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A single lonely cigar rattled inside. He took it out, and unwrapped it a
Romeo y Julietta Churchill. Seven inches of dark, rich satisfaction, and yet
another occasion to tell all his patients to "Do as I say, not as I do."
Much of the time, they even did.
He sliced off the tip with his pocket knife, careless of where the sliced-off
portion bounced, and flared his old, battered Zippo to life. People who smoked
cigars for style would tell you to slice the end off with one of those little
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guillotine things that people were always giving him for Christmas and which
he could never be bothered to carry, or to never light a cigar with a real
lighter. You were supposed to use one of those butane things, or a match.
Bullshit.
Sherve liked the acrid smell of the lighter fluid, and it only lasted for a
few moments, anyway. And puffing a fresh-lit cigar to life wasn't some sort of
religious ritual, after all; it was habit and pleasure.
By the time he had the cigar going the way he liked, the car was filled with
so much smoke that he couldn't see through the rear window. He cracked the
windows on both sides, and let the breeze sweeping across the hood suck the
smoke out of the car. In summertime, when he was out on one of his extended
walks, sometimes people would tell him that they'd known he was coming for
miles, just by the smell.
He had maybe a half dozen of the Churchills left, and only one box of the
Punch Double Coronas. Time to send off to A.E. Lloyd & Son again, if he didn't
want to have to start smoking legal cigars. They just didn't taste as good.
Forbidden fruit, maybe?
Hard to say. Damn expensive, but nowhere among the frustrations of being a
small-town doctor was low pay. Besides, what the hell else was he going to
spend it on? His kids were grown and gone, back only for every other
Christmas, and if either of them were going to have the decency to present him
with a grandchild or two to spoil, they would have done it by now.
New toys for the clinic were always a possibility, but it made more sense to
have the county pay for as much of that as they could, to help establish the
precedent. Once Bob Sherve retired and he would retire eventually, no matter
what everybody believed it would be hard enough for them to get high-paid MDs
to staff the emergency room, and just this side of impossible to get another
young buck, fresh out of medical school, to take over.
He'd had an idea that maybe Barbie Honistead could be steered into medical
school, and maybe she still could be, but she had gotten involved with some
boy from Florida in her first year at William and Mary, and was making noises
about getting married.
The chances of luring some Rorida type to Hardwood were close enough to zero,
zip, and null to be not worth the trouble to think about.
If he had been smart, he would've realized how bright Karin Roelke was,
twenty-odd years ago, and steered her into medicine, and maybe there was a
chance with Thorian, although likely not. But, shit, when he went it was going
to be bad for the town, and though he still had more than a little life in his
body, he was far closer to the end than the beginning.
Enough wool-gathering.
Give an old man a cigar and a warm place to sit, and he could sit there all
day, particularly since he'd had to start wearing those damn Depends diapers.
As if old age didn't have enough indignities built into it.
Which it did.
The pain in his chest returned, and then was gone. Good.
He reached for the car phone and punched a number. "Hello," he said. "It's
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me. If he's going to do this, it's about time to get going. Ian's probably
been gone long enough."
He sat back and considered the glowing end of his cigar.
It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes before her brown Ford
rolled quietly to stop next to Bob's Suburban. Karin Thorsen probably had had
the car started, with her and Hosea sitting in it, the engine running.
Which meant she was nervous. Sherve didn't blame her.
He gestured at Karin to stay seated, then opened the back door to help with
Hosea's gear. The air in the brown Ford puffed out at him, smelling of warmth
and cinnamon and a distant hint of Karin's perfume. Something musky enough to
make an old man remember he had been a young man, once, long ago.
"You sure this is a good idea?" Sherve asked Hosea.
"No, I'm sure about very little," Hosea said. "Certainty is for the young,
and whatever I am it is a certainty that I'm not young."
"Then why?"
The tall man was silent for a long moment. ''Because I might be useful. And
these days, I'm not all that useful."
"You're just fine, Hosea."
Hosea shook his head sadly. "No. There was a time when I could have led Ian
to that which he's going to be seeking, but that time is gone. That's a good
thing, in many ways. It's good that I'm not the powerful being I once was,
yes, but it's not a comfortable thing." He shrugged, or at least Bob Sherve
thought he probably shrugged his parka was far too large for his frame, and it
hung loosely. "Besides, I have little choice in the matter. I promised
Torrie's grandfather that I would always look out for Karin and Torrie,
and..." He shook his head. "And I hardly see a way I can do that here, or in
the city."
"And you always keep your promises."
Hosea nodded. "Always. Which is why it's perhaps for the best that I make
promises so very rarely."
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