“Barney, she’s passed. Do you remember that? She passed last evening.”
“What? No, she—”
“Yes,” Reggie said.
Barney shook his head. “She ain’t dead, Reggie. I seen her upstairs.”
“She’s better now. Mabel’s sitting at the Lord’s Table.”
“No, she’s sittin’ in bed, Reggie. But then I lost her an’ I cain’t find her no more.” His eyes darted through the store and settled on Leah’s painting. “Help me find her, Reggie.”
“Barney, let’s have a seat, okay?” Reggie squatted down and kept his eyes on the old man. “That’s it, come on down here a minute.”
Barney’s knees popped as he sat. Aside from the mockingbird, there was no sound. No movement. Reggie waited until Barney understood. They were alone—he and Reggie and no one else. No one.
“She gone,” Barney whispered. “Ain’t she, Reggie?”
Reggie nodded.
“Leah didn’t help her.”
“No.”
“The Rainbow Man let her die.”
“Barney, there’s no—”
“Why didn’t she help, Reggie? Leah always liked Mabel so.”
“Leah couldn’t help her, Barney. Her life’s a dark one, so she had to go make a fantasy to make things brighter. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s no magic to that little girl, just heavy sadness.”
“But her pictures,” Barney said. He pointed to the one in the window that he hadn’t run through. “And my numbers, Reggie. She painted my numbers.”
“No one else saw those numbers, Barney. I don’t know what happened or how you won, but I still say it had nothing to do with faith. I saw those work orders over there on the counter. I know what they’re for. It’s all false hope, Barney. You succumbed to it, and because of Leah, everybody else is succumbing to it too.”
Reggie knew those were hard words at a hard time. There was no easy way in this life, just hardness and the Mystery. It had always been like that. It always would.
“There’s numbers on her new painting,” Barney said, and that was true. The sunshine through the windows proved it—34720625, spilling out from the bird’s beak.
“Yes,” Reggie said. “But trust my words, Barney, those numbers will fall down on this town like a hard rain.”
Barney’s head fell into his hands. Soft sobs echoed through the aisles. He looked up and said, “She said my day’s come. We’d be all right now. Leah’s been lyin’ all along, ain’t she?”
“I think you two just fell into something, Barney. I don’t know what that something is, but it’s not what Leah says it is. She ain’t Christian, Barney. She’s a lonely girl. And she breaks my heart despite my anger.”
“We gotta do somethin’,” Barney said. “I don’t want her hurtin’ anyone else like she hurted me.”
Reggie patted Barney’s knee.
“Don’t you worry about that. We’ll quiet her down. I’ll start on that today.”
3
It wasn’t the mockingbird that had kept Allie awake all night, though the incessant warbling hadn’t made things easier. It was the noises from the bed above.
She and Leah had snuck back inside and dried themselves off just after the mockingbirds left. Even in the heat of the night, their skin was freckled with goose pimples and their teeth chattered. It was the magic, Allie remembered thinking. The Maybe had sucked all the warm out of the air and left them hunched over and prostrate as if in God’s presence. Which, Allie figured, had maybe been the case.
Leah had offered Allie the bed. Sleeping there had seemed almost like a fairy tale, but such notions had given way to the manners Allie had been taught. Allie willingly took the floor. The four-poster’s fluffy yellow comforter made a surprisingly soft mattress. When Leah added three pillows, the result had been more than on par with Allie’s bed at home. They’d settled, then—as settled as two girls who’d watched someone die and a bunch of birds fly out of the moon could be, anyway. The house was quiet except for the one mockingbird still calling outside.
“Are you okay?” Allie had whispered.
“Yuh-yes,” Leah had answered back. “Thuh-thank you for that, Allie. Even though I duh-don’t feel much duh-different and I’m still scuh-scared.”
Allie had replied that she was scared too, though she hadn’t known why. “I’m glad Miss Mabel’s up in heaven, but I’m sad Mr. Barney has to stay down here. He’s got Pastor Reggie, though. And us, he’s got us for sure. And I bet Pastor Reggie’s already told him that Mabel’s sittin’ at the Lord’s dinner table. He likes to say that to people, and I like to hear it. It makes me feel good that people are eatin’ and havin’ a good time up yonder. Don’t you think so, Leah?”
“I guh-guess.”
They’d said nothing more. Allie had tried to close her eyes and find sleep, but she found pictures on the other side of her eyelids; Mabel saying I love you and Mr. Barney fussing over his wife like he always had. That was the way Allie hoped Zach Barnett would treat her one day. She also hoped to still be walking and going to the bathroom on her own when that day came.
It was around one in the morning when Leah had started her talking. It was mumbling at first, sounds rather than words.
Allie heard “Are you shuh-sure?” and “Nuh-no” and “I duh-don’t want to.” “I’m tuh-tired.” “Wuh-will you help?” Once Leah had leaned over the edge of the bed to make sure Allie was sleeping. Allie let out a snore that convinced Leah to resume her business. The speaking had gone on for about an hour until it finally died down. From then on, the only talk had been from the mockingbird outside.
