To Be Where You Are

by Jan Karon

  They had to make a spot for Charley, sleeping now in her cone collar. Taking her to the house wouldn’t work. They needed the meds, the IV, the clinic amenities.

  The plumbers still at it at four o’clock, the jackhammer decimating the toilet floor.

  They would make camp in Surgery for the night—Charley in her crate. He and Jack would sleep where? They kept a folded cot behind the mech room door, but it wasn’t built for two.

  He went to the house and waded into the junk room off the upstairs hall. Piles like this were common in third-world countries without garbage disposal technology.

  He wrangled the futon mattress down the stairs and through the kitchen and across the drive and into the clinic. He wouldn’t ask Lace to join them; her sleep had been compromised for too many nights.

  Jack hugged his mom’s legs. ‘Me an’ Dad will miss you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  She smiled at him and reached into the big plastic bag she was carrying and took out a couple of blankets and three pillows.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20

  Cool but sunny with rain coming in the evening, according to Willie’s report.

  She was on the kitchen porch, stacking logs in the carrier for tonight’s fire, and feeling grateful. Beth was on her way from Baltimore, where she’d stopped overnight with a friend. Charley was sleeping in her cone collar, blood pressure good. And the sketch—wild, ragged, crude, spontaneous—was done. She was using the brush now, which felt familiar; she had sketched like the wind this morning, not stopping to correct or edit. The rough image would change as she progressed, but the components were loosely in place and it was working.

  The mountains were purple today, the cows somewhere out of sight. Lily was in for a half day, there was Willie raking leaves in the backyard and Harley changing a tire on Dooley’s truck and Jack playing in the gravel. A family; they had a family. Maybe not everybody’s kind of family, but—

  ‘Look, Mom!’

  Two dirty palms upturned. A penny in one, a dime in the other.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘From th’ driveway.’

  ‘Terrific! Put it in your bank.’

  ‘I could give you one for your bank. I would share.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much. Do I get to pick which one?’

  ‘You can have th’ penny.’

  She took the penny, warm from the sun. ‘I truly appreciate it.’

  How earnest he was, and full of grace.

  ‘I seen it in th’ gravel an’ I’m goin’ back to look for more, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And I will prob’ly bring you another one, okay?’

  ‘Okay! But you need to get your shampoo. You and Dad leave at two-thirty.’

  ‘How much is two-thirty?’

  ‘See the two? When the little hand gets to the two and the big hand gets right here to six, it will be time to go. Lily is ready to shampoo your hair and Harley will shine your boots if you’ll bring them downstairs.’

  ‘I want to shine my boots.’

  ‘Will you rub them really hard with the rag, like Harley does?’

  He nodded, eyes serious.

  ‘I love you big,’ she said.

  ‘Love you bigger!’ he shouted, and raced into the house.

  • • •

  She could hear him coming, her little steam engine pounding up to Heaven and counting at the top of his voice, ‘Seventeen! Eighteen! Nineteen! Twenty!’ and he was in the room and his forehead was sweaty and his eyes were big and her concentration was broken and she was glad.

  ‘Mom!’ Jack tugged at her shirttail. ‘Come down, I have a great idea.’

  ‘How exciting! But you can tell me out loud. There’s nobody here but us.’

  ‘Secrets have to be said in people’s ears! It’s a secret for Dad.’

  She stooped to him, to the scent of his shampoo, and he cupped his hands and whispered the secret in his warm boy breath.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘How perfect!’

  ‘But you can’t tell anybody.’

  ‘I won’t, I promise.’

  ‘People who tell secrets gets their toes cut off an’ throwed in th’ pond for th’ big turtle to make soup!’ He cackled with laughter. ‘An’ a huge tractor with a monkey on top jumps out of th’ pond an’ eats your brains out!’

  ‘I will totally not tell anybody, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jack.

  She laid her brush down. ‘Now! I’m goin’ to catch you and kiss you for scaring me!’

