Your Chariot Awaits

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Andi. Is that short for something?”

  “Andalusia.” I said it a bit defensively, maybe even in a wanna-make-something-of-it tone. “I shortened it to Andi when I was a little girl. We moved around so much, and the kids could never pronounce it, much less spell it. Mostly they just made fun of it.”

  “They should have studied their geography better. It’s a region in Spain, isn’t it? How’d you get a name like that?”

  “My father was there during World War II. He liked the friendly people and the climate and mountains. He wanted to go back after the war was over.”

  “And did he?”

  I shook my head. “The closest he ever got to Andalusia was giving me the name. Never enough money, I suppose. But he was always . . . looking for something, even if he was stuck on this continent. We moved every few months, all over the country. Mom’s family disapproved of him, and she pretty much just walked away from them.”

  “That’s too bad. Family is important.”

  “He always had ideas about starting a business of his own. Big, outlandish ideas, I can see now, although back then I was just impatient for him to do it, and then we’d settle down and live in one place forever. I remember once he invented some new kind of beaters for Mom’s electric mixer. Except when she used them, it was like an egg hurricane in the kitchen. It took us hours to clean up the walls and woodwork.”

  I smiled, remembering my father’s dismay. And my mother’s endless, supportive good humor. “I think it needs a little fine tuning,” she’d said diplomatically as she wiped beaten egg off her eyebrows.

  I spotted a little crab sitting motionless a dozen feet from the water. I thought he was already lifeless, but when I carried him to the water, he revived and scuttled off. I applauded, and Fitz grinned at me.

  “Your folks aren’t around here?” he asked.

  “When I was about fifteen, they got involved in some back-to-nature, live-off-the-land movement. People came to our house bringing stuff like thistles and lilies and alder bark to eat. Did you know crabgrass is edible? Kind of. The sum-mer I was seventeen, we spent four months camping out on the other side of Mount Rainier.”

  “Just you and your folks?”

  “Other people came and went. Everyone would get up before sunrise and sit cross-legged in front of their tents with their eyes closed and palms up, waiting for the sun to rise.”

  “And you?”

  I laughed wryly, although I also had a catch in my throat. Looking back, I saw my folks as so young and naive and vul-nerable, so much younger than I was now. “I was huddled in my sleeping bag in another tent, wishing I could take a hot shower and have something other than those awful boiled weeds for breakfast.”

  Fitz picked up a flat rock and skipped it across the smooth surface of the water. The inlet was in that lull between tides now, before the water started rushing back in. I was always astonished by the speed with which the water moved up the inlet toward the bay, like a river running backwards. When Richard and I lived in the big house across the way, Sarah and I’d toss out sticks just to watch them zoom away.

  “Did you have a falling-out?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. When cold weather froze us out, we moved over to Anacortes. Where I was a month late starting school, of course. Then in early spring my folks got the nature bug again and went out to the mountains to commune with the snow or something. Their pickup got stuck, and they were dead by the time searchers found them several days later.”

  I could still feel the awful shock of that, the pain, the dis-belief and sharp stab of betrayal. Rationally I knew they hadn’t chosen to leave me, but deep inside the feeling was there, and I did feel abandoned.

  “And you were on your own. Were you resentful and angry?”

  Angry? Oh, yes. Angry that they would do such a careless, stupid thing, and then angry at myself for being so angry at them. But a resolve had come out of that anger.

  “Mostly I was just determined to marry a man who was totally different from them, and to do it as soon as possible. Someone rooted and rock-solid and dependable. I made the mistake of thinking that someone was Richard McConnell.” I glanced over at Fitz and smiled. “So there it is, the story of my life. You’ll probably see it on ‘Lifestyles of the Muddled and Misguided’ any day now.”

  We turned around, where a creek flowing into the inlet changed the beach from rocks to mud. The fire had burned down to ashes by the time we got back to the picnic area, and at first I thought Joella was still asleep. The blanket was wound around her like a cocoon. Then I realized she was bunched into a fetal position and making small whimpering noises.

