Authors: Lynne Hinton
I
cannot help myself, I am sad for the boy. I see the way he lingers in his glances across the faces of those he loves, across the landscape of the mountain and the silent distant plains. I hear the shallow way he breathes. I watch how he struggles to pretend nothing has changed, everything is fine, and he is not weakened. But I feel his strength ebb, his sleep deepen. I know because of my own steps of sickness that carried me up to the portals of heaven. He knows too, but he fights it. “I have so much to do,” he tells me. I smile and nod. “So did I,” I explain.
“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, surprising me, since I am always near. “Is that why you’ve been here? To carry me?”
I shake my head, but I am not completely truthful. I have come for him, but not just in death. I came for his birth too. I try to rationalize, but he only smiles. “It’s okay,” he finally says. “I’m just glad it’s you.”
He closes his eyes to sleep, to dream, to plan. I rest upon the delicate air between us. I float above but not beyond his call. His breath is tight and labored and shallow, his face flushed, his head bathed in sweat, and I fear he could slip away even now. I hesitate. I am not sure what I am to do.
It’s not as if there were no warnings about this relationship. I was told how difficult this pairing would be, but I could see no other way. As soon as I knew, as soon as his comings and goings were revealed, it had to be. I was his. He was mine. I promised that I could conquer any temptation to change the course of life. His life. I promised them I would not interfere. I would let the days unfold in the right timing, the right way. But now I understand the counsel.
Now, the cautious undertaking, the lack of assurance, the slow, endless making of a decision, the hesitant way I was granted my wish, I understand. And before I can listen to what my thoughts, and their counsel, are reminding me of, I leave the room to find help. I decide. The time cannot be now.
I
don’t understand how you knew something was wrong,” Malene said to her father as he drove the Buick, following close behind the ambulance.
“I can’t explain it,” he said, watching the road, driving faster than he should have been. He shook his head. “It was a dream. Woke me up and I just knew.”
Malene looked away from Oris and stared out the windshield. “Mom,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.
Oris didn’t respond. He kept watching the road ahead of him and the ambulance, trying to keep up. “Put your seat belt on,” he said.
Malene buckled the belt around her. “It looks like pneumonia again.” She rested her elbow on the armrest and dropped her head in her hand. “His little lungs are so scarred. I just don’t know.” She shook her head. “This came on so fast. He was doing great at his birthday party. He’s felt good for this whole week. I saw no signs that he was getting sick. I even thought his legs were getting stronger and that he was so much better. He was planning to start back to school with everybody else. We were going shopping to buy some new clothes with his birthday money. How did this happen? How did I miss it?”
“He’ll be fine,” Oris assured his daughter. He reached over and patted her on the leg. “He’s a fighter, and he knows this battlefield as well as he knows the roads of Pie Town. He’ll be fine,” Oris repeated, trying to convince himself as much as Malene. “Alice wouldn’t have come to me and told me if she wasn’t planning to save him,” he added.
“But that’s what has me worried,” Malene said. “She’s never been to you before. She’s never been to anyone but Alex before now. Something’s different this time because she did come to you.”
Oris didn’t comment. He found the fact that his dead wife had visited him to be disconcerting as well, and it wasn’t because he was disbelieving or afraid of visits from people who had moved beyond. He was afraid for the same reason his daughter was. Alice had never visited anyone but the little boy. Her coming to him instead was unexpected and seemed to render troublesome news. She had practically pushed her husband out of bed.
Both father and daughter knew that since he had been able to talk Alex claimed to have an angel watching over him. It was one of the first words he said, “Lady,” pointing to the empty air above him. They thought he was talking about a nurse or his female doctor of whom he was especially fond. They waved it off and thought nothing of it. When he could put together sentences and make sense in a conversation, he had told Malene about the woman who came to him. He had explained that she was not a nurse or hospital worker, she was real and yet unseen by everyone but him.
