by Jim Nelson
She found the panoramic photo hanging over the bed. Barefoot, she stood on the mattress to study it up close. Having lived in Angels Camp for two months now, she recognized buildings and monuments on the valley floor of the photograph. City Hall, the steeples of the Catholic church, the Griffin Building, and Griffin Park—the photo was from such an altitude, with a ramp of trees leading all the way to the valley floor, she knew it had to be taken from atop Fremont Hill. Streaks of orange and red clouds led the eye to a distant vanishing point, the sun burning magnificently above the silver lip of the Pacific Ocean. This was the view from Kyle's cabin, a home on the threshold of God's creation, and no matter how she denied it, she knew she would see it one day.
Fifty-six
Kyle's story and confession at four in the morning took its toll. She slept in until eight. When she stepped downstairs, flushed with embarrassment, she found Kyle fast asleep and Henry gone to school.
The cellular reception was poor at the base of Fremont Hill. She found making calls with her cell phone to be spotty. Ruby lifted the cordless phone from the kitchen wall mount and secreted it upstairs to the master bedroom. She kept the door closed and her voice low, although she really didn't have to worry about Kyle overhearing.
"Women's Facility office," announced a female voice on the line. "This call is being recorded."
"I'd like to schedule a phone visitation with Hanna Driscoll." Ruby recited her mother's prison number twice. "The last time I called—"
"Please hold."
The line went silent. After a full two minutes, Ruby wondered if she'd forgotten about the call. Ruby hung up and dialed again.
"Women's Facility," the woman's voice answered. "This call is being recorded."
"I just talked to you," Ruby said. "I was asking about Hanna Driscoll."
"Yes," the woman said. "Please hold."
Before she could protest, the line went silent. Occasionally, a sporadic pop or crackle sounded off. Minutes passed. Finally, a pronounced click came down the line.
"Hello?" Ruby said. "Hello?"
No one answered. Ruby waited.
After a minute more, the phone began to make the klaxon warning of a phone left off the hook. They'd hung up on her, Ruby realized.
Ruby stabbed the HANG UP button, swore under breath, released it, and began dialing a third time. She stopped before reaching the final digit. Indecision caused her to pause so long, the klaxon warning returned.
The sinking feeling of foolish naiveté descended upon her. Mouth loose, lips parted, she stabbed the HANG UP button. She held the handset before her, half-expecting the phone to ring.
Fifty-seven
Early Sunday morning, Ruby knocked on Henry's door and yelled for him to get a move on. She hurried downstairs to an awake Kyle. She discovered he'd risen from bed on his own and made coffee and toast for the three of them. An economy-sized jar of peanut butter and a clean knife waited next to the plate of toast. Ruby led him back to the bed so she could look over his bandages.
"They're clean," he groused to her.
"That's for me to decide." She untied the robe's sash and helped him remove it. "Quit your complaining. It'll only take ten minutes."
Upstairs, she heard the shower running in the bathroom. Good, she thought.
Kyle's leg bandages did need changing, although the residual blood on them was a miniscule amount compared to the first time she'd tended to him. The smallest fragment holes had closed on their own, leaving only two holes the width of pencils to gauze and tape up. He'd also emptied his colostomy bag on his own. He could reach the bathroom on his own now.
When the sound of the water running subsided, Kyle yelled, "Henry!"
"Yeah!" came a weak reply from upstairs.
"You stay up there until I tell you it's okay to come down!"
He did not require as much help as he once did to roll on his side. Other than a few soft groans of discomfort, the pain was not tremendous when he did so. The fire in his leg remained.
"I'm still in Hell," he told her.
While the front wounds were closing, the cavernous holes in his backside had a ways to go. She carefully unpacked the cotton stuffed into them. They were bloody, but they were always bloody. The wounds had grown more shallow. She could not reach into them any longer. She could not see bone.
"Hey!" Kyle yelled. Although he was faced away from the staircase, he could hear Henry sneaking down the stairs. "What did I tell you before!"
