A few moments prior to eight, they were out the back door of the hospital. Andrew wore a pair of workman’s trousers and boots, and an oversized woollen coat—one big enough to admit his splinted arm and still let him move. Jason carried the doctor’s bag and another satchel containing food and a knife, a canteen for water and what other things a man might need on foot in the wilderness.
There was no gun in the kit, an omission for which Jason apologized several times, but as he explained: “Aunt Germaine keeps a close watch on both our guns and would miss them. Then you’d be done for.”
I may be done for anyhow, thought Andrew as he and Jason made a wide circuit around the quarantine, towards the tree-line. Whatever Dr. Bergstrom had put in him that had knocked him out, seemed to have the effect of numbing the pain enough for him to move right now. But he knew enough about anaesthetic to know that would only purchase him so much time, before all that pain came back at him. He would have to pace himself—and then rely on some good luck to get him through the next couple of nights.
For now, though, he kept on moving. The going got tougher the closer they got to the trees, and finally, maybe a dozen yards into the thin woods—out of direct sight of the hospital but still in good view of the quarantine—they stopped. Andrew sat down on a log. Jason handed him the doctor’s bag, and the other bag that could be thrown over a shoulder.
They sat still and quiet for a bit. Then Jason spoke, his voice soft and quavering.
“Why would they lock me in with that thing?”
“I don’t know.” Andrew squinted at him. “You sure you won’t come with me? I’m not sure this is a safe place for you right now.”
Jason shook his head. “Sam Green said: I go, it points straight back to him.”
“Ah,” said Andrew. “I don’t know about that. There’s a game going on here. Has to do with Mister Juke. Harper. Bergstrom. Sam Green now. And I wonder how your aunt’s involved.”
Jason hunched his shoulders. “I wonder that myself.” He looked right at Andrew Waggoner. “Sometimes, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better I just got left alone back in Montana, my aunt never showed up. Or maybe if that germ had took me—”
Andrew stopped him. “That is not something to wonder about.”
“I know.” Jason sighed. “You better get moving. I’m sure sorry I couldn’t get you a gun.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m not much good with a gun right now anyway.”
“Well—” Jason stood up, and cleared his throat. “Well, it would still be a greater help to you than that knife. I hope this goes a little ways towards repaying you for helping me last night.”
“That is no debt,” he said. “Helping a boy who’s hurt in the night is a doctor’s work. I am sorry that we won’t be able to learn more about Maryanne Leonard, and those things inside her.”
“You can,” said Jason. He put his hand on the bag. “I wrapped the specimen jar with those eggs in it in cloth. You get back to someplace with an eyeglass, you can have a look at them and see what’s what.”
Andrew smiled. “Thank you,” he said.
Then Jason’s expression, something in the tilt of his shoulders, shifted. He finally looked Andrew in the eye.
“No,” he said. “You got no reason to thank me, sending you off alone to die.” He took a look back at the hospital. “Hang Sam Green. I’m going with you.”
Andrew put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “You made an agreement—a promise. You go too, attention will come back to Sam Green, who’ll suffer for no reason other than doing a fellow a good turn. I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be,” said Jason.
“You don’t have a say.” Andrew made himself smile, and lied. “I’m feeling much improved, anyhow. That knife and the food will be a help, and I can remember the way back to Bonner’s Ferry fine. You go back to your aunt, and keep your mouth closed, and lie low for awhile. Like Sam Green said to.”
Jason didn’t answer. He turned away and tromped back through the underbrush. Andrew watched him as he headed past the quarantine, paused to look at it for only a second, and returned to the hospital and his aunt. By the time the boy was inside, the smile was not even a memory on Andrew Waggoner’s face.
With a grimace, he pushed himself up off the log, gathered the things that Jason had brought for him, and headed into the dark sanctity of the woods.
Aunt Germaine was waiting for Jason as he came through the door to their rooms at the hospital. A single candle burned in a dish beside her. She held a small envelope between two fingers of her right hand, tapping the edge of the envelope against the palm of her left like the blade of an axe. Those eyeglasses made her expression inscrutable.
“Good evening, Aunt.”
“Nephew,” she said, nodding sternly. “Been busy?”
Jason felt something fall in his gut—something that had stayed put through the whole adventure of stealing medical supplies and clothes and what else he could find, and sneaking Dr. Waggoner out the back. Through it all, he had attributed the ease of it all to improbable luck. Now, all he could think of was how improbable it was that he’d get away with the escape—how vastly improbable. Aunt Germaine knew of his conspiracy, and he felt like a bandit, caught in the act.
He looked away from her. Germaine leaned forward. “Nephew,” she said, her voice low, “I am trying to protect you. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” said Jason. He felt very small then. Were he a couple of months younger, he thought he might’ve started to cry.
“Well,” she said, “then why do you feel the need to go to another?”
“You mean—” Jason felt as though it were all going to spill out. Aunt Germaine—who, if Sam Green were to be believed, was at the very core of this plan to murder Andrew Waggoner… she had Jason in a corner. She had him figured out. Her next words would surely be about Sam Green, he thought.
“I mean that dreadful girl,” she said. “Ruth Harper.”
Jason gawked, and Aunt Germaine took his expression as something else. She held the envelope, and pulled a card from it. “Do not play the innocent, Nephew,” she said. “This came for you whilst you were gallivanting—no doubt signed after you had met.” She tossed the card on the floor in front of Jason. Perplexed, he bent down to pick it up.
It was written in a fine script on paper so thick it almost felt like cloth. It was addressed to Jason Thistledown. It requested the Pleasure of Your Company at a Celebration of Spring in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Garrison Harper this Sunday the Thirtieth of April, following Worship. It was signed, Miss Ruth Harper.
He took a long, even breath, then looked up and met Aunt Germaine’s gaze.
“First I heard of this, Aunt,” he said. But all he could think of was his improbably good fortune.
Just as Sam Green said they might, men came to the hospital in the evening. They wore ghost-white cloaks over their shoulders, and white hoods like pillowcases over their heads. There were five of them and they all strode purposefully to the front of the hospital, up the steps and in through the waiting room like Hussars.
One of them hollered: “Where is the nigger rapist?” which brought the duty nurse as far as the door to the clinic (she fled back into the depths of the hospital when she saw who was there) and set the newborn infant sleeping not far in a room with his mama yowling.