Comes a Time for Burning Read online

  Sonny Malone was not just resting. His head hung against the trunk of the tree, the spruce bark pushing his eyebrow up into his forehead. It might have been a shadow from his cap, or the vagaries of the distance and light, but the rivulet of darkness below his ear looked to be hemorrhage. Thomas could not see the man’s right hand, but his left was basically engulfed in spruce, as if the tree were trying to swallow him. Thomas walked a circle around the spar, finding another vantage point on the far side. Sure enough, Malone’s right hand was also caught, this time just above the wrist bones. His right leg and boot hung straight down beside the tree, the climbing spur gleaming and free of the wood, while the Malone’s left boot looked as if its spur was caught in the bark.

  The draw line snapped taught, and the shipment of block and tackle, wedges, rope and axe jerked aloft. Feeling a presence standing beside him, Thomas lowered the scope.

  “What do you think?” Paul Bertram asked. “Not gettin’ much work done, are we.” The crowd of onlookers remained, and Thomas supposed that the wagering was thick and heavy.

  “There appears to be some discharge from his left ear. And he’s clearly unconscious. So close to the blast…”

  The logger thoughtfully dug the toe of his boot into the duff. “Don’t know as a man can stand ten feet away from fifty sticks of dynamite goin’ off and not end up with somethin’ to show for it.”

  “It’s incredible.”

  “What is?”

  “I can’t imagine how he could withstand the concussion and still have the presence of mind to cut his safety rope?”

  “Cut it or get wrecked,” Bertram said philosophically. “Sonny’s been in the timber since he was sixteen.”

  “And how old a man is he now?”

  “I think he’s goin’ on twenty-six, if I remember correct.”

  “You’ve had this happen before?”

  “Nope. Well, let me see now. We’ve had a man or two killed by the dynamite, all right. And high riggin’ in general has laid waste to a couple more. Never the two together.” He looked almost proud of the accomplishment. “This is a first. Had crowns give a topper a good kick sometimes when they’re not payin’ attention. That’s the most common thing.”

  Off to the left, Thomas’ gelding uttered a long, heartfelt nicker, and the physician turned to see the ambulance threading its way toward them, sticking to the narrow trail through the stumps.

  “Sure hate to see this. We’re short handed as it is.”

  Thomas laughed. “And you’ll be more so, Mr. Bertram. Does a young fellow named Huckla work for you? Buddy Huckla?”

  “He’s over on the flume gang. They’re puttin’ the last of the chute together, down to the bay.” He turned and pointed off toward the north as if those directions were accurate enough. “Why?”

  “He managed to ruin his right hand last night. Thumb wrestling, he says. You know how that’s done, I suppose. One of his comrades fetched him in to the clinic this morning.”

  “A few wrenched fingers aren’t going to slow that kid down none,” Bertram scoffed.

  “More than wrenched. I operated this morning. If he’s very lucky, he may regain some partial use of his right index finger.” He touched his own finger to his thumb. “I worked to give him some pinch. I won’t know how successful we were for some time.”

  “Well, damn, then,” the foreman muttered. “Can’t work for a while?”

  “Plan on six weeks. Maybe eight.”

  “Well, Christ. Who brung him into town?”

  “A young chap named…it escapes me, but something German, I think.”

  “Sitzy,” Taylor Simpson offered. He had once again drifted toward where Thomas and the foreman stood.

  “Sitzberger. Yes. He’s not feeling his best, either.” He smiled at Bertram’s puzzled expression. “Too much indulgence last night with rich food.”

  “Too much woman-friend, more likely. Huckla can use his left hand all right?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Then he can tend one of the flume gates.” Bertram turned and nodded at Taylor. “Does Huckla know his numbers and such?”

  “Guess he does,” Simpson replied. “He don’t write as good as Sitzy does, but some, I guess.”

  “Well, then he can be a tallyman at the flume for a few weeks. That’ll bore him silly, and maybe he’ll heal faster.”

