Deep in the Valley (26 page)

Jonathan huffed and puffed. “Lies! Exaggerations! I’ll call the church council this very second!” And out the door he stomped.

“That oughta keep him busy for a while.”

“How’s he going to explain this to the council?”

“I suppose in the usual way—those women just threw themselves at poor Jonathan.”

“If the council has been awake…”

“How could Jonathan say that with a straight face?” George demanded.

“Myrna,” Burt said. “Syl read your new book and—”

“Well, that’s a relief. There was no one at my signing yesterday. No one. Not even Birdie. Have a little drug raid in the town and everyone is too preoccupied to support a local author in her time of promotion!”

“The town was full of feds and helicopters! The only thing we were missing was tanks!” George protested.

“Such carrying on. So, what did Syl think of my new book?”

“Well, I think she means to ask you something. Syl said you’ve done the missing husband plot again, she said you do that about every tenth book….”

“Is it really that often?” she asked. “You know, as you get older, you forget how often you tell the same story all over town.”

“Anyway,” Burt continued. “Syl said this was the most terrifying yet, and—”

Before he could go further, Myrna yelped a happy laugh and clapped her hands together. “Oh, thank her for me! Please!”

“I will, but I wasn’t done. The most terrifying and
realistic
yet,” he said. “This one had the heroine go in search of her missing husband, find him with another woman, lure him home with the promise of a nice divorce settlement—because she was pretty wealthy, you know—and when he was unaware, she killed him.”

“Yes, that clever witch!” Myrna declared proudly.

“And chopped him up in little pieces and buried him all over the garden. Front, back and sides of the house. And her garden flourished but she’d gotten a taste for killing, and—”

“Oh, Burt, don’t tell the ending!” she begged. “You’ll ruin everything!”

“Myrna,” he continued, “are you ever going to tell what happened to Morton Claypool?”

“Why? You think he’s in the garden?”

“Your irises have been legendary since he went missing,” Sam said.

“Why Sam, you give Morton more credit than he deserves!”

When the little Sunday morning party was breaking up and Elmer escorted Myrna to the yellow Caddy, he said to her, “I wouldn’t be surprised if your garden gets raided. You tempt fate.”

“Oh Elmer, no one really thinks that. They have fun with the idea, that’s all. Now tell me what you did to set up this boycott.”

He shrugged. “I called Birdie and Susan Stone and Julianna Dickson. I said that in light of what had happened to Leah and to Justine, and to a young anonymous patient who was abused by her spouse and almost killed, I was taking a stand against the poor treatment of women. I said that I was sick of Jonathan Wickham’s behavior and excuses, and that I wasn’t going to church again till the town, and its women, got either a heart-felt apology or a new preacher. Who called you?”

“The Barstows. But I’m so surprised that
no one
showed up this morning. I thought there was a core group that supported him.”

“I thought so, too,” Elmer said. He turned and walked across the street to the clinic, his hands in his pockets and his gait sluggish. He had thought the preacher had a core group of supporters, and was chagrined to know it was probably him and his cronies—the old men who didn’t take seriously what it was like to be sexually harassed.

June felt a finger drawn down her spine, from her neck to below her waist, and her eyes came slowly open. In the distance she heard the unmistakable sound of Sadie slurping up her food in great hungry gulps. He had gotten up and fed and watered the dog. She felt the gentle caress of his hand, lifting the hair off her neck. Then his lips there, kissing.

She turned over. His eyes were clear and rested, but his face was scraped raw on one cheek.

“This is no way to play hard to get,” he said, his hand stroking, starting at her shoulder, down over a bare breast, across her rib cage, over a hip, ending at her thigh.

“I must be out of my mind,” she said. “You’re only going to leave me.”

“I have to go back to work, but if you say yes, I’ll come back.”

She touched the side of his face that was unhurt with the palm of her hand. “Yes,” she whispered.

