The Caretaker of Lorne Field (12 page)

He was checking Lester’s vital signs while a nurse attached an IV and another wrapped gauze around Lester’s hand. She recognized the nurse attaching the IV as Abby Huffman’s girl. She had never seen the doctor or other nurse before, knew they weren’t from her town. The doctor asked how the injury happened.

“I don’t know. My husband says it was an accident. That’s all he told me.”

“He was with your son at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone else with them?”

“Nope, just Lester and my husband.”

“What happened to the thumb?”

“All he said was it was lost. Anyway, I don’t have it and I don’t know where it is.”

“That’s too bad,” the doctor said. “It looks like a clean cut. The thumb probably could’ve been reattached.”

“H-how do you think it was cut off?”

“A knife.”

Lester was sedated when he was brought in. He started moaning. Abby Huffman’s girl told the doctor that the IV was in. He told Lydia that they were taking Lester to surgery. That not only did they need to operate on his hand, but his blood pressure was dangerously low and he needed a transfusion as quickly as possible. He looked away from her and told her that she would be escorted to a waiting area.

“I want to be with my son.”

He turned only partly to face her. He was a lean man in his early thirties with a face like a razor. The look he gave her had about as much warmth as a sheet of ice.

“We have certain rules we need to follow for cases like this,” he said.

“Cases like what?”

He ignored her, nodding instead to two orderlies standing nearby. They took hold of the gurney Lester was on and started wheeling it away. The doctor followed them. When Lydia tried to follow, the nurse that she didn’t know stepped in her way.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but I need to bring you to one of our waiting rooms.”

The nurse was a good forty pounds heavier than Lydia and had a thick neck for a woman. Her forearms were also thicker than Lydia’s thighs. Lydia felt very tired at that moment. Weak also. She nodded and followed the nurse to a small room that had only a table and two chairs in it. The nurse asked Lydia whether she could get her a magazine. Lydia shook her head, sat down and started to cry. She didn’t want to cry in front of this other woman but couldn’t help herself. She heard the door close as the nurse left.

While she waited, a woman from the hospital came to ask her questions. She was about Lydia’s age but looked much younger. She wore a turtleneck sweater and a long wool skirt, which seemed to Lydia like an odd choice for the summer. Most of her questions were about their family life. It was a blur to Lydia. She was only half-aware of her answers. A short time after the woman left, two local police officers came in to talk to her. They didn’t have many questions, mostly the same ones the doctor had, and a few about her husband. It was also like a blur with them. It seemed as if they were only there for seconds before they were gone. She knew it was longer, but that’s what it seemed like.

When Sheriff Wolcott walked into the room she was surprised to see that it was already a quarter to five. He looked ill at ease as he sat across from her, his skin color not quite right.

“Mrs. Durkin,” he said.

“Daniel.”

“I understand there was an accident?”

“Yes.” She looked again at her watch and slowly made sense of the fact that she’d been sitting there over two hours. “My boy should be done with surgery by now,” she said, her face crumbling as she expected the worst.

“I understand the surgery went well. A doctor will be in here soon to talk to you about it, but I understand it went well and Lester’s recuperating right now.”

“Thank God.” She started crying then, her sobs wracking her nearly skeletal frame. “Oh thank God for that.”

Through the sobbing she could see Wolcott studying her, his eyes queasy and his lips turned up into a forced look of sympathy. He looked like he wanted to bolt. She sniffed a few times, got control of her crying and wiped a hand across her eyes.

“Why ain’t I allowed to be with my son right now?”

“You will be,” he said. He looked down at his hands, didn’t seem to know what to do with them, and ended up folding them in front of him with his fingers interlaced. “I understand Lester’s still in post-op, but you’ll be able to see him soon. I have some questions for you.”

“Well, why don’t you get around to asking them!”

He smiled weakly at her then, reminding her of the way he was when he was five and she used to babysit him. The smile faded quickly. “I need to know about the accident, Mrs. Durkin.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you,” she said. “You’re going to have to ask Lester or my damned fool husband about it.”

“I plan to,” he said. His manner shifted momentarily to something more formal, more police-like. When he met Lydia’s stare, the hardness about his face faded. “I was hoping you might have some idea what happened.”

“Nope. I wasn’t there.”

“The doctor I spoke to thinks Lester’s thumb was cut off with a knife.”

Lydia didn’t say anything. Wolcott tried to meet her eyes, but instead lowered his gaze back to his folded hands. “Do you think Jack might’ve done something like that?” he asked.

“All I know is he told me it was an accident.”

“But you know him as well as anyone. Could he do something like that?”

She laughed. “Know him as well as anyone? Ha! I don’t have a clue what goes on in that block of cement he calls a head. But no, he wouldn’t intentionally hurt Lester. He never once laid a hand on me or the boys. It’s not in him to do something like that. He makes a lot of noise but that’s all it is.”

“He does seem to have quite a temper.”

“Not really. His bark’s worse than his bite.”

“What about his mental state?”

Lydia laughed again. “He’s no crazier now than he’s ever been.”

“I don’t know,” Wolcott said. “I was talking to him just last night and he acted pretty crazy to me. You know that a bunch of boys snuck down to Lorne Field and threw tomatoes at him? He wanted me to track them down so he could have them hung publicly in the town square.”

She shrugged. “That’s what’s written in his contract.”

“I don’t care what’s in his contract, that’s insane!”

