And her logical mind quickly responded, Nonsense! It’s the circumstances. You only think you do because you were in trouble and he came to your rescue, dummy. Like a knight on a big blue charger. In fact, wasn’t that what they used to call truckers? The Knights of the Road…?
The baby nestled below her breast stirred, arching her tiny body and shooting out one fist like a miniature pugilist. So that’s what she’s been doing, her mother thought, gazing down in teary adoration. No wonder her legs had been going numb.
She moved her legs experimentally and was pleased to find that they seemed to be in working order, although they felt as though they each weighed several hundred pounds. Conversely, the middle part of her seemed light as a feather, if a little loose and jiggly, like half-set gelatin. And, when she laid an exploratory hand on it, it was not nearly as flat as she’d hoped. The lower part of her torso, the part diapered in thick layers of towels, it seemed wisest not to disturb.
Soon, she thought. It was getting light. Help would be coming soon.
She watched the light turn from blue-gray to mauve, and to a beautiful shade of rose…and then to gold. And suddenly streaks of blinding radiance shot across the sky and frozen landscape, splashed like molten fire over the dashboard and front seats and onto the bed where she lay with her baby in a sleeping man’s arms.
She gasped at the sheer glory of it, and Jimmy Joe’s snoring instantly stopped. He lifted his head from the pillow beside hers, his eyes going first to the baby then to her face. Reassured, he propped himself on one elbow and frowned at the light.
“Wha’ time is it?”
“Morning,” said Mirabella huskily. “That’s all I know. Christmas morning.”
“Everything okay?”
She nodded, unable to take her eyes from his face. For a long, seemingly endless time he gazed back at her without speaking. Then he leaned down slowly and kissed her.
She’d never been kissed like that-never. His mouth was so firm and warm and soft; strength and sensitivity wrapped in satin. It felt so wonderful. It made her feel like crying-like a beautiful sunset, a touching movie, a sad song, tiny children singing. It was nourishment-food and drink-and warmth and shelter and loving arms all rolled into one incredibly sweet, impossibly lovely touch. She wanted it to last forever.
But of course it couldn’t. Her cheeks and eyelashes were wet when he lifted his head. She gazed at him through a silvery blur, trying to read the messages in his glowing brown eyes, finding tenderness and puzzlement and wonder and fear, knowing they must be reflections of hers. Her lips trembled as she waited for him to say something. Anything.
Her heart was hammering so loudly she could hear it. Or was it his?
But he’d suddenly gone still, listening as she was. And she knew it wasn’t thundering pulses she heard. They both closed their eyes and their bodies relaxed together as the silent beauty of the morning, and that fragile and precious moment, were shattered forever by the clatter of a helicopter’s rotors.
Chapter 12
“Attention, K man shoppers, there’s a blue-light special at mile marker…” “We got a bear convention goin‘ on-bears in the bushes, bears ever’where!”
I-4U-Tennessee
The helicopter threw a long blue shadow across a sheet of unblemished white as it hovered above the rest-stop parking lot. The snow was frozen so solid even the chopper’s rotors couldn’t stir it up, and it set down like a dragonfly alighting on a sheet of frosted crystal.
Jimmy Joe watched it from the wind-sheltered side of his truck, squinting into the just-risen sun and puffing out clouds of vapor. Being a Southern boy through and through, he was convinced air that cold could kill you, and he was trying his best to figure out how to extract enough oxygen from it to live on without actually letting it into his lungs.
When the chopper’s rotors had slowed to a lazy thunk-thunk beat, the door opened. Two men-one of them the pilot, wearing orange coveralls and a knit ski cap and carrying a paramedic’s kit, and the other an older guy in a fur-lined parka, a Stetson hat and earmuffs-jumped out and headed for the truck with their heads down, walking fast, half jogging. Both were wearing sunglasses. Jimmy Joe stepped forward to meet them, wishing he’d thought to put his on. The cold and the glare were making his eyes water.
