Comes a Time for Burning (2 page)

“Yes?” At the mention of his clinic handyman and ambulance driver, Thomas looked at her sharply.

“I couldn’t help noticing that his leg is giving him significant discomfort, Doctor.”

“You think so?”

“I am certain. He does his best to disguise it, but on occasion, his discomfort is obvious.”

Bertha Auerbach had a wonderful capacity for mixing sternness and sympathy in the same expression, Thomas thought. “He has said nothing to me about this.”

“You’re a busy man, Doctor.” Bertha’s smile was a ghost on her fine features. With no small chagrin, Thomas ducked his head in agreement. Busy or not, and despite his pride at his own skills and observations, he had found long ago that he was no match for Bertha Auerbach, whose sharp eyes and keen brain saw and recorded virtually everything in the world around her…so much so that Thomas had come to depend on her in a thousand ways. If Bertha Auerbach said that Howard Deaton was suffering, then he was. It was that simple.

Chapter Two

“I shall talk with Howard,” Thomas said. “This very morning. Without delay.” The previous autumn, Thomas had patched Deaton back together, but the injured man, a former teamster for one of the large freight companies, had lost the job that had nearly killed him. He had convalesced eventually into full-time employment with the Clinic. Deaton now drove one of the two white ambulance rigs, a man so dependable and resourceful that Dr. Thomas Parks gave that aspect of the Clinic’s operation not a moment’s thought, leaving it entirely in Deaton’s capable hands. The six horses were always meticulously groomed and shod, the rigs kept clean of every speck of mud, dust, or blood.

“We’ll have a moment right after I chat with Mrs. Schmidt,” Thomas said. “So, let’s be at it, then. Mr. Huckla, the boots, the trousers, the vest and shirt. You may leave on your drawers.”

“Christ, Doc, it’s just my
hand
you’re workin’ on,” he protested.

“Indeed. And the cleaner, the better. I have no intention of working around clothing that hasn’t seen the laundry for a month.” He glanced down at Huckla’s heavy, lace boots. “Those are a challenge with one hand, I imagine.” He swiftly unlaced first one boot and then the other, grimacing at the bouquet as he slipped them off. “We’re going to end up burning sulfur to fumigate this place,” he muttered, but Huckla didn’t reply.

A moment later, Bertha returned from outside and waved her hand under her nose. “That young man is having a fine time of it.” She leaned over and looked into Huckla’s eyes. “What did you fellows have last night for supper?”

“We had…what’d we have. Oh, Mike Curran, he had a bunch of that dried salmon from up the way. Eatin’ on that all night when we was at cards.”

“You might package some bicarbonate for him to take along,” Thomas said. “For both him and his companion.”

“I have done so.” Bertha walked behind Thomas, who had drawn hot water piped from the Victor boiler in the basement. While he washed his hands in water so hot that it hurt, he had one of his anatomy texts open to a plate of the skeletal details of the hand, leaning sideways so he could peruse it without dripping on the pages.

“That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” he quipped, and then nodded his thanks as she slid a pan with the carbolic acid drench near his elbow.

“Alvina is down at the barns,” she said. “She said there was an issue with her horse…I’m not sure what.”

“She’s not riding anyway,” Thomas groused, pushing back from the wash basin. “She said that she favored a short walk this morning, and I can’t blame her for that.” As his wife’s pregnancy progressed, the confines of the large house at 101 Lincoln never seemed large enough for her. Regardless of the weather, Alvina Haines Parks toured her unborn child around Port McKinney, favoring the smooth footing by the inlet below the high tide mark.

“Is Prince with her?” The big hound, himself an off-and-on surgical patient, seemed to sense the imminent arrival of the child, and did not stray from his mistress’ side.

“As always. She said that she will come inside when she finishes at the barns. She wanted to work an hour or so on the billing this morning.”

“I won’t discourage
that,”
Thomas said. “Were it left to me, we’d all be in the poorhouse.” Preparations for surgery were simple and swift, and when Thomas was convinced that Buddy Huckla’s hand and arm up to the elbow were as sterile as they could be, he isolated the hand in linen. Donning a clean apron, Thomas rinsed his hands once more in the drench and, while Bertha Auerbach tended the small bottle of nitrous oxide and the face mask, Thomas took a moment to re-examine the fingers.

