by Cathy Lamb
He looked at them, grunted. “Not bad, Evie. Once again, not bad.”
Mr. Jamon is eighty-five years old and owns a small fishing company. He lives up on the top of our highest hill in a log cabin his own father built as a family vacation home. The father owned two newspapers in Washington. I’ve seen the log home from a distance but have never been up there. He’s a bit of a hermit. I relate to him, hermit to hermit.
In the last ten years he’s built up a fishing business and employs about ten men and women. He pays incredibly well. All of his fishermen and fisherwomen own homes on the island and drive nice cars. They love him.
“What do I need more money for, Evie?” he said to me about five years ago. “I’m eighty years old. But I can provide jobs for families, so I do.”
But “fisherman” only covers his last job. Up until he became a fisherman, he was the president of the publishing empire his grandfather started and he expanded.
We’re friends, and he is also friends with my mother and aunts. Mr. Jamon has quietly donated money to the schools on the islands, the small hospital, and he’s bought up land all over the islands and put it in trust, so it will never be developed.
Mr. Jamon goes through one or two books a week. His interests run anywhere from biographies, particularly of presidents and leaders around the world; memoirs, particularly of Hollywood actors and actresses; science, particularly the history of space travel; history, particularly World War II. Also physics and politics and occasional spy novels. Recently he has become interested in romance books, “for love,” he told me, “the eternal hope even when you’re my age. Romance isn’t dead and neither am I!” In short, he’s my ideal reader.
“I’ll take them.” He tapped his cane.
“Let me give you some spice cake with cream cheese frosting. Bit of cinnamon in there, too.”
“I can’t say no to that.”
He sat down in the café to eat, and I sat with him. I always do. It’s rude to give someone cake and not eat with them. Plus, the spice cake had zucchini in it. Zucchini is a vegetable, therefore the cake is healthy.
Chapter 6
Betsy Baturra
Multnomah County Jail
Portland, Oregon
1975
Late that night, after Betsy’s baby, Rose, was taken away, she hemorrhaged in her jail cell. A new doctor coming on shift had sent her back to her jail cell after the birth, still bleeding profusely onto a pad, shackled at the wrists and ankles. The two squeamish young guards, reeling from all that screaming and what happened between the prisoner’s legs, led her back.
The infirmary had been crowded. The woman who had been jumped by a fellow inmate and had her neck slashed with the toothbrush/knife bled quite a lot and needed stitches. Three other women had gotten into a fight. One had her head bashed against a toilet. The other took a broomstick to the eye. The third tried to slug the first woman, slipped, and somehow broke an ankle.
So there was no room for a woman who had given birth with, apparently, no problems. Of course, no one had checked on Betsy again after Dr. Rothney and Clarissa left in a huff after she told them what would happen to them in the future, with the doctor’s girlfriend stealing the guitar collection and the nurse being pregnant by a lying husband.
Betsy’s body was aching, her spirit and mind shattered. At first, huddled on her cot in her cell in a ball, when the bleeding grew heavier, she didn’t want to do anything to stop it. They had taken her baby. They had taken Rose. She would undoubtedly be found guilty in her upcoming trial and be in jail for twenty years, maybe more. The newspapers were in a frenzy about her and Johnny. Young lovers, they said, wanting to steal Johnny’s father’s money. She was the ring leader, the liar, the manipulator! They were criminals! The public outcry was high. These youths today are out of control! Drugs and more drugs!
There was only a slim chance she would get out for good behavior, so what was the point? Why live? Why try? So she let the blood between her legs run, she let the fever shake her, she let her body die.
But her roommate, a woman named Rainbow, as she told Betsy, “because I invented colors,” cried out for help, and when help didn’t come, Rainbow started reciting colors in alphabetical order, her voice shaking as her tears fell, “Lime green. Mauve. Scarlet . . .”
