The Pirate Queen

by Patricia Hickman

  “What on earth?”

  “Turner called. It’s Bender. He woke up,” said Saphora.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He was so sure, Marcy. Excited sure.”

  “This is a resurrection. I prayed that power down on him.”

  “Whatever it is, I just can’t believe it. My head’s spinning. I can’t wait to see my husband, Marcy.”

  “That’s a whole ’nother resurrection. Did you call Gwennie?”

  “I’m calling now. They’re out somewhere on a date. Probably down by the marina.”

  As it happened, Gwennie and Luke were at the Marina Bistro. They drove and met them at the edge of town. Saphora turned on the inside car light and brought down the window. “Who’s going?” she asked. Gwennie kissed Luke good night and joined her mother and Marcy.

  Saphora felt as if she drove in slow motion. She checked the time again as Marcy said, “Slow down or you’ll get a speeding ticket.”

  By the time they congregated around Bender’s bed, Turner was holding his hand and Eddie was seated in a chair next to his grandpa’s bed. Bender’s eyes were closed just like before. Saphora felt herself holding back. Maybe since Turner had called he had already slipped into the coma again.

  “Daddy,” said Turner, “wake up and see your family.”

  Bender opened his eyes. “Saphora.” He took a moment to take her in. “You were the first person I wanted to see,” he said. “Come close.”

  Turner changed places with Saphora. She took Bender’s hand. “I can’t believe it” was all she could think to say.

  “Turner said I collapsed in church,” he said.

  “You did. It was a big scene with the ambulance, Pastor John clearing out the lobby. He’s a good man, John Mims.”

  “He is. Can I talk to my wife?” he said to the others without taking his eyes off her.

  “Turner, let’s go outside,” said Gwennie. She was on the other side of her daddy’s bed. She kissed him on the cheek. She held her hand out to Eddie. “Come outside and tell Aunt Gwennie when you’re going back to school. Mama, we’ll come back in a few. I’ll call Ramsey.”

  “Mama, the nurse says dad’s doctor, Jim Pennington, has been called,” said Turner. “He’s on his way here.”

  Marcy followed them out the door too. Eddie was smiling at his grandpa and was the last to go out the door.

  Bender squeezed Saphora’s hand. “I’m as weak as a little girl. But you feel good, Saphora.”

  “You’ve come back to us,” she said. “I still can’t believe you’re looking at me and talking.”

  “I’ve lost time.”

  “I’ll catch you up,” she said. But she would not tell him about Jamie or Tobias just yet.

  “I mean that I’ve lost time with you, and I don’t want to lose anymore,” he said. “Saphora, I’ve not done right by you.”

  “You don’t have to say that.” But she knew he did.

  “There are days I can look back on and say that I was no good to any soul on earth.”

  She waited.

  “I’d guess there have not been a lot of people coming by to see me. While I was in the coma I was keenly aware of two things. One was when you were here, and the other was when my children or grandchildren stopped by my bed.”

  She did not ask him about Evelyn.

  “You should have left me a long time ago.”

  “Bender, don’t say that.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Bender, don’t paint me with such broad strokes. The day you came home to tell me about your cancer, my suitcase was packed.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Oriental, I thought.”

  He closed his eyes again.

  “Bender, I’ll admit that I’ve struggled about us. But love is not a feeling. It’s the actions you take whether or not you feel like it.”

  “That’s what I wish for. To show you I love you. I kept praying like I thought Mims would. I kept willing my eyes to open. Then I came awake, and there was Eddie running a car down the side of my bed.”

  Saphora laughed at him.

  “But it was great. I mean, the sounds that a boy makes at that age are sacred. I have a new list, Saphora.”

  “You do?”

  “Bender’s list of sacred things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mistakes.”

  “Mistakes?”

  “They’re a wonder. We try so hard not to make them. But our lives are puddled up with them, like mud holes that kids are drawn to after a rain. And then there’s the everyday chatter of people. You think I’m kidding. I became aware of nurses in the room talking. They were talking about unimportant things. I never knew how important it was to observe mindless chatter. It’s how we know one another.”

