Lost (28 page)

Slowly the door opened and they stepped back even farther. A hand holding a lighted lamp emerged slowly through the opened doorway. “Hey,” Mamie said, her voice shaking. “We're out here.”

The upheld lamp came toward them. Light spilled down a woman's sleeve and burnished half her long face; the other half melted in darkness. She was a tall woman and she was wearing a sweater over her apron and blue work shirt. A knotted scarf hid her hair. “Who is it?” she said. “Who's out there? … Kids? Little kids? What on earth …”

“Wreck,” Patsy cried, running in. “Wreck, we've had a wreck!”

Holding the small of her back, the woman leaned down, shining the lamplight over them, turning her head from one to the other as they all talked. Then, as Patsy ran out of breath, Walter pointed out across the white fields. “She's hurt,” he said. “She's bleeding.
She's died!
”

“Come in here,” the woman said. “I can't understand a word you're saying. Don't let my heat out, now. Come on in here and tell me what happened from the beginning.”

Near the warm cookstove in the kitchen, she gathered them to her, loosening their coats and rubbing their cold hands, and when she understood what had happened, she said, “Now, listen. Where was it? How far?” And they told her about the bridge, the low bridge.

She went immediately to the telephone and dialed it. She said, “Mark, this is Vivian, up here. Come quick! There's been a wreck down by Forky Creek bridge. Somebody's hurt.” She slipped into her coat, sat in a chair to pull on rubber boots. As soon as she was ready to go, she ushered the children into the living room where the drum of another wood stove glowed with heat. “Mom,” she said to the woman sitting near the stove. “Mama, you look after these children, now. While I'm gone.” And they were left alone in that tall room quaking with light, alone except for an old woman whose eyes glowed from the deepest crevices of her face. Coming inside from the violence of all that had happened, their bodies still vibrant with fright, they stood gazing across the stove at the creaking chair that had slowly, very slowly, stopped rocking.

They brought Leona back to the farmhouse in Mark Hardesty's old Willys car, and he carried her in his arms to Vivian's bed in the living room. To the children, Mark was a provocative and beguiling sight, tall, dark-haired, a man of action. Murmuring among themselves, they crept forward to see him better in the lamplight. “I like him,” Walter whispered. “He's kinda like my daddy.” But Mamie whispered, “Sh-h-h. Don't say that any more. They'll know something's wrong.” Her small white fingers were like knobs pressing through his coat sleeve. Straightaway, Vivian tried to call a doctor but after a moment she hung up the receiver. “I cain't get through,” she said. “We'll have to do the best we can.”

“Maybe if I left right now,” Mark Hardesty said. “Maybe I could still get to town.”

Vivian shook her head. “In this storm, you'd never make it. And even if you did, you'd never get back. Don't you leave me stuck out here. We're just lucky we got back here with 'er.” Then, while Vivian swiftly attended to Leona's most critical needs, wrapping her in quilts and heaping wood on the fire, Hardesty brought in suitcases from the car. Vivian asked the children which of the suitcases their clothes were in and Mamie pointed to two of them. “All right. Now, tell me, what would her name be?” Patsy and Walter turned to peer at Mamie. “It's Leona,” Mamie said without looking up. Vivian slid the two suitcases away from the others, pulled more blankets from the wardrobe, gave them to Hardesty, and told him to put the kids to bed upstairs. Hearing their footsteps on the staircase, she turned immediately to her mother, who had been watching throughout the commotion. “Mama, you're gonna have to put yourself to bed tonight. I got work to do.”

The old woman's cane tapped the floor. Slowly she stood; then her face twitched as if she had walked through spiderwebs, and her quivering voice began, “Vivy, listen to me. There's somebody in yore bed. Hit's some gypsy woman with a whole passel of kids. Ye oughter watch out. They're gonna steal ye blind.…” Vivian went with her as far as the kitchen door and turned back.

