Tucker’s Grove (18 page)

In the cramped kitchen of her
“
senior”
apartment, Lillian went to the coffee maker and poured the untouched pot of old coffee down the drain before starting a fresh batch. Lillian never drank coffee, but she loved the warm, roasty smell of a brewing pot. It helped ease the annoyance o
f
being trapped in an old timers
’
complex
—“
Prep School for the Nursing Home,”
she called it. But she had nowhere else to go.

Lillian had uncovered many fascinating Tucker
’
s Grove st
o
ries to share with Peter D., excellent fodder for a historical book, in her
opinion. As his aunt, Lillian had always felt free to give him ideas for novels, hoping he would take up writing again. Given Peter D.
’
s creative streak, he must be bored in his dead-end job as a bartender. She wanted to be supportive of the poor boy, bu
t
her goof-off nephew had been moody and wit
h
drawn since he
’
d broken up with Kathy. She had always thought the two made a wonderful couple.

Lillian kept waiting for him to snap out of his funk. “
Here
’
s a wonderful romantic story about the old owners of the
Waltercroft house,”
she wanted to suggest to him on the telephone. “
A young girl was torn from her true love and forced to marry a cruel old farmer, but the girl never stopped loving her young beau. Corny, right? When the farmer found out about the affair,
he took up his shotgun and went to confront them. But
—
surprise!
—
he was struck by lightning on his way to kill the two. Struck dead by a bolt out of the clear blue sky. Not a cloud in sight. Can you b
e
lieve that?”

Of course, Peter D. would have groaned and
rolled his eyes, dismissing the tale. “
Yes, I know it
’
s a true story, but people just won
’
t believe it. Too much of a coincidence for fiction. There has to be some
reason
for things like that to happen.”

Oh well, she supposed he was right. Lillian wished
Peter D. could be happy. He and Kathy had been so captivated by each other, so in love, just like the young couple in the story. She sighed. Things change, and sometimes there
’
s no explanation.

The bitter smell of coffee began to fill the kitchen.

A GLI
MPSE OF THE ANKOU

Ray lit another cigarette, but this time he offered it to Betty, taunting her. His wife steadfastly refused and concentrated on her driving. He watched how her lips pressed tightly together, how her hands gripped the steering wheel. Betty
had quit, all right
—
hook, line, and sinker.
New Evidence Shows Cigarettes May Cause Cancer
the newspapers and newsreels screamed.

Too bad nobody had told him that a couple of years ago
—
Ray didn
’
t have much to lose anymore. He took a long drag of smoke, b
ut did not enjoy it.

Wind whipped around the windshield of their brand-new convertible, a baby blue 1954 Buick Century. They had bought the car just a few months before, back when Ray had his whole life ahead of him, back when everything was fine and norma
l. The wind seemed to sting Betty
’
s eyes and they brimmed with tears as she drove. Christ, she was going to have one of her so
b
bing fits again! He wished she
’
d stop being so selfish.

Ray leaned back against the passenger side door, cramped and aching from
the long drive. His joints hurt most of the time now, and he had long ago stopped trying to “
keep a stiff upper lip”
about it all.

“
Ray, will you
please
put up the top now?”
Betty asked.

Grudgingly, he turned around and leaned over the back seat
, fumbling with the canvas top. His joints sent complaints of pain to grate on his nerves.

In the car
’
s back seat, the baby fussed and whined in his ba
s
ket, cranky after spending so many hours in the car ignored by both his parents. Scotty had recently co
me down with a low-grade fever, just bad enough that it made him fussy and mi
s
erable all the time.

Ray managed to pull up the convertible top against the resis
t
ing wind, locking the struts and fastening it firmly to the win
d
shield. He felt a wetness below
his nose and touched it, not su
r
prised to find blood running out of one nostril. “
Oh hell!”
Biting back a more bitter outburst, he yanked out a stained handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at the blood. If only he had worried about his nosebleed
s sooner. Who would have thought that aching joints, a few mysterious bruises, and bleeding gums could come together as
this
!

One day he
’
d come home from work, grinning from ear to ear. The brand new Vice President of the bank. Betty hugged him and called
him “
Big Shot.”
He changed his tie, combed his hair back with a fresh dab of hair creme, and promptly swept his wife off her feet. He gave her only time enough to call Shirley, their usual babysitter, before they went out for surf and turf at the “
best su
p
per club in Northern Wisconsin.”
Soon after, they had bought the new car, straining their finances with a too-large loan, but the Vice President of a bank
had
to have a new car.

