Unconditional (3 page)

There was applause, and I was grateful—I needed another moment to compose myself. I tried to focus on the faces. Then just one face, Jonathan's, who sat in the seat next to my empty chair. But doing so became increasingly difficult. With a glance over my shoulder, I saw the image of my book on the screen had been replaced with a graphic of a two-dollar bill.

Did you get my Jeffersons?

“The two-dollar bill,” I said, looking back at the audience. “It came to be Billy's symbol of love. You see, there are millions of these bills in print, more than enough to go around. But they are hardly ever seen. People hoard them, keep them hidden away. Billy would . . . he would always say, ‘There's enough love to go around, Sam. You just have to share it.'”

I looked down at the podium, at the two-dollar bill that had seen better days. My fingertips hovered over it, quivering. “He . . . he got this crazy idea . . .” My head started to spin. “He began giving away two-dollar bills to total strangers. It was . . . it was his way . . . it was his way of . . .”

I could barely see past the tears shimmering between myself and the audience. People who, by the looks on their faces, could see my pain and knew it had become too much to bear. I looked down at the podium again, scooped the wrinkled bill into my hand. “I'm sorry,” I said.

I crossed the stage as quickly as I could, stumbling blindly toward the stairs. A man's hand reached for mine. I took it, figuring it was probably Jonathan's. Not that it mattered. In that moment I would have grasped at anything. Anyone. All I knew was I had to get off the stage. And somehow—
somehow
—back to the farm, where I would try to muddle through the lonely days and torturous nights.

Two Years Later

The dark cloud
hovered over north central Tennessee like the hand of an angry God. For two days it had rained, just as it had that night. For two days there had not been any sign of the storms letting up or moving on. On the third day of rain, which was three years to the day since Billy's murder, I decided the rain was a sign.

I was determined to end the anguish. Stop the nightmares. There would be no more dreaming about love and sunshine, only to wake in the morning with the knowledge it would never again be true. No more dreaming about a life cut down by a killer's bullet.

I was full up with pain. So full of bitterness and sorrow, the will to go on had left me. Nothing made sense without Billy. No amount of begging God or making deals with the devil would bring him back. All my efforts at moving forward and getting on with my life had failed. I couldn't eat. Hardly slept. Didn't work. I was living on Billy's life insurance, but I was smart enough, even in my grief, to know it couldn't last forever.

Late that afternoon I pulled on a pair of Billy's sweatpants. They hung on me, even with the drawstring waist pulled tight—only my jutting hipbones kept them from pooling around my ankles. I dug around the laundry basket for a camisole and covered it with Billy's matching hoodie. I slipped my feet into a pair of running shoes, tied the laces, grabbed my hobo purse from the doorknob of our master bedroom, and shuffled outside to Billy's old truck.

I made the drive to Nashville that evening, as I had three years earlier. Nothing was different. I was soaked through and through, just like before. My headlights revealed only rain as it beat down on the asphalt in wide sheets. As before, I was heading for the alleyway behind Murphy's Liquor Store.

By the time I turned onto the street, the rain had let up a bit. The lights from the old Ford cut through the darkness. No one stirred along the sidewalks or under the awnings. The streetlamps flickered, but the lights inside the stores were dim. I parked the truck directly in front of Murphy's.

I unlatched the glove compartment, watching my breath form little clouds that floated toward the dashboard. I reached in and quickly pulled out the .44 Magnum that Billy had kept tucked inside. I took out a box of bullets, dropping it onto the seat beside me. I opened the box and removed one bullet.

Just one.

I only needed one.

After several short, rapid breaths, I opened the door and stepped out of the truck, onto the rain-slicked sidewalk. I didn't bother to close the door. What would be the point? Stench from a nearby Dumpster permeated the air, but it didn't deter me. I kept moving, past the bar-covered windows and the slum stores, to the gaping mouth of the alleyway.