“Don’t yell at me, Daniel.”

He nodded, contrite. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Durkin. But you have to admit someone wanting to have teenagers executed for throwing tomatoes at him is pretty insane.” He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he wet his lips and edged closer to her. He asked, “I was wondering if that contract has anything in it about cutting off someone’s thumb. You know, as a punishment?”

Lydia shook her head. “I’ve read it. There’s nothing like that in it. And my fool husband only does what’s spelled out in his contract.”

“I’d like to read it also.”

“You come over to the house when he’s not home and I’ll get it for you. You just can’t let him know I did it.”

He licked his lips again and asked, “So you don’t think Jack’s acting any crazier these days than usual?”

“Nope. No more than usual.”

“Then what do you think happened?”

“I have no idea. Probably it’s just an accident like Jack said. He was probably showing Lester how to pull out one of those weeds, and maybe what he was using slipped. Maybe he uses a knife. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

“I will when I talk to Jack later. Did he bring Lester back to your house after the incident?”

She nodded.

“Why didn’t he come with you to the hospital?”

A dark film fell over her eyes. “He had his weeding to do.”

“So he went back to Lorne Field afterwards?”

“That’s right. After he brought Lester home he headed back there.” She paused as she considered this, and as she did, her features weakened, becoming more like bone china than stone. “That would’ve been a violation of his contract. He’s not supposed to leave that field until his weeding’s done. It must’ve been difficult for him to do that.” A tear leaked from her eye. She wiped it away with a hand. “When do you plan on talking to him?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Daniel, can you wait until he leaves that field?”

“I don’t know if I can do that—”

“It would be hard on him to have someone come by that field like that. Please, Daniel, wait until he finishes his weeding.”

He started to tell her that that wouldn’t be possible, that there was possible evidence at the field which he needed to examine, but instead he looked away from her and stared out the window. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.” A red-tailed hawk flew into view, and he watched as it circled lazily in the sky and then darted out of sight. He imagined that it spotted a rabbit or squirrel. He turned back to her. “What bothers me the most about all this is wondering what happened to Lester’s thumb. If it was cut off in an accident, then where is it?”

Lydia shrugged and said she didn’t know.

“This just doesn’t make sense. If it was simply an accident, why didn’t Jack bring Lester’s thumb with him so it could be reattached…?”

“He said it was lost,” Lydia said.

“What?”

“Jack said the thumb was lost,” she repeated weakly.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what he said.”

Wolcott frowned, his lips straightening out into a hard line. He pushed himself out of his chair and told her he’d have Lester’s doctor talk to her. He stopped at the door, took a deep breath, and informed her that Child Services was investigating the accident. “Until their investigation’s complete Lester’s going to have to be placed in a foster home. Bert, too. I’m sorry, Mrs. Durkin, but those are the rules.”

“That’s not right.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he said.

“It’s still not right.”

“Mrs. Durkin, what we have right now is a seventeen-year-old boy alone with his father having his thumb cut off and no reasonable explanation as to how it happened.”

Lydia’s took a tissue from her pocketbook. Her hand shook as she dabbed her eyes with it. “That woman who talked to me, the one wearing a turtleneck sweater in ninety degree weather, she’s not with the hospital, is she?”

“Do you remember her name?”

Lydia found the woman’s card. “Suzanne Phillips,” she said. The card had a lot of acronyms and abbreviations on it and she had no idea what any of them stood for.

“Ms. Phillips is with Child Services,” Wolcott said.

“How can you have a woman like that—someone without the sense to wear proper clothes during the summer—be allowed to make decisions like that about my family?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Durkin.”

“It’s not right.”

Wolcott looked away from her and didn’t answer.

“When’s Bert and Lester going to be allowed to come home?”

Wolcott sighed and squeezed his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “I’ll talk to Jack and Lester and see what they both have to say. If I can clear this up quickly enough, maybe tomorrow.”

Lydia sniffed and gave Wolcott a hard look. “Well, make sure that you do that.”

He hesitated for a moment with his hand on the door-knob, then walked back to her so he could give her a hand and escort her to the doctor who had performed Lester’s surgery.

Time floated by Jack Durkin. One moment he’d be aware of weeding in one part of the field, next he’d be realizing that he was pulling out Aukowies fifty feet away from that spot. Somehow, even with his mind turning on and off like that, he survived it without any further injuries. He guessed he had gotten to the point where he could weed Aukowies in his sleep, which was a good thing since he was for the most part sleepwalking that afternoon. He was surprised when he was done with his last pass of the field and saw it was only six-thirty. Even with everything that had happened he had finished early.

Even with all the distractions . . .

Even with having to half-carry Lester the three miles back to their home . . .

He heaved the canvas sack over his shoulder and carried it to the stone pit. After dumping the Aukowie remains with all the others, he tossed a match onto the pile and watched it burst into flames. Once again they shot close to twenty feet upward, a bluish-reddish flame lighting the sky. It was an unnatural color for a fire, something that burning weeds shouldn’t cause. It hit him then that he had planned to videotape the flames. Up until that moment he had forgotten about Charlie Harper’s video camcorder. After Lester lost his thumb he put the camcorder in the shed for safekeeping. He turned to retrieve it, but stopped after a couple of steps knowing the flames would be out by the time he got it. He turned back to the fire and watched it burn. It didn’t matter. Lester had videotaped enough of that foot-high Aukowie in action before he dropped the camcorder . . .