The two of them glanced at each other before Joe answered my question. “I heard he was alive, though just barely. Some desert rat brought him in laid out across the hood of his old Willys jeep. He wanted Preach’s spine and neck to stay as straight as possible and not jar him around too much.”
I was already headed toward the door, assuming John had been taken to his storefront church. Peggy must have guessed. “He’s not at his church,” she said. “He’s at Ginger’s, the old movie theater.”
I thanked her and she reached out and caught my arm. “Ben, I heard he’s in bad shape. Broken and bloody from head to toe. It was a hit-and-run.”
Instead of driving I walked the few blocks to Ginger’s as quickly as I could. Such an accident was long overdue, assuming it was an accident. What certainly wasn’t an accident was the fact that he had been hit, and hit hard, and whoever had done it knew what had happened—and then just left John there on the side of the road like so much roadkill. Then what?
John was traveling southeast and the vehicle that hit him probably came from behind, meaning it was going east as well—likely all the way into Rockmuse, though before town there were a few small ranches and desert rats holed up in mobile homes and stone cabins off the highway. I knew them all, and they all knew John, if only, as is said, in passing. I just couldn’t see any of them hitting him and then driving off. The inescapable truth was that whoever had hit John was probably in Rockmuse and maybe lived there. Or had come into Rockmuse from the desert to run errands or get supplies. Chances were that I either knew the person or knew of them. Then there was the circus train and the candy-apple cab-over. The cab-over seemed only to be spotted at night. The circus train was headed into the desert for what the idiot wagon master had called “camping.”
The rusted old Willys that had delivered John was parked askew at the curb in front of Ginger’s place. There were dried rivulets of blood on its hood. A small group was gathered in front of the theater ticket window talking quietly. They nodded at me and I at them as I pulled open the door and entered the empty lobby. It was dark inside, lit only by the light in the glass display case that once held candy and now held, as best I could tell, an artfully arrayed exhibit of Ginger’s handmade soaps, most in various religious symbols and personages—crosses, goblets, Elvis, Jesus, and Buddha—the big three—and so on. No sign of John or anyone else.
I heard some voices behind the curtain leading into the theater. It had been a small movie house with maybe a hundred wooden seats, ten to a row. At some point the seats had been unbolted from the floor and stacked in their rows against the walls. The white screen was in tatters. The high house lights were mostly burnt out and it took my eyes a moment to adjust as I threaded all the card tables loaded with Ginger’s whatnots, glass, used clothes, a whole table dedicated to more religious figures, dishes, and enough homemade soaps to keep the entire town of Rockmuse clean for years. John was on a gigantic four-poster bed that took up most of the stage. It occurred to me he was lying in state; I hoped not. Ginger and an old man were standing next to the bed.
I hopped up onto the stage and joined them. There had been a lot of bleeding and the green flowered comforter had large stains where the blood had pooled. I half expected to find John looking like a piece of raw meat, which wasn’t the case. A plastic bowl of pink water sat on a table next to the bed and I assumed Ginger had been cleansing his injuries. She had cut off his jeans and shirt and they were in a nearby pile. He was still wearing his worn-down army surplus combat boots. He appeared almost serene, dressed only in his underwear beneath the stage lights. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Did he die?” I asked.
Ginger kept her eyes on John as she answered. A gold crucifix, only slightly smaller than the one John hauled, dangled from a chain around her neck. “No, thank God.” Though we had never actually met, she acknowledged me by name. “You’re Ben.”
I recognized the old man and assumed he was the desert rat who had found John and brought him to town. Over the years I had only delivered to him a few times and couldn’t remember his name, if I ever knew it. He remembered my name, though, and slowly shook his newly trimmed beard.
“Hell of a thing, Ben. Hell of a thing. The preacher got knocked maybe fifty feet off the shoulder. Would have missed him completely if I hadn’t seen the cross layin’ there. That old jeep of mine only has two gears and I was just pokin’ along as usual.”
“Coming into town for supplies?” I asked.
“More important. Dancin’ lessons.” He winked at me. “With Ginger here.”
He was old but he wasn’t dead. Maybe he didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet and skinny as a rail and with his best days in his rearview mirror, but things hadn’t changed that much. Dancing was just an excuse for him to be close to a woman. His hands were clean, and so was his denim work shirt, except for a few spatters of what I assumed was blood. An aroma of cheap aftershave and talcum powder hovered like a hopeful cloud around his narrow shoulders.
“I don’t know if he should be moved,” Ginger said. “I was up on my ladder when George drove up. All he’s got for a bed at his place is an old army cot. I thought this would be a better place for him. I think I’ve done all I know how to do. Life Flight should be here soon.”
“It won’t be here soon,” I said. “It won’t be here at all. Not today. It’s at an accident two hundred miles away and Price is about to have a snowstorm.”
“What about an ambulance?” Ginger asked.
“And no damn ambulance either,” I said. Hearing my harsh tone, I added, “It’s too far, especially with a weather front coming in.”
