The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman And Matters Of Choice Part 145

After her shower she lay in the dark and thought of a lot of things. From the guest room she heard the soft drone, the rise and fall of his evening prayer. She couldn't make out words until the end, when his satisfied voice rose a bit in relief: "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen." Just before she slept, she remembered what he had said about having already abrogated one important set of vows, and it crossed her mind to wonder if Joe Fallon and his nun Dorothy had made love before receiving the Pope's dispensation.

In the morning she was awakened by the sound of the motor of his rental car. It was still dark, and she fell back into sleep for another hour, until the alarm went off.

The guest room was as before, except that the bed was made tighter than she usually accomplished, and with military corners. She unmade it, folded the blankets, put the sheets and the pillowcases in the hamper.

She and Toby had begun to meet early Thursday mornings for an hour of paperwork before she drove to Springfield. That morning they went through the forms that required her signature, and then Toby gave her a diffident little smile.

"R.J. I think maybe ... I think the laparoscopy worked."

"Oh, Toby! Are you certain?"

"Well, I'll let you tell me for sure. But I believe I already know. I want you to do the delivery when the time comes."

"No. Gwen will be here long before then, and there's no better obstetrician. You're so lucky."

"Grateful is what I am." Toby began to cry.

"You stop that, you d.a.m.n fool," R.J. said, and they hugged each other until it hurt.

43.

THE RED PICKUP.

On the afternoon of the second Thursday in July, driving away from the Family Planning Clinic, R.J. saw in the Explorer's rear mirror that a battered red pickup truck also had pulled away from the curb. It stayed behind her in traffic as she crossed the city of Springfield, heading for Route 91.

She pulled over onto the gra.s.s at the edge of the highway and stopped her car. When the red pickup sailed past, she drew a deep breath and sat there for a minute or two until her pulse slowed, and then she drove the Explorer back onto the road.

Half a mile down the highway the red pickup waited by the roadside. When she pa.s.sed, it moved onto Route 91 behind her.

Now she was trembling. When she came to the turnoff to Route 292 that would bring her onto the winding back road up Woodfield Mountain, she didn't take it, instead staying on 1-91.

They already knew where she lived, but she didn't want to lead them onto lonely, untrafficked roads. Instead she stayed on Route 91 all the way to Greenfield and then took Route 2 west, following the Mohawk Trail up into the mountains. She drove slowly, watching the truck, trying to commit things to memory.

She stopped the Explorer in front of the Shelburne Falls barracks of the Ma.s.sachusetts State Police, and the red pickup truck stopped across the road. The three men in the truck sat and looked at her. She wanted to walk up to them, tell them to go to h.e.l.l. But people were shooting doctors, and she got out of the Explorer and ran into the building, where it was dark and cool in contrast to the bright early summer sun outside.

The man behind the desk was young and tanned, with short black hair. His uniform was starched, the s.h.i.+rt ironed with three vertical creases, sharper than a Marine's.

"Yes, ma'am? I'm Trooper Buckman."

"Three men in a pickup truck have been following me all the way from Springfield. They're parked outside."

He got up, walked out the front door while she followed. The place where the truck had been parked was empty. Another pickup truck came down the highway at a good clip and slowed when the driver saw the trooper. It was yellow. A Ford.

R.J. shook her head. "No, it was a red Chevy. It's gone."

The trooper nodded. "Come on back inside."

He sat down behind his desk and filled out a form, her name and address, the nature of the complaint. "You're certain they were following you? You know, sometimes a vehicle just happens to be going the same place you are, and you think it's a tail. It's happened to me."

"No. There were three men. Following me."

"Well now, most likely a couple good ol' boys had a schnapps or two under their belt, Doctor, you know? They see a pretty woman, follow her for a while. Not a nice thing to do, but no real damage."

"It's not like that."

She told him about her work at the clinic, about the protests. When she finished she saw he was looking at her through a great coldness. "Yes, I imagine there are people don't like you all that much. So what do you want me to do?"

"Can't you notify your patrol cars to watch for their truck?"

"We have a limited number of cars and they're on the main roads. There are country roads in every direction, into Vermont, down to Greenfield, south all the way to Connecticut, west all the way into New York State. A majority of the people in the country drive pickup trucks, and most of them are red Fords or Chevrolets."

"It was a red Chevrolet with running boards. Not new. There were three men in the cab. The driver wore rimless eyegla.s.ses. He and the man near the pa.s.senger door were thin, or at least average. The man in the middle looked fat and had a good-sized beard."

"Their ages? Color of hair, color of eyes?"