The guy in the parka stuck out a mittened hand. He had a large cold-reddened nose and a thick brown mustache that seemed to spread across his face when he grinned. “Howdy. Mr. Starr-it sure is a pleasure to talk to you face-to-face for a change.” He laughed at the “Beg your pardon?” look on Jimmy Joe’s face. “Dr. Austin-I was on the other end of that phone relay last night. How’s ever‘body doin’ this mornin’?”
“Good-doin’ just fine,” Jimmy Joe mumbled. He nodded at the paramedic, who told him his name was Travis, shook his hand, then gestured toward his truck. “Been waitin’ for ya.”
He went to the passenger side and opened the door, stepped up and called softly, “Marybell? You ready for company?”
She was sitting up, swaddled from the waist down in his mother’s old quilt, the baby cradled in her arms. He saw that she’d brushed her hair and fastened the top and sides back from her face with a clip of some kind. She looked about sixteen years old, radiant and a little apprehensive, like a little girl getting ready to take her first trip on an airplane.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly. But her eyes clung to him as if for reassurance, pleading with him-for what, he didn’t know.
He stepped down and gestured for the doc and the EMT to go on in, wondering as he politely held the door for them why it was resentment he felt more than relief. As if they weren’t rescuers, but intruders. He felt like there was a primitive being inside him that wanted to be standing in front of that door snapping and snarling. Like a wolf, guarding his mate and their young in his den. His mate. His woman.
He heard the doctor sing out, “Well, hello there, little lady, how are you doin’ this mornin’? Let’s have a look at this pretty girl, here. You two all ready to go for a ride?” Then he slammed the door shut and turned away with his chest aching and his heart pounding.
He was pacing up and down alongside his truck, grinding his teeth and swinging his arms, too cold to think about anything except how to keep from freezing to death, when the door opened up again and Travis, the EMT, hopped out.
“You wanna give me a hand with the stretcher?” he called out as he loped off toward the chopper.
Jimmy Joe grunted, “Sure thing,” and took off after him.
“That’s one tough little ol’ gal,” Travis said as they were wrestling the basket stretcher out of the helicopter. “Sure is pretty, too.”
Jimmy Joe grunted. “Yeah, she is.”
“This your first baby?”
Jimmy Joe didn’t know quite how to answer that. He stammered around and finally decided it wasn’t worth explaining, so he mumbled, “Uh…no, I got a little boy-”
“No, I mean first one you ever delivered.”
Then he felt a little sheepish and had to grin. “Oh. Yeah, it sure is.”
“Yeah, well…it’s always a thrill. Always a miracle.” Travis bent down and picked up one end of the stretcher and Jimmy Joe got a grip on the other and they headed back to the truck at a jog-trot. Travis threw a look over his shoulder. “Must’ve been quite a night for you.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy Joe panted, “it sure was.” Quite a night. One he wondered if he was ever going to be able to get over. One he sure as heck knew he would never forget.
The cab of Jimmy Joe’s truck had suddenly gotten terribly crowded-full of noise and way too many strangers. Mirabella felt lost in all the confusion. She longed for the soft sounds of Christmas songs on the radio, Jimmy Joe’s snoring, the tiny squeaks Amy made when she nursed. She wished they could go back to the way it had been; just the three of them together, cocooned in the truck, isolated from the world and swaddled in intimacy and warmth, magic and-daringly her heart whispered it-love.
Now all of
that had been lost, the peace shattered, the cocoon stripped away. She felt jangled and panicky, lonely and unprepared. The world seemed to be spinning too fast, out of her control. She was bundled and lifted and settled and strapped, more like a parcel than a person. People talked around her and over and about her, never to her. She found herself retreating into dazed isolation, cloaked and protected by the paranoia of her newly awakened maternal instincts, clinging to her baby with primal ferocity, her eyes daring anyone to take her from her. Perhaps understanding, no one tried.
She looked for Jimmy Joe, desperately needing the reassurance of his sweet smile and kind eyes, his soft Georgia drawl saying, “There now…everything’s gonna be fine.” He was there, or at least his body was, helping to wrap her in layers of blankets and tuck her into the stretcher, bustling around collecting her belongings, making sure she had everything-her purse, her clothes, her shoes and overnight bag. She followed him with her eyes, silently begging him to look at her, to touch her, to reach out to her in some way that would let her know that the bond that had grown between them through that long, miraculous night was still there.