  ‘No!’ he said, racing from the room and down the hall.

  ‘No, please!’ he yelled. She was right behind him. ‘You will kiss my skin off!’

  She was laughing so hard. ‘You better believe it!’

  • • •

  At two-thirty, Teddy was sitting by the kitchen door, eager to go on the ride he was promised. She would miss him.

  ‘You and Dad will have fun.’ She loved how he had polished his boots in such a solemn, grown-up way. ‘Give Miss Lucy my love. Tell her we’ll come visit.’

  ‘Blake will watch Charley?’

  ‘He will. And I will, too.’

  ‘An’ Uncle Doc will come and help watch?’

  ‘He will.’

  She didn’t want them to go, not really.

  ‘There’s a food bowl for Teddy,’ she said, handing Dooley a basket, ‘and bottled water and snacks for the road and three quarts of pumpkin. It’s ready for the pie shell. But remember to bring the basket back, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Dooley gave her a long look.

  ‘Remember you have Teddy’s kibbles in the truck.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, and kissed her. ‘Love you deep.’

  She walked to the driveway with them and waved as they backed out. There went her world—in a red truck. She watched them all the way to the road, where they headed north.

  • • •

  Meadowgate pecans on Beth’s windowsill, in a bowl with a nutcracker and pick.

  On the bedside table, a book they both loved in college: Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, and its dense narrative of building a new life.

  The bedspread turned down, pillows fluffed up, asters on the night table.

  She ran upstairs and set Lily’s pumpkin pie on a blue and white plate in the center of the kitchen table. Added three Mason jars of blue and white asters. Good, but needing a touch of red. A quart jar of their tomatoes. That worked, though maybe not the best thing with pie. All from their farm, that was the connection.

  The loud knock at the front door. The farm dogs going nuts on the porch.

  ‘Roses!’ said the driver from Mitford Blossoms, looking personally responsible for such a windfall.

  Coral, their petals tipped with yellow. ‘They’re gorgeous!’

  ‘Runnin’ late. Accident a few miles back. Tractor trailer.’

  ‘The curve?’ she said.

  ‘You got it.’

  She didn’t see a card. From Beth?

  In the kitchen she removed the quart of tomatoes, put the roses in their place—perfect—and looked again for a card.

  Could they be from Dooley?

  She remembered the intense, lingering look he gave her before they left. There was something different about that look. She didn’t really understand its meaning; it seemed to come from a new place.

  She laid a fire in the primitive style she learned long ago at Absalom Greer’s summer camp for youth, then set out their best plates and glasses and flatware and two small red lanterns with candles. Jack loved these lanterns.

  And there was Blake coming in the back door, on his way to the hall room. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s okay. I may have to come over to your place sometime.’

  A bit of a laugh.<
br />
  ‘Will it never end?’ she said of the plumbing job.

  ‘Mid-November is the new end date.’

  Always the meter running. ‘How’s Charley?’

  ‘Vitals good. Awake and wanting out of there. I’ll bring her over before I go home tonight.’

  She checked her messages—Beth was a half hour away.

  The sound of the flush in the hall room, and Blake walking fast through the kitchen.

  At the door, he picked up a bucket of water to be carried over, required of any clinic staff using house facilities.

  ‘Nice-lookin’ table,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ She loved getting ready for her best friend and her husband and son.

  • • •

  Twenty-seven minutes past eight.

  Rain pecking the kitchen window.

  She had been looking at the wall clock every few minutes since his text.

  Teddy looks like a home run. Loaded up & leaving Joanna 6:45. Home 7:45. Sorry. xo

  Beth had arrived in her cappuccino-colored Kia, looking her pre–Wall Street girl self. All the dogs had greeted her car, sniffing every tire. Squeezing hugs, high five, the rain just beginning.

  ‘Are you starved?’

  Beth laughed. ‘Seven hours on an order of fries and tenders. I only stopped once because I couldn’t wait to get here!’

