DOC MOO RODE THROUGH the falling darkness, his horse stepping carefully on the rough road up to Lick Creek. The Tug lay two hundred feet down the steep slope, roving through the trees, and the bats were up, darting through the dusk. Altair seemed slightly nervous this evening, wary of the shadows crawling across the ground—unusual for the big gelding.
Doc Moo rubbed the animal’s shoulder and smiled, thinking of Musa, who loved this hour most—the time between the dog and the wolf, when the shapes of the world shifted like smoke. The boy would be headed home now, racing barefoot through the woods, due at the dinner table just before the last sliver of sun slipped behind the western ridgeline.
That boy. He’d come from the womb more fully formed than most, more like some animal cub born with tough feet and a quick mind. Many a time, Doc Moo or Buddeea had panicked to find the boy’s crib empty, only to discover he’d not only managed to climb out of the open-top cage and survive the long drop to the ground, but to crawl outside onto the porch or even into the yard, undetected by his mother, father, and three older sisters. Later, the family would joke that the house couldn’t be haunted because Musa had scared all the ghosts away, sneaking up on them, and the boy seemed to have some deep connection with the hills of his birth. He knew the name of every weed, shrub, tree, insect, bird, and beast long before he knew the name of any President, and he could disappear for hours in the woods.
Lately, though, given the boy’s age, Doc Moo had begun to wonder if there might be more than birds and bees drawing him afield. After all, a few of the surrounding farms did have daughters his age. Most of them were several miles away, but that was nothing for Musa …
Doc Moo heard an automobile coming up the road behind him and twisted in the saddle to look. It was being driven hard, the headlights jouncing over the rough road, flashing in and out of the trees. He could hear the motor racing. He steered Altair to the side of the road and waited, watching the open-top touring car come around the bend amid a pale plume of dust and skid to a halt just short of him, jacklighting horse and rider in the headlamps.
Moo held up his hand, shielding his eyes as he stepped Altair out of the glare. Three men got out of the car, the springs squeaking beneath them as they rose. They had khaki shirts and white armbands and hitched their trousers when they stood. Town men, well-bellied. A trio of rifles stood inside the car, propped upright between the seats.
“Mingo Vigilance Committee,” said the driver. “State your business.”
“I am Doctor Domit Muhanna, a known physician in this county.”
“And your business?”
“The same as most members of my profession. Treating the sick.”
“I know who he is,” said one of the others. “He’s the one doctors them folks up at Lick Creek.” He spat. “Walked out the Vigilance Committee meetin’ at the courthouse, he did.”
“Is that right?” said the first. He whistled. “Too chicken to join the law-and-order brigade, that it?”
Despite himself, Doc Moo felt a flush coming into his cheeks, his blood rising. These son-of-a-bitching gasbags who thought they were tough. As if he hadn’t seen more blood in a single hour than the three of them put together. He thought of what Buddeea would tell him to do. Count to ten before he replied.
Moo got to three before speaking through his teeth. “My business is healing people, not carrying a rifle. Now, if you’ll excuse me, please, I have patients this evening to attend to.”
One of the men took hold of Altair’s bridle. “Afraid we can’t let you do that, Doc.”
“Excuse me?”
“Too dangerous up there at Lick Creek. No more’n a slum, breeding ground for disease and violence. Can’t let nobody of your station up there, ’specially not after dark. Besides, you might be carrying contraband.”
“Thank you for your concern,” said Moo, “but I will travel freely inside my own county. Now please let go of my horse.”
No one moved.
Moo could feel the wildness rising in him now. The old Muhanna blood churning, crackling beneath his skin. “I will ask you again, sir, to unhand my horse.”
The man holding the bridle swallowed and looked at the other two. They said nothing.
Moo inhaled, his nostrils flaring. It was decided then. Slowly, deliberately, he rose from the saddle and began to dismount. He had not sailed seven thousand miles across the world, traveled up the Mississippi River on a riverboat full of knife-wielding Kaintucks, and graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine with top marks, carving a position of respect for himself and his family out of the very flesh, blood, and bone of these hills to be bullied by a trio of chubby sons of bitches in khaki shirts and armbands.
