TWENTY-ONE

The scene over at Dr. Jerry Copeland’s home had turned chaotic as the doctor was trundled a few blocks from the tavern in a wheelbarrow pushed by his friends. And then when Tom Allison, Danny Russo, and Walter McWhinnie tried to get him inside, the doctor let loose cursing and striking at them with his fists, doing everything he could to resist being manhandled, while his wife, Jeanette, and their two children stood by weeping and humiliated. When Loren arrived on the scene he watched in amazed fury for a moment before he shoved Walter and Danny out of the way and seized the doctor by the shoulders and hollered an inch away from his face to get a hold of himself. Loren being a large man the doctor shrank from him and gave up struggling. They were good friends through the years of hardship, but Loren had put a lot of time and effort in trying to help the doctor with his drinking problem and his anger now was sharp. Meanwhile, the doctor slumped back in the wheelbarrow. Loren was not sure if he had passed out.

“Can you hear me, Jerry?”

“Didn’ you tell me to shuddup?” the doctor mumbled.

“The little girl at Robert’s house is very sick with tetanus, we think. She’s convulsing. Jason is with her. He sent me over for TIG. Do you have any TIG in your office? Do you hear me?”

The doctor nodded his head but then commenced blubbering.

“I hear you,” he said.

“Tell us where to look.”

Now the doctor just shook his head. “I can’t help you,” he moaned.

Loren looked to Jeanette. “Do you know where he keeps this TIG medicine?”

“We don’t have any more,” she said, and she put her hand over her mouth as if shocked that her words had escaped from there.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m absolutely certain,” she said in a voice still inflected with the tones of her native Normandy. “I remember when we used the last of it. A young man on the Schmidt farm. More than a year ago.”

“Wake the fuck up, Jerry!” Loren hollered. He smacked him smartly on the face, but the doctor appeared to be truly unconscious.

“Stop it!” twelve-year-old Jasper screamed. “Leave him alone!”

Loren left the doctor and reached for Jeanette’s hand. “You have to come help,” he said. “Right now.”

“Okay,” she agreed and hurried away with Loren in the direction of Robert’s house. The boy followed them down the street a little way but Jeanette admonished him to go back and stay with his little sister, Dinah, while the other three men resumed their struggle to get the doctor inside the house to his bed.