The passageway between the dark buildings looked as dismal as it had three years ago. I stood there looking at the spot where Billy's blood had spilled onto the road, where he'd taken his last breath . . . only a few feet from another Dumpster, as though he'd been worth less than a piece of trash.

Before moving into the alleyway, I wondered—as I had for three years—what his final thoughts had been. Had he thought of me? Or had the killer done his deed so quickly, Billy's life had simply . . . ended. I wondered if there had been much pain. If he'd felt the bullet tear through his heart. Or if, graciously, he'd felt nothing at all.

And I wondered again where God had been in those moments. Where was the great Master of the world when evil had been allowed to triumph and good had been consigned to die?

I staggered a bit to the spot where Billy had died. I dropped to my knees, then my chest, and finally laid my cheek against the cold, wet asphalt. Dirt in the street had turned to mud. I felt it grind into my cheeks, abrasively. But I didn't care.

The smell of gasoline and oil lingered, meshing with the scent of rain in the city. Fat drops of it stung my head and my hands. As much as I'd come to hate the rain—for what it had cost me, for calling Billy out that night and into this godforsaken part of town—I didn't care. I closed my eyes and imagined myself as Billy, blood oozing from my body, life slipping from my lungs.

When I opened my eyes, I found my finger had wrapped around the trigger of the pistol. I pulled myself up to stand. Billy's jacket and sweats weighed heavy on my body as I moved to a cinderblock wall, turned, and leaned against it. I opened the cylinder of the gun and shoved the single bullet into the uppermost chamber. I closed the chamber, and it clicked shut. I slid downward until I was sitting, knees at my chest, feet pressed together. I swallowed twice, raised the pistol, and pushed the cold muzzle against the wet skin under my chin.

I squeezed my eyes shut, drew one last breath, and whispered a final word.

“Billy.”

My hand began to shake.

Was I cold? Afraid?

No.
No.
I was doing this. I was ending it. Whatever pain resulted from the bullet entering my brain was nothing compared to what I lived with on a daily basis. I had to . . . had to . . .

Right now. Right—

A thump and a scream from the street beyond the alley caused my eyes to fly open. I turned toward it, dropping the gun to the street beside me.

“Keisha!”
A boy's cry rose above the pounding of rain.
“Keisha!”

I grabbed the gun, slipped it into my jacket pocket. I began to run. Faster . . . faster, until I could see the front of Murphy's. The streetlamp shone down on the crumpled body of a little girl who appeared to be no more than six.

Another child, a boy of about nine—dark-blue hoodie pulled over his head, backpack balanced on his back, white teeth bared against wet, dark skin—cried out her name again.
“Keisha!”

I stopped in front of him, frozen. He saw me then, his eyes wild, his hands laid over the girl as though she were the most prized thing in the world. “She—she got hit,” he hollered into the rain. “By that car. She got hit!”

I jogged the distance remaining between us, scooped the child into my arms, felt the warmth of her blood seeping between my fingers, the weight of her head against my shoulder. One hand lay against my chest, quivering. She was beautiful. And unconscious.

“That's my truck,” I said to the boy. “Get in.”

He scooped up a lavender vinyl backpack I'd not noticed before. “You know where the hospital's at?” he asked, sliding into the passenger's side of the truck.

“Here, you'll have to hold her,” I said, laying the girl in his lap. I pulled the seat-belt buckle over the two of them. After I heard it click, I jerked it to make sure it was secure.

“Well? Do ya?” the boy asked me again, his voice filled with fear. “Do you know where the hospital is?”

I didn't. “Do you?”

“Naw, man! Naw.”

I looked up the street and then down. There was no one. Nothing was open. I'd left my cell phone at home. “Don't worry,” I said. “We'll find it.” I shut the door. Precious time was wasting.

The corridor outside
the emergency room's patient area was long and dimly lit. Old plastic chairs, gurneys, wheelchairs, and a short line of oxygen tanks lined the narrow space. I sat with my elbows on my knees, my face in my hands, looking down at my feet, pressed together on the dingy white linoleum. My shoes were still wet.
I
was still wet. And I was tired. And alive. I had set out to do
one
thing that evening, and I'd failed.

