by Chaz McGee
Rodrigo shouted something in Spanish and I knew enough to understand what it was – it was a healthy baby girl. Rodrigo had taken off his flannel shirt and folded it by his side. Cradling the baby carefully in one arm, he wiped her face with his tee shirt and pulled the mucus from her nose, then smoothed the caul from her eyes and cleared her brow. Thick black hair sprung from her head like a rooster’s comb as Rodrigo dried it with his shirt. The baby was still for one heart-stopping moment before she burst out into an indignant, cave-filling cry that sounded more beautiful than any music I had ever heard. Both Arcelia and Alice began to cry as Rodrigo wrapped the baby in his flannel shirt and placed her in Arcelia’s arms.
Overcome by what happened, Rodrigo sat back on his heels and watched the two women huddled together over the child, bathed in the glow from his lantern. He was thinking the same thing I was thinking: life remained a miracle.
Arcelia kissed her baby’s face over and over and held the squalling child to her. All the strength she had shown for the past week – culminating in the astonishing power she had shown that day – had been worth it. It had led to this. She had done it. Her baby was safe.
It was a uniquely human moment. I felt as if the universe, whose secrets still eluded me, had nonetheless given me a gift. I felt connected to the baby nestled in Arcelia’s arms and the three adults clustered around it. I felt connected to my fellow traveler, who lingered in the room with us, and I felt connected to every one of the billions of human beings who walked the earth above me, all oblivious to my being. I had lived my whole life as an outsider, feeling out of step with the world and unworthy of my existence. But in that moment, for the very first time in either my life or my afterlife, I felt as if I was supposed to be there. I was part of the plan.
I was so stunned with gratitude that, like the others, I forgot the danger that lay above. When the hatch lid above us opened, it was Alice who reacted first. She leapt to her feet and started up the ladder, without hesitation, ready to face anything to protect the child.
‘Damn girl,’ Calvano’s voice floated down from above. ‘Easy there. It’s only me.’
Alice slumped against the ladder in relief, staring down at Arcelia and her baby. ‘The baby is here and it’s healthy. But we need an ambulance. And something to get the cuffs off of her. He chained her to the wall.’
‘Ambulance is here,’ another voice promised. It was Maggie. ‘Is there room for the EMTs to go down?’
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘I better come up.’ She sounded reluctant to leave.
Calvano reached down to give her hand and she grasped it automatically. As their hands touched, I felt something electric pass between them – was it something new or a residual of what had happened below? Maybe what I had felt in the cave when the baby was born lingered to forge connections between people, I thought. Maybe it always happened that way. Maybe it all came down to that.
As Calvano hoisted Alice up into the night air, I heard him say, ‘What in God’s name are you covered with, Hernandez?’
‘Afterbirth,’ Alice told him, laughing with relief. She could relax. Arcelia and her baby were safe.
Calvano’s reaction made Maggie laugh and that, too, was a glorious sound. It had, against all odds, ended well.
Rodrigo would not leave Arcelia and I don’t think she would have let him let him if he had tried. She was gripping his hand with the resolve of someone who intends never to let go. He stayed by her side as the emergency medical technicians climbed down to join them and freed her from her metal restraints, then fashioned a pallet to lift both Arcelia and her baby to the surface. I had no doubt that she could have – and would have – climbed up that ladder one hundred times, if need be, if it meant safety for her child, but the ambulance attendants insisted that she ride up in style instead, emerging from the ground in a giant papoose, receiving a round of applause once she reached the surface.
I joined her and there – spread out against the great lawn of the mansion – stood what looked like an army of people ready to help. Calvano and Maggie were in the forefront and behind them clustered rows of uniformed officers who had answered the call for help. Investigations like this one never ended well and everyone wanted to be a part of the triumph.