J
une thought maybe Elmer guessed what was going on because of how readily he did as she asked. She called him on Sunday afternoon and told him she’d overdone it and needed a couple of days to rest and recover. “But if you have an emergency, please be sure to call. Otherwise, John said he’d cover for me.”

“If that’s what you want,” Elmer said. “Do you want me to come out there and cook something for you?”

“Um…no! I’d rather be alone…and get some rest.”

“If that’s what you really want,” Elmer had said, but June had never asked for a day off in her life. Nor had she ever overdone it or been too tired to work.

So Elmer called Tom Toopeek and said, “My daughter wants to take a couple of days off to rest.”

“Oh? And can you spare her?”

“I can and the clinic can. John Stone is there and I’ll gladly help out tomorrow. What I want to know is this—is it at all possible a pot grower from the mountains has escaped the law, found her and is holding her hostage?”

“Did she sound nervous or upset?”

“A little, yes.”

“Then let me just check on that for you,” Tom offered.

Tom let a little time go by, then called June and said, “Your father wants to know if you’re being held hostage by an escaped grower.”

She glanced at Jim, who leaned against the pillows, the sheet drawn to his waist. She smiled. “Well, if you must know…”

“I’ll tell Elmer you’re perfectly safe and need some rest.”

“What we really need is some men’s underwear, size 36.”

“Shall I pass that on, or…”

“It was a narrow escape, you see.”

“Goodbye, June.”

Jim’s undercover work in the Trinity Alps was over and his next assignment would be in another part of the country, but it was still necessary to keep him a secret. There were escaped and missing growers, business connections these criminals had in California, and connections that had connections. Jim could not drop his cover and emerge as a law enforcement officer. Not yet. In time—and he couldn’t say how much time—he could reappear under a new cover of some kind, without bringing unsafe attention to himself or June.

“Do you have any idea where you’ll work next?” she asked.

“I doubt they have a spot for me yet. Finishing the reports and debriefing from this raid will take time. Months.”

“Months?” she asked weakly.

“Say about three. Maybe four. I’m sorry.”

“It must be grueling work.”

“It has its challenges, but when that’s done, I’m due a couple of weeks off. Is it possible you’re due a couple of weeks about then?”

“I haven’t taken a vacation in twelve years.”

He pulled her against his bare chest. “What great news. Then you’re due. What do you think about a sandy beach somewhere? You could pack everything you need in a coin purse.”

She got a stricken look on her face. They had been together for two days. They had hardly bothered with clothes. And for the first time she remembered that little oval case—the color of pearl, compliments of her doctor—that would
never
fit in a coin purse. Not only had she not used it, she had not even opened her dressing table drawer where it was kept. She swallowed hard.

“June?” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a sandy beach…. It could be—”

“Shoot,” she said.

On Tuesday morning June accompanied Sadie outside at dawn. She carried her steaming cup of coffee and meant to sit on the porch steps and wait. Even though she and Sadie had bonded, and Sadie had stayed a constant at her side, she was afraid to let her roam, afraid she would have to go find her at Mikos’s farm, which was still vacant and now up for sale.

But while Sadie found a comfortable place to squat, June found a package on the back porch steps. “Jim,” she called into the house. “You’d better come see this.”

He came out of the bedroom in his new uniform, a pair of cut-off pink sweatpants that were oversized for June and fitted like hose on Jim, and a big T-shirt that she often wore to bed. The shirt had lace around the neck and sleeves, and ballet-dancing bears on the front. He was scruffy and unshaven, his scraped face being too sore to touch with a razor, his hair wildly curly and sticking out everywhere. Every time she saw him in that lacy shirt and bursting sweats, she had to use control not to laugh out loud. He looked like Attila the Hun in a tutu.

“What’s this?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I didn’t dare touch it. What if it’s a bomb or something?”

He crouched down and studied it, then pulled the string that held the brown paper closed. It came apart easily. It contained clothes—underwear, socks, jeans, shirt. He looked up at her. “Well, I guess it’s time.”