But he wouldn’t look at her. She couldn’t find him-the Jimmy Joe who’d held and stroked her, guided and sustained her, laughed and cried with her as he’d placed her newborn daughter in her arms. Where was he? Oh, God. Please, Jimmy Joe, I need you.
They were taking her to the waiting helicopter, Jimmy Joe at her head where she couldn’t see him, the man in the orange coveralls at her feet, the big man in the cowboy hat alongside. It was cold, so cold, but Mirabella hardly felt it. Amy was safe and warm, snug in her arms in a thick nest of blankets, and Jimmy Joe was there with her. She knew as long as he was there, she and her baby would be safe.
She felt the stretcher tilt as it was lifted into the helicopter. The doctor climbed in beside her, the man in the coveralls moved up to the pilot’s seat, and the air filled with wind and noise. Jimmy Joe was backing out of the open doorway.
Panic seized her. Struggling frantically, she managed to free a hand from the straps and blankets and fastenings and grab his shirtsleeve. “Jimmy Joe-”
“Yeah, I’m right here.” He wrapped her hand in both of his and she held on to him with all the strength in her body, as if she were dangling over a void and he was the rope. “Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll be in Amarillo in a little bit.”
“Please-” she gasped. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”
His inverted face hovered above hers, lined with strain and pinched and reddened with cold. But for the eyes, with their familiar glow of kindness, she would hardly have recognized it. His fogged breath mingled with hers as he smiled. “Sorry…wish I could. Gotta stay with my truck. I’m gonna be along in a little while. Listen, you’re gonna be just fine. You just take good care a‘that baby, now, y’hear?”
“Jimmy Joe-” Don’t leave me!
“Safe trip.” He leaned down and kissed her, quick and hard. She felt his hand slip from her grasp.
The helicopter door clanged shut. A mittened hand patted her shoulder and a kindly Texas voice said, “You just hold tight, now, honey. We’ll be there soon.”
Mirabella closed her eyes as her stomach gave a dreadful lurch. Don’t…leave…me.…
Jimmy Joe stood and watched the helicopter lift off. Watched it until it was just a speck in the sky. He felt as if a great big piece of himself had just been ripped off him and was flying away from him. And if he lived to be a hundred, he wasn’t ever going to be able fo forget the look in Mirabella’s eyes when he’d left her alone in that chopper.
A truck crawling by on the interstate saw him standing there and blasted an airhorn greeting. Jimmy Joe lifted his hand and waved, then started walking back toward his big blue Kenworth, still idling faithfully away as it had through that long, cold night. She looked a mite road-weary, he thought, covered with grime and snow sludge, mud flaps crusted with frozen mud. He promised himself the first truck wash he came to after he got out of this mess, he was going to pull in and give her a nice bath. Himself, too, while he was at it.
And they were both going to be needing some fuel pretty soon; the Kenworth’s tanks might have a few more miles left in them, but he was running on empty. The snacks he’d gotten from the vending machines were all gone, except for a halfeaten package of peanut-butter crackers. He ate those and washed them down with warm 7-Up, then tidied the sleeper as best he could and disposed of the trash. After a safety check of his rig and a last visit to the rest stop’s freezing-cold toilet facilities, he was finally ready to roll.
First, though, he turned up the volume on his CB radio and took down the mike, then waited until he got a lull in the conversation. “Uh…this is the Big Blue Starr,” he drawled. “I’m over here at the rest stop at the twenty-eight-mile stick… Gon’ be joinin’ you here in a minute. I’d ’preciate it if you’d give me some room… Come on.”
As it seemed to be more and more often these days, it was a female voice that came back to him. “You got it, Big Blue. Sure am happy to hear from ya again. How’s the lady and her baby doin’? Ever’body okay?”
“Doin’ just fine. Chopper picked ’em up this mornin’. They’re headin’ for Amarillo as we speak.”