With Huckla relaxed in slumber land, Thomas first hauled the crooked thumb back into place, and felt a good, solid
pop
as the joint settled properly. Satisfied with that, he turned his attention to the index finger, selecting the finest bistoury in the collection.

“An interesting spiral fracture,” he murmured, then sighed. “This joint will never work properly again. There’s actually a piece of the phalanx process fractured clear. I can’t envision how he managed that. Whether the ligaments will reattach after we clean this up…well, that’s anyone’s guess.”

The lightest of raps on the door drew Thomas’ attention. As soon as he looked up, Alvina pushed the door open the rest of the way. “You stay outside,” his wife said to the enormous, gray-muzzled dog who accompanied her.

“Doctor Thomas, you have a young man determined to speak with you.”

“Well, I can’t just now, Alvi. And Bertha told him to go back to camp. His friend here will be detained most of the day.”

“Mr. Sitzberger has taken his smelly carcass back to the timber,” Alvi said cheerfully. “And taken the bicarbonate with him. The visitor is another fellow who brings word from Paul Bertram.”

“Bertram? The timber foreman?”

“The same. They have an injury out on one of the bluffs. They’ve come to fetch you and the ambulance.”

Thomas frowned, absorbed by the challenge under his scalpel. Alvi remained silent while he worked. Two tiny stitches helped to stabilize a torn ligament, and the physician allowed himself a deep breath. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Alvi said. “The fellow says that one of the high riggers is in desperate straights.” Thomas had yet to spend sufficient time in the timber to boast familiarity with the myriad harrowing jobs, but he knew what a high rigger was and what those mad men did. Scaling the towering spruce or fir, working in the wet tree tops, every tool they handled was sharp and slick.

“If Howard will prepare the ambulance…”

“He is doing so as we speak. And Fats,” she said referring to Thomas’ gelding.

“That’s good. Bertha tells me that Howard’s leg is beginning to trouble him.”

“I would agree.”

“Give me ten minutes, then.”

The door and the world closed around him as he worked, and by the time he had closed the small incision and helped Bertha with the bandages and splinting, half an hour had passed.

Huckla was already beginning to stir as they wheeled him to the ward and transferred the young man to one of the narrow beds.

“A quarter grain in an hour,” Thomas said. “And then again if he needs it. But today only. It should be nothing more than a mild ache by this evening.”

With his heavy medical bag in hand, Thomas hurried outside where the messenger awaited. The rider, a young man with peach fuzz where a beard might someday grow, drew the reins to the ready, and his bay mare looked at Thomas expectantly as the physician left the clinic. An oil slicker was rolled at the back of the man’s saddle, but the lad ignored it, apparently preferring to drip instead. Thomas had never seen the youth before, but he was from the same mold as young Huckla—compact, confident, grubby and unkempt. The youngster obviously knew him.

“Doc, the boss man says that if you got the time, we could sure use you out on the Dutch Tract.” The youth folded both hands on the saddle horn as if about to settle in for a pleasant conversation. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of wretched teeth. “Don’t expect you’ve ever seen anything like this.”

“And the ‘like this’ is what, my friend?” Thomas asked.

“We got us one of the riggers stuck up a spar.” The rider smiled again.

Thomas laughed “Stuck? At the top of a tree? How does one accomplish that?”

“Takes some doin’, I gotta say.”

“He’s hurt? Well, of course he’s hurt,” Thomas corrected quickly. “Else wise, you wouldn’t be here. But surely he is out of the tree by now.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s hurt. But I don’t think he’s lit to the ground yet.”

And bled to death by now, no doubt
, Thomas thought. “How far, then?”

“South acreage of the Dutch, across the creek, Doc. Maybe eight miles.”

Thomas frowned at the results of his automatic computations…eight miles meant an hour under the best of circumstances. “And can you give me some notion of the injuries?”

“Well,” and the boy wiped his face and snapped the water off his fingers. “I ain’t sure. He’s too high up to see. Squished hands, I guess. That’d be a start. Don’t know what else. Maybe got his noggin cracked open.”

