“Seven years,” she whispered. “I’ve been your wife for seven years. I’ve followed you across the world. I’ve earned your indulgence.” I’d not heard this sharp of an edge to her voice in years. It took a lot of work to get her angry, though I seemed to be pretty good at it.
I knew I’d reached the end of her patience, but I pressed on, and hated myself for it. “I need a reason.”
“Faith.”
My stomach knotted. We’d had this argument countless times, and it never ended well. I’d gone with her to church several times in the two years we dated but stopped shortly after marriage. I had no interest in converting. I’d been honest with her about my intentions from the start. But still, she pushed and pushed and cried about my eternal security.
At first I found her faith refreshing and cute. Her sanguinity and optimism fascinated and inspired me. With her, I had hope; I wanted to believe—not necessarily in something, but simply to believe—though belief, for me, was uncommon, unfamiliar, and a little intimidating. Her faith helped me find hope for those in darkness, hope for them to rise from ashes, phoenix-like, and persevere when hope itself was a flame in a vacuum.
Though proud of my accomplishments, Nadine never felt like my articles were enough. They brought light and inspiration, became hope for a people, for a nation, for the world. Belief alone would not suffice. It always came back to faith, to a belief in.
“We’ve been through this, Nadine. I’m more facts than faith.”
“They’re not opposites. They go together.”
“How?”
She sighed. “I’m too tired to do this now.”
I squeezed her knee and wondered if my nausea was due to the winding highway or the guilt of antagonizing my dying wife. How did I get to this point? When had it become so important for me to not believe in God? “Look, I’m sorry.” I sighed. “Don’t even know what I’m doing anymore, what I’m saying.”
She took a ragged breath and put her hand on mine. “Things are going to get difficult. I want you to be ready. You’ll need something bigger than yourself to get through this.”
By “this” she meant her impending death, and by “something bigger than yourself,” she meant God—Jesus. She’d learned to use generic terms when speaking with me about issues of faith. I’d made it very clear to her how much spiritual specificity irritated me.
I reached for the radio, hoping the distraction would ease my nerves.
“They’re getting married.”
My hand never reached the radio. It took me a minute to figure out who she meant. “Mason and Aida? When?”
“This week.”
“Why so fast?” Then, I understood. “She wants you to see the wedding.” I moved my hand from the radio dial back to her knee.
It made more sense now. At the hospital, Aida insisted on bringing Mason back to her house with us. He didn’t have a car at the hospital, and I wasn’t about to let him drive mine again. I told Aida to drop him off at his house, so Nadine could rest and get some sleep.
Her answer was swift and final. “I’ve been sleeping all day. I’ll sleep just as well with him there.”
I couldn’t argue with her. And now, playing the scene back in my mind, I understood. “A week?”
* * *
It was late when we got back. And though we were all tired, none of us could sleep. Some invisible need or unspoken imperative demanded we stay awake, demanded we enjoy each other’s company while we could. But the conversation lulled often, broken by awkwardness and irritation.
Nadine, my wife, Aida’s sister, would die soon.
What could we say?
Aida had the most experience in this department. As a hospice nurse, she worked with terminal patients daily. But this was her sister.
Twelve years ago, Nadine and Aida’s parents died when a train derailed behind their housing development and crushed several homes. Nadine was eighteen. Aida was fifteen.
Hailey had seen more than its share of tragedy in its existence, but none echoed through the years like the derailment. It left Nadine to raise her sister alone, something she did remarkably well.
Nadine told me once how she’d done it. She trusted the faith of her parents, embraced their Christianity and relied on Christ for her strength. Without Him, she assured me, she’d have been crushed by the weight of depression, stress, and early-onset responsibility.
I felt a similar weight now, and Nadine would do everything she could to see that it didn’t crush me. For her, that meant feeding me a steady diet of Jesus, no matter how much I threw it back in her face.
Aida poured me some coffee. Mason refilled his cup. We sat, feet up, watching Wheel of Fortune reruns from the eighties. Nadine had a thing for Pat Sajak. She lay stretched out on the couch, her head in my lap. She liked it when I played with her hair, rubbed her back.
I admired my wife more than I could express, but I was not a man of faith. It was foreign to me. I’d made it this far relying on myself; it’s what I knew, what I trusted, and that’s how I’d continue.
Aida excused herself to make Nadine’s bed and asked her if she wanted more morphine.
“No.”
I put my hand on her damp forehead and became suddenly aware of the delicate weight of her head on my leg. My stomach cramped. I doubled over and buried my face in my hands. I wanted to pick her up and hold her forever, but all at once wanted to be held by her, to feel her courage, to understand her ability to stare death in the eye unblinking. A voice echoed in my head. Two words repeated, an insatiable echo that nauseated and crippled me. There, in front of Mason, Nadine, and Aida, no matter how much I struggled to conceal them, tears framed my face, and I wept for the first time in my adult life, the echo in my mind chanting mantra-like:
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
Chapter 4
Thursday, September 3rd
If Mason noticed my red eyes, he did not say. Mercifully, he didn’t mention my breakdown from last night, either. We stood in the early morning while the sun rose over the distant hills. I’d not expected it to be so cold here in the desert, especially on the foothills of summer. Nadine swore it stayed hot and dry until late October. We sipped coffee for a few minutes, making a point not to say anything to each other. He didn’t want to say something to upset me, and I hadn’t decided if he was truly insane yet.
