Unconditional (16 page)

The memory of the little boy lying helpless in the hospital flashed in my mind.

Grandma, how come my dad don't love me?

“Big Mac's face was already swelling. Bloody mess coming out of his mouth and nose. I saw the shank laying not twelve inches from his head. I grabbed it . . .” Joe held his hand up, fist clenched. “I was ready to drive it as deep into that man's chest as it would go. I'd lost all reason. All sanity.” Joe shook his head. “Big Mac's eyes were wild. There was more fear in them right then and there than there had been in Pauly's five minutes before. And right then, Sam,” he said, looking at me, “I looked down on that man I was about to kill. And in that moment, I saw it so clearly.”

“What? What did you see?”

“How far my anger and pride had taken me. How far I had fallen. And how much pain I had caused.”

His grandmother. Had she been alive when he was convicted?

“The guards came, and they pulled me off Big Mac. Drug me off to solitary.” Joe's expression seemed so far away. “Ever been in solitary, Sam?”

“In some ways, yes.”

His brow rose.

“After Billy died. After everyone had gone home and the casseroles ran out and the only place I wanted to be was in the grave, lying next to my husband. I climbed the stairs, got in bed, and hardly came out. After a while, even my mother stopped trying to coax me down.” I swallowed. “But I suppose it's different in your case. In mine, I had a choice, I suppose, to walk out any time I wanted. All I had to do was get up and move.”

“Yeah. I didn't have that option.”

“How long were you in there?”

“Forty days and forty nights. All alone. Guards came three times a day to bring what they called a meal, but other than that, it was just me and God. And, Sam? When God's all you got to talk to, God is
who
you talk to. And you wonder why you didn't talk to Him sooner. Because you see, it was in that darkness, in the loneliest place of all, that I felt the love of a father—
the
Father—for the first time in my life.”

A breeze pushed through, pulling the cloud away from the moon. A light was cast across Joe's face. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and slipped like rivulets down his cheeks and over his jawline.

“I've never been the same since. I feel that love every day I'm with those kids. I look into their eyes and I know: Now
there's
something worth fighting for.”

I raised my fingertips to my lips, and they quivered, just as Joe seemed to be. “Samurai Joe. Always the fighter.”

But then I realized, Joe wasn't quivering. He was shaking. His left hand pressed under his shirt to his side.

“Sam?” His voice shook. When his hand slipped out from under the hem of the tee, bright red blood lay thick across his fingertips.

He looked from them to me.

“Joe?”

“I think I could use your help . . .”

Chapter Fifteen

I wrapped Joe's
arm around my shoulder and carried as much of his weight as I could. The rest was up to him, with what little energy he had left. Being Joe, he didn't give in, and for that I was grateful. I couldn't have carried his entire weight alone.

The scent of hay wafted toward us as we hobbled across the field together. The smell blended with that of burning wood from the living room fireplace. Brick must have lit a fire for the children.

By now, they would be stretched out and asleep in their sleeping bags or on top of the old blankets and quilts their parents and guardians had sent with them. I wondered if Brick or Denise were still awake. I'd told Denise earlier that she was more than welcome to one of the upstairs bedrooms. Brick was going to camp out on the sofa so he could keep watch over the kids and make sure no one got the unction to slip out to the barn during the night.

Perhaps, once I got close enough, I could get his attention.

We'd just made it past the barn when Joe stumbled. “Joe . . .”

He moaned in answer.

I thought of how I'd laid him down in the forest when we were children. How I had run for help. Maybe I should do the same now. “I can go get Brick,” I said. “Or Denise . . .”

He stopped long enough to look across the wide expanse of the yard to the house. “No. Just get me to the porch. When you do, get inside as quietly as you can. Go into my room and get the dialysis machine and bring it out to me. I don't want . . . don't want the kids . . .”

“What about Brick?”

“If he's awake, fine. If not . . . we can handle this, Sam. I don't want to take a chance on waking the kids.”

