Estes stepped hard on the brake, and the truck swung catawampus in the yard. He hurried himself off the high seat, and Early hauled himself up and inside the cab. He slammed the door.
“What's going on, Jimmy?”
“If I knew, I wouldn't need your truck.” Early stabbed the transmission into reverse. He backed the truck around and, in an effort to find first gear, jammed the transmission into second. That killed the engine, and Early ground away at the starter.
Estes came running, waving his arms. “Sometimes it's—”
The engine roared.
Early diddled with the gear shifter and caught first. He rolled the truck out of the yard and into the lane headed for the county road. Early saw the Jeep dip through the wash a quarter-mile on, and he double-clutched, slipping the transmission into second. To Early, accustomed to driving a lightweight Jeep with a V-Eight engine, Walter Estes's tandem handled like a lumber wagon. But it came with an advantage, a two-speed rear axle that on a long, flat, straight road might allow Early more speed than his Jeep possessed. He rolled through the wash and through the ranch gate that Estes had left open, downshifting, horsing the heavy truck up onto the county road. The truck swayed and rocked, and Early set to the business of double-clutching up through eight gears. The International shook through sixty-five, then seventy, and smoothed out as its speedometer needle rose through eighty to peg at ninety-two.
Early clung to the steering wheel, watching the truck eat away at the distance that separated it from the Jeep.
The Jeep's taillights flashed on. Curve ahead, Early could see it. And the intersection with State Twenty-Four that ran south to Manhattan, and north a way and then west to Clay Center.
Early brought his foot off the gas pedal and onto the brake. He stepped down, playing off speed, swaying the truck around the curve, downshifting, setting up for a square ninety to the right. But the Jeep went straight, across the highway and on east toward the Big Blue Valley, the Jeep's taillights masked by dust roiling up where the county road went from pavement to gravel.
A school bus lumbered up from Manhattan, and a freight truck came over a rise from the north. Early saw them both and slowed. He timed the other vehicles and shot the International across the highway behind the passing school bus, the freight driver hauling on his air horn, mouthing words Early didn't want to know.
The flat, paved road fell away behind, the gravel road twisting, rising, and falling as it snaked out ahead through the Flint Hills. Early pushed his speed up to fifty-three and dropped it back for the turns. He topped a hill and spotted the rear of his Jeep disappearing half a mile ahead over a rise he knew fell away on the far side into the deep valley of the Blue River. Early downshifted for the rise and the fall away and the first of the near switchback turns. The Jeep ran out of sight beneath cottonwoods far below.
Shift up, shift down, crank the steering wheel into a turn, twist it in the opposite direction to bring the truck straight. A woodchuck, humping alongside the roadway, scrambled off into the brambles as Early in Walter Estes's truck rumbled by.
The International rolled out of the last turn and onto the flat of the valley floor. Early stepped down on the accelerator. Where was Thelma and the Jeep? The cottonwoods, two turns that Early could remember—or was it three?—and the viaduct of the Kansas & Nebraska Railroad . . . he wouldn't see the Jeep until he got to the other side. He pushed the truck for all the speed the road would allow him, steering under the cottonwoods and through the first turn. The air rolling in through the window smelled different here, not of grass on the high ground, but of drying cornfields and pumpkins.
Early downshifted again, and then he saw it, under the viaduct, his Jeep—on its side, the wheels spinning.
CHAPTER 26
* * *
September 26—Monday Afternoon
New Life
He sat in the gravel, cradling Thelma's head and shoulders, stroking her hair, weeping—wishing it were he who was dead—the tips of his fingers wet, the color of Indian paintbrush. Sorrow and the smells of gasoline and an overheated engine swirled with the scents of sun-dried cornfields in the early evening air of the valley of the Big Blue River.
“Sheriff.”
A voice, but Early couldn't make it register.
“Can I help, sheriff?”
He twisted around, toward where he thought the voice had come from, peered up over his shoulder, his vision blurred by tears. The sun slapped into Early's eyes, and he squinted. A shape there silhouetted, someone . . . a flat-brimmed Stetson, the front pulled low, the face lost to shadows.
“Sheriff?”
That voice again. So whispery.
“Sonny?”
“Yeah. Got a camp in the brush beyond the viaduct. Heard this and came. This not your wife, is it?”
Early raked a sleeve beneath his soppy eyes.
“She dead?”
“Yes.”
“What's she doing, driving down here?”
“Running from demons.”
“How's that?”
“You wouldn't understand.”
Sonny Estes knelt. He lifted Thelma's lifeless hand and laid it across her stomach. “She pregnant?”
“Our first.”
Sonny touched Thelma's rounded midsection. “Sheriff?”
“Huh?”
“I feel movement. Think yer baby's alive.”
“Oh God.”
“What do you want to do?”
Early hauled his hand down his face, twisting his cheeks and jaw, stretching them, elongating them. “The hospital,” he said.
“Your baby won't make it, be dead before you get there. Sheriff?”
“Uh-huh?” Early brushed at a curl at Thelma's temple, worked the curl behind her ear.
“Ever cut into a cow to take her calf when you knew the cow was going to die anyway?”
“Couple times.”
