The First Lady turned back as Earl galloped toward her down the orchard row. He was a big, ungainly man who ran without any grace but a lot of joy. He smacked into a low-hanging branch, spun around, and came on as if nothing had happened. When he reached them, he was breathing hard and smiling big.
“Hi, Bo.”
“Morning, Earl.”
“Beautiful, huh?”
Bo looked at the First Lady, and thought, Yes. Then Earl touched the tractor, and Bo understood what he’d meant.
“I get to drive it sometimes,” Earl said.
“But not now,” Kate told him.
Earl looked disappointed and climbed onto the seat anyway. He began to pretend to drive the machine, making engine sounds.“Vrrooom! Vrrooom!”
The First Lady moved to the flatbed and sat in the shade of an apple limb. She put her sandals beside her and crossed her long, brown legs. “I used to come here with my father almost every night. He’d bring his telescope and we’d look at the moon and the stars for hours.”
“It’s easy to see why he loves it.”
“Am I keeping you from your work?” she asked.
“You are my work.”
“My aunt thinks the world of you, you know.”
“I’m pretty fond of Annie. I owe her my life. What I’ve made of it, anyway.”
“What about the others?” she asked. “The children who lived with you in the bus.”
“Otter, Egg, Pearl, and Freak.”
“Those were their names?”
“Street names. We all went by them.”
“What was yours?”
“Spider-Man.”
“So, what happened to the others?”
Earl was pretending to shift through gears and bouncing on the seat as if he were driving over rough road.
Bo leaned against the ridges of the Kubota’s big rear tire. The limb that shaded the First Lady also shaded him.
“They still had homes somewhere. Social Services sent them back to their parents.”
“And they all lived happily ever after?”
“Pearl got pregnant at sixteen. The first time. She has five children now by three different men. Her oldest daughter ran away this summer. Pearl still hasn’t heard from her. Otter’s an alcoholic, been in and out of treatment for years. Those are the success stories,” Bo said.
“The other two? Egg and Freak?”
“Egg’s doing time in Eddyville, Kentucky, for armed robbery. Freak died of AIDS, two years ago. He was a heroin addict.”
“I’m sorry, Bo.”
“Me, too.”
“What about you? Are you happy with the life you’ve put together?”
“Happier some days than others. Isn’t it like that for everyone?”
Instead of answering, she rose and said, “I should be getting back. Earl, are you coming?”
“Yeah. Do you want to go swimming?” He climbed down from the tractor and took his sister’s hand.
Before she started away, the First Lady said, “Shouldn’t that tractor be moved?”
“Your safety is our priority right now,” Bo said. “Eventually I’ll have one of my people put it in the barn.”
“Or put it there yourself. Why give someone else the thrill?” She laughed, turned away, and headed toward the house with Earl, following the orchard lane Tom Jorgenson had taken a couple of days before. The two FLOTUS agents trailed her.
When they’d gone, Bo walked to the apple tree behind the flatbed and climbed the trunk. He eased out onto the limb that seemed to have been the culprit in Tom Jorgenson’s accident. He crouched and examined the bark. Some of the very small sucker branches were bent or broken. It looked to Bo as if someone might well have climbed out onto that limb not long before him.
chapter
nine
The St. Croix Regional Medical Center stood on a hill overlooking Stillwater and the St. Croix River. The wing that housed the trauma intensive care unit faced east, with a good view of the historic old town and of the broad, beautiful river that had been designated a national scenic riverway. The rooms in trauma ICU were all single patient rooms situated around the central nurses’ station like spokes around the hub of a wheel. The lovely view from the windows was lost on Tom Jorgenson. He lay unconscious in his bed, living through tubes and wires. His head was wrapped in a thick gauze turban. His eyes were black as a raccoon’s, as if he’d been beaten. A tube from a ventilator snaked down his throat. Another tube had been inserted into the side of his chest. Lacerations and bruises covered his arms. Even to Bo, who didn’t love him nearly as much as did Annie and his daughters, he looked like death already.
Bo didn’t enter the room, just stood in the doorway. Keeping vigil at that hour were Ruth and Earl. Ruth Jorgenson, who’d kept her maiden name after marriage, had a successful law practice in St. Paul and was the attorney for her father’s Institute for Global Understanding. Like most attorneys with whom Bo was acquainted, she always seemed to be long on responsibilities and short on time. However, sitting at her father’s bedside, reading aloud fromWind in the Willows, one of Earl’s favorite books, she appeared to be in no hurry at all. Bo knew from his own experience that tragedy had this effect. It slowed the world so that every second of life counted. Earl sat near her, listening with a big smile on his face as she read.
Bo returned to the nurses’ station where he’d previously flashed his ID. The nurse there, a stout woman with silvering hair and a name tag that identified her as Maria Rivera, R.N., asked, “What can I do for you, Agent Thorsen?” She spoke with a slight Hispanic accent.
“Can you tell me who treated Tom Jorgenson last night?”
“Dr. Mason was in charge in the E.R. I believe she oversaw the treatment of Mr. Jorgenson herself. Let me just check the chart.” She started to reach toward a rack of charts filed by room number but stopped abruptly and snapped sternly, “Mr. Cooper, stop that.”
Bo followed her eyes. A large aquarium tank sat on a stand against one wall of the Trauma ICU. The bottom of the tank was covered with colorful marbles. An old man in a white robe had his arm in the tank, almost up to his shoulder.
“You put those marbles back.”
The old man opened his fist, and an array of marbles sank back to the bottom.
Nurse Rivera shook her finger at him. “You wait right there. Don’t move.” She dialed a number and spoke with exasperation, “Mr. Cooper is up here again. You’d better bring a dry bathrobe.”
The old man looked duly chastised. He waited until an orderly arrived, and he let himself be led away.
Nurse Rivera shook her head. “He means no harm. He comes up from the geriatric unit on the floor below. The marbles have some significance with his childhood, I think. If we don’t watch carefully, he takes a handful and disappears. He ought to be restrained, I suppose, but he’s really no danger to himself. Just a nuisance to us. Now then.” She pulled Tom Jorgenson’s chart. “Yes, it was Dr. Maggie Mason.”
“Is she on duty now?”
“I’m not sure. I’d be glad to check.”
“Thank you.”