  I ran to her and yanked back the blanket. Sweat rivuleted down her face and plastered her blonde hair to her head. “Jo, what’s wrong! What is it?”

  “I . . . I think the baby’s coming.” Her hands were crossed over her abdomen. Her eyes looked not quite focused. “I feel all tight and hard inside. Oh!” A pain hit her, and she balled up even tighter.

  But the baby couldn’t be coming! Joella was only a little over seven months along. If she had it out here—

  “We have to get her to the hospital!”

  Fitz didn’t ask questions. He shoved everything to the center of the tablecloth on the picnic table, grabbed it all in a bundle, and slammed it into the trunk of the car. I helped Joella to her knees, then to a shaky stand. Together Fitz and I half walked, half carried her to the backseat of the car.

  “You get in back with her,” Fitz said. “I’ll drive. I know where the hospital is.”

  I got in back with her, but about all I could do was wipe her damp forehead with a tissue. What did I know about child- birth? I’d had one child by caesarean while fully anesthetized in a hospital almost forty years ago.

  “Can you tell how often the pains are coming?” I asked anxiously.

  “It’s all one great big pain.”

  Fitz drove fast but carefully. Joella groaned. I cursed the minuscule size of the backseat, the seat-belt straps and buckles that kept getting in the way, and the delaying traffic light where the inlet road joined the highway into town. Traffic was heavier on the highway. Some idiot cut around us, making Fitz screech the brakes to keep from hitting him, and I shook my fist at him. I also prayed, recklessly asking for God’s help even if I wasn’t on some approved list of prayers.

  Please, God, this is a child of Yours. Don’t desert her now. She and her baby are depending on You!

  20

  Joella kept groaning and holding her abdomen.

  I said the only thing I could think of. “Don’t push. Wait till we get to the hospital. Everything will be all right. Don’t push!”

  Joella gritted her teeth. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one . . . trying . . . to hold back a . . . rocket ship about to launch.”

  “Think soothing thoughts. Ocean waves. Birds singing.”

  “What does it feel like when your water breaks?”

  I had no idea. Sixty years old, I’d be the matriarch in any primitive tribe, the wise old woman. But, product of civilization and caesarean that I am, I knew nothing!

  We whipped into the parking area, then under the covering that sheltered the emergency entrance. Fitz ran inside. Thirty seconds later he was back with two guys in white and a gurney. They loaded Joella onto it, and I followed them inside while Fitz went to park the car.

  He caught up with me in the emergency room a couple minutes later, as I was giving the woman at the admitting desk information.

  She frowned. “You don’t have an insurance card or any-thing for the patient?”

  “No.” I was pretty sure Joella had no insurance, but I didn’t want to reveal that. “We were out at the park on a picnic—”

  “Did they take her directly to the delivery room?” Fitz cut in.

  “The patient is your daughter?”

  “No, but—”

  “You are family?”

  “Well, in a way.”

  “What way?”


  “Joella lives in my duplex.”

  “You’re roommates?”

  “No, I’m the, uh, landlady.” Which came off sounding not even third-cousin-once-removed close to being family.

  “Please wait over there.” The woman motioned in the direction of the chairs arranged around the room, only two of which were occupied. Good. That meant Joella should be getting priority attention.

  So we sat. We waited. The chairs had apparently been chosen for longevity rather than comfort. I kept thinking about all that food we’d eaten. Could wieners and onions and chili induce labor?

  There was a coffee machine in the corner. Fitz went over and brought back Styrofoam cups of stuff as black as my impounded limousine.

  “I guess it’s coffee,” he muttered, peering at the dense liquid. “Unless it’s something they’re using to resurface the parking lot. I could run up to one of the espresso stands.”

  “This is fine,” I assured him. I didn’t want him to leave. We weren’t doing much talking, but his presence was comforting.

  “Matt arrived three weeks early,” he offered once. “And look how big and strong he is now.”