The snowstorm lashed the old farmhouse in great, droning gusts; against the winter blasts, the kerosene lamps in the room guttered and throbbed with smoky light. Much later, after Vivian had cut away Leona's bloodied clothes and bathed and covered her in one of her own gowns, after Hardesty had closed the vicious head wound with mercerized thread, they stood by her, waiting for some remnant of color to return to her stone-white face. They couldn't have marveled at her more if she had plummeted from the sky. “My God, look at her,” Vivian said, her voice constrained with worry. “I wonder who she is.”

“Come on, now, Vee. She looks healthy. She'll come through this all right.”

“She'd be pretty if she didn't look so nearly done in. Surely, somewhere, her people must be waitin' for her.”

“We could find out who she is if you want to,” Hardesty said. “We could go through her purse.”

“No, sir,” Vivian told him. “I'd hate to do that—unless we have to. I wouldn't want somebody rummagin' through my things. I guess it don't matter who she is right now—we cain't get word out anyhow.”

When it appeared that Leona would, indeed, survive the night, Vivian sent Hardesty home, with the understanding that he would be on hand the next day while she did her chores. She didn't tell him what she had seen.

Leona's clothes had been well tailored, so unlike Vivian's clothes she had hated to cut them, and there were welts and scratches on her abdomen and thighs that did not correspond to any of the tears in her clothing. So what had really happened? And why had her car crashed in this isolated place? She wore no wedding ring, yet she had three children. Who are you? Vivian thought. What sent you out on that mean stretch of road on a night like this? With three kids in the car? And why get them out of the car and not yourself? But finally … Lord, she looked so hurt and helpless. Vivian took her limp hand momentarily and patted it. “Well, Leona,” she said, “you don't make any sense to me. You look like you've been through livin' hell.”

The next morning, while Hardesty and her mother watched over Leona and entertained the children, Vivian went out to do her chores, glad to be outside even in a blowing storm. Hardesty had offered to do her work for her but she refused him, taking some pride in the little farm work she left for herself. She treated the children in the only way she knew how, with a warm place to sleep and good food from the stove and cheer in her heart. Even her mother, who was eighty-three and feeble, cantankerous, growing dimmer and weaker every day, rejoiced in the three little imps, as she called them.

For three days and four nights, Leona lay on Vivian's bed in the living room, wounds wrapped in bandages, as still and exotic as a mummy. Every now and then, she would rouse up and say something, but her ramblings made no sense. The enigma she created just by being there remained intact; the entire household revolved around her, and it was with a kind of freighted expectancy that Vivian waited for the woman to regain consciousness. I'll know what this is all about when she opens her eyes, Vivian thought, as if the unknown were suddenly going to solidify into a definite shape.

“Try to lay still and rest. You've had a bad spill.”

The voice came to Leona in ripples, like the surface of a pond broken in disappearing waves, and the air itself condensed to the consistency of water, smooth and slick and easy to drink. She was aware of footsteps shifting quietly around her. From farther away, she heard a soft whirl of giggles. She opened her eyes and the place was full of light. Shapes were standing nearby, just barely out of focus. This is a dream, she thought, but realized it wasn't; she seemed to be stranded in some bright void. Closest was a man, a stranger.

She started to edge up on her elbows to see and talk, but a hand settled on her breastbone. The man said, “Don't try to get up. You'll fall down.” Then he spoke again: “Look at me,” he said. Leona strained to see him clearly, but against the glare her eyes began to water. “Look at me,” he repeated. “Do you see me?” She opened her lips and nothing came out. “Don't try to answer,” he said. “If you hear me, just follow my finger with your eyes.” He moved his finger from left to right and up and down. The space where he had been grew clouded.

The soft weight on her chest was too heavy to lift. She sagged where she lay, her mouth cottony inside, forming and forcing from her lips all she had to know. “The”—drawing in breath, licking her lips—“the children …” A cool cloth pressed against her forehead and a voice trickled away inside her brain. “They're safe. You're all safe now. Don't worry.”

The next time she awoke, the room was dark, murky-colored. Light pulsed on the walls and she heard a dry, snapping noise. Leona rolled her head and saw shooting flames inside a wood stove. With her fingers she touched her face, lips, eyebrow, and found the thick patch of bandages on her forehead. Her fingers collapsed there for a moment, searching, before her hand fell away. Under the covers she slipped her other hand out in a wide arc from her body, out across the cool expanse of the bed sheet, and it felt good and fresh against her parched fingers. Quickly she moved her toes. Nothing's broken, she thought.

