He remembered blood-stained aluminum bats, white jumpsuits, twelve irritable strangers in a courtroom staring at his older brother.
Pregnancy and fatherhood had never been part of his plan.
His silence unnerved her. “Say something.”
Mason’s face had no color. “You shouldn’t be smoking.”
She laughed. “That could be the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I didn’t mean to ...”
“No, Mason. It’s fine. I mean, I had it coming.” Another long silence stretched across the desert. The train gathered momentum, jogged down the tracks. “I kinda thought you might be excited.”
“I am, it’s just that—”
“I’m not getting an abortion. I won’t do it.”
“No, no, no. That’s the last thing I want.” He looked at her stomach. It seemed flat, like normal. Maybe she’d decided to play a really bad joke.
“I can’t finish school,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mason. That’s why you gotta plan.”
Mason closed his eyes, let the sun warm his face.
“This is your fault, too, you know.”
As he recalled, she was the one who forced the issue.
“I thought you loved me.”
“I didn’t think I was supposed to.”
“You’re stupid, Freak. You don’t get girls at all.”
Mason shook his head. “You’re the only one I talk to.” He felt inadequate, ill-prepared, nervous and fearful. Sweat threatened to break out across his forehead. His voice choked, his pulse pounded his chest. In his neck, in his head, behind his eyes, panic moved in and pressed against his conscience.
“So,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
In the distance, a shrill whistle of the train split the warm summer’s air. It’d gained massive momentum and ran toward them at incredible speed.
Life is complex at seventeen, how much more at thirty? Forty? Eighteen?
“We race.” He took his spot on the tracks.
She shook her head. “Mason, my stomach hurts. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“Fine. I’ll race. You stay.”
“You’re impossible.” She stood awkwardly, tipping to one side, using one hand to balance. She followed him up to the tracks and stood behind him like always. The vibrations under his feet shook the nervousness out of him, dissipated the panic, shook life into him.
On the tracks, he had no plans, no Princeton, no pregnancy. He had only the hum of the rails, the shrieking of wheels, the wind, the piercing whistle, the quickening pulse, the unimaginable elation of nothing.
Chapter 6
Thursday, September 3rd
Mason flicked the stub of his third cigarette to the dirt around the patio. He spit and cracked his knuckles. “Shannon never made it off the tracks that day.” The sun climbed higher in the sky. The early morning chill died. “She sat down.”
“Sat down?”
“I remember hearing her back a ways, shouting for me. I turned around, and she sat down. I ran after her, toward the train. It was a ways off still, but coming fast. The tracks bowed, sent me flying. I’d never run toward a train, and the bounce of the ties, I didn’t understand. They came faster. I tripped. But I got up, figured out the pattern and ran faster than I had before.
“She sat there the whole time, crying. I remember bouncing up, legs still pumping, like I was some cartoon character, legs spinning in the air and getting nowhere. I screamed at her to get off the tracks, but she just pulled her knees into her chest and said, ‘I got a plan,’ and ‘I love you, Mason.’
“She’d never really used my name much, not before that day. Didn’t call me ‘Freak.’ I tried to pull her off. I tried, but she’d tucked her arms under her knees. When Shannon set her mind to something, there was no changing her mind.
“The train was huge and loud and fast and strong. But I couldn’t budge her.”
He looked at the sun. Though he stood with me outside of Aida’s house in the early desert morning, his mind still contended with Shannon, stretched back over years, clutching at her overalls like he could pull her straight from the past onto the patio with us.
“What do you do?”
I leaned against the rail with no answer to give him.
“What could I do?” His eyes cut to mine, and he said again, “What could I do?”
There are some questions for which there are no answers. He wanted me to say something, to reassure him in some way, but I had no words. Nadine was the comforter. She’d know what to do. I had no clue.
The screen door creaked. Aida poked her head out and took a sniff of the smoke-laced air. “So you told him about Shannon?”
Mason nodded.
She looked to me, “Won’t be happy till he joins her. I tell him if he keeps up his smoking, that’ll be sooner rather than later. If those cigarettes don’t kill him, I will.”
I grinned, still uneasy from the story, but glad for Aida’s effort to break the tension. I spoke softly, hoping not to upset Mason further. “The article you want me to write—should it focus on you or on her?”
“Me?” he asked, surprise clear in his voice. “What’d I do? It was clearly her story. She’s the one who …” Here he paused. “Sacrificed herself. It was a selfless act.”
I sighed. “Not sure I can spin suicide as selfless. Besides, wasn’t she pregnant? That would make it murder in a way, right?”
All color drained from Mason’s face, as if someone had pulled the plug on his pigment.
“Real smooth, Connor.” Aida glared at me. “For being a man of words, you say some real stupid stuff sometimes.”
“It’s fine, Aida. He’s right anyway.”
“And she’s dead. If we’re trying to find the righteous in Hailey, doesn’t that mean the living ones?”
Aida shook her head. “Smooth. Come inside you two. Nadine’s feeling better and wants breakfast.”
