Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  I thought of one more question for the medical examiner.

  “Does anybody else know about the autopsy findings?” I asked, remembering the deputy’s earlier statement.

  The coroner shook his head again.

  “No, I know because I went to school with the head medical examiner over at Little Rock. Our wives are best friends. Anyway, he’s very particular about not sharing his report until he’s documented it. So, keep a lid on it, would you? I shouldn’t have told you any of this.”

  I understood and respected his request.

  “Thank you. And you can trust me.” I couldn’t explain it at the time, but I felt somewhat dishonest in having said those words. “I’m sorry about your lab coat,” I said again.

  He waved off my apology.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s time for me to go home anyway. I don’t need the caffeine.” He smiled.

  “You take care now and watch where you’re going.” He headed down the hall.

  I threw away the napkins and found my way to the elevator. I felt worse than I had before I came downstairs.

  TWENTY

  I was on my way to Ms. Lou Ellen’s room when I decided to stop by and see Maria, to let her know that I had returned.

  “You get something good and greasy?” she asked, smiling when I walked behind the tall desk that wrapped around the nurses’ station.

  She was sitting in a small cubicle behind a partition, working on charts.

  “Hamburger,” I answered.

  “Mmmmm,” she responded. “With fries?”

  “There’s no other way,” I replied.

  The elevator opened and we leaned around the corner to see that a nurse was returning with the patient who had left earlier with the ambulance attendant.

  “Great.” Maria sighed. “Just when I thought I was getting a break.”

  I knew she meant that she was going to have to help the patient resettle in the room now that the procedure he had just had was completed. She stood up from her seat and stretched.

  She threw her hands straight above her head and then dropped at the waist, touching her toes. She turned from side to side. Then she stood up and reached over, grabbing her stethoscope. “You don’t want a job, do you?”

  I laughed. “Not yet,” I answered. “But maybe you could quit this gig and start a yoga group.”

  She smiled and started to walk out of the station. “More money in cleaning bedpans,” she said.

  “By the way, your patient is doing very well. I checked on her while you were gone. Ran her vitals, repositioned her. She was alert and oriented and then fell right back to sleep.”

  She grabbed a chart. “When did her toes get painted?” she asked and looked at me for a response.

  I smiled and shrugged my shoulders, trying to act innocent. “I’m glad she’s doing well,” I said, and then I remembered something that was bothering me.

  “Maria, do you know the woman who took that patient down?” I asked, referring to the man that was being wheeled down the hall, that man she had to get resettled. “Her first name is Becky and she runs an ambulance shift?”

  “Becky Kunar,” the nurse answered as she flipped through a few pages in a chart. “She works a couple of jobs, she’s all over the hospital.”

  She started out the door and appeared to think of something that might interest me. “She’s from over where you’re staying, West Memphis. She’s engaged to some deputy there.”

  Kunar, I thought. I suddenly remembered that the other paramedic had mentioned her being engaged to Fisk. I considered her last name and wondered where I had heard Kunar recently. I knew somebody had mentioned that name.

  It was almost one o’clock in the morning and I was getting drowsy. I patted my cheeks trying to wake up.

  I followed Maria down the hall and stopped at Ms. Lou Ellen’s room. I opened the door and then turned, facing it to close it as quietly as I could. When I turned around to see the patient, she was awake and watching me.

  “Well, hey there, sleepyhead,”

  I moved closer to the bed. The light was on above her.

  She smiled. “Did you get some dinner?” she asked.

  “I sure did,” I answered. “Are you hungry?”

  Her face pinched in a knot. “Maybe in the morning,” she replied. “I’m still not feeling too ready for food.”

  She pointed to the chair beside her. “Come sit down and talk to me,” she said.

  “What did you eat?” she asked.

  “Burger and fries,” I said.

  “No green Jell-O?” she asked.

  I moved over to the large reclining chair positioned next to her bed. I stood beside it. “No, I told them to save all the green Jell-O for the patient in room four-fifteen.”

  She folded her hands across her lap.

  “Tell me a story,” she said.

  “What kind of story?” I asked.

  “About you,” she replied. “I don’t know anything about you,” she added.

  I turned the chair to face her and sat down. “Okay,” I answered, “What would you like to know?”

  “I want to know about your kin, about where you come from,” she said.

  I studied her. “Aren’t you sleepy?” I asked, thinking that I didn’t really want to share my history at that early hour in the morning.

  “You know I’ve been sleeping all day,” she replied. “Stimulate me,” she said, shaking her head with a dramatic flair.

  I laughed. “My story is hardly stimulating,” I answered.

  “Then tell me about this mystery you were working on, the one about the sheriff and the dead man.”

  “You remember that?” I asked, feeling surprised that she would be so clear about our first meeting.

  “Darling, my hip is injured, not my brain.” She slid over a little in the bed.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said, wondering if I had offended her with my suggestion that she would be mentally incapacitated.

  “Well, I’m more confused than I was yesterday,” I said as I stretched out my legs.

  “Yes, but you’re different than you were yesterday.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant so I asked. “How so?”