On the other side of the firelight, a chair stirred with a cracking sound like the fire. A spindly shadow jutted and receded, sliding up and down the wall. The cadenced motion of the rocker, the creak and snap of the runners on the floor, fell into rhythm with her own heartbeat and in time it seemed as though her heart were out there softly fighting in the dark.
D-rump, ramp. D-rump, ramp
.

A figure stood from the chair and came through the amber half-light, a tall, long-boned woman of coarse features. “So,” the gaunt woman said, seating herself in the cane-bottomed rocker by the bed. “You've finally come to.”

“Yes,” Leona said, “I think so,” her voice as slow as her breath. “Where …”

“Sh-h-h,” the woman said, leaning down. Age had softened the rough features of her face with a finely etched crosshatching, but the woman's eyes were intelligent and unblemished, an almost glacial blue. “Mind you, everybody's asleep. I even caught a little catnap myself.” She smiled. Her hair was streaked with gray, her cheeks windburned and ruddy. “It's three o'clock in the morning. Now, don't fret yourself. Everything's under control.” As she spoke, she tipped a pitcher and poured water into a glass. “Here,” she said, “take a little of this. It'll help bring you around.” Sliding her arm under Leona's pillow, the woman lifted her until she could drink a few sips of the water. Then she eased her back down, extracted her arm, and took the glass. “I've made some chicken soup. Would you take some if I brought it out?”

Leona closed her eyes and slowly shook her head on the pillow. “Are the children all right?”

“They're fine,” the woman said, “all tucked in upstairs, fast asleep.” She smiled and rocked back and forth. “I've told you that so many times it's gettin' to be monotonous.”

Leona closed her eyes and slowly drew them open again. “What happened?” she asked.

“Don't you know? It's nigh onto impossible to get an ounce of sense out of them kids. They said you made them get out of the car?”

“That's right,” Leona said. “I couldn't stop it. I thought I was done for.”

“You wasn't by yourself in that,” the woman said and sat back.
D-rump, ramp
, her friendly firelit face swimming in and out of Leona's loose focus.

“Did you come get me?”

“Um-hum. Me along with Mark Hardesty. He lives just down under the hill. We didn't know what to treat you for first, the knock on the head or frostbite.”

“I'm glad you did anything at all,” Leona said. Then it came to her. Terrifying images tore through her thoughts—windows crashing, yellow ripping teeth, the hideous sensation of flying uncontrollably through black space. She pitched upright on the bed and a sharp ringing pain erupted in her head. Struggling, she said, “I have to get up. Please. We shouldn't be here.”

“Easy does it,” the woman said, holding her. “Take it real easy. We've been expecting you to fly off the handle. You took a pretty hard lick.”

“No,” Leona said anxiously. “You don't understand. We're in danger. There's a man, a madman …”

“Yes,” the kind woman said, soothing her, “but the danger's all over now. You mustn't work yourself up. There's no reason to,” she said, easing her down, patting the pillow. “There's nowhere to go, nothing to see. This blizzard's fixed us proper. Nobody could get to you even if they wanted to. We've got two feet of snow on the ground already, and more on its way. Our electricity's down, the phone's dead. Our pipes've been froze up since yesterday. I have to pump well water. Nothing's been through here, not even the mailman.”

The exertion of trying to get up left Leona exhausted. She caught her breath and held it, then let it go. “What day is this?”

“Well, let's see. Unless I lost count, this is Monday. You've been here now three days.”

Three days, Leona thought, three lost days with that lunatic still out there, still coming after us. But her resistance was gone. Increasingly, the motion of the woman in the rocker was making her dizzy. Questions went on drifting drunkenly in her mind, but even as she tried to voice them, her eyelids drooped closed. “Who are you?” Leona asked, dragging her words.

“My name's Vivian Turner,” she heard the woman say. “But I go by Vee. And we live about eight miles this side of Rocky Comfort, West Virginia.”
D-rump, ramp
. “Right smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.”