Loving Jessie

by Dallas Schulze

  Idly, he wondered if she’d had a reason for making the drive up here. If so, he was in no hurry to find out what it was. The temperature was hovering somewhere in the upper nineties, the air so still it almost seemed to have a pulse beat all its own. When he tilted his head back against the rail, he could see a red-tailed hawk drifting in lazy circles across a clear blue sky. He closed his eyes and let an unaccustomed sense of peace ease through him.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” Jessie said softly, her thoughts following his.

  “Yeah. The house is a wreck, the only way the driveway could be worse is if it were mined, and most of the land is vertical, but I can really see why Gabe bought the place.”

  “I imagine the two of you will be able to put the house back together.” Matt didn’t need to open his eyes to know that she was smiling. He could hear it in her voice, and his own mouth curved irresistibly in response. Jessie continued in the same prosaic tone. “From what I remember of your brother, I don’t think he’s going to mind too much if the driveway discourages visitors, and, unless he decides to take up farming, I suppose vertical is as good a direction for land to go as any.”

  “You always were an optimist,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her. “Reilly used to tease you about always seeing the bright side of things.”

  Her smile flickered, and her eyes shifted away for a moment. “Reilly liked to tease. If I’d been a cynic, he would have teased me about that.”

  “Probably,” Matt admitted, grinning a little. He picked up his glass and took a long swallow of lemonade. “You coming to this shindig he and his wife are having Saturday night?”

  Jessie nodded. “I’m not only an invited guest, I’m also making the desserts.”

  “Oh yeah?” He gave her a bright, interested look that made her grin.

  “You always did have a terrible sweet tooth.”

  “My palate is simply finely attuned to the subtle nuances of sucrose-enhanced foods,” he said, affecting a haughty tone, and Jessie laughed out loud.

  “I might buy that if I didn’t know that you consider Twinkies the height of culinary perfection.”

  “It’s only because of government corruption that they haven’t been properly recognized as the perfect food,” he whined, and then spoiled his sullen look by grinning when Jessie laughed again.

  “Oh, Matt, I’ve missed you,” she said, setting her hand on his knee. “It’s so good to have you home.”

  “It feels good to be back.” But not nearly as good as your hand feels on my leg. Matt quashed the thought almost before it was born. The heat must have fried his brain. This was Jessie, for God’s sake! But he was relieved when she moved her hand away.

  “Reilly and I had a drink at Harry’s Bar last night,” he said, shifting his legs into a more comfortable position. It was pure coincidence that it also put him out of her reach. Or maybe it put her out of his reach. Not that there was any question of anyone reaching for anyone else.

  “I haven’t seen him in a while,” Jessie said, and Matt made an effort to pull his attention back to the conversation. “How is he?”

  “Okay.” He shrugged, ignoring the twinge of pain in his shoulder. “Business is apparently good.” There was a scrub jay on the ground under a huge old sycamore, shuffling through the fallen leaves with a self-important air. His eyes on the bird, Matt debated whether or not he wanted to say anything more. He generally made it a point to avoid gossip, despite the business he was in. The line between news and gossip was often blurry, which was one reason he’d always been happy that his job was to take the pictures rather than to tell the story. Still, Reilly was his friend. Jessie’s friend. And something was definitely not right.

  “I haven’t seen much of Reilly over the last few years,” Jessie said, unwittingly saving him the effort of making a decision. “Not since he got married, I guess.”

  So much for Jessie knowing what’s going on. “What’s Dana like?” Matt asked.

  Now how was she to answer that? Jessie wondered. She didn’t really qualify as an unbiased source. She looked down, half-afraid of what Matt might see in her eyes. He’d always had a tendency to see more than you wanted him to. “I don’t really know her all that well. She seems a little cool. Distant maybe.”

  Matt thought about the woman he’d met and shook his head slowly. “I don’t know, Jessie. Maybe. She seemed…lonely to me.”

