I responded honestly. “I’m not sure my heart can answer that.”
She sounded surprised. “You don’t know what your own heart feels?”
I spoke quickly. “You’re assuming my heart can feel anything at all.”
From then on, they patched me through.
I dialed the number. My caller ID registered. Suzy answered, and her voice walked three thousand miles through the line. “Jo-Jo! How you doing?”
Not wanting to disturb Allie, I walked outside and closed the door behind me. “Not real sure, Suzy.”
She heard the uncertainty in my voice. “You okay?”
“Rough couple of days.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
She knew me well enough by now not to push it. She changed the subject. “What’d the doctor say?”
“Says I’m fine.”
“Which means you haven’t been to see him, have you?”
“I saw him.”
“But . . . he wants to schedule a procedure and you’re stalling.”
“I feel fine.”
“Except when you don’t.”
“It’s getting better.”
“You still eating antacids like chocolate chip cookies?”
“Not as much.”
“How many a day?”
“I don’t know—”
“Be honest.”
“Fifteen. Twenty.”
“Joseph, that’s not normal. You need to see someone about that.”
“Why is it when somebody wants to say something serious to me they always say my whole name?”
“Because we’re trying to get your attention, but you’re stubborn.”
“I’ll move it up on the priority list.”
“Jo-Jo?”
“Yeah, Suzy.”
“Tell me something you remember. Something good.”
A memory flashed across my eyes. “I had a friend one time. He had my back. He plucked me out of more than one bad situation. Most mornings, we shared coffee. At a table overlooking the South China Sea. He’d light a cigarette and let it burn on the table between us, keeping the mosquitoes at bay. When we finished we’d leave our empty cups on the table and say, ’Till tomorrow.’”
“Why?”
“Because there was no guarantee of tomorrow. Only the hope of it.”
Maybe it was the tone of my voice, but she let it go. “Can I play you something?”
“Sure.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Grand Funk Railroad had a pretty good song back then.”
“Good night, Joseph.”
“Night, Suzy.”
“And, Jo-Jo?”
“Yeah?”
“Until next time.”
I hung up and smiled as she closed the show with “We’re an American Band.”
AT MIDNIGHT I FOUND myself leaning against the couch, staring at Allie. For some reason she stirred and her eyes opened. My feet were stretched out toward the fire. She put her arm around me and hooked her heel over my shin. I’d seen vines do the same thing. After a moment she whispered, “I had a dream.”
“Yeah? What about?”
“You.”
I chuckled. “You sure it wasn’t a nightmare?”
She smiled. “You were young. You’d been hurt.” She looked up at me. “Wounded.” She paused. “Were you?”
I nodded.
She slipped her hand inside my shirt, her palm flat across my chest. “Were you shot?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know really. We were all shot.”
“Give me a number.”
“A lot.”
“That’s not a number.”
“I lost count.”
“Do you have scars?”
I nodded.
“Will you show me?”
“Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Show me.”
I lifted my shirt. Left shoulder. “Bullet.” Right rib cage. Longer scar. “Bayonet.” Back. “Shrapnel.” Scar along the left side of my neck. “Knife.” Right hip. “Smaller bullet.” I pulled my shirt back on. “There are others, but my pants are covering them up.”
“Did you receive a Purple Heart?”
“Yes.”
She touched the places on my body that I’d just shown her. “For all of these?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Don’t really remember.”
“How many?”
“For those of us who spent a lot of time over there, the whole medal thing became somebody else’s concern. We just wanted to get home.”
“So you got shot more times than awarded medals?”
“Sure. But so did everybody else in my unit. Medals are what people sitting at desks do back home. Trying not to die was what we did up front.”
“Where’re your medals now?”
“No idea.”
“Really?”
“I don’t think about them.”
“Do you wish you had them?”
“What for?”
“To remember.”
“I’d like to forget most of the moments they represent.” I was quiet several minutes. “Maybe it’s tough to understand, but all that happened over there, it’s not like what you see in the movies. It’s not like anything you’ve ever seen. It leaves its mark on a man.”
