Mammoth Secrets (32 page)

The paramedic team rolled him inside on a gurney. Eyes closed and sunk with shadowed hollows beneath, he'd slow-blinked awake and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, then, recognition washed his features. Earl Dale shot her a half-cocked grin and stole her heart for the millionth time. “Told you I'd be back for you, Naomi,” he whispered in a sandpaper voice. And he'd even winked.

That was hours ago. He'd fallen into a fitful slumber and she'd sat down to watch. To wait. Her hips and back screamed from settling on that chair they'd dragged over for her. Her mouth pasty, her throat overcome by a powerful thirst. She gave a loud rattling clear to shake it, but nothing would. “Be right back, honey.” She got up, satisfied the monitors were steady, quiet. Naomi squeezed her husband's hand and set off in search of a drink.

Overheads too bright, she switched on the red shaded hurricane lamp she favored. The double glass hooded antique was the only thing her mother had ever given her. The last thing.

Naomi closed her eyes, empty as the brown glass on the counter.
Lord? What am I going to do without him?

Voices filtered into the kitchen, hushed tones of her angels in the other room. Eden, Lilah. So much like their mama, as if two halves of her daughter had been shorn and given to each. And she'd been given the opportunity to do things right a second time. Every way she went wrong with Rebecca made right in raising her orphaned twins. Ice clunked. Hollow, she spun a splash of water. No matter which way she sliced it, Lilah and Eden would always be her girls, right along with her Rebecca. Sweet Rebecca, the daughter born of her body that'd left her with two daughters, born of her heart.

Eden with her powerful faith and little girl dreams, now all grown up.

Lilah, her runaway, finally home, the gap that kept them apart for so many years, bridged at last. Thanks to young Pastor Gibb, of all things.

And it was Lilah, ultimately, who was there when Naomi couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Because thinking meant the end of all she'd known since the tender age of nineteen. And thinking meant it was time to let Earl go. It was right for him to be here.

Eden appeared in the u-shaped kitchen, stepped to her grandmother's back, and squeezed her from behind. The girl certainly hadn't gotten her height from the Dale side of the family. It was from Samuel's, of course. The Guthries towered over everybody.

“You OK, Nana?” Eden's voice, so low it was barely a whisper.

Naomi just shook her head, tipped the cup to her lips, and clattered it back down again. “I-I don't know how to be today.”

“You don't have to.” Eden hugged her. “We're here to help.”

Help. Naomi searched her granddaughter's tear-stained face. In a blink, Eden was six, caught playing with the makeup. Then sixteen, crying over that Reynolds boy. She shook her head to clear the images.
Earl's not the only one skipping through time. Where do the years go?
She gave her girl a kiss on the forehead. “Go wipe your raccoon eyes, honey. I'll be back out in a minute.”

Eden gave a nod and padded her way down the hall to the bathroom as ordered.

The visitors vanished sometime during the night, just as they'd promised. The hospice workers didn't even speak with her beyond knowing looks and encouraging hand-squeezes.

That breathing apparatus off Earl's face, he looked more peaceful, if still out of place in that blasted hospital bed. Why hadn't Earl just taken a last fishing trip down to the river, cast his line for the last time, and...just…

One couldn't order up their way to go to glory. Not Rebecca on her fateful, final journey. Not their countless friends and neighbors, parents, and siblings that they'd laid to rest in that cemetery on the hill.

Someone had pulled a chair over and Naomi made use of it, sitting at Earl's bedside. She patted his fingers, wove hers in between. “I'm here.”

Their hands. Hers stacked upon his, withered, wrinkled, and old. The bluish ropes of her veins startled her as thoughts dipped and churned from the days at the ranch, to Becca as a baby, to the newborn twins. A girl in each arm and a hole in her heart.
Sweet Jesus. The years snatched away like a thief in the night...and now, lost.

“When'd we get so danged old?” Earl read her thoughts, his thin voice reaching her ears.

A gasp, she stuttered a laugh. “It's a blur, isn't it?”

He nodded once, breath whistling like wind through the reeds. “I'm tired, Naomi.”