“I've helped my dad do it, too.”
“Cut into my wife?” Early's hand stopped. He forced himself to look at Thelma's face, forced himself to consider what she might want done.
“Sheriff,” Sonny said, “you got a couple minutes at most, no time to argue this. Your wife's dead. She's still holding your baby. Don't you think we ought to save it?”
“Oh damn . . . oh damn.”
“Better try, shouldn't we? Can't help but think she'd want you to have this baby.”
“She would.” The words came as a ragged whisper.
“We better get on with it. We can work right here.”
“Yeah, that's . . . that's fair.”
Sonny wriggled his fingers, for Early to lean Thelma forward, into his hands. “That's the way,” he said as he took hold of her shoulders, her head lolling to the side. “You get up now.”
Early worked himself onto his knees.
“Dad always kept a blanket behind the seat. You get it.”
Early stumbled away to the International, to the cab. He fumbled a patterned red blanket out and, when he returned, he saw that Sonny had laid Thelma out on the gravel, had ripped her dress open.
Sonny knelt there, next to Thelma, pulled a filleting knife from a sheath on his belt.
Horror flashed across Early's face. “What you doing?”
“Cutting into her.”
“Not with that gawddamn sword.” Early pitched the blanket aside. He dug his pocketknife out as he went down on his knees, opened the blade. He flexed his fingers, to chase the tension from his hand before he put the point at the far side and below Thelma's navel.
“You gonna cut there?”
“It's the best way.”
“No time, man. Split her down the middle like a watermelon. Lift the baby out.”
“Butcher my wife?”
“Dammit, sheriff, pretty work don't count here.” Sonny grabbed Early's hand. He hauled it and the blade it clutched to the top of the bulge. “Cut from here down.”
Early hesitated.
“Gawdammit, man, do it.”
“Cut that wall now,” Sonny said.
“I know what I'm doing.”
“Gawd, yer slower than Methuselah.”
“Shut the hell up.” Early again positioned his blade, this time at the top of the uterus. He pressed down, sliced, and again drew the blade down. “There's the sac. See it? I got to cut it.”
“You just talk, talk, talk, don't you?”
“I'm getting the job done.”
A blue fly buzzed in close, then another, drawn by the scent. “Gawddamn, get those flies away,” Early bellowed.
Sonny swung at the first and missed. He clapped the second between his hands, and, with a fuss of waving, scared the other off.
Early, focusing, pierced the amniotic sac, the thinnest of walls. He cut it away and fluid spilled out, filling the cavity. There open to the world laid the baby—slick, wet, and blue. Early reached in with both hands. He scooped up the child.
“You a daddy now,” Sonny said.
“Yeah. How're you at tying knots?”
“What?”
Early nodded at the umbilical cord splayed out, leading back into the uterus. “You gotta cut it and tie it off.”
“That cord's too stiff. What if I used a string?”
“You got string?”
Sonny pulled a hank from his back pocket.
“Do it then.”
“About here?” he asked, holding the cord a short ways from the child's body.
“Good by me.”
Sonny whipped the string around the cord once and a second time, then tied it off. He pulled the knot tight, doubled it and pulled it tight again. With the blade of his filleting knife glinting in the evening sun, Sonny sliced through the cord above the knot.
“Wish I had iodine to splash on that cut,” Early said. “Your dad wouldn't happen—”
“Yeah, in his jumble box in the cab.” Sonny scrambled up. “I'll get it, and you get that blue baby to breathing.”
He disappeared. Early heard him rummaging in the cab as he lifted the child by its—no, by her—heels. Head down, he milked the mucus from the baby's throat and mouth, and, as a last gesture, smacked the child on her bottom.
The baby, flaccid as a washrag, did not respond.
Early smacked the child's bottom again.
Still no response.
Desperate, he cradled her in the crook of his arm, covered her mouth and nose with his own mouth, and puffed a breath into the baby's lungs.
Then another.
“Come on, baby, breathe,” he said and puffed another breath into her lungs.
And a fourth breath. Early rocked back on his haunches. He watched, and the child's chest tremored up with no help from him. It held a moment and fell, then tremored up again.
“She's alive, isn't she,” Sonny said. He gazed down from where he stood next to Early, a work-stained box under his arm.
“Yeah, I need that blanket to dry her off. Cut it in half, huh?”
Sonny laid the box aside. He snatched up the blanket, folded it and razored it along the fold, handing half to Early who wiped the child clean with it. When satisfied, Early laid the baby on the dry half.
Sonny hunkered down. He got a small bottle from the box, screwed the cap off and daubed a finger in. He spread the iodine over the cut end and around the child's umbilical cord, drops falling onto the baby's stomach. The child yeowled at the burn of the disinfecting fluid.
“Got lungs on her, don't she?” Sonny said through a snicker as he brought out a gauze pad. He tore off the paper wrapping and placed the pad over the knotted end, snugged it tight with a strip of adhesive tape. “Think we got it, Poppy.”
Early lifted Thelma's hand. He pressed it against the child's face. “Thel,” he said, “we got us the baby you wanted.”
“Girl, huh?” Sonny asked.