Ruby turned to see Henry on the stairs in dress pants and a button-up shirt. He'd descended a few steps and hunched down to see through the banisters.
"Get up there," Kyle yelled, and Henry disappeared.
"You're still embarrassed for him to see your butt," she teased Kyle.
"No boy should see his father like this," Kyle said.
She spoke carefully. "If you want to talk to Henry, you have to trust him. He wants to talk to you too. You can't hide your condition from him."
"I'm not hiding anything."
"You are," she said. "You need him. We need each other."
Bandages changed, Kyle raised himself from the bed once more.
They'd spent the evening prior preparing his Sunday clothes. He'd never been comfortable wearing a tie, but he thought it appropriate this Sunday. Ruby wanted him in loose clothing, so she selected from his wardrobe a plaid shirt one size too large for him and an old baggy pair of black denim pants she found folded up in the bottom of a drawer. She'd bathed and shaved Kyle the night before. She quickly wiped him down with a washcloth to freshen him up before helping him into his Sunday clothes. She wetted a comb and flicked it through his hair, making a part down the left side of his scalp. He requested she fetch his aftershave from the master bedroom bathroom. She slapped on him a generous amount, smelling up the room with a bracing spiciness. She knew it was to mask the odor from his colostomy bag.
"You don't have to go overboard," he said.
He required her help climbing into the four-by-four truck. Henry took the rear seat and Ruby drove. Kyle offered directions. She didn't need them—she knew the way—but she allowed him to direct all the same.
The Protestant church topped a hill outside of town. The gardened driveway ascended an incline to the parking lot. From a concrete island in the center of the lot rose three milk-white crucifixes, each with an extended trunk and short arms. They formed a triangle facing each other, with the eastern one slightly taller and wider than the other two.
"Are you in pain?" Ruby unsnapped one of Lea's dressy purses and produced a pack of tissues she'd thought to bring. She dabbed the perspiration from his forehead and cheeks.
Kyle's attention was directed toward the church itself. Worshippers were streaming in for services, most dressed in suits and skirts, with the occasional teenager in T-shirt and jeans. Dotted throughout the bright smiling families were bridge daughters in gray, featureless dresses, standard issue for the bridges of more traditional families. Some were bulging and plump with expectation, others were too young to understand the trial they were in for. Some were in strollers wearing gray onesies and gray headbands, cared for by their older bridge sisters if the family was fruitful.
A fair-sized crowd had formed at the church entrance. An organ and a piano from the inner sanctum was piped outside via speakers mounted around the parking lot.
"Stay close to me," he murmured to her. "You and Henry are my strength."
In a line, Kyle at the center, the three approached the crowd. Kyle's stick clicked as they crossed the lot's asphalt. The clicking sharpened when he stepped up on the trellised walkway leading to the church entrance.
The shift in the crowd was subtle but perceptible. Congregants stopped their pre-service socializing to stare at Kyle's approach. The crowd noise dimmed. Some turned to face him. Some retreated a step or two. Their glare had an intensity Ruby could feel the heat of. She'd been nervous since waking that morning, but now she was scared. This is a mistake.
Blake and
Suze Griffin mingled in their Sunday best among a group of well-dressed adults. Everyone carried a Bible. The center of their attention was a rather handsome tanned man with exquisite silver hair. He held a hefty Bible at his side, a substantial edition with gilded pages and a leather cover the color of cherry wood. It was Pastor Benton Hargrove.
Kyle, perspiring from nerves and pain, managed to produce a smile. His eyes softened at the sight of a familiar family, friends, and congregation he'd known for years, some for decades. The smile widened to a relieved grin. He raised his free hand as way of greeting—to prove he was not returning to the fold, rather, that he'd never left it.
The group congregating around Pastor Hargrove folded in. They surrounded him like Roman soldiers falling into column formation around a field general. Frowning, imperious stares dared Kyle to approach. He halted his ambling walk, hand still raised. His smile faded. He lowered his hand to his side. Staring ahead at the phalanx surrounding Pastor Hargrove, he fumbled his on Ruby's hip. She clenched it tight.
