by Dawn Mattox
“Fuck!” A man’s voice uttered a string of curses from above. Angry. Very angry. And close. So close. Probably deciding whether to pursue me down the steep incline or not.
I prayed between gasps of air, rocking back and forth, silently and mindlessly repeating “Oh God, oh God, oh God” in holy supplication. The child whimpered and struggled, but the tree kept our secret.
“Bitch! You fucking bitch.” There was something final in his tone as if he had reached some kind of conclusion, followed by the soft crunch of footsteps that faded into the night.
I would have stayed inside the tree until daylight if not for Paige, if not for the baby. Instead, I waited until deeper shades of nightfall blanketed the woods.
Leaving the safety of the tree required what scant courage I had left, and then some. What courage I lacked, I faked, and it was enough to propel me from old oak’s ancient womb. Paige would die if she didn’t get help.
The baby renewed its whimpering from deep within the throw. Peeking in I saw the little shape move its head back and forth like a baby bird, reaching out for a mother that was not there. I empathized with the child, instinctively kissing its little head.
So warm and soft.
“You,” I admonished, “are a pack of trouble.”
Rewrapping the baby into a tighter bundle, pressing it close to my chest, I began the ascent, slipping, sliding, and crawling forward on hands and knees to the top. I dared not risk the flashlight. Darkness hid beneath the trees, but moonlight filtered through the clouds, casting a pale, diffused glow out in the open. I followed the ridge line that led to the backside of Joyce and Kenny’s home.
A pair of black-and-tan hounds came out of the dark to announce my arrival. Kenny opened the door holding his hunting rifle, calling out in a gruff voice, “Who’s there?”
“Kenny—it’s me, Sunny. Help me.”
True to his culture, my Native American friend never wasted time on useless questions. It was enough that I had arrived with a child in my arms, asking for help. There would be time for questions later.
“Come inside. Quickly.”
I hurried indoors; fairly falling into Joyce’s loving arms.
“Oh, Joyce.” I sobbed, shaking with relief and clinging to her as if she were a life preserver before she gently pried the baby from my arms. “Her mother’s at the cabin. I think she’s dying. She’s bleeding badly.”
“There’s a man with a gun out there somewhere. Logan’s sent him for me.”
Kenny turned to Joyce. “I’ll get the chains on the truck. Get them ready,” he said with a nod, and then vanished into the night.
Joyce took the baby to a chair near the wood stove. Setting the bundle down, she opened the package with her strong brown hands. “A girl,” Joyce observed as she went about the business of cleaning the protesting child. “Tell me about the mother’s condition.”
I felt awkward and incompetent as I described the child’s birth. My thoughts had been focused on the intruder more than the delivery. Wrapping the baby back in the blanket, Joyce handed her to me.
“Watch the baby, Sunny,” said Joyce as she pulled on her boots.
Holding the baby, I rocked her back and forth in an attempt to comfort both of us. God forgive me. I could not help myself—holding the baby up to the light—searching for Chance’s sky-blue eyes and Travis’s sandy-colored hair. This felt wrong; shallow and calloused under the life-and-death circumstances of the moment, but continued to search for clues and signs—answers to the question I had long held in my heart.
The roar of Kenny’s truck pulled me back into the world. All I found, all I could see, was a child with undeclared slate-blue eyes and mouse-colored hair, knowing that both would likely change over time. Joyce shouldered her way into a warm coat and hat. “Let’s go,” said Joyce, taking the baby.
Kenny opened the door to the truck and boosted me in. Joyce handed the baby up and climbed in next to me. Kenny got in the driver’s seat, and the old truck groaned as he put it in gear.
“Leave me at the top of Sunny’s road,” Joyce said to Kenny. “I’ll take the baby and go down and tend to the mother. You and Sunny go get help.”
“No—you can’t,” I cut in. “Paige has my gun. I told her to shoot the next person that comes through the door. She . . . she isn’t thinking straight. She put the gun to her head and said she would shoot herself if I didn’t take the baby with me.”
