Asked For (33 page)

“Please, Cletus. I’m so tired…” Then everything went black. She woke up the next morning in their bed, nothing on, last night’s vomit dried on the floor. He was gone, and she wondered. Had he? She’d run her hands down her bare body. He must have.

The baby repositioned in her arms. One tiny fist struggled free from the blanket. He brought it to his face and rubbed the ball of fingers against his nose and cheek. Lana smiled. He was so small, so soft, and so warm. This birth had been easy, maybe because of his size. She thought of his father, and tears came to her eyes. “You’re special,” she whispered. “You need a special name. One that will dub you with kindness all your life. I think I’ll call you James.”

Chapter 50

James 1960

They came, they all came, and they stood just as they had stood around the table James’ whole life. But there was no table here, and there were no chairs. Just a train platform and a waiting train alongside it.

“All strikeouts,” Harold said. “Pitch those no-hitters.” One arm was around Sandra. She smiled, her face rosy, and James wondered. By the time he came back from his first season of playing ball, he’d know, but he suspected by then Harold would be the father he always said Mama had been.

“I will,” James promised. “Only winning games.”

Betsy stepped forward and hugged him. Gail and Jackson handed him a bundle wrapped in burlap.

“From Harold’s store,” Gail offered. “A good jacket. Want you to look perfect while you’re out there in the world.”

James smiled. Perfect. It’s what Gail did. Poor Jackson.

The whistle blew on the train. James’ heart jumped. He wanted to go, yet he wanted to stay. Carla and Miles stepped forward, and Carla wrapped both arms around James. She felt like Mama. She smelled like Mama. James was glad Carla hadn’t married a Pop like Mama.

“Alex will be sorry he missed you,” Harold added. “Just another week and you could have seen him before you left.”

James thought of Alex as he’d last seen him. Muscles that loved enough to break a wooden post for James’ sake, muscles that had fought in a war to escape the hurts at home, now coming back to take over Pop’s shop. Pop…

“Don’t think about it, little brother.” Magdalena slipped an envelope into his hands. “It’s his own fault,” she leaned close and whispered. “I told you that before.”

The stench of welded metal scorched into James’ skin was nothing compared to the smoke that had seared his lungs. Two days? Four days before he came around? The white of the hospital room’s walls couldn’t erase the black smoke James saw in his mind, or the burning cloud he tasted with every breath. James had survived the fire. Magdalena and Mama were at his bedside when he first awoke. “Pop?” he’d tried to ask. He sounded like an old man, his throat burned raw. Mama laid her hand on his. James couldn’t read what he saw in her eyes. Love? Fortitude? All of the things Mr. Morgan had said were there? Certainly beauty. “Pop made it,” Magdalena had said. “Barely. He won’t be the same ever again, though.” That’s when James saw him, just after Magdalena said it, those dark eyes, that dark hair, standing back and watching. Mr. Morgan, also in hospital attire. Magdalena had nodded. She knew James’ question, and she knew he had seen the answer. Mr. Morgan had saved them, saved James and Pop. Mr. Morgan was there.

The train huffed impatiently behind him. James fingered the envelope and looked at his sister. “Save it for later,” Magdalena said. He slipped it into his shirt pocket and nodded.

“All aboard!”

James glanced at the conductor, a car away, waving his arm toward the train. He turned back to his family, the ones who had loved him all his life, protected him, told him he was different without ever really saying why.

Choke up on the bat.
Passengers filed past, heading to the train. James glanced around them, through them, searching for the one who’d given him that advice years ago. He wasn’t there, but everything he’d given James, over the years, was.

“It’s time to go.” James turned to his family. They pressed close, they touched him; no one said goodbye. “I’ll write,” James promised, looking at Mama.

Tears formed in Mama’s eyes as she drew him to herself and hugged him. He felt her nod, her head close to his, a faraway look in her eyes when she stepped back and released him.

“I know you will, James,” she said. “I know you really will. It’s what family does, but you really will.”

He boarded the train at the conductor’s final warning. Pop wouldn’t have come to say goodbye even if he could have.

James found a seat near the window. He laid Gail’s bundle beside him and put his satchel at his feet. His family stood on the platform. They spotted him, and he planted his palm on the window’s glass as if he could touch them.
Stand back and gain perspective.
There he was. Mr. Morgan. Far back, his dark hair, eyes so like James’ own, so like Mama’s, also.
Your father will be there today.
The train lurched forward, James’ family passing by on the other side of his hand.

He couldn’t see them.

His eyes were drowning in tears.