I understood. This was far more serious than any of them needed to be a party to. Joe faltered again, and I caught him, carrying his weight with my own. “I've got you, Joe.”

It seemed like an eternity, but we made it to the porch. I eased Joe into one of several rockers parked across it. “I'll be right back,” I said.

“Quiet now . . .”

I nodded and opened the door with a silent turn of the knob, praying the door didn't creak in protest.

When I stepped into the living room, I found the children lying corner to corner and everywhere in between. Brick's fire continued to blaze in the fireplace, filling the room with warmth. I used its light to guide my feet over and between sleeping children. I glanced to the sofa where Brick snored peacefully, blissfully unaware of Joe's predicament.

I reached the bedroom and rolled the dialysis machine into the hall. Then I picked it up and, as quietly as I could, carried it through the living room. Once the door had closed behind me, I rolled it in haste to where I'd deposited Joe.

Joe's face was bathed in sweat, his eyes wild with pain. He had opened his shirt and pulled his tee up to reveal a port and catheter of some kind. Blood oozed around it, soaking a patch of gauze.

“Good thing I hooked up the fluids earlier,” he said, panting.

“Joe, should we take you to the hospital? Or call an ambulance?”

“No,” he groaned, and I could feel panic rising.

“Look at me,” he said.

I did.

“You can do this, Sam.”

I nodded and began instinctively unraveling cords and tubes as though I'd been doing it all my life.

“Plug it in, Sam,” he said, the words coming between breaths.

I reached for the electrical cord. An outside outlet was only a few feet away, near the door. I did as Joe instructed.

“Come on,” Joe said, his breathing increasingly ragged. He had one of the tubes, but his hand shook too violently to get it to the catheter.

I took the tubes from him. “Here,” I said. “Give them to me.”

“Hit the switch in the back.” Joe's head lolled against the back of the chair.

I did as he said, and the apparatus sprang to life, emitting a series of beeps and tones.

“Take that tube,” he said, looking at the machine.

“Which one? There are so many.”

“That one.” He pointed.

I retrieved the tube he'd indicated.

His hand trembled over the bloody gauze and catheter. “Hook it up,” he said. “Ughhhh . . . right in here.”

Oh, dear God in heaven, was I adding pain to his agony? “Am I doing this right? Joe?”

“You're fine . . . you're fine.”

“Okay . . .”

“You're doing good.”

“Okay.”

I followed his eyes to where they gazed upon the machine. It blinked words and numbers in codes I didn't understand. “Unclamp that . . .”

“Okay.”

“. . . and hit the red button.”

I did. The beeping from the machine stopped, followed by a gentle clicking and then a
whoosh
. . .
whoosh
. . .
whoosh
. Joe groaned a final time—only this time, in relief. I leaned toward him. His left arm—the one closest to the machine—fell across mine, and his hand gently dropped on my shoulder. I felt his fingers wrap themselves into my hair. He coughed a few times before taking in a deep breath and letting it go. Finally he looked up at me. Though his smile was weak, his words held the humor I'd always come to expect from Joe.

“I guess that makes three times, huh?”

I laid my hand on his shoulder and brought the back of my fingers to rest upon his cheek where a five o'clock shadow had grown thick. “Yeah,” I said in a whisper. “I guess so.”

A short while
later, as the dialysis machine hummed beside Joe, another cloud passed across the moon. Joe and I sat side by side on the front porch. I'd gotten a blanket for him and laid it over his lap for warmth. But when the chill in the night air grew heavier, I walked over to the barn where I kept the fire pit and brought it back.

“You're like a pioneer girl,” Joe said, watching me throw in firewood and kindling.

I looked up at him and smiled. “Billy and I used to enjoy camping. He was always in charge of the fire-making, but I know how if I need to.”

“A regular Laura Ingalls Wilder.” He smiled.

I chuckled. “Maybe not
that
much of a pioneer, though I wouldn't mind being compared to her as an author.”

“There ya go . . .”

With the fire blazing, I sat down again next to Joe. “You doing okay?” I asked.

