“I—”
“I nothing. You listen, and I’ll tell you. What’s going to happen tonight, it’s got nothing to do with you. But it has a lot to do with our friend Andrew Waggoner. He’s not going to wake up tomorrow, if he stays in that room in the hospital through the night.”
Jason twisted his shoulder and Sam Green let go.
“All right,” said Jason, stepping back a bit, “I’m listening. You tell me what’s what.”
“Good.” Sam Green sat back, blew out his cheeks. Sawdust was falling on them now, light golden snowflakes, and the whine of the saw was steady. “First thing. I know that you and Dr. Waggoner met outside the quarantine last night. I saw you, because I was watching the quarantine under orders from Doc Bergstrom.”
“I didn’t see you anywhere—”
“You didn’t see me because I didn’t want you to.”
Jason glared at him.”You tell Bergstrom?”
“About last night? As it happens, no. No I did not. You and I are of a mind on Dr. Bergstrom, and that mind’s made up. I didn’t tell, but I did talk to him. Him and your aunt, early this morning.”
“My aunt?”
“Yes, son, your aunt. He did most of the talking but she was there for all of it. And he—” Sam Green looked at his hands, and huffed. “He asked me to do something. Or not to do something.”
“What?”
“He told me to keep clear of Andrew Waggoner tonight.”
“And that is it?”
“Son, you remember how I told you I was in dutch?”
Jason remembered. “On account of shooting those fellows at the hanging tree?”
He nodded. “That is why I’m in dutch with Mr. Harper. Doc Bergstrom is none too happy with me, either.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’m in dutch with the doctor,” he said, “for showing up at all.”
Jason gaped, and Sam Green nodded. “Or at least when I did.”
“You mean—”
“Bergstrom thinks that the Juke was never in any danger of hanging, or at least of dying from it. He said the important thing was for those fellows to try, and then to fail. Teach ’em a lesson, he said.
“He was more than happy to see the Negro doctor die on the end of a noose. It would have solved some problems for him if he did.
“And so he asked me to keep clear of the top floor of the hospital. He made sure to tell me that everyone would be keeping clear of the top floor of the hospital tonight. He told me that Dr. Waggoner needed his rest—and that if someone came by, to make sure they understood—why, he wanted to make sure no one who knew how to use a gun was there to stop whatever’s going to happen.”
Jason sat back and absorbed that. In the mill, the saw had stopped its work a moment—maybe while the men were positioning more logs. So the lumber yard became quieter, but the sawdust still fell.
“Why do you think he’s doing that?”
“Two reasons. First one: Bergstrom is the kind of man who cannot abide a nigger in a white man’s job, and Harper’s the kind of man who can’t abide denying a smart nigger his due. And second: that smart nigger’s learned more about the Juke than Bergstrom would like.”
“You know about the Juke,” said Jason. “You know what that thing is in there.”
“I know it is a freak of nature,” said Sam. “It doesn’t die from a hanging. It does not speak but makes itself understood better than any man I have met. And it gets…”
There was quiet again.
“Yes?”
“It gets bigger.”
“Bigger.” The air cleared now, as the last of the sawdust plume settled on the brim of Sam Green’s bowler hat.
“Yeah,” he said. “It grows. When Bergstrom found it, just in the summer—the thing was only as high as my elbow. Now…” Eyes down, his voice trailed off. But he put his hand level a good six inches over the top of his bowler.
“Were you there when he found it?”
Sam Green looked up from the hands he was examining so closely. “Boy,” he said, “here is what you’ve got to do. You get up to Andrew Waggoner’s room. You tell him that if he sleeps tonight, he won’t wake up, because Nils Bergstrom aims to see him dead. You tell him he’s got to get far from here. No one will suspect you—because I am the one supposed to be watching you, and I will say you were someplace else. And if you head up there around—oh, let us say seven—you will find you can make a clean escape.”
“Think I should go with him?”
“I think,” said Sam, “that you ought not trust your aunt to protect you. But you shouldn’t leave, either. That will draw things back to me, and that won’t do anyone any good. I’ll do my best to keep you safe if you stay here. But stay you must.”
And at that, Sam Green got up.
“That is all for today,” he said. “You think I have done you a favour but I haven’t. I’m doing my friend Dr. Waggoner a favour. You are not my friend.”
“How can you trust me to carry it out then?”
“I trust you,” he said, “because you owe that doctor a debt, and you are not the sort of man to leave a debt unpaid. And,” he added, “you won’t leave, or tell of this, or anything else, because you owe me now, for giving you a way to repay it.” And then he turned and stomped off. Jason watched him go, across the avenue and into another passage between the lumber. Jason had no reason to stay, but he waited all the same, until the saw started up again, to make his way out of the lumber yard and back to the hospital.
He was gone before the sawdust stormed again, which was a good thing, because Jason knew he would have to clean the residue off before he got back to the hospital, and went to work settling all those debts.
Andrew Waggoner blinked and coughed. The boy—Jason—Jason Thistledown—was in his room again. He had left the room at some point, but Andrew was not clear on exactly when or why, or on the things that had come after. Now he was back and he was talking. Or whispering. His mouth was moving, anyhow.
Andrew worked his lips, which felt numb, and blinked, and as he did, things started falling into place. Jason leaned closer, and Andrew became aware that the boy had his hands on his shoulder and was talking, somehow more clearly now.
“Dr. Waggoner, you have to wake up now. You’re in very bad trouble. You have to walk out of here, because I cannot carry you and the things I’ve got for you.”
Andrew licked his lips. “Wha—”
He tried again. “What are you talking about, Jason? What things?”
Jason looked relieved. “Good. I thought they might have already got you. Why’re you like that?”
“Bergstrom gave me a needle of something,” said Andrew. He looked at the window, the purple-orange sky outside it. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past seven,” said Jason.
Andrew let out a slow whistle, counting hours until he got to ten. What had Bergstrom put in that needle? It wasn’t morphine. Veronal, perhaps? Put enough of Emil Fischer’s hypnotic drug into a hypodermic, and it could knock a man out for a day. Put a drop too much, and it’d kill him.
“You were saying something about the trouble I was in. I may have missed the beginning of it,” said Andrew.
Jason took a breath, and started over again. By the time he was finished, Andrew was fully awake, alert—and convinced. He had to get out of that hospital room. There would be no stopping at his house for things. There would be no dallying here waiting until his wits were all returned to him. He had to get away from Eliada. And he had to do it now.