Which one of them had found the opening to the hatch? I wondered. Then I saw the old butler slumped against one of the cherry trees at the side of the lawn, his head bowed as he gasped for breath. He had been forgotten in the excitement of bringing Arcelia and her baby to the surface. I saw him suddenly jerk, like a puppet whose strings have been released. He clawed at the tree and crumpled to the ground. He twitched and sprawled, then lay completely still.
Not a person other than me had seen him.
It couldn’t end that way. The old man had pushed himself in unimaginable ways, he had helped save Arcelia and her baby more than anyone. How could he die like that, on the very edges of victory, overlooked? It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t let it happen. But I had nothing to bargain with.
Despite all that has happened to me, and most especially the events of that night, I still was not convinced that there was anyone, or at least not a single all-mighty being, to hear my prayers if I tried. But I had to at least have enough faith to try, I decided, and so I began to pray. I told whoever or whatever might be listening that I understood there had to be a balance between birth and death. That new life inevitably meant an old life was passing, that the balance of the universe required such an exchange. But not now, I prayed, not at this moment. The old butler had behaved with such courage and he had a wife who still needed him. It was only fair that he should be given more time. Take me, I told the universe, take me and send me wherever I must go, even if I have not yet redeemed myself. I have nothing else to offer, but I offer myself. Just please give the old man some more time.
Dry lightning split the sky and in that instant, the old man’s body was silhouetted against the glare. A voice called out from the crowd, ‘Man down by the trees.’ A handful of officers sprinted toward the butler’s body. A uniformed cop I did not recognize reached him first and rolled him on to his back. Kneeling by his side, he pressed both of his hands against the butler’s chest and began to pump. A female officer reached them a second later and took her place near the old man’s head. She tilted his chin up to clear his passageway, took a deep breath and began to resuscitate him. Others came up behind with portable paddles and gestured for them to make way. An EMT placed the paddles on the old man’s chest, another adjusted the dials on a small black box connected to the paddles and nodded.
The butler’s body arched up and fell back to earth. The EMTs waited, saw no response, and applied the paddles a second time. Once again, the old man’s frail body arched as if presenting itself to the skies.
Still nothing happened.
Take me, I pleaded. Not him. Not him.
I felt something pass through me, something cold and in a hurry.
The EMTs applied the paddles to the old man’s chest yet again.
This time, they were successful. The butler began to breathe on his own. The EMTs raised their arms to the skies in triumph and the crowd cheered once again, looking from Arcelia to the butler, unable to believe that two miracles had occurred in one night.
I was the only one who could see that, up in the night sky, below the pearly moon, a tornado of tiny swirling lights had formed in the trees above the old man’s head. The constellation whirled and the darkness surrounding it deepened until the funnel rushed upward and exploded in a glory of fireworks that only I could witness.
I knew then that my fellow traveler was gone. That whatever needed to be given in exchange for the old butler’s survival, he had been the one chosen to give it. Once again, I had been left behind.
I tried to tell myself to have faith, that my time would one day come. But I could not help feel I had been forgotten yet again.
That was when my fellow traveler gave me a gift.
I felt him within me and saw the world thr
ough his eyes once more. Only this time, instead of feeling the attacks of cruel men on my body, I was filled with a peace so profound it infiltrated every fiber of my being. I felt safe and exalted and uplifted as I found myself walking through a luminescent tunnel, drawn by a warmth ahead of me. A light glowed in the distance and I walked toward it without hesitation, drawn by the joy it promised.
Slowly, out of the fog, there emerged the faces and figures of those I knew my fellow traveler had loved – and been loved by in return. I saw ancient African warriors dressed in feathers and beads, paying homage to his courage. I saw a smiling old women with nothing but wisps of white hair left on her scalp beaming as she held her outstretched arms toward my friend. By her side, stood an old black man in a pair of worn overalls, his eyes filled with pride and enduring love for his son. And then, there by the mouth of the light, stood the woman I had seen in my earlier vision cooking over a fire in their cabin. She was younger and more beautiful than in my vision, her face free from worry or pain. Her eyes sparkled and her hands were wrapped around children on either side, who smiled up at my fellow traveler with such love and joy that I thought my heart might explode.
