“All right,” Mike said. “I’ll take you home, but I got to leave you at the gate. I don’t like the way that guard looks at me. That all right with you?”
“Yeah. That’ll be all right.” Jesse dropped flat on the couch and closed his eyes. “Thanks, man.”
Mike knew that was Jesse’s way of saying goodnight. He stood in the doorway, waited until he could hear the regular deep breathing of Jesse asleep, then crept down the hallway leading to his granny’s room, where he would turn off the TV, sit in the big chair at her bedside, and take comfort in the quiet sound of her breath until he sank into his own sleep, forgetting the awful mess of the day. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to the darkness of his grandmother’s room. She had turned off her light. Hadn’t waited for him to come tuck her in the way she liked. He wanted his granny to be awake; just her voice would give a little comfort. Still, he crept into her room, sat in the chair, hoping being near his granny would make him feel all right. But there was no consolation, just the memory of that blue-truck girl. The touch of her hand on his arm. He tried to think of her running in the dark, trying to get to some guy’s house. Some guy named Randy. So what if she screwed around on her fiancé? He closed his eyes and tried to see her finding her way in the dark, knocking on some guy named Randy’s house. Then he felt the touch of her hand again, her saying he should know her name. It wasn’t over with the blue-truck girl. He was pretty sure of that.
He shuddered, tried to shake off the feeling. But he could still see Jesse standing out in that field. Calling to the girl to come on. She stood by the car. Mike told her to go on, to do what Jesse wanted, and it would be all right. He wanted her to get away from his car, wanted to roll up the window, lock the door. He could feel her looking at him. But he wouldn’t look up from his hands gripping the wheel. “Talk to me,” she said. “What’s your name?” He glanced up, looked away. Then she reached in, squeezed his arm. He flinched, said, “What you doing?” He pulled away from her, ducked down, leaned closer to his hands on the wheel. “My name is Katy,” she said. “You need to know my name.” He kept his head down, didn’t want to look at her, and when he looked up, she was gone. And before he knew it, Jesse was throwing a screwdriver at him, giving him all kinds of hell.
Mike pulled the chair closer to his grandmother’s bed. He told himself it was like Jesse said, there were always worse things. He leaned back in the chair, listened to the soft sound of his granny’s breathing. It would be all right. Yeah, it was a waste of a day. Nothing went like they’d planned, but it would be all right. But he couldn’t shake the feel of that girl’s hand. There’d be no leaving that girl named Katy behind.
Just Nature She Loved, Flowers and Fangs and All
The old woman liked to watch the night from her back porch. In the old days, she did laundry there, wringer washer, hung clothes on a line out back, strung them up in the kitchen in winter months. Now she had an electric washer, dryer, heat, and air conditioners. All stuff her daughter bought her, insisted that she have. Now her daughter was trying to talk her into getting a burglar alarm. “Everybody knows you live out there by yourself. Anything could happen to you.”
But the old woman wasn’t worried. She’d lived a long life and seen a lot of things. Sure, she lived alone, but folks knew she had nothing in her house worth stealing, and they probably figured she had her husband’s old .22. She could still see clearly and wasn’t afraid of pulling a trigger.
And she loved this land. Her husband had courted her with this five acres, and before long they’d had fifty. It was a home built on love, and much as her daughter wanted to her to sell and move to be with her in Poughkeepsie, she wasn’t budging. She knew she’d freeze half to death up there. This was her land, and the only way they’d get her out was in a box. Or a bag, she guessed. She watched police shows. They used black bags these days.
She walked down into the yard to look up at the sky. Saw the Big Dipper. The top end of Scorpio and the other one she liked, Orion’s belt. Her husband had taught her to see these things.
A hoot owl swooped in moonlight, grabbed something up and rose. She figured it had to be a field mouse scurrying toward the brambles out by the trash heap. She liked the predatory birds. Ospreys, red-tailed hawks, owls that sometimes looked big as boys sitting up in those trees. She’d watched a show on Discovery about these birds. Raptors was what they were called. She liked the way talons clutched the furred things, lifting them up against the sky to somewhere they could plunk them back on the dirt and eat. She liked the nature shows. Bears scooping salmon from the streams, stripping the skins off. The way the big cats stalked. The hammerhead shark and the way it used some kind of sonar to sniff out things to eat buried under the sand. They were smart. Every creature in the world was smart when it came to feeding time. That was one thing she’d learned from the nature shows.
Her daughter thought she was strange. But the old woman said it was just nature she loved, flowers and fangs and all. Now she looked up at the full moon. You should see this, she thought to her husband, who had died twelve years before. He probably saw the moon. He probably saw the whole world, giraffes in Africa, the northern lights in Finland, and he probably saw all that meanness too that went on in the cities. That went on everywhere. But then there were always babies laughing somewhere, and that made things easier to bear. She liked to think that was what death might be like. It would be like the moon that sees everything, that circles around and around this world, just watching, waxing, waning, circling back around to see it all.
She saw a rustling in the brush at the back of the yard, made it out to be the pair of deer that liked to come for the salt lick she’d laid down. She liked watching the deer but had to keep her garden fenced. One year they’d snapped off the buds of all her lilies just as they were about to bloom. She saw them out there watching her. She made a little chucking sound, the way she talked to babies. She didn’t know deer language. They just stared at her for a minute and walked off. A breeze shook the trees. There had been such a drought lately. Here it was, late summer, and the leaves were already making a dry, brittle sound. She looked out at the field behind her house and ached for her husband, who used to plow that land, grew the sweetest corn in the county. She looked up, saw a shooting star, and made a wish for the safety of her daughter, who for some reason had decided to move up north.
She looked back at that field, remembered the lush corn that used to grow. And she felt a sorrow as if something very sad had just flown over. She wondered how many more years she’d have to walk this world, waiting to meet her husband in eternity somewhere. She was ready. She looked up, hoping to make another wish, but saw only a few blurred stars in a dull black sky. The humidity, she thought. Her daughter was always telling her to sell the farm and move to a place with milder weather. She sent a prayer to her husband, asked him to give her a sign to tell her whether she should give up the place and move or hang on and stay. I’ll know when it’s time, she thought. And then she thought maybe those were his words in her head. Patience was his favorite word. You’ll know when it’s time. That was exactly something he would say.
Love Calls Us to Things of This World
Billy woke in the dark, a jolt in the spine and a wide-eyed stare at the ceiling. Day three and she wasn’t back yet. He sat up, looked at the clock: 3:30 A.M. As usual. Somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30, he would wake. She was always home by then, even when she worked late at the bar, partied with the wait staff. He stared into the dark. Not a sound in the house. Most nights he’d hear the clicking of ice as she brought her glass of ice water to bed. When she worked late, she always came in quietly, took a shower, brushed her teeth, and he never heard a thing but the clicking of her ice water as she set it on the side table, slipped so quiet, soft, and damp into their bed.
Three thirty A.M. What does a man do at 3:30 A.M.? Five thirty is a civil time to rise. That was what Katy said: “Five thirty is a civil time to rise.” Farmers did it. Fishermen. Even those yuppies with some 6:00 spinning class at the gym. She said that getting up before 5:30 meant you were anxious or a nut of some kind or a workaholic. Katy liked sleeping in. In her ideal life, she said she’d like to be able to rise clean and clear-headed with the sun so she could watch the night