The Last Ranch Page 2

  The bus driver dropped him off outside the old Spanish colonial brick-and-stucco hospital building now used for offices, where a clerk directed him back outside to one of the army-style barracks buildings that served as hospital wards, rehabilitation clinics, surgical theaters, and medical specialty centers. Considered temporary construction, each building was a long rectangle, two stories high, with a gable roof, horizontal wood siding, double-hung windows, and an external staircase to the second floor. Dozens of the buildings, marked with numbers and signs, stretched out in long, neat rows with the brown, barren Franklin Mountains as a backdrop. After presenting his appointment letter to a receptionist in the Ophthalmology Clinic, Matt was led to an examination room, where he was greeted by an attractive older woman with eyeglasses perched on her nose and captain’s bars on her uniform shirt. She had blond curly hair cut short; warm, brown eyes; and a small raspberry-red birthmark above her right cheek.

  “Take a seat, Sergeant Kerney,” she said, smiling and motioning to a stool as she looked up from a medical chart. The nameplate on her desk read Capt. Susan Beckmann, MD.

  “I’m Dr. Beckmann, and I’m new to this man’s army,” she said with a hint of humor in her voice. “I’ve been told by my commanding officer, who is still instructing me in matters of military etiquette, that you must call me ma’am, Doctor, or Captain.”

  Matt nodded as he sat on a gray metal stool. “I didn’t expect to be seeing a lady doctor for my exam, Captain.”

  Beckmann’s smile froze as she paused to study her patient. He was tall, in his early thirties with square shoulders, a darkly tanned face, and intelligent features. “We’re a rare commodity, I’ll grant you. Do you have a problem with that, Sergeant?”

  Matt touched the ruptured duck lapel button on his shirt and shook his head. “No, ma’am, and since I’m a bona fide, one-hundred-percent honorably discharged civilian, you can drop the ‘sergeant’ moniker. Call me Matt, Dr. Beckmann.”

  Beckmann’s smile warmed. “Fair enough, Matt.” She left her desk, sat on a stool, scooted it close to him, and said, “Now, let’s take a look at that eye.”

  As she lifted his eye patch her smile faded. There was no doubt the loss of sight in the eye was permanent, but the surgery to remove the shrapnel had been neatly done. The worrisome thing now was redness and swelling around the orbital cavity that suggested the possibility of infection.

  “See, Doc, it just doesn’t work right,” Matt joked lamely.

  “Does it cause you any discomfort?” Beckmann asked as she slipped her hand into a sterile glove and probed gently with a finger above and below the eye.

  Matt shrugged. “Not much.”

  Dr. Beckmann paused and gave him a quizzical gaze. “Really?”

  Matt’s jaw tightened. “I do okay.”

  “You aren’t a very good straight-face liar,” Beckmann scolded with a sigh. “I’ve never understood why some men have a hard time being honest with doctors. You didn’t strike me as that type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “The stupid type,” Beckmann explained, softening her criticism with a smile. “Let’s start over. Do you experience any pain?”

  Chagrined, Matt nodded.

  “Describe it to me.”

  “Sometimes when I move my eye, it feels like I’ve been stabbed in the eyeball and it hurts like hell.”

  Susan Beckmann nodded and continued her questioning. Matt reluctantly admitted he sometimes had severe headaches that laid him low for an hour or more. Occasionally his head tingled as if insects were crawling on his scalp, or he sensed a slight trembling of his head, almost like a palsy that was hard to control. The bad eye just ached dully much of the time, but the pain often intensified and spread to the entire left side of his face. It got worse if he had a beer or some whiskey. Taking aspirin frequently helped but it usually took a long time for the pain to lessen.

  “How much do you drink?” Beckmann asked.

  “Not much,” Matt allowed. “Maybe twice a week I’ll have a beer or a whiskey before supper.”

  “How’s your memory?”

  “I don’t have trouble remembering things.”

  “Not even little things?”

  Matt shook his head. “Nope. What are you getting at here, Doc?”

  “The orbital cavity around your eye is inflamed and possibly infected. And I’m thinking the optic nerve behind the eye may be involved, which is partially causing your pain.”

