“The car.” He had to lift his chin off the ground and turn his face so he could speak. “They’ll bust me.”
“And they wouldn’t bust you for trying to break into my house?”
A brief hesitation. “This is your house?”
“You betcha.”
“You going to let me up, mister, or do I have to lie here talking to the worms all night?”
“I haven’t decided yet, son. The idea of you talking to worms sounds fine to me.”
“C’mon.”
The kid tried to wrench his hands free so he could start the armadillo imitation again. But Ben wasn’t about to buy it. “You’re worrying about getting busted, you tell me why I shouldn’t phone the sheriff right now.”
“Came here looking for somebody.”
“Who’d you come here looking for? Who did you think would be interested in seeing you in the middle of the night?”
“They told me over at the gas station. I asked and they told me she was here.”
Fear sliced Ben’s gut. They told me she was here. Don’t tell him this had something to do with his family. He’d gotten slugged in the face; that pain felt warm and alive. It didn’t compare to the misgiving that detonated in him now. “Who are you looking for?”
The boy spit. Dirt in his mouth. “You know Tess? Tess Crabtree?”
Ben set the kid’s hands free. The minute Dirty Sneakers scrambled up onto his arms, Ben took a fistful of his oily hair and held his head with it. “Are you the one who got her pregnant?”
“Tess staying at your place? She around here somewhere?”
“You didn’t answer my question, young man. Let me ask it again. Are you the one who got her pregnant?”
The slightest hesitation. “Well, now. That’s anybody’s guess.”
Ben ached to let the kid up so he could square off with him in hand-to-hand combat. One big uppercut would make him feel much better. Teach that boy a thing or two about how to respect his daughter. But Ben couldn’t be certain he’d stop at that; when he finished with this guy, he’d be the one in the sheriff’s custody. So hard to resist the urge.
“Stand up.” Ben backed off instead, keeping the pistol sighted where it would count the most. “What’s your name?”
“Coot—I-I mean, Connor. Connor Banks,” he said while he was getting to his feet. “But my friends call me Cootie. My mother called me Cootie. I don’t go by anything else.”
“I’m going to get you inside where you’re not going to bolt. I’m going to get you someplace safe so I can decide what to do with you. You hear that?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“You’re not going to make any false moves or hurt any members of my family. You hear that?”
“Yes. I mean, yes, I hear that. I won’t hurt nobody.” Then, “You gonna call the cops?”
“I’m still thinking about it,” Ben said. “We’re going to decide what happens with that when we have a conversation with Tess, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
Ben prodded Cootie in the vertebra once more and they headed for the house.
IT WAS NORA who noticed Tess’s expression when Ben and his capture burst through the front door. Nora had never seen such an explosion of hope, and it terrified her. Tess bounded forward with a frantic cry, “Cootie!” while Ben shouted, “Get back, Tess!” and the boy said calmly, “Hey, Babe. He’s out there with a .22, man, thinking he’s gonna rescue the world.”
“Daddy, it’s okay.”
With false composure, Nora walked to the refrigerator and began placing ice cubes into a bag. “Ben. You’re hurt.” She tried to press the ice bag against Ben’s swollen jaw but he waved her away.
He gestured toward Tess. “You know this guy?”
“Oh, yeah. I do.”
“Ben.” Nora’s voice carefully measured to hide her terror. “If you don’t get ice on that thing now, it’s going to get worse.” How she wished this intruder had been a burglar, a thief, a murderer, anyone except the person stepping in on them now.
Who would come looking for Tess here, except for Tansy’s father? Nora would bet these words were rattling around in Ben’s head, too. Words from the day Tess had come home and Nora had found the pregnancy test.
If you are pregnant, you know who the baby’s father is, don’t you? Ben had asked.
Tess’s brown eyes had filled with irony. What does that matter? I’m going to get rid of it. You know there’d be something wrong with it anyway, if it came.
It matters, Tess, Nora ought to have shouted. It matters because a father has a right to a baby, too. It matters because someday, some month, some year, he might be standing in our living room and we wouldn’t know what to do.