Joyce frowned as we bounced and lurched along the road. “Keep the baby then and go to someone’s house and call for help. I’ll try to help the mother.”
Kenny nodded. Minutes later we stopped at the top of the driveway to the cabin. There were tracks; a vehicle with chains had come in, turned around at the top, and left, heading back toward the pavement. Kenny reached behind me to place a hand on Joyce’s shoulder. Their eyes met and lingered as they exchanged volumes of unspoken words and unexpressed emotion. Joyce gave a reassuring smile as she gazed into his eyes. “I’ll be careful. You be careful too. Hurry.” I gave Joyce my flashlight, and she climbed out of the truck. The light bobbed from side to side as she strode down the driveway, finally fading into the distance.
Putting the truck into gear, we drove away into the night. Kenny pulled his rifle from the rack behind my head and cradled it in his arms. An angel must have whispered a warning because I turned to Kenny. “Turn off your lights,” I said. Kenny killed the lights; moonlight peeping through the clouds and reflecting off the snow was enough. He slowed his speed to a quiet crawl, inching forward until our tires finally touched the pavement of Lumpkin Road. I looked over my shoulder out the side window. Down there. I could barely make it out—parked to one side of the pavement, a dark-colored SUV with a single person sitting inside. Waiting.
Kenny saw it too, and we nodded to each other in silent acknowledgment. He patted my leg and gave a confident squeeze. “We must take to the mountains while there is still time. If we hurry, we can make it to La Porte.”
I looked at him in astonishment. “We can’t do that. It’s snowing. The road will be closed.”
“Not yet. Not if we hurry.”
“But he’ll see us.”
“No, he won’t.” Kenny put the truck in Reverse, backing up a hundred yards before turning sharply off the road onto an old path, my old shortcut that ran along the apple orchard behind the school. The trail came out near the playground, far above the assailant’s line of sight.
“What about Joyce and Paige?”
“My wife is wise,” said Kenny. “Your friend is in good hands.” He nodded in conclusion. “We cannot get past this hit man. We will go around him. There will be help in La Porte.”
I had looked to Kenny for help, and now I needed to trust him in spite of my doubt. He was older and wiser and had saved me many times from Logan’s wrath. I needed to trust someone, and I wasn’t ready to trust myself. We stopped at the end of the trail and looked both ways, up the road and down. Both felt like certain death. Clutching the baby, I took a sharp intake of breath as Kenny pulled out and turned the truck uphill.
The front tires bumped along; the chains on back tires chattered on the pavement. Less than a mile above town the pavement would end and branch off into a network of dirt roads through the high country. Tonight, the roads would be a white maze. Tonight, the roads would be a white maze and the glare of the headlights bounced off the snow and into our eyes as we drove.
God, I hope he knows what he’s doing.
CHAPTER 26
The road was defined by a velvety flatness bordered on either side—a berm of snow on the downslope, and a steep incline on the other. Ghostly trees bent beneath the weight of fresh snow and seemed to reach out, stretching their arms as if to snatch us from the road. On a sunlit morning, the landscape might have resembled a Norman Rockwell Christmas card. Tonight it was reminiscent of Dickens’s Specter of Death.
Kenny has always been like a father to me, but this night I wanted my daddy, I wanted my husband, I wanted Tr
avis to show up with the cavalry. I wanted to be home with my dog, drinking hot chocolate and sitting next to a Christmas tree. This is the last place on earth I want to be.
The road wound on and on, climbing higher and higher with every turn. I felt the baby moving and wriggling in my arms and heard her fragile cry for her mother. I commiserated with her, wanting my mother too, when the truck suddenly fishtailed to a stop in front of a fallen tree.
“Crap.” Once again, true to his heritage, Kenny summarized the situation in one word.
“What now?” I looked to Kenny for answers, hoping he would say “go back.”