No one on the pavilion spoke. All eyes were on the trio. She searched the crowd for a friendly face. Cara lingered off to the side, alone, watching the silent performance unfold. She indicated nothing to Ruby. Inside, the organ droned its promise of spiritual enlightenment. The piano tinkled its call of hope and salvation.
She recognized so many of the faces. These were the faces who'd stared at her in the supermarket, the library, the medical supply store. They stared at her from the sidewalks as she drove by in Kyle's rust-brown truck, its pencil-sized bullet hole whistling in the wind. She had only been half-paranoid. They were staring at her all right, not because she might be a Hagar. She was a foreigner, a question mark, and she and Kyle were damaging the church. Kyle's mere presence reminded everyone of Hargrove's mistake, and they were not used to pastors making near-fatal mistakes. The church's antibodies rose in defense.
Griff whispered a few words to his wife. He stepped away from his post guarding Pastor Hargrove. The column tightened in to patch the hole. Griff marched down the walkway with his Bible in hand. He stood close to Kyle.
"Can't you see the pain you're bringing here," he murmured. "Can't you see what you're doing to this church."
"I'm here to worship," Kyle said. "I forgave the pastor long ago."
"And he's forgiven you," Griff returned.
"He's forgiven Kyle?" Ruby asked, stunned.
"We offered you a chance to settle this, and you refused," Griff said.
Ruby gripped Kyle's hand. She shook his forearm. "We need to leave," she whispered to him.
"On behalf of the church," Griff said to Kyle, "I thank you for your years of faithful service. We wish you the best in finding a new spiritual home for you and your family." He looked across the three of them. "Bless you all," he added.
Kyle's tight-clenched fist shook a warning into Ruby's fingers. She was about to explode, and he knew it. He was telling her to leave it be.
He hobbled a ponderous circle, his walking stick clicking as his stiff feet clumsily moved him around. The three of them began the lumbering journey back to the truck. Henry hurried ahead to get the truck door open and to offer to lift his father into the cab.
At the truck door, Kyle could not stand it any longer. His stick clattered to the asphalt. He propped himself against the truck, one hand on the side, the other on the frame of the waiting door. He hunched over. He clenched his eyes and his jaw. The nurse and the boy, each with a reassuring hand on his back, they were his family now.
Fifty-eight
Ruby's duties relaxed over the next week. With Kyle walking and able to care for himself more, she found herself with slices of free time throughout the day. Ruby began to search online for job opportunities in Angels Camp. She picked up discarded newspapers at a coffee shop in town to scan the help wanted ads. By now, she was used to the stares she garnered from the folks in town, including the waitress at the coffee shop who'd brought her order and handed back the change.
Drinking coffee at a table, she felt and heard a rasping emerge from her lungs. She coughed twice and found herself out of breath, as though asthmatic. She sucked in a whistling thread of air and coughed hard. A ball of phlegm streaked with webs of blood filled her cupped hand. She hurried to the coffee shop bathroom. She coughed up smaller flecks of red phlegm into the sink. She studied the mess for a long while, then turned on the hot water and washed her hands and mouth. Making a water blade with her palms, she made sure to send all the bits down the pipe. She returned to the table and waited for the wooziness to subside. Patrons stared once more as she headed for the exit. She felt faint. She pressed her palm to her forehead and cheek. Her skin was clammy, like the fever that accompanies the flu.
Although she was doing all she could to maintain a tight fist on the household expenses, she'd given in to temptation and purchased a bear claw to-go at the coffee shop. She tossed the paper sack into the passenger seat and drove home. She told herself to stay focused on the road. She felt sleepy. She took deep, exaggerated breaths to wake herself up. She told herself to get her head in the game.
A wolf pack sped the opposite direction on Griffin Street. She focused her attention on the road, ignoring them. On Highway 4, a different wolf pack in a dark green step-side truck trailed along in the distance. Again she focused on the road ahead. The dark green truck swerved off the highway after a mile.
