I’d protect her.
As the light of the lampposts showered down on him and his freedom, he turned a corner and disappeared. He was gone. I knew the focus of my life had changed.
As that thought was making its way into my brain, a shadow appeared where the man had disappeared. A taller shadow. The shadow swung, and the flesh-broker reappeared just as quickly as he’d left. Only this time he was airborne. Flying backward, head leading his feet. His head rocked unnaturally on his shoulders and his feet wrapped up with each other like a pretzel. He flew through the air in a perfect arc, coming to rest on his head and shoulders while the rest of his body piled up on top of him like noodles. Above him stood a man. A man with an angry face etched with a road map of wrinkles and scars written by a lifetime of pain. That man was sweating, and blood had stained his white hair and white beard.
Clay.
I pulled myself to the sidewalk, where a crowd had gathered. Clay stood over the man like Ali. I stared in dumbstruck amazement. I’ll never know how, given his condition, not to mention his age, he managed to get from Ellie’s hotel room to there.
I stared at him. He glanced down at the unconscious man at his feet. Then smiled at me. His teeth were red. Wobbling slightly, he shuffled to a park bench, sat down, crossed his legs, and folded his hands across his lap. He assessed his fingernails like a man getting a manicure, then eyed the split skin above his middle knuckle as if he were glancing at his watch to determine the time. Finally, he looked up at me again and nodded.
I looked at the man and knew I could kill him. Maybe I should. I also knew prison was not kind to men who dealt in flesh. In prison, your sins have a way of returning on you, and his would return with interest. When he woke, mine was the first face he saw. I flipped him, drove my knee into his kidney, drove my other knee into the hamburger that was once his thigh, and torqued his shoulder far enough upward to tear his rotator cuff and dislocate it from its socket.
He yielded.
An hour later, the paramedics had cut off my shirt and turned my pants into shorts in an effort to plug my holes and sew me up. Again. I was in pretty bad shape, and all I wanted to do was sleep.
But as the paramedics were lifting me onto a stretcher to transport me to the hospital, Sister June appeared. She reached for my hand. Her face was taut. “Sister Marie.” She pointed to an older Cadillac in the street. I limped to the car as the first rays of sunlight began breaking across the skyline and fell into the front seat. Ellie climbed quietly into the back.
Chapter 50
The ride across town was short. And quiet. Sister June spoke not a word.
We parked at the gate and wound through the trees, but there were no peacocks this time. Just silence. Sister June climbed the steps to Marie’s cottage and held the door for me. Marie lay in bed. A single light shone down on her. My last book on her chest. The rest were stacked neatly on the bookshelf next to her bed. Each one dog-eared, cover tattered, pages worn. I was tired and couldn’t differentiate between delirium and euphoria. When I knelt, she smiled. I slid my hand beneath hers.
She tapped the book. “I like this one.” She was pale. Struggling. These were the last words of a dying woman. “My favorite.”
I nodded. So many questions. Struggling to breathe, she forced her lungs to expand, inhaled, and let it out. Slowly. She eyed the water in front of us where the sun was just breaking the skyline. She leaned sideways, pressing her forehead to mine. She spoke without struggle and without fear. “Walk me home?”
I shook my head. “I have so much I want to tell you.”
She waved her hand across the bookshelf. “You already did.” A smile. “Ten thousand times over. I used to lie here and wonder if you would ever walk in that door.”
I nodded and opened my mouth, but no words sounded.
She chuckled. “You were here every day. Every sunrise. Sunset. I’ve never been alone.” She paused. Breathing. The vein on her temple pounding, depicting the load her heart was under and how it was struggling to keep up. She placed her palm on my cheek. We didn’t have much time. She struggled. “I ran . . . because I didn’t feel worthy of your love. The more I tried to push you away, the harder you looked and the more you proved me wrong.” She tried to smile. “So many times I stared out the window. You had come within the sound of my voice. And yet I couldn’t let myself cry out, knowing what I’d done.”