He rarely spoke of her, but there had been enough times that Malene had finally pieced it together. She figured out who his lady was. Alex was being visited by Alice, his great-grandmother, her mother. For years she didn’t speak of it to anyone, not even Roger. And then she had finally confided in her father one evening after he confronted Malene about Alex having a make-believe playmate. He was not sure it was normal for a child to be so sure of the presence of an invisible being.
“I knew it was her,” Oris confessed. “I knew she came to the boy.” He shook his head. “All this time, ever since you told me about his dreams, this woman, I knew. Ever since I understood he wasn’t making up some playmate to take the place of his mother, ever since I knew not to be worried about what he saw, who he saw, I knew it was her. And I was happy and pissed off at the same time, because I wanted her for myself. I wanted her to come to me. All this time.” He wiped his eyes. He had been up for hours and he was tired. “Now I wish she hadn’t.”
Malene reached her hand over and squeezed her father’s arm. “You said it yourself,” she noted. “He’ll be fine. He always is.”
They drove in silence for a while, making their way the 160 miles to Albuquerque, where they knew Alex would be treated in a pediatric intensive care unit. After all the years and hospital stays, they knew practically everyone who worked on that unit. They had even called the head nurse for the night shift once the paramedics arrived, letting her know that they were on their way.
“Roger getting one of the boys to come and pick him up later?” Oris asked.
His ex-son-in-law was riding in the ambulance with the boy. Malene had decided to let him go ahead while she rode with her father. She shrugged. In their brief conversation, the two of them hadn’t gotten that far in their plans.
Roger had driven to Malene’s house before the ambulance and after Oris. He was wearing his uniform because he thought it somehow granted a bit of authority when they arrived at hospitals, and they wanted all the extra attention or authority they could use. He’d also be ready to hurry back to Catron County to handle any emergency. As usual, he had brought along a small bag of toiletries. He kept one in his car at all times. He had become accustomed to the hospital runs and the overnight stays with his grandson.
Malene had called him as soon as she got off the phone with Oris, while she was in the room with Alex. At first she had thought her father was crazy, waking her up in the middle of the night, telling her to go and check on the boy. At first she refused, but when he had said that he was on his way over there, she had gotten out of bed and gone into the room next to hers. Oris had been right. Alex was hot and his breath was labored. There was a rattle from his chest. She called 911 and then Roger. She tried to wake Alex up, tried to cool him down, but all she had managed to do was to take his temperature, 103 degrees, put a pillow behind his back to ease his breathing, and get herself ready for the trip. She would ask Frieda to bring some things when they got settled in a hospital room. She was only concerned about making sure that Alex was getting the medical attention he needed. She was only concerned that he was going to be okay.
They finally reached the end of the state highway and turned onto the interstate. “Now we can make some time,” Oris commented. “I knew I would need this new car,” he added.
Malene glanced over at her father. She seemed surprised. “That’s the real reason you buy a new car so often, isn’t it?”
Oris smiled slightly. He checked his rearview mirror as he pulled off the ramp onto Highway 25, heading north.
“All this time I thought you were throwing your money away or trying to impress somebody. You buy new cars to transport Alex.” She studied Oris. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Not just Alex,” he responded. “I started buying new cars just after you were born.” He opened the window a bit. It was stuffy in the car, and he was starting to get sleepy. “Catron County is a long ways from doctors and hospitals. All we’ve ever had was that little health clinic over in Socorro, and I never trusted that foreign doctor.”
“I don’t remember us having a new car all the time,” Malene commented.
“That’s because you were paying too much attention to those horses when you were little—and that boy up ahead you married when you got to be a teenager—to notice what your old man was driving. Besides, your mama always kept that old car of her mother’s. That’s the one you mostly rode in.” He turned on his emergency blinkers, following close behind the ambulance.
“That old green Dodge,” she remembered. “Yeah, that’s right, you would never let me ride in your cars. What was up with that?” she asked.
“You were messy,” Oris answered. “And your mother let you eat anything in the car.”
Malene smiled. “She was a lot looser about the rules than you were.”
“That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.” He blew out a breath. “You and Lawrence were coddled from the time you were born until the time . . .” He paused. “Until she died.”