I was Icarus flying too close to the sun. And like Icarus, my fate was to tumble back to Earth.
This time, I knew, my friend was truly gone. But he had left me with the gift of knowing that, one day, my time would come.
THIRTY-FIVE
It was not such a bad deal to be returned to the living, not this time around. What a glorious sight it was to see Arcelia and her baby being transferred to a stretcher in preparation for her trip to the hospital.
The EMTs had just finished wrapping a clean blanket around her and her baby, when I heard her name being called from across the lawn. ‘Seely! Seely!’ a voice shouted in the distance. The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses, making room for a man running full tilt across the grass. Danny Gallagher. His life was restored and with it, his strength. All he wanted was to be with his wife.
No one made a sound. No one tried to stop him. The entire crowd watched, transfixed, as Danny reached his wife, laughing and sobbing at the same time, unable to stop saying her name, needing to reassure himself that it was true – she was alive. He reached her side and froze, unable to take his eyes away from the baby in her arms. She whispered something to him and he cupped the baby’s face in his hands, kissing its tiny brow and laughing as he ran his hands through her thick hair. True to form, he was crying. But this time, I just thought to myself, ‘Aw, let the guy cry.’
When the time came to interrupt them, the EMTs were gentle with Danny Gallagher. They let him hold his wife’s hand as they wheeled her toward the ambulance. He kept rubbing his thumbs over the red marks gouged into her wrist from where she had been shackled to the wall. Every few steps, he would raise her hand and gently kiss her wounds, as if he might heal them with his tears.
Arcelia balked when they tried to load her into the ambulance. ‘Not yet,’ she said to the people hovering around her. ‘I must talk to the woman who helped me.’
‘I’m here,’ Alice said quickly. She had never been more than a few feet from her side. ‘What is it?’
‘There was someone else down there with me,’ Alice explained to her, speaking in English so that the others could understand. ‘When I was down there, I could feel him with me and I saw the bones coming out of the earth.’
‘There was a body down there with you?’ Alice asked. She, like the others, was wondering if Arcelia was thinking clearly. She had been through a lot.
‘Yes,’ Arcelia said. ‘There is a body down there. I am sure of it. I felt the finger bone and I brushed the earth away from it. I know the rest of the body is there.’
Maggie had heard her and showed no hesitation. ‘We’ll send someone down and check,’ she told her. She touched Arcelia’s baby, her hand lingering on the clean white blanket that now bound the child from head to toe. ‘I’ll make sure they check carefully. You go now. Your husband can ride with you to the hospital. Go and show him your little girl.’
‘What about him?’ Arcelia asked Maggie, nodding toward the house. She could not bear to say Lamont Carter’s name.
‘There are officers taking care of that now,’ Maggie promised. ‘You don’t have to worry about him any longer. No one does.’
THIRTY-SIX
I arrived back at the house in time to see Lamont Carter being dragged down the grand staircase in handcuffs. He had drawn in even further on himself and he radiated sullen hatred toward all. As he was hustled toward the foyer, I felt the house itself gather around him as if it were anxious to spit him out of its front door.
Carter was dragged into a night made bright by the glare of television lights. The media had arrived. It seemed as if every network covering Arcelia Gallagher’s disappearance had been tipped off and were now crowded at the front gate, pressing against the bars or surging against the hapless line of uniformed men sent to guard the low fence on either side. Dozens of reporters and their crew members shoved for position, determined to bring their viewers the unexpected happy ending to the Arcelia Gallagher story. Lindsey Stanford stood at the front of the pack with her camera crew, resisting all attempts to share her premier spot in line. She would be first through the gate when it opened. Maggie’s ex, Skip Bostwick, stood beside Stanford. He had become one of them. He threw elbows like an experienced reporter.