  She and Beth had a history of standing by each other—through the hard times with Dooley, through Beth’s loss of her dad and then Freddie walking out. With all their combined moving around since college—Beth to Boston, then New York, herself to Atlanta and Chapel Hill—they had remained close, like sisters, sometimes exchanging or lending clothes by mail or UPS, confiding the best and the worst of themselves.

  They were devouring a plate of cheese and crackers.

  ‘Honest, Lace, I think you’re worrying too soon. And your supper smells so good I could weep.’

  ‘It’s sitting too long, but . . .’ All she could think of was time. ‘They’re nearly an hour late.’

  ‘They left at six forty-five. You said Joanna is about an hour away, that’s seven forty-five and now it’s eight-thirty. So that’s really only forty-five minutes later than Dooley said. And with game traffic . . . ’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said. Maybe she should have gone with them to Joanna’s; Beth could have let herself in and been perfectly at home. The rain was another reason this wasn’t feeling good.

  The text had come from RHH/llc, which she knew to be Rivers Herd Health. That meant Dooley had used Joanna’s phone. Even if he’d found his, the charge would have been gone ages ago.

  ‘The roses are beautiful. They even smell like roses. Who sent them?’

  ‘No card. Maybe my mom, because she knew you were coming. I’m texting Joanna.’

  Last time she’d been frantic about Dooley, but now it was Dooley and Jack . . .

  Hi, Joanna. Are Dooley and Jack still there? Thanks for everything. U will be your dad’s best meds.

  ‘There’s a good reason, I promise,’ said Beth. ‘They’re okay, I just feel it. Have you seen Tommy?’

  ‘I think he’s traveling with the band. I wanted to tell him you were coming, but Dooley had his cell number in his phone, which he lost chasing a cow.’

  ‘I messed up by not texting him anymore. Things were so volatile with me . . . ’

  ‘Do you care that you messed up?’

  ‘I hate that I just sort of dropped him. Especially when he must have been grieving his grandmother.’

  ‘She pretty much raised him. He wrote a beautiful song about her. Tommy said he loved singing with you at the wedding.’

  ‘I’ve started singing again—around the apartment, in the car. It all started at the wedding.’

  Lace looked at the kitchen clock.

  ‘You look tired, Lace Face. Your mural is amazing, I wish you could know this. You’ve always struggled with knowing how good your work is, but maybe that’s okay. You’ve been working too hard, I can tell. But I’m here now and I’ll help. What’s on for tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m starting to paint clouds. Can you start being Jack’s aunt?’

  ‘I’d love that. What do aunts do?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose they do what moms do, but with less worries! Work with him on a secret project for his dad, read with him, help him learn to count beyond twenty. He’s a very quick learner. And I’ll make lunch.’

  ‘Do you know what heaven this is for me? Thanks so much for letting me come. I’ll do anything. Give me a broom! A shovel! A head rag! Whatever you think.’

  ‘I think we should eat.’

  ‘Yes! Hooray! Let me help.’

  Lace opened the warming door of the oven. ‘Lil’s famous lasagna! Bring the plates!’

  • • •

  Most people were scared of the curve, he worried about deer. Frye Hickman hit a deer the other day—five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to his new truck, a worse scenario for the deer.

  No phone. He’d have to lay out four hundred bucks. He and Joanna and Jack and her farmhand had searched but it was no good—his phone was history.

  They had pulled out of Joanna’s at seven-fifteen—the farmhand had needed help with a trailer hitch, then the rain and the traffic from the game in Wesley held them up, so they were running late and he was making his wife crazy.

  Dark on these country roads, but he liked that. He needed time alone with the light from the radio and the music to keep him company. Jack had worn himself out playing with a litter of collie pups, wolfed down a pimiento cheese sandwich, and was buckled into his booster seat, out cold.

