The Eyes of the Doe

by Patricia Taylor Wells

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know. Your mother didn’t want me to tell you. She was afraid you couldn’t keep it from Jake. We’re both afraid that if Jake thinks he’s going to die, he might stop fighting altogether. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’ve got to promise me you won’t say anything.”

  I turned and looked into Holly’s eyes. I wasn’t sure if could trust her but decided I had no choice.

  “Jake’s cancer is very aggressive,” I continued. “It’s spreading from his lymph system, attacking all his organs and tissue. I still don’t know how this could have happened without our knowing about it sooner.”

  Holly leaned against the wall with her arms folded tight across her chest. She had turned very pale and had lowered her head. I thought maybe she was about to faint.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said, looking up.

  “It’s like this.” I sighed. “We’ve been given two choices and neither one of them are any good. If we do nothing, Jake won’t be around very long. There’s another option, but it’s risky. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t know.”

  “What kind of option?” Holly asked.

  “Chemotherapy. I feel like we’re being pushed into this, but it’s the only chance Jake has. It’s not going to cure him, but it could extend his life. Time is the only hope we have. They’re coming up with new treatments every day.”

  “What does chemo—whatever you called it, do anyway?”

  “It attacks cancer cells.”

  “Then why can’t it cure Jake?”

  “It’s not that simple, honey.” I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to say it. I blamed myself just as much as I blamed Jewell for not paying more attention to Jake. If we had caught this sooner, maybe I wouldn’t be here trying to explain it to Holly.

  “I really don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” I admitted.

  Holly seemed lost in thought. Her face had grown ashen again and she rocked nervously on her heels.

  “I think you should let Jake come home,” she finally said. “That’s what Jake would want.”

  “Well, I don’t know what Jake wants,” I said, “but I’d do anything to keep him alive. I sure as hell don’t know what the treatments are going to do to him, but I don’t think we have much choice.”

  “Then why take such a big risk?” Holly demanded.

  “This isn’t your decision!” I snapped. “You can’t possibly understand what your mother and I are going through. I feel the same way I felt when you came down with polio. I would have done anything to save you. Look at you now. Everything we did was worth it. Miracles happen every day. We only need one. I keep praying for one—just one.”

  “Brother Howard says everything happens according to God’s will.”

  “I don’t want to hear any talk like that. I can’t believe in a God who would want my son to die. God doesn’t sit around in the sky deciding who’s going to live and who’s going to die. We don’t have any control over what happens, but it’s up to us to do something about it.”

  “Then your mind is already made up?”

  “I suppose it is,” I replied solemnly. “If I gave up, I could never forgive myself. If I thought that there was even the slightest chance to save Jake and I threw it away, my life wouldn’t be worth living.”

  “Well, I think you’re wrong,” Holly retorted. “I think you and Mother are very wrong. You should let Jake come home. Please don’t let him die in the hospital. That’s not what Jake wants.”

  I looked at my daughter, knowing I was about to betray what little trust she had in me. All Jewell and I wanted was to keep Jake alive, no matter what. As long as there was air coming out of his lungs, we still had him. I had to do everything I could to keep him breathing. I wasn’t about to leave the fate of my only son to God’s will. God’s will. God’s goddamned will!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Every tragedy has tentacles that reach far beyond its obvious victims.

  Bibi

  CULLEN AND I drove thirty-five miles each day to Children’s Hospital, hoping we could relieve Jewell of her bedside vigil. The only way she would let us help, though, was to stay overnight with Holly so neither she nor Ross had to leave Jake’s side. They looked so tired. One of them would sleep on the cot while the other dozed in the recliner at the foot of Jake’s bed.

  Cullen and I married the year before Holly was born, so both she and Jake thought of Cullen as their grandfather. I was very young when I married my first husband, Leland Anders, which was probably why we ended up parting company. I’d have never married him in the first place if my mother hadn’t passed away so young. My father wasted no time in remarrying. His new wife, a widow with three children of her own, made it clear that I was in the way. I left home the day I turned fifteen. I was walking down a dirt road with everything I owned in a cardboard suitcase when I met up with Leland carting a load of melons into town.