I leaned over John. There were a lot of gashes in his head and upper body and blood was still oozing from under his beard, which was rapidly turning from white to pink. His left leg had an ugly protrusion just below the knee. A break, I supposed. There were also some bruises coming up beneath his rib cage that indicated, at least to me, there could be some internal bleeding.
“But he needs a doctor!”
“There is no doctor,” I said.
“Then what do people do out here?”
“They die,” I said. “Or they get better. John would probably recommend prayer. I think you’d get a better response from Elvis, but if it helps pass the time then go ahead.”
My remark made her sputter. “You!” she shouted. “You’re supposed to be his friend.”
“I am,” I said, and I hoped truthfully. “That doesn’t mean I share his love of Jesus. John knew something like this could happen. The only miracle is that it took this long. I tried to give him a ride into town just this morning. The crazy son of a bitch turned me down.” Soon as the words left my mouth I knew I was angrier with John than with whoever had run him down.
“Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up. You have a truck, don’t you? Why not take him to the hospital? Even with a storm it’s worth the risk, isn’t it? Or maybe you’d just like to stand here and insult the man and his ministry until he dies.”
The desert rat thought she had a point. “It’s worth a try, Ben. You usually get through.”
That was true, though I might get stuck along the way. Two days was the longest I’d ever been stalled waiting for the weather or road to clear. It seemed like forever then and it would be forever with a gravely injured passenger. I was seriously considering it, knowing John could die at any time on the way to the hospital. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d hauled a corpse. I knew I would need someone to go with me and see to John while I drove.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If that’s our only option.”
Lenny joined us on the stage. He asked me if we could speak alone for a moment.
I followed him off the stage and out among the tables. “I’m going to need someone to ride along to care for John,” I said. “Probably inside the trailer is best. We can set up a bed. You volunteering?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I have another idea first.”
The second fifty percent of the Rockmuse population boom that had occurred during the summer was a man I had never seen, though I delivered water and propane to him. Delivering him propane was technically against the law, but technically I did it all the time for others and I technically didn’t care. The man lived in a small Terry trailer tucked under the lip of the mesa just a couple miles out of town. He paid in cash that he left under a rock near his door. Lenny, who delivered his groceries and booze to him from the Mercantile, which included lots and lots of vodka, and only at night, by the man’s request, had set up the arrangement with me. Lenny had never actually seen him. He paid the Mercantile by check and the checks were always good, which for Rockmuse was an oddity in itself.
“The name printed on the checks says his name is Rupert Conway, MD. Maybe you should stop by and see if he could take a look at the preacher.”
“Why me?” I asked. “You’re the one that knows he’s a doctor.”
“He scares the shit out of me, that’s why.” It was obvious that Lenny was not joking. “I’m used to the hardcore desert rats, Ben. But he’s different.”
I knew there was something Lenny wasn’t telling me. “Let’s hear it all,” I said.
“He always holds a weapon on me. A shotgun. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen him clearly. All I see is this big damn Remington over-under. I get the impression he doesn’t want visitors.”
I admitted that was a logical assumption. “He’s a fucking alcoholic,” I said. “I’m not sure he’d be of any use anyway.”
“Don’t you think a drunk doctor is better than no doctor at all?”
“No. Besides, maybe he hasn’t practiced in years. His medical license is probably no good, if he ever had one.”
Lenny sheepishly admitted he had Googled the doctor. “That’s what I was doing. Up until five years ago he was with Doctors Without Borders. Then something happened. Not much on exactly what that was. There must be a hundred entries for him. He’s the real deal, drunk or not. It’s worth a try, Ben. At least he might be able to tell us if it’s safe to transport Preach.”
It wouldn’t be the first time I had been confronted by an antisocial armed drunk. Such events didn’t qualify as commonplace, though, given the nature and location of my clientele, it wasn’t uncommon either. As far as I knew none of them had been doctors, not that that would make a difference. An eighty-year-old former nun once greeted me wearing nothing but her habit headgear, a smile, and an ancient Luger. It wasn’t my charm that kept them from shooting; it was the realization that shone through the alcohol or crazy cloud that if they shot me there would be no one to deliver to them. While I hated to breach a man’s privacy, especially one who seemed dead set on being left alone, I agreed with Lenny that it was, for better or worse, worth a shot. Maybe needing water and propane would allow me enough consideration to make my pitch and leave alive.
I asked Lenny to unload my trailer as best he could and get the vegetables into the Mercantile. One way or another I wanted to be prepared to transport John. “If I’m not back in an hour,” I said, “do not come looking for me. Understand? But you might mention it to Trooper Smith when and if he makes it to town.”
Lenny went to offload my trailer and I walked up to the stage and addressed the old man. “Any objection to me borrowing your jeep?”
He said he had no objections and asked no questions. “What’s your name?” I asked. I was slightly embarrassed for not remembering and said so.
For some reason that seemed to tickle him. “It don’t matter, does it?”
I agreed it didn’t, but I still wanted to know.
Over the years I had run across a certain reticence on the part of some desert dwellers to let loose of any information no matter how harmless. Then again, some had good reason to want to keep their identities to themselves.
“George,” he said.