“Ms. Crawford?”

I looked into the face of young nurse, a wisp of a woman, really. She wore her dark hair pulled back in a chignon. Her honey-colored face was pretty and devoid of makeup with the exception of shadow over her lids, which made her almond-shaped eyes appear all the larger. She rested an elbow on the countertop of the nurses' station, appearing completely relaxed about the trauma I'd rushed into her shift.

“How is she?” My words came like a whisper. I was nearly too exhausted to speak.

“She got banged up pretty good. She's got a mild concussion, and we had to put some stitches in her forehead.” She touched her own near the hairline. “We're gonna keep her overnight to be safe, but she should be just fine.”

“Did you reach the family?”

“Someone should be here any minute.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, not only at the news that Keisha would be okay, but that—if family were coming—I could go home. Home, where I knew I'd be forced to reevaluate things in light of the night's events. I reached for my purse, which I'd thrown onto the chair next to me.

“Ms. Crawford?” the nurse said.

I looked up again.

“The police are downstairs. Waitin' for a statement. But if you got a second, the little girl wants to see you.”

I clutched the purse close to my chest. Nodded.

“Room twenty-seven,” she said, looking down the hallway. “Down that way, turn right.”

I nodded again, stood, and followed the directions until I came to the open door of the girl's room. I peered in. Keisha lay sleeping in the bed, covered by a sheet and a thin blue blanket. She looked so helpless, so fragile. A gauze bandage covered the side of her forehead. Her brother sat in a chair beside the bed, arms hanging limp. His hands were cupped over his knees. The book bag he'd carried earlier sat atop a table beneath the window, beyond which the night had managed to carry on without us.

Seeing me in the doorway, he looked up. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself.”

“She wanted to tell you something.” The boy stood, reached over the raised rails of the bed, touched his sister's shoulder, and shook gently.

“No, no . . . no. Don't wake her. She needs her rest.”

He stopped, walked around the bed, saying, “She's goin' be mad if she don't get to see you.” When he stood directly before me, he stopped. “So then what about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“You comin' tomorrow?”

Coming tomorrow,
I thought.
Back . . . here?

“I don't know,” I said. Then again, what else did I have to do? “I think so. I think I'd like that. Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head as though he were studying a work of modern art he couldn't understand. “How do I know you not playin'?”

I couldn't help but notice the tough-boy attitude in the way he spoke out of the side of his mouth, like a little Cagney of his time. “I . . . uh . . .” I reached my hand into the hobo bag, to the front pocket where I kept my business cards. I'd put several of them in before leaving home that evening. For the police, for when they found my body.

I drew one out and handed it to him. “Here.”

He studied it for a moment. “Samantha Crawford.”

“Sam. You can call me Sam. And what's your name?”

His eyes never left mine. “I'm Macon. And you just made
me
a promise.”

Macon extended his hand to seal the deal.

I slipped mine over his. “Well, I guess I did,” I said, not breaking contact, easily readjusting my hand to the “second handshake” position.

Macon chuckled and, somehow, I managed to smile myself.

“All right then,” I said.

“All right. See
you
tomorrow.”

I squeezed his hand once more. “Good night, Macon. Tell Keisha I'll be back.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

I left the doorway—I'd never really made it into the room—and started back down the corridor, approaching the nurses' station across from where I'd sat minutes before. A black man leaned over it, talking to the same nurse who'd directed me.

My head throbbed. I rubbed my tired eyes with my fingertips, my feet keeping pace with my heart.

“So she's okay,” I heard the man say. His voice was gentle soft. Comforting somehow, despite the fact he was asking for reassurance.

“Yes, sir. She's all right. Gonna be fine. Are you a relative or . . .”

I passed them, intent on getting to the elevators.

“I help look after her,” he said. “Ms. Evans is on her way up now.”

“What's your name, honey?”

“Joe,” he said. “Joe Bradford.”