“We sure are glad to hear that. We been prayin’ for ya. My husband Tom, here, and me, we’re drivin’ team. Got two little babies ourselves, over there in Enid, Oklahoma. We’re still hopin’ to get home in time to hug ’em and tell ‘em Merry Christmas, but…I don’ know. If this don’t clear up pretty soon…”
“How’s it lookin’ over that way?”
“Uh…pickin’ up a little, they tell me. Looks like they finally got the overpasses sanded, anyways. Sun’s gettin’ up there now, though. Gon’ start gettin’ slick, here, pretty soon.”
“Thanks,” said Jimmy Joe. “I’ll watch it.”
“You do that. Pass on our good wishes for us, if you see the lady and that little baby again, would ya? ’Preciate it.”
“I’ll do that. Y’all have a safe trip, now.”
“Back at ya. Ten-four.”
Jimmy Joe hung up the mike and put his rig in gear, sending up a little prayer as the first of eighteen wheels bit into unbroken snow. He churned down the on-ramp and a hole opened up for him. He eased the blue Kenworth into it and once more became part of the long caravan of trucks ploughing steadily eastward.
It felt real good to be on the road again, and heading for home at last. But for some reason, without Mirabella and the baby in it the cab seemed awfully quiet to him. And empty.
It was past midday by the time Jimmy Joe rolled into Amarillo. He’d made one stop, at a gas station on old Route 66 just west of Vega, where he’d bought a few gallons of diesel and shaken the hand of the man whose voice, coming through on the radio emergency channel, had guided him through the long night just past.
Turned out the fellow, whose name was Riggs, had a pretty good garage and a tow truck besides, so he’d given him some money and Mirabella’s car keys and asked him to go pick up the silver Lexus as soon as the roads cleared up enough. Riggs had wanted him to stay and have a bite of breakfast, but hungry as he was, he was even more anxious to be on his way. So he’d settled for a cup of coffee and a quart of chocolate milk, and then he was on the road again.
On the outskirts of Amarillo, the going got a little easier. The bright sunshine hadn’t warmed things up much-just enough to melt a thin coat of water on top of the ice that made it about as slick as grease. But at least the overpasses and the on- and off-ramps had been sanded. And the streets leading to the hospital had been well plowed. It looked like about half of the parking lot had been scraped clear, too, and the snow pushed up in a pile over to one side.
He parked his rig next to the pile and set the brakes, and was indulging in a good stretch when he noticed that the parking lot seemed to be an awfully busy place, considering it was Christmas Day. He noticed several TV-news trucks and vans with satellite antennas sticking out all
over them.
“Wonder what’s goin’ on?” he muttered to himself as he climbed out of the cab. He hoped it wasn’t some sort of disaster or other. Happening on Christmas-that sure would be a shame.
The hospital’s front entrance and main waiting area were all a-tangle with people, quite a few of them carrying video cameras, the rest standing around drinking coffee out of plastic cups and looking out-of-sorts. Several of them kind of stared at Jimmy Joe when he walked in, which was a reminder to him that it had been a couple of days since he’d showered and shaved. He was glad he’d put on a clean shirt and his good boots and changed his trucker’s vest for his fleece-lined Levi’s jacket, but he knew from the glimpse.he’d caught of himself in the glass doors coming in, with his two-day beard and bloodshot eyes, that he was no prize. On the other hand, it was Mirabella he’d come to see, not a bunch of strangers, and he had an idea she would forgive him if he looked a little rough around the edges.
He eased his way through the crowd with a few “Beg your pardons” and “‘Scuse me, ma’ams” and made it up to the reception desk, where a sweet-faced, gray-haired lady wearing a pink pinafore was trying her best to ignore all the hustle and bustle.
She flicked him.a glance. and said, “May I help you?” in a tone of voice that warned him she would rather not.
He cleared his throat and leaned as close to her as he could across the countertop so he wouldn’t have to shout his business to the whole world over the noise. “Uh…yes, ma‘am, I’m lookin’ for the maternity department?”
The lady in pink folded her hands together as if she was about to say her prayers and gave him a look that wasn’t much warmer than the temperature outside. “Of course you are. And the patient’s name?”
One Christmas Knight Page 18