by Ninie Hammon
“Sam, I—”
“Don’t.” The word was a whisper on a breath and Malachi withdrew his hand. But he stood there beside her, looking down at her.
Then he raised his eyes to the boy on the bed. Sam couldn’t see his face, but Charlie could. The mix of feelings that washed over it was the most amazing display of unreserved, transparent emotion she’d ever seen.
How did you do that, discover over the course of a half hour, that you have a son? A son who might … die.
Malachi had obviously had the same thought.
“We have to do this”— his voice was ragged — “now.”
Then he turned and walked to the door, turned back and waited for Sam and Charlie.
“Give me a minute,” Sam said. “With Rusty.”
And then it landed on Charlie’s chest, too, the force of an avalanche falling down on top of her.
Merrie.
She and Sam and Malachi were about to walk into the mouth of a roaring lion. Charlie had seen the claw marks on Fish’s chest. She had listened to his horror description of the monsters that had rushed at him from the trees. The teeth and claws. That’s what the three of them were going out to face. With no weapons, no plan. No do-overs. No backstop.
They all could … die.
Raylynn looked at E.J.’s sleeping face. Watched his chest move up and down. He looked bad, so haggard, worn out and in pain. The growth of beard on his cheeks was beginning to form a solid surface. He hadn’t shaved in almost a week and when the beard grew all the way in, it would be mostly gray.
Except it wouldn’t grow in.
She reached into her pocket and withdrew the full bottle of oxycontin. Today was the day, for a lot of reasons. Mostly because it was time, she knew it and so did E.J., but also because Sam would definitely miss pills out of her bottle today. The only way Raylynn could get the number of pills she needed was to take almost every remaining pill.
When she went to the bottle to get E.J.’s every-four-hours dose, Sam would notice.
Today.
“I’m not asleep,” E.J. said.
She could tell by the tension in his voice he was in pain. It wouldn’t be long now.
“I was having the most terrible dream. I dreamed …” He looked at her, and some recognition came into his face then. “It wasn’t a dream, was it? You did tell me that your father …”
She put out her finger and touched his lips.
“Doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now.” She held up the full bottle. “I’ve got enough. We can … we can go today.”
“No.” His voice had a firmness she hadn’t heard in a long time. “No, not we, Raylynn. I’m not taking those pills unless you swear to me an oath that you won’t take the ones you saved for yourself.”
“We’ve been over this. It’s all right, everything’s all right.”
And on so many levels, it was all right. Raylynn had made her peace with a lot of things. Something in her had shifted. Perhaps it was giving up any image of a future. Perhaps it was embracing not just the concept of her own mortality but the reality of it. Not just the idea that yes, she would die someday, but the reality that the someday was today. That life on this planet for Raylynn Bennet was about to be over.
That was fine with her. As long as she could stay with E.J., she didn’t care if where they were going was … the other side. She would die with him because she wanted to be with him, and because she could not, would not countenance an existence without him.
“Raylynn, listen to me.” There was strength in his words, so much that it was a little like … when she was a little girl, her mother would make cookies and just the smell of them from the kitchen would make Raylynn’s mouth water. The vestige of power in E.J.’s words had the aroma of the old E.J., the strong man she had fallen so totally in love with. Just a whiff, but it made her mouth water for the real thing. That’s how it would be … on the other side.
The strength in his hand when he clasped her arm was surprising.
“You don’t get it and you have to. You have to understand. I don’t want to die of rabies, but I will do exactly that … or of whatever the infection is that’s eating up my leg. I’ll die of whatever cause is out there to bite me and take my life. I will NOT take a handful of pills and exit this world with you. I won’t let your kill yourself with me.”
“But …”
He was so strong, so adamant and determined.
“I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry I asked you to help me. It was a weak, cowardly thing to do and I apologize. I never should have dragged you into my exit fantasy. Because that’s what it was, all it was. Just a fantasy. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. But that’s not … I inserted a quarter and did not get the song I wanted. But I have to sing along with the one that’s playing.”
“No, E.J., you can’t … you’ll …”
“Get rabies. Die of rabies — that’s an unimaginably horrible thought.” His grip on her arm actually grew stronger.
“But you’re a beautiful young woman with—”
“Don’t you dare say ‘with your whole life ahead of you.’ People always say that. What life? What about the Jabberwock? And … my father?”
“Well …” Something like a grin tried and almost succeeded in capturing his face. “I never promised you a rose garden.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Just … don’t make me into the hero who marched bravely into the jaws of a horrible death. Not! I’m so scared I almost wet myself when I think about it.”
“But you don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do. We both do. Can’t just pop a pill — plop-plop, fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is.”
She didn’t know what that meant and apparently her lack of comprehension showed, because this time the grin made it all the way across his face.
Then the strength drained out of him, and she realized he had summoned his last reserves to say to her what he’d said. He let go of her arm, could no longer grip it, and collapsed back on the bed into the pain-riddled body he’d managed to escape for a couple of minutes.
“Raylynn.” The voice came from the doorway and she turned to see Charlie McClintock standing there. Like maybe she had been standing there for a while. Maybe she had seen.