"I couldn't tell." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the prescription pad she had scribbled on. "The truck had Vermont license plates. The number is TZK-4922."

"Oh." He wrote it down. "Okay, we'll check it out, get back to you."

"Can't you do it now? While I stay here?"

"It's liable to take some time."

Now she returned his dislike. "I'll wait."

"Up to you."

She sat on a bench near the desk. He made certain he didn't do anything about her for at least five minutes, then he picked up the telephone and called a number. She heard him repeating the Vermont license plate number and then thanking somebody and hanging up.

"What did they say?"

"Have to give them time. I'll call back."

He busied himself with paperwork and ignored her. Twice the telephone rang, and he had brief conversations that had nothing to do with her. Twice she got up restlessly and went outside to look at the highway, seeing only the traffic, heightened by people driving home from work.

When she returned the second time, he was talking on the telephone about the pickup's license plate.

"Stolen plate," he told her. "It was removed from a Honda sedan this morning at the Hadley Mall."

"So ... that's it?"

"That's it. We'll put out a bulletin, but by now they have some other number plate on the truck, you can be sure."

She nodded. "Thank you." She started to leave and was struck by a thought. "They know where I live. Will you kindly telephone the Woodfield police department and ask Chief McCourtney to meet me at my house?"

He sighed. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

Mack McCourtney went through her house with her, room by room. Cellar and attic. Then the two of them walked the wood path together.

She told him about the hara.s.sing calls. "Isn't there equipment the phone company offers now that gives you the telephone number for every call?"

"Yeah, Caller ID. The service costs a few dollars a month, and you have to buy a piece of equipment that costs about the same as an answering machine. But you're left with a bunch of phone numbers, and New England Telephone won't reveal who they belong to.

"If I tell them it's a police matter, they'll set up an annoyance call trap. That service is free, but they'll charge you three dollars and twenty-five cents for every number they trace and identify." Mack sighed. "The trouble is, R.J., these creeps who are calling are organized. They know all about this equipment, and all you're going to get is a lot of numbers that belong to pay phones, a different pay phone for every call."

"So you don't think it's worth trying to trace them?"

He shook his head.

They saw nothing on the wood trail. "I'd bet a year's pay they're long gone," he said. "But here's the thing, these woods are deep. Lots of places to hide a pickup truck off the road. So I'd like you to lock your doors and windows tonight. I'm off at nine o'clock, and Bill Peters is the night man. We'll keep driving by your house, and we'll keep our eyes peeled. Okay?"

"Okay."

It was a long, hot night, and it pa.s.sed slowly. Several times headlights coming down the road sent light dancing into her bedroom. The car always slowed when it pa.s.sed her house; she a.s.sumed it was Bill Peters in the squad car.

Toward dawn the heat was stifling. Keeping the windows closed on the second floor was silly, she decided, since she would certainly hear it if anyone set a ladder against the house. She lay in bed and enjoyed the coolness from the window, and a little after five o'clock the coyotes started to howl behind the house. That was a good sign, she thought; if humans were in the woods, probably the coyotes wouldn't howl.

She had read somewhere that much of the time the howling was s.e.xual invitation, used to arrange mating, and she smiled as she listened: Aa-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-yip-yip-yip. Here I am, I'm ready, come and take me.

It had been a long time of abstinence for her. Humans, after all, were animals too, as ready for s.e.x as the coyotes, and she lay back and opened her mouth and let the sound come out. "Aa-ooo-ooo-ooo-yip-yip-yip." She and the pack howled back and forth as the night turned pearly gray, and she smiled to realize she could be so scared and so h.o.r.n.y, all at the same time.

44.

EARLY CONCERT.

It was a rich summer of joys and sadnesses for R.J., practicing among people she had come to admire for their many strengths and for the humanness of their frailties. Janet Cantwell's mother, Elena Allen, had been suffering with diabetes mellitus for eighteen years, and finally circulatory problems had developed into gangrene that forced the amputation of her right leg. With trepidation, R.J. was treating atherosclerotic lesions on her left leg as well. Elena was eighty years old, with a mind perky as a sparrow. On crutches, she showed R.J. her prize-winning late lilies and huge tomatoes, already beginning to ripen. Elena tried to foist some of her surplus zucchini onto the doctor.

"I have my own squash," R.J. protested, laughing. "Would you like to accept some of mine?"

"Glory, no!"

Every gardener in Woodfield grew zucchini. Gregory Hinton said that anyone who parked a car on Main Street had better lock it, because if he didn't, when he came back to it he would find that somebody had put zucchini in the backseat.

