“Ah. You believe in hell?”
She tilted her head and smirked at him. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m closely acquainted.”
Take that, he thought. But instead of following his own advice and staying out of it, which kept him awake all night, he crossed the line again. “You going to talk to that woman lawyer? Brie?”
She shrugged. “If the time seems right. Really, my biggest worry is that if I get in Arnie’s face anymore, try to upset his temporary win here, he’ll get worse.”
“Maybe that would be a good thing to talk to the lawyer about,” he suggested. “Because while you’re painting and leaving him alone with his temporary win, he could be plotting his next move.”
“Like I said, I’m not ruling it out. And believe me,” she said, stooping to pick up her paint roller, “the first thing I’ll tell her is I can’t afford her because my boss is a hopeless tightwad.” She winked at him. Then her grin faded and she said, “Jesus, you look miserable. You have bags under your eyes. You might want to drop the macho-man deal and pop a couple of aspirin.”
“You’re not the only one with worries, you know,” he said defensively.
“Baby, everyone has worries. The rich have as many as the poor. The healthy as many as the sick. It’s a worrisome deal, this life business. You have to learn to mellow, not stay up all night feeding it.”
“Well, you sure shook off your funk pretty well. Maybe I’m just not as good at it as you are.”
“Hanging on to it a little, are you?”
“Not because I like being worried,” he said. And it was damn tempting to point out to her that she and her problems started the whole thing.
“Ah,” she said. She rolled more paint onto the wall. Then without looking at him, she said, “Must be a payoff in there for you, bud.”
“Knock it off, Ellie.”
“There’s a trick to letting it go, in case you’re interested.”
He took a deep breath, an impatient breath. “Lay it on me.”
“You can’t try. Trying is a struggle and doing is an act. You can’t witness the act of trying, but you can see the results of doing. Trying brings on stress because not only do you have the problem, but now you have all this frustration with it not going away just because you want it to. It’s kind of like being told not to think of pink elephants—impossible. What you have to do is stop. You say to yourself, this is over for now. I’m done for now. Take your mind to another place and concentrate on that peaceful place. Deep breaths. Go limp. Put your mind in another state. It takes practice, but it gets easier, over time.”
“Thanks, Scarlett,” he said with a laugh, not believing a word. He tried to imagine counseling a completely stressed-out person by telling them that all they had to do was not try to let it go, and it would go. Although he did admit to himself that he had used that technique, or something similar, in the past with some o his clients.
“My gramma used to say, you can only feel one feeling at a time. For example, you can’t feel trust and fear together. If you want to trust but you’re afraid, fear is still in charge. If you trusted, there wouldn’t be fear. She also used to say, you have to listen to what you feel—feeling fear could be a warning, right?”
He knew this theory. Fear and faith cannot coexist. He’d used that a hundred times, too. But he had never counseled her. Her grandmother had. “Well, I guess I’m not as good at it as you are. If I have a problem, it tends to haunt me for a while.”
She looked at him, lifted one thin, light brown brow and said, “Oh. Sure. So, how’s that working out for you?”
Enough! he thought. No twenty-five-year-old stripper was going to counsel him! But he said, “What else did your grandmother say?”
She got a very happy look and turned to him, roller at her side. “Don’t make love to your problems—they’ll never give you back the satisfaction you give them. And, troubles aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but that doesn’t mean writing them down won’t help you get a fix on ’em. And, God respects you when you work, but he loves you when you dance. That last one might’ve gotten me into some trouble.”
Good God, he thought. This was like listening to Grandma Pyle’s wisdom on The Andy Griffith Show! “I won’t be around until later today,” he said briskly. “I have errands. I’ll be gone most of the day.”
“She also used to say, ‘If Jesus walked the earth today, he wouldn’t be hanging out with Billy Graham. He’d be found with drug addicts and prostitutes and the like.’”
That one stunned Noah still for a moment. He’d always thought that himself. “Need anything before I go?” he finally asked.
“I’m good,” she said, rolling away. “I’m sure I’ll get started on the downstairs john while you’re gone. Take aspirin, Noah. Don’t be stupid.”
“If I don’t see you when I get back, I’ll assume you worked as long as you could.”
“Okeydokey.”
“Will you please give Lucy a spin over the grass for her potty break and leave her in the RV when you quit for the day?”
“Of course. Want me to get her dinner at the bar before I leave?”
“Nah, I’ll be back for that. That’s almost the best part of my day.”
With that, Noah left the church and got into his truck. It really pissed him off that she was doing so well this morning. Not that he wanted her to be in pain—of course not. But he was the professional—he was supposed to be telling her how to cope, not the other way around. Her grandmother had some very sage advice. And, he wasn’t doing as well as she was…even with her problems! So one of them was not a particularly good role model, and he feared it was him.
And that really pissed him off.
As Noah pulled around to the front of the church, he saw Mel Sheridan loading a box into the back of the Humvee with another one sitting on the clinic porch. She lifted a hand and gave him a wave, so he pulled up alongside. “Need a hand there?” he asked.
“Thanks, but it’s not heavy. Where are you headed?”
“I thought I’d run over to Grace Valley and visit with Harry Shipton, the pastor there.”
“I know Harry. We always called Harry when we needed a minister. Now I guess we won’t have to do that anymore.”
“I hope not,” he said.
“Are you in a hurry? I mean, do you have an appointment with Harry?”
“No,” he said. He shrugged. “I called him and said I’d drop by this week and he said that’d be great. Why?”
She walked over to his open window. “How would you like a private tour of some interesting and little-known parts of the area?”
“Cool. I’d like that.”
“You’d have to keep some secrets. Are you any good at secrets?”
“Gimme a break!” he said, insulted. “I’m a minister!”