“I have to talk to you. It’s very important.”
Chapter Ten
There was a large, rectangular room that ran along the back wall of the clinic where wire kennels had been set up to keep E.J.’s recovering patients, the “hospital” part of the Healthy Pets Veterinary Clinic and Hospital. It was where Merrie’s private menagerie was housed. A couple of litters of puppies, and one of kittens that had grown so fast in the past two weeks, they no longer had to be fed from the little bottle Raylynn had rigged up to give them nourishment after E.J. had had to put their mother to sleep.
Charlie stood in the doorway of the room, soaking up the sound of her little girl’s laughter. Merrie had the most glorious laugh. Maybe because her name was Merrie. It was all warmth and rounded tones, a tinkling sound that was a little like wind chimes and a little like what Charlie imagined must be the sound of bells in monasteries high up in the Himalayan mountains.
The little girl was inside the biggest of the kennels, rolling around on the floor with a litter of more than half a dozen puppies. Just lying there as the puppies crawled all over her, laughing at the feel of them.
She was babbling something that might have been real words if Charlie’d concentrated to make sense out of it. But they were just sounds to her now, seasoned with words, “… tickles me … widdle claws are sharp … Tinkerbell … tongue so pink … whee …”
It didn’t matter what she was saying because she was only talking to the puppies and her intent and meaning was clear by the tone of her voice and the love in every word.
Charlie sucked in a little gasp to keep from sobbing, stepped back so Merrie wouldn’t look up and see her standing there. If she did, she would leap to her feet, casting pu
ppies every which way, and race to Charlie, begging please-oh-please-oh-please, can I have three puppies? Pleeeeease.
It had started out with one, of course. Can I have a puppy, please, Mommy? Not a surprising request. But then, Merrie hadn’t been able to decide between her two favorite ones. This morning, she had announced that she wanted three of them because the puppies from the other litter had finally opened their eyes and one of them had blue eyes. It did! Charlie couldn’t see the color, but she was sure Merrie could.
Charlie had come here to … say goodbye to the little girl. To lie to her, tell her Mommy was going somewhere with “Aunt Sam” and “Uncle Malachi.” Not far. Wouldn’t be gone long at all.
The truth was she might never come back. Probably wouldn’t. But she could let none of that reality show on her face. It would frighten the little girl and Charlie couldn’t stand the thought of little Merrie being afraid. She’d have to keep it light, just go in and pop a kiss on the child’s little nose and …
No.
No, no, no! Charlie couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave her. Could not. She had already almost lost her, had come so close that the frayed ends of her nerves sometimes felt the pain and terror of it when she wasn’t even remembering what had happened. Sitting beside the kiln as the sun began to light the black sky. Singing to the little girl she thought was dead inside.
Hush little baby don’t you cry. Mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby.
Charlie’d broken off all her fingernails, didn’t even realize it until hours later. Every one of the acrylic nails she had paid more than the gross national product of some Third World countries for — they were lying in pieces in the grass beside the kiln. Some of them were stuck in the almost imperceptible crack where the door fit into the jamb of the box. Charlie’d broken them off clawing at it. She supposed that was what she’d done. She didn’t remember. Much of that time was blessedly a total blur.
She didn’t even have to remember now, to feel the agony of being bereft.
She could not leave Merrie here and go off to … Absolutely, one hundred percent could not. She could not walk out the door, get in the car with Sam and Malachi and drive into such harrowing danger that there was almost no chance she’d survive. An image of Fish’s chest, the thick bands of scar tissue crisscrossing it, like he’d been savaged by a grizzly bear.
She loved that precious child far too much to leave her!
And the power of that love was the only force in the universe strong enough to make her go.
For Merrie to survive, they had to beat the Jabberwock. The three of them, the Breakfast Club, had to walk innocently into its lair and … play kiddie games with it.
“Mommie!” Merrie had spotted her through the tangle of animals crawling on her and got to her feet. She flung open the kennel door, then realized she’d have to chase all the puppies down and catch them — she’d already had to do that once before — if she didn’t fasten the door shut behind her.
Charlie knelt on one knee and as quickly as Merrie’s little fingers could flip the catch, she turned and raced into Charlie’s arms.
“Three of dem. All three. Pleeeeease, Mommy.”
Charlie was afraid if she opened her mouth, if she tried to speak, she would burst into tears and be unable to stop sobbing. So she just smiled a tremulous smile and nodded.
Merrie was thunderstruck.
“Yes? You mean … I can have dim?”
Charlie nodded again.
“All three?”
“Sure, the more the merrier,” Charlie was finally able to say, then grabbed the little girl in a hug that was so tight Merrie struggled to be free.
“How come?” she asked, pulling out of her mother’s arms so she could look at her face. “How come now I can have dem, but not when I asked this morning?”
“Because I love you more now than I did this morning.” She realized she probably shouldn’t have put it that way. “And I will love you more this afternoon than I do now. I love you to the moon and back.”
Merrie studied her face.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Charlie had to get away. This was taking too long.
“Nothing’s wrong, pumpkin.” That’s what Stuart called her. She stammered, struggled for something, anything to say.