  “Thomas Sawyer is how so,” she replied.

  I blushed.

  “How is it that everybody knows about me and Tom?” I asked. “It just happened last night.”

  “It’s hard to hide that kind of splendor,” she said, a big grin stretched across her face. “And I know good love when I see it.”

  “Well, it really isn’t all that interesting now because I’ve probably gone and blown it all to pieces,” I responded, remembering what I had stolen from this man I was supposed to love, then how I told the deputy.

  “Why, child? What have you done?” she asked, sounding quite alarmed.

  “I listened to you, is what I’ve done.”

  She seemed confused so I explained.

  “I trusted someone, like you suggested. And I’m not sure that he’s the one I should have.” I crossed my legs at the ankles.

  “When did I tell you that?” she asked.

  “A little while ago, before I went downstairs to get something to eat.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You said, ‘You need to trust somebody, Rose Franklin,’ ” I repeated her earlier words.

  “Well, dear, it looks as if you were right after all. There has been a brain injury. I don’t remember ever saying that to you.”

  Then she coughed a bit, clearing her throat. “What was the context of these words of wisdom?” she asked.

  I recalled the conversation to her.

  She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t remember. She paused a few minutes.

  “Well, it’s just a beginner’s mistake,” she finally said. “You’ll get another try.”

  “I’m not sure, Ms. Lou Ellen. This may have been a huge mistake,” I confessed.

  She moved over a little in the bed. I could tell it hur
t, but she reached out and took me by the hand.

  “Tell me what you’ve done,” she said, sounding like a priest hearing confession.

  I took in a deep breath, hating myself for what I was about to tell.

  “I went over to Tom’s trailer to find some jewelry I had left—” I stopped, realizing I was implicating myself as a woman who had slept with a man.

  The older woman didn’t seem phased by this information, so I continued.

  “When I was there, I found a gold coin, in a book he had read to me. I stole it because I thought maybe he had something to do with Mr. Franklin’s death.”

  I knew my story needed further explanation.

  “Tom told me that story about the slave’s gold, about Percy Dalton and the Quaker. And then I learned that Mr. Franklin was trying to find a burial ground. I think the two stories are related and that Tom and Mr. Franklin had found them both, and then—” I stopped.

  Ms. Lou Ellen was shaking her head quite dramatically.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What kind of gold coin did you find?” she asked.

  “A twenty-dollar piece, from Colorado. From that company that Percy Dalton got his money. A gold coin from 1860,” I said.

  “Was Pike’s Peak on one side?” she asked.

  I looked at her, surprised. I nodded slowly.

  “The word Denver stamped beneath it?” she asked.

  I nodded again, sitting up in the chair and completely facing the older woman.

  She laughed. “Dear, I gave Thomas that coin.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Five or ten years ago after he told me that story of the slave’s gold.” She pulled on her sheets. “I asked around to some friends of mine who collect those old coins.”

  “What?” I repeated.

  “I bought one of those coins from a Denver coin collector for Thomas. There’s about ten or fifteen of them and I got one.” She rubbed her hand across the edges of the tape on the IV site on her wrist.

  “Darling,” she said quietly when she could see my disbelief, “I have a lot of money.”

  I shook my head. “Why?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  “Married well,” she answered, as if I had asked her about how she had gotten to be rich. “More than a few times,” she added.

  “No, why did you give a gold coin to Thomas?” I asked.

  “Oh, because Thomas and I have a close connection,” she said.

  I could tell she was measuring what else she was going to say. “We visit quite regularly, have common issues.” She sighed.

  I thought for a minute.

  “AA,” I said, remembering his addiction, that he said that he relied greatly on the support of others.

  “Are you his sponsor?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows, brought a finger to her lip to demonstrate a need for confidentiality. Then she smiled at me.

  “Thomas reached a great milestone several years ago and I decided to honor it with a token.”

  “You gave him the gold coin,” I said, still finding all this hard to take in.

  “Thomas is a fine young man,” she said. “He deserves some happiness.”

  I felt a deep, sinking feeling.

  “Oh, no,” I said, realizing what I had done, realizing that the coin might be gone for good.

  “What, dear?” she asked.

  “I’ve done an awful thing,” I confessed.

  “Darling, we’ve all done those.”

  She patted me again on the arm. “That’s why mercy takes your breath away.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “He’ll never forgive me,” I said.

  “Well, you can’t know that until you ask,” Ms. Lou Ellen said. Then she yawned.

  “You should go to him as soon as you can. It’ll all work out,” she added. She rested her head against the pillow.

  “I think I may go back to sleep a little bit.” She slid down in the bed.

  I stood up and lowered her bed to make her more comfortable. I reached over her head and turned off her light.

  I sat in the darkness, thinking what I needed to do next, considering my options, going through my wrongful actions. I had made a grave error of judgment about Thomas and I feared I had made another, perhaps one more dangerous, regarding the deputy I had trusted.

  I was short on ideas. I leaned back against that hospital chair, trying to figure a way out of the mess I had created, trying to think of what I should do next. I sat like that for more than an hour trying to sort through my thoughts and actions, my misdeeds.

