by Nikki Loftin
It was a lump of paper wrapped around something no bigger than a Matchbox car. She unwrapped the paper to show me what it was: a tiny, hand-painted metal truck. “An ambulance?” I guessed.
“Yep,” she said.
“It’s perfect. He’s gonna love it.”
She smiled up at me. “I’ll get you one for your birthday if you want. If you’re not too big for toys.”
“Thanks,” I managed. “I’m not too big. Not really.” I sort of wanted to hug her, but two more people walked out of the Emporium just then. Ladies from church, Trudy Lester and another lady, part of Mom’s prayer circle. They waved, and I waved back.
Once they’d walked off, I put my hand back in my pocket, feeling the rock. It had been stupid, thinking of throwing it here. There were so many people who’d see—even if I hadn’t known they were there.
“I gotta go,” Isabelle said. “Ernest is at the 7-Eleven. You wanna go say hi?”
“Nah,” I said, trying to look like I didn’t care. “You tell him . . . tell him happy birthday for me, okay?” Tell him I didn’t know he’d invited me, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t do that to Mom.
“Okay,” Isabelle said, that sad, grown-up look back in her eyes again. “You can still come to the party, you know. If you want to. Or just come over.” She paused, waiting. I didn’t know what to say.
“It got dug up after all,” she said at last.
“What?”
“The baby bird. Something dug it up.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “That happens.”
“Not when you help,” she disagreed, her pale eyebrows furrowing. “You’re the best hole digger, Little John. Next time, tell your daddy you need to come over and help. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed when she scowled at me. “I will . . . if I can.”
“Good.” She wrapped the ambulance back up and walked down the sidewalk.
I watched her go. She was the same as ever. Spunky, demanding. Bossy where Raelynn had been sweet. Ernest had said they were a perfect match, with no more sense between them than a box full of geese. Ernest was always coming up with stuff like that.
I missed him so bad. I wanted nothing more than to go with Isabelle to the 7-Eleven and meet up with him. Maybe spend the day with both of them. But I couldn’t.
I had a different little girl I had to take care of.
I glanced back at the window to the Emporium, the anger starting to churn around inside me again. The eyes in the painting seemed to follow Isabelle. It made me want to smash them out even more.
Then, all of a sudden, with my fingers gripping the rock in my pocket so hard I could feel it cutting into my skin, I knew that smashing out the eyes of the window wouldn’t be enough.
I wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d thrown the money back at his feet. And then thrown the sharpest rock I could find at his face.
Luckily for me, I knew where he lived. I started running again.
I stopped twice for water, drinking from the outside taps by two houses I’d never been in before, although I recognized the cars from the church parking lot. I didn’t bother to ask for a cup, or permission to use the taps; I was too set on getting to Mr. King’s before I could change my mind about the whole thing.
I had never run this many miles before, not all at once. In gym class at school, they had us do two miles sometimes, and once a year a 5K, but never five miles. It felt good, though, the warm air pushing into my lungs and hissing out with each breath, the pad of my sneakers on the asphalt.
It would have been relaxing if it hadn’t been for the thoughts that kept running through my head. I still didn’t know what had happened to Gayle. She hadn’t been able to speak. Had he done something to her throat? Her voice itself?
Maybe . . . maybe I should go to her house—well, her tree—and find out, before I went over to Mr. King’s.
It would be good to know what I was smashing in his face for, exactly.
I was almost there, almost to the Cutlins’, when the ambulance came up behind me. The driver beeped the siren to get me to run on the shoulder. I moved over, wondering where they were going. There weren’t any other houses out on this side of town, and the hospital was in the other direction.
Maybe, I thought kicking viciously at a stone that came up in front of me as I ran, maybe it was Mr. King. Maybe he’d had a heart attack or something. A stroke, like my grandma had had.
I hoped so.
Then I was almost there. I could see the Cutlins’ fence, and the ambulance. It had stopped right on the side of their house, not at Mr. King’s at all.
Who was hurt? My heart, already pounding from the run, skipped a beat when I saw where the paramedics were running.
“No!” I whispered, and picked up the pace, my feet pounding faster than my heart.
They were heading for the sycamore tree.
I knew what had happened. I knew it, deep down.
Gayle had fallen.
And for the second time in my life, I hadn’t been there to save her.
Jebediah Cutlin and his mom were standing on the grass in the front yard, looking toward the back like they were spectators at some sort of game. I ran past, but Jeb’s hand shot out and grabbed my shirt, ripping it at the shoulder. “Stop,” he shouted, as I tore free from his grasp. “They said to stay back!”
“The heck with that,” I yelled. Maybe there was something I could do—even if it was just to apologize. If she was still alive, that was.
I ran around the back to where the paramedics were working on a figure on the ground. As I got closer, though, something tried to click in my mind.
Something wasn’t right. There was no pink-and-brown plaid shirt, no brown hair spread out on last year’s leaves.
Instead, through the gaps I could see around the men working frantically, there was a blue work shirt, stained with blood. A pair of long legs in blue jeans.