He said he’d never before felt such a deep stirring of the heart; that it hurt to say goodbye. He would call when he could, but she should understand that over the next few weeks and months he would be working and probably traveling. Before the next assignment came, however, they would have a getaway—a distant and quiet and private time together. This was important work he did, and he was good at it, but it wasn’t the kind of work a person could do forever. A couple more years and this would end; he would settle down. Grace Valley was nice, he said. Just the kind of spot he’d had in mind.

“What if you’re just playing me for a fool?” she asked him.

“June, anytime you think this arrangement is not what you want, you say so. But this is all I have right now.”

“I’m perfectly fine with this arrangement,” she said stiffly, “until you go.”

He said, “I don’t know why I met you when I did, but I’m going to assume it’s meant to be. I think I’m in love with you.”

“Aw,” she said with a hiccup of emotion. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“I’m not kidding,” he said.

“Don’t drag this out, please,” she said. “This is awful.”

He kissed her once more, then walked across the porch, down the step and down the long drive, disappearing at the road. As she watched, tears ran down her cheeks. When he was gone, she felt as though a plug had been pulled inside of her and all emotions had been cruelly drained out, leaving her empty.

Sadie licked her hand. June looked down at her new best friend. “We have to go back to work anyway,” she said. She sniffed loudly. “Just call me June of Arc.”

He didn’t call her. As each day passed, she sunk a little deeper. Her fear was twofold: that he’d been hurt or even killed; that he’d only been passing through her life because she was convenient.

The days turned into miserable weeks.

“Elmer, what’s wrong with our girl?” Myrna asked. “She’s been so morose.”

“I don’t know. I think the Jeep burning up took it all
out of her. Or maybe it was that drug raid. She took a couple of days off for the first time since she’s been back in the valley. She’s gotten very moody.”

“It seems more serious than that. She’s brokenhearted.”

“I know. I don’t know what to do for her.”

“We’ll have to think of something,” Myrna said.

After four disappointed weeks, Pastor Wickham put a lock on the church door. A moving van stood in front of the parsonage. He had called many parishioners, one by one, insisting he had nothing to atone for; he’d been maligned and slandered and completely misunderstood. He never uttered an apology to anyone in town, least of all Justine. Angry and hurt, he would not say any goodbyes. But Birdie Forrest wouldn’t let it pass. Someone had to defend Grace Valley; the town was not to blame. She took a plate of cookies to the parsonage as the movers were loading them up.

The children were cross, Clarice’s eyes were puffy and red, and Jonathan wore a look of sullen indignation. “I wanted to wish you a safe move, Pastor and Clarice,” Birdie said, presenting the cookie plate.

He wouldn’t take the offering. “It would have been far more charitable had you wished us a safe
stay
by showing some support,” he said.

“You know, this could have been all different,” she said.

“This is a mean little town,” Clarice said. “And I’m glad to be leaving it!”

“It’s not a mean town,” Birdie argued, but without ire. “But it’s become an angry town now. Mad at itself, you
know. For standing by and letting people be hurt. For thinking there was nothing it could do. For not wanting to interfere, while knowing everything that went on in everyone’s life. You can’t have it both ways. If you
know,
you have to
act.
Isn’t that what being a neighbor is about?

“I think this town is working on forgiving itself now, but it’s going to take a while.” And then she left, leaving the plate of cookies on the hood of the Wickhams’ car.

She went back at five that evening and swept up the shards of glass from where it had been angrily smashed on the parsonage drive.

By the first of July, the crops in the Craven garden had grown thick and healthy. The corn was high, the squash plump, and it looked like a good pumpkin crop was coming. Sam, Elmer, Lincoln, Burt, John and Susan and some of the other neighbors managed to tend the yard and garden while the boys were put in foster care in Pleasure, just down the road. Corsica Rios visited them every week and reported back that they seemed to be thriving.

