When Crickets Cry

by Charles Martin

"Before breakfast or after dinner?"

  That stumped her, so she scratched her head, looked up and down the sidewalk and then nodded. "Before breakfast."

  "One hundred seventy-four pounds."

  She looked at me another second. "What size shoe do you wear?"

  "European or American?"

  She pressed her lips together and tried to hide the smile again; then she put her hands on her hips. "American."

  "Eleven."

  She looked at my feet, apparently wondering to herself if I was telling her the truth. Then she straightened her dress, stood up straight, and pressed her chest out over her toes. "Well, I'm seven. I weigh forty-five pounds. I wear a size 6, and I'm three feet, ten inches tall."

  My mind whispered again: 0 tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide.

  "So?" I asked.

  "You're bigger than me."

  I laughed. `Just a bit."

  "But-" She stuck her finger in the air like she was checking the direction of the wind. "If I get a new heart, my doctor says I might grow some more."

  I nodded slowly. "Chances are real good."

  "And you know what I'd do with it?"

  "The heart or the few extra inches?"

  She thought for a moment. "Both."

  "What?"

  "I'd be a missionary like my mom and dad."

  The thought of a transplant recipient traipsing through the hot jungles of Africa, hundreds of miles from either a steady diet of medication, preventive medical care, or anyone knowledgeable enough to administer both, was an impossibility that I knew better than to hope for or believe in. "They'd probably be real proud of that."

  She squinted up at me. "They're in heaven."

  I said nothing for a moment and then offered, "Well, I'm sure they miss you."

  She pressed her thumb into the spout of the cooler and began filling my cup again. "Oh, I miss them too, but I'll see them again." She gave me the cup, then held both hands in the air like she was balancing a scale. "In about eighty or ninety years."

  I drank and calculated the impossibility.

  She looked up at me again, curiosity pouring out of the cracks around her eyes. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

  I drank the last sip and looked down at her. "Do you do this to all your customers?"

  She placed her hands behind her back and unconsciously clicked her heels together like Dorothy in Oz. "Do what?"

  "Ask so many questions."

  "Well ... yeah, I guess so."

  I bent closer, drawing my eyes closer to hers. "My dear, we are the music-makers and we are the dreamers of the dreams."

  "Mr. Shakespeare again?"

  "Nope. Willy Wonka."

  She laughed happily.

  "Well," I said, "thank you, Annie Stephens."

  She curtsied again and said, "Good-bye, Mr. Reese. Please come back."

  "I will."

  I crossed the street and picked through my keys to unlock my Suburban. Key in hand, I stared through the windshield, remembering all the others just like her and the magnetic hope that bubbled forth from each, a hope that no power in hell or on earth could ever extinguish.

  And there, I remembered that I was once good at something, and that I once knew love. The thought echoed inside me: I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; it is melted within Me.

  A strong breeze fell down through the hills and blew east up Savannah Street. It ripped along the old brick buildings, up the sidewalk, through squeaky weather vanes and melodious wind chimes and across Annie's lemonade stand, where it picked up her Styrofoam cup and scattered almost ten dollars in change and currency across the street. She hopped off her folding chair and began chasing the paper money into the intersection.

  I saw it too late, and she never saw it at all.

  A bread delivery truck traveling right past me down South Main caught a green light and accelerated, creating a backfire and puff of white smoke. I could hear its radio playing bluegrass and see the driver stuffing a Twinkie into his mouth as he turned through the intersection and held up his hand to block the sun. Then he must have seen the yellow of Annie's dress. He slammed on the brakes, locked up the back tires, and began spinning and hopping sideways. The farther the truck turned sideways, the more the tires hopped atop the asphalt.

  Annie turned to face the noise and froze. She dropped the money in her hand, which fluttered across the street like monarch butterflies, and lost control of her bladder. She never made a peep because the tightness in her throat squelched any sound.

  The driver screamed, "Oh, sweet Jesus, Annie!" He turned the wheel as hard as it would turn and sent the back bumper of the truck into the right front quarter panel of a parked Honda Accord. The truck deflected off the Honda just before the flat side of the panel truck hit Annie square in the chest. The noise of her body hitting the hollow side of that truck sounded like a cannon.

