Dark River Road (13 page)

Right about then he happened to see Chris Quinton standing just inside the gym door, his face all worked up into a tight expression as he stared at Tansy dancing with Leon. Chantry watched him closely, but when the song ended and Tansy and Leon went to the refreshment table, Chris walked in the other direction. The rest of the night went pretty fast, and only once more did he see Chris Quinton. He stood across the gym talking to his friends, with Mariah occasionally looking over at Cinda and Chantry like she wanted to say something but didn’t dare. It was just as well.

When the Fall Festival ended he walked Cinda out front to wait for her daddy to come pick her up. It’d gotten cold, with the wind damp and coming from the northwest across the river. Cinda shivered, and he took off his leather jacket and put it around her shoulders to keep her warm.

She turned, looked up at him, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to bend down and kiss her. She tasted like cherries. Sweet. Delicious. Ripe.

She made a soft little sound like “um” and kissed him back, curling her fingers into his shirt to hold him close. Then she stepped back, smiling up at him.

Someone shouted something at them, and he looked up. Donny Ray whistled, and several other boys made hooting sounds.

“Sorry,” he said to Cinda, and she shook her head.

“Lousy timing, Chantry Callahan. Don’t ever say you’re sorry when you kiss a girl. She’ll think you really are.”

He grabbed her hand before she turned away. “I’m not sorry for kissing you. Next time it won’t be in front of the whole school.”

“Oh, and you think there’ll be a next time?” She was still smiling, and shrugged free of his hand and his coat in almost the same motion, handing him the jacket. “There’s my dad. Call me. I think I’d like to see what next time will be like.”

So would he. That night he dreamed about Cinda and not Tansy, and when he woke up to go to work at the vet’s clinic, he wished he had a few more hours just to dream.

“You’re pretty good at this,”
Doc Malone told Chantry once he’d finished sewing an ear back on a coon hound that’d got it caught in a barbed wire fence. “Good instincts.”

Chantry didn’t do much but sop up blood and hand him sterilized instruments when he needed them, but the praise made him feel good. He nodded. “Thanks.”

“Ever think about being a vet?”

He had. But that was one of those dreams that would stay a dream. He had no illusions about what it’d take to go to vet school.

“Not much,” he said, and shifted the unconscious dog to lift it from the surgery table to a cage for recovery.

“You should. I’ll retire one day and Cane Creek will need another vet.”

“I’ll be long gone from here by then.”

Silence greeted that remark, and Chantry put the coon hound into the clean cage and made sure it was doing okay before he shut the door and latched it.

“Cane Creek isn’t so bad,” Malone said when Chantry had cleaned up the surgery area. “Lot of folks here with money.”

“Maybe that’s part of the problem.” He focused on pushing the broom across the floor. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate what Malone was trying to say. He did. He just didn’t want to say how he really felt.

“Yeah,” Malone said like he understood, and Chantry looked up. “Some folks act like they think they’re better because they have a little money. But real folks don’t think that way.”

“It’s not the real folks that bother me.”

Malone grinned. “Being an asshole isn’t restricted to just people with money, Chantry. It knows no class boundaries.”

“No, just makes it easier to get away with it.”

“So young to be so cynical. How’s Shadow?”

“Great. Took him out to a friend of Dempsey’s that has some goats. He did pretty good.” This was safe conversational territory. Doc Malone gave him old magazines about Catahoulas and stock dogs to read, and most of the time, just gave him sacks of premium dog food he said had been broken open and couldn’t be sold. Chantry knew he could use them in the clinic, but Mama had always said it was bad manners to refuse a gift when given for the right reason and so he took the food when Malone offered it. It wasn’t just for him, he reasoned, but for Shadow. And he’d do extra work to make it up.

“Still plan to enter him in the GCSA?” Malone asked.

“In January. I’ll pay the dues for the year so he’ll qualify. I don’t know if he’ll be ready to compete and win, but just trying might do him some good.”

“It’ll get him noticed, anyway. He’ll bring a good price if he gets enough points.”