In the midst of her devastation, her loss, Betsy thought, Why is Rainbow here? She’s sick in the head. Why is she in jail? No one came when Rainbow repeatedly yelled for help. The guards told her to “shut up,” so she went back to her color recitations, her body trembling. Two hours later, when one of the guards finally ran a check, Betsy was passed out, cold, white, dying, and accepting of her death. Rainbow had wrapped her body around Betsy to warm her up. She held her close, whimpering, repeating colors to comfort Betsy.
When a guard finally did her rounds to check on prisoners, she was initially mad because Rainbow should not be in bed with Betsy! Women may not sleep together! That’s against the rules! Then, when Rainbow sat up and pointed at the blood all over the mattress and on Betsy’s jail scrubs and even on Rainbow and Rainbow said, “Blood red,” the guard finally hit the alarm.
She rushed in and told Rainbow to move. Rainbow told her that she saw black when she looked at the woman. “Black in your heart,” Rainbow cried. “I kept calling for help and you all ignored us like gray slugs. You’re a black-hearted woman.”
“Oh, God,” the guard said, realizing the severity of the situation, then swore. She slapped Betsy to get her to wake up as Betsy was clearly fading out, and Rainbow lightly hit the guard in the face with three fingers in protest. Rainbow did not believe in violence—she was in jail because she stole a roasted chicken and donuts because she was starving—but she felt the guard needed a punishment.
The guard turned and hammered Rainbow, and Rainbow fell back into the wall, her head banging against the cement. Rainbow sobbed out, “Azure blue. Banana yellow. Lavender purple.”
“Wake up! Wake up!” The guard shook Betsy hard, her white face still. The guard was shocked at all the blood soaking the mattress. Other guards ran in, and Betsy was whisked off to the infirmary, blood trickling behind her, the mattress stained with Betsy’s life.
Later, after the doctors and nurses leaped to take over caring for Betsy, moving with frantic practice, the guard came back to punish Rainbow for hitting her. The guard slipped in the blood on the floor and fell on her back. Rainbow said, “It’s karma. It’s coming for you like midnight black. Gunmetal silver. You’re an infected lime green color now.” This enraged the guard because she believed in karma, too. She had Rainbow put in solitary for a week.
Rainbow whimpered as she was led away and said, “Betsy is golden yellow.”
* * *
Betsy woke up in the infirmary again, tied down, of course, wrists, ankles, waist, a different doctor leaning over her.
“What happened?” she asked. It was morning, she could tell by the light. Maybe afternoon.
“You hemorrhaged. You lost a lot of blood.”
The doctor was a woman. She had a kinder face than the nurse standing there, who looked impatient, her face scrunched like a bulldog’s. Tears welled up in Betsy’s eyes again. Rose. Rose. Rose. She would never see Rose again. Never. She wanted to die.
“You’ll stay here for a few days.”
She nodded through her tears.
“You’ll need to build your strength up. Why didn’t you ask for help?”
“Rainbow did. My cellmate. No one came.”
“I’m sorry.” She knew who Betsy was. She knew about the case. “Your trial starts soon, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. What did it matter? Her baby was gone.
Taken.
Lost.
Never to be held or kissed again.
Betsy again wished she was dead.
* * *
Betsy had the same premonition the next night in the infirmary that she’d had since she was five years old. In the midst of her delirium, as her fever spike
d up and down, again and again, she was lucid enough to grasp it.
She was driving her car on a winding, too-narrow one-lane road. The sunlight was behind her, the sun setting through the tall, swaying fir trees. There were orange poppies on both sides of the road.
She curved to the left, toward the side of the mountain, distracted by the steep cliff to the right and not wanting to go over.
A truck was coming toward her. She swerved her car to the right, closer to the cliff, but in that short expanse, with the tight road, there was no chance of not hitting the truck. She hit the brakes to lessen the impact, terror filling her heart, as the back of her car fishtailed. There was a woman inside the truck. She could not see much more than that.