  “It’s a good list.” She liked him like this, confessional and thoughtful.

  “And a woman’s lips on your hand.”

  “What woman?”

  “You, Saphora. Your lips. You would come in and before you left you would kiss my hand. You’re so tender. The seconds that it took to be aware of a parting kiss taught me a lot about you.”

  “Like what?”

  “The way you exercise care for everyone around you. The vigil you keep over all of us, our kids and grandkids. When you didn’t want to love me anymore, you just kept doing it.”

  “Like this,” she said, lifting his hand and kissing it.

  “Yes.” Bender closed his eyes. The slight turning up of his mouth looked a good deal better than the emotionless pallor that had darkened his face during the coma.

  Saphora got up out of her chair. She kissed the side of his face.

  Bender moaned. It was the kind of moan a man might make who was buried and had finally broken through to the oxygen.

  She twisted the top off a bottle of peppermint lotion. She massaged the lotion into his arms.

  Tears ran down his face. “Don’t know why I can’t stop crying,” he said.

  She cleaned him up and massaged his neck, around his ears. Then she put her mouth very near his face and said, “I love you, Bender Warren.”

  A small sob came up from inside of him. It both pained and delighted Saphora to no end. Now he was making her cry. She wiped her eyes. Then she came up onto the bed and laid her head on his chest, but facing him so he could see her. “Make the time stop so we stay like this for a long time.”

  “I will ask God just for you, my Saphora.”

  Jim Pennington stuck his head into the room. “Okay if I come in?”

  “Jim, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” said Bender.

  Saphora lifted up and said to Jim, “It’s a miracle.”

  Jim sat in Gwennie’s place. “Wonders of the brain, old man,” he said. He checked his chart and then examined him. Saphora did not let go of Bender’s hand the entire time.

  Jim sat back in the chair, dropping the stethoscope. He clasped his hands and looked somewhat pensive. “This happens sometimes with terminally ill patients. They’ll suddenly just wake up and be very lucid.”

  “Jim, you don’t sound very hopeful,” said Saphora.

  “I’m sorry. Consider this time a gift. Bender, you know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Just make the most of this time. Saphora, if you’d like, I’ll step out and invite your kids back in.”

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  Jim excused himself.

  Saphora bent over and pressed her lips into Bender’s hand, still holding tightly to hers. “Don’t leave me again.”

  “I don’t know how to stay, Saphora,” he said. “I’m not in charge. This I know.”

  Gwennie and Marcy split the cost and stayed overnight in a hotel. Saphora slept all night on the lounge chair next to Bender’s bed. She would wake up to listen to the heart monitor and then drift back into sleep. She decided hospitals were too cold for real sleeping. It felt like she was watching herself sleep without ever actually entering the deep abandonment of real rest. She
woke up and Bender was looking at her.

  “You look terrible. Ask Jim to order my release. Take me home, Saphora.”

  “To Davidson.”

  “Oriental. I want to sit with you by the Neuse. I’m running behind on my quota of sunrises.”

  “You’re right. Let’s go,” said Saphora. She called for the nurse, Kew.

  The Asian nurse came in, smiling. “Nice to see you again, Dr. Warren.”

  Saphora asked, “Kew, could you help us run down Dr. Pennington?”

  “Glad to. I’ll find him,” she said.

  Jim bustled in about ten minutes later. Bender made his request known. Jim, although very forward thinking, was old school enough that he balked at first at Bender’s request. But he finally acquiesced since there was no point in arguing with Bender Warren. He signed the release orders. “As long as you ride to Oriental in an ambulance,” he told him.

  Marcy drove Bender’s Lexus, keeping up pretty well with the ambulance. Gwennie rode shotgun with Marcy. Turner and Eddie drove behind them, bringing up the rear of the procession.

  When the ambulance pulled into the driveway, Luke was pacing up and down, his phone to his ear. He closed up his phone and threw open the ambulance door and also his arms. “Welcome home, Dr. Warren.”

