Seeing Things (39 page)

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Authors: Patti Hill

BOOK: Seeing Things
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“I got plenty tired of being yelled at.”
“I imagine you did.”
“I felt guilty about leaving you alone with Diane. Good night, she was a handful!”
“We weren't your responsibility.”
“You got awfully lonely, I know you did.”
“There you go, turning this into something about me, but this is about you. Andy, I should have stepped in, told Chuck to leave you alone. Maybe you wouldn't have that scar on your back if I had.”
“Mom, you're forgetting how stubborn he was.”
“Was he that bad?”
“Worse.”
“I can be stubborn too.”
“What is this about, Ma?”
“I need your forgiveness.”
Andy expelled a long breath and massaged his temples.
I touched his arm. “Can you say without any hesitation that you never wished I'd stepped in to help?”
He stood, paced back and forth. “What good is this?”
“Someday, I hope you'll forgive your pa. I don't have much of a say in what you do about that, but I hope you will for your own sake. Bitterness is poison.”
He stopped. “Were you afraid of him?”
“Never.”
“Then I wish you'd told him it was you who pulled off the truck fender.”
“Don't get cute with me.”
Andy looked at the ground. “I should be asking you to forgive me. I mean, I've been pretty selfish.”
“One thing at a time, Son. Will you forgive me? Will you?”
I don't know why Andy couldn't say yes to me that day, not with words anyway. I suppose a woman could live to be a thousand years old and never know what pops and sizzles inside the male mind, but Andy and me blubbered all over one another for a good thirty seconds. That has to be some kind of record for a grown son crying on his mother's shoulder. I took it. I treasured it. I thanked the good Lord for catching Andy's gaze.
Huck had taken his leave by the time I thought to look for him.
Chapter 40
My heart hadn't raced this hard since I'd found a bear in the kitchen. Back then I plopped baby Diane, all wide-eyed and anxious for her bottle, into the sink and shooed the bear out the door with two clanging pots. I told that bear where to go, but he'd ambled down the road, sure to enjoy the vittles of a careless camper.
Good riddance!
Nothing so wild or odorous as a bear shot adrenaline through me as I stood wrapped in a blanket with Suzanne. No, this was something grander, much more glorious. In fact, Jesus turned his gaze on me as Andy and Fletcher set to launch the raft onto the tiny lake in the park, and maybe he winked. I liked to think he did. I laughed like a schoolgirl.
“Mom!” Suzanne pulled me closer. “We have to be quiet,” she whispered in my ear with coffee-tainted breath. “I am not ending up on the front page of the
Denver Post
tomorrow morning.”
The midnight chill seeped through the blanket. I dabbed at my nose with my cuff and filled my lungs to embrace the night. The lake smelled stale and lifeless, nothing at all like a mountain lake, where the stew of life rose to sting one's nose. Leaning out the window of his new truck, Andy backed the trailer with the very large, very heavy raft into the water. “Fletch, are we in yet?” he called in a forced whisper that wasn't much of a whisper at all. Suzanne tensed.
Fletcher motioned his father deeper into the water. “The truck's wheels are in about three inches.”
“Stop me before the tailpipe gets wet.”
Andy eased the trailer farther down the ramp.
Fletcher yelled, “Keep coming, Dad!”
Suzanne moaned. How easily the young forget caution.
Darkness is the most frustrating of situations for a macular degenerate like me. Once the sun goes down, the world grows thick and viscous. No details. This night Andy's taillights stabbed at my eyes.
Fletcher yelled, “Stop! The raft's touching the water.”
Andy wasn't satisfied. He left the cab to investigate. A sloppy launch meant terrible risks, all enumerated by Andy before we'd left the house. The raft was more than capable of crushing anyone who got in its way if it slid off the trailer sideways. Andy ordered Fletcher into the cab.
“Are you sure, Dad? I mean—”
Andy put a hand to Fletcher's shoulder. “Take it nice and slow.”
Fletcher climbed into the cab. The truck shuddered as he shifted into reverse and eased toward the lake.
“Nice and easy, nice and easy. Keep it coming. Stop!”
The raft rolled on scraps of pipe Andy had purchased at the plumber supply store. He'd thought of everything, but that was my son. “Get out here, champ,” he called to Fletcher. “Your raft is about to float off without you.”
“It's floating?”
“Grab the poles from the truck bed. Let's get this baby into the big water.”
Suzanne clutched my hand.
“Tell me everything,” I said, nearly spitting my partial into the lake. “What's happening?”
She gasped.
I squeezed her hand tighter. “What?”
“The raft tilted, but it's level now.”
“What are they doing?”
“Andrew and Fletcher are standing on each side, pushing the raft away from the shore with the poles. Uh-oh, now the raft is turning to the left.”
“To port,” I said.
“Yes, to port. Andrew has moved to the port side to help Fletcher pole. They're going straight now. Can you hear them counting?”
I couldn't.
“They're poling together, in unison.”
