“I could just leave, you know.”
Germaine’s eyes widened in the dark of the stairwell. The two stood on a landing, she a step below Jason, and he towered over her. Perhaps that is what gave Jason the courage to say that thing. Because after having said it, he could scarcely believe it had come from his mouth. It was a region of thought he had not come near—even when his temper was at its hottest.
But he found it was a region with a clear path through it. So he went on.
“You got me out of Cracked Wheel when things were bad, and I’m grateful for that, and glad to know I have kin yet. But when I was sitting in the cabin with my mama, I figured on carrying on with what I could. A fellow willing to work can find it anywhere I figure. I’m surely big enough.”
Aunt Germaine opened her mouth to speak. But a sound came out that was unfamiliar to Jason. “Why—” she began, and “My nephew—” she went on, and finally, she opened her arms and flung them around Jason’s shoulders, and Jason realized with a hitch that he’d done something that nothing—not the death of her sister, nor the wasting at Cracked Wheel—nothing else had yet done in his presence.
Through his selfish words, he had made his Aunt Germaine cry.
“Why did you do that to the boy?” said Andrew when Jason and his aunt were well gone. “He’s not sick. From what he told me, any exposure to the illness that took lives in his home town happened long ago. And if he were somehow contagious… Well. He spent a long time on train and boat and foot without quarantine. What would be the point of containing him now?”
Dr. Bergstrom pulled up a chair to Andrew’s bedside. “You feel that you are qualified in some manner to question my decisions with regard to this boy? That’s interesting, Andrew,” he said.
“That boy was in danger, and you put him there,” said Andrew. “Deliberately. You tied him down and locked him up with that rapist, Mister Juke.”
Dr. Bergstrom leaned very close to Andrew’s face, and as he did so his expression underwent a change. And that was the first true sense that Andrew got that he might actually be in physical danger from this man.
“Do not,” he hissed, “call him that—you damned meddlesome nigger. Do not dare.”
Andrew drew back against his pillows. All he could think about was Maryanne Leonard, the things that had been done to her corpse. What could this man’s hands do to living flesh?
“Doctor,” he said as levelly as he could. “Control yourself.”
His words seemed to have some effect. For a moment, Dr. Bergstrom looked as if he would strike him, but the moment past. The doctor sat up, ran a hand through his hair, then looked deliberately into his lap for a moment before shutting his eyes tight.
When he opened them again, he drew a deep breath. He stood fast enough the chair rocked at his calves.
“What an error it was,” he said softly, “bringing you to Eliada.”
Andrew did not say anything to that. He could do nothing but stare at the man across from him.
“Well. I have other business to attend to. So if you will excuse me—I will leave you to your rest.”
Dr. Bergstrom lifted his hands from his side—with a flash of silver in one of them. Before Andrew could react, he grabbed Andrew’s good arm, pulled it out straight and pushed it down onto the mattress, then pausing not an instant to find his mark, jabbed the hypodermic needle into it. Andrew moaned, as the drug found its way into his veins.
“Rest,” said Dr. Bergstrom again, wagging the spent hypodermic in front of him and backing away, he slipped out the door and hurried down the hall.
Aunt Germaine was set up in a room on the third floor, not far from Dr. Bergstrom’s own offices. There was a table, a couple of wooden chairs, and five big boxes full of papers.
Aunt Germaine, having dried her eyes and calmed her nerves after Jason contritely explained he was not going anywhere, said, “Those are like larger versions of my file cards. They are all the records that Dr. Bergstrom has kept of the people here in Eliada. From the time that it began.”
“That must be a lot more than those ones.”
“Not so much more,” she said, whisking her skirts aside as she sat down. “Eliada is a young town. It was incorporated in 1887—just a quarter of a century ago. Currently, some eight hundred souls call it home. But its population has grown only in recent years—since Mr. Harper and his foundation arrived and began their work in earnest.”
“That the Utopian paradise business that Ruth was talking about?”
Aunt Germaine smiled wryly. “Near enough the mark,” she said. “Let me see if I can explain it a little better. Mr. Harper comes from a family that has done well for itself in timber and mining. Most of their more profitable holdings are farther west of here—in Seattle and California. Mr. Harper came into—shall we say, possession of this town, inasmuch as he took control of the sawmill, at the turn of the century. So we are properly regarding just a decade of medical records.”
“Because the hospital came with Mr. Harper.”
“Correct.”
“And so what is it that makes this place so Utopian? The hospital?”
“Utopian. Those are that young Ruth’s words.” Aunt Germaine shook her head. “The hospital is not the cause of it. It is, however, a signpost.”
“A signpost.”
“It is an indication that the community cares for the health and hygiene of its members. However remote—this is a safe place. Do you know what Eliada means?”
Jason frowned. “It’s from the Bible. One of King David’s sons? I got that right?”
“Very good. And it means, ‘Watched over by God.’ That is the principle upon which Mr. Harper governs.”
“What was it like here before Mr. Harper came along then?”
Aunt Germaine shrugged. “I really cannot say. But,” she said, patting the top of one of the boxes, “we will be able to say a great deal about the last decade here. Once we have looked through these, and conducted our interviews.”
“I guess you want to get started.”
“In time,” said Aunt Germaine. “To begin with—I think we ought to find a good breakfast. I have your clothes here. We can go into town, eat our fill—and you can tell me all of what happened last night.”
Jason did not tell all of what happened. In fact, he left out important parts and that changed the story utterly. He was not sure when he decided to withhold these things from his aunt, but decide he did. As they left the hospital and made their way along the wide roads to breakfast he told her a story: how, left alone in the ward room, he had panicked when a large raccoon came into the room and had gotten curious about him. So he’d cut himself loose, he told her, as he ate a plate of fried eggs and thick-rinded bacon, and run off into the dark, where he had cut himself on the scalpel something terrible. Dr. Waggoner had found him outside, bleeding and naked, and taken him inside and stitched him up.
“So we went up to his room, where he said he would keep me until morning, on account of neither of us thought it was a good idea going back into that quarantine building.” He pushed his plate away. “On account of the raccoon. And just generally.”
Aunt Germaine patted a napkin on her lips and regarded him. They sat in the dining room of the Eliada Empire Hotel, which had in it five tables, each round and covered with identical red-and-white checked tablecloths, and they had it to themselves. In fact, from the way the old man who ran the place greeted them coming in, Jason got the idea that fixing breakfast at ten in the morning was a real travail. Now, he could feel himself being watched.