by Tim Sandlin
Maurey took the thermos lid from Roger, drained the coffee, then gave him back the lid. “I met Mary Beth in Amarillo, a long time ago. She was living in a hippie commune in Oklahoma, with a drug-abusing hard dick called himself Freedom.”
Roger returned his attention to the coyote. “There’s a drug-abusing hard dick in the book called Freedom.”
“Maybe every drug abuser silly enough to name himself Freedom was a hard dick back then.”
As Roger watched, the coyote arched its back and leaped—like a ballerina—and came up with a ground squirrel in its teeth. The coyote swallowed the ground squirrel in one mighty gulp.
Maurey dropped back into the prone spotting scope position. “All those commune kids had silly nicknames. Mary Beth was Critter. Freedom had a son whose name was Brad, but they called him Hawk, if you can believe that. The minute he got off the commune, the kid changed back to Brad.”
“The Freedom in the book was Ann’s boyfriend, before she got pregnant. He’s only mentioned in a couple of paragraphs.”
“And Ann is?”
“Buggie’s mother. Buggie’s father was killed in the hospital parking lot the day Buggie was born, and Lydia’s theory is that Freedom did it. Then, five years later, Buggie disappeared from a campground on Jackson Lake. Freedom could have snatched him, and if it’s the same Freedom, Mary Beth might have ended up with the boy.”
“You got a lot of big ifs there, son.” Maurey studied Roger to see how much he wanted to believe the idea. He seemed dead serious, but then, Roger always had seemed dead serious. “Mary Beth told me Freedom got himself killed in a drug deal, and a couple of his friends dumped you on her. She was working in a dental office in Boulder and just getting out of all that hippie jive, and she was too poor to keep you herself. I was taking in an assortment of lost souls back then, so she drove you up.”
Maurey pulled herself to her knees She resented like hell the old age push it took to get her off the ground. “You had a little suitcase about the size of an overnight bag, and in the bottom was a picture postcard of the Tetons. I think that’s why she first thought of me.”
Maurey stood. “Let’s go over by the springs. I need to check on an American redstart Pud swears is nesting in a willow patch.”
Roger shook out the blanket. “Lydia says I have to track down the author. She says I have a responsibility to discover what happened during the missing years.”
Maurey unscrewed the scope off its tripod. “What do you think?”
“I think she’s a nosy bitch. What good can come from me knowing stuff that had to be so lousy I stopped talking?”
Maurey stalled for time by writing the date and place next to the drawing of a ring-necked duck in her Petersen’s Field Guide. Ring-necked ducks have a ring on their bill. She’d never understood why they weren’t called ring bills instead of ring necks, but even more important, this seemed one of those moments when she was supposed to come through like family. Maurey had always known Roger would go searching for his past someday. Her maternal instincts cried out for her to protect the boy, but she knew from bitter experience that once the kids are out of high school maternal instincts are often wrong.
“You remember that time when you and Auburn got into a fight in the school cafeteria?”
“That was no fight. Auburn punched me out and left me lying on the linoleum floor.”
“Do you know why he hit you?”
“One of those jock friends of his was calling me a pussy, and when I wouldn’t stand up to the jerk, Auburn pushed his friend out of the way and hit me in the face. I guess he was embarrassed to have a brother who was chicken.”
“I talked to Auburn that night, and he didn’t think you were chicken. It was the opposite.”
Roger snorted a laugh. “He didn’t punch me for being brave.”
“He said you showed nothing. No fear. No shame. You weren’t even angry. He couldn’t stand it that you could be called a pussy in front of the whole school and not feel anything.”
Roger tried to remember what he had felt. In times of attack, his automatic reflex was withdrawal. Something inside would shrivel into a hard little ball surrounded by a cushion of not caring. The Tar Baby syndrome.
Maurey went on. “Auburn said he wanted you to feel something, even if it was only blood in your nose.”
Maurey reached across and touched Roger’s arm. “What I’m saying is, it’s not healthy for a boy your age to hide in a cabin off by himself, insulated from any possibility of pain. Feelings have to be exercised, like muscles, or they rot.”