  “Partially?”

  “Yes. You received excellent surgical care for the eye injury, but you also suffered trauma to your brain when the shrapnel penetrated your eyeball. That could be causing some of your symptoms as well.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  Susan Beckmann paused before responding. “Yes, by removing the eyeball and fitting you with a prosthetic eye.” She didn’t mention that some patients who’d suffered the traumatic loss of sight in one eye eventually lost vision in their sighted eye. It could happen within months or it could take years and there was no way of predicting who went totally blind or when. For the time being, she wanted Matt focused solely on the immediate need for surgery and not the unknown future.

  “A glass eye?” he asked.

  “Yes, but you could always continue to wear the patch if you like. At this point, doing nothing is not an option. If there is an infection, I don’t want it to spread to your brain. It could kill you. If I find only inflammation, surgery is still our best option and I can treat it immediately. It should significantly reduce your episodes of pain and discomfort.”

  Tired of the pain and the headaches, Matt didn’t hesitate. “When can you do it?”

  Susan Beckmann returned to her desk and consulted her calendar. “Early tomorrow morning; you’ll be first up in the operating room,” she said. “I’ll arrange for you to be admitted to our pre-surgical ward this afternoon. Be back here at four o’clock. Eat a good lunch, because it will be the last food you’ll have before I operate.” She waved a finger at him. “And absolutely no alcohol.”

  Matt nodded and stood. “How long will I be stuck here after you saw my bones, Doc?”

  Beckmann smiled. “Two to three days, depending on what I find.”

  “See you at four, Captain.”

  Matt shook her hand and headed out the door for the NCO club, stopping first at the Post Exchange, where he bought postcards and stamps, and scrawled notes to his pa at the ranch and Anna Lynn in Mountain Park, writing that his doctor had ordered some tests that would hold him over for a few more days but it was just routine and there was no need to worry.

  He doubted the postcards would be delivered much before he returned home, but since neither his pa nor Anna Lynn had telephones, it was the best he could do.

  At the NCO club he ordered a hot turkey sandwich, mashed potatoes, green beans, and apple pie. As he sipped coffee and waited for his meal to arrive, Matt wondered why Dr. Beckmann had hesitated when he’d asked her if she could fix him. Had she given him the whole scoop or was she holding something back? He had reason to be a little wary about medicos. He’d seen too many army doctors and medics tell dying men they were going to be all right.

  ***

  Groggy from the general anesthetic, Matt Kerney woke up to find a young, cute brunette in a crisp white nurse’s uniform with gold second-lieutenant bars on her collar taking his pulse. Her name tag read LT. R. HARTMAN.

  “Hi, Matt,” Nurse Hartman said brightly. “You’ll be just fine. Your surgery went perfectly. The doctor will be here in a jiffy to give you the once-over. And your wife and daughter are waiting to see you.”

  “My wife and daughter?” Matt asked, still scatterbrained from the heavy dose of painkillers used to knock him out.

  Hartman looked up from her wristwatch. “Yep, Anna Lynn and Ginny. What a cutie that little girl is. I want one just like her someday.”<
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  “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding willing suitors ready to volunteer,” Matt predicted.

  Lt. Hartman almost giggled. “I sure hope not.” She patted Matt on the shoulder. “You just rest and stay put now. We’ll get you moved to the post-op ward in a little while, as soon as the doctor gives the okay.”

  The nurse’s perky, friendly manner made Matt smile. “What’s your first name?”

  “Raine,” she answered. “Bet you didn’t expect a handle like that.”

  “Nope, I didn’t,” Matt allowed, as he watched Raine Hartman swish out of the room. He wondered how in the blazes the postcard he’d sent yesterday could have arrived in Anna Lynn’s mailbox the same day. That was impossible. He was still only half-awake when Captain Beckmann breezed into the room, smiling broadly.

  She took a quick look at his chart before speaking. “Good news, no infection. You’ll be out of here in no time. How are you feeling?”

  “Dopey,” Matt replied.