“I’ll meet you right here in five minutes,” the physician said. “Let me get my horse.” He looked beyond the portico toward the stable. The rain, more a pervasive mist, wafted in ghostlike curtains between the two buildings, but Thomas could see that one of the ambulances had already left. “Howard knows the way?”

“Sure enough does,” the young man replied.

He turned to see his nurse, Bertha Auerbach, standing in the clinic’s doorway. “If you’ll convey my apologies to Mrs. Schmidt…”

“Of course. I’ll reschedule her for tomorrow.”

Thomas pulled up his slicker and scrunched his soft hat down firmly on his head. He took no real joy in riding, and this day promised misery. In the barn, his gelding was bridled, blanketed, and saddled, reins looped loosely over one of the stanchions. The animal, a fifteen-year-old creature with impenetrable nerves and soft gaits the envy of any child’s pony, stood stock still as Thomas lashed his medical bag to the saddle skirts. As he did so, a hand stole over Thomas’ shoulder and stroked his cheek, and a huge, firm belly nudged against the small of his back. He turned to face Alvi, and before he could get a word out, his wife had taken his face in both strong hands, her characteristic gesture that said, “
I want your full attention, my husband, and I want it now.”

“You be careful, Dr. Thomas.” Her voice was a husky alto that matched her full-figured stature. Behind her, the gangly Prince had settled in a quiet corner well clear of horses’ hooves.

“Oh, indeed. It’s just a run up to the Dutch.” He said it as if he’d been there a hundred times, rather than never at all.

“Howard took the harbor road with Sally and Ebbi, since there’s some rough going otherwise. Taylor will be taking you straight across the ridge. That’ll save you four miles.”

“I hadn’t even asked his name.” Thomas glanced toward the portico where the young messenger waited.

“Taylor Simpson.” Alvi grinned. “A good boy. That’s the highest recommendation from Miss Bertha.”

“She knows
everyone
,” Thomas said. “I don’t know how she does it.”

“Twenty-five years living in the same tiny village, no doubt,” Alvi said. She kept a hand on the gelding’s bridle as Thomas led him out of the barn. When they were a number of feet away from the structure, she leaned close, pushing her fashionable canvas hat back until the mist settled fetchingly on her nose. Her breath was warm on his ear. “And she’s right. Howard’s leg
is
troubling him, Dr. Thomas.”

The physician nodded. “I was coming out to fetch him as soon as the surgery was finished. And then the Simpson boy arrived.”

“You’ll watch over him.” It wasn’t clear to whom she was referring, but Thomas nodded.

“Of course.”

“And watch over yourself, Dr. Thomas.” She turned his head, heedless of who might be watching, and kissed him full on the lips, a long, passionate probing, hugging her belly against his.

“And you behave,” he said, almost gasping for breath.

“Prince and I are planning a long, gentle walk. That’s all.”

“Keep it very gentle, and not very long, Alvi. Perhaps a couple of times up and down the front porch.”

She laughed that characteristic little bubble that implied,
So you say
. “You can be so old-fashioned sometimes, Dr. Thomas. I am no invalid.”

“I know you’re not. But sometimes…” He caught himself. “Bertha reminds me that Dr. Hardy will arrive today.”

“Then I’ll give him a proper greeting and tour if you have yet to return,” Alvi said, and patted her husband’s arm. She stepped back as he swung up onto the gelding, the lingering stiffness in his own left hip forcing a careful, genteel mount. She reached out and squeezed his thigh. “Let the horse pick the way.” She blew him another kiss and stepped away from the gelding, whose ears had perked in response to an excited nicker from Taylor Simpson’s mare.

Chapter Three

Simpson pirouetted his horse around in the driveway. “It’s about four miles goin’ straight across the bluff. That’ll save us some time. You mind that?”

Without waiting for a reply, the young man led them through the village, and then swung off on a side street that at first appeared to dead-end in a rocky bluff. Instead, the trail snaked through dense stands of rhododendron, cedar, and huckleberry bushes, and through forests of stumpage, the timber gone a generation before.