It wasn
’
t long before Ray stopped sleeping well at night, and found himself ta
king hot baths more frequently, trying to ease the soreness in his joints. For a while he kidded himself that the pressure of the new job was getting to him…
and then
—

Acute Myelocytic Leukemia

Decreased production of normal blood

Great excess of abnormal l
eukocytes

No Effective Treatment

No Effective Treatment

You
’
re going to die

Everything was a confused blur in his mind, but it all focused down to that one fact. And the damned doctor hadn
’
t even been able to offer any hope: one month
—
at best.

Aminopterin.
Methotrexate. Thioguanine
. All the chemical names were irrelevant
—
the doctor insisted that some of the treatments did show distinct promise, but for such an advanced case as Ray
’
s…
He suggested that Ray drive to Rochester, Mi
n
nesota, check into the Mayo Cl
inic, and let them do their best.

The doctor was rather young, but he wore an odd monocle in his eye, reminding Ray of the commandant in
Stalag 17
, which he and Betty had gone to see earlier in the year…
back when they would spend their Saturday nights at t
he theater. The last big movie they
’
d seen together was
From Here to Eternity
—
and now Ray was on the road to Eternity all by himself, taking an express route.

Before he
’
d left the doctor
’
s office, Ray pulled the wallet from his back pocket and took out a p
icture of his wife and baby son. The doctor pushed the monocle back into his eye, looking at the photograph in silence. Then Ray got dressed, retrieved his snapshot, and turned to leave.

“
There
’
s something at the University of Chicago called
krebiozen
,”
th
e doctor called before Ray could open the door. “
It
’
s very new, but their researchers say it
’
s a painless cure for all forms of cancer. Some other people say they
’
re just quacks, and that krebiozen does nothing. I simply don
’
t know. I can
’
t re
c
ommend it. B
ut a man in your position
—
I can
’
t tell you what to do. I just wanted you to know about it.”

Ray was too conservative to be a gambler, but only one of the options had a large enough payoff to make it worth risking ev
e
rything. With no more than a month to li
ve, he didn
’
t have time to make mistakes.

Krebiozen.

Chicago.

They drove off early in the morning with Betty at the wheel, taking the convertible out on the web of little country roads in northern Wisconsin, the roads that eventually joined up with Highw
ay 51 and led straight south. They passed through dozens of small crossroads-with-taverns towns, each of which forced Betty to slow down momentarily before letting the convertible fly down the highway again. The dark woodlands, with their summer-tourist v
i
llages and sportsmen
’
s bars, gave way to far
m
land as they reached the center of the state. North of Madison, when they reached their last chance to turn west and head instead toward Rochester, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic, Ray closed his eyes and made hi
mself concentrate on the way south.

Chicago.

Krebiozen.

“
Do you want me to drive?”
Ray asked.

When Betty shook her head, her wavy hair bobbed back and forth. “
Not if there
’
s a chance you might pass out again. You just rest.”

“
I can
’
t stand sitting here m
uch longer. It
’
s four more hours to Chicago.”
He turned his head to watch the cornfields flicker by in the setting sun. “
We
’
ll have to stop for the night.”

Betty didn
’
t answer and kept driving. The county road had li
t
tle traffic, although occasionally they
found themselves stuck behind a slow pickup truck or some farm machinery. Ray watched the scenery, letting the monotony and the helpless boredom lull him. The fields of alfalfa had been cut and baled into hay, and some of the land looked naked without a
c
rop. Scattered barns and silos surrounded by the wide fields looked like misplaced modern-day castles.

The sun went down, taking the day
’
s warmth. Ahead, in the gathering twilight, they drove toward a charred and lifeless cor
n
field, a black blot on the lan
dscape, which abruptly ended against a tree-lined lane that led away from the road. The lane was rutted and partially grown with weeds, leading back into the fields r
a
ther than any visible house.

When Ray sat up to look, a rusty nail of pain jabbed both e
l
bow joints. “
I wonder what happened there.”
Betty slowed the car to look at the burned field.

Ray
’
s attention went elsewhere. Where the dirt lane met the road back under the growing shadows of t
he oak and wild-cherry trees along the fenceline, he spotted a dark man standing beside a bulky oxcart, as if waiting for something. Ray stared at the half-hidden shapes of the two oxen in front of the cart, surprised at how incongruous they seemed. The b
e
asts faced away from the road, ready to plod deeper into the fields; they looked ma
s
sive and powerful in the failing light.

Time seemed to slow when Ray focused his attention on the man by the cart. He was dressed all in black, with a tight collar like a p
reacher
’
s and even black gloves on his hands. The man was gaunt and cadaverous, with his downturned mouth slightly open and showing only a black emptiness, no teeth, no tongue. His nose jutted sharply, twisted, as if it had been broken several times and p
o
orly healed. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that draped a muffled shadow over his eyes, but Ray still could see burning orange slits in the sockets.