months, but now I can’t wait till he’s two and completely out of the woods.”
“Did the pediatrician think it was a SIDS episode?” June asked.
“That’s his best guess.”
“How terrifying, Julianna. Can I hold him?” she asked.
June reached for the baby and cuddled him against her chest. She breathed in the talcumy smell of him and felt herself melt around him. She had not felt this way at thirty or even at thirty-five. What was happening to her?
Elmer, Judge and Birdie joined them on the bleachers. “She’s going to get strange again if she holds that baby for very long,” Elmer said.
June looked up and was completely surprised by who she saw on the other side of the street. “Dad, John, look who’s over there! It’s the Mulls. Julianna, do you mind if I carry the baby with me to go fetch them? I promise not to give him up.”
“It’s okay, June. I think you can be trusted not to kidnap him.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Elmer said. June gave him a glare and went to get the Mulls. Elmer leaned toward John. “She’s been acting pretty strange ever since she delivered Julianna’s baby. Emotional. Funky.”
“She’s at that age,” Birdie said. “She should have someone in her life who isn’t an old man or a married woman.”
“I bet it’s her clock,” Susan said. “Tick, tock, tick, tock…”
“Well, I think it would be good if June had a man in her life,” Julianna said. “John, isn’t there someone you can fix her up with?”
“I’ll think about it—but shush, here she comes. Make room for the Mulls, everyone.”
It was a remarkable thing to have them come out in this way, and far more than anyone ever expected to happen. It was one thing to get Clarence to try drugs and get Jurea to see a doctor, but this—the whole family joining with the town. It was more than any of them had ever dared hope for.
By two o’clock, when the first clumsy strains of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” were being coughed out by the Valley View High School Band, June was seated on the bleachers between Jurea and Julianna, and Jurea was holding the baby. Jurea had mentioned how amazed she had been when her own babies had not cried at the sight of her, and Julianna had told June to pass Douglas to her. Also near were Jessica, Ursula and Philana watching for the Toopeek children in the parade, Charlotte and Bud and some of their grown children, the Gilmores, the Crandalls, and Corsica Rios, who had brought the Craven kids to participate.
June looked around her and saw all the faces, all the happiness and anticipation, and felt blessed. She touched Jurea’s hand, the one that held the baby, and said, “Jurea, it means so much that you’re here, that you trust us enough to be here. You and Clarence. You’ve made us
all very very happy.”
“I ain’t done the tenth of what you all have done for us,” she answered shyly.
The band came, then Tom Toopeek in the decorated Rover, with kids hanging off the sides, crepe paper and balloons blowing in the wind. He ran the siren when they passed the gallery, and everyone whooped and laughed and yelled at him. He cleared the way for the teenagers in their decorated cars, then the younger kids on their decorated bikes and skateboards, then the little ones marching along holding hands, waving banners and pulling decorated wagons or riding decorated tricycles.
Then came a sight that would never be forgotten in the valley.
The tiniest of the children held crepe paper streamers that seemed to pull along a big, red-and-white, oversize ambulance, complete with flashing lights on top. There sat Myrna Hudson Claypool in a white nurse’s dress and cap, her skinny, aged legs dangling on the windshield. Sam drove the ambulance, and beside him, waving out the window, was Justine.
It didn’t sink in at all. June thought it was just another of Aunt Myrna’s elaborate costumes and dramas. “She usually has the children pull streamers, and at the end is the yellow Cadillac,” she said. But no one responded. All her friends around her just wore knowing grins because, as happened all the time in Grace Valley, the word had leaked. “This is awesome,” June said. And she was thinking, Man, that is exactly what we need—a real no-shit ambulance, loaded. But she would never say so because it was simply impossible.
The ambulance stopped in front of the gallery of spectators, and someone from the band handed Myrna Claypool a microphone. Into the mike she said, “Dr. June Hudson… Come on down!!!”
June’s heart skipped a couple of beats. She looked around at her friends and they all met her gaze with knowing eyes. She began to tremble. “Not really,” she said. “Not really.”
On shaky legs, she descended the bleachers and walked slowly to the ambulance. Sam had jumped out and lifted little Myrna down from the roof so she could meet her niece. And behind June, everyone in Grace Valley applauded. Did they all know? Had this been an elaborate surprise just for her?