  Thomas turned to watch Howard Deaton take his time tying off the reins, then carefully lower himself from the rig. The fine white paint, touched here and there with elegant gold trim, was now showing a hundred pounds of the countryside, the rich muck welded throughout the undercarriage and splattered down each side. The driver moved two steps away from the ambulance and settled himself on a broad stump, the charging of his pipe requiring his full attention.

  Up above, considerable discussion carried in only fits and snatches to those below.

  Thomas handed the glass back to the foreman and then walked over to Deaton.

  “What you got here?” the driver asked, calm as if asking the time of day.

  “We have a man with both hands caught in the split trunk. And he was too close when a charge of dynamite went off. The crown got hung up in a neighbor.”

  “Well, hell.” Deaton sucked on his pipe, the big match drawing and flaring, the cloud of smoke enveloping his head. “I tell you what, these boys think of more ways to ruin a day.” He scanned the timber. “Whyn’t they clear the close timber away from the spar first?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Someone was in a hurry. The foreman said they weren’t supposed to use dynamite anyway.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  One of the men topside shouted something, and Art let the single-bit axe hang loose. A moment of discussion followed, and they saw the block and tackle rigged, one end of the rope secured to Sonny’s safety belt at the back of his waist. In a moment, a long coil dropped earthward.

  “Couple of you get on that,” Art called down, and Simpson jumped as if kicked. He and another logger secured the rope, tying the loose end to yet another coil with a deft series of hitches.

  Up above, Art dropped down and drove a wedge into the split a foot or so above the trapped man’s hand, then repeated the process on the other side. Still, the stubborn spruce refused to release its hold. More sawing ensued, this time three feet above the stricken man, and in twenty minutes—it seemed to Thomas to take hours—Art Mabry shouted again, and an off-side six-foot section of split trunk pirouetted away from the spar. It hit the duff below with a loud whump, driving a foot-deep wedge into the wet ground.

  Now the rescuers had a flat seat half the width of the trunk, just above the man’s trapped hands.

  “Take the weight now,” Art instructed the men below. Again the wedges were driven in. An excited shout greeted success. First the injured man’s left and then his right arm flopped down, away from the tree. He made no move to lift them, his face still leaning against the bark. With his safety belt unclipped, Sonny hung like a large bean bag from the rope tied around his belt at the small of his back.

  The two men on the ground fed rope upward to the block and tackle’s rigging one hundred and sixty feet above their heads. Sonny Malone never moved a muscle as he was lowered. By the time his spurred boots touched the ground and half a dozen hands gently stretched Sonny out on his back, Howard Deaton had brought a canvas stretcher from the ambulance.

  The group of loggers fell silent as they watched Thomas Parks adjust his stethoscope. Out of habit, he shut his eyes as he listened to the thin, thready pulse, then opened them to watch Sonny Malone’s face as he counted again. The man had bled from both ears, and one eye was only partially closed while the right was squeezed shut.

  “Gently now,” Thomas ordered. Stripped of his safety belt, boot spurs, and an eight inch knife, the stricken logger was positioned on the stretcher and carried the few yards to the ambulance. “I’ll ride with him.” Thomas turned to see Taylor Simpson leading the physician’s gelding across the clearing. “
He’ll trail the ambulance.” Simpson nodded, tethering the gelding’s reins to the ambulance’s rear grab bar.

  “You want me to come into town this evening to check on him?” Bertram asked.

  “Someone needs to,” Thomas said, situating himself on the side bench in the ambulance near Sonny Malone’s head. The polished handles of the stretcher fit neatly into yokes, turning it into a secure cot for the trip to the clinic. “He has family somewhere?”

  “Well, I suppose he does,” Bertram mused. “Don’t know for sure. Maybe one of the boys can tell us.”

  “That would be good. Someone needs to inform his mother and father. You could stop by and have a talk with Buddy Huckla at the same time. He’s at the clinic, and I’m sure he’s feeling sorry for himself right about now.” Howard Deaton had already coaxed Sallie and Ebbie into a walk, and Sonny Malone made not a sound as the ambulance jerked forward.

