“He’s okay. They transferred him to the hospital in Munroe.”
“Because of a bloody nose?”
“He has leukemia, June.”
I’m stunned. Cal has always been the picture of health. Tall and lean with a head full of thick hair that you can tell used to be as black as Jonathan’s. There’s something vigorous about him. Hale. It’s hard to imagine that someone like Cal could succumb to anything. Finally I manage, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“Tell Cal and Beth that.”
“I will, of course.” My mind is racing. “How long have you known? What do they need? Can I help? Jonathan, I want to help.”
He sighs. “Slow down. They just found out. Still trying to wrap their heads around it, I think. And then Baxter was killed, and now Cal’s in the hospital…”
“They admitted him?”
“They’re keeping him overnight just to run a few tests and make sure his blood pressure is stabilized.”
“Is Beth okay?”
“What do you think?” He shoots me a grim look.
I can’t stop myself from peppering him. I have so many questions. “Will he do treatment?”
“I think that’s the plan. It’s really early, June. I don’t have a lot of answers for you.”
We’re silent for a few minutes as Jonathan navigates the dark county roads. The stars are out in full force, a scatter of diamonds in a black, moonless sky. Usually I’d lean forward against my seat belt and marvel at the constellations through the windshield, but I’m rooted to the bench tonight.
I whip toward my brother as a thought occurs to me. “Wait. Is this…” I can’t find the words, and even when I do, they seem illogical. Impossible. I say them anyway. “Does Cal’s cancer have anything to do with their water? With the trouble with the Tates?”
“Cal and Beth think so.”
It’s a sobering thought. Suddenly the fields around us seem ominous, the tufts of newly sprouted corn menacing. I’ve been told my whole life that this is a place of abundance. A fruited plain. It feels corrupted now.
“That’s insane,” I whisper, more to myself than Jonathan.
He pounces anyway. “It’s not. It’s all connected, June.”
It’s obvious he’s been spending a lot of time with the Murphys. They talk like this all the time. About how we’re poisoning ourselves with chemicals, sacrificing our own lives on the altar of corporate greed. According to the Murphys, big agra isn’t just the end of the small family farm, it’s the destruction of our planet. It’s why they bought the acreage in the first place, and why they work so hard to grow everything, according to Beth, “the way God intended it.” They hand out homemade pamphlets at their roadside stand, cultivate bee-friendly plants, and eat clean. They aren’t strict vegetarians, but I do know that the only meat they’ll touch is whatever they’ve raised on their own little plot of land and butchered locally. Admirable, I suppose. But it doesn’t seem as if any of it has made a difference.
“I know,” I soothe Jonathan. “It’s not fair. I didn’t mean that I don’t believe you. It’s just a lot to take in. And you have to admit, people get sick all the time. Cancer doesn’t discriminate.”
“Thanks for that, oh wise one.” The sarcasm in Jonathan’s voice is so thick I can practically see it dripping in the air between us.
“You don’t have to be mean.”
Jonathan ignores me. “Remember Petunia?”
Of course I remember Petunia. The Murphys bought an Angus calf a couple of years ago and raised her in the pasture behind the small stable. She really was a sweet thing. Big brown eyes and a gentle manner that made her seem more like a pony than a cow. But when she was eighteen months old, Petunia disappeared.
“We’ll have lots of steaks and hamburger, of course,” Beth told me when I asked where Petunia had gone. “But also bone broth and liver and tongue. Don’t worry, June, we won’t waste a bit of her.”
The Bakers are carnivores through and through, and I eat my fair share of hamburgers hot off the grill and Iowa chops with meat so tender it falls off the bone. But I have never named an animal I later ate. It seemed a little barbaric to me that the Murphys would do exactly that.
“What about Petunia?” I ask with some trepidation.
“When they butchered her, she was so full of tumors they had to condemn the meat.”