“Marie—”
She stopped me. “I don’t deserve it, but I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
She breathed slowly. In. Out. The end had come. She pulled the clear tube away from her face and lay waiting. She pointed to the beach. Squeezed my hand. “Be my priest . . . and walk me home.”
I swallowed. I knew what she was asking. And the pain of it was killing me. “Only if you’ll let me be your husband first.”
She blinked and smiled, unable to speak. I slid my hands beneath her legs and lifted her frail and thin body. She hung her arms around my neck and pressed her nose to my cheek, breathing in. She weighed nothing. What little she did weigh was crushing me.
Without oxygen, Marie was having trouble focusing, so I called her back. “Marie . . .”
In all my wanderings, all my dreaming, all the slideshows across my mind’s eye, I’d never seen us end this way. My lip trembled. Mind raced. I couldn’t put the words together. I just pulled her to my chest, descended the steps onto the beach, and held her while the life drained out and the darkness seeped in.
While I carried her, she smiled and whispered in my ear. “Bread first. Then wine.” Before us, Sister June had set a table.
We waded into the water.
Her faded gown sucked to her skin. She had become a shadow. Only seconds now. Waist deep, I held her. I tore off a small piece of bread, mumbled something no one could hear, and managed a whisper that mimicked the words I’d written in my books a hundred times: “. . . the body, broken for . . .” Then I laid the bread on her tongue.
She pushed it around her mouth and tried to swallow, which brought a spasm of fear. Of the inability to get oxygen to her lungs. Her body tensed, eyes rolled back, and I just held her. Ellie stood crying just feet away. Around us, the water had begun washing the blood off me, causing a tint. First pink. Then Cabernet. Merlot.
Marie settled and placed her palm flat against my chest where she could feel my heart pounding. I pulled the cork, tilted the bottle, and rolled the wine up against her lips. “The blood, shed for . . .” My voice cracked again. “Whenever you do this, you proclaim the . . .” I trailed off.
She spoke before letting the wine enter her mouth. The smile on her lips matched that in her eyes. I’d known that smile since our youth. Since the beach where we played as kids. I would miss that smile. The look behind her eyes. The window to her soul. It spoke to the deepest places in me. Always had. The wine filled the back of her mouth and drained out the sides.
Blood with blood.
Another spasm. More struggling to breathe. I clung to Marie as the waves rocked her body. One breath. Then two. Mustering her strength, she pointed. Deeper water.
I hesitated.
Marie’s eyes rolled back, but she forced their return and they narrowed on me. “Please.”
I waded deeper. Her breathing was shallower. Less frequent. Her eyes opened and closed. Sleep was heavy. I spoke the only words I knew. “If I could stop the sun or ask God to take me and not you, I would.”
She placed a hand behind my neck and pulled my face close to hers. “I’ve . . . always . . . loved . . . you.” She swallowed and fought for air. “Still do.”
I kissed her, trying to imprint the feel and taste of her into me.
I walked farther into the gin-clear water, above my waist, while Marie’s body floated beneath the cradle of my arms. A trail of red painted the water downcurrent. Marie tapped me in the chest and used one hand to make the numbers. She tucked three, leaving two. Without pausing, she held up all five. Then she started over. Extending five on
ly to tuck three, leaving two. Making a seven. Her cryptic motions meant 25–7. Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me.
I nodded, and the tears pushed through the dam. I could hold them no more.
Her head fell to one side. Her lips made the words, then the sound came. “Forgive me?”
I kept shaking my head. “There’s nothing to—”
She pressed her fingers to my lips and tried to nod. “Please. Forgive—” She tensed. Her lips were turning blue.
The tears drained off my face. She thumbed each away. I managed, “I love you with all of me. I—”
“I know. You told me . . .”
As Marie’s life drained into the ocean and her lungs held less air, she pulled me toward her. She was cutting me free. “Tell me what you know about sheep.”