  “Men always fall for those big blue eyes,” Jessie said lightly, but the words had a sharp edge, even in her own ears. God, now she sounded like a jealous cat. And the fact that she was jealous only made it worse. She lifted her glass and took a long drink, hoping the cold lemonade would help cool the heat in her cheeks.

  “Actually, I had something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, changing the subject abruptly.

  “You mean you didn’t drive all the way out here just for the pleasure of my company?” Matt arched one dark brow. “I’m crushed.”

  “I doubt that,” Jessie said dryly. She glanced at him, then looked away again. She was worrying her lower lip with her teeth, Matt saw, and wondered if she was nervous. He refused to admit to wondering how it might feel to nibble on her lip himself.

  “Grandad was writing a book when he died,” Jessie said abruptly. “A book on roses in general, but really on his rose garden in particular. He was pretty well known among rosarians, you know.”

  “I seem to recall he had some pretty spectacular battles with Reilly’s mother over how to prune them.” Matt’s tone was reminiscent, and Jessie relaxed, her sudden attack of nerves dissolving. There was no reason to be nervous about talking to Matt.

  “I half expected them to come to blows a time or two,” she said.

  “Pruning shears at twenty paces?”

  “Or a duel to the death with trowels.” Her smile faded, her eyes suddenly shadowed with remembered grief. “But as much as they argued, he respected Mrs. M more than anyone else in the rose club. He really missed her when she moved to Sante Fe.”

  “And you really miss him,” Matt said softly.

  “Yes.” She sighed, then looked up with a quick smile, her eyes a little too bright. “He was one of my best friends.”

  “He was a great guy.” Forgetting all about keeping his distance, Matt reached out and took her hand in his. “I was in his class the last year he taught English lit. I planned on coasting my way through, doing no more than I absolutely had to to pull a passing grade, but he really made the books come alive. He was a hell of a teacher.”

  Jessie blinked back tears as her smile widened. “I don’t think you could say anything that would have pleased him more.”

  They sat quietly for a few moments, their hands still linked, remembering. It was Matt who broke the silence.

  “So tell me about this book he was writing.”

  She did. She told him about her grandfather’s plans to write a book that would offer advice for growing roses, with an emphasis on the special needs of people dealing with the Salinas Valley’s unique climate and soil conditions. But he wanted it to be more than just a how-to book. He wanted it to be a sort of memoir of sixty years spent working with and growing roses.

  “He had finished most of the writing before he…before he got so sick,” Jessie said. “And he left detailed notes for the rest of it, so I’m pretty sure I can finish it for him. There’s a publisher interested in it. It’s a small press out in San Francisco. This isn’t the kind of book that’s ever going to hit the bestseller list, but the editor I spoke with seemed to think they could do fairly well with it, particularly if they focus on the regional aspect of it. Getting the book published was a big dream of Grandad’s, and even though he’s not around to see it happen, I’d really like to finish it for him.”

  “Sounds great.” He was still holding her hand, and he tightened his fingers around hers, his smile encouraging. “I’ll buy the first copy, hot off the press.”

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d be willing to make a more su
bstantial contribution,” Jessie said, and he remembered that she’d said she’d come out here to talk to him. He looked at her, brows raised in question.

  “I was hoping you’d be willing to do the photography for the book.” She rushed the words out, looking at him directly now, her eyes wide and anxious. “I know it’s a lot to ask. Grandad left some money to finish the project, but I doubt if I can pay you anywhere near what you usually get. And it’s not exciting work or…or important. I mean, it’s important to me, but it’s not exactly on a par with the kind of work you usually do. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to do it, because I could hire another photographer.”

  She was babbling, Matt thought. Jessie always babbled when she was nervous.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to do all of it, anyway, since we really need pictures taken over the course of a whole year. Showing the garden in all seasons, you know. But if you could do some of it, it would be great. And if you can’t, that’s okay. I hadn’t planned on asking you, but then you came back and you said—when we were at Ernie’s the other day—that you were between jobs right now, so I thought…”

  She let her voice trail off and looked at him, her big eyes full of a mixture of hope and uncertainty as she waited for his response.