Mason smiled, wiped his eyes with his sweatshirt, and clasped my shoulder. “See?”
He said it as if my willingness to write the articles was directly responsible for Nadine’s better health. I didn’t see the connection, but wanted to believe. Not in God, not like Mason said. I’d spent my life denying God’s existence, and wasn’t about to recant my disbelief. But some deep part of me wanted to believe that Nadine would be better, and that I could do something to heal her.
Nadine sat at the table looking frail and hungry. I sat next to her, put my hand on her knee. Seeing her up and ready to eat made me hungry, made me forget, for a moment, the horrible trip to the hospital yesterday. Seeing her like this made it hard to believe that she might only have a few weeks left.
Aida served potato pancakes on paper plates. She glopped a generous amount of light sour cream on them, dressed them with a few chopped chives, and sat down beside Mason. I grabbed my fork, but Aida pressed my hand back to the table. “Still have to pray,” she said.
Nadine wouldn’t want me to roll my eyes, so I didn’t. Instead, I set my fork down and grinned. “Sorry. Forgot.”
Mason cleared his throat, took Aida’s hand, and reached for mine. I took it reluctantly.
“Lord, we thank You for Your blessings. We ask for Your guidance and love, and for Your healing hand. Amen.”
At least he kept it short. Guilt punched me when Nadine took her first bite. I didn’t have many friends growing up. Like my mother, and like Aida, I tended to say what was on my mind with little regard for how it came across. But Nadine looked past my shortcomings. No matter how many times I said “sorry,” it got harder each time. I swallowed and squeezed her hand. “Last night, in the car.”
Nadine interrupted. “I don’t want an apology. I want a change. A real one. Not some act you put on becau
se you think I’m going to die soon.”
She spoke of her death with such nonchalance, as if she’d simply asked me to pick up milk at the store. Her flippancy chilled me.
I took a bite, chewed slowly, and said, “I’ve already told Mason I’d write the articles, if that’s what you’re talking about.”
She patted my leg. “It’s a start.”
Mason and Aida eyed us quietly. I hated being manipulated, and the three of them acted like a team, somehow working against me, plotting to corner me into doing Mason’s work. The whole thing stank of a conversion conspiracy. Even if it were, I had few choices. I couldn’t tell my wife no. Not now, with her so fragile. No matter how uneasy it made me, I’d have to go along with it.
* * *
If she’d asked for the moon, I’d have found a cosmic lasso and roped it in like a rangy calf. I’d have served it on a platter as silver as the empyreal stone itself. But she didn’t. She’d asked me to write the articles.
The moon, though, may have been an easier request. Week-long deadlines were tough enough, but to only have one day to research, write, and polish a piece seemed a herculean feat.
After breakfast I spent the morning in the guestroom furiously tapping away on my laptop. Nadine stayed in the living room, unwilling to distract me (as if I could focus on anything other than her). I checked on her more often than she liked, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I paused long enough for a ham sandwich for lunch and a microwaveable dinner. I sat with Nadine as I ate. I resented Mason for giving me this asinine assignment, but Nadine had urged me to take it. If I resented Mason, I’d have to resent her, too. Instead, I pushed it from my mind and concentrated on the moments I had with my wife.
As long as I worked, Nadine did well. Whenever I stopped, even for as little as an hour, she grew sicker. If, as Mason suggested, this assignment came from God, He had a sick sense of humor.
I wrote and revised late into the evening. I didn’t know how long I’d been up at that point, but guessed I’d only slept a few hours over the last forty-eight. “More coffee, please,” I called to Aida.
Nadine shuffled in with my mug and slipped into bed. She covered herself with the thin sheet. “How’s it coming?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve no idea what he’s expecting, but I’m almost done. He’ll have to be satisfied with it, for better or worse.”
“What’s good in the story?”
I sighed, leaned back, and rubbed my eyes. “He wanted the story to focus on Shannon, but since he was the one telling it, I felt I had to write it from his point of view. It’s about a kid, a selfless kid, who loved the unlovable. That’s what I want to leave the reader with.”
“Sounds righteous to me.”
“Good. Hope it’s enough for Mason.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. Coming to bed?”
I wanted nothing more than to lie next to my wife and feel her in my arms. “I’ve got to finish this thing. Only be a few minutes.”
“You’ve been working all day. You need sleep, or you’re going to burn out.”
Her sublime attention to others’ well-being astounded me. Over the last seven years, I’d learned her selfless giving was not free. It took its toll on her.
Before she got sick, she spent her time volunteering for so many charity organizations, I had trouble keeping them all straight. A better husband, I realized now, would have made it his business to know his wife’s business. But I’d been selfish, and dismissed her work as another obstacle to our marriage, one more hurdle for us to jump before we could spend some time together relaxing.
The phone calls pushed me over the edge. They’d come in at all hours of the night, women in hysterics, blubbering for Nadine. She spoke to them with her musical voice, a voice like a warm bath. I’d fallen in love with it at the mall, while she played piano and sang old jazz numbers. It had the same effect on the callers. Before long, they’d settle down, content with Nadine’s simple reassurances and sublime faith.