  “Where’re you going, Missy?” Leland asked as he reined in his two mules.

  “Nowhere,” I said, squinting to keep the sun out of my eyes.

  “Well, hop up.” Leland held out his hand and helped me into the wagon.

  “You can drop me off at Miss Thompson’s if you like,” I said. Miss Thompson took in boarders for extra pay.

  “I bet you don’t have a nickel on you,” Leland commented.

  “I’ll do fine.”

  “Miss Thompson’s not going to let you stay for free.”

  “I’ll pay her back when I get a job.”

  “You could marry me and not have to worry so much,” Leland proposed.

  “I guess that would be all right.”

  That evening, Leland took me back home and asked Papa for my hand. Papa wanted to know if Leland had spoiled me. I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then I remembered him using that same term when talking about Mattie Lou Owens. She and her mother had disappeared for a while, supposedly off to visit an aunt in Lake Charles, Louisiana. When they returned, Mattie Lou had a baby brother. Papa said the man who spoiled Mattie Lou should have been fed to the alligators in Calcasieu Parish.

  Papa told Leland that I didn’t know how to do anything when it came to cooking or cleaning, but Leland still wanted me. The following Saturday, I wore the same dress my mother wore when she married Papa. It wasn’t much of a wedding, but it was in a church and that’s all that mattered.

  I soon found out being married to a farmer was a hard life. Henry was born our first year together and Martha less than fourteen months later. I would have called it quits after these two, but I ended up pregnant with Jewell before I could figure out a way to leave a husband who was ten years older than me and could barely scratch a living. I didn’t know how to tell Leland I’d had enough of him and farming. He was a good man, but each time I looked at the plain wedding band I wore, I realized he couldn’t give me all the things I wanted: a diamond ring with matching studs, an upright player piano, and an automatic washing machine.

  JEWELL HAS NEVER forgiven me for leaving her father, but I have never regretted living the easier, more agreeable life I now shared with Cullen. He was the one who insisted that we drive over to the hospital every day when we found out Jake wasn’t coming home any time soon. Jake had an infection and was hemorrhaging. Now that chemotherapy was underway, the chief concern was making sure Jake’s red blood cells weren’t overwhelmed if the bleeding continued.

  “Your mother’s going to make herself sick if she doesn’t come home and get some rest,” I said to Holly as we drove out of the hospital parking lot that evening. I would have preferred to sleep in my own bed tonight, but someone needed to see after Holly, poor child.

  “She’s not about to leave Jake,” Holly stated flatly.

  “I know, but it would do her good to get away from that hospital once in a while. I don’t know how she sleeps up there with those nurses coming in at all hours of the night.”

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sp; “I wish Mother and Daddy would stop all of this.” Holly pouted. “I don’t like what they’re doing to Jake.”

  “They’re doing everything they can,” I said.

  “The chemotherapy isn’t working. All it’s done is made him sick.”

  “Lord, I hope you know better than to say anything like that to your mother. She’s had just about all she can bear for the time being.”

  “Has she?” Holly’s voice rose up. “Then why is she putting Jake through this? Why is she putting all of us through this?”

  “For goodness sakes, give it some time.”

  “He’s not getting better,” Holly insisted. “It’s pretty plain to me that he isn’t.”

  Holly was right. Jake’s skin was as pallid as old sheets hung out to dry. The thought of his hair eventually falling out due to the treatments distressed me. Nothing would signal he had cancer more than that.

  “I know this is hard on you—life is hard.” I tried my best to discourage Holly’s pessimism. “Maybe God didn’t want us to have it easy.”

  “I never knew God wanted us to suffer,” Holly scoffed.