“I feel.” Roger carefully wrapped the blanket around the coffee thermos and placed them both in his leather day pack. “Sometimes.”
“It’s your decision. Do what you want, but I think if there’s any chance this writer is your stepfather, and he can tell you what happened to make you like this, it might be a good idea to hear what he has to say.”
“You think so?”
“You started talking again, Roger. Now it’s time to wake up.”
***
Lydia telephoned the federal penitentiary outside Lompoc, California.
Hello, to whom am I speaking? Ivan Belle, I need to speak to a client there…an inmate…His name is Hank Elkrunner, he’s located in minimum security, and I am certain you will have no trouble locating him…I am his wife, Lydia Elkrunner…Yes, Ivan, I know visiting hours start at 8:30 a.m. every day but Tuesday and Wednesday; the problem is, I’m in Wyoming and unable to come to California at this time, and I really, really need to talk to Hank…It’s an emergency…I am quite aware of that, but those rules are meant for real criminals; Hank couldn’t hurt a kitten. He never even broke a law that I am aware of until he helped me evade persecution, and I don’t see how you can condemn a man for defending his wife…Look at it this way. If a close family member had died, would you bring him to the phone?…No, I don’t want you to tell Hank a close family member has died, I’m simply trying to ascertain the depth of emergency that would motivate you to behave like a human being…No, Ivan, nobody died. Do not tell Hank somebody died. Just go get him and bring him to the telephone…I hear you, Ivan, your lot in life must be difficult, being a bureaucrat who doesn’t make the rules but only enforces them…Exercise your imagination and feel what I am feeling. Can’t you drum up an iota of compassion…I need to talk to Hank! Don’t give me that policy bullshit—you could bring him to the phone if you wanted to. You could if you had an ounce of decency. Ivan, don’t hang up on me, you motherfucking slime sucker!
Lydia smacked the telephone against the table edge with such force that the earpiece broke off and flew across the room.
***
Eden Rae’s water broke while she was changing Willa Potter’s colostomy bag. There was a sound, like a puppy sigh, that either came from her or Willa, then liquid running down her thighs.
Willa held the bed rail with both hands and peeked over at the mix of water, mucous, and streaks of blood spreading across the tile. “Did I do that?”
“No, Mrs. Potter. It came out of me.”
Willa stared hard at the floor. “You better go find your people.”
“I don’t have any people.”
Willa watched Eden’s hands pull away the soiled plastic bag. The hands moved quickly, stripping the tubes, replacing the bag gasket, taping the tube to Willa’s leg. Willa thought Eden had the hands of a child.
“You better let me be, and go find the folks you’re staying with. They’ll know what to do. They’ve seen this before.”
“You think it could happen right now, any second?”
“Not any second. You have some time yet.”
“How long do I have? There’s things I wanted to do before it came.”
Willa let go of her hold on the rail and settled back onto the bed. “I’ve had six and lost one,” she said, “and each one was differ
ent, but my guess is you ought to settle in where you’re going to be sometime soon.”
The wall-mount TV came on suddenly, loud, showing a man who could clean gravy stains out of trousers. The man shouted, “Have you ever seen anything this amazing!” and the studio audience cheered like he’d scored a touchdown.
“Raise up,” Eden said.
Willa arched as high as she could while Eden felt under her back until she located the TV remote control jammed against Willa’s bony shoulder blade. She pushed the Off button, and the man disappeared.
She said, “I’m sorry. About the one you lost.”
Willa said, “Me too.” With her right hand, Willa cradled the cool plastic bag against her thigh, while Eden coiled the spare tubing and Zip-locked away the old bag. As she turned to leave the room, Willa raised her head and said, “You find you some people.”
***
Eden trickled water down the hall to the duty station, where she told Penny, the night nurse, she had to go home. She didn’t say why, and Penny didn’t ask. Penny had all the stress she could endure taking care of geriatric invalids; she didn’t want anyone’s problems she wasn’t being paid to deal with.