  Chapter Five

  Dr. Thomas Parks stood in the clinic’s dispensary, elbows leaning on the counter, head cradled in both hands. He stared at the printed pages in front of him, pages that he’d read a dozen times, searching. He could recite them by heart. The letters fused into fascinating patterns now, as elusive as a simple answer. The truth was simple—twenty-six year-old Sonny Malone lay comatose in the ward, unresponsive and dying. There was nothing to be done for him.

  Thomas closed his eyes. Sonny Malone deserved to live, but he would not. It was really that simple. Fifty sticks of dynamite had detonated within a few feet of a human skull that protected a brain the consistency of gelatin. The shock had been as if Sonny Malone had been smashed with a giant sledge hammer. That ten sticks immediately over his head had not detonated might have saved his life for a few hours.

  Careful examination had found no skull fracture, even with Sonny Malone’s black Irish locks shorn and his skull shaven as smooth as a billiard ball. Little scars from past adventures here and there, but nothing else. Yet the damage to the fragile brain inside had to be immense. An ampoule of ammonia held under his nostrils or the prick of a pin on the bottom of his foot produced not the slightest twitch. With no obvious depression of the skull, no lesion, no laceration, there was no single, isolated spot that Thomas could point to and say, “Aha! Here lies the source of hemorrhage. This is where to begin. This is where we should open the doorway into the skull.”

  Thomas opened his eyes and regarded the textbook again, a current edition that professed the very latest in medical advances. But the author—and one of Thomas’ favorite professors at the University of Pennsylvania—had been skeptical of treatment.

  “The measures appropriate for the first few hours’ treatment of contusion of the brain are diametrically opposed to the line of treatment required after reaction has been induced,” Dr. John Roberts had written, then added—and Thomas could imagine that wry smile that he remembered so well from lectures—“It is a nice question to know when the change should be made.”

  A nice question indeed, since no discussion of initial treatment for blast injury had been mentioned. A contusion of the brain generally resulted from a blow, and a blow left marks that said, “Open here.” Thomas had no such sign.

  After reaction has been induced. But there had been no reaction induced. Sonny Malone lay comatose as his life’s blood leaked from a thousand tears in his concussed brain—a thousand lacerations, the text called them.

  Thomas snapped the book closed and pushed back from the counter. He glanced at his watch and saw that lunch had passed him by an hour before. He walked through the main ward to the three small rooms that had been partitioned off in the back. Sonny Malone lay in the first, curtains drawn over the single window and the gas light turned down to a tiny, quiet flame.

  For a long time, the physician stood at the foot of Malone’s bed. The “ice pillow” was in place, cushioning the patient’s skull from the nape of his neck to his eyebrows, the chill of the ice helping to constrict blood vessels, slowing the deadly seep of blood that would suffocate the brain.

  A nice question. At what point, then, should healing be encouraged by gentle heat or stimulation?

  Should the patient be bled as a means of releasing pressure on the brain? The textbook had mentioned such a measure, but to be used with great caution. That meant that Dr. John Roberts, despite his years of experience, was just not sure what would work. Yet Thomas could not bring himself to believe that draining the body’s very life source would be anything but counterproductive.

  Sonny Malone’s bashed hands lay bandaged and splinted. The three great knuckles for the first, second and third fingers of each hand had been smashed by the spruce, but that was of little concern now. Thomas had rearranged the bones into a reasonably straight line and splinted them, but at this point, he would have considered it a triumph if Sonny Malone had howled out in conscious agony.

  “Will you talk with Mrs. Schmidt now?” Bertha Auerbach’s voice was a mere whisper, and he turned.

  “Yes, I suppose so. When was the ice changed last?” He found it difficult to tear his mind from this case, to wash the slate clean, to direct his attentions elsewhere.

  “Every twenty minutes, as you instructed. Twenty on, then rest for twenty.”

  “You’ve seen no reaction?”