  “Suffering only makes us better Christians,” I countered as I thought about the child I had lost—my precious little Henry. He died before Jewell was born, when I was still carrying her. It was an accident. Henry fell into Miller’s Pond and drowned before I knew he had wandered off by himself. The next few months were the loneliest ones of my life. I had no one to talk to; no one who knew what was going on in my head. Leland was gone from sunup to sundown, out there plowing his fields while I had nothing but time on my hands and another child on the way. I thought about things long and hard while I sat around blaming myself for what had happened. Then one day I figured it out. God had His reasons—reasons that no one could ever understand. You didn’t ask God why; you just accepted whatever came your way.

  Despite this revelation, I had always felt uncomfortable touting myself as a devout Christian. Years ago, the Baptist Church had closed its doors to me and Leland for chaperoning a dance at the high school. Why those church deacons thought they had a right to poke their noses into our business was beyond me. I guess you could say that I was too much of a Southerner and a hypocrite for being wary of what townsfolk might say about me. I pleaded with the deacons of First Baptist Church to reconsider their ruling, but none of them were eager to align themselves with a sinner.

  Once our membership had been revoked, the only church that would welcome us into their midst was the colored congregation about ten miles south of Land of Goshen. The members of the Little Flock Baptist Church met in an abandoned farmhouse located off a back country road. Even on the hottest day with little air stirring from the opened windows, the coloreds were jubilant in their worship, clapping their hands and swaying as the choir sang praises to the Lord. The service always began at eleven in the morning and if Reverend Ellis got too fired up, it could last until almost two. No one dared leave early or without dropping one-tenth of their weekly earnings into the collection plate. If anyone missed a Sunday, the reverend and his entire family would show up at their house sometime the following week to check on them and stay for supper.

  Holly’s frustration with all that was happening in her life didn’t surprise me. She was still naïve enough to think that being a good Christian would insulate her from life’s pain. There was no use in my trying to tell her anything she wasn’t ready to hear.

  No one said anything the rest of the way as we rode past neighborhoods where red and green Christmas lights trimmed ordinary houses, transforming them into holiday honky-tonks. Wooden reindeer cutouts flew from the rooftops of ranch-style houses that had no chimneys. On the ground, mangers surrounded by plastic shepherds with light bulbs in their hollow bellies cradled little girls’ dolls disguised as Baby Jesus.

  My daughter’s home was the darkest house on the street. Ross usually strung colored lights under the eaves and on the huge cedar next to the garage. Even Jake’s hospital room was cheerier than the gloom that met us as we pulled into the driveway.

  Earlier in the week, Mrs. Lake had brought a miniature artificial tree with multicolored lights and tiny ornaments to the hospital. Jewell had placed it on the table beside Jake’s bed. Each day, Jewell and Ross added to the list of things Jake wanted for Christmas: a train set, a model airplane, a microscope, a racecar set with elevated tracks, and a new baseball mitt. Already, the tracks of a Lionel train looped under his bed and around the recliner where Ross usually slept. The hospital staff patiently stepped back and forth over the tracks, never complaining as the engine hissed and shrieked while chugging its way past the sorrow that lurked around each bend.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Forgotten dreams are like embers just waiting to catch fire again.

  Eric

  MIKE AND I were sitting in the back of the bus when Holly got on. It was Friday afternoon and all I wanted to do was get home.

  “She’s headed this way.” I nudged Mike with my elbow.

  “I hope she doesn’t stumble and break her leg,” Mike snickered.

  “Shhh, you numskull.” Jake had punched me pretty hard once when I called Holly a cripple. He told me I could call her anything but that. I didn’t know at the time she’d had polio. I was just making fun of her because she hobbled a bit.

  Holly plopped down on the seat in front of us, the one where Larry and Frank usually sat. She turned sideways so she could face us.

  “Hey Mike and Eric,” Holly greeted. “Jake’s coming home tomorrow, so I need you to help me with something.”