She sank her shoulder beneath mine. Somehow, over the course of the afternoon and evening, any boundaries of personal space had been thrown out the window. If Jake had ever had a tether to Allie’s heart, he didn’t any longer. She liked being close to me, and I liked her being close. Which caused me some concern regarding tomorrow. I chewed a few antacids and admitted that wasn’t my only concern.
“Why do you eat those?” she asked.
“Habit, I suppose.”
“When did you start the habit?”
“Back when I was drinking.”
“Why?”
“Stomach started bleeding.”
“You had an ulcer?”
“Don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Never really had it checked out.”
She sat up and frowned.
I continued. “I quit drinking and started taking these. Bleeding quit. Problem solved.”
She shook her head, leaned against me, and laid her hand flat across my chest again. “Life dealt you a bad hand.”
I laughed. “Somebody did.”
She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the index card I’d laid on the bedside table the night I found her on the beach. I didn’t know she’d kept it. Spilled coffee stained one corner. Water droplets another. The paper was wrinkled and some of the pencil had smeared. She held it between two hands. “You’ve improved.”
“Practice does that.”
I’d sketched her sleeping. Hair tucked behind her ear. Sheet and blanket draped across her legs and hips. One foot half covered. She pointed toward the drawing. “When I sleep, does my forehead scrunch like that?”
I nodded.
“No wonder I have so many wrinkles.”
We slept in front of the fire. Warm. Close. Rosco sprawled out around us. The wind gently nudged the limbs, which brushed the sides of the cabin.
It was the best sleep I’d ever had.
25
I woke before daylight and made coffee. Allie was wrapped up like a cocoon with one arm around Rosco. I poured myself a cup, stepped outside, and breathed in. A minute later, she slid her arms around my waist and pressed her chest to my back and held me. “Morning.”
“Hey.”
I turned and she wrapped her blanket around us, and we stood in the cold morning air. Two kids. I squinted one eye. “I think you’re hugging me.”
She strained on her tiptoes, kissed my cheek, and then brushed my face with her palm. Then she kissed the corner of my mouth. Then again, this time cl
oser to the center.
She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. I leaned against the counter. “You sure you want to do this? We don’t have to go. I could go and do some poking ar—”
She sipped and didn’t take her eyes off me. Her tone told me nobody was changing her mind. “We’re going.”
We drove down the mountain, taking 221 into Spruce Pine and then 19E through Burnsville. Three miles east of I-26 I pulled to the side of the road, read the map, and turned right on a dirt road. We drove a mile to a dead end and parked. I grabbed my binoculars out of the console, and we headed west through the trees and up a small ridge. On the ridgeline we turned south, then west again. Below us spread a meadow with a nice one-story ranch on the other side. Several horses walked in and out of the barn. Forty or fifty head of cattle dotted the hillside behind the house. A detached four-car garage lay perpendicular to the house. A late-model sports car of some sort, a Cadillac Escalade, a Ford F-250 diesel with aftermarket tires and bumpers, and a Mercedes SUV. Parallel to the garage sat a taller building with metal roof and open sides. Parked inside sat a mobile home—the expensive kind driven by rock stars or parked on the infields at NASCAR races. And parked along that sat a shiny new red and chrome Peterbilt. The trailer it was pulling had been painted with custom race car designs.
I passed Allie the binoculars. “That look familiar?”
She adjusted the eye relief and shook her head. “Never seen it.” She handed me the binoculars. “But I’d like to know who’s been paying the insurance.”
While we sat hidden in our perch in the trees, a silver Jeep pulled into the drive. A girl, maybe sixteen, hopped out with a school backpack and walked inside, talking on a cell phone. At the rear of the house a woman, maybe early fifties, walked out wearing stretch pants and a workout shirt showing sweat down the back. She was sipping coffee and reading something on her phone. The only car that didn’t fit was an older Honda SUV that must have belonged to the house help—a woman who exited the house about this time and refilled the first woman’s coffee cup. A few minutes later the young girl, the driver of the Jeep, walked out and sat down with the woman. The two talked while looking out across the pasture at the horses and cows. The sun had come up over the ridgeline in front of them and shone yellow and clean on the grass below.