She said, “Make sure you clock out.”
***
Pink light soaked in from the east as Eden Rae walked across the parking lot and unlocked the Madonnaville van. A silver moon sliver hung over the chairlift docking tower on the mountain south of town. Pine siskins and finches took defensive positions on bird feeders over by the fake Japanese garden, with its handicapped-access pathways. Even though it had been explained to her over and over, Eden had no idea what was happening in her body. She’d never paid attention to the details, which meant the first contraction, coming as she drove past the airport turnoff, scared the beJesus out of her. The second, ten miles and fifteen minutes later, was quicker, sharper, even more unbelievable. It made her hands jerk down, causing the steering wheel to twist, and both right tires dropped momentarily off the asphalt into loose gravel.
Gilia and I were asleep when Eden pried off her shoes in the doorway and slid into our bed. She lay between us, on top of the covers, holding her belly and staring at the ceiling, waiting.
Gilia’s eyes flickered. She rolled to her side and dropped her arm across what she thought were my shoulders, but knew immediately weren’t.
“Eden?”
Eden concentrated on her next breath. Nothing that came before or could come after mattered as much as her next breath.
“Is anything the matter?”
“No.”
Gilia propped on her elbows and looked down at the girl’s face. Across from her, I went from deep sleep to total alertness in a single heartbeat.
“Are you having the baby?” I asked.
“I think so.”
No matter how many births I’ve been in on, I hyperventilate. The thing is, I cannot fathom a person springing alive from between the legs of another person. The miracle floors me. Chemicals surge through my brain, and neurons fire like Fourth of July. Over the years, I have turned into a birth junkie. I need the buzz. The hyperventilation is so predictable that I keep a bag—originally designed for those throwing up on Delta Airlines—in the top drawer of my bureau.
I dived out of bed and ran for the bag.
“Have you had contractions?” Gilia asked.
Eden nodded.
“Let’s wake up Honor and see where we stand.” This last was meant for me, but I missed it. I stood there against the wall, puffing into my Delta Airlines barf bag and staring at the pregnant girl on my bed. To me, women in labor are the most beautiful objects on Earth, an opinion not shared by most women in labor. The couple of times I’ve commented on their incredible radiance, women in the midst of a contraction have snapped fairly brutal comebacks.
“Sam,” Gilia said. “Wake up Honor. But don’t wake up Baby Esther.”
“I can handle that.”
***
Honor Edmonson, the home nurse-practitioner, measured dilation and timed contractions and announced that everyone could eat breakfast, but lunch would be at the hospital, if at all. I offered to help Eden back to her own room, but she wasn’t disposed to leave our bed. In my experience, even a mild, low-maintenance woman becomes willful in labor, until in the last few moments before birth, reason and docility fly right out the window. And Eden had never been known as low maintenance. She wanted a Dr Pepper in a plastic cup with no ice, then she wanted a stuffed Pooh bear she’d brought out from Pasadena, then she wanted every pain pill in the compound.
I phoned Dr. Hazen, who was on the fifth tee at Teton Pines golf course. Dr. Hazen talked to Honor and decided he had time to finish the nine holes, but Honor told him if he wasn’t at the hospital when we arrived, she would stick his putter up his crack, headfirst. Honor was willful in her own way.
Soon, I pulled the van up to the front door, and Gilia and Honor brought Eden outside. Eden held the Pooh bear in the crook of her left arm. She shaded her eyes with her right hand and peered into the back of the van.
“Where’s Roger?”
Gilia answered, “Up in his cabin, I guess. I heard him earlier in the shower.”
“Roger has to be with me.”
“Sam and Honor will be here. They’ll take care of you.”
“I’m not doing this without Roger.”
Honor said, “Eden, the baby’s going to come when it comes, and I’d be a lot happier if that was the hospital instead of out here in the yard.”
Eden balked. “I’m not going without Roger.”
I found Roger in his cabin, plucking bass to a Stan Getz CD. He had Zuleika Dobson perched on the music stand. Roger turned his page without missing a beat.