Thomas saw that the boy rode with his reins slack, letting the horse practically nuzzle the trail as he selected his footing. Thomas let the gelding do the same, and for the first mile, the physician focused on sitting erect but relaxed in the saddle. Each time he mounted a horse, apprehension still reared its ugly head, now almost nine months after a frightful wreck in which a mule had pitched him into a tidal pool and then rolled on top of him—all during his first hour in Port McKinney. His first months had been spent in painful convalescence, hardly the stuff of his medical school dreams. He had switched from crutches to cane for his twenty-seventh birthday in December, then abandoned even the cane by spring.

In twenty minutes they reached the high bluff lands northwest of Port McKinney. The land was scarred into fantastic patterns where the timber had been harvested, small strips left here and there where some feature of the topography made logging impossible. The stumps, some seven or eight feet high, stood as armies of silent giants, making a direct route to anywhere impossible.

In places, the timber was new growth, the majority of the stand little more than eight or ten inches in diameter, spots either harvested decades ago or regrowing after a lightning strike. The mist sifted through the trees in spooky swirls, the place dark and forbidding.

The footing made the gelding nervous, challenging him with downed timber, dislodged roots, or shelves of slick rock. Despite the chill, the animal worked on a froth under his cinch and along the flat plane of his neck. The tract was rarely flat, but rolled through ravines and across creeks, the path little more than a single deer-trail. There was no horizon, just an endless rumple.

“Spectacular country,” he called to Simpson. The lad didn’t reply to his jest, but as they jogged onto the broad back of the bluff where the land sloped sharply away, they intersected a rough and mucky trail rutted by the constant traffic of freight wagons. The youth nudged his mount faster and Thomas urged the gelding into a lazy gallop to keep up, the animal’s over-fed gut releasing a veritable symphony of gassy complaint. Their hooves threw great clots of mucky sod above the riders’ heads.

Across the bluff, the two riders eventually settled into a series of switchbacks that took them to a major stream bed. They splashed across twenty yards of water running two feet deep and the color of strong tea, colored by the continual soaking of saw logs rich in tannic acid. On the other side of the creek, the dense, mature timber blocked daylight, and Thomas could easily imagine that he was riding in the last moments of dusk.

They passed ever-increasing signs of the industry but saw no loggers, no riggers, no buckers. Smoke drifted up from a smokestack rammed through the roof of a rude slab-wood shack on log skids, and Thomas caught a glimpse of the steam donkey inside, its draw cables slack. Here and there, a deck of fragrant saw logs loomed out of the mists.

The bluff was narrow and ragged, the engineering problems of logging it explaining why its trees had stood for so long. Finally, far ahead through the trees, the physician saw the light of a precipice, and Simpson slowed his horse to a sedate walk. The gelding huffed, sides heaving.

“Right there,” the lad called, and pointed off to the east. Sure enough, a crowd of men had gathered, the incident—whatever it was—dragging them out of the timber. For a moment, Thomas saw nothing that would warrant the men’s attention. And then, silhouetted by the dim and curtained morning light, he saw a figure, a dozen feet below the top of an impossibly tall Sitka spruce spar. But the giant’s feathery top hadn’t plunged loose. Its uppermost limbs rested firmly in the crown of another neighboring spruce twenty yards away. The crown’s bole, twenty-four inches in diameter, was suspended nearly horizontal to the ground, its butt somehow still attached to the spar.

Thomas craned his neck backward as he rode closer until he was looking sharply upward, so much so that the brim of his hat no longer blocked the fine rain. He blinked hard and rubbed his face and, just as he reined the gelding to a stand-still, he saw a second man right below the ragged and threatening tonnage of the skewed crown. Yet a third man was climbing steadily sixty feet below the pair, hitching his safety rope deftly, keeping on the side of the spruce opposite the threatening top. From his belt on a six-foot keeper hung both a double-bit axe and a short cross-cut.

“Take a look, Doc,” a voice behind him said, and Thomas turned to see an older man with his gray hair tied back in a braid, a woolen sailor’s cap pulled low. He didn’t bother with a slicker, and as he stepped closer to hand a small brass spy-glass to Thomas, the physician could smell the rank odor of perpetually damp wool. “I’m Bertram,” the man said. “I’m glad the kid could find you.”