She cut the bear claw in thirds and left the other two portions on the kitchen counter for Kyle and Henry. As she ate her third with a small glass of orange juice, the sugar and fried carbohydrates began to revive her. It's over, she thought. It had to be over, she told herself. She was responsible for two people's well-being, and she could not leave them now.
In the distance, she heard the telltale sound of a wolf pack on the highway. There was no mistaking them. They passed the property regularly, the trucks' beefed-up engines growling like no other. Usually, she went to the window to watch them pass. Ruby did not go to the window this time. They would pass soon enough.
Absorbed in the help wanted section, she did not notice the sound of the wolf pack growing louder. She only detached from her searching when the racket was too great to ignore. She pushed aside the paper and went to the window.
On the stretch of Highway 4 along the front of the property, two trucks—two wolf packs—were parked crosswise on the near lane. Their police-style cherry lights directed traffic to use the other lane to pass. A third wolf pack was idling at a low rumble at the end of the driveway, its rear wheels on the highway and its front wheels just past the open gate.
Kyle staggered into the front room with his walking stick. His free hand was fumbling to pull on the left half of his robe.
"What in hell is going on out there," he called out over the din.
Ruby stared back at him with a drawn, scared face. Her mouth hung open to speak.
"Is it about Henry?" he said to her.
She shook her head once, eyes wide and jaw loose.
"It's about you," he said.
She enunciated each syllable: "I am so sorry."
Henry entered behind his father, bearing a quizzical look. He slowed when he saw Kyle and Ruby facing each other.
A burst of electric crackling sounded outside. The bullhorn mounted to the truck at the base of the property pierced the thin walls of the house.
"Ruby Driscoll," the bullhorn blared. "Come outside now."
"Who's Ruby?" Kyle demanded of her.
"I've lied to you both," she said. "I am not who I said I was."
"Driscoll?" he said, growing angry. "That's the name—" He turned to Henry. "Get upstairs," he ordered him. "Don't come down until I tell you to."
Henry backed away, staring at his father.
"Get the hell up there!"
Henry turned and bolted up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed shut.
"You have sixty seconds to vacate the building," the cackling bullhorn announced.
"You're one of those Abneys," Kyle s
aid to her viciously. "Driscoll is Henry's old name."
"I'm not an Abney." She wrenched her hands like wringing out a wet cloth. "I never had anything to do with them."
"You arrived here on their behalf," Kyle said.
"To find Henry," she said. "I came here to see Henry."
"It was too good to be true," he said, bellowing. "Taking care of me for free. Watching over Henry as you did." He rushed at her with more speed than she'd ever seen him exhibit. He was upon her in four staggered steps. "They sent you here to spy on us, didn't they."
"No—"
"Oh, what a fool I was," he spat. "Cynthia was Henry's bridge mother."
"I—I wanted to tell you—"
"What do the Abneys want of me?" he roared. "They can keep their blasted money—I only want to raise my son in peace."
"I love Henry more than you can imagine," she said to him, tears on her cheeks and running down her nose. "I held him when he was just born. Barry—his real name is Barry. Barry was my name. I picked it."
"Thirty seconds," the bullhorn blared through the walls.
"Who are you?" Kyle demanded.
"I'm his aunt."
"No you're not," he shouted. "The court told us about all his relatives. His mother is in Folsom. His father was some stumblebum who couldn't save two nickels to rub together. His grandparents weren't fit." He was counting Ruby's relatives with outstretched fingers. "That left the Abney family and their money." He paused in recollection.
"And a bridge daughter who'd been fixed," she said softly. "The twin of the bridge who bore Henry—"
Ruby pouted up at Kyle towering over her.
Kyle said, "No."
"It's true."
"No," he said. "You can't be."
"Our mother is in Folsom prison because of me," she said. "I made a decision when I was thirteen years old and they held her responsible for it." She stared longingly the direction Henry had retreated. "That's when they took Barry away from us."