I picked his jacket off the floor and held it out to him. “Eden Rae refuses to have her baby unless you’re there.”
Roger stopped mid-note. “Why me?”
“My guess is she has you mixed up with the father.”
“I’m not the father. She was pregnant when she came here.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been diddling her. Come on.”
Roger leaned the bass against his desk and slipped on the tennis shoe with the broken lace. “Diddling?”
“I imagine in Eden’s mind, one diddler is the same as another.”
Roger wondered why he ever thought his actions might be secret. You live way the hell up a dirt road in the mountains, and the whole state knows if you so much as spit upwind. People in huge cities have more privacy than hermits. “I’ve never been at a birth before.”
“It’ll make you a better man.”
I drove with Honor and Roger on each side of Eden in the middle seat. Eden held Roger’s hand so tightly it hurt. During a contraction, she called him Jimmy—“Jimmy, you lied like a dog.”
“How’s that?” Roger asked.
“Told me you’re sterile.”
Honor checked her watch. “Six minutes and going down. We’re cutting this closer than I had in mind.”
I said, “She should have gone straight to the hospital from Haven House. Saved herself a drive up and down the mountain.”
Eden yelled, “Don’t criticize me, you prick.”
I shut up and drove.
***
At the hospital, the anesthesiologist gave Eden an epidural. Dr. Hazen strode through the delivery room, still wearing his golf shoes. Honor gave him a dirty look, but like doctors everywhere, he deflected it without missing a step.
“How’s our little trooper doing today?” he asked.
Eden hissed, like a cat.
The doctor chuckled as if she’d said something utterly charming. He said, “Don’t start without me.” Then he left the room to wash up and change.
Eden’s eyes left the ceiling and searched out Roger at her side. “Who was that cocksucker?”
***
I hyperventilated into a Johnny Horizon litter bag. Roger stood beside Eden, his wrist crushed in her iron grip. Honor stood between Roger and Dr. Hazen, who sat on a stool at the end of the bed, looking into Eden’s cervix.
“When I say Push, you push for all you’re worth.”
Eden said, “Stick it up your ass.”
“Okay, push.”
Eden’s face was fascinating. Sweat sheen, eyes, the tips of her teeth, purple vein throbbing in her neck, every facet of Eden’s life had come down to the word Push.
Dr. Hazen placed his hands like a quarterback awaiting the snap from center. “That’s it. Harder now.”
Eden’s fingers clawed blood from Roger’s wrist.
Dr. Hazen said, “Bo Bo needs a bigger door.”
Honor handed him a pair of scissors—long handles, short blades—and to Roger’s horror, the doctor scissored Eden Rae open.
Eden Rae’s eyes rolled behind the eyelids, and her breasts sucked in on themselves. I don’t think she noticed the pain of being sliced, not on top of the pain the baby was causing.
Dr. Hazen said, “Now’s the time.”
She drew a sharp breath and tore her head from side to side. She hissed through her teeth. Her face glistened like a garden slug. Something soaked and candle waxy and bruise colored appeared between Eden’s legs. And flesh, of a sort. It didn’t look like anything I’d seen before, and I’ve seen a lot of births.
Eden’s chest buzzed. She growled, “Get that out of me.”
Dr. Hazen held the baby’s head in his palm. It had a blond stream of hair, and its eyes were closed. He said, “Push it out yourself.”
Honor leaned over, blocking Roger’s view. “Show the prick how tough you are.”
“JesusChristmotherfuckshit!”
Events overlapped. I had trouble following the order, and Roger, who’d never been at one of these things, was totally whacked-out. Dr. Hazen was saying the head was out, and Honor was saying Push in a voice without panic but close enough to it that everyone knew there was something out of the ordinary, and over it all, Eden was screaming. Blood and fluid spurted onto the doctor’s forearms, spreading onto Eden’s hospital gown. His hand was inside Eden up to the wrist, and I couldn’t see how the baby’s head and the doctor’s hand fit in the same gap, but they did, and Eden was hurting from it.