In a Town Called Paradox by Miriam Murcutt & Richard Starks

Author:Miriam Murcutt & Richard Starks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical novels America, 1950s Hollywood movies, Fictional memoirs, Utah American West, Novels for seniors women, Strong women fiction, Small town fiction, Coming of age stories, Native American Navajo
Publisher: Prestwicke Publishing
Published: 2021-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Corin Dunbar

I first heard of the Indian from the radio. I’d slept badly the night before as I’d twice needed to turn Ark and give him water from the jug he kept on his bedside table; and in the early hours a storm had blown through, rattling the windows louder than a percussion band. When you live in the desert, you savor rain. So at first light I tiptoed onto the front porch to watch the deluge mire the dust before I stepped into the downpour to let it plaster my nightdress tight against my skin.

I was in a down mood that morning, still shaken by the horror of a rat biting Ark’s defenseless body and by another seizure he’d suffered during the night; it had disrupted his brain and set his arms and legs twitching like someone possessed.

“All part of his healing,” Doc Draper had reassured me.

But I had my doubts about that.

I was also low because the day before I’d been to see Jay Lambert—a friend from school (we sat in the same class for the better part of six years) who’d matured into Paradox’s only independent lawyer as well as someone I could trust. Jessie had asked him to check on her insurance to find out if it would continue to cover Ark’s ever-mounting medical bills.

“Good news and bad,” Jay had told me, as I faced him across his desk. It was high noon and the October sun still held a hint of summer heat, but Jay, as ever, had imprisoned himself in a three-piece navy-blue suit and a white pressed shirt he’d livened up with a vintage silk tie imprinted with art deco motifs. On the office wall behind him were a dozen sepia prints he’d rescued from libraries and attics in Bicknell, Moab, and Cedar City, where they’d been left to curl and molder. He’d framed the photos himself. Miners with heavy moustaches and wooden-handled picks. Rivers of sheep flowing down Wasatch Street on the way to the dip. Paiute Indians with braided hair and striped blankets. And respectable ladies in crinolettes, standing poker-straight under lace-fringed parasols.

“Those are times we won’t see again,” he told me, when he noticed me looking at the prints, “but they represent our history. They show us who we were. Most people don’t care. They throw out the past like it’s yesterday’s news, but if we don’t know where we’ve come from, how are we ever to know where we’re going?”

“Give me the bad news first,” I said.

He dipped his head and spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “The insurance company won’t pay for the kind of round-the-clock care your husband needs—if it’s provided ‘in home.’” Finger quotes in the air. “You’ve got a month before the money stops, since in the eyes of the insurance company, Ark isn’t sick enough.”

I had to close my eyes, clench my jaw, and slowly count to ten.

“Not sick enough?” I said. “Jay, Ark can’t walk. He’s bedridden. He can’t even sit up without a trapeze and pulley to help him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.