This boy was dressed in a puffy nylon jacket over a thin T-shirt worn so often that the neck had frayed. On the side of one jacket sleeve someone had stitched VL by hand. His dusty jeans hung in loose folds that made his legs look elephantine. One side of his hollow face was striped with scratches and his curly dark hair hung wide around his face like the hood of a cobra.
A silver chain dangled from his belt loop to his pocket and he wore a gunmetal stud in each of his ears. When Nora met his red-rimmed blue eyes, they looked faded by life. Except for his hair, he was devoid of color. This boy reminded Nora of a ghost.
“You tell me why I shouldn’t call Deputy Merrill Horn and get him over here right now,” Ben repeated again.
“The car,” Cootie said, as he looked pointedly at Tess and wagged his head.
“What about the car?” Ben asked. His jaw was pounding where the kid had belted him across the face. Another lost boy who got high to drown out the troubles of the world. Ben’s anger hovered somewhere between sorrow and disgust.
Tess jumped in fast. “Cootie won’t be any trouble.”
“You may have to convince me of that. He attacked me in my own front yard.”
“I attacked you because you were after me.”
“I wanted to see who you were.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you.”
And Tess’s thin voice, “You can put the gun down, Daddy. It’s okay.”
Ben lowered the Ruger by degrees.
“You might win a Scooby-Doo at a carnival with that, Mister.” But Cootie still seemed a little concerned. “That’s about all the damage you could do.”
“It’s okay, Daddy. You can put it down.”
Ben held it a moment longer before he propped the thing against a chair, still within easy reach. The tension between Tess and Cootie seemed to flood out of the room the moment the gun touched the floor. It seemed to Nora that, at that moment, the two of them melded together, fell into each other. There might have been only two of them in this room.
“Thought I’d come see about you,” Cootie said in a rush and Nora hated the pleasure she saw in Tess’s face. Her daughter appeared so delighted to see this boy, so proud, so surprised, and there was an eager flush to her cheeks.
“Came to see if I could make you come back.”
Ben had finally lowered himself into a kitchen chair and let Nora daub his wound. “You think you could have come to see my daughter at a decent hour?”
“There’s something about you, Babe. You look different.”
“There’s been a lot that’s happened. Do you want to see the—”
No, Tess. Stop. “Where do you live? How did you get here?” Nora interrupted sharply. The baby. Tess had been about to say, Do you want to see the baby?
“I drove.” Then, “It’s a long story. I just, I’ve been trying to get here for a long time.”
He can’t have Tansy, Nora was thinking. I don’t want him to touch her.
It was five in the morning and Nora longed for sewing in her hands. She needed a needle to thread. A hem to stitch. A sleeve to gather. She needed the heavy reassurance of fabric draping her knees and her hands constructing a garment. Somewhere inside, Nora knew her perception was flawed but she couldn’t change it. When she looke
d at Cootie, she did not see how far Tess had come. Instead she saw everything that Tess used to be.
Nora saw only a curling iron burning her arm and futile days with a Diversion officer in court. She thought of her Hamilton watch missing, money stolen from Ben’s sock drawer, flakes of marijuana on the bathroom floor.
She remembered Tess’s empty bedroom before it had become the guestroom, with the wrinkled note that read: IF YOU COME AFTER ME, YOU WON’T FIND ME. I CAN’T STAND LIVING WITH MOM ANYMORE. She saw Tess’s last, most selfish act: I’m not signing anything. I can’t give her away. Nora looked at Cootie and those things were all she could see.
Ben took the ice pack from his wife. “I’ll do this myself. It’s okay.” This left her hands empty, and she needed something to occupy them, something to take her mind from the brilliance in Tess’s eyes. With every ounce of her, Nora wanted to say to Cootie, Go. Please just go. Don’t take us back again. She yanked the refrigerator open and brought out the egg carton, a can of Pillsbury biscuits, the pitcher of orange juice. “I’ve got bacon, too. You like bacon, don’t you? How does breakfast sound?”