A pair of brown leather work boots I knew well, since they sat right outside my own front door every evening.
“Dad!” I yelled, and stepped forward. But one of the paramedics turned his head and barked out an order.
“Stay back, son,” he said. “We’ve got to get him on the stretcher. Move back now. Move!” I obeyed, my body shuffling back. My brain was filled with the humming of hundreds of wasps. The two men hefted Dad—“one, two, three”—onto a stretcher on the ground next to him. They had tied something around one of his arms . . . or what was left of his arm.
His arm wasn’t just broken, I saw. Below the elbow, it was bandaged and wrapped so thickly I couldn’t tell what had happened. Was it cut up?
Was it . . . missing?
The paramedics lifted him and hustled toward the open doors of the ambulance. In seconds, the doors were shut, and I was alone, staring at the splotches of blood on the ground, and a broken branch.
Tiny white pinpricks of light danced in front of my eyes, and I slumped over, dizzy. Maybe I was going to pass out. I felt grass under my seat, prickling through my jeans, and then—a hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry, Little John,” Gayle said, whispering the words. “I tried to fix him, but I couldn’t.”
I closed my eyes, working to breathe slower.
A voice called out from the Cutlins’ house. “Little John? I’m calling Pastor Martin for you. You stay put.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I shouted back automatically. I didn’t think I could get up anyway; my legs weren’t answering my brain. I felt Gayle lean up against me.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“He was trying to cut the bad limb on my tree. But he couldn’t do it—” Her voice trailed off, and I finished the sentence for her.
“Alone?” I pounded my forehead with my palms. I wished I had a hammer, so I could just crush my skull in and have it done with.
“It’s n
ot your fault,” she said. “I was talking to your dad before he got hurt. He said he made you stay home today.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “He asked me about Mr. King.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t look up, but I listened. “What did you tell him?”
“He said I should stay away from Mr. King,” she said. “I told him I was going to.” She paused again. “He’s a bad man.”
Oh, God. What had happened to her?
“I shouldn’t have taken you over there. I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have done it, for five hundred dollars or a million. I’m—” My voice broke. “I’m so sorry.” But sorry wouldn’t make it right. How could I make it up to her, repay her for the wrong I’d done?
I had an idea.
Why should I stuff the money down Mr. King’s throat? I reached into my pocket and pulled it out, the whole roll. “Here. I want you to have it.”
“I don’t want it,” she said.
For some reason, that made me angry. “Just take it,” I said, and shoved it toward her again.
“What for?”
“To buy something?” I pointed up at the tree. “A treasure, maybe. Something shiny.”
“Treasures don’t come from the store, Little John.” She looked disappointed in me, like I should have known that.
“Fine. But it’s not right for me to have it. I don’t care what you do with it. Use it to—” I looked up into the air. “Use it to line your nest, make it into paper airplanes. But I’m not taking it home.” I set it on the ground. The money was the wrong shade of green against the grass, a flat, dead color.
Silence stretched between us, like a vibrating string, tight and pulled close to breaking. Then, slowly, she picked up the money and tucked it into one hand. It was a thick roll, and she couldn’t quite wrap her fingers around it. “I’ll put it in my nest, then,” she said.
“Fine.” Somewhere, far away, a mockingbird began to trill, changing songs every few seconds, like he couldn’t decide which song was his. Gayle sniffled, and wiped her runny nose with the wad of cash.
“I couldn’t fix your dad,” she said at last. “I can’t fix anything now.”
“Sure you can,” I said. I knew she thought her voice had powers. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that was just a story she’d made up, the kind of thing little girls liked to think. I wasn’t going to steal anything else from Gayle.
“No, you don’t get it. Mr. King stole it.”
“Stole what?”
“My voice.”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t understand.
“What he did,” she whispered. “He disappeared my voice. He took it. I didn’t know anybody could do that. Why anybody would. And now it’s gone.
“Watch.” There was a moth on the ground, one that must have gotten caught under a falling branch. One of its wings was bent, and it lay there, on her palm, like a thrown-away kite. She opened her mouth and took a breath. I waited for the notes to come out, the melody that—even if I didn’t know if it could really heal things—had made my heart feel whole and happy every time I’d heard it, and was so much a part of her.
But no melody came out. Just a thready wisp of air, rattling, like the last breath of a dying animal.
“See?” She waited for me to look at the moth. She shook her hand. The moth flapped there, uselessly beating its good wing in an attempt to fly away.
For a moment, I just stared at the moth, wondering what she meant. Did she really think she could save a moth with a broken wing?
“You know you can’t save everything, right?” I said at last. I put my hand out for the moth and took it, setting it on a piece of broken branch. “You can’t . . . really fix all the hurt things in the world. That’s not your job, Gayle.”
She sighed, that broken sound again. “I know it’s not.”
“Okay,” I said, and stood up. I had to go. Go make sure Mrs. Cutlin had called Mom, make sure someone could take her and me to the hospital.
Make sure Dad was okay.
But I heard Gayle’s voice as I left, five words that stayed with me the rest of that week.
“It’s not your job either.”
