Echo Mountain: Chapters 57–73

“They’re much like Captan was as a puppy. Do you know who their sire is?”

That took me aback. “The bee stings were the first hurt I gave him.”

I thought of those bandages, which had once been sleeves my father had made and, before that, bolted muslin, and, before that, cotton on a loom, from a plant known to draw blood from the hands that picked it.

“If, by found, you mean wrangled some in exchange for cleaning a chicken coop and then stole the rest from a hive.”

While we worked, Cate trembled and flinched, but she didn’t make a sound.

And I thought of the dead honeybees. And the terror of the snake. And the willow buds withering on the floor, just there by Larkin’s feet.

And Larkin, standing by, appalled, while his father died.

For I knew, with great clarity and certainty, that there was more I could do to help Cate. I just didn’t yet know what that might be.

Then, from the near distance, came a long, lingering howl. It was as mournful and wild as any coyote I’d ever heard, but I recognized the voice.

Because she brought in a doctor, and the broken leg turned out to be a bruised leg, nothing more, which healed rather quickly when Florence dressed it with warm compresses.

“Oh, there he is,” Cate said as Captan barged into the room and went immediately to lay his head in her lap.

“Not right now. This is for Cate.”
“For Mrs. Cleary?”
I was amazed that she saw a distinction.

“Now wash up and sit down and eat.” Instead, he sidled up next to me.

“A lot of thinking for a twelve-year-old girl?”
Which earned me her customary snort. “A lot of thinking for anyone.”

In the lull, I wondered where Larkin was and hoped he would come back soon...and with no rancor.

“This is her idea. If anything, I’ve bungled the whole deal since the beginning. If I’d let her run the show, I’d be right as rain by now.”

Captan didn’t like the sounds that Cate made as I ladled the warm vinegar onto her wound, bit by bit, letting it seep into the cut and then collect in a reservoir on her skin, inside the glue dam I’d made.

A dog like that comes to me in the night, of course I went in to have a look, but she’s sleeping soundly.

I’d spent more time on her leg, scraping away the hide glue and pulling open the wound to wipe the honey out, pouring vinegar into the breach and letting it scour her clean.

Bit by bit, her wound began to improve. Her fever to abate.

"What's this?" Cate said when they came through the door, Larkin and the portly doctor in his just-so coat and his dinner-plate face.

“Right after I left here. Esther thought so, too, that I should go get help. So I told my mother,” who had not been pleased, “and walked down the mountain and out to the road and caught a ride in a rubbish truck,” which explained why he smelled like he did, “and had to sleep under a bridge,” which also explained why he smelled like he did, “until the doctor got back the next day. And then it took us a while to get here.”

While he was there, the doctor examined my father as well, listening to his heart, his lungs. Looking into his eyes and ears. Testing his reflexes, which were understandably sluggish.

“Could be some dizziness. Some permanent weakness in your muscles.” He looked at my mother. “No seizures?”

We’d already had my father on his feet once, helping him slowly into the washroom for the first proper bath he’d had in months, and that had been an ordeal.

The doctor, when he saw for himself, told us another word we hadn't known. “Atrophy,” he said. “He needs to build up his muscles again.”

For that, he gave her a salve, though she’d already brewed a fresh batch of vinegar with the “mother” from the last batch.

“Any trouble with your words?” the doctor said. My father looked bemused.

But I hadn’t expected a great pile of wood in chunks too big for a hearth. Or walls and rafters hung with wood cut rough and raw but clearly meant to be mandolins someday.

If my father got well enough, fast enough, to manage a passel of dogs.