SPIN

* * * * *

I went to the window, watched and waited.

I saw Pastor Dan carry two empty buckets from the barn to the house and travel back with the buckets full and steaming. A few minutes later Aaron Sorley crossed the gap to join him.

Which left only Simon and Diane in the house. Maybe he was giving her di

I itched to use the phone but I had resolved to wait, let things settle a little more, let the heat go out of the night.

I watched the barn. Bright light spilled through the slat walls as if someone had installed a rack of industrial lights. Condon had been back and forth all day. Something was happening in the barn. Simon hadn't said what.

The small luminosity of my watch counted off an hour.

Then I heard, faintly, a sound that might have been a closing door, footsteps on the stairs; and a moment later I saw Simon cross to the barn.

He didn't look up.

Nor did he leave the barn once he'd arrived there. He was inside with Sorley and Condon, and if he was still carrying the phone, and if he'd been idiotic enough to set it for an audible ring, calling him now might put him in jeopardy. Not that I was especially concerned for Simon's welfare.

But if he had left the phone with Diane, now was the hour.

I pecked out the number.

"Yes," she said—it was Diane who answered—and then, inflection rising, a question, "Yes?"

Her voice was breathless and faint. Those two syllables were enough to beg a diagnosis.

I said, "Diane. It's me. It's Tyler."

Trying to control my own raging pulse, as if a door had opened in my chest.

"Tyler," she said. "Ty… Simon said you might call."

I had to strain to make out the words. There was no force behind them; they were all throat and tongue, no chest. Which was consistent with the etiology of CVWS. The disease affects the lungs first, then the heart, in a coordinated attack of near-military efficiency. Scarred and foamy lung tissue passes less oxygen to the blood; the heart, oxygen-starved, pumps blood less efficiently; the CVWS bacteria exploit both weaknesses, digging deeper into the body with every laborious breath.

"I'm not far away," I said. "I'm real close, Diane."

"Close. Can I see you?"

I wanted to tear a hole in the wall. "Soon. I promise. We need to get you out of here. Get you some help. Fix you up."

I listened to the sound of more agonized inhalations and wondered if I'd lost her attention. Then she said, "I thought I saw the sun…"

"It's not the end of the world. Not yet, anyway."

"It's not?"

"No."

"Simon," she said.

"What about him?"

"He'll be so disappointed."

"You have CVWS, Diane. That's almost certainly what McIsaac's family had. They were smart to get help. It's a curable disease." I did not add, Up to a certain point or As long as it hasn't progressed to the terminal stage. "But we have to get you out of here."

"I missed you."

"I missed you, too. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

"Are you ready to leave?"

"If the time comes…"

"The time is pretty close. Rest until then. But we might have to hurry. You understand, Diane?"

"Simon," she said faintly. "Disappointed," she said.

"You rest, and I—"

But I didn't have time to finish.

A key rattled in the door. I flipped the phone closed and pushed it into my pocket. The door opened, and Aaron Sorley stood in the frame, rifle in hand, huffing as if he'd run up the stairs. He was silhouetted in the dim light from the hallway.

I backed away until my shoulders hit the wall.

"Tag on your license says you're a doctor," he said. "Is that right?"

I nodded.

"Then come with me," he said.

* * * * *

Sorley marched me downstairs and out the rear door toward the barn.

The moon, stained amber by the light of the gibbous sun, scarred and smaller than I remembered it, had risen over the eastern horizon. The night air was almost intoxicatingly cool. I took deep breaths. The relief lasted until Sorley threw open the barn door and a raw, animal stench gushed out—a slaughterhouse smell of excrement and blood.

"Go on in," Sorley said, and he gave me a push with his free hand.

The light came from a fat halide bulb suspended by its power cord over an open cattle stall. A gasoline generator rattled from an enclosure out back somewhere, a sound like someone revving a distant motorcycle.

Dan Condon stood at the open end of the pen, dipping his hands in a bucket of steaming water. He looked up when we entered. He frowned, his face a stark geography under the glaring single-point light, but he looked less intimidating than I remembered. In fact he looked diminished, gaunt, maybe even sick, maybe in the opening stages of his own case of CVWS. "Close that door back up," he said.

Aaron pushed it shut. Simon stood a few paces away from Condon, shooting me quick nervous glances.

"Come here," Condon said. "We need your help with this. Possibly your medical expertise."

In the pen, on a bed of filthy straw, a ski

The heifer was lying down, her bony rump projecting from the stall. Her tail had been tied to her neck with a length of twine to keep it out of the way. Her amniotic sac was bulging from her vulva, and the straw around her was dotted with bloody mucus.

I said, "I'm not a vet."

"I know that," Condon said. There was a suppressed hysteria in his eyes, the look of a man who's thrown a party but finds it spiraling out of control, the guests gone feral, neighbors complaining, liquor bottles flying from the windows like mortar rounds. "But we need another hand."

All I knew about brood stock and birthing I had learned from Molly Seagram's stories about life on her parents' farm. None of the stories had been particularly pleasant. At least Condon had set himself up with what I recalled as the necessary basics: hot water, disinfectant, obstetrical chains, a big bottle of mineral oil already stained with bloody handprints.

"She's part Angeln," Condon said, "part Danish Red, part Belarus Red, and that's only her most recent bloodline. But crossbreeding's a risk for 'dystocia'. That's what Brother Geller used to say. The word 'dystocia' means a difficult labor. Crossbreeds often have trouble calving. She's been in labor almost four hours. We need to extract the fetus."

Condon said this in a distant monotone, like a man lecturing a class of idiots. It didn't seem to matter who I was or how I'd got here, only that I was available, a free hand.

I said, "I need water."

"There's a bucket for washing up."

"I don't mean for washing. I haven't had anything to drink since last night."

Condon paused as if to process this information. Then he nodded and said, "Simon. See to it."

Simon appeared to be the trio's errand boy. He ducked his head and said, "I'll fetch you a drink, Tyler, sure enough," still avoiding my eyes as Sorley opened the barn door to let him out.

Condon turned back to the cattle pen where the exhausted heifer lay panting. Busy flies decorated the heifer's flanks. A couple of them lighted on Condon's shoulders, u

It didn't help that the heifer was obviously ill, drooling greenish mucus and struggling for breath even when the contractions eased. I wondered whether I should say anything about that to Condon. His divine calf was obviously infected, too.