“Appears so.” Early released Thelma's hand, and Sonny busied himself covering her with the soiled half-blanket while Early folded the sides of the dry half-blanket over the child.
“Got all her fingers and toes, Poppy?”
Early cradled the baby as he had Thelma. He gazed into the child's face. “Got all her fingers and toes.”
CHAPTER 27
* * *
September 26—Monday Evening
One Loss Forever
Early and Doc Grafton stood together in a room, the room white, smelling of antiseptic, Early with his hands in his back pockets, Grafton his arms folded across his chest. They gazed down at the child asleep in the bassinet.
“Our baby things are a helluva lot better than that horse blanket you brought her wrapped in,” Grafton said. He leaned against Early. “You were one damn fool to take her, you know that? But I'm sure glad you did.”
“She's so small.”
“She's the better part of a month and a half shy of full term. She'll grow. They all do. . . . I'm sorry about Thelma.”
“Yeah. Her world had changed. She wasn't comfortable in it.”
“I guess.”
“It's a hard way to get peace.”
“You think she crashed the Jeep?”
“I don't know. I'd like to think not, but I don't know.”
Grafton rocked back. He rubbed a hand over his hair. “Cactus, I made some calls for you . . . to Sherm over at the funeral home and to Gladys.”
Hard lines formed around Early's eyes.
“Now don't you go getting upset on me,” Grafton said. “You're in no shape to arrange a funeral, and Gladys will work with Sherm. She'll do it all. You got to let your friends carry you for awhile now, you hear me?”
The Esteses hustled into the nursery from the hallway, followed by Mose Dickerson, Nadine Estes bee-lining it for Early. She hugged him hard. “Jimmy, I'm so sorry.”
Early allowed himself to return the hug. It all welled up, and he snuffled, words failing to form, failing to come out.
“You let it go, Jimmy,” Nadine said as she squeezed him about the ribs. “You let it go. Mose said you got the baby. This her?”
“Yes. Sonny helped.”
Nadine Estes leaned back, her eyes wide. “Is he here?”
“Didn't want to come in. Stayed with the truck.”
“There's nobody with the truck, Jimmy. Mose parked right next to it.”
Dickerson pulled his hat off. “He get away again, Jimmy?”
“He wasn't exactly caught.”
“What would you call it?”
“He just came out of the brush and helped. We were a little too busy to think about much else.”
Estes put his gnarled hand on Early's shoulder. “I'm glad you let my boy go.”
“I didn't have him to let him go.”
“Jimmy,” Dickerson said, “if that's the way you want to think about it, that's all right. . . . So this is the little girl, huh?”
James Early, in the only suit he owned, a black band around his right sleeve, sat on a dirt pile next to an open grave, his cattleman's hat beside him, a breeze stirring at his hair. He sifted soil from one hand to the other and back again, the soil cool to the touch, not yet dry enough that it had given up its earthy smells.
Mose Dickerson stepped away from the funeral party moving out toward their cars and pickups parked at the side of the Worrisome Creek Baptist Church's iron-fenced cemetery. He gathered up a handful of golden leaves that had dropped from a maple and limped his way back toward Early. “Mind if I sit with you a spell?” he asked.
Early didn't say a thing, just continued sifting soil.
Dickerson settled next to him. He set the leaves aside and pulled a handkerchief from a side pocket. Dickerson rubbed the handkerchief at the tip of his nose as he gazed around. After a bit, he looked up at a red-tailed hawk riding the currents, the sky above the bird a milky blue. �
��Guess if you got to be buried, this is a pretty good place.”
“It's all right.”
“You got some trees, and you're not far from the pastures, and the little church here where your friends come, you're not forgotten. . . . I'm thinking when I die, I might have it written out that they bury me in my car.”
Early glanced at Dickerson, puzzlement twisting an eyebrow.
“Well, I drive it all the time on my mail route. It's kind of a part of me.” Dickerson picked up a leaf. He studied its veining. “You put something special of Thelma's in her casket?”
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“In the evenings when she didn't have schoolwork to do, sometimes she'd read a Shakespeare sonnet. I never understood them—some of the words and what they call meter—but Thelma said those sonnets were the best poetry. I put the book in her casket.”
“Anything else?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Had the newspaper editor take a picture of our little girl. Nice picture. I put that in there too.”
“That's really good, Jimmy. She had to like that.” Dickerson laid the leaves out in a line. “What you gonna do now?”
“Take some time away, I guess—get my head clear. Ranch work will do that. Walter says he's got a lot of work to do to get his place ready for winter, so I told the county commissioners Hutch can be sheriff for awhile.”
“He won't catch Sonny.”
“Never tell. He might.”
“Naw, Hutch don't know where he is.”
“And I suppose you do?”
“Yessir.” Dickerson pulled from his inside coat pocket an envelope. He held it out. “ ’Twas in the morning mail for you at the post office.”
Early took the envelope. He turned it over and read a Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, return address but no name.
“He's in the Army,” Dickerson said.
“How do you know that?”
“Held the envelope up to the light. I could read a few words through it and Sonny's signature.”
CHAPTER 28
* * *
October 14—Friday Afternoon
Early's Fall Page 25