  Matt withdrew his hand from hers and rubbed his damp palm lightly down the leg of his jeans. Between jobs? Was that what he’d told her? Probably. It was as good an explanation as any, better than admitting that he had no idea where his life was going anymore. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t ready to pick up a camera again. Not when the thought of it was enough to give him sweaty palms. Ridiculous. Jessie was asking him to take pictures of a freaking rose garden, not a mass grave.

  God, had he thought that a week spent nailing down shingles and hanging lath had worked a miracle cure? All it took was Jessie asking him to pick up his cameras to show him how far away that cure was.

  But she was sitting there, looking at him, waiting for an answer, and he couldn’t tell her the truth. That he hadn’t touched his cameras in months. That he didn’t know if he would ever touch them again.

  Forcing his mouth to curve in what he hoped was a natural smile, he gave her the only answer he could.

  “Let me think about it.”

  The beginning of the dream was always the same. He was standing in the middle of the road. It was an old road, built centuries ago, intended for carts and wagons and foot traffic. Never wide, it was made narrower still by the piles of rubble that spilled in from either side. He knew that, a few weeks ago, that rubble had been homes. There had once been life here. Children had grown up here, married, had children of their own, grown old and died here. But there was nothing left of that now, only the jagged remnants of walls, and empty black holes where windows and doors had been.

  The clear winter sunlight lit the destruction with brutal clarity, and, in the dream, just as it had been in reality, he was analyzing the play of shadows and light, choosing the best angles to catch the full drama of the scene before him.

  He could feel the weight of the camera in his hands, so familiar that it was more an extension of himself than a tool. The Nikon wasn’t his newest camera, or the fanciest, but it was the one he reached for first. It fit his hand perfectly, responded to his touch like magic. In the dream, he could feel the faint roughness of the case beneath his fingers, and he wondered if he should change lenses. Maybe a wide angle would best capture the full impact of the devastation.

  He reached for the leather case slung over his shoulder, his movement slow and unhurried. It wasn’t until he heard the voices that he realized he’d been standing amid utter silence. The shrill, frightened voice of the woman tore the silence like a blade slashing through raw silk. And then there were others. Hard, male voices, rough and angry. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. Funny that, even in the dream, that remained true. But he recognized violence. Smelled hatred.

  Turning slowly, so slowly, he saw them drag her into the street. Four soldiers. And her. A woman. No, a girl. Hardly out of her teens, if that. Impossible to tell what she looked like. Her face twisted with fear.

  The bleak gray and tan winter landscape was suddenly drenched with color. Eye-searing crimson and jet black. Their uniforms were vivid green, the sky a slash of cerulean overhead. Color seared his eyes, making him flinch back, dazzled.

  And this was where the dream varied. Sometimes he stood watching, as if glued in place. Watching through the lens of his camera as the soldiers dragged the girl into the center of the street, only his finger moving, triggering the shutter as they shoved her to her knees and put the gun to her head.

  Other times he dropped the camera, the clatter as it hit the ground loud enough to drown out her screams. When he looked down, he could see it in pieces in the dirty street, the back open and film trailing out in a long, black tongue. And then he was moving forward, mouth open as he shouted. Except there was no sound. His throat ached with the force of his shouts, but there was never any sound at all.

  Matt shot up in bed, the sound of a gunshot echoing in his head. His heart was pounding in his chest, his breath coming in deep gasps that hovered on the edge of becoming sobs. A thin film of sweat covered his body, his skin chill in the warm night air.

  He hadn’t made a sound. He knew that. When the nightmares had first started, he would awaken with the sound of his own scream echoing in his ears. It had always struck him as ironic when, in the dream, he couldn’t make a sound. Somehow he’d conditioned himself not to cry out, waking himself a split second before his screams of rage became reality. It was too damned bad he couldn’t condition himself not to dream at all.