She didn’t give him a chance to answer. How much of this was Scripture working in her heart? If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. She would never know. As Nora broke eggshells and scrambled yolks in a bowl, as she laid the bacon in ribbons in the skillet and they began to sizzle, she never could have known that a mother hadn’t cooked Cootie breakfast for ten years.
“Can’t hang around,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got to ditch—I mean, I’ve got to get back with the car.”
Pale light had begun to filter in through the shades; Nora glanced at the clock as she poured eggs into the pan. Five minutes until five. “Sure, you’ve got time. It won’t take long.” The biscuits slid into the oven and the jar of jewel-red jelly came out of the fridge. Nora circled the table with plates, aligned forks, knives, and spoons, folded the napkins and placed them like little flags. Cootie gravitated to the table, so Tess gravitated, too. By the time Nora said, “Everybody come. It’s ready,” everyone was already there.
There was something sacred about it, something uncommon about the meal they shared. The tension didn’t leave, but it was muted. They ate buttery biscuits and licked their greasy fingers. They moaned with delight when the hot bacon strips crumbled against their tongues. They drank milk so cold they could feel it when it reached their stomachs. Sparrows fluttered awake in the maple outside and began to sing.
When Cootie ate, he leaned forward into his food as if he was afraid it might disappear. He ate his breakfast in huge, eggy globs, using his fork as a shovel. The biscuit disappeared in two bites. He slowed once to wash everything down with orange juice before he reached for a third helping. Other than that, Cootie never rested his fork. Nora had the awful intuition as she saw Tess touch his jacket sleeve that he was starving for much more than a meal.
“Got this plan once, right after you left,” he said around his biscuit to Tess, only all of them heard it. “Know what I was going to do?”
“No. What?”
“Kept thinking if I climbed to the top of the Magnolia Building and took a ride on that red horse, I could see all the way to you.”
Tess laughed. “That would have been insane. Why would you do something like that?” But she diverted her eyes with shy pleasure. “All you had to do was drive a car and come find me.”
“I know.” Those faded blue eyes leveled on Tess. “But it wouldn’t have been nearly so romantic.”
Father, Nora thought. It is not Your will that any should be lost.
“They ran a story about that horse this month in The Dallas Morning News. Had to wait by the newspaper dispenser until somebody paid and I could grab the door before it latched and get a copy out.”
Father, have You done all this so we could help this young man?
“When the horse first went up, it revolved 1.3 times per minute and it was built from 1,162 feet of red glass tubing. That’s what the story said. On clear nights, pilots from all around can see it.”
“You want more eggs?” Nora asked. When he nodded, she loaded more on his plate.
“Someday I’ll get up there. Just for a chance to see all those glass tubes and wires and things.”
As Nora handed him more bacon, too, she couldn’t have known that sometimes Cootie dreamed he might find his mother there, at the top of the Magnolia Building. That she might be standing below those neon tubes, bent low to welcome him, her crocheted purse (oh yes, he’d always remember that purse) lying on the concrete beside her feet. Nora couldn’t have known that he still dreamed his mother would say, “I’m sorry I let you go, Coot. My life would have been so different if I had you.”
Father, what should I do?
“All you had to do,” Tess said again, “was drive a car and come find me.”
“All you had to do,” Cootie said back, “was take care of everything the way you said you would and hitchhike back to Dallas.”
Nora met Ben’s eyes, their glance toward each other as sharp as broken glass. With foreboding Ben found the Ruger with his hand; he’d kept the gun propped close to his side. “Tess had other things she decided to do.”
Nora felt connected with Ben in a way she hadn’t felt in months, sharing this fear that seemed both well-founded and vague. Trying to figure out what to do next with him was like trying to drive through deep fog. All either of them knew to do was creep along toward the other side.
“Did you come here to find me?” Tess asked. “Did you want me to go back with you?” As if she were thinking, Well, if you didn’t come here with this on your mind, I can surely put it there!
