Gourdfellas Read Free Page B

or stroke her hair or otherwise comfort her and let the taller EMT poke and prod and check her out, while the shorter one, a sandy-haired blond boy I’d seen around town, held the crowd back.
    “Susan, it’s me, Lili. The paramedics are going to take care of you. Is there anything you need? Jack’s still away on his fishing trip, right?”
    Her pale lips parted, but before she could say anything, her eyelids fluttered and her body went slack.

Chapter 2
    Country hospitals are quiet. Oddly, people smile less than they did in Brooklyn. A ponytailed doctor with pretty blue eyes bent over a now-awake Susan, probed at the raw wound, then frowned as she waited for an answer.
    Susan’s color had returned along with her consciousness. “No, I don’t know what hit my head. All I know is I was getting off the stage after I spoke. This thing came flying from somewhere to my left. And when it hit me, it hurt like hell.”
    “Looks like it was probably a rock,” the doctor said softly. “There’s grit in there and I have to get it out. I’m going to numb it and then muck around until it’s clean. It’ll take ten, twelve stitches, but I know how to sew a fine seam. If you manage the wound care properly, it won’t get infected. So, you okay with me going ahead?”
    Susan nodded, grabbed my hand, and held tight for the twenty minute procedure. I averted my eyes and let my mind drift. I’d followed behind the ambulance in my car and navigated the bustle of the ER in that state I call essential reality.
    Only Susan and her needs existed. Now that the doctor was taking care of her, I had the mental space to wonder about what had happened in that packed auditorium in the few minutes after Seth and I left.
    A rock had been thrown. The tactic brought to mind thirteen-year-old boys whose frustrations had reached desperation levels in a dates-and-oil exporting country. It wasn’t the kind of behavior I expected from members of this small, congenial community.
    Susan had expressed what turned out to be the minority opinion—that the casino was a morally righteous project that should be endorsed by the town in the name of justice. Nora said she’d called it a reparation. Didn’t that come from the word repair? What would it take to repair the friendships that were close to shredding over this issue? Nora, Elizabeth, Melissa, and Susan had helped each other flourish in the rich Walden Corners soil. I’d read lately about how marigolds and tomatoes, planted near each other, made for a healthier garden. But my friends were behaving more like dill and carrots, natural enemies that interfered with the other’s ability to reach its true potential.
    “What’s funny?” Susan said in a constricted voice.
    The doctor murmured an apology and swabbed her forehead with more clear liquid.
    I must have laughed out loud without realizing it. I had slipped so easily into country metaphors, replacing all the real-estate figures of speech that had been my native tongue when I lived in Brooklyn.
    “I was just thinking about marigolds and tomatoes and dill and carrots. You feeling better? You sure look better.” Except for the Herman Munster zipper that would grace her forehead for a while, she did seem almost like herself again.
    “Thanks for staying with me, Lili. I guess what hurts even more than my head is that they all disappeared. Melissa, Elizabeth, even Nora. At least, that’s the way it seemed.”
    “They were probably stuck in the crowd somewhere,” I said, only half believing myself. “I’m sure they wouldn’t let a difference of opinion cancel out more than twenty-five years of friendship.”
    Susan’s silence spoke volumes.
     
    By the time I’d driven Susan home, helped her undress, and waited while she left a message at school saying that she wouldn’t be in in the morning, I felt lightheaded, my energy gone. But I still had to drive twelve miles on two-lane country roads and not hit any stray cows that had wandered onto