With patience like that, she should have been a mother, but God didn’t see fit to let us have children. Instead, He gave her cancer.
I swallowed and hammered the keys on my laptop a bit more. Nadine closed her eyes and rolled over. I arched my back, stretched, sighed.
On one of our first dates, I took Nadine to Carlton’s Chops, an exclusive gourmet steak-house I couldn’t afford. I’d wanted to impress her, but the low lights and fancy tablecloths couldn’t overcome my awkward conversation and dogmatic political views. In the corner, a man played piano and crooned Frank Sinatra tunes. He didn’t have half Nadine’s talent.
“Bottom line,” I’d said over the soft music and the rattle of forks on plates, “We need to do more to help our people. Poverty is rampant; hunger is out of control. We’ve got millions on welfare trying to work their way up, but they can’t. Not the way government’s set up now.”
“You can’t wait for the government to fix our problems. We’ve got to do it for ourselves. You and me. People try to make these groups, these action committees or whatever, to feed the homeless, but how many of them work in soup kitchens? They raise money to battle hunger, but they’ve never so much as handed a slice of bread to someone who was starving.
“We can’t save everybody at once. We have to do it one at a time, on an individual level.” She took a sip of her wine and looked up at me. The greenness of her eyes stilled my heart. They gleamed coquettishly. “Live,” she continued. “And when you die, know that you have truly lived. The world should not mourn the loss of your accomplishments or legacy, but the loss of you.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
In a matter of weeks, she would die, and the world would be that much darker. Another light gone out. The loss of Nadine would devastate hundreds. She’d suffered with the world. She cried with widows, comforted the terminally ill, fed the hungry.
When I died, I imagined the world wouldn’t blink. Best case scenario, I’d be a footnote on an otherwise unremarkable news day. I’d chronicled the suffering of the world, recorded its hope, professed its faith, and felt none of it.
“Are you done yet?”
“No. I’ve got a long way to go.”
Chapter 7
Friday, September 4th
Mason paid me in cash. “I kept it in hundreds. Easier to count and spend that way. Bundles of fifty, seven-and-a-half bundles. That’s twenty-five thousand for this article and half for your next. You can count them if you like.”
I’d never seen this much cash in my life. I picked up a stack and shook my head. Holding it, I felt like a drug dealer or a cop busting a weapons deal. My breath caught in my throat. I felt displaced, like a first time flyer looking at the sea of clouds beneath the plane. This was not a sign of completion, but of the beginning of long hours of hard emotional work and separation from my wife. In that light, the stacks of money seemed smaller. I fought back a tide of nausea.
I sat at Mason’s kitchen table, the neat stack of hundreds standing out amid the disorder of the home. Half-used paper towels and dirty paper plates folded in half. The smell of rotten bananas and molding bread hovered like smog. Mason opened a couple windows; a gentle, chilly breeze set to work collecting the acrid smell and escorting it outside to the desert. Outside, clouds moved in and blanketed the Mojave sky in gray burlap.
He read over the article again, slipped another cigarette in his mouth. He set it down, rubbed his forehead and cracked his knuckles.
“Is it what you wanted?”
“Not really up to me.”
“Fine. Is it good enough for God?”
“I’m not God.”
“Mason, are you allergic to straight answers?”
He put the article down and folded his arms. “Sorry, Conno
r. I don’t mean to be vague, but I’m not calling the shots on this. I’m like you; I’m a reporter. I just tell you what’s been told to me.”
“How very Zen of you. Why not ask your angel, then? I want to know if I’m on the right track or not. A little direction would be helpful.”
“Direction,” he mumbled. “That’d be nice.” He leaned back in his chair, lit his cigarette, and rolled the article up. He tucked it under his arm and pointed to the couch in the front room. “Get your coat. We’re going for a drive.”
I didn’t know where we were headed, but didn’t want to bring the money. I got the sense that carrying any kind of money in a town this poor would be like carrying a sign that said, “Please rob me!” I left it on the table, grabbed my jacket, and followed him to his rusty pick-up. “Where to?”
“Hailey State Penitentiary.”
“Just visiting, of course.”
He exhaled a long blue plume of smoke. “Some of Hailey’s finest.” He said it without a trace of irony.
“Such as?”
“My brother.”
* * *
Mason’s ancient Mitsubishi pick-up navigated Highway 29 with all the grace of a drunken gorilla. Each pothole—and there were many—shook the truck until I was sure the tires would fall off. The gray vinyl seats sucked the heat from my core, and his heater didn’t work. I’d never had to roll down a window to warm up.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars would buy a decent truck.”
“It would.”
“So why not a better car? A better house? If you’ve got a quarter million dollars ready for spending, why are you still in Hailey at all?”
“Life’s not about luxuries.”
“I’m not suggesting mansions and Maseratis. Just something with a heater or AC or shock absorbers. How about a house that isn’t pre-fab? You got the land, why not build on it?”
“New rule: No talking about the money.”
The Bargain - One man stands between a destitute town and total destruction. Page 5