“What are you going to name your three new puppies?’’
“Oh, all da puppies already gots names. Santa Claus has da biggest claws, the one wiff a black spot on his head is the one that bitted me, his name’s Poopy. The solid black one wiff white paws is Twinkle Sparkle."
She flung herself back into Charlies arms and squeezed her neck so tight Charlie could barely breathe.
“Thank you, Mommy. I love you. Can I take den home to Aunt Sam’s tonight? Can day sleep wiff me?”
“I’ll let you know when I get back.”
“Where you goin?”
Charlie heard apprehension in the voice.
“I’ll be back before you even know I’ve been gone.”
It took every speck of strength Charlie had to pull the rest of the way out of Merrie’s embrace and stand up.
“Take care of Santa Claus and Poopy and well, whatever the third one is.”
She leaned over and planted the peck of a kiss on Merrie’s nose.
“I love you. I’ll see you in a little while.”
She turned around, holding her breath, because if she’d breathed she would burst out sobbing. She heard Merrie squealing behind her.
“Poopy, Santa Claus, Twinkle Sparkle — Mommy said I could take you home wiff me and you’ll be my doggies.” She heard the little girl open the latch of the kennel, then fasten it back when she closed the door behind her.
“I love you Mommy!” Merrie called after her, but Charlie didn’t dare turn to reply.
Charlie went to E.J.’s room. Raylynn was there and E.J. was speaking earnestly to her. Charlie paused at the door, didn’t want to interrupt that moment.
“… fizz-fizz, oh, what a relief it is,” E.J. said and then collapsed back onto the bed, panting from pain.
“Raylynn, I have to talk to you,” Charlie said. “It’s very important.”
Raylynn started to get up but E.J.’s weak voice came from the bed, “I thought we already settled this part. The we’re-going-to-hide-all-the-bad-stuff-from-E.J. part.”
Charlie nodded, spilled the whole story in a few short sentences, blurted out what she and the others were about to do.
“I need you to take care of Merrie,” she told Raylynn.
“Oh, no problem, she’s playing with the puppies right now—”
“I don’t mean just for the next little while, or the rest of the day.”
Raylynn backed up from what she was driving at.
“If I don’t come back then … we lost. Our side … the Jabberwock took us. If that happens …”
She couldn’t catch her breath, staring into the girl’s horrified eyes. “If that happens, you and everybody else … I’m just asking you to please, please take care of her.”
Her voice broke then, and she let the tears flow. “Hold her tight and don’t let her be afraid. Tell her to close her eyes and it’ll be over soon … and she and I will be together again.”
Chapter Eleven
Sam was on her knees. She didn’t remember how she’d gotten there, must simply have slid out of the chair beside Rusty’s bed. She was holding his limp hand, had her forehead pressed against it as she prayed.
Sam had never been what she’d have described as a “religious” person. In truth, those kinds of people, the sanctimonious ones who were far more interested in your behavior than the nature of your heart, were the reason she hadn’t gone to church for years. Oh, she was a Christian, understood Christianity well enough to grasp that Jesus himself didn’t like sanctimonious people either.
As soon as Rusty was old enough for it to matter, she had choked back her dislike of religiosity and took the boy to church every Sunday.
She had always pra
yed, but never saw it as an activity separate from the rest of her life. Like, now I’ll go to the grocery store, now I’ll do the laundry, now I’ll pray. It was a part of all the activities, a part of who she was, as essential and elemental as breathing. She talked to God in her head almost constantly, and out loud when she drove along the mountain roads on her way from one patient who lived so far out in the boondocks, the sun only shone there once a week, to another patient who lived equally far out in the sticks on the other side of the county.
That was one of the many reasons Sam loved her job. The enforced solitude of traveling from one patient to another, the beauty all around her on the hillsides, the creeks and the wildflowers. She’d listen to the radio — country music. Or to her Walkman, on which she’d loaded classical music. Or she’d pray out loud, talking to the God of the universe as casually as she had spoken to her own father, who had adored her in the same unconditional way she knew God loved her.
And loved Rusty.
She had prayed for God to spare the boy almost non-stop since she had knelt by his side on the asphalt in front of the clinic, and saw how terribly the boy had been hurt. He had been shot. Shot. She always yanked her mind away from the knowing of that, the reality of it, or she would be filled with such rage she … But when she veered away from that thought, she was always served up the image of the blood dripping out of his ear.
At the end of the day, that was the injury that mattered.
He could have brain damage.
Abby Clayton had had a stroke after she rode the Jabberwock a second time. The stroke had sent her off into a madness that almost cost Merrie and Malachi their lives.
Clearly, Rusty had suffered a traumatic brain injury of some sort. You could call it a stroke or a brain bleed or … didn’t matter the label. Rusty needed a neurologist — now. He needed …
What he couldn’t get as long as the Jabberwock imprisoned the county.
So now Sam knelt beside his bed, not just begging God to heal him, as she had begged with every inhalation and exhalation of breath for the past … how long? A lifetime. Now, she begged God to protect him and to protect her and the Breakfast Club. To protect them and intervene on their behalf.