  I pulled a blanket around me, growing more and more comfortable in my position, and before I knew it, I had fallen sound asleep.

  THE

  FOURTH

  DAY

  O Lord, I pray Thee

  Hear my humble prayer and watch over

  These, Thy Children.

  Shades of your image by night

  Standing by these Jordan banks

  Guide them with Thy perfect Light

  Until we take leave of this place.

  Bound now by evil’s snare

  Thereby in time finding our freedom

  Heaven’s still waters running fair

  Finally, to see Thy face.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I slept for almost three hours and when I awoke, everything was clear. The yellow sun rising, thin pink layers of light streaming across the sky, the tiny drips in the line falling from the bag of fluids and into Ms. Lou Ellen’s veins, the easy way morning creeps across a room. Everything was clear.

  I remembered where I heard the last name of the ambulance attendant, Kunar, the driver who was supposedly taking the dead body to Nashville, then finally delivering it all cleaned-up to Little Rock, the white sand that was from the quarry, the Kunar Quarry, and the white sand that was at first present and now mysteriously missing from Mr. Franklin’s airways. The red marking ribbon in his pocket, the kind he used to mark graves, or as he was doing on the occasion of wearing the suit that day, an old burial site.

  The quick, knowing way that Deputy Fisk handled the gold coin when I gave it to him, sticking it so easily in his front pocket, the announcement of the findings in the unreported autopsy, the cold, sly way he said my father’s name. Like he knew him, knew what would make him proud. The easy way he placed his hand on my shoulder. Like he knew me, like he had me. It was all clear and simple.

  It was as if the sleep loosened my thoughts, unraveled my doubts, and placed them in an ordered row in front of me. As if an angel jumped down from a tree and walked with me a ways, pointing things out, giving depth and meaning to everything that happened along the path of my life.

  It was like having somebody guiding me through dark, muddy waters and finally helping me up on the banks of a river where the darkness and the night noises and the way we never spoke as we drifted, suddenly made perfect sense. It was like knowing the thing you cannot say and then finally finding the right words. It’s like the outing of truth. When it finally comes, there’s no way to mistake it. Everybody who witnesses it knows exactly what it is.

  I stood up from the hospital recliner where I had enjoyed such deep sleep and folded up the blanket I had placed around me. The patient was still resting soundly so I did not disturb her. I walked over and found my bag, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and prepared myself for what I knew I was going to have to do that morning.

  I stood at the window and prayed, to the river, to the tree angel, to the saints waiting on the other side, to God. “Somebody, please don’t let it be too late.”

  Ms. Lou Ellen woke up when Maria came in, her last visit before her shift ended and together we got the patient up, took her for a few painful steps around the bed, and then positioned her as comfortably as we were able to in the large chair where I had been for most of the night.

  “Did you sleep, dear?” she asked as I threw the blanket around her.

  “I feel like a new woman,” I said, thinking that there
was also energy to this newfound clarity.

  “How about you?” I asked the patient, hoping the same for her.

  “No, I still feel like an old woman.”

  She winced when she shifted in her chair.

  I helped change the bed linens and then I gave her a quick bath and a fresh gown. I combed her hair and because she insisted, helped her apply a little makeup. By the time Rhonda and Lucas arrived, at six A.M., she was already worn out from her morning activities, but looking forward to breakfast.

  “Dear sister,” Lucas said when he walked in. “Don’t you look spectacular?” He leaned next to her and kissed her on top of the head.

  “Hey, Mama,” Rhonda said, walking in behind her husband. Then she turned to me. “How did things go last night?”

  Before I could answer, Ms. Lou Ellen spoke up.

  “Lucas, you take Rose back to Shady Grove,” his mother-in-law instructed. “She has things she needs to do.”

  And she winked at me as if she had received the same clarity I had in knowing exactly what I needed to accomplish.

  She already knew that I had tried Thomas on the cell phone several times without success and was growing anxious to return to West Memphis and make sure that he was okay. And even though she didn’t know all the details of what had happened, what I had done, what I had set into motion, she knew I was in a hurry to get to him

  “I thought I’d pray with you first, dear sister,” Lucas said as I stood at the door waiting for my ride.

  “You pray with Rose while you’re driving her across the bridge,” she said. “She needs to see Tom.”

  Rhonda and Lucas both peered at me with unknowing looks, but Lucas agreed to take me back and then told his wife he would return by lunchtime. I hugged the women good-bye.

  There was not too much traffic on the bridge, but I could feel myself getting more and more worried as we drove toward the state line. I was sure that I had waited too long. I said to Lucas, “Brother, I need you to pray.”

  “Okay,” he said, seeming a bit unsure of my request. And the big man drove and prayed. He prayed for salvation and hope and mercy and grace. He prayed for Ms. Lou Ellen, for Rhonda, for the Miller family, for Thomas, and for me. Mostly he prayed for me. Eyes open, alert to his driving, he prayed like a preacher. He prayed like the righteous man that Mary said he was.