  She managed to raise one hand, taking most of the blow, and began rolling backward like a yellow bowling ball, her hat sailing in one direction, her legs and body flying in the other. She came to rest with a thud on the other side of the street beneath a Ford pickup, her left forearm snapped in two like a toothpick. The tail end of that easterly breeze caught the bottom of her dress and blew it up over her face. She lay unmoving, pointed downhill, her yellow dress now spotted red.

  I got to her first, followed quickly by the lady behind the cash register, who was crazy-eyed and screaming uncontrollably. Within two seconds a crowd amassed.

  Annie's eyes were closed, her frame limp, and her skin translucent and white. Her tongue had collapsed into her airway and was choking her, causing her face to turn blue while her body faded to sheet white. Unsure whether her spinal cord had sustained injury, I held her neck still and used my handkerchief to pull her tongue forward, clearing her airway and allowing her lungs to suck in air. I knew even the slightest movement of her neck risked further injury to her spine, if indeed her spine was injured, but I had to clear the airway. No air, no life. Given my options, I chose.

  With Annie's chest rising and falling, I checked the pulse along her carotid artery, and with the other hand unclipped my flashlight and lit her pupils. While I watched her eyes, I stuck the flashlight in my mouth, stripped the Polar heart monitor from my chest, and placed the transmitter across her sternum. The pulse reading on my watch immediately changed from 62 to 156. I felt for the point of maximal impulse and then percussed the borders of her heart by tapping with my two hands and discovered what I already knew-her heart was nearly 50 percent bigger than it ought to be.

  The lady from the cash register saw me place my hands around Annie's prepubescent chest and slapped me hard across the face. "Get your hands off her, you sick pervert!"

  I didn't have time to explain, so I held the transmitter in place and kept monitoring Annie's eyes. Cash-register Lady saw Annie's pupils and her swollen tongue and squatted down next to Annie. She jerked the necklace off the girl's neck, pouring the tiny contents of the pill container across Annie's stomach and sending something else shiny, maybe gold, beneath the truck, lost in the muck alongside the gutter. She grabbed two pills and reached to place them beneath Annie's tongue. Keeping one hand on Annie's neck, and my eyes trained on Annie, I grabbed the woman's hand, clasped my fingers about hers, and spoke calmly. "If you place those in her mouth, you'll kill her."

  The woman's eyes lit up and the panic rose, bulging the veins in her neck. She was strong and nearly pulled her hand away, but I held tight and continued to watch Annie.

  "Get your hand off me. You'll kill her." She looked at the crowd that had formed around us. "He's killing her! He's gonna kill Annie! "

  Two big men in faded overalls and John Deere baseball hats, who had been eating at the cafe, stepped toward me.

  "Mister, you better git yer hands off'n that little girl. We knows Annie, but we ain't knowin' you."

  He was nearly twice my size, and this was no time for words, but
I was the only one who knew this. Holding tight to the woman's hand, I turned and kicked the bigger of the two squarely in the groin, sending him to his toes and then his knees.

  The second man put his huge paw on my shoulder and said, "Fella, tha's my brother and you shouldn'ta done that."

  With my free hand, I drilled him as hard as I could square in the gut, which was no small target, and he too dropped, gasping and blowing his breakfast across the sidewalk.

  I turned to the woman, who was still screaming and pleading with the crowd. "He's gonna kill her! Annie's dying! For God's sake!"

  This was getting worse. I pried open her hand with my other, but made no attempt to take the pills. I looked her in the eyes and said calmly, "Use half-of one."

  She looked confused and unable to process.

  The bigger brother had made it to his knees and was about to put a hand on me, when I kicked him solidly in the gut, but not hard enough to break a rib.

  She looked down at Annie and at the tractor twins at my feet. Her face told me that whatever I was telling her was not equating with what she had either read or been told in the past.

  "But ... ," she started.