Epilogue

Magdalena 1960

Mama had six children after she had me, one right after the other except for James, mostly because Pop couldn’t leave her alone. It wasn’t that he was in love with her. He just loved hard the same way he worked hard. He worked her hard too, and us kids. Mama never complained, not for a long time, no matter what Pop did, so we mostly didn’t either. My brothers and sisters were too afraid of what Pop would do when they were growing up. I learned later in life I was only afraid of what he didn’t do.

“Guess what, Pop. Got another letter from Jim!”

Pop flinched. It was all he could do. James had walked out of the hospital after the fire, but Pop never could. He was carried home. The disfigurement the fire left made his flesh match his heart. That was an ugly thing to say, but it was true. While James went on to play baseball, Pop took to his bed.

Sometimes I borrowed Max’s car and took Mama to one of James’ games if it was fairly close. James traveled a lot, and when he was on the road, he always wrote. He described every inning of every game in great detail. For Mama’s sake, so she’d feel as if she was there. He wrote each letter well, because I heard her cheer when she read them. When she was finished, I always took his letters into Pop’s bedroom and waved them in the air. I waved one now as I dragged a chair near his bed. Pop hated it when I said “Jim.” I did it because it was medicinal. It made me feel good and it kept him alive.

As I read James’ letter, Pop never interrupted. I’m not sure he could. He never responded when I finished, either. He never did. I know he reacted on the inside, though. He just never let it show. I stuffed the letter back into the envelope.

“Alex says everything’s fine at the shop.” I waited. I could see Pop thinking, but there was nothing to say. No thanks for reading, no thanks to Mr. Morgan for saving him, nothing to Mama, me, or Betsy for taking care of him.

I did want to thank Pop for something, though, but it would have been cruel. When Mr. Morgan had pulled Pop and James from that fire, he had taken something from Pop’s arms before the three of them were carried away on stretchers. A box, a small metal box that housed some papers, a letter, and a key. Mr. Morgan handed it to me when I went to visit him in the hospital. The papers were a ledger of the money Pop had given Mama years ago when he paid for us kids to see a movie or her to do as she pleased. Guilt money. Probably to counter the key, a key to a house Pop had bought. I claim that house now. Mama and I chased away the woman he had living there, and I made it my own. The letter was James’. I’d handed it to him before he boarded the train, his first acceptance from the scouts, never burned after all. But almost.

“Need anything before I go, Pop?” I still didn’t mention the house.

Silence. I left his room.

Mama kept all of James’ letters in a small box on her dresser in my old room where she slept. I set this one at the back, all of James’ letters in a row in the order they’d come. I walked back downstairs through the living room, through our old dining room, and onto the back porch. I stopped at the washstand and gazed into the old mirror. I lifted my hair the way Mama had done once, then let it drop. I call myself just Magdalena now. I live in a house paid for by Pop, and I help take care of him, but I’ll never be Magdalena Paine again. That girl grew up and became so many Magdalena somethings I lost track. Each one was different, yet each one the same. I didn’t see it until Mama pointed it out to me. Every last name I took on was attached to a man who was like Pop in some way. Magdalena Paine died then, and a new Magdalena was born. I like this one. This one is beautiful.

Beautiful like Mama. Just like Mr. Morgan had said. I turned from the washstand and stepped outside.

Mama was out there. She really was beautiful. She looked better than she’d ever looked. The wind whipped her faded housedress against her legs. She was still tall and slender, her auburn hair fluttering around her face.

I walked up beside her and stared out over the pasture where she was looking. She was smiling. I reached down and took her hand. I pressed a small token into her palm and closed her fingers around it.

“What? More?” Her eyes twinkled. “I swear…”

“Save ’em up, Mama. Someday you’re going to be ready for one of those sundaes again. And you’ll have enough tokens to last you the rest of your life.”

Mama smiled and turned toward the pasture, but not before I saw James in her eyes. I watched her let herself through the gate and disappear over the rise. Mama loved the pasture. Mama just plain knew how to love.

A word about the author...

Born and raised in the Midwest, Colleen is at home in that rural atmosphere but enjoys experiencing other cultures also. She works as a laboratory technician by day, but devotes her nights and weekends to literature, both reading and writing. Other hobbies include outdoor activities, treasure hunting in antique malls and flea markets, yard work, and theater.

Colleen’s multiple awards for her short stories, include:

2nd Place, Mighty Mo Award, 2008;

1st Place, Jim Richardson Memorial Award, 2010;

1st Place Ozarks Writers League Award, 2012;

Honorable Mention,

Ozark Creative Writers Nostalgia Short Story;

Honorable Mention, Mighty Mo Award, 2012.

~*~

Also by Colleen L. Donnelly

and available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

Mine to Tell

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