For an hour things around the house were relatively quiet. Then a Toyota Tacoma with large mud tires and a lift kit pulled into the drive and parked behind the Jeep. A good-looking kid jumped out and let himself inside. He wore athletic shorts and shoes, and he too was sweaty, as if he’d just come from a practice or workout of some sort. A minute later he joined the woman and girl on the back porch. At lunchtime all three left the house, each driving out in a different car. Over the next several hours, Allie napped while I studied the details below me.
The cars began returning at four. The woman first. She was nicely dressed, wore jewelry of some sort, and appeared to have a well-manicured body. Around five the boy and girl returned. The house helper lit the charcoal grill at five thirty and turned on the outdoor porch lights. At six a black Mercedes SUV with blacked-out windows pulled down the long drive and slowly approached the house. It wound around the used car lot in front of the house and paused long enough to remotely open a fifth garage door connected to the house. The door opened, the SUV entered, and the door closed.
At six thirty the house help came out and departed in the Honda. Soon a man appeared on the back porch, carrying a large plate of steaks. He laid the tray of steaks on the table next to the charcoal grill and stood sipping a glass of wine and staring out across the pasture, horses, cows, and meadow.
I handed the binoculars to Allie, who focused. Two seconds later the color drained out of her face and tears broke loose, cascading down her cheeks. She wiped her face on her shirtsleeve, bit her lip, and watched Jake stoke the fire and spread the steaks on the grill.
Five minutes later she handed the binoculars back to me. She spoke with clarity and control. “Jake has no cane . . . and no limp.”
We sat there watching as he cooked steaks amid the world his lies had created. I spoke softly. “It’s your call.”
She stood. “Let’s go.”
We returned to the truck. I cranked the engine and we drove back down the dirt road to 19E, turned west a half mile, and then right. We ambled down a recently asphalted and nicely serpentined blacktop and finally came to Jake’s mailbox, which ironically was a miniature Peterbilt. Allie calmly dialed 911. She was staring at her fingernails like a woman who’d just decided she needed a manicure when the dispatcher answered, “911. What’s your emergency?”
“Yes, hi . . . you need to send several officers to . . .” Allie craned her neck and read the number off the box.
The dispatcher responded, “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
Allie tapped her front tooth with a nail. “No, but there’s about to be.”
The dispatcher was well trained and attempted to keep her on the phone. “What kind of trouble are you experiencing, ma’am?”
Allie smiled. “Well . . . I’m about to kill somebody . . .” And she hung up.
Small-town deputies are often starved for excitement, so I figured that would get their attention. They’d come running. I parked at the front door, and we got out.
I was surprised at Allie’s demeanor. She was calm, cool, and totally collected. I thought about ringing the doorbell, but Allie walked right past me, gently pressed the door handle, and let herself in the front door. I followed, not wanting to miss what was about to happen. She wound her way through the foyer toward the sound of dinner being eaten in the kitchen. She turned right at the jumbotron screen and into the light of the kitchen, where Jake sat with his family eating dinner.
All four of them looked with curiosity at Allie, who stood in the center of their kitchen. The woman spoke first. “Can I help you?”
The only person who looked like he’d seen a ghost was Jake, who was as white as a sheet. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and attempted to scoot his chair backward, but I stepped in behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Sit tight, Houdini.”
Allie pulled up a chair at the table. Both the kids to her right. The woman across from her. Jake on her left. She folded her hands on the table. Even her breathing was calm. Her right hand was spinning the wedding band on her left. An empty vase sat in the middle of the table. She slid it slightly off to the side giving her a clear view of the woman. She looked at the woman several seconds. “Do you know who I am?”
“No.”