“I’m not leaving here without you, Babe, if that’s what you —”
The first short bleat that came from the sewing room was almost indiscernible. If Nora hadn’t gotten used to listening for this tender cry, she might not have even heard it. The sound might not have even registered until it was louder, or longer, or stronger. Nora bit her bottom lip and looked a terrified question at Ben. He began to rise. “I’ll go.”
Nora stood, too. “No, I can.”
But they weren’t the only ones who heard Tansy’s cry. Tess had heard it, too. She beat them both. “That’s the baby, Coot. Don’t you want to see her?”
“What?”
“Weren’t you coming to get me and the baby?”
Cootie’s expression went flat and considering. “You promised you’d take care of that.”
“Yeah. I know I did.”
“There wasn’t going to be any baby. I dunno what you’re talking about.”
“I changed my mind,” Tess said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Sure, I was coming to get you,” Cootie said. But then, with all high shoulders and stiff back, “I wasn’t coming to get any baby.”
In the sewing room, Tansy began to bleat louder. The bruise on Ben’s face had turned a vicious purple and had swollen to the shape of a pear. “You’re no good for my daughter,” Ben said. “You did this to her. You’re the one who kept getting high with her. You don’t take responsibility for your actions.”
“Hey, man,” Cootie said. “Your daughter’s old enough to make her own choices.”
While Cootie had talked, Nora had watched Ben’s lips fold in on each other. There was nothing left except a tight dash of disapproval, like something drawn with a slash of a pen.
“That’s what happened, Cootie,” Tess said. “I made my own choice. Why did you think I didn’t come back? Did you think it was because I didn’t want to see you?”
Tansy’s howls came from the crib, more strident now, those woeful, terse wails that could pull a person’s heart out of itself. Nora couldn’t stand it anymore. “She’s hungry,” she said. “I’m going after her.”
“No, Mama. Sit down.” Tess’s eyes were moist almost to the point of tears but her jaw was set and hard. “I’ll go.”
Nor
a had in mind clearing the plates and rinsing them, but her legs felt twice their normal weight. She collapsed into the chair again, not believing she could feel this tired. Ben’s voice wasn’t quite even when he said, “She’s a keeper, this little one. You wait and see.”
Tess brought Tansy in all bundled in a blanket, helped her daughter balance her little head upright. Tansy’s cheeks were flushed pink from wailing and her nose was blubbery and her eyes were the color of blueberries. Wisps of fine dark hair protruded from her head like dandelion fuzz. Dressed in a cherry-pink sleeper, she was too little to even do baby things. She didn’t yet drool or tear up or smile. She just looked at Cootie, her blue eyes as big around as nickels, interested to see him. She was interested to see all of them.
It would have taken a fiend to look at that baby and be able to turn away.
Tansy did not protest when Tess placed her in Cootie’s arms. Nora’s body protested instead. Bands of panic encircled her throat. She wanted to snatch Tansy out of this young man’s hands and send him packing. She wanted to grab Ben’s gun herself and usher Cootie out the way he had come. Who cares if it wouldn’t do more damage than winning a prize at a carnival. Aimed at the right area of his anatomy, that would be damage enough!
The boy held Tansy’s compact little self away from his chest, his elbows as stiff as scissors.
“What do you think?” Tess asked. “Isn’t she the prettiest thing?”
Nora’s frustration came from so much more than Cootie’s dangerous presence and Tess’s calm pleasure. It came from deep inside her. It came because she had considered encouraging Tess to have an abortion. She was never going to let anything bad happen to this baby. Never.
Something came back to Nora, a memory fluttering like a moth, just out of her reach. The Christmas pageant—of course, that was it, one of many years that Creede Franklin had been Joseph, and a much-younger Frieda Storm had asked Tess to bring a doll. That’s what Tess had said to Creede after she’d shoved her way to the manger. “What do you think?” she’d asked Creede, too, only she’d been talking about her doll, Pink Baby. “Isn’t she the prettiest thing?”
If I Had You Page 13