The hospital in Brownwood smelled like lemon cleaner and antiseptic, the kinds of smells that practically stripped your nose clean from the inside. I took a deep breath anyway and followed Pastor Martin through the set of doors marked INTENSIVE CARE.
Verlie Cutlin had called Mom to let her know what was going on, but she hadn’t been home, since it was the day she helped stock the food pantry. Somehow Ernest’s mom had already heard—probably one of the other neighbors had been listening to the police scanner again—and she’d brought Mom in. Ernest had answered the phone at my house—which was weird, but helpful, I supposed. Pastor Martin came out to pick me up from the Cutlins’ house, along with something for us to eat while we waited to hear about Dad.
The smell of fried chicken wafted out of the bag I was holding under my arm, and my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, I’d run a long way, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to wait much longer.
A nurse stopped us at the door to the ICU. “I’m sorry,” she said to the pastor. “Only two visitors per room. His wife is already in there with him.”
“How is he doing, Arlene?” Pastor Martin asked, quietly, with a sideways glance at me. I tried to act like I couldn’t hear them and wasn’t paying attention. But I listened hard when the nurse answered.
“His arm is pretty bad. But the doctor thinks he’ll keep it.”
“Thank God,” I muttered and slumped against the wall.
Pastor Martin looked like he wanted to say the same thing, but he just nodded at me. “This is the son.”
The nurse cleared her throat and frowned at me, then straightened up. “Son, you wait here. I’ll tell your mother where you are.” She motioned to a chair and waved Pastor Martin inside.
I sat there for what seemed like hours. When the door opened, Mom stepped out. I jumped up, knocking the bag of fried chicken to the floor. “How is he?”
Mom smiled at me, but her face was twitching, like it couldn’t decide whether to let her make the expression. “Well, he’s out of the woods, they say.” She sank down on the chair beside me. “He’s sleeping now.”
“Can I—can I see him?”
“I don’t know,” she said, chewing at her lower lip. “I think it might be better to wait.”
“Just for a minute,” I said. I had to get the picture of him all torn up, lying at the bottom of the sycamore, out of my head. I had to try to tell him I was sorry for leaving him alone, even though he’d told me to stay home. He and I both knew that job had been too big for one man. If I’d put it to him that way, if I’d been thinking of him and not my own troubles, and Gayle’s . . .
I had to apologize for not being there to help him.
Mom just nodded. “Don’t wake him.”
The nurse looked like she wasn’t going to let me in at first. But Pastor Martin came out and waved me in as he left, probably in a hurry to eat the fried chicken. I could hear his stomach grumbling as he walked by.
Dad’s room had a glass door and a curtain that hid most of him from view. I stepped behind it. He was hooked up to so many tubes, I couldn’t keep track of where they came from and where they went. He had tubes in both arms, and a mask over his face for oxygen or something. The machines next to him beeped softly and hissed, like sleeping snakes.
Dad looked smaller and pale. There were scratches all down his face and neck, probably where small branches had hit him when the larger one fell. His arm—I made myself look at it. It wasn’t that bad, from what I could tell. Of course, it was wrapped up in so many bandages, I couldn’t see much. But it looked the right length. Like maybe there was still an arm under there, after all.
“I’m sorry, Dad,”
I breathed. “I won’t ever let you down again.”
Of course, he didn’t answer. But the beep and hiss of the machines sounded like a recording machine that was keeping track of my promise. I knew this was a promise I had to keep.
I heard Mom talking to Pastor Martin as I left the ICU wing.
“No,” she said softly, “we don’t need money. Mr. King called the hospital and said he’d pay the bill here. And for the work John had done up to today.”
But what about next week, next month? I wondered.
“You know we’ll be here for you, Mary,” Pastor Martin said. “Just call.”
“Thank you.” Mom stood up, catching sight of me at last. “But we’ll manage. We had a little windfall this week, so we can make rent.”
I felt cold sweat break out on the back of my neck. The money. The five hundred dollars. Mom thought it was at home, and the landlord was coming tomorrow.
The fried chicken I’d eaten, waiting for Mom to come out of the ICU, flipped around in my stomach like it had grown feathers and was planning to fly up my throat.
Mom wandered off to speak to the nurse one more time. Pastor Martin came over to me, rested his hand on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard, son, but you’ll have to be the man of the house for a while. Think you can handle that?”
I nodded, wondering what that even meant. Was I supposed to start drinking Jack Daniels and watching the news?
Pastor Martin saw my confusion. “Just help out a bit more. Keep an eye on your mom.” He leaned down, whispered into my ear with breath that smelled like drumsticks. “She’s a little . . . upset, right now. Keeps talking about your sister. Like she’s still alive. Has she been doing that . . . before today?”
“No, sir,” I lied.
“Oh,” he said, shifting his feet, and his eyes. “That’s good, then. I’ll tell the doctor. She had him a little worried in there. Thought he might have to check her in for some . . . extra care. He thinks it best she goes home now, with you. Pack some things for the next few days, and get some rest.” He leaned back, looked me in the eyes. “You let me know if she needs help. Okay?”