He nodded then sighed as though all was right with his world. “I'll be fine, Dr. Sam.”

I crossed my legs and tucked my folded hands between them. “I would if I had to, but I'd rather
not
have to do that again.” I smiled, then grew serious, “Joe? How long can you keep this up?”

“Until the doctor says my kidneys are at the end of their rope and I have to have a transplant.”

“Is it dangerous to wait?”

“Could be. But it's the only choice they're givin' me right now.”

I heard one of the French doors squeak open. Both Joe and I turned. I fully expected to see Denise, but instead, it was a sleepy-eyed Keisha wrapped in a blanket.

“She's sleepwalking,” Joe said. “Mattie says she does it all the time.”

I reached my arms toward her. “Come here, baby.”

She climbed into my lap, and I drew her close to my chest. I laid her head on my shoulder and watched her heavy eyes close as she drifted back to sleep. In that moment I regretted never having children with Billy. We'd always planned on it, and we did nothing to prevent it. It just never seemed to happen. We'd never fretted over it, never got concerned enough to seek medical advice. We thought we had time.

Keisha's feet wiggled beneath the blanket until ten precious little toes were exposed to the night air. Tenderly, like a father, Joe took the edge of his blanket and placed it over her bare feet. “This child,” he said, “is an angel.”

I looked down at her, unable to argue the point. If there were angels on earth, then I was surely holding one in my arms now. “She's sound asleep,” I said to Joe, then I smiled. “Just listen to her breathing.”

“No more peaceful sound on earth.”

“Joe,” I said, rocking back and forth, back and forth. “What happened to their father and mother?”

Joe's expression turned painful, but this time I knew it wasn't because of the discomfort in his body. This time, it was for Keisha and Macon. “Their mama got caught up with the wrong crowd. One night, when Macon was over at a friend's, a man broke into the house. Keisha ran into the kitchen and hid in a cabinet, listening while her mama was raped and murdered.”

I felt the air rush from my lungs, and I drew Keisha closer to my chest.

“Then he set the place on fire. Somebody heard Keisha screamin' and ran into that burning apartment. Straight into the fire. He saved her life. But . . . she's never spoken a word since.”

I looked at Joe, saw the tenderness in his face as he reached out and touched this precious child. “It was you,” I said. “
You
saved her.”

Joe shook his head. “Me?” He chuckled. “Old Samurai Joe? Naw . . . it wasn't me. It was another guy. Man by the name of Anthony Jones.”

My heart quickened. “Anthony Jones?”

“Do you know him? He lives next door to the kids. With their mama gone—and who knows what happened with their daddy—the kids had nowhere to go. So he went to his neighbor Mattie. Talked to her, and she took them in. She's a good woman, Miss Mattie is. And she loves these kids.”

“I thought she was their grandmother.”

“No. Just a good woman. She's got some issues, but she . . . she's the one who stepped up to the plate.”

“Because Anthony asked her to.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Anthony Jones.
Could I have been so wrong? Surely a man who would run into a burning house to rescue a child wouldn't kill an innocent man in cold blood. Would he? But if not Anthony . . . then
who
? I'd been convinced enough that I'd broken into his house. Rummaged through his belongings. What kind of person did that make me? Joe talked about pride going before the fall, but how far had I fallen to do something like that?

“Sam?”

I pushed a stubborn tear from my cheek. Rocked a little harder. “I thought . . . I believed Anthony Jones was the man who killed Billy.”

“
What?
What would make you think that?”

Joe had been so honest with me. I decided it was time I was just as honest with him. “Joe, I—that night . . . the night I took Keisha to the hospital . . . Haven't you ever wondered what I was doing down there? In the Commons?”

“It crossed my mind, but I figured you'd tell me when you got ready.”

I took a deep breath and slowed my rocking. I looked at Keisha and was reminded of the night I held her in my arms, her blood pouring over my hand, seeping between my fingers. “Like I told you, my husband—Billy—was murdered in your neighborhood. In the alley behind Murphy's.
That's
why I was in the Commons that night.”