  I nodded reassuringly. "Start with half, then let's monitor. If you place that much nitroglycerin beneath that child's tongue, her pressure will drop so low that we'll never get it back up." I let go of her hand. "Use half."

  The woman bit the pill in half, spitting out one half like the top of a musket load and placing the other beneath Annie's tongue. Annie was conscious; her eyes were having difficulty focusing, and her arm hung like that of a string puppet. There was a lot going on around me-people, horns, and a distant siren-but I was trained on three things: pulse, pupils, and airway.

  The nitro dissolved and color soon filled Annie's cheeks-the result of expanded blood vessels, increased blood flow, and oxygen to the extremities.

  The woman spoke softly. "Annie? Annie?" She patted Annie's hand. "Hold on, baby. Help's coming. Hold on. They're coming. I can hear them now."

  Annie nodded and tried to smile. Her pulse had quickened slightly but remained somewhat erratic.

  While the siren grew closer, I gauged how long it would take them to arrive, diagnose and stabilize, and then transport. That meant Annie was about twelve minutes from the emergency room.

  With Annie blinking and looking at the people around her, I spoke again to the cashier. "Now, the other half."

  Annie opened her mouth, and the woman placed the other half beneath her tongue. When that had dissolved, I pulled my own vial out of my pocket, emptied its contents, and handed her one small baby aspirin.

  "Now this."

  She did as instructed. I unclasped the watch end of my heart rate monitor and re-clasped it about Annie's wrist. Even on the last hole, it was loose.

  While the sirens grew closer, I looked at the woman across from me and pointed at the watch and the transmitter across Annie's chest. "This goes with that. It's making a record of what's going on with her heart. The ER doc, if he's any good, will know what to do with it."

  She nodded and pushed Annie's sweat and mud-caked hair out of her eyes and behind her ears.

  The paramedics arrived ten seconds later and jumped alongside me. Seeing me in control, they first looked at me.

  I wasted no time. "Blunt trauma. Flail segment left chest wall, cleared airway, spontaneous respiration is 37. Felt crepitus, suggesting subcutaneous emphysema, suspicious of partial pneumothorax left side."

  The young EMT looked at me with a dazed expression on his face.

  I explained, "I think she dropped a lung."

  He nodded, and I continued, "Heart rate 155, but irregular. Brief LOC, now GCS 12."

  He interrupted me. "She had her bell rung."

  I continued, "She's had 0.2 sublingual nitro times two, five minutes apart." I pointed to her midsternal chest scar. "Post open-heart. Possibly, twelve months ago. And"-I looked at my watch-"polar heart rate monitor in place and recording for seven minutes."

  He nodded, stepped in, and began placing an oxygen mask over her mouth.

  Behind me, the tractor twins sat wide-eyed and openmouthed. Having made sense of me, they made no attempt to pull me away. And that was good. Because I had the feeling that had they really wanted to, they could have. Surprise had been my asset, and it was gone.

  The medic monitored Annie's pupils, told her to breathe normally, and began wrapping the blood pressure cuff around her right biceps, while the second paramedic returned with a hard collar and a backboard. Two minutes later, careful not to aggravate her arm, they had inserted an IV with saline fluids to help elevate her pressure, loaded her into the ambulance, sat Aunt Cici alongside, and were driving toward the Rabun County Hospital. As they shut the door, her aunt was stroking Annie's hair and whispering in her ear.

  While the street cleared and police questioned the driver of the panel truck, the locals milled along the sidewalks, hands in pockets, shaking their heads and pointing up toward the intersection and down into the wind.

  I turned to the two guys behind me and extended a hand to help the first up. "No hard feelings?"

  The bigger of the two took my hand, and I strained to help him up.

  He pointed toward the ambulance. "We thought you 'as goin' to hurt Annie."

  My eyes followed the ambulance out of sight. I spoke almost to myself, "No sir. Not hardly." I helped the other to his feet, and the two walked off shaking their heads, straightening their caps, and adjusting the straps on their overalls.