For days, the media had accused Danny Gallagher of killing his wife, and Aldo Flores of helping him. Then they had cast suspicion on non-specific illegal immigrants. They had, in fact, pretty much blamed everyone but the man now being dragged out to a waiting police car in front of them all. It made absolutely no difference. The reporters smelled blood. Better yet, they smelled a huge story: Hollywood and crime intertwined. It was a ratings dream.
As soon as Lamont Carter came into view, Lindsey Stanford went live with a pompous intro about the dark face of Hollywood fame. But an intrepid reporter had slipped past the guards and found the manual switch to the main gate. He flipped it before he could be stopped. Like a pack of hyenas falling on a dead beast, the journalists crashed though the front entrance, trampling Lindsey Stanford as they ran toward Lamont Carter.
Skip Bostwick stepped over Stanford as unconcerned as if she had been a boulder in his way and dashed toward Carter and his police escorts. The cops saw the crowd converging on them and practically threw Carter into the back seat, shutting the door just before a flood of reporters overcame the car.
In the chaos, I was the only one, at first, to see the spooky figure framed in the front door of the mansion, looking out into the night, her eyes bleary and unfocused. At first, I thought it was an apparition. But it was Dakota Wylie, dressed in a nearly transparent negligee with her emaciated, decidedly non-pregnant body on full display. Her face was stripped of bandages and bare for all to see in its horribly altered state. She was barefoot and her hair was disheveled. She was also clearly confused about what was happening or where she was. The pills had hit her hard before the noise woke her from her drug-induced sleep.
‘Lonnie?’ Dakota called out into the night. ‘Lonnie, where is the baby? You promised me a baby.’
When Carter did not respond, and I was not even sure he could see her through the crowd of reporters blocking his view, she began to scream his name again and again, attracting the reporters’ attention. One by one, they fell silent and turned to stare at her standing in the doorway, looking for all the world like a young Blanche Dubois – wilted, frail and teetering on the verge of madness.
There was a moment of utter silence as they realized who they were seeing and then it sounded as if a thousand crickets and ten times as many locusts had descended on the scene. Whirring and clicking filled the air as every single camera leapt to action, their operators surging forward as they fought for a better shot of the star.
Dakota was too confused to move. She was too doped up to realize that her ravaged face had been exposed for all to see – th
e misshapen mouth, too wide and unnaturally thick; the bruised eyes, with the right one off-kilter; the strangely asymmetrical tilt of her right cheek; the ghastly pulled-to-one-side stretch of her skin.
It was awful. It was humiliating to think of someone once so beautiful, and still so fragile, trapped in the frames of all those cameras, exposed for the world to see.
‘Is that Dakota Wylie?’ Skip Bostwick shouted frantically. He was ignored by the others. They pressed forward, shouting questions at her. Dakota stared back, eyes wide, and reached a hand out to steady herself against the door frame. She was too stunned at what she had finally noticed to react.
Calvano came out of the blue.
Like a defensive lineman intent on sacking the quarterback, he shot out of the crowd and cut in front of the cameras, bent low. He scooped up Dakota Wylie and folded her over his shoulder, then raced back inside the house and slammed the door shut with his heel.
The crowd froze. No one moved. No one understood what had just happened. And I think more than a few thought that they had, perhaps, imagined it all.
But that one act of kindness would later become the defining moment in Adrian Calvano’s career, long after the tabloid covers faded. It would lead to his new nickname – Sir Calahad – and, I suspected, be talked about for years, if not decades, to come. He’d had no white horse, but that had not stopped Sir Calahad from galloping to his lady’s rescue.
I don’t think Calvano cared what others were thinking when he did it, though. I think all he cared about at that moment, and all he would care about afterwards, was protecting someone he saw as too frail for this world, someone who was about to be thrown to the lions. If she had once been his dream girl, he would now be her knight.