  “None. But the body has great resources.”

  Thomas sighed. “A daring rescue, and here he is, under our roof. And there’s nothing we can do to save him. Nothing.” Thomas ran a hand through his hair, pausing with his palm on the crown of his head. “What could we have done within the first few minutes? What if the rescue hadn’t taken so interminably long? Should I have climbed up to him myself and tried to administer some relief? Sometimes I think that I should have insisted on that.”

  “What if,” Bertha said, and Thomas glanced at her. “You can torture yourself all you like, Doctor. That won’t change this young man’s condition one iota. And if you suffered an accident doing something so foolish as climbing, who would patch you back together this time?”

  “Yes, I suppose. I just can’t help thinking…”

  “Thinking is good. And of course there I go again, talking out of turn. You’ve spoken with Mr. Deaton?”

  “I haven’t yet had a chance.”

  Bertha managed to curb her impatience. “He’s in the stables now. Carlotta Schmidt is also waiting for you. I asked her to wait in your office where she might be more comfortable, since I didn’t know how long you would be.”

  “Ah.” He brightened and held out a hand as if to escort his nurse. “If you please, then.”

  Carlotta Schmidt stood in front of one of the bookcases in the comfortable, overstuffed office, her head cocked to one side as she read the titles. Her long auburn hair, now lightly streaked with gray, was captured up in a fashionable sweep, a small but stylish hat pinned to the bun. At the sound of their footsteps, she turned and offered a radiant smile. No wonder she was legend among the rough men who worked for her husband, Thomas thought.

  “Mrs. Schmidt, please.” He held a chair for her. It was a large, padded leather monstrosity, and Carlotta Schmidt appeared amused. She sat, perched well forward, one hand folded over the other.

  “I’m loathe to take your time with such trivial matters.” Her voice was a soft alto and she held a white linen kerchief to her nose. Thomas caught the delicate aroma of perfume water.

  “At this point in my day, I welcome something trivial,” Thomas said. It appeared that Bertha was about to leave the office, but Thomas beckoned her to stay. “You’ve met Nurse Auerbach, of course.”

  “Of course. We’ve had a moment or two to chat.”

  Thomas settled behind the desk. “Now, first let me apologize for not meeting with you earlier today.”

  “That’s hardly necessary, Doctor.” Carlotta held the white linen to her mouth, suppressing a small, shallow cough. The faintest flush touched her flawless cheeks, and her hazel eyes were bright but reddened, the conjunctiva swollen. Only a trace of darkness marked the hollow
s under her eyes, as if she had not been enjoying as much rest as she should.

  “So,” Thomas said. “Your complaint. From the beginning.”

  “I would not have bothered you…”

  “It is no bother.”

  She smiled at the abruptness of his interruption. “A nuisance is all. I cough a little. And sometimes I think it bothers my husband more than it does me, especially when a fit strikes in the night.” She smiled again, as if embarrassed at how silly and perhaps even indelicate the next suggestion might sound. “He is concerned…that I might have tuberculosis.” At Thomas’ frown, she added, “His mother and sister died of that affliction, so he fears…”

  “I can understand his concern, and yours.” That the disease sometimes favored families, even through generations, was well known. But Carlotta’s blood relatives were not her husband’s, and the woman who sat before him hardly was the definition of a tubercular patient. “In your family as well?”

  “No one.”

  “That’s good. Is the cough productive?” Her eyebrow lifted at that. “Does the cough itself relieve a congestion, a collection of mucous, or is it dry and unproductive? We could call it a cough for no good reason.”

  “I feel as if the contents of my head are trying to run down my throat,” she said, drawing two fingers down a velvety neck. “The cough offers some relief.”

  “And this is a recent condition?”

  “Several weeks. Perhaps as much as two months. Perhaps longer.”

  “You’ve tried remedies?”

  “This and that.” She dropped her eyes. “I traveled to Portland some weeks ago to visit a cousin. I felt so much better while there. Upon my return…”