Kenny sat in silence and then said, “We turn around.” He nosed the truck, first right and forward up the slope, then rolling back as he cranked the wheel to the left, repeating the maneuver on the narrow road three times—back and forth, back and forth. The third time, the truck slid, and the front tires groped for the road, and the truck shimmied for a moment as if surprised by the change, as the rear wheels spun freely in the air.
We slid—backward—angling downward. Then the sickening realization washed over me—of slipping off the road, plunging and bucking downhill to the tortured sound of shrieking metal as we plummeted, ripping and tearing through the foliage. Our piercing screams of fear amplified, sucking the oxygen from the cab as we continued to fall back and down for an eternity; ending at last with a resounding crunch as we slammed abruptly and upended, with the tailgate wrapped around a tree.
Perfect silence followed, except for the thrum of the engine, the beating of hearts, and heavy breathing. We reclined in the front seat, staring out over the hood with the headlights illuminating the slope and road high above.
“Are you okay?” Kenny croaked, his voice tight.
“Yeah.” My voice broke, quivering with fright. “You?”
“Not so good.” He gave a little gasp. “My back . . . I think. . . something is broken.” He paused. “The baby?” he asked.
The baby was crying plaintively from within the blanketed bundle that I still clutched to my chest. Pulling back a corner of her blanket, I peered inside at the squalling baby. I didn’t know what to look for. “Hey, kid. You okay?” She wailed louder, sounding more angry than hurt. “Yeah, she says she’s okay. At least I hope she’s okay. What should I do?”
“Don’t move. Stay warm and still, and let me think.” The engine was still running and the heater working. “See if you can open your window a little.”
We sat for what felt like hours. The baby quieted down. Puffs of snow continued to fall, blotting the view as they stuck, accumulating on the windshield and shutting out the sky as if a gravedigger were burying us alive. Kenny turned off the headlights. His breathing was ragged, the sound punctuated by an occasional gasp. And then, the motor died.
“Kenny?” I called out in fear.
“Sunny,” Kenny said, his soothing voice firm, as if he had reached a decision. “It will be light soon. The hunter will find us. You must take the baby and go.”
His words were more frightening than the accident had been. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll never leave you. You would never leave me.”
“Come close,” said Kenny, and I responded, unbuckling the seat belt and carefully sliding next to him, curling beneath the shelter of his arm.
“I remember when you were just a little fox—a wild, shy thing that would hide behind the trees on the road to our houses.”
I gave a little laugh. “I know. My dad always told me to hide from strangers, although you and Joyce weren’t exactly strangers.”
“And then you became a woman. Our children moved away, and some moved on to the Great Journey in their afterlife.” Kenny groaned and drew us close as I shivered. “Like a daughter, you have been to me. You brightened our old age with your youth and your pregnancy.”
His unexpected words twisted like a knife in my gut. Why would Kenny talk now, of all times, about the most painful moment of my life? I didn’t want to think about Logan or my pregnancy, or how he had pushed me from the upper deck, killing our unborn child.
“You were a gift,” Kenny continued, “just as this little one is a gift to you. Children don’t always come from our bodies. Sometimes they are a gift from God. I have loved you like a daughter”—he paused to catch his breath—“and now, you have a daughter of your own.”
I wrinkled my nose unconsciously. “This isn’t my daughter. She belongs to another woman.”
“She belongs to whoever has her in their care.”
Kenny hugged us both. The night was as silent as death, broken only by Kenny, who softly chanted one of his native songs.
“What are you singing . . . Father?” I asked, returning his love.
“I am going home, Sunny. And you will cross the mountains in the morning, taking your daughter with you.”
“No. I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to.”
“Nonsense. You are not a child anymore. You’re a woman. We’re not that far from La Porte, and there is only death behind us. You can send for help.” He gave me another reassuring hug. “Sleep now. I will wake you with the first light.”
I was cold—bone-chilling, bone-aching cold. In spite of my chattering teeth, I unzipped my coat to tuck the bundled baby closer to my body. I wondered if she would live. I wondered if I would care. I was so cold. All I wanted was to be warm. To feel safe. To go home.