  But Joella was almost two months early.

  God, Jo says Your timing is always perfect, no matter how it looks to us down here. Please make it perfect this time!

  After an hour and forty-five minutes, I approached the reception desk. “Can we find out anything about my friend, Joella Picault?”

  “I’ll check.” The woman returned a little later with the information that they were still running tests.

  “Is there a problem? Has she had the baby yet?”

  All I got was a repetition of the “running tests” information, which is apparently all landladies were entitled to in this day of CIA-level privacy regulations.

  After almost three hours, the swinging doors opened, and a woman in a white pantsuit pushed a wheelchair through. Joella stood up, still obviously pregnant.

  I rushed over to her. “Jo, what’s going on? Why are they letting you go? Are you okay? Are they kicking you out because of money? I can come up with—”

  “I’m okay. The baby’s okay. I need to go out to the car and get my checkbook. The lady inside said I need to pay something on the bill today and make arrangements about the balance.”

  “I’ll go get it,” Fitz offered. He headed out the double glass doors.

  “They did something to stop the baby from coming too soon?” I asked anxiously.

  “They didn’t stop anything. She never was coming. My water didn’t break, and I wasn’t even dilated.” Joella sounded both embarrassed and frustrated.

  “But all your pain—”

  “I am here in the emergency room, recipient of every test known to pregnant womankind, with a huge, enormous, industrial-strength case of indigestion. A big, bad bellyache.”

  “Indigestion!”

  “With my breath smelling so strongly of onions, I practically asphyxiated the doctor. He asked me what I’d been eating.”

  I went down the list. “Burned weenies. Garlic-flavored buns. Onions. Pickle. Mustard. Pepper-jack cheese. Greek salad . . . with kalamata olives. Chili. Chocolate cake. Fudge frosting.”

  “That’s what I told him. He said I could have found a healthier menu in a dumpster.”

  I slammed a palm against my forehead. “It’s all my fault. What was I thinking?”

  “You were thinking of what would make the day fun for me, and I chose most of that stuff. And it was a glorious picnic.” Joella gave me a hug. “The best birthday ever. And if I hadn’t been such a pig and eaten about three times as much as I should have, I’d have been fine. But the baby was never in any danger. I just . . . panicked, I guess, when I started feeling a little pain.”

  “You’re sure it’s just indigestion? They’re sure? Doctors make mistakes.”

  “They did ultrasound, blood, EKG, urine, the works. Indigestion. They gave me some medication. I can’t believe it. Telling you the baby was coming when it was just a dumb stomachache.” She shook her head in disgust. “What am I going to do when I have real labor pains?”

  Laughter came from the other side of the swinging doors.

  Joella rolled her eyes. “One guess what they’re laughing about back there. They’ll be making onion-breath jokes for days.”

  Fitz returned then and handed Joella her purse, and she dug out a checkbook. I knew today must have run up a mammoth bill.

  “I can help out—”

  “I’ll manage.”

  She had to take the check to a different desk, and it took quite a while getting the financial arrangements made. I don’t suppose they can repossess the baby if you can’t pay a bill, but I was pretty sure they could make life miserable. Would “man- aging” mean she’d have to accept her parents’ ultimatum about adoption to get financial help? And though I could and would help her out, I doubted I could do enough to make much of a dent in this bill. Is this God’s way of helping her make a decision? I wondered with a stab of dismay.

  I put a hand over my mouth and breathed into it as we went out to the car. Now I knew why she’d almost asphyxiated the doctor. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Maybe because it was like a skunk-on-skunk situation. If you’re a skunk, you probably don’t smell the other skunks.

  But thank You, God, thank You for indigestion instead of tragedy. Please, please take care of Joella and her baby.

  Odd, I thought, how much I was talking to God here lately.

  NEXT MORNING I brushed my teeth twice as long as usual, rinsed my mouth with Listerine, and took a breath mint for good measure. I had enough problems without burying innocent bystanders in an onslaught of onion-breath hangover.