The truck and the car smashed together with a reverberating, echoing bang, metal on metal, glass shattering, brakes shrieking, tires twisting.
One of the vehicles went over the cliff. She thought it was hers, but the premonition ended in a blur. It could have been the truck. It could have been her car. But this particular premonition shifted sometimes; it was the only one where the scene altered. One of the women died, she thought. Probably. There was an air of death. She didn’t know who it was, though, or if it was both of them. It was fuzzy, and her premonitions were never fuzzy.
Was it she who died?
Or did the other woman die?
Was it her fault that the other woman died?
She couldn’t live with that.
She took note, yet again, of the scene. The weather. The time of day. The place. The poppies.
She could change the outcome of premonitions with other people; she could interfere sometimes, she had done it her whole life. Because of the fuzziness, did that mean the end result of this premonition was undecided?
And, if she changed the premonition for herself, if she reacted quickly to save herself from crashing into the truck, and she didn’t die, would the other woman die? That wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. She could never hurt anyone like that.
If this was set in the future and she was older—she thought, because her hands, on the steering wheel, were all she could see of herself and looked older—and the other woman was younger, the younger woman should live, not her.
As she lay miserable in that grimy infirmary, the leather straps tight, her body throbbing, her fever spiking up again, her legs hot and sticky from blood and sweat, she tried to sort things out through the excruciating depression in her mind.
If the premonition was correct, she was out of prison. She was not here. She ended up on a winding road near fir trees and orange poppies.
Maybe she would not die in prison.
Even if she wanted to.
Chapter 7
I have a lot of animals, I know this, I do. I am not an animal collector. I am not an animal hoarder.
I simply love animals.
Jane Austen, my brown horse, was almost dead when I saw her on the western edge of the island on a farm. You could see her bones. My friend, Amy, saw her and called me. The farm was owned by a mean son of a gun named Doc Haurley. Doc used to be a doc, but he lost his medical license and was sued because he was a negligent, drunken doctor. He was a urologist. One man ended up wearing a colostomy bag the rest of his life. Another woman ended up incontinent. One almost died.
When he was in town, he was regularly rude and drunk and mean.
So my mother, aunts, Amy, and I stole Jane Austen. We knew that Doc was off the island because we asked his neighbor, Mr. Jennings, if he would keep an eye out. Mr. Jennings, who had offered to buy the horse from Doc Haurley because he was so upset about her condition, agreed to be our coconspirator.
Mr. Jennings called us when he knew Doc was headed off the island, and we headed over as stealthily as we could hauling a horse trailer. I called to Jane Austen. She didn’t move, her head down, bones out. We went over to pet her. She jerked away, frightened. I gave her an apple and called out gently, and she ate it right up, then another apple, and a third. We led her to the trailer by dropping hay along the way. She, slowly, with what seemed like great pain, got in.
We drove her in the trailer to a vet’s on Lopozzo Island, as Marco had not arrived yet.
The vet was appalled and called the animal cruelty line. The vet said Jane Austen was suffering from a long list of things she never should have suffered from. We left her with the vet for several days. The animal cruelty inspector came out, took photos, and Doc Haurley was arrested. He went to court and was fined and put on probation. His other animals were taken from him, including his prized but abused hunting dogs, which Amy and Mr. Jennings adopted. He also had to pay the vet’s bill for all of the animals, which was substantial. He was not allowed to own animals again.
We took Jane Austen home. I named her Jane Austen because I love Jane Austen and have read all of her books twice. If there was a time machine, which I am not embarrassed to say I do dream about, I would get in it and go and be Jane’s friend.
Within a month Jane Austen was a new horse. She was heavier, shinier, happier. When I walked the property, she followed me around like a dog, only there was no leash. We fed her hay and apples, and she liked her salt lick. We fixed up the barn and gave her a lovely stall, but most of the time she was outside, as she liked watching the other animals.