I had a feeling she did, but that would come soon enough. Allie looked to both the kids. “You two have any idea?”
They shook their heads. I actually believed them.
Allie never looked at Jake. She was watching the eyes of the other three. She said, “Jake, why don’t you tell them?”
He was about to say something like “I don’t—” but I patted his shoulder and encouraged him otherwise. He turned to the woman. “Kids, this is Allie.”
When he stopped talking, I prompted him. “And she’s . . . ?”
The pain I was creating in his neck convinced him to keep talking. “She’s my . . . my other wife.”
The children looked confused.
It was obvious that the woman was in on whatever Jake had cooked up, as she was not the least bit shaken by Jake’s words. He was about to turn toward me to exert his authority, but I cranked down on his left ear, pinning it between the end of his steak knife and my thumb. He tried to sip his wine, but his hand was shaking so he set his glass down. “She’s, um . . . she and I are married.”
The boy looked at his mom. “Mom, what’s he talking about?”
The woman wiped her mouth on her napkin. Cool as a cucumber. “Just nonsense. I don’t know who these people are.”
Allie reached across and slapped the woman as hard as she could across the face, knocking her out of her chair. The boy stood, but at my invitation quickly sat back do
wn. The girl started crying. From the driveway I heard several car doors slam. Before the police walked in, Allie turned to Jake. While she had captured his attention with the stiletto finger jabbing him in his face, she grabbed the woman’s steak knife and drove it down through Jake’s right hand, pinning it to the table. That seemed to get everyone’s attention. When the woman climbed back up to the table, Allie lifted the vase and broke it against the woman’s jaw.
AN HOUR LATER, JAKE sat silently cuffed in an ambulance while medics tended to his hand. The look on his face suggested there were a million other places he’d rather be. His first wife, Sylvia—of twenty-four years—also sat cuffed and sitting not-soquietly in a patrol car in the driveway. She was doing a pretty good job of exercising her first amendment right. Unfortunately, Allie also sat cuffed in yet a third vehicle. The sheriff listened to my story with a raised eyebrow. When I finished, he shook his head. “I appreciate your trouble, I really do, but you can’t just go around breaking into people’s houses and stabbing them in the hand.”
I gave him the number at First General and told him Dawson Baker would confirm and document everything I said. As would local law enforcement. He still wasn’t buying it. The sheriff added, “Not to mention that we have her on record as stating she intended to kill someone.”
I dialed a number, and Bobby answered. I asked, “You got a minute?”
“For you? Yes.”
I explained our predicament. Bobby said, “Put him on.”
I tapped the sheriff on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Sheriff.” I offered the phone. “This is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Senator Bobby Brooks. He’d like to speak with you.”
The sheriff stuck the phone to his ear and spoke with no small disbelief. “Yeah, this is Sheriff T. Wayne Higginbotham. To whom do I have the pleasure of—”
The sheriff was quiet several seconds while the color drained out of his face. When he responded, he said, “Well, sir, I’d be negligent if I didn’t at least hold her. I mean, at a minimum, we’ve got assault with a deadly weapon, and we do have her on record as having threatened to kill someone . . .” Slowly, disbelief gave way to something else. His eyes began to grow large and round and his tone of voice changed. Pretty soon he was nodding in agreement. “Uh-huh . . . uh, yes, sir . . . Well . . . yes, sir. Her threatening him in that manner did definitely get our attention.” Another laugh. “Yes, sir, I imagine we set a few land speed records getting here.” He paused. “No, sir, I hadn’t thought of it that way.” More seconds passed. More nodding. Followed by a chuckle. “Well . . . when you put it that way, no, sir, I don’t in fact see how anyone could be arrested for assaulting someone who’s already dead.” At this point, he belly-laughed. “I understand . . . No problem, sir. No, I appreciate that, but I don’t think it’s necessary. If I need you, I’ll contact your office. It’s my honor and privilege . . . Yes, sir . . . I will, sir. You have a good night, sir. And you keep up the good—”
Send Down the Rain Page 14