  “No kidding?” Mike sounded just as surprised as I was.

  “Just one night,” Holly added. “Anyway, there’s a tree over on the vacant lot, the one on Montclair. I want you to help me chop it down.”

  “Are you crazy?” I asked.

  “No, I’m serious,” Holly said. “I want to surprise Jake—you know, have it all decorated when he walks through the door.”

  “Why don’t you just go buy one?” Mike questioned.

  “I don’t have any money or anyone to take me,” Holly replied. “Besides, this tree is perfect.”

  Neither Mike nor I had ever liked Holly. She was too bossy. We put up with her because she was Jake’s sister. We reluctantly agreed to meet her around four. I went home first and grabbed my camp saw and Boy Scout axe.

  When we got to the lot, Holly was standing next to an evergreen full of dark green prickly needles. She smiled and waved us over.

  “This is the one,” she said.

  “How do you know someone doesn’t own this tree?” I began to hedge. I looked around to see if any neighbors were watching us.

  “No one owns it, you ninny. This lot is still for sale.” Holly sounded confident.

  “I’m gonna have to explain what I was doing with my axe and saw when I get home. Why do you have to have this tree? They all look the same to me.”

  “This tree is perfect. Besides, no one has to know where it came from. It’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. I want this tree for Jake.”

  “I don’t know,” Mike wavered.

  “If you don’t hurry, it’ll be dark.”

  “Stop your whining,” I said, wishing Mike and I had never given Scout’s oath that we would help her out.

  “We’re doing this for Jake, not me.” Holly looked as if she were about to cry. “We have to have this tree. I would have never asked either of you to help if I’d known you were such sissies. Here, give me your axe. I’ll chop it down myself.”

  “You wouldn’t even know how to use an axe! Oh, don’t start crying. We’ll do it.” I looked at Mike and shook my head.

  “If we get caught,” Mike told Holly, “you’re the one who made us do it. We’re not taking the blame for this.”

  “You’re the biggest scaredy-cats in the world.” She rolled her eyes at us. “Why did you say you would help me if you were so afraid of getting caught?”

  I wasn’t about to let some girl call me
a coward, so I started hacking off the lower branches of her perfect tree. I then notched its trunk with my axe. After several skillful cuts, the tree came down in a clean, gentle fall. Mike helped me prop the stump end on top of a nearby log so I could level it with my camp saw. The saw’s sharp teeth bit into the scaly trunk—spitting dust as it chewed off the wedge honed by the axe.

  “Well, that’s done,” I said, running my fingers across the smooth grain of the wood. “Let’s get this tree home. Mike, you grab the middle and I’ll take the heavy end.”

  “I can carry your tools,” Holly offered.

  “Just leave them. I’ll come back and get them.” I didn’t want her anywhere near my axe or saw. “You can lead the way.”

  Mike and I followed Holly’s awkward walk home, parading past the houses on Laurel Lane. She tried to get us to sing Christmas carols with her, but we refused. Just when we thought we were in the clear, Mrs. Edgar came out to get her mail. She lived across the street from Holly.

  “Now where on earth did you get that tree?” she inquired.

  “We found it in the street,” I hollered back. “It must have fallen off a truck. We’re gonna decorate it for Jake’s homecoming.”

  “Oh, is Jake coming home?” Mrs. Edgar called back, still eyeing us suspiciously. Mike and Holly were trying not to laugh.

  “I can’t believe you told her we found this tree in the street,” Mike chided me. “She’ll probably call our parents, maybe even the cops.”

  “No one’s gonna pay attention to that old lady.”

  By the time we got the tree in the house, the sun had dropped below the horizon. It was too dark to go back and get the tools I’d left behind.

  “I hope nobody steals my axe and camp saw,” I said.

  “Who would want that stuff, anyway?” Holly asked.

  “Oh forget it,” I said, irritated that she thought my tools were unimportant now that she had the tree she wanted.