  An Asian neighbor woman one driveway down from Luke sidled up the street in tiny inching steps, as if Saphora might run her off. Even though Saphora had never met her, she offered a steaming dish spicing the air around it, colors and swirls of vegetables that Saphora would not have the imagination to plait together. “For you and your family tonight. Pork, cabbage, and Chinese vegetables. It’s good for you, Dr. Warren.” She gave her casserole dish to Gwennie.

  “Will you come back and have coffee?” asked Saphora.

  “You say when,” she said. “I’m Liu.” Gwennie wrote her number on her daddy’s discharge papers.

  By the time the sky was so thin on the horizon that every hue created a whole new collage by the second, Ramsey and Celeste barreled through the front door. Liam skittered across Saphora’s rug like a tadpole just finding its legs. He said to the adults, “Where is everybody?” as if the adults did not count.

  “Eddie’s upstairs, Liam. But go outside and see your grandpa first,” said Saphora. Gwennie had walked her daddy outside so he could sit in the chair he liked best, the big, blue dolphin deck chair. Bender was weak, as if when he fell into his coma, he left the most robust parts of himself back in the dark crevices of that quiet world. He came out of the darkness part Bender and part the newly bewildered man causing his children and grandchildren to talk about him in whispered corners of the room.

  He stole a bucket from under the deck, keeping it close by in case he was struck by the nausea that flooded his esophagus. He was too queasy, he said, for even a single lusty draw on a Cuban stogie.

  The new routine was to get him out of bed for the sunrise since he meant what he said about seeing as many as possible. Turner helped his mama and, between the two of them, they dressed Bender in a morning jacket, khaki trousers, and blue trouser socks. By the time the sun came up, Saphora wanted to go back to bed. But she sat with him for three mornings. She noticed him slipping away the third morning. She asked if he wanted a bacon omelet, to which he answered, “Wa-melon,” meaning, she thought, watermelon.

  The sun was nearly fully up. The cool of the morning put him in a more amiable and stable attitude. He had taken to avoiding the hot afternoons baking in the deck chair.

  Saphora talked to him about Eddie and Liam and the twins, not expecting him to answer. She said, “Have you thought about heaven and what it’s like over there?” Jamie was in her thoughts, but the kids had discussed the whole Jamie and Tobias debacle and decided their daddy best not know what none of them could change. “I’ve just been thinking about it.”

  Bender lifted his hand. He pointed at the sun. “Light.”

  “Did you like talking to Pastor John?”

  “Toad.”

  “Frog?”

  “To-ad me good,” said Bender.

  She took it to mean that Pastor John had told him good things.

  Gwennie and Celeste burned a pancake. Gwennie had decided she should stay over and had called her office to rearrange her schedule. They opened the doors to air out the house. “The house phone’s been ringing. Are you answering the phone today?” asked Gwennie.

  “Go ahead,” said Saphora. But the phone did not ring again. In the middle of helping Bender squeeze his walker across the door stoop into the den, the local sheriff came to call. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.

  He was a big man, name of Cole Langford. Saphora had heard about him. He acted as both the town dogcatcher and horse doctor and kept the homeless guys off the streets at night. “Mrs. Warren, can I talk with you?” he asked.

  Saphora followed him out onto the walk.

  “Wilmington cops called me this morning about a runaway kid. You know Tobias Linker?” he asked.

  “I know him. He’s my grandson’s friend.”

  “He was staying with an aunt at an RV park along the coast.”

  “Dora, yes, she took him in when his mama passed on. He ran away?”

  “She thought you might know something of his whereabouts. Mind if I take a look around?”

  “Of course not, come inside,” she said, although she was somewhat resentful Dora would sic the sheriff on her.

  Sheriff Langford walked into the house but, seeing the Warrens collected around the kitchen table for breakfast, excused himself. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “What’s this?” asked Gwennie.

  “Tobias has run away,” said Saphora.

  “That boy’s got lots of medicines to take,” said Marcy. “This is some serious business, I hope you know.”