“How far out are they?”
“Not very far, only thirty feet or so.”
“And the raft is level?”
“Like a pool table.”
As if Suzanne's words opened the door to another world, the raft appeared to me, not as it was—I knew that—but as I dreamed it would be, floating on the ink-black water of the mighty Mississippi with Andy at the tiller and Fletcher casting a fishing line into the water. The moon hung low where no moon hung in our world, a ribbon of light writhing on the swirling current. Embers sparked from the fire pit, ready for the catfish Fletcher would pull off the bottom. Willows bowed over the river and cottonwoods swayed with a breeze I couldn't feel. A lantern winked a yellow light. Another figure rose from the wigwam and stretched as if to tickle the stars.
Huck!
Of course he wouldn't resist the chance to hop a raft, in big water or small.
“They're in the middle of the lake,” Suzanne said, her voice tight with apprehension. “They should turn back.”
The image of the broad river and the content threesome faded into my perpetual grayness. I caught a tear with the blanket. “They'll be fine. There's no other place Andy or Fletcher would rather be right now.”
“How do you know that?” Suzanne said, releasing my hand.
“They're testing themselves and the work of their hands. Men thrive on that kind of stuff.”
“This is the twenty-first century, for heaven's sake. What kind of nonsense is this? The ‘work of their hands.'”
It was no small miracle that Suzanne had come to be wrapped in a blanket with me, a woman whose presence she had once despised, watching her husband on what she'd declared a fool's errand. Explaining the nature of men or mentioning her quest for motherhood seemed unnecessarily provocative. I entertained no claims to having tamed my tongue, but this small victory is counted among the string of miracles from that night that I hold up to the light now and again, not the least being our common purpose. Anyone stopping to look out their window toward the lake that night as they pattered to the kitchen for a second slice of pie would call us a family. That's a miracle.
The boys made it back to shore without attracting the attention of the law. Getting the raft out of the lake proved more difficult than launching it. Andy called a tow truck to hoist the raft onto the trailer, and he slipped the driver a hundred dollars to turn off his flashing lights.
Back in the kitchen, Fletcher held out his coffee cup to his father. Andy hesitated before filling it. Suzanne served muffins she'd bought at a boutique bakery across from the hospital. Fresh from the microwave, the chocolate chips coated my tongue.
“Oh man, we totally forgot the life vests,” Fletcher said around a hunk of muffin.
“We'll use them, don't you worry,” Andy said.
After slaps on the back for the boys and wishes of sweet dreams all around, I hobbled off to my bedroom. Under the blankets, I waited for the warmth to ease the pain in my joints. I patted the spot where Bee should have been. “It's a good thing you weren't here tonight. You would have barked your head off, and the neighbors surely would have called the police.” Thinking of Bee reminded me that Emory had a new dance partner, my best friend.
“You can have him.”
I turned toward the wall, and after a considerable amount of shifting to ease the pressure on my hip and shoulder, I let silly half dreams usher me into sleep.
Chapter 41
I'd only seen Josie talk on the phone one time. She'd held the receiver at arm's length and shouted for the plumber to come to her house. She gave him her address and hung up. He showed up before lunch. Wouldn't you?
“Don't be an idiot!” she said. “There's nothing going on between us! Emory loves you! Good-bye!” The phone line clicked a few times before it buzzed incessantly. I hit the off button and sat on the edge of the bed.
Lupe stepped into the room. “So, this Emory guy loves you. He's got a good job, right? What you going to do?”
“You heard that?”
“Me and everyone from here to Kansas. Even my sister Jacinta could hear that, and she doesn't hear so good.” She planted her fist on her hips. “You're avoiding the question: So what are you going to do about Emory?”
I felt myself smile. “Maybe I'll call him.”
“Maybe?” She pointed an accusing finger at me. “Love is not so easy to find. You should know that by now. I think that maybe you should wake up and smell the . . .”
“Coffee?”
“Nah, you smell the coffee just fine. What you need to smell is something rare and beautiful, like . . . ah, like an agave.
Mi abuela tiene un agave—
”
“In English, please.”
“When I talk about home . . . well, I forget.” She shuffled across the room and sagged into the recliner. “My grandmother waited and waited for her agave to bloom. Her mother, my great-grandmother, she planted the agave in the garden of
mi abuela
when my mother was born. She hauled water from the house. My grandfather, he made fun of her. The kids, my brothers and sisters and all the cousins, we hated that plant. It had thorns like fish-hooks all along the edges. The boys, they liked to chase the girls with the leaves like they were pirates with long swords.

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