Greg Hinton, R.J.'s early critic, had become her loyal supporter and friend, and it wounded her when he developed small-cell lung cancer. By the time he came to her, coughing and wheezing, he was in trouble. He was seventy. He had been a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker from the time he was fifteen, and he thought there were other causes of the disease as well. "Everybody says how healthy it is to be a farmer, to work out of doors and all that. They don't think of the poor fella inhaling hay chaff in closed barns, and breathing in chemical fertilizers and weedkillers all the time. It's an unhealthy job in lots of ways."

R.J. sent him to an oncologist in Greenfield. When an MRI showed a small, ring-shaped shadow in his brain, R.J. comforted him after radiation treatments and administered chemotherapy and suffered with him.

But there were also positive moments and weeks. There hadn't been a mortality all summer, and R.J.'s environment was fecund. Toby's abdomen had begun to expand like a popcorn bag in a microwave oven. She was racked with morning sickness that extended into the afternoon and evening. She found that intensely cold sparkling water containing slices of lemon helped to quell the nausea, so between vomitings she sat behind her desk in R.J.'s office holding a tall gla.s.s whose ice tinkled as she took small, dignified swallows. R.J. had scheduled her for amniocentesis in the seventeenth week of pregnancy.

Other births already had caused ripples in the placid surface of the town. On a moist day of dreadful humidity R.J. had delivered Jessica Garland of triplets, two girls and a boy. They had known for a long time that three babies were coming, but after the uneventful birth the whole community celebrated. It was R.J.'s first delivery of triplets, and probably her last, for she had decided to refer all maternity cases to Gwen after the Gablers moved into the hills. The babies were named Clara, Julia, and John. R.J. once had thought that country doctors had babies named for them, but she supposed that no longer happened.

One morning when Gregory Hinton came to the office for his chemotherapy, he lingered.

"They tell me, Dr. Cole, that you perform abortions in Springfield."

The formal address put her on guard; for some time he had been calling her R.J. But the question didn't take her by surprise; she had been careful not to be secretive about what she was doing. "Yes, I do, Greg. I go to the clinic there every Thursday."

He nodded. "We're Catholics. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

"Oh, yes. I was born here and raised Congregational. Stacia was raised a Catholic. She was Stacia Kwiatkowski. Her father was a chicken farmer in Sunderland. One Sat.u.r.day night she and a couple of girlfriends came to a dance at the Woodfield town hall, and that's where I met her. After we were married, it seemed simpler to go to one church, and I started to attend hers. No Catholic church here in town, of course, but we go to Holy Name of Jesus, in South Deerfield. Eventually, I converted.

"We have a niece lives in Colrain, Rita Hinton, my brother Arthur's daughter. They're Congregational. Rita was going to Syracuse University, got herself pregnant, and the boy took off. Rita quit school, had the child, a little girl. My sister-in-law Helen takes care of the baby, and Rita does housecleaning to support her. We're very proud of our niece."

"You certainly should be proud of her. If that's what she chose to do, you should support her and be happy for her."

"The point is," he said quietly, "we can't abide abortion."

"I don't like abortion much myself, Greg."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because the people who come to that clinic are in desperate need of help. A lot of women would die if they didn't have a safe, clean abortion option. It doesn't matter to one of those women what any other pregnant woman did or didn't do, or what you think, or what I think, or what this group or that group thinks. The only thing that matters to her is what's happening in her own body and soul, and she must personally decide what she has to do in order to survive." She looked into his eyes. "Can you understand that?"

After a moment, he nodded. "I believe I can," he said grudgingly.

"I'm glad," she said.

Still, she didn't want to go on dreading the approach of Thursdays. When she had agreed to help out she had told Barbara Eustis her partic.i.p.ation would be temporary, only until Eustis had an opportunity to recruit other doctors. On the final Thursday in August, R.J. went to Springfield intending to give Eustis notice that she was through.

A demonstration was in progress when she drove past the clinic. As usual, she parked several blocks away and walked back. One effect of the Clinton administration's influence was that now police officers had to keep the demonstrators across the street, where they could no longer physically impede the progress of anyone entering the clinic building. Still, as a car turned into the clinic driveway, the signs and placards were shaken and raised into the air, and the shouting began.

Through a bullhorn: "Mommy, don't kill me! Mommy, don't kill me!"

"Mother, don't kill your baby!"

"Turn back. Save a life."

Someone must have identified R.J. when she was half a dozen steps from the door.

"Murderer ... murderer ... murderer ... murderer ..."