  Behind me, an older gentleman, wearing a brimmed hat and Carhartt overalls, and whose boots smelled of diesel fuel, mumbled, "When's that girl gonna get a break?" He spat with precision, a straight stream of black juice into the gutter. "Of all the people in this town, why her? Life just ain't fair. 'Tain't fair a'tall." He spat again, staining the street, and stepped off down the sidewalk.

  When the crowd thinned, I crept alongside the curb, found what I was looking for, and slipped it into my pocket. It was worn and had something printed on the back side. The sound of the siren had faded into the distance, and on the air were the smells of cinnamon, peach cobbler, barbecue, and diesel exhaust. And maybe the hint of Confederate jasmine. As I drove away, a line formed at the water cooler jug as people silently dropped in bills on their way back to work.

  Chapter 2

  ine months passed before I found the key. She had placed it in the bottom of a wooden box that I'd had since childhood, beneath a tattered and dusty copy of Tennyson. The name of the bank was printed on the side of the key chain, as was the number of the box.

  Charlie and I drove to the bank together. The teller fetched a manager, who checked my ID, led us into a small room with a table and four chairs, and disappeared. He returned quickly with an ashen face and some papers for me to sign. I did, and he disappeared again, reappearing a few moments later with a small locked box. He left, pulling the curtain behind him while Charlie sat quietly, hands on knees, posture perfect, waiting patiently. I inserted the key and turned it. The click turned Charlie's head. I flipped open the top, and inside sat three letters, all addressed to me. The handwriting was unmistakable.

  The front of the first letter read To be opened now. The second read After one year. And the third After two years. I held the first in my hands, ran my finger beneath the flap, and pulled out two pages. The first sheet was a copy of the beneficiary assignment page for a $100,000 whole-life insurance policy that Emma's father had taken out on her when she was just a child. Evidently he had acquired it before anyone knew about her condition, and neither of them had ever told me about it. The second page was a letter. I sat down in the chair next to Charlie and started. Reese, if you're reading this, then it didn't take. That means I am gone, and you are alone ...

  My eyes blurred, my face grew numb, and I crumbled like a house of cards. Charlie and an older security guard carried me out of the bank and placed me on a park bench where I tucked myself into a fetal ball and shook for nearly an
hour.

  Later that day, I finished the letter. Then I read it again, and again. Knowing she had written it in advance was a stone in my stomach. At the end of the letter she'd written: Reese, don't keep this letter. I know you, don't live that way. Set it free. Let it catch a tender breeze and sail away like Ulysses did so many times when we were kids.

  I closed my eyes and could feel her frail, almost translucent, palm on my face, searching to strengthen me-strength despite such weakness.

  Obediently I traced and cut a thin pine board, drilled and tapped in the mast-a balsam dowel-folded the letter, threaded the mast through it to form a sail, glued a one-inch candle to the oak board beneath the letter, and doused the board around it in lighter fluid. I lit the candle and shoved it off into the gentle but wide current of the Tallulah. It floated away, fifty yards, then a hundred, where finally the candle burned down, lit the fluid that had puddled around it, and ignited the entire thing. The blaze climbed five or six feet in the air, a thin stream of ash and white smoke climbed higher, and then the small ship turned, tilted sideways, disappeared beneath the bubbles, and sank almost eighty feet, coming to rest on the long-ago buried town of Burton at the bottom of the lake.

  I counted the days until the first anniversary, woke before the sun, and flew down to the dock, where I ripped open the envelope, wrapped my face in the letter, and breathed. I devoured every word, every hint of her smell. I imagined the small twitches in the way her mouth would have shaped and formed the words, the tilt of her neck, and the invitation behind her eyes. I could hear her voice, then her whisper, just below the breeze off the lake.

  I spent the day looking out over the lake, running my fingers along the lines of the letter, rewriting it a hundred times, knowing her hand had made the same movements. Finally, at dark, I cut another board, secured the mast, doused the bow and stern, and shoved her off. The single light disappeared into the darkness, finally igniting into a floating inferno almost two hundred yards away. Then, without warning, the flame toppled and disappeared like a flaming arrow shot across the wall.