Chantry didn’t reply to that. It was his own secret that he intended to have enough to buy Shadow himself. He had plans for the dog. Long-term plans. Rainey had been right when he said folks paid top dollar for a good stock dog. They’d pay more for a winner. Shadow had excellent bloodlines and could put some good pups down when the time came. Breeding fees went pretty high. And if he got the pick of the litter a few times, he could end up doing pretty well one day.

Malone gave him a ride to the end of the road, and Chantry was glad of it. It’d turned into a wet, cold day, with the wind hard enough to go bone-deep. He went out back as soon as he got home, to check on Shadow and the new house he’d finally been able to put together. It wasn’t the best, but he’d put pine straw in it for warmth and it was pretty tight. He hated that Shadow had to stay penned up so much of the time, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He took him out for runs as often as he could. The dog went wild sometimes, with so much pent-up energy he just ran in circles and made Chantry laugh.

When he went in the house, Mama was waiting on him. She looked tense, fine lines going from her eyes and on each side of her mouth. He glanced around the kitchen for Rainey but didn’t see him. Only Mikey sat there in his good clothes, looking expectant and a little confused.

“We’re going up to Memphis, Chantry,” Mama said. “Clean up and put on something nice and I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

Memphis was sixty-eight miles from Cane Creek but it might as well have been five hundred. He vaguely remembered going there with Mama and Rainey one time when he was real little, but it’d been so long ago he didn’t remember anything but that there had been lots of people and cars.

Mama didn’t drive much, but she started Rainey’s truck like she’d been doing it every day of her life and backed out of the driveway. Mikey sat between them, strapped into a seat so that he could almost see over the high dashboard.

“Rainey know we’re taking his truck?” Chantry asked when they got out on the highway, and Mama said he would when he got home and read her note. Great. He laid his head against the window and watched the blacktop unfurl in a dark ribbon ahead of them. It was a gray day, the sky dripping rain and dead leaves. He wondered what mission Mama was on that she’d invite the hell that would await them when they got back with Rainey’s truck.

After about ten miles, she said, “We’re taking Mikey to a doctor I know in Memphis. He needs surgery within the next year.”

It was what she didn’t say that brought Chantry’s head around to look at her. Tension rode her brow, her hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, and he thought it must be pretty bad for her to be so upset. Maybe she’d gotten another letter. Maybe Mikey’s doctor had found another hole in his heart. He glanced down at him. Mikey just looked glad to be riding in the truck and out of Cane Creek.

Nothing much was said during the hour and a half ride to Memphis. When they got close to the downtown area, Mikey got real excited at the glimpse of lights and high buildings. He wanted to stop and look, but Mama said first things first. She seemed to know where she was going, but it made sense, Chantry guessed, since she’d grown up in Memphis.

Wet streets reflected red and green traffic lights, and there were seven and eight lane roads so full of cars Chantry could hardly believe all these people existed. It seemed like too many. It was entirely different to read about an expanding population, and come this close to it. Quinton County was one of only two counties in the entire state of Mississippi that didn’t have a single traffic light, and here there were traffic lights on almost every corner.

Mama turned onto a four lane road with big old houses lining it, and old fashioned kind of street lamps like he’d seen in movies. A sign named it Peabody Avenue. A clinic stood on one corner, and behind it he saw a big cross all lit up and letters that said Methodist Hospital atop a red brick building that had to be at least ten stories high. Mama passed all that up, and put on the turn signal in front of a greystone house set back from the road and up on a slight hill. It had a long driveway that went up beside it with a turn-around, and a covered part that stuck out. It didn’t look much like a doctor’s office to him, but when Mama stopped the truck, he figured this was where she meant to be.

She turned and looked at them. “You boys be on your best behavior, do you hear me? No matter what you hear me say or what you hear anyone else say, just be quiet and do not speak until you are spoken to directly. Understood?”

This just got stranger. They both said they understood, though neither one of them did. It didn’t look like something they should question, with Mama acting so nervous.

They followed Mama up on the front porch and she rang the bell just like they’d come for a visit instead of a doctor’s appointment. She was wearing her best suit, he noticed, her Sunday one she used in the winter time. It had a straight slim skirt and little short jacket, and was a pretty blue color that almost matched Mama’s eyes. Her hair was softer around her face today, looser than usual but still pulled back on her neck. Her hand shook as she punched the bell again, and Chantry began to feel really anxious.