“Yeah, well, that’s not saying you don’t have a big mouth,” Mel said.
“And what if I swear to God?”
“Jack’s trying to get me to stop swearing, but go ahead, if it floats your boat. I just have something you might be interested in, but you can’t tell. If you tell, my life is going to be too miserable to describe.”
“You have a problem you’d like to talk about?” he asked hopefully. Right about now he’d like to feel as good at counseling and giving comfort as Ellie’s grandmother.
“No, nothing like that. Tell you what, follow me out of town…if you feel like it.”
Nothing could stop him now. “I’m right behind you.”
Mel loaded the second box, jumped in the Hummer and pulled out of town. Noah was right on her bumper. They drove for about twenty minutes, out Highway 36, then turned off on a side road that wound up and down a big mountain, and then Mel pulled over at a wide space in the road. Noah pulled up behind her. She stepped out of the Hummer and beckoned him with a wave of her hand. “Leave your truck here and come with me.”
He did as she asked, getting in the front seat of the Humvee. “Where the devil are we going?”
“When I first got to Virgin River, I was working with old Doc Mullins. He died last year and Cameron Michaels came down from Oregon to work as the town doctor for at least a year. Mullins was an ornery old coot, but I loved him. Anyway, I came from the city—from L.A.—and there were things he tried to tell me about life in the mountains. For that matter, Jack tried, too. Some things I just had to learn for myself. You a city boy, Noah?”
“Pretty much. I grew up in a suburb of Columbus and went to college and seminary in Seattle.”
“Where I came from, working in an urban trauma center, when we treated indigents or vagrants, we called social services and just handed them off. I never had to worry about what had become of them after that transfer. The doctors called it ‘buff ’em and turf ’em.’ Treat the patients as well as you can for your specialty, then hand them off to another service—someone else’s turf—and then it’s their problem. Things are very different around here—except for the larger cities, there aren’t facilities for dealing with poverty and homeless people. Virgin River doesn’t have anything to offer, and neither do the surrounding small mountain towns.”
“You have homeless here?” he asked. He knew that except for the successful ranches, farms and vineyards, most of the community lived a lower-middle-class existence, but he hadn’t seen any stark poverty or homelessness.
“Boy howdy,” she said. “I think you should see for yourself. I doubt there’s much you can do about it, Noah. They sure won’t cotton up to you bible beating them. They might torture you for that. Or just plain go to sleep. But you should know about mountain life. There are lots of poor people out in these mountains who aren’t homeless, people who homesteaded, and once they sold off their quotient of lumber, had nothing left but a mountain full of forty-foot trees and very little income. If they homesteaded, they’re probably elderly and often sickly, but they’re not real fond of doctors, either. I get a little slack, being a nurse-practitioner. We look in on them when we can.”
“I guess you have to know the area pretty well,” he said.
“More than half of our population is rural,” she said. She turned off onto what appeared to be a hidden road. Narrow, all dirt and washboard, obviously very seldom used.
“It’s not all charity work in our practice,” she said. “In fact, we’re doing better all the time—there are more insured and paying patients every year around here, but there are still people in need who don’t have the means. It’s all part of the territory, Noah. I get a lot of food at the clinic as patient fees. After Cameron and I go through it and see what we can use, most of the really good stuff goes over to Jack’s. Preacher cooks it, bakes it, freezes it, cans it…and they always serve people who serve the town—”
“He’s been real good to me that way,” Noah said. “I won’t take advantage, but I’ll take the occasional piece of pie off his hands….”
“Well, it all shakes out even in the end. There’s always stuff left at the clinic—milk and juice real close to going bad, cheese with a few moldy spots I can cut off and, depending on the season, there might be some produce. And then there are the casseroles that are half eaten. Stuff that can’t be used at Jack’s but can fill a belly. The boxes in the back have food in them. There’s just one problem….”
“What’s that?”
“Jack has absolutely forbidden me to do this. As Doc Mullins did before him. So, I’m trusting you.”
“Oh, great. Secrets between husband and wife.”
“I don’t see it that way,” she said. “They are confidences kept by a medical practitioner in this town. You can rest assured that when you come to me with a medical problem that you might find personal and perhaps embarrassing, Jack will never know about it.”
“Well, there’s a comfort,” he said. Like when would that happen? When he finally had constipation? The drip?
“Well, Jesus, Noah—would you tell about my spiritual struggles?”
“You have some?” he asked almost hopefully.
“Not that I recall,” she said with a shrug. “We’re almost there. I’d like you to please stay in the car. You’re new around here. They don’t know you. It might make them skittish.”
“Who?”
But before Mel answered, she pulled into a clearing. And there was a camp. Surrounding a bald spot within the trees were tents, a couple of old vehicles—one up on bricks without wheels and one that could be functional—one old dilapidated trailer, some furniture that looked as if it had been pilfered from a dump, some tarps stretched over the furniture to keep the moisture off. And a few men standing around who looked for all the world like hillbillies. They had a pot over a fire and that was it.
Mel jumped out, opened the back of the Humvee and hauled out a box. She put it onto the hood of the Hummer and waited. An old man with a gray beard that reached down to his chest ambled forward. He was skin and bones and real shaky. He nodded a little as Mel spoke to him. She reached inside the box and pulled out a large white plastic jar and held up one finger. She shook the jar and held up that one finger again, in emphasis, and the man nodded.
Noah watched in fascination. And then, although he had been told to wait in the car, he got out. Mel glared at him briefly, but didn’t say anything. Noah stayed beside the passenger door, minding his own business. Then, braving her reproach, he went to the back of the Hummer and got the second box, bringing it slowly and cautiously around to the front of the vehicle.
“Anyone sick or hurt?” Mel asked the man.