“It's OK, honey.” Tears welled, spilled over her lips as she patted his hand, releasing the sea of tears the only thing that could quench the ball in her throat. “You can go rest, now.”

“I'll go find us a nice little place...wait for you...”

Tears pricked, heated her eyes even as an icicle of fear clutched her heart. “I'll try not to be too long.”

“You be watchin' for that big bird, now...” He sighed, worked for a breath and turned his head to the river below, eyes half lidded. “It's a sign…from Becca.”

“I-I've always thought so.”

“It is.” Turning to look at her again, he smiled. “She just told me.” His eyes closed, mouth set at half a smile.

Shoulders shaking, she knit her fingers together with his.

“Hear that?” Earl's eyes opened, a look of wonder brightening his face as he stared into a realm unseen. “It's her, she's singing…can y'hear?”

“I'm trying...” Naomi strained her ears to the silence and prayed.
Not yet. Please, Lord. Not yet.
Forehead to her hands, her shoulders wracked in silent sobs of one robbed, too soon, of the love of her life.
We need more time...is there ever enough time?

No sound, no answer but his ragged breath.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think, for all of the roaring silence. Naomi pressed a paper-dry kiss to his forehead then stood and backed away from him. Everything about her was dry. Parched. Her soul, her mouth, her throat. She'd left the glass on the counter. Ice.
I'll get him some crushed ice, for his lips.
She muscled through the crowded emptiness into the kitchen but hesitated at the porch view.

Beyond the flowerbox window, the kids and their beaus sat out on the screened in porch talking in hushed tones.

Eden and Luke, side by side in the wicker swing, their index fingers hooked. Finally a pair. Lilah turned side to side in her swivel chair like a six-year-old, toes on the ground while Pastor Jake rubbed her shoulders and stared out toward the falls. The four of them, a newly arranged bouquet of blossoming love.

Soon this river place would be full of weddings and babies. Of laughter and life. And, if Lilah and Jake figured out what to do with each other, her little runaway could be a pastor's wife. The very notion burbled a laugh into her throat and a new waterfall of tears. Laughter. Anguish. Without sound, could one tell the difference?

She returned to Earl's side.

His head faced in the direction of the river, his body lay still. Unmoving. A look at his calm face, and she knew. His body a shell, her husband was no longer there.

The glass tumbled from her grasp to the rag rug. Ice skittered across the hardwood floor. Silence swelled with the scream that welled from her soul as she brushed over his chest, his arms, and his face with futile fingers. Still warm, but gone. Hollow. Empty. This vessel that held the soul she loved, would love, until the day she died.

“Why didn't you wait for me to come back? I wanted to hold your hand...to say g-goodbye...” But nothing mattered.

Her husband was finally free.

 

 

 

 

46

 

The misty, morning painted the Arkansas sky a dull white. The cicadas echoed in a rhythmic hum. No sounds of traffic. Even the river seemed to have gone quiet to mourn the passing of Earl Dale.

Lilah walked up the long, winding road from the chapel to the top of the hill, Jake's sermon ringing in her ears.

A good man. A quiet man. The foundation of his family. Of the town. Jake retold stories that brought folks to laughter, to tears, though not one of them experienced or heard first hand. The Earl Dale that Jake met was nothing like the man he'd known. “Obituaries are rarely that way.” He'd told her the night before. At his father's mega church, often the pastor never even meets or knows parishioners first hand. Close to God, but not so much to each other. “Not like here,” he'd said. Was he intending to stay?

On either side of the grassy path, centuries-old headstones bowed their heads in moss-covered disarray. Leaning oaks wove through the ghostly crowd, with exposed, knotted roots. Grave markers told the final tale of families, generations gone. Of children buried too young. Soldiers returned from war, taken before their parents. Her own mother laid to rest, there, at the crest of the hill.

She headed toward the spot marked for her grandfather's earthly remains. Where Astroturf topped the freshly dug plot, and where the three distinct rows of white folding chairs waited under a tasteful canopy, along with countless wreaths and hapless sprays of memorial flowers.

And the brass handled casket.

So wrong...Papaw shouldn't be here—he should be scattered in the river. But Nana'd put her foot down. They were going to rest forever together on the hilltop, just as they'd planned.