“Thomas Parks.” Thomas extended his hand, and Bertram’s grip was like iron, only the backs of his hands wet from the drizzle.

“Bert Schmidt speaks mighty high of you, Doctor. Thanks for comin’ out. You can see for yourself, we got a fine mess up above. There’ll sure as hell be some work for you in a few minutes.”

Clearing the image took some finagling, but eventually the glass gave Thomas a view, the lens spotted with droplets…and the scene still made no sense. What appeared to be the man’s safety rope hung from his trouser belt in two pieces, one half dangling past each leg. He was caught at least ten feet below the break, and sure enough, the tree’s crown appeared to have been broken off, rather than sawed or axed cleanly.

“I don’t understand,” Thomas said. “The ride out here took the better part of forty minutes…I assume a little less for young Simpson to ride
into
town to fetch me…you’re saying that this man has been caught up there for nearly two hours? Perhaps three?”

“Well…” Bertram said, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “We got us something of a problem. I’d just as soon discomfort him a little than have to bury him.”

Discomfort him a little
. Thomas marveled at those words as a man, apparently broken in some curious and painful way, hung a hundred and fifty feet above the ground, his safety belt useless.

“They’ve tried a couple things, but so far…” and Bertram shrugged. “We’ll know more here in a minute.”

Thomas stepped back to more secure footing, digging his boots into the muck. The spar was situated on the very rim of a steep incline, and certainly the view from on top must have been spectacular. Thomas knew that when the tree, stripped of all limbs and its crown, was rigged with a wonder of ropes and tackle for moving timber, it would command a large section of land so steep that oxen or mules couldn’t skid the logs. The spar acted as an enormous, rooted crane.

“He appears to be hung up on something.” Thomas lowered the glass. “I can’t make it out.”

“That’s puttin’ it one way, Doc,” Bertram laughed and turned away, pulling out a pocket knife. In a moment the foreman returned with a small wand of limb wood. He shook off a geyser of moisture and then deftly nicked off the side twigs until he had a switch two feet long with a little fan top.

“See, this is what we got.” He glanced up at the spar. The third climber had progressed to within fifteen feet of the pair above him. “He was cuttin’ off the crown, right there where it’s about two foot through. Maybe a little more.”

He first held up the twig, matching against the huge spar to make sure that Thomas understood the model. Then, with a twist of the knife, he cut part-way through the switch just below the brush of remaining twigs. As he cut, his thumb bent the feathery crown over until with a snapping of fibers, it stood out at right angles from the stick, but not yet entirely separated.

“So she pitches over like that, see. The crown’s supposed to break free, but she doesn’t.” Working the knife blade into the exposed end grain, he split the wand downward from the break of the crown, tugging a little on the top to widen the split.

“See, this is what we got,” he said again. “And it looks like two things happened. After he lights the dynamite…”

“Dynamite?” Thomas stared incredulously at the foreman.

“Well, sure. He wants a banger. Wasn’t
supposed
to do that, but he goes ahead and does it anyway.” He made an imaginary circle around the stick with his index finger. “So he chops a girdle all around, see, right where he wants the top to separate. Maybe five, six inches deep. That don’t take too long. Easy enough to lay the charge, packin’ ’em in around the stick. Art thinks he used sixty or so.”

He paused, amused by Thomas’ thunderstruck expression. “Got a bit of light rope, stringin’ them charges all together. Kind of a daisy-chain. All around where he wants the top to be blowed off. Then he cuts a good drop fuse.
Good
and long. Six, eight feet.” He shrugged and looked skyward again. “On a good day, that should give him time to drop down—five, six minutes, something like that. Unless he gets hung up on something. Limb stub, just about anything. Sometimes just a stubborn scab of bark.”

“But
dynamite
? Whatever for?” He gestured around him at the groups of men, all captivated by the drama above. “An
axe
? Saws?”