Malene considered her father’s comments. She knew he was right about her mother’s easy ways, her pampering, loving, permissive ways. She had never laid a hand on either of her children, was always patient and gentle in nature, even doling out punishment in soft kind words. Malene had intended to be the same kind of mother, but it hadn’t turned out that way. She had never been as even-tempered with Angel, and even though she had never hit her daughter, she had often been angry enough to do so. The pair had gotten into more than a few battles. Malene always wondered why she hadn’t inherited her mother’s maternal instincts.
“So what about the cars?” Malene asked, recalling their conversation.
“What about them?” Oris responded.
“Why did you think you needed a car after I was born?”
“Your mama had a hard birth with you. We almost lost both of you.” He shook his head. “So much blood. The midwife came over in time, and she was good, but the delivery was way beyond her capabilities. She finally acknowledged that things weren’t going right and called for an ambulance.” Oris rolled the window back up. The temperature in the car had dropped, and he was now chilled. “I couldn’t wait. They were sending somebody all the way over from Glenwood. And they were having a hard time because it was icy and freezing cold. So I heated up the old car I had at the time and decided to drive your mother to Albuquerque myself.”
Malene listened intently. She had never heard the story of her birth.
“Damn Ford broke down thirty miles from Magdalena. Radiator hose busted. We waited for more than an hour before the snowplow finally came up the road. He radioed the ambulance our location, and they got her to the hospital just in time to pull you out feet first.” He gripped the steering wheel. “I swore to God and the doctor on call and to your mama that I would never drive a car that could break down and keep us from doing what we needed to do or being where we needed to be. So I kept my promise.” He grinned. “And I ain’t never been stalled on the side of the road again. When Alex was born, it just seemed like even more of a necessity. You can even fit a wheelchair in the trunk, and he can lie in the backseat, and I can drive him safely to the doctor.”
Malene leaned her head back against the seat. “All this time I just thought your buying a new car so often was because of vanity.” She closed her eyes. “I should have known it was love.”
Oris glanced over at his daughter. He could see how much she had grown to look like her mother. The thought of his dead wife and how much he still grieved over her made his chest start to tighten, and tears filled his eyes. He wiped them away and pressed on. They were still miles away from the hospital.
H
e seemed so good at his birthday party.” Bea was chatting with Danny, the deputy, who had stopped by for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. He had been the one to break the news about Alex to everybody in town.
He shook his head. “Pneumonia again,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “Roger said he was pretty bad off last night.”
“I heard the ambulance and wondered who had called,” Bea noted. She slid a pitcher of cream over toward the young deputy sitting at the counter. “I thought maybe it was somebody over at Carebridge,” she said, referring to the nursing home.
“I know. We’ve gone a long time without Alex being rushed down to Albuquerque.” Danny poured some of the cream on his plate, dipped his biscuit in it, and took a bite.
“I was just so hopeful those bad days were over.” Bea stuck her small pad of paper in the front pocket of her apron. “Poor Malene. She must be exhausted by now.”
“Roger said that she and Oris rode together and he took the ambulance with Alex.”
Bea nodded. She looked up and smiled at the couple entering the diner. She pointed them to a booth by the window.
Danny ate another bite of biscuit and suddenly noticed the girl in the back washing dishes. “You lose Hector?” He was referring to the dishwasher who usually worked during the breakfast shift.
Bea followed his eyes to Trina, who was having trouble loading dishes in the washer. “He went to visit his grandmother in Phoenix. She was having hip surgery. Francine decided she would drive him over because she wanted to visit some friends. I needed some help, and I knew she was available.” She watched the girl and grabbed a couple of menus to take to her customers. “Let’s hope she can take orders better than she can wash dishes.” She turned back to Danny. “What did Roger tell you about Alex when you talked to him?”
The deputy chewed his bite of biscuit. “Just said it was pneumonia and that he was in intensive care and that he was staying up there until he hears more. I don’t know if he plans to come back with Oris or stay up there with Malene. I guess he’ll call and let me know if he wants a ride home.”
“So, since Roger’s away, does that put you in charge?” Bea asked, smiling.