  Joella had already left for the coffee shop by the time I went out to my car. I’d checked on her earlier, and she was fine, no pains. We were both still apologizing, Joella for her mistake about thinking she was in labor, me for not using better judgment about limo-dog revelry. Fitz was bringing his fish over to cook this evening.

  I visited the county personnel offices first, only to find out the hiring situation had changed there. A big sign said all job vacancies were posted on their Web site. A similar situation with the school offices, although I did pick up an application form there. By that time I’d had it with the advances in technology and decided to work on something more productive and perhaps even more important than a job.

  Keeping myself out of jail.

  21

  Only a scattering of cars occupied the big F&N parking lot. They were huddled together as if intimidated by all the empty space. I found the door to the wing where I’d worked locked and had to go around to the main front entrance. A uniformed guard . . . a guard! . . . stood beside it. He checked my ID and called up to Letty’s office before he let me pass.

  I found my way up the stairs and down the hall to the section of cubicles where I used to work. Everything seemed the same, except that the desks were abnormally uncluttered, the phones silent, and Letty the only occupant.

  She stood up and held out her arms. “Andi! It’s so good to see you!” She gave me an enthusiastic hug.

  We’d never socialized outside the F&N setting—Letty’s grandchildren kept her busy—but I’d always considered her a good, dependable friend. She’s my age, widowed, plump and energetic, a cheerful mile-a-minute talker. Her skin is enviably unlined, and there’s always a flowered barrette in her buttercup yellow hair. Today it was my favorite, daisies.

  “Good to see you too. What’s with the guard?”

  “They hired him after Mr. Findley found some homeless guy washing his feet in the sink in the executives’ restroom. He’d just wandered in.”

  “That’s kind of creepy.”

  “So’s sitting here alone day after day. It feels like a deserted island, without the ubiquitous palm tree.”

  Ubiquitous. I’d forgotten Letty’s determined system for improving her vocabulary. Pick a new word or phrase and use it at least once a day fo
r two weeks. It was from Letty that I’d learned such words as salubrious and rubescent, although I hadn’t yet found any particular use for any of them.

  “How’s everything going here?” I asked.

  “I can’t believe they expect one person to finish up every-thing for the entire department.” Letty waved both arms as if fighting off work hurtling at her from all directions, like strange creatures in some video game.

  “How much longer will it last?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe a month or six weeks. I’ve been trying to get them to hire someone to help out, but you’d think I was asking for my own private Rent-a-Hunk. But I’ve made up my mind. Once I’m finished here, I’m through. I’d planned to work till I was sixty-five before taking my Social Security. You get more if you wait, you know. But now I’m just going to run. I’m thinking about expanding my herb garden and starting a small business selling herbs and spices.”

  “Great idea. I’ll be an eager customer.” I was a little short on basil and thyme right now, since the sheriff’s department had custody of mine.

  “Oh, but I should have called you. I was so horrified when I heard what happened to Jerry. Murdered! Here, sit down.” She pulled a chair from a neighboring empty desk as if the murder must have tired me. “I just made fresh coffee.”

  She’d moved the shiny metal coffeemaker stand into the aisle closer to her desk. She bustled around, pouring coffee and setting out packets of creamer and sugar. “And how traumatic for you, having it happen right under your nose. Though I’ve never understood what a limousine was doing there.”

  I explained about my inheritance, which brought an appreciative “Oooh!” Then a hopeful, “Are you giving rides to old friends?”

  “I’d like to, but the sheriff’s department impounded the limo. Actually, the reason I’m here has to do with the murder. As you may recall, you were the one who introduced me to Jerry at the company Christmas party—”

  “And now I feel so guilty about that! But it wasn’t as if I’d planned it. It was, well, you know, propinquity. I just happened to be talking to you when he came up. And at the time, I thought it was so wonderful that the two of you right away got started talking about a hiking trail out by some lake and seemed so taken with each other. But now, considering the circumstances . . .”