  Beckmann nodded. “I’ll check on you again later in the day.” She told him how long the bandages needed to stay on, how he was to care for his face until his next outpatient appointment in a week, and when he would be scheduled to return to be fitted with his new eye. “I’ll go over all of this with you again,” she added.

  “Is all this what you weren’t telling me yesterday?”

  Beckmann looked surprised. “Why, yes,” she lied. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much information.”

  Matt laughed. Beckmann might be new to the army, but she already had the right stuff when it came to keeping the troops in the dark.

  “Why is that funny?” Beckmann asked.

  “No reason, Doc,” Matt replied, figuring only another dogface would see the humor. He wondered what kind of cartoon Bill Mauldin might have dreamt up about it. Matt couldn’t come up with anything, but with his mile-wide funny streak Mauldin would have thought of something hilarious.

  Beckmann shook her head in puzzlement and left.

  As the fog from the anesthetic lifted, Matt’s mood continued to improve, and when the orderlies wheeled him to the post-op ward he got to thinking that maybe Doc Beckmann had not only fixed the problem of his awful pain and headaches, but had also rid him of his sulky temperament. More likely he was just giddy from the heavy dose of drugs.

  No other patients had come out of surgery so far that morning, and all the other beds were empty. One of the orderlies, an older private with a pronounced limp, gave Matt a sharp look as he helped move him off the gurney onto the hospital bed. Before he left, he took another close look at Matt, paused momentarily to glance at the chart, and seemed about to say something. Instead he retreated silently down the corridor as Anna Lynn and Ginny came hurrying to his bedside.

  Matt didn’t recognize the man at all, but he looked vaguely familiar. He gave up trying to put a name to his face and turned his attention to his visitors, smiling broadly. Tongue-in-cheek, he said, “Well, if it isn’t my own little loving family come to visit.”

  Anna Lynn wrinkled her nose at his wisecrack and kissed him on the lips. “Your doctor wouldn’t have let us near you if I hadn’t lied and said we were married. So I’m your wife, but only until we can take you home.”

  “I’ve got no complaints with that,” Matt replied, grinning. He asked her how she’d found out about his surgery.

  Anna Lynn smiled. “You’re the most reliable man I’ve ever known, and when you didn’t return as you promised I knew there had to be a reason. So we drove to Alamogordo and I called the hospital from the train station and learned you were scheduled for surgery this morning. We drove right down.”

  “We slept in the truck, and we’re going to stay over in the city until we take you home,” Ginny said excitedly, as if it were a grand adventure, looking up at Matt from his bedside. “But you still have only one eye,” she announced with great disappointment.

  “My doc says I’m gonna get a new one soon,” Matt said.

  Ginny smiled at the prospect. “Then will you stop wearing that patch? Mamma hates it.”

  “Maybe,” Matt replied.

  Footsteps down the corridor announced the impending arrival of Lt. Raine Hartman.

  “I think we’re about to be shooed away.” Anna Lynn gave Matt another smooch. “We’ll leave you in the hands of your pretty, young nurse. Don’t flirt with her too much.”

  “Why not?” he asked, feigning confusion.

  The lighthearted tone in Matthew’s voice, missing for so many months, brought a warm smile to Anna Lynn’s face. She kissed him again. “On second thought, go ahead. A little flirtation might be good for you.”

  ***

  With the realization that Doc Beckmann’s first surgery patient of the day was quite possibly none other than Matthew Kerney, his Matthew Kerney, Pvt. Fredrick Robertson Tyler forgot about keeping his nose clean and getting out of the army with an honorable discharge. Known as Fred to his buddies on the base, Tyler stood outside the ophthalmology ward, lit a cigarette, and mulled over his discovery. First off, he needed to make damn sure that he wasn’t mistaken about the man he’d helped wheel from surgery to post-op. If it was Kerney, it would be stupid to reveal himself to the woman and little girl who were visiting him at his bedside. A closer look at Kerney’s medical chart should do the trick, and if Tyler needed more proof about the patient’s identity, a pal in personnel could let him have a look-see at his service jacket.