Except for Frank, who might not be thriving, but he was improving. He wasn’t with his younger brothers, but in a group home for teenagers that Jerry Powell had put together, in a place where he could learn that he wasn’t the only abused child in the county. Nor was he the only one who had a problem with rage. There was more hope for him now than there had been in the past.

Corsica and her son Ricky took the Craven boys to see their mother every Sunday. Her prison was of another type now—walls and bars and guards. And
still it was not as bad as it had been with Gus. The boys could see that in her eyes. Even Frank. No matter how bad things seemed, they didn’t have to fear Gus’s violence ever again.

“My lawyer says he thinks I have a good case for self-defense, and I’m going to come home to you soon,” she told her boys.

The only problem, which she didn’t want to share with her vulnerable sons who missed her so much, was that the prosecutor was building his case around the fact that Gus was killed by a blow to the
back
of his head.

In a hospital clinic in Eureka, Dr. David Cohen sat on a low stool with a sketch pad while Jurea sat higher, on an exam table. June stood behind Dr. Cohen, looking over his shoulder as he sketched, trying to keep all expression from her face. A couple of times she leaned too close and Dr. Cohen slowly turned and glared over his shoulder at her—but then he smiled. It was hard to wait.

At Jurea’s side stood Clarence, whose appearance had changed remarkably in just a few weeks as his medication brought a new and barely familiar calm to his mind. His features were relaxed, which was the greatest change, but he’d also traded the ponytail for a close-cropped haircut, and he wore a shirt with a collar, compliments of Charlie McNeil’s trip through piles of second-hand clothes donated to the disabled vets.

Jurea had been through several examinations, beginning at the clinic with June and her staff and culminating at the hospital where the visiting plastic surgeon evaluated her. There had been lots of probing of her
face and eye and ear and neck, and an MRI—which really tested Clarence’s newfound stability, watching his wife being pushed into that dark, clanking tube. Now she waited tensely, squeezing Clarence’s hand.

Dr. Cohen looked up at her face, down at the sketch, up and down, up and down, charcoal moving, and when he looked at her, he wasn’t really looking at her but at her scars, which would become his canvas. “Despite the appearance of damage, Mrs. Mull, it’s all surface scar tissue and not as deeply destructive as it might seem. There are only a few tiny old fractures of your cheek. Your cranium and jaw are completely intact, and, although it’s difficult to get an accurate test right now, I believe you’re sighted in that eye.” He sketched some more. “It’s remarkable. Claw hammer, you say?”

“Yes sir. I was only six. Caught it off my daddy’s backhand while he was hammering away. Sent me through the air ten feet before I landed.”

June winced every time she heard that injury described.

“I’m sure it was a frightening injury at the time, but most of the scar damage came later, as your skull and face grew and the old injury didn’t have much give. Had you seen a doctor at the time, you might have been helped.”

“Mountain people don’t put much stock in doctors and hospitals,” she said.

“It would be nice if someone could work to effect change in that thinking. It could save lives, make lives easier.” He stood and showed her the sketch. Her mouth dropped open. “It would take a minimum of four sur
geries, over a year or maybe just a little longer. We’d be removing scar tissue, doing some abrading. There would be a skin and tissue transplant, and I think it will be necessary to implant a small plastic disk under your skin at the top of your cheek to make it symmetrical with the other side. That’s the bulk of my challenge, right there,” he said, moving his charcoal from side to side across the drawn face, then up and down from forehead to chin. “Making all sides and quarters equal. We’re going to find it difficult to replicate the eyebrow, but you can always correct with cosmetics, and you might find a slight droop at the lip, here. But the cheek, eye, nose and jaw will smooth out and look perfectly natural about a year post op.”

Jurea stared at the charcoal drawing in disbelief. This was what she’d look like if she hadn’t been hit with the back end of her daddy’s hammer? This face, this woman was almost beautiful. A tear gathered in her good eye and slowly traced a path down her cheek.

Dr. Cohen started to pull the tablet away and her hand shot out, grabbing it. She wasn’t going to be done looking for a long time.

“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.