  “Look, Sheriff, Tobias has not been in a good home. That Dora is not looking out for him like she ought,” said Gwennie, taking the opportunity to get in her legal digs on the woman.

  “I’m not here to patch up family disputes. Just following a lead on a runaway.” He walked around the house. Satisfied that they were surprised at the boy’s disappearance, he gave Saphora his card. “Call me if he shows up, ma’am.”

  “Will you take him back to Dora?” asked Saphora.

  “Social services says he’s got to be returned to his legal guardian,” said Langford.

  Saphora saw him out the door.

  Gwennie was already running to dress. “I’ll get Luke. We’ll go out and look for him,” she said.

  “Tobias might come out of hiding if he saw you,” said Saphora. “But Marcy’s spot-on. He can’t go long without his meds.” She tried to call Mel three times. But he did not pick up the phone.

  Ramsey and Celeste stayed one more night. The next morning they loaded up the boys after they had each kissed their grandpa good-bye.

  Eddie walked down the street, pushing his bike. He scarcely waved good-bye to his cousins as they pulled out of the neighborhood. Every few yards, he yelled, “Tobias! It’s Eddie! It’s safe to come out!”

  Saphora could see him through the front-window sheers. Aunt Celeste had cut the legs off a pair of his jeans for his sudden beach wardrobe. He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm.

  Turner walked Bender to the sofa and turned on an Eagles’ reunion tour on public television. Saphora checked his pulse as Jim had told her to do. When she looked up from his wrist, he was looking straight into her eyes. “Ja-mie. Tell,” he said.

  “Not now,” she said.

  “Now.”

  “There was an accident,” she said. “Jamie didn’t make it. Tobias’s daddy sent him to live with Jamie’s sister, Dora. Now Tobias has run off, and we don’t know where he is.”

  Bender turned his eyes on the Eagles. “Sad. Boy.”

  “He’s very sad,” she said. She dabbed her eyes as it was painful telling Bender. He was still so aware of details even if he could not fully express himself.

  The police looked for Tobias for t
wo days. Saphora called the sheriff’s office once in the morning and again at the end of the day. But he would tell her only one thing: “You are not family. I can’t tell you anything. But if there were any news, I’d tell you at least that, Mrs. Warren. There’s no news about Tobias Linker.” She was put out with the man who had come asking for her help.

  Gwennie came wheeling her suitcase out of the guest room. “I’m sorry I have to leave, Daddy. It’s my job,” she said to her father. “I’ve got a very important lead on my case that I’ve got to hunt down.”

  “Call me when you land in New York,” said Saphora.

  “I will.” She set aside her luggage and said, “Mama, when Luke and I drove out to Dora’s place, we found them all living in squalor in an RV. Not even a mobile home where they would at least have room. When I say she lives in a vacation park, I mean the kind where old people go. Her children run up and down the beach all day because they can’t stand to be cramped up in that orange juice can of a trailer,” she said, threading a colored ribbon through her suitcase handle.

  “Where does Tobias sleep?” asked Saphora.

  “Little Paul had a bed made from the kitchen table. It drops down into a makeshift bed. Tobias had to share it with him.”

  “What was she like? Dora, I mean?”

  “She’s Dora, you know. I think she thought she had to put on for the police. And—” She stopped. “Mama, is that Dora on TV?”

  Saphora looked toward the television. “Oh my!” she said, turning up the sound.

  Dora was looking straight into the camera. “This is the child of my dead sister. This is killing us. We can’t even make ends meet as it is and now this.” Dora’s face was contorted. She looked up at the sky. “God, help us.”

  “She’s appealing for sympathy,” said Gwennie. “Like she’s asking for donations. What an exploiter that woman is!” She gathered up her things. “Keep me up on things, Mama.” She kissed her mother. Then she put her arms around her daddy. “I’ll be back next weekend.”

  Saphora walked her to the door and exchanged I-love-yous with Gwennie.

  Gwennie said, “You keep your prayers going up. Something’s got to break soon.”