Watershed. Mark Barr

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Watershed - Mark Barr

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narrowed his eyes at him, scrutinizing. “In a spot, huh?”

      “You could say that.” As they’d talked a cool weight had slid inside his chest, pulling him down at his guts. He couldn’t go back now. Memphis was lost to him after what had happened. “I’ve got to make this work.”

      “Well then, we’d better get back in there. I expect they’ll have your desk ready by now.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      CLAIRE LAY ON HER MOTHER’S BED WITH HER UNDERPANTS bunched up in her fist, her skirts rolled back while Doc Peters made the burning alternately better then worse with his hands. Her mother had sent Tom to the store for groceries, had taken little Nan out under the big oak. There was no door between her mother’s room and the kitchen, and none between the kitchen and the front room. Claire found herself staring absently at the living room curtains where the light played through the trees.

      “Here, too?” Doc said, raising his face to look up at her.

      Claire nodded, wincing. Doc sat up straight, shaking his head. In the afternoon heat, the house was stifling, and his face shone with sweat.

      “Looks like the old mining camp special is making a comeback. Nasty stuff. You’re the third case this month.” He wiped his hands on a towel. “You’re lucky. Three years ago I couldn’t do a thing for this, but the Germans have come up with a medicine. I’ll write to Memphis for some.”

      Claire smoothed her skirts down. “Who were the men you treated?”

      “Oh, I can’t tell you that.” But Claire saw him quickly search her with his eyes first.

      “Travis was one of them,” she said.

      Doc considered, then said, “He was.” He began gathering the instruments that he’d spread out on the bedside. “I never figured that he’d be bringing it home, though, Claire. Else, I would have given him a sterner lecture. I figured that you two were quits in that department if he’d taken to doing what he was doing.” He patted Claire on the thigh. “You ask me, he has a woman like you at home, he’s got no business looking elsewhere.”

      Claire’s lips pressed into a hard line. She pulled her leg away from Doc’s hand.

      “Did he say who he caught it from? Which one of them?”

      Doc shook his head, stood up. “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

      “You should have.”

      Doc considered her. “It don’t do for a lady to trouble herself with some things. Knowing who she was wouldn’t change the situation, except that you’d have one more thing eating at you, and that one they don’t make a medicine for.”

      “I’ve got two kids, Doc. They don’t have a daddy around anymore.”

      Doc rolled his shirtsleeves down. He looked at her, moved his jaw ruminatively.

      “Who did that other fella get it from?” she asked.

      “Some gal from that place over the old gas station. But there’s nothing to say it was the same woman.”

      “It’s enough for me to think on.” She walked Doc to the front door.

      “I’ll wire to Memphis for those sulfas,” he said. “It might take a few days.”

      “It can’t get here too soon.” She imagined the wait. A week seemed like a long time.

      “I’ll send word when it arrives. And, Claire, on that other business, don’t go making trouble. Probably coincidence.”

      “Thanks for seeing me so quick, Doc.”

      He nodded and went out onto the porch. “Eliza, she’ll be fine,” he said to her mother, who sat under the tree arranging sticks with Nan.

      “She’d better be, at your prices,” her mother said. Doc took this in with an uncomfortable smile and went out into the sun.

      Claire picked Nan up. The child smiled at her, offered one of the twigs. Claire pressed her forehead against her daughter’s, kissed her nose. By the same age, Tom had been a chatterbox, making up his own singsong language, but Nan remained mute. Children took their own sweet time, Claire knew. There was no measuring stick for progress.

      A figure came along the road and she looked up, thinking it was Doc back with something he had forgotten, but it was Travis.

      “Mama, take Nan back into the house,” she said, handing the child to Eliza.

      Travis didn’t look like he’d bathed after the workday. The front of his coveralls were stiff with mud and concrete. His hat was pulled down tightly on his head, but she could see enough of his eyes to know he’d been drinking. For courage, no doubt. Claire started after her mother.

      “Claire,” he called. “Dammit, Claire! Wait. I want to talk to you.”

      “I don’t feel much like talking to you,” Claire said, hurrying for the house.

      He broke into a loping run, and Claire began running herself. Her mother had left the door open and Claire closed it quickly and threw the latch. Travis loomed in the glass, a large, dark shape against the curtains. The door rattled as he shook the knob.

      “Claire,” he said, his voice low but loud enough for her to hear. She grasped the knob herself now. She saw his hand rise to shade his eyes. He leaned his head close to the glass to peer through. The door shook again, and this time pictures all along the front wall rattled.

      Now her mother was at her shoulder.

      “Let him in, child,” she said. “Before he pulls the door off the hinges.”

      The shape leaned to the glass again.

      “Claire, I’m taking the car. I ain’t walking all the way into town every morning.”

      “Take it,” Claire said. “Is that what you came for? Then go on.”

      “No, that’s not what I came for,” he said. I…” There was a pause, and then the shape moved away from the window.

      When she heard his voice again, it was farther out in the yard. She lifted a curtain and saw Tom talking with him. The boy stood holding the bag of groceries, his father standing over him with hands thrust into pockets, his big shoulders hunched as he talked. Claire started to go out and rescue her son, but something in Tom’s face told her that the boy was taking care of himself. He nodded respectfully, hearing his father out, the tight-lipped expression never leaving his face. When Travis finally went to the car and drove away, Tom watched until he was out of sight and then came to the house. Claire opened the door for him, taking one of the sacks. The boy’s eyes showed strain.

      “What did he want?” Claire asked.

      “He said that it’s all a big misunderstanding,” the boy said.

      “Like hell it

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