Shakespeare was rescued because the vet called us from Lopozzo Island and asked if Jane Austen wanted a gentle horse friend. Jane did want a friend! We named him Shakespeare because I read Shakespeare out loud in college each time I was trying to avoid paralyzing anxiety or panic attacks or a horrible scene filled with sand and flames that kept burning through my mind. There was something about the cadence that calmed me down.
Shakespeare was an old racehorse that was going to be quietly turned into glue. We went and got Shakespeare. Then Shakespeare and Jane Austen fell in love. They played in the meadow, they ran, they strolled. They do not write plays or books, but their love is true.
Mars, Jupiter, and Venus were feral, diseased, and weak, and I took them in. I found them in a box off the highway at a rest area about forty-five minutes north of Seattle, where I’d stopped to get coffee. People’s cruelty to animals can be shocking. I found Ghost when I was twenty-four outside my apartment complex in Seattle, mewing, shaking with cold, and wet. No one ever responded to my ads or the local pound about Ghost.
The lambs had been used in medical experiments. I found out about them from a friend who lived in Seattle and worked in the medical field. All the lambs were going to be put down.
“I’m coming,” I told her.
I found my black and white goats wandering around the island. I kept seeing them, and one day I called them to me. They came. They were friendly. They were silly. They were emaciated, their hair matted. I put up signs, asked around, no one ever claimed Mr. Bob and Trixie. They’re mystery animals.
My animals and I are one big family. I go outside, we walk and talk. I watch them play. They greet me when I come home. They are naughty, hilarious, loving.
It’s like having an animal circus around me at all times. The dogs and cats are inside and outside; they go in and out through a tiny door right next to my front door. Both goats wander into the house now and then because somehow, someway, they’re able to figure out how to get out of their pen. The lambs stay outside, but they’ll come up on the deck and look in the windows and prance around when they see me as if they’re thrilled they found me. They have, clearly, forgotten that they saw me fifteen minutes ago. I’m like the gift that keeps on giving.
The horses stay outside for the vast majority of time, but if I open their paddock, sometimes they’ll come up on the deck and stick their heads in through the open front door.
I love my animals, and when I’m around them I feel better, calmer.
They remind me about everything innocent and kind and caring in life.
* * *
The Book Babes, the ten women who regularly meet on Wednesday evenings from six o’clock to eight o’clock at my boo
kstore, are serious readers. If you are dead or unconscious, you’re excused from reading the book. Otherwise you have no excuse with the Book Babes.
Tonight they were discussing the plot of a book in which a woman ran naked along a river because her anger management counselor told her to do something out of her comfort zone to shake out her anger. The woman accidentally ended up entangled on the ground with a handsome man, the moon shining down on them, an owl hooting.
“I would run my butt down a river naked,” one woman said, “to get rid of my lingering anger with you-know-who.” Oh, the Book Babes knew exactly who Lynn was talking about. It wasn’t a cheating husband. It wasn’t someone who took off with her money. It was her sister-in-law, that witch. Always flashing her money and her rings and her silly, shallow lifestyle. So annoying!
“You would?” another replied. “I doubt it. I think you kind of like hating her.”
“I’d do it. Make me.” The woman is not a runner. I heard her describe her own body type one day as “dough woman.”
“I dare you,” said the online college professor with pink streaks in her hair.
“I dare you!” she told the professor. “You’re the runner. Plus, you can’t stand your daughter-in-law.”
“That’s because she hates my cooking. Says it’s not organic enough. She has all these allergies, too. Can’t eat meat. Can’t eat dairy. How do you say it? Glue-ton? Glug-ting? Gluten! That’s it! Can’t eat that stuff, either. I swear she can eat only carrots.”
“I would run naked if no one saw.” I blinked. The woman is seventy-three.
“If Eunice does it, I’ll do it. I can’t run fast, but I’d participate. I have a lot of anger in me because my father was a bourbon slamming, wife-beating, kid-slapping son of a gun. You’d think my anger would be gone with him being dead and burning in hell for five years, but I still got it.”