  He had loved the look on Lucy’s face. ‘I wouldn’t think a dog could remind me of a pig, but that’s exactly what Homer used to do.’ After sniffing the territory, Teddy had leaped onto a low foolstool, curled up, and given them a satisfied look.

  If he didn’t get a cherry pie out of this deal, he’d be et for a tater.

  Something moving at the side of the road. He threw his right arm across Jack as he braked. Not a deer. A man waving.

  He rolled down his window, the rain spattered in.

  ‘My wife’s havin’ a baby, I need a doctor! My cell phone don’t have a charge. Can you call us a doctor?’

  ‘I’m a doctor, but . . . ’

  ‘She’s bleedin’. Please, God, can you help us? It’s somethin’ bad wrong, I can’t move her like this.’

  Jack stirred, opened his eyes.

  ‘I’ll look in,’ he said. He wasn’t the doctor for this job, but he couldn’t leave the man standing in the road. He wheeled into the driveway, the man running alongside. A beat-up van. Stacks of firewood. Rabbit hutches. A light inside the house silhouetted three kids and a barking hound on the porch.

  ‘It come on so quick, I couldn’t git her out to th’ van.’

  Jack sleeping again. ‘My boy’s in here.’

  ‘He’ll be fine, he’ll be safe. Hurry, for God’s sake, she’s in a terrible way.’

  He heard screaming from the house, prayed for Jack to keep sleeping.

  The children, roughly five years and up, were crying and clinging to each other. ‘Is he gon’ help Mama?’

  ‘He’s gon’ help her. Go on, now, git in th’ back an’ don’t come ’til I call you.

  ‘She’s thisaway,’ said the man. ‘We’ve birthed all our young’uns at home, ain’t never had this happen.’

  The smell of woodsmoke and fried ham . . .

  ‘How long in labor?’

  ‘Three hours. Water’s broke.’

  Walking fast down a dark hall, the air filled with a ragged, tearing scream, to the door of a room with the thick scent of blood and the woman lying uncovered, sweat pouring, the sheets beneath her a soaking red.

  She turned her head and looked at him. ‘Pleas
e.’

  He was instantly pulled into her suffering; he felt faint as he walked to the foot of the bed.

  Fully dilated, but the head hadn’t crowned. If this was what Hoppy called abruptio or complete placenta previa, he, she, they were done for, he could not touch that. Could be the placenta was implanted in the uterus with an edge too close to the cervix. Could be anything. He had to get in there, locate the head.

  Lube, he needed lube.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the truck,’ he said to the man. ‘Hot water. Need to wash up.’ He raced out, Jack sleeping. Lube, gloves, gloves, yes, and ran inside and took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

  Please, God, do not let me deliver a dead baby. Cover me here.

  ‘Your wife’s name?’

  ‘Janette.’ The man’s voice was shaking.

  In the bathroom, he lathered to his elbows with a sliver of soap, rinsed, dried, and went back to her.

  She looked at him, wild with pain. He had nothing in the truck for this.

  ‘Janette,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be fine. Work with me.’

  The smell enveloped him like a caul as he bent to her.

  Gentle, very gentle, he instructed himself, feeling for the head. Right there! In place, but . . .

  ‘Push, Janette. We need to get your baby out now!’

  He was terrified. Yet in his terror, he felt a certain calm flowing in.

  Jesus, he thought.

  ‘Help me,’ she said.

  • • •

  He could stop somewhere,’ she said to Beth, ‘and use a phone. Two hours. And no message from Joanna.’

  ‘I believe they’re fine, Lacey. Somehow it’s all going to be okay.’

  ‘I’m calling the county police.’ How many husbands out there were two hours late tonight? Surely hers was not the only one. But Jack—Jack was two hours late, also. If anything terrible had happened, she could not bear it. She could not.

  Her mother had left her by looking the other way, her father left her by seeing his daughter as an object. Dooley’s mother had left him, his father left him; somebody was always leaving, disappearing. Maybe two hours late wouldn’t be a serious problem for other people, but . . .