“I’m going to need something for the pain,” he said.
“You already had something for the pain,” she told him. And he giggled again. But in his eyes there was menace and she decided not to make any more eye contact.
Doc made a sudden movement that slammed Calvin’s arm onto the table, hard, gripped by Doc’s arthritic hand. “You never do that, you hear me?” Doc said in a voice more threatening than Mel had heard before, then slowly released Calvin’s forearm while boring through him with angry eyes. Then Doc immediately turned his attention back to Maxine. “I’m going to have to put this bone right, Maxine. Then I’ll cast it for you.”
Mel had no idea what had just happened. “You don’t want an X-ray?” she heard herself ask Doc. And her answer was a glare from the doctor who’d asked her to try not to talk. She went back to the man’s face.
There was a cut over his eye that she could repair with tape, no stitches required. Standing above him as she was, she noticed a huge purple bump through the thinning hair on the top of his head. Maxine must have hit him over the head with something, right before he broke her arm. She glanced at his shoulders and arms through the thin fabric of his shirt and saw that he had some heft to him—he was probably strong. Strong enough at least break a bone.
The bucket of water arrived—the bucket rusty and dirty—and momentarily she heard Maxine give out a yelp of pain as Doc used sudden and powerful force to put her ulna back into place.
Old Doc Mullins worked silently, wrapping an Ace bandage around her arm, then dipping casting material into the bucket, soaking it, and applying it to the broken arm. Finished with her assignment, Mel moved away from Calvin and watched Doc. He was strong and fast for his age, skilled for a man with hands twisted by arthritis, but then this had been his life’s work. Casting done, he pulled a sling out of his bag.
Job done, he snapped off his gloves, threw them in his bag, closed it, picked it up and, looking down, went back to the truck. Again, Mel followed.
When they were out of the compound she said, “All right—what’s going on there?”
“What do you think’s going on?” he asked. “It isn’t complicated.”
“Looks pretty awful to me,” she said.
“It is awful. But not complicated. Just a few dirt-poor alcoholics. Homeless, living in the woods. Clifford wandered away from his family to live out here years ago and over time a few others joined his camp. Then Calvin Thompson and Maxine showed up not so long ago, and added weed to the agenda—they’re growing in that semitrailer. Biggest mystery to me is how they got it back in here. You can bet Calvin couldn’t get that done. I figure Calvin’s connected to someone, told ’em he could sit back here and watch over a grow. Calvin’s a caretaker. That’s what the generator is about—grow lights. They irrigate out of the river. Calvin’s jitters don’t come from pot—pot would level him out and slow him down. He’s gotta be on something like meth. Maybe he skims a little marijuana, cheats the boss, and trades it for something else. Thing is, I don’t think Clifford and those old men have anything to do with the pot. They never had a grow out there before that I know of. But I could be wrong.”
“Amazing,” she said.
“There are lots of little marijuana camps hidden back in these woods—some of ’em pretty good size—but you can’t grow it outside in winter months. It’s still the biggest cash crop in California. But even if you gave Clifford and those old boys a million dollars, that’s how they’re going to live.” He took a breath. “Not all local growers look like vagrants. A lot of ’em look like millionaires.”
“What happened when you grabbed his arm like that?” she asked.
“You didn’t see? He was raising it like he was going to touch you. Familiarly.”
She shuddered. “Thanks. I guess. Why’d you want me to see that?”
“Two reasons—so you’d know what some of this country medicine is about. Some places where they’re growing are booby-trapped, but not this one. You should never go out to one of those places alone. Not even if a baby’s coming. You better hear me on that.”
“Don’t worry,” she said with a shudder. “You should tell someone, Doc. You should tell the sheriff or someone.”
He laughed. “For all I know, the sheriff’s department’s aware—there are growers all over this part of the world. For the most part, they stay invisible—it’s not like they want to be found out. More to the point, I’m in medicine, not law enforcement. I don’t talk about the patients. I assume that’s your ethic, as well.”
“They live in filth! They’re hungry and probably sick! Their water is undoubtedly contaminated by the awful, dirty containers they keep it in. They’re beating each other up and dying of drink and…whatever.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Doesn’t make my day, either.”
She found it devastating, the acceptance of such hopelessness. “How do you do it?” she asked him, her voice quiet.
“I just do the best I can,” he said. “I help where I can. That’s all anyone can do.”
She shook her head. “This really isn’t for me,” she said. “I can handle stuff like this when it comes into the hospital, but I’m no country practitioner. It’s like the Peace Corps.”
“There are bright spots in my doctoring, too,” he said. “Just happens that isn’t one of them.”
She was completely down in the dumps when she went back to the grill to collect the baby. “Not pretty out there, is it?” Jack said.
“Horrid. Have you ever been out there?”
“I stumbled across them a couple years ago when I was hunting.”
“You didn’t want to tell anyone?” she asked. “Like the police?”
“It isn’t against the law to be a bum,” he said with a shrug.
So, she thought—he didn’t know about the semitrailer. Doc had said it showed up not long ago. “I can’t imagine living like that. Can I use your bathroom? I want to wash up before I touch the baby.”
“Right back off the kitchen,” he said.
When she got back she picked up Chloe and held her close, breathing in the clean, powdery scent.
“Fortunately, you don’t have to live like they do,” he said.
“Neither do they. Someone should do an intervention out there, get them some help. Food and clean water, anyway.”
He picked up the baby bed to carry it across the street for her. “I think they’ve killed too many brain cells for that to work,” he said. “Concentrate on the good you can do and don’t gnaw on the hopeless cases. It’ll just make you sad.”
By early evening, Mel was coming around. She took her dinner at the bar, laughed with Jack and even Preacher cracked the occasional smile. Finally, she put her small hand over Jack’s and said, “I apologize for earlier, Jack. I never even thanked you for watching the baby.”
“You were kind of upset,” he said.
“Yeah. I surprised myself. It’s not as though I haven’t seen plenty of bums and street people. They were frequent clientele at the hospital. I didn’t realize before today that in the city we’d clean ’em up, straighten ’em out and hand ’em off to some agency or another. In the back of my mind I probably always knew they’d be back picking out of trash cans before long, but I didn’t have to see it. This was very different. They’re not going anywhere and they’re not getting any help. It’s been down to Doc. Alone. Takes a lot of courage to do what Doc does.”