MOODY VETERINARY
(Sikeston)
Dr. Preston Moody
ST. JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Clement Puyear
TROUT, OTIS
(retired) DENTIST (Bayou City)
Dr. Otis Troutt
[Retired dentist]
TATUM, BARBANUS G
(retired)
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Bamabus G. Tatum
[Retired D.O.]
ST. LUKE'S MEDICAL CENTER
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Howard Southmore
This seemed an unlikely way to go about finding her father, from a stranger's arbitrary list, and her pessimism was scarcely diminished by her companion. Sharon glanced surreptitiously at the badly scarred man beside her.
“Ray, how did you know all these doctors, and all the different places and everything? And what made Dad so sure this man would be a doctor, just because he'd been a doctor for the Nazis?'
“Well—'
“It seems like such guesswork, you know?'
“Your dad thought this guy'd be one of those, what-yacallem—ego freaks? Figured he couldn't stand it if he couldn't practice medicine or experiment on things. In small towns like this everybody knows about all the doctors, what their reputations are, where they came from. That's all people do around here is talk medicine, discuss their operations, or who's going out with whose wife. See, here's what I figure. This guy's got to be pretty old. Even if he was like twenty in 1944 you can see he'd be past retirement age. That narrows it some. Like that retired dude Barnaby something?'
“Barnabus Tatum,” she read from the list. “Retired D.O.'
“What's D.O.?'
“Ophthalmology—no, that's the eye. Osteopathy, that's it.'
“Thing is...” He picked and chose his words carefully before he spoke. What Meara was thinking he wasn't about to verbalize. He knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of finding anything out, but he wasn't going to be the one to break the news. “This was the direction your father was heading, anyway.” He left the rest of it unsaid. If her father had got himself jammed up in a bad scene, at least it proved one thing. He'd looked under the right rock.
39
It took them an hour and seventeen minutes to get from the door of Sharon Kamen's motel on the outskirts of Bayou City to the home where Dr. Tatum lived. He was very old and quite ill. She never found out what else he was suffering from other than acute emphysema and didn't care to have his illness diagnosed. She was inside the home five minutes tops, and when she came back to the truck her face looked ashen. Bloodless.
“Let's go, please,” she said, and slammed the passenger-side door.
“You wanna go by the hospital next?'
“Sure, fine.'
“That didn't take long.'
She didn't say anything, put her head against the seat, facing away from him, and began sobbing bitterly.
He thought he really had a dandy effect on her. Ray fought the impulse to touch or console her, focused his mind on the rainy streets and dangerously stupid Cape motorists, and kept his mouth shut.
Finally she brought herself under control. “You know,” she said, blowing her nose and trying to smile, “it's funny. I'm not a crier normally. I don't tend to cry much. You caught me in a slump.” This struck her as absurd and she laughed. “It's all so impossible.... I don't know. That man in there is a dying invalid. His wife said Dad hadn't been to see them and suddenly it seemed as if there was no hope. I know something's happened—I know it has.” She blew her nose again.
“Hey, I understand,” he spoke quietly. “But your dad looked to me like the kind of person could handle himself. Don't jump to any conclusions yet. This is only the beginning. The fact he didn't get to the Tatum house doesn't mean anything bad.'
“Okay.'
Three stops later, midafternoon, the weather having warmed up and the rain having slackened, Meara still sat in the truck, waiting. Ever since this lady got into his pickup that morning he'd been self-conscious about how dirty the interior of the truck was.
He started to get out and stretch and saw her coming out of the building, striding toward where he was parked on her long, gorgeous legs, and she took his breath away with the flawless geometry of limb and the artwork of pore and follicle. But he was beginning to realize there was more than beauty that made her so intensely attractive to him.
“Hey, listen,” she said, in a bossy, businesslike tone, as if she'd read his mind, “this is really taking way too much of your time, Ray. Please take me to a taxi and I'll make my own way back, huh? You've been super, but this is fine.'
“I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “Where to next?'
“Oh, well,” she said, letting a lot of breath out as if in disgust. When she inhaled deeply, Meara couldn't help but watch her chest push the sweater out and fill it. Why was he doing this to himself?
Again, Sharon was uncomfortably aware of his attention, and the last thing she needed was someone coming on to her. She was smart enough to know, however, that she was a woman who was capable of unconscious provocation and this was the sort of routine interpersonal moment she dismissed. She knew things by taste, background, and instinct: how to appear warmly feminine, for instance, without crossing the line and becoming unduly provocative. She also knew the reverse, and she could chill a man without half trying. With her concerns about her father, the kind of look Meara had given her virtually negated all his kindesses to the moment. She about tore the raincoat off in her haste to pull it around her, and to hell with what he thought.
He felt, appropriately, as if he'd acted like a boorish pig, and it was clear she was going to end up hating him if he didn't get his act together. He could hear words coming out of his mouth, something about Sikeston and Anniston. Bertrand. Dr. Syre. Just words in a businesslike tone. He couldn't get his mind right, and glanced at her