She paused at the crunch of approaching footsteps and turned toward the sound. The lanky glassmaker shuffled his way up the path, then froze under her gaze.

“You following me, Guthrie?”

“Not intentionally...uh...Lilah.” He tried out a grin at using her name, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, he dragged the cap off his head, held it wadded and bunched at his middle. “That was a right pretty sermon your man gave.”

Lilah nodded. “Jake's got a way with words.”

“Why aren't you in that big black car with your'n? Your grandma and sister?”

“I needed some air.” Tipping her gaze to the limousine, she shook her head. “Walk with me the rest of the way?”

“Oh, I don't think—”

“Please.” She looked up into Guthrie's haunted eyes. “I could use the company.”

Together, father and daughter stepped up the winding path, side by side, separated by the gulf of time and a host of unanswered questions neither one of them considered asking.

Lilah hesitated at the rise, frowned at the folding chairs lined up and waiting for her, for Eden, for Nana. At last, she found her voice.

“P-papaw always said he knew more f-folks here than in town.” Like a dam overfull, her grief finally spilled over. Tears of loss and longing for a time she'd run from. For all she'd missed. Her steps halted, she fisted her hands to welling eyes. “I shouldn't have run. I should have stayed.”

“Don't.” Guthrie pressed a clean handkerchief to her hand, gave her shoulder a hesitant pat. “You can't get the time back, so no sense in trying.”

“I left Eden.” She dragged the mascara-darkened cloth under her eyes and blinked up at the scattered cotton sky. “I left all of them, chasing the wrong guy. The wrong idea.”

He nodded, eyes wide in a knowing stare. “Often wondered how that worked out for you.”

“I failed at that, same as with everything else.” Her breath stuttered out. “All I can do is sling hash, cast a line. All of that, thanks to Papaw.”

Guthrie focused on her. “Think those things aren't worth doing?”

She couldn't help but study Guthrie's features. This time, he did not look away. His eyes, the same color as hers. She recognized herself in his shape of face, like looking in a distorted mirror. At once, she saw her reflection in his strong jaw-line. Even the shape and mannerism of Eden's in his calloused thumb, worrying each fingertip. Lilah found the part of herself that never fit in the Dale mold, here, in this man. She slow blinked and turned back to the gathering crowd. “Not sure I'm ready for a father-daughter talk, yet.”

“No. Not the time or place.” He un-pocketed and pressed a hand to hers, pressing something small, cold in her palm. A silver key.

She blinked up at her biological father. “Is this—”

“You take that now. That river place's all I've got to give you.” he pressed lips together. “I get the feelin' Eden's happier in town.”

Laughter mixed with tears as Lilah nodded. “You've pegged her right.”

“Well, then. See you up there.”

Guthrie continued up the path without looking to see if she followed, while Lilah rolled the key to the river house over in her palm, at last in charge of her own destiny.

 

 

 

 

47

 

“When will you be back?” Lilah hated the way her words rung with desperation as Jake checked his watch. Time wasn't on her side this morning.

“Scott Emerson's giving the sermon this week. If it goes well, he'll be there the following, too.”

“If it goes well. You mean you're done here?”

He lifted, dropped his shoulders. “Mammoth's a small part of a big engine, Lilah. There are steps, measures. We have to be accountable as a church.”

“So that means running back and forth to California on your father's whim?”

The church hadn't run him out on the news of his family, his deception, they'd embraced him. Did she even know who he really was anymore?

When he spoke, it was the measured words of her pastor, not the man she'd fallen in love with. “They want to hear our story out there. The Steadmans need a vacation, anyway. What a testimony they have.”

“And I can't stow away in your suitcase?” She toed his duffle bag, heart welling at his responding laugh.

“Maybe next time. It's still a little complicated back there—”

“Because of your ex.” She managed.

“And yours.”

“Right.”

The words ran out as the limo-taxi appeared. “Looks as if dear old dad shelled out the big bucks. You flying first class, too?” At his responding silence, she gawped. “You are! Wow. Big time pastor hidden in the middle of nowhere.”