  Tyler took a long drag on his smoke, hoping the woman and little girl would come out of the building before his cigarette break was up. He wanted a closer look at Kerney’s happy little family for future reference.

  When the war started, Fred figured he was too old, too lame, and too undesirable to be drafted into the army. But at age forty-four, with an armed robbery conviction on his sheet and a smashed foot courtesy of a fellow inmate at the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe, his local draft board classified him as acceptable for limited military service. A month later he was inducted into the army, put through an abbreviated Basic Training course for men unfit for combat assignments, and sent to Fort Bliss along with a few other semi-cripples, misfits, and miscreants to serve as medical orderlies.

  Years of living in prison surrounded by dangerous men made the army a cakewalk for Fred Tyler. He figured he’d remain safe and sound stateside at Fort Bliss, frequent the Juárez whorehouses when he had money and some leave, maybe earn a stripe or two, and get out with everyone else who’d been drafted for the duration plus six months. Then he’d return to the business of robbery.

  But if he was correct about the man in post-op, he had to change that plan some. Years earlier, he’d been expecting to rob a kid named Matthew Kerney living alone in a house his mother had left him, only to have the kid scald him with boiling hot coffee, stab him in the arm, knock him unconscious with a frying pan, and get him arrested by the cops. Later in open court, Kerney had accused Tyler of killing his friend Boone Mitchell, which Tyler had done, though it couldn’t be proved at the time because no dead body had been found.

  Kerney’s accusation caused the presiding judge to hang two consecutive sentences on Tyler, doubling his prison time. For that alone he needed to settle accounts. Moreover, it gnawed at him that a punk kid barely out of high school had gotten the best of him. Now, miraculously, here was an opportunity for a reckoning. Tyler figured something much more painful than a bone-breaking beating or a slow, agonizing death for Matt Kerney was in order.

  The price Kerney paid needed to be steep. As Kerney’s wife and daughter stepped out into the hot early-morning sun, he got the idea that maybe Kerney losing his family might just be the ticket. As they approached him, that notion became even more appealing.

  He field-stripped the cigarette butt, smiled, touched a finger to his fatigue cap, and said as the woman and child drew near, “Don’t you worry none about your man,
ma’am. We’ll take good care of him and get him back home to you in a jiffy.”

  The woman took a half step back, gave him a studied look, smiled through thin lips, and thanked him rather stiffly, as if he were some lowlife crud looking for a handout.

  The tight-assed bitch’s reaction pleased Tyler. He watched her hurry to the visitor parking lot clutching the little girl tightly by the hand. This just might be a lot of fun, he thought.

  ***

  Anna Lynn drove through downtown El Paso past the ritzy, ten-story Hotel Paso Del Norte that soared over the nearby plaza. Several years earlier, she’d stayed there with Matt on an unforgettable romantic weekend that still brought a smile to her lips every time she thought about it. But with money tight, she couldn’t afford such luxury. Instead, she stopped at a motor-coach inn on the street to the Rio Grande, where the international border separated El Paso from the Mexican city of Juárez. She rented one of the brick bungalows with attached garages shaded by a grove of trees and sheltered behind an adobe wall. Each bungalow came with a double bed, radio, telephone, hotplate, and coffeepot.

  At a nearby market run by a Mexican couple, Anna Lynn stocked up on some groceries. Back in the bungalow, she gave Ginny a bottle of cold soda pop, along with several children’s picture books she was using to teach her to read that she’d hurriedly packed in her suitcase before leaving Mountain Park. Then she brewed a pot of coffee.

  Ginny sat at a small table under the window that looked out at the walled courtyard, happy with her soda and books, reading aloud the words she’d already learned as she turned the pages. Recently, she’d started reading some of the Sunday funny papers all by herself. When the pot finished perking, Anna Lynn sipped her coffee and thought about the soldier who had greeted her outside the hospital ward. The man’s leer masquerading as a smile, the belligerent look in his eye, and his aggressive tone disturbed her. Had he been deliberately waiting for them? For what reason? To stop them solely to reassure them about Matt’s care made no sense.