We had started this way, and we would end this way. It hurt too much. I shook my head.
“Tell me.”
“The needs of the one . . .”
She closed her eyes.
“Outweigh those of the ninety-nine.”
She laid her hand flat across my chest. Just two kids on a beach. She pulled herself toward me. “One more thing . . .”
Her pulse had slowed to almost nothing. I waited.
“Spread my ashes where we started . . . that shallow water near the north end of the island.”
I stared six hundred miles north. Past my mind’s eye. To the beach where we played as kids. I shook my head. “I—”
Blood spilled out the corner of her mouth. “Where we fell in love.” The flow was deep red. Then frothy. She was choking now. Rather than fight for air, she chose to speak. “Did then . . . do now. Always will.”
She wrapped her fingers around the thin leather necklace hanging around her neck and lifted it off. The years had worn it thin. Tarnished the outside. The side that lay next to her chest had been polished to a shine. She set it in my hand and closed her fingers around mine.
Marie stared at Ellie and then at me. She lifted her hand, extending her fingertips and waiting for mine. I rested her in the water, and we wove our fingers around each other like vines. She tried to breathe but couldn’t catch it. That was it. Marie’s life would end in my hands. I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t. Seeing my pain, she pressed her palm to my chest, flat. Then pulled me to her and pressed her lips to mine. There she held me. A moment. A year. Forever.
She crossed her arms, smiling slightly. I stared out across the water, but my heart had blurred my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I nodded for the last time. She let go, and her body lay limp in my arms. Her words were gone. She’d spoken her last. Only the exhale remained. The light in her eyes was fading.
I leaned in. Forcing her eyes to focus. I managed a broken, “I’ll miss you.” She blinked, telling me that singular muscle movement was all that remained. I rallied what little strength remained in me. “You ready?”
Her eyes rolled back, then she drew a surge of energy from the depths and focused on me. One last time.
While she may have been ready, I was not. The words of her life were draining off the page, black to white. From somewhere, she mustered a final word. Although she didn’t speak it. With her eyes closed, I felt her fingertips on my chest. She was writing her name over my heart.
With one hand beneath her neck and one hand covering her chest, I spoke out across the surface of the water. “In the name of the Father . . . the Son . . . and the . . .” My mouth finished the words but my voice did not.
She blinked, cutting a tear loose, and I pushed her beneath the surface.
In that second, her body fell limp, the last of the air bubbles escaped the corner of her mouth, and the water turned red.
Her body felt light as I lifted her. As if her soul had already gone. When she surfaced, her eyes were open but she wasn’t looking at me. At least, not in this world. And the voice I’d once heard I could hear no more. I carried her to shore and set her on the sand, where the waves washed over her ankles. Her arms lay flat across her chest—yet even in death her fingers were screaming at the top of their lungs: “23.”
I pulled her to me and cried like a baby.
Chapter 51
Bones rented a house on the water where they tell me I spent the first three days sleeping. He brought in doctors and nurses to tend to each of us. My physical wounds would heal. I just needed time. The wounds on my heart were another matter. Angel’s wounds were deeper than skin. Hers, too, would take time. Fortunately, she had a good bit of that. She and Summer were never far. Arm in arm, Summer and Angel walked up and down the beach to sweat out the toxins in Angel’s body.
When I woke, it was to the rhythmic sound of a chair moving under the lazy weight of someone enjoying the moment. I cracked open my eyes to find Clay sitting in a rocking chair, an IV bag hanging above him from a stainless pole on wheels. I found myself in a hammock swung between two posts on the porch. Sea breeze cooling the sweat on my skin. In the distance I heard the sound of small waves rolling onto shore. And women’s laughter.
Clay looked good. Whatever was dripping into him was helping. I sat up and tried to climb my way out of the hammock, but I was still too tired. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, it was dark and I smelled a campfire and heard soft conversation. I watched as the girls roasted marshmallows on sticks around a fire on the beach. Staring into the firelight, I felt Summer’s hand on my shoulder. Then a kiss on my forehead.
