Dance Away with Me(70)

“Duke don’t believe in doctors. And last time I sewed him up, God bless America, I ended up fainting right on the floor and had a headache that lasted all week.”

“Concussions will do that to you,” Tess muttered as Mrs. Childers went to the truck to retrieve her husband.

Duke Childers was even more grizzled than his wife, with big ears, an unkempt mustache, and wires of gray hair sticking out from beneath a work-worn hat of indeterminate color. A none-too-clean towel wrapped his hand. “Jes sew it up. I got work to do,” he said, by way of a greeting.

“There’s no need to be talkin’ to missus like that.” Sarah chided him as Tess fetched the first aid kit. “I apologize for my husband. He doesn’t take well to bein’ hurt.”

“If you’d a done what I told you . . .” he grumbled.

“I’m not stitchin’ you up again, Duke Childers!”

Tess directed him toward the dining table, which seemed to be turning into her general surgery table. “Have a seat, Mr. Childers.”

“Name’s Duke,” he said. “I been settin’ fence posts all my life. Damn fool thing to do.”

The gash ran deep in his palm near his thumb and gushed fresh blood as Tess unwrapped it. Even if she’d had more of the same wound dressing she’d used on Eli, she wouldn’t have been able to use it at that location. “This needs stitches,” she said.

“God bless America, but that’s why we’re here,” Sarah said, as if Tess had missed the point.

Tess pressed a clean gauze pad over the wound. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t have any anesthesia to numb the area, and you need antibiotics.”

Duke drew back his lips over crooked yellowed teeth. “It’s not hard to see you ain’t from around here. Up here in the mountains, we help each other out. Let’s go, Sarah.”

Tess knew when she was beaten, and she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder as he began to rise from the table. “This is going to hurt like hell.”

He shrugged. “‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.’ Psalm thirty-four.”

“Well, all right then.” Tess reached around the sleeping baby to clean and stitch up Duke’s hand. It was like sewing shoe leather, but he barely flinched.

Ian came in as she was finishing. She was irrationally angry with him for being out on one of his nature rambles while she had to deal with medical emergencies.

“You the artist fellow?” Duke said as Ian sat on the bench and pulled off his hiking boots.

Ian set his boots aside. “Ian North.”

“I heard you helped out Pete Miller with his beehives.”

Ian rose from the bench. “I mainly got in his way.”

“Yeah, that’s what he told me.” Duke held his hand steady as Tess put in another stitch. “Your woman here’s pretty good at doctorin’, is she?”

Ian came close enough to look over Tess’s shoulder. “I guess you’ll be able to answer that for yourself.” He must have seen enough because he quickly backed off. “I wouldn’t trust her, though, if you need open heart surgery.”

A good point.

Tess put in the last stitch and wrapped the wound as Wren began to stir against her chest. “Even if you keep this clean, there’s a good chance it’s going to get infected without antibiotics.” She stroked Wren’s back. “Have you ever seen gangrene? Maybe in one of your dogs? That’s what your hand’s going to look like. And if you think even for a minute you can come running back here and order me to cut it off, you’d better think again, because I’ll tell you to go straight to hell. Got it?”

Duke didn’t seem offended. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ian smiled.

Tess made Duke give her his word of honor that he’d come back in a few days to have the wound checked.

Ian regarded him sagely. “I strongly suggest you don’t make her come after you. She has a mean streak.”

“Mos’ women do.”

After Duke and Sarah left, Tess gazed down at the crumpled ten-dollar bill he’d thrust at her on their way out the door. “God bless America,” she muttered.

Ian helped her clean up the mess. “If you’re going to stay in Tempest long-term, you’d better either keep the door permanently locked or make yourself legal, because I have a feeling this is only going to get worse.”

“It’s not right! The pregnant women look at me like I’m going to hex their babies, and these people treat me like I’m the local emergency clinic. I don’t want to be the village healer!”

“Then you shouldn’t be so good at taking care of people. Now go get dressed. Heather’s taking Wren so we can get out of here for a while.”

“Taking Wren? I don’t want to leave her. And going where?”

“Civilization.” His gaze cut over her jeans and spit-up–stained sweater. “It’s up to you, but you might want to change clothes.”

She argued with him about leaving Wren, but he held firm. She begrudgingly changed into slacks, a silky white T, and a fitted blazer. Before long, they were on their way to Knoxville.

“Why there?”

“Why not?”

He was being deliberately obtuse, and they fell into silence. With each mile, the atmosphere in the car grew heavier. If it had been a normal day and they were two normal people, he would have told her where they were going, but he resisted all her attempts at conversation, and nothing about this felt normal.