Finally someone came to the front door. She was an older lady and wore a uniform of some kind, with a white apron over a dark dress. Mama looked a little surprised, but asked firmly enough if the doctor was in.

“No, ma’am, he’s out of the country for a while. If you’d like to make an appointment, I can give you his office number—”

“No,” Mama said, and looked real upset, “I have his office number. This is—personal. I
 . . .
may I leave him a note?”

The lady hesitated, and said to wait just a moment, she’d ask the secretary. Because it was raining and blowing on them where they stood on the porch, she asked if they’d like to wait inside where it was dry and Mama nodded yes.

It smelled like lemons and fresh flowers inside, even though it was winter and most all the flowers had died for the year. A huge vase of gladiolas and flowers he didn’t recognize sat on some kind of table in an entrance hall that was bigger than half their house in Cane Creek, and Mikey just stared around him with his mouth open.

“Is this a castle?” he finally whispered, and Chantry squeezed his hand so he’d remember they were supposed to be quiet and not say anything without being spoken to first.

Mama was acting really odd. She walked from the entrance hall to one of the open doors just like she knew where she was going, and stood looking in at a room that should have been in a museum. It had velvet couches and chairs, and huge paintings of horses and dogs and people in really old clothes on the walls. Chantry wanted to leave. He didn’t like it here. It felt cold. Not just because of the weather, but there was nothing here that made it feel welcoming.

In a moment, a lady in a suit a lot like Mama’s came down the stairs that had thick carpet on them. “Yes, how may I help you?” she asked pleasantly enough, and Mama turned around.

“I had hoped to see the doctor, but have been informed he is out of the country.”

“Yes, he and his wife are on a business trip and extended holiday. If this is pertaining to a patient, perhaps—”

“It is a personal matter. I
 . . .
I would like to leave a note for him. Could you be certain that it is given to him as soon as they return? It is quite urgent.”

“Urgent? He left a colleague on call if you’d like his name.”

“That will not be necessary.” Mama took a deep breath. The woman looked at her with a little frown as if she didn’t understand at all, and Mama said, “I am afraid I was not prepared for the possibility that he would be out of the country. If I might ask for a sheet of paper and an envelope, please? I apologize for being a nuisance.”

“No, not at all. Come this way, please. I’ll see that Doctor Callahan is given your letter as soon as he returns.”

Mama turned to look at them. “Stay right here and do not move.”

Chantry stared at her. Was this Doctor Callahan a relative of his father’s, or was it just a coincidence they had the same name? He held Mikey’s hand really tight, and stood still in the center of the entrance hall with the huge crystal chandelier hanging overhead. Outside, the cold rain beat against the windows and street, and inside it smelled like a spring garden.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mikey whispered, and Chantry rolled his eyes. He had to go, too, but he knew better than to say anything.

“In a minute,” he said.

After a few moments passed, Mikey said, “I hafta go
now
, Chantry.”

Jesus. He blew out a heavy breath and nodded. “Okay. Let me find that lady again.”

He went down the entrance hall toward another door, and stuck his head around the frame to look into the room. It was empty, but he heard someone moving around close by.

“Excuse me,” he said as loudly as he dared, and in a moment, the first lady in the apron and dress came back around the corner. “My little brother has to
 . . .
to use the bathroom.”

“Of course.” She smiled, dark little eyes squinting up so easily that he guessed she spent a lot of time smiling. “I should have thought to offer. Come along this way now, boys, and I’ll show you where it is.”

She showed them to a bathroom that was bigger than his bedroom at home. It was off the kitchen, and didn’t even have a tub, just a toilet and a wash basin, and some fancy furniture. A window made of stained glass like in the New Cane Creek Baptist Church let in colored light, and he looked around as he helped Mikey with his clothes and washing his hands. When they’d both finished, he went back out and found the nice lady waiting on them in the kitchen with a big plate of cookies and glasses of milk. It was different in here, bright and cheery and not so cold. She smiled at them.