It was Christmas morning. My eyes fluttered. Most Christmases brought back happy childhood memories. But there had been a couple of Christmas days that were bad. Really bad. And I feared that today was going to be another one.
Blaming my mother was easy. She was not a nice person. In spite of her lifelong quest for peace and love, she’d had little of either.
Few people understood how I, an advocate and expert witness on felony domestic cases, could possibly have loved my father—a man who sometimes beat my flower-child mother.
It was Christmas vacation, so-called before the school system robbed the holiday of its true intent, and the snow had fallen nonstop, much like today. Every few years a big storm would roll in and park on top of the cabin, dumping a couple of feet of snow that would last for weeks.
That was the Christmas of the big one. My socks were wet. My toes blue with cold. Pajamas from Second Time Around thrift store were thin and short, barely containing my seven-year-old body. I shivered—hard enough to make the butterflies on my pajamas take flight as I pounded on the door, hugging Frito who had been tossed out behind me.
“It’s your dog. If you can’t take care of him inside, you can both go outside where you belong. You can come back in when you say you’re sorry,” Starla yelled from the other side of the door.
“I’m sorry. We’re sorry. It will never happen again. Mama, please. We’ll be good. Don’t leave me out here.” My tears left tracks as cold as a pair of ice skates sketched across the face of a winter pond.
Frito had crapped behind the wood stacked next to the heater, hoping to stay warm and that no one would catch him. But Starla found it. She always did. And now we were freezing our butts off.
Hours passed while we sheltered in the Japanese bathhouse. That was before my dad put in the hot water tank and the claw foot bathtub. It was more of a hippy bathhouse back then, located about fifty yards from the cabin. It was freezing out there. If you wanted a hot bath, you had to build a fire under the redwood tub. I had tried to start a fire, but the only thing that ignited was the entire matchbook. I tried clutching a snowball to cool my scorched fingers, but they still hurt.
The only thing colder than that Christmas Eve was my mother’s heart. Frito and I repeatedly beat a path from the bathhouse to the cabin door to beg and plead for forgiveness from Queen Mother. All in vain. It was a safe bet that she was either passed out on Valium or tripping on “shrooms.”
Santa never found our cabin that year, but Lefty did. In spite of the icy roads, my dad arrived from Oakland in the van, slip-sliding down the driveway. Headligh
ts swept across us as he swooshed to a stop, the door cracking with cold when he popped it open.
“Sunny,” Lefty called. It wasn’t a question but more like a statement of disbelief. “What the f—” He scooped me up in his big strong arms, his beard brushing my icy cheeks as he covered them with kisses, holding me tight and rubbing my back to warm me. He had been drinking.
Lefty didn’t bother with a key. He just leaned back and kicked the door open with his heavy boots, cracking the door frame, sending splinters flying.
Starla fled upstairs.
After wrapping me in his Hell’s Angels coat, Lefty paused to add wood to the heater. Then he turned his attention upstairs. I clung to Frito. Music drifted down from the radio upstairs. Credence Clearwater wasn’t the only one who saw a “Bad Moon Rising” that night. Frito trembled in my arms as I sang along to the sound of my mother’s screams.
“Wake up, little fox.” Kenny had somehow taken off his coat and removed his shoes and socks. He took the baby and added his jacket over the blanket. Then, in spite of my protests, he had me help him replace his shoes, then put his socks over my hands. The effort left him exhausted, visibly sweating and shaking. “It’s time for you to go.”
“I can’t leave you.” Tears welled up. “You’ll freeze.”
“I have everything I need,” said Kenny, patting the rifle in his lap. The muscles in his face tightened with pain as he spoke. His breathing was labored, his words forced. “Your tracker is coming. You must hurry. Don’t go back uphill. Go down first . . . cut along the hillside . . . then go up. He must think you’re . . . still in the truck. You know the way. Now—obey me . . . like a good daughter. No more words. Go. Now. The Holy Spirit . . . will guide you.”