  He swung his legs off the bed and padded barefoot across the room. Experience had taught him that trying to go back to sleep was worse than a waste of time. If he did manage to fall asleep again, the dream would probably return. Finding his way in the dark, he moved through the house. The doors and windows had been left open to allow air to stir through the rooms. Flipping up the latch on the screen door, he stepped out onto the porch. He was wearing only the white cotton briefs in which he’d slept, but there weren’t any neighbors near enough to care, even if they happened to be awake at two o’clock in the morning.

  The air was still and warm. September was just around the corner, but there was nothing even remotely autumnal about late August in the Salinas Valley. The heat would linger for another month or more, until the fall rains came, bringing with them new growth, new beginnings. He heard an owl hoot nearby and a rustle of leaves as if some small creature had just burrowed into deeper hiding.

  Leaning his hands on the porch railing, Matt forced his breathing into a slow and steady rhythm. It wasn’t as bad as it had been at first, he told himself, wishing he believed it. Closing his eyes, he leaned his forehead against one of the roof supports. It felt worse, maybe because he’d had a whole week without the nightmare and had half started to believe that coming here had worked a miracle cure.

  Behind him, the screen door creaked softly, but he didn’t turn.

  “Here.” Gabe set a plain white mug on the rail in front of him. “Tea. It’s herbal crap. Tastes like boiled weeds, but it’s supposed to be soothing.”

  Matt nodded and picked up the mug, finding the heat comforting, even though the night was warm. Behind him, he heard Gabe sink down on the glider and the barely audible creak of the chains as he set it in motion.

  “You want to talk about it?” Gabe asked after a while.

  “No.” Had he cried out after all? Or was it just that instincts honed thirty years ago were still functional? How many nights had Gabe snuck into his room when they were children, saying nothing but just sitting with him, sharing the pain of their father’s latest beating?

  “Okay.” Gabe accepted his refusal to talk about what was bothering him without question, just as Matt had known he would. Gabe never pushed, but Matt knew he would be there if he ever needed to talk.

  Cradling the mug between his p
alms, Matt leaned against the porch railing. Gabe was right. The stuff tasted like boiled weeds—old boiled weeds. He was fairly sure that any soothing effect was more likely caused by the soft night air and Gabe’s quiet company. Like Jessie, Gabe never felt the need to fill every silence.

  “Did you know Jessie’s grandfather was writing a garden book?” Matt asked suddenly.

  “I’ve read some of the manuscript. He had a good style. Jessie said he had a publisher who was interested in it.”

  “Yeah.” Matt frowned down at the mug, gleaming white in the darkness. “She asked me to do the photography for it.”

  “Can’t blame her for wanting the best,” Gabe said. “You going to do it?”

  “I don’t know.” Suddenly restless, Matt set the cup down on the rail and turned to look at his brother for the first time. “It’s not exactly my line of work. I don’t take pretty pictures.” He reached up to rub his shoulder, suddenly aware that it was aching like a sore tooth. He laughed, the sound sharp and humorless. “Now, if someone was torturing rosebushes to death, that would be right up my alley.”

  He could just make out Gabe’s nod in the darkness. “It would be different, all right, but sometimes change is a good thing.”

  “Sounds like something out of a fortune cookie,” Matt muttered irritably.

  “Probably where I got it.” Gabe lifted his own cup and sipped. “How long has it been since you picked up a camera?”

  The quiet question caught Matt off guard. He should have known that Gabe would have guessed. Not much slipped by his older brother.

  “Not since I was shot,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t know if I even want to pick them up again.”

  Gabe didn’t protest. “You want to tell me what happened over there?”

  “No.” Matt drew a long, shallow breath. “No, I don’t.”

  “I suppose you haven’t talked to anyone else, have you?” Without waiting for a response, Gabe shook his head. He stood up, setting the glider into trembling motion behind him. “You always were pigheaded as hell.”