He stepped to the ground before them and thumbed the three-barred cross at his throat, looking from man to man. His eyes were wide open, blazing like spot lamps. “Allah maei,” he said. God is with me.
The first man stepped forward, cocking his fist back. “The fuck you say?”
MISS BEULAH SAT IN her rocker, watching the sky. The bullbats were up, flurrying through the dusk. Dark came early in these narrow hollers, but that upper sky remained a long time aglow, flushed with a sun she couldn’t see go down. The air seemed shifty tonight, full of haints or echoes, worlds past or yet to come. She felt it inside her, too. Nervy, her mama used to call it, like the veil between worlds had stretched out thin, and your own bones and tendons and nerves were raw, able to feel things you normally couldn’t.
Doc Moo came walking up out of the falling dark, his brown canvas pants tucked into his riding boots. He looked harried, his shirt sweat-sodden, wrung slack at the collar. Breathing harder than usual, too. Heaving. Closer, she saw his bottom lip busted and a trickle of blood running from his nose.
“What got hold of you, Doctor?”
Doc Moo shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
Miss Beulah squinted. She’d never seen the good doctor angry, but there was a fury in him now, burning just under the surface. It was coming off him like a sweat or fever. She could almost smell it. “No offense, Doctor, but it looks a damn sight more than nothing.”
The doctor smoothed his shirt. “I ran into a carload of vigilance men down the road. They tried to keep me from coming up here, as if they could tell me whom I can or cannot treat.”
Miss Beulah nodded at the state of him. “Looks like you ain’t listened to them.”
The doctor sniffed, holding his black medicine bag stiff at his side. “They were lucky I was outnumbered.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Miss Beulah, fighting a grin. She’d known the good doctor had some grit in his veins—you couldn’t do what he did without it. Still, she didn’t know it went all the way down to his fists.
She shook her head, sucking her teeth. “It’s blood in the air tonight, Doctor Moo. I can almost taste it.” She thumped a heel on the duckboards. “Why don’t you sit down and cool yours a spell.”
The doctor turned over a milk crate and sat down next to her, placing his medicine bag between his boots. He wiped his nose on his handkerchief, blood on the white linen.
“Sometimes it seems worthless, Miss B. All this work and care to stitch people back together, to stanch wounds and set bones and battle infections, and every time I finish one, there are ten more, like holes busting loose in a dam, except it’s blood instead of floodwater.”
Miss Beulah put a hand on his arm. “Blood and time, those ain’t battles you can win. All a body can do is keep up the good fight. And you fight harder and better in your way than most anybody in this whole valley.” She squeezed his arm. “When the doubts come clouding, you remember that.”
He nodded, and she squeezed his arm harder, making sure she had his attention. “Even when I’m gone, Doctor Moo, I want you remembering that. Like a little whisper in your ear. Like I’m haunting you. You hear me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and cocked his head, as if listening to a distant sound. “I hear you, Miss B. I do. Thank you.”
The doctor returned the bloody handkerchief to his coat pocket and took a deep breath to regain his composure. He dropped his voice. “Any sign of Frank yet?”
It was the night of his final checkup for the bullet wound he’d suffered in the Lick Creek raid. Miss Beulah shook her head. “He come by night before last, said he and his men was headed up to Marmet to meet the rest of them that’s gathering for the march.”
“I thought that might be the case.”
Miss Beulah nodded. “I knew he would. Soon’s I heard about Sid.” The news had punched her square in the chest. She’d jerked back in her rocker and felt her arms stiffen at odd angles. She hadn’t felt the same since. “I took it so hard cause I knew what it meant, I knew he’d go off to fight. And there ain’t a damn thing in this world I could say to stop him.”
Doc Moo leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “Word is, Mother Jones tried to convince them to go home.”
“I heard that, too, and I heard they ain’t listened to her, neither.”
The doctor nodded. “Well, sometimes it takes time for a mother’s words to sink in.”
Miss Beulah sniffed. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Well, we can hope that’s the case here.”
“We can, Doctor, and we will. But the Devil’s in these hills tonight, walking above ground. I can sense it. He don’t stay long under the Lord’s eye, no sir, but it don’t take much to spark hell when you know just where to strike.”
The doctor opened his mouth, but no words came.