Danny grinned. “Does it give me a discount if I am?”
Bea refilled his coffee cup before walking away. “Not here,” she replied. “No discounts of any kind at the diner.” She moved away from behind the counter and headed in the direction of her newly arrived customers.
Danny finished his breakfast and kept watching Trina. He had heard about the new girl staying in the apartment behind Roger’s place, but he hadn’t met her. He saw her at the birthday party, but he had spent most of the night trying to talk to Christine and hadn’t introduced himself to her. He had, however, watched her as she drove away from the Catholic church with Rob Chavez later that night.
Christine had finally agreed to let him drive her home, and he was pulling out of her driveway when he decided to patrol the area a bit. Christine’s house was at the end of the same road as the church and rectory, and he saw the two young people as they pulled out from the church parking lot. He thought about following them, having a closer look at things, but decided later that it was none of his business. Besides, after he drove around the church and didn’t see anything suspicious, he hadn’t seen reason to stop them. He wondered if his little sister, Rob’s girlfriend since they had been in junior high, knew about the late night drive her boyfriend was taking with the new girl in town, but he concluded that he’d better not step into that situation either. He just decided to file away the information in his mind in case he needed it later.
“Trina, can you come out here and bus a couple of tables?” Bea had called out to the girl from the dining room. There were at least four tables covered with dirty dishes.
Trina emerged with a cart and began stacking dishes. She had filled up the cart, wiped off the tables, and was walking back to the kitchen when she noticed Danny.
Danny studied the girl. She was pretty, he thought, couldn’t be much older than eighteen or nineteen, but he wondered what she was doing with a high school boy, and with that high school boy in particular.
She went back into the kitchen and emptied the container, filled up the washer, and started unloading the clean dishes. She walked out of the kitchen with a tray of glasses and stacked them behind the counter near the drink station. When she finished she moved over to Danny.
“Hey,” she said, indicating his uniform. “You work with Roger, right?”
He nodded.
“You hear anything from him this morning?” she asked. “Is Alex okay?”
She knew the sheriff had been called over to Malene’s because she had been sitting on the top of her steps when he came out to get in the car. She found she liked sitting on the landing late at night because she could see the stars so clearly. She had been worried all morning since hearing where he was going, but she hadn’t found anybody who knew anything about Alex. She hadn’t heard the conversation held earlier at the counter between Danny and Bea. She didn’t know the latest news.
“He’s in the ICU in Albuquerque. It was confirmed to be pneumonia.”
“Damn it,” she said, dropping the empty tray beneath her arm. “I hate that.”
“You know Alex?” he asked. He wondered how she could have gotten close to the little boy.
She shrugged. “Not long,” she replied. “But I know he’s a great kid and been through more than most kids should have to go through.”
Danny wiped his mouth. “Won’t argue with you about that,” he noted.
“I saw you at the party,” Trina said, studying the young deputy.
“Danny,” he introduced himself. “Danny White,” he added, holding out his hand.
“Trina,” she said, wiping her hand off to shake his. “You been working with Roger long?” she asked.
“Few years,” he answered. “Finished school three years ago, and I went to a community college down south. Came back here and got this job.”
“Roger seems nice,” she commented.
“Best sheriff in Catron County,” Danny said, grinning.
“I guess that probably means he’s the only sheriff in the county,” Trina responded. “I rent from him,” she added.
Danny nodded. “I heard he rented out Angel’s old place. You’re new here?”
“Just a couple of weeks,” she replied. “I like it,” she added, glancing around the diner.
“You got family in Catron County?” he asked, wondering if she was kin to one of the ranchers who lived on the outskirts of town.
She shook her head. “No, just came here ’cause I liked the name,” she responded. “Just sounds like a nice place to live. ‘Pie Town.’ How can you go wrong in a town named after a dessert?”
“Not all that glitters is gold.” Bea appeared next to Trina, having overheard the conversation. “And not every pie is sweet.”
“What are you saying, Bea?” Danny asked, teasing the older woman. “You don’t think our fair village is the perfect American small town?”