Because he had not gone home, Mason wore the same gray sweatshirt and holey jeans. His hands were buried deep in his pockets, arms straight, and he fidgeted in the chill. When he did speak, it came through chattering teeth. “You think I’m crazy.” He paused. I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t expect you to believe me. You’ve got no reason to. But what I said before was true.” He rocked back on his heels and looked off toward the growing sun. He pulled his hands from his pockets long enough to crack his knuckles and replace them in his pockets. “Hailey has seven days, starting today, before it’s destroyed. You’re the only one who can save it. God’s given you a gift, and you have to use it, because if you don’t, we’re all going to die. Hundreds of people. But if you do what I ask, if you take the time to write a few articles, you can save them. You can save us. You can save Nadine.”
“How exactly is writing articles going to save her?”
“God rewards those who are faithful. He’s worked miracles before, Connor. He can do it again.”
“Right.”
He sighed. “I’ve offered you money, the chance to save yourself and your wife, a chance to save hundreds of people. What do I have to do to get you to write these articles?”
I folded my arms across my chest, hoping to find some relief from the chilling wind. “You can’t make me do them.” I calculated each word as it c
ame. “Last night Nadine talked with me on the ride home. She said I needed something bigger than myself, a higher power, if you will, to get through this. We went to church for a bit when we were dating, but I haven’t been since we married. She hounds me about it all the time. But I’ve never needed God.” My eyes shifted to my shoes. “But last night …”
“I know.”
“She has to know. I have to tell her.”
“Can’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t make the rules. I do what I’m told. God wants you to write the articles, and we can’t tell anyone about it.”
“Wait. God asked for me by name?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“You have to be more specific.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet, took another sip of coffee. Golden sunlight spilled over purpled mountains, ignited diamonds in the sand. “What if He did? Would it matter to you?”
I paused and thought of Nadine. “It would matter to my wife.”
Mason shook his head. “We can’t tell her.”
“Look, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it for her. She needs to understand that. I’m not going to lock myself in a room for the next few days to knock out a few articles while my wife struggles to hold on to life unless she knows I’m working for her. I don’t care what you tell her, but if you want me on board, you’ll find a way to explain it to her.”
He cracked his knuckles, then scratched his neck. “Sounds fair.”
The air warmed quickly in the full light of the sun. Lanky shadows stretched out from our feet. “Tell me how it works.”
He turned his head quickly toward the river. Didn’t want me to see his smile, but I caught it on the corner of his mouth. “He wants an article a day. I’ll pay half up front and half upon completion of the article.”
“You said each should focus on someone in Hailey. What are you looking for here? Biography?”
“Up to you. However you want to reveal the important information, so long as you focus on the good. Paint the people in a positive light, but don’t lie. He wants a complete picture, but the emphasis should be on the good, like you did with Sri Lanka. People in Hailey are survivors, too.”
I chuckled. Had he really just compared one of the most destructive tsunamis in history to his dirty little town in the California desert? These people had no concept of what it took to persevere beyond destruction that widespread.
“I’m sure they’re identical. When do I start?”
He pulled a cigarette from his sweatshirt pocket and lit up. “Grab your notebook. I’m your first story.”
Chapter 5
RACING TRAINS
Shannon told Mason she was pregnant the summer before their senior year. It was a few months after he saved her life, and four years after his brother had been dragged out of their house, arrested, and summarily imprisoned. They sat by the railroad tracks overlooking the river, about a mile down from the cement company where her mother worked.
Their future, life after high school, lay spread out before them, as far away as the moon, as close as the railroad tracks. They were seventeen, coming up on thirty.
She took a drag on a foul cigarette she’d lifted from her mother’s purse and offered it to Mason. He shook his head. When she smiled, he noticed that her teeth had already begun to yellow.
“One of these days, you’ll be smoking just like me, Freak.”
“Maybe. But not today.”
He wrote her name in the loose sand on the slight embankment that ran up to Highway 29. A shrill, distant train whistle split the still dusk. They’d learned how to tell the speed and distance of a train based on the reaction of the tracks. Since the skin on their hands was too thick and calloused, they’d lie on their bellies and press their cheeks to the cold rail. The humming of the track told them how far off the train was and how fast it traveled. This particular train, five or six miles away, accelerated rapidly.
They came here when life got too big. Highway 29, up the slope behind them, ran parallel to the tracks at the base of the embankment. Between the tracks and the road, Shannon and Mason had a privacy they couldn’t find elsewhere.
Years ago, Shannon invented a game out of a purely juvenile lust for adrenaline. She called it Racing Trains. The rules were simple: Run in front of the train. Jump when it got too close. Last one off the tracks won, or died.