When I woke again, it was still dark, the fire had burned out, and the beach was quiet. Only the stars spoke above me. I looked to the rocking chair, but instead of Clay, I found Summer. I wriggled myself out of the hammock, laid a blanket across Summer, and walked barefoot onto the beach where the moon shone down. Gunner limped up alongside me, licked my leg, and stood staring up at me. I rubbed his head but was too sore to bend over. I walked out on the beach, let the waves wash over my feet, and then waded out into the water. When the water reached my thigh, I squatted, sat on my butt—or rather fell backward—and soaked. An hour later, that’s where the sun found me when it broke the skyline.
A week passed. We cooked our own meals, walked on the beach, swung in hammocks, and swam often. Despite his own wounds and a painful limp, Gunner was never far off. When I slept, I heard him breathing alongside me or felt his tail wagging and thumping the floor below me. And when I woke, his eyes followed my every move. He had become my protector.
My keeper.
A week later, we gathered on the runway. Ellie stood on steps leading into the jet. Her hard shell had cracked and the softer side had risen to the surface. I liked it. A lot. She looked down at me. “Come see me?”
We had some catching up to do, and I owed her years, not moments. She would love Freetown. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“You promise?”
I nodded.
She turned and took one step but then stopped and returned. “I don’t have a good history with people keeping their promises to me.”
I clicked open the clasp on my Rolex, fed it over her hand and onto her wrist, and said, “I want that back.”
She smiled and checked the time. “Unlikely.” Then she stared at me. A full minute. Her head tilted sideways. She lifted my Costas off my eyes and said, “All my life I’ve wondered what you looked like.” Then she kissed me and hugged me. And when she did I thought I noticed her arms shaking. She lifted one hand, spread her fingers, and waited for mine to touch them. When I did, she folded her fingers around mine, and we made the fabric of us.
Angel was next. Detox had been tough and she was in the middle of it. She was having a rough go. She leaned against me. “Padre.”
I chuckled. “Yes.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “I’m a good kisser.”
I laughed. “That’s not all you’re good at.”
This time she laughed as well. “Yeah, I’m still real sorry I did that to your chapel. That
’s my bad.”
Her honesty and ability to see herself clearly was a beautiful gift. Magnetic. I waited.
She kissed me again. Invading more of my personal space. “And my mom is a good dancer.”
“Yes, she is.” I tried to lighten the air. “Good kisser too.”
Angel laughed. “Better than me?”
“She’s pretty good.”
Tears came easy. Her body was using them to flush out the toxins. “Don’t take too long. Mom’ll miss you. Me too.”
“Deal.”
She kissed me a final time and then spoke over her shoulder. “I’m saving you a dance.” Before she walked through the door of the plane, she turned, closed her eyes, and raised her hands. Frozen. Soaking in the sun. Then she twirled and disappeared. A beautiful disappearing.
Clay was next. Dressed in his new suit and shoes, he tipped his hat, shook my hand, and stared at the G5. He shook his head. “My first airplane ride.” Bones had paired him up with a specialist who was treating his particular strain of cancer. His chance of full recovery was good. Like all of us, Clay will die one day, but probably from old age.
“Catch a bit of a tailwind, and you’ll bump up against the speed of sound.”
“How fast is that?”
“Six seventy-five. Give or take. Depends on the air temperature.”
“Miles an hour?”
I nodded.
“You don’t say.”
He was enjoying himself. Maybe more than at any time in his recent memory. He picked at his teeth with a toothpick. “’Mazing.”
I patted him on the back. “Spring training starts soon.”
His eyes widened. “Yes, it do.”
“Got a favorite team?”
“The Yankees drafted me but traded me to the Dodgers ’fore I could get there.”
“It’s a short ride to LA. And they’ve got a pretty good team in Denver.”
He eyed the plane. “We take this thing?”
The Water Keeper Page 31