Bea raised her eyebrows. “I’ve been serving breakfast and lunch to the residents of Pie Town for thirty years, first in the schools and now in this restaurant, Danny White. Let’s just say I know more than just stories of apple pie and baseball. We’re a hard place to settle.”
Danny laughed. “Bea, now why would you want to go and cause concern for our newest arrival in Pie Town? You trying to run her off?”
“Ain’t my business whether she stays or goes. I’m just trying to tell the truth about the place.” Bea reached for a glass, filled it with ice, then poured some iced tea.
“Small town can shelter a person from a lot of craziness in the world, but it don’t free you up from the meanness,” Bea noted. “Seems to me it makes more sense for a young person to move to a big city where she’s got more opportunities to better herself.” She grabbed some napkins and placed them on the tray next to the drink. “A new person in a small town is always suspect, and the old people never want to change.”
Trina watched her. “I’ve been to big cities,” she commented softly. “Didn’t care for them.” She shrugged. “And I’m not so worried about being suspect because I haven’t done anything wrong. But even if I do, I figure it will take more than a city to better myself.” She smiled at Danny, who blushed.
“That why you’re so chummy with the priest?” Fred had been listening to the conversation. He pushed a plate of food through the serving window and rang the bell even though Bea was still standing right there. “Order up,” he called out.
“I’m not blind,” Bea barked. She reached up and took the plate.
“Who? George?” Trina asked Fred. “You think I hooked up with a priest to ride his coattail to heaven?”
Fred shrugged, holding up his hands. “Wouldn’t be the first time somebody tried to get close to God through one of his servants.”
“Please,” Trina said, shaking her head. “First of all, I don’t need a coattail to find my way to God since he’s pretty easy to get to from just about any hike up a mountain or walk along some creek. And second of all, I’m pretty sure George’s skills are limited in trying to help somebody like me.”
“You saying you beyond redemption, girl?” Fred asked.
Trina shook her head again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just know Father George has a lot to learn about this world.”
“Well, maybe while he’s trying to teach you about the next world, you can teach him about this one.” Fred winked at Danny and headed back to the grill to flip some pieces of bacon.
She rolled her eyes at the cook. “Everybody thinks I have a crush on the priest because we drove into town together,” Trina explained to the deputy.
Danny didn’t respond. He hadn’t heard any of the rumors about the two of them, but he had noticed how troubled the new priest seemed to be around the girl at Alex’s birthday party. At first, he thought he was imagining it, but Malene had mentioned the same thing when she saw how Father George made it a point to move to the far side of the shelter away from Trina.
“And George is so not my type.” She grinned. “I mean, even if he wasn’t a priest, he’s like my older brother or something. Besides, I think it’s kind of cute how he looks so worried every time I’m around. I think I remind him of someone who made him anxious. I sort of enjoy having that power over him.” She said the last sentence quietly, like it was a secret.
Danny thought about her comment and wondered if Christine, the girl he had been chasing for three years, only allowed him to hang around her because she thought the same thing about him.
“Hey,” Trina suddenly exclaimed. “Are you going to Albuquerque anytime to visit Alex? Because if you are, maybe I could catch a ride with you. I don’t have a car,” she added, “but I can help pay for gas.”
Danny thought for a minute. Several things flew across his mind, including what having this new girl in his car might do to his chances of finally landing a date with Christine. Even though the girl of his dreams hadn’t agreed to go anywhere with him, he was pretty sure she was softening toward him, since she let him take her home from the birthday party. She actually seemed interested in him, talked to him most of that night, but he also considered the idea that maybe it was time he looked in another direction. He thought about seeing Trina with Rob the night of the party and about how his little sister would feel if she knew about it. Getting to know Trina better might help with that situation as well. He took the last sip of his coffee. He was just about to answer Trina when the door opened and in walked Father George.
“Well, speak of the devil,” she said with a big smile on her face. “Never mind,” she added, looking back at Danny, “I know where I can get a ride,” and she grabbed her rag and empty tray and headed over to the table closest to the door.