Bertram grinned at the young physician. “You ever run a one-man cross-cut through a couple feet or more of sappy knots? That spar’s knot-studded like a stick of cheap knotty pine, Doc.” He held his hand flat and made sawing motions. “One thing to do it on the ground. But sideways a hundred and fifty feet up? Hangin’ by rope and spurs? You’re fightin’ it every inch you make. And an axe don’t make it any easier.”

“But
dynamite
?” Thomas repeated.

“Another thing,” Bertram said. “Up here on the headlands, the wind will come up here pretty quick.” He held up the twig and waved it back and forth. “That’s a hell of a wand. That starts dancin’…why hell, you can sweep yourself an arc across fifty foot of sky. Hard to hang on, sometimes.”

“So what happened, then?”

“My guess is that he had a skip or something like that. We’ve had some troubles with that if they don’t pay attention. Now normally, Art Mabry…he’s up there now…he’s the one who sets the charges. But this time, Sonny Malone went ahead and did it.”

“A skip?”

Bertram shrugged. “Most of the time, now, the fuse is long enough that after he lights it, he’s got time to drop down as far as he can, see. Do it right, and don’t get hung up, he can make it to the ground. That’s what we want to see—him clear of the spar. But something goes wrong, and the charge don’t go off. The fuse sputters out or something, or has a skip.”

The foreman shrugged again. “Some of these fellas ain’t got the patience God shoulda gave ’em, and that’s where the trouble starts. That’s what the boys tell me happened here. Sonny goes back up to see what’s wrong. He’s ten feet below the charge when off she goes. And this ain’t his lucky day, see.”

“I don’t see.”

“Well, first he got himself a goddamn serious hang-fire, and even then, some of them go off, some don’t.” He reached out and touched Thomas lightly on the shoulder as if the physician wasn’t paying attention. He thumbed the top of his model tree to the side, the wood cracking but still attached. “So we got this. We got this split startin’ to run down the trunk, see. And that’s a lot of weight pitchin’ off to the side. Then the trunk splits, bang.” Bertram yanked at the top, and the split trunk yawned open where he’d started it with his pocketknife. “’Cept for that split, he mighta been okay. But the weight of the top just pried that trunk wide open. They’ll do that sometimes. Now, as that trunk splits—and hell, it can gape a dozen feet before the top tears free and the split slaps shut—well, let me tell you, it don’t take much
gape
before you’re flat run out of safety belt, even if you’re usin’ every inch you got.”

“And then?”

“If he don’t cut the safety rope, it’ll cut
him
. Well, it’s going to crush him like a damn banana slug slapped with an axe handle. Saw a climber cut clean in half once up in Vancouver.” He grimaced. “Weren’t all that clean, neither.”

“The safety rope won’t break first?”

Bertram shook his head and spat. “Sure as hell better not. They got a steel core, you know. But I tell ya…old Sonny there is damn quick. He saw what was comin’ and had time for one good swing with the axe. Cut the safety rope, then just hugged that tree and prayed, probably. See, it’s small enough around up there that a man can hug it. Well, almost, it is. Trouble is,
when
he hugged it, he got both hands in the split. The crown settled in the neighbor tree, and the split slapped shut. You got about five tons of crown pushin’ it closed now. Like a goddamn big rat trap, is what it is.”

“My God.”

“And there’s old Sonny, up to his elbows in a stick of spruce that won’t let him go. They’ve been doin’ some thinkin’, and we’ll see what happens. Lemme see that again.” He held out his hand for the glass. For a long time, Bertram watched the performance overhead. At first, Thomas thought he could hear one of the men calling, but then realized that the high-pitched keening, intermixed with a string of profanity so confused it sounded like jibberish, was uttered by the trapped man himself.

“What are they going to do?”

“Don’t know,” Bertram said. “I know what
I’d
do.”

“I can send something up for the pain. Morphine would do it. Anyone can administer it.”

“Got to have his wits about him,” Bertram said. “What little wits he’s got left after the dynamite.”

“Hey!” The single word floated down from above.

Bertram took a couple of steps closer to the tree, craning upward. “What’d you decide, Art?” Thomas moved up beside the foreman, one arm over his head to shield his eyes. The light caught the individual droplets now, streaming downward like miniature diamonds, just enough air movement to slant them against the dark green of the timber.