It gave them a way to grab hold of their lives when they felt they had no control. Soon, it became a staple of their summers.
She made Mason do it first, when they were in junior high. Eager to please her, he ran as quickly as he could. To his surprise, his feet rushed over the rough wooden ties fluidly. He felt fast. He felt good. He hadn’t realized how fast he was, nor did he realize how much he liked running. When he got to high school, he made sure to join the track team.
Shannon, however, did not have the same quickness. Her running was coupled with wheezing and hacking, frequent complaints, and early jumps. In their years of racing, Shannon had never won.
Shannon raced to flirt with Death, to stare into his cold eyes and wink.
Mason raced to forget. The wind rushed past his ears and all sound evanesced except the shrill horn of the train.
Racing on the tracks was like running on a trampoline. The ties bowed and bounced, and their feet never hit when they thought they might. At first, they fell, collapsed, scurried up from their knees and fell again. The rails shrieked and screamed. Chills iced their spines, and their teeth hurt.
When they jumped just ahead of the train, dirt swirled and stung their faces. The slipstream clawed at them and threatened to vacuum them under the screeching wheels. Their skin drew tight, and their breath was sucked away. Off the tracks, they still ran, feeling their feet lift off the ground, running on air, and they understood what it was to be small in their world.
It was too early to take to the tracks—they would wait. Mason watched Shannon take a long drag on the cigarette. She was a professional.
* * *
Mason turned thirteen the week six police officers flooded his home and dragged his brother Greg to the driveway. They said Greg was resisting and used their nightsticks to “quell the threat and ensure cooperation.” Mason wondered what qualified as “resisting.”
Was it when Greg grabbed the coffee table, kicking and screaming while six men clawed at his limbs and face? Was it when he shielded his neck and chest from the batons that crashed down on him? Was it when he demanded to know what he had done? Or was it when he tried to stand up? Likely, it was when they threw him to the concrete. It was then that he found his feet, and in the amber light of the garage from which Mason and his parents watched, hit one officer square on the jaw.
That crack, like stepping on a too-dry cottonwood branch by the river, still rang in his ears at times. For a teenager, his brother handled the officers well, as if he’d spent his life fighting. But, unlike Mason, his brother Greg did not always think things through. The physical evidence of the officer’s injuries (bruises, cracked ribs, broken jaw), sustained during Greg’s arrest, were enough to persuade the jury to vote “guilty” on the additional lesser charges of resisting arrest and assault on a police officer.
After the trial, after the guilty verdict, the bailiff escorted Greg from the courtroom. From then on, whenever anyone mentioned Greg’s name, he saw a seventeen-year-old man-child dressed in a white jumpsuit, chained hand and foot, shuffling over mock wood flooring. On his way out, Greg glared at Mason and whispered two phrases: “be strong” and “do right.”
Odd words for a convict, though they burned his mind and seared his conscience. It begged the question: what was justice? Did justice even exist?
He decided then to be a lawyer in that courtroom. There would be a day when he would defend the innocent, or prosecute
the guilty. He would be strong. He would do right.
* * *
Mason didn’t make many friends growing up. Painfully shy, he kept to himself, content to study, to learn. His teachers termed him “socially awkward.” They’d had smart students before, but none as reserved as Mason. However, they couldn’t argue with his intellect.
Ms. Knowlton, his third grade teacher, called Mason’s mother in for a conference early in the year.
“He’s too bright for third grade. I tested him earlier this week. He’s reading at an eighth grade level, and he’s already showing signs of being able to do algebra. His mind just isn’t on the same level as these other children.”
“I’m very happy to hear that,” his mother had said.
“I think it’s time we promote him. There’s an opening in Ms. Brea’s fifth grade class.”
“That’s two grades. I don’t think he’s even ready to skip one.”
“I can do it, Mom. I want to.”
His mother put a hand on his shoulder, but didn’t take her eyes off Mrs. Knowlton. “He’s too young. He wouldn’t make any friends.”
Mason looked at his mother. “I don’t have any friends now.”
“How about fourth grade?” Mrs. Knowlton asked.
“No skipping. He needs friends.”
It took three years for Mason to make his first friend. Shannon was taller than all the boys. Her stringy almond hair always looked in bad need of good shampoo and worst of all, she smelled of tobacco. His first thought was that her mother must be a chimney. He didn’t realize until the following year that Shannon was the chimney. Did junior high students really smoke?
She approached him one day in the middle of the school’s quad with everyone watching. “Buy my lunch, Freak, and I’ll sit next to you.”
“Me?”
“Who else, Freak?”
“My name is Mason.”
Shannon cackled. “I like Freak better. Now, buy me lunch.”
He thought it a small price to pay for a friend. No one else would speak to him, or even sit near him. They became friends by necessity more than choice, though Mason could never quite pinpoint why Shannon liked him.
The Bargain - One man stands between a destitute town and total destruction. Page 3