Allie’s momma often said this was a strange world, and trying to make sense of it would only drive a mind crazy. That hadn’t been enough to stop Allie from trying to make sense of it anyway. Besides, if she couldn’t make sense of things and her mind went all Humpty Dumpty, Mr. Doctor could put it all back together again before breakfast. Allie thought long and hard until the first rays of the sun poked up from behind the mountains and finally chased the mockingbird away. By then, the only conclusion she’d drawn was that her momma was right.
Allie pushed the doubled-over comforter back and went to Leah’s desk, where she collected a sheet of paper and a red crayon. She pulled the comforter over her so that only a sliver of light passed through the bottom. A vertical line went down the center of the page. At the top left Allie wrote Leah’s lying. At the top right, Leah’s telling the truth.
“Okay, so there’s Mr. Barney gettin’ rich,” she whispered. She wrote that on the right side of the page. “That’s gotta be truth, since it happened. And then there’s her second picture, the one with the birds, and she knew about Zach lovin’ on me at her party.” Two more for the home team. “Miss Mabel.” Allie chewed the end of the crayon on that one, then reluctantly wrote it to the left of the vertical line and whispered, “Sorry, Leah, but you just kinda blew that one.”
The score was three to one. Not bad, Allie thought, but not good either. Once she factored in the opinions of the people she trusted, things got worse. Allie knew her momma and daddy didn’t really believe everything Leah was saying, even if they hadn’t come right out and said it. Preacher Goggins definitely didn’t. That put Leah a run behind. Mr. Doctor didn’t believe (Allie didn’t think he believed much of anything), and suddenly Leah’s lying was up by two. Though Leah had said Miss Ellen thought she believed but didn’t really, Allie scribbled her name in the Leah’s telling the truth column anyway, just to make things closer. And there was Mr. Barney too. If anyone believed in Leah and the Rainbow Man, it was Mr. Barney. But that was after he’d won a bajillion dollars and before he lost Miss Mabel, and Allie didn’t know what he thought now or if the hurt let him think anything at all. She wrote his name to the right anyway.
“We have a tie ball game, folks,” Allie whispered. The air under the comforter was hot and stale. Allie began to sweat. “Bottom of the ninth, and that means . . .”
Allie didn’t finish, didn’t have to. Because it was a tie ball game, and the only person left to bat was herself.
One day ago Allie’s would have been the first name written under Leah’s telling the truth. Allie, who had stood on top of the fancy banquet table in the middle of the park on carnival week with fists raised, ready to pounce on any one of the townspeople or reporters who dared get near her frightened friend. Who had gone down to the Treasure Chest not once but twice to deliver Leah’s holy paintings. (Or holey, Allie’s mind said.) Who’d even taken Leah out into the backyard and washed her in the blood, and if that wasn’t faith, Allie didn’t know what was. But now, under the big blanket where only Allie and the first tendrils of sunshine dwelt, there came doubt. Not a lot, but certainly some. And even that little some was enough to frighten her, because that doubt came in the form of Mr. Barney sitting beside his fading wife believing Leah was going to make everything better.
In the end, all the pretty paintings and all the magical numbers and all the birds from the moon didn’t matter. No God was worth serving who was good at parlor tricks but bad when it came to what mattered. For Mr. Barney, all that had mattered was Miss Mabel.
Allie’s hand went to the left beneath Mr. Doctor’s name. Then to the right beneath Mr. Barney’s.
Leah moved in the bed above. There was a sniff and then a yawn. Allie quickly folded her sheet of paper and tucked both it and the crayon into her pajamas.
“Huh-hey,” Leah said. “Are you awake?”
“Yeppers,” Allie said.
“Duh-did you sleep?”
“Like a log. I didn’t hear you talkin’ at all. You?”
“Kuh-kinda,” Leah said. She rubbed her eyes and pushed her long hair behind her ears. “Thuh-thank you for last nuh-night. I feel buh-better now.”
“I’m glad.”
“Your mom will buh-be here suh-soon. I think I hear Muh-Mommy up. Puh-Pops will be up soon t-too. He should stuh-stay here, but I thuh-hink he’s going to wuh-work.”
“Sorry,” Allie said. She wondered if her daddy would go to work too and decided he probably wouldn’t. Mr. Barney would have to start getting his affairs in order. That’s what people did when their loved one died. Allie didn’t know what that meant, but she knew it often involved a lot of help. “Maybe you should ask him to stay.”
“I’ve truh-tried that. The R-rainbow M-man says Puh-Pops is trying to fuh-find his way.”
Allie tried to smile. “I reckon we’re all tryin’ to do that just now. C’mon, let’s get up. I’ll talk to your daddy if you want me to.”
“Thuh-hanks.”
Leah smiled, and with that Allie Granderson embraced once again her role of Guide to the Higher Things. She decided it wasn’t because Leah had said the Rainbow Man wanted her to, but because it would be what God expected. And though she hadn’t gotten the chance, Allie told herself that her name would go into the Leah’s telling the truth column after all. She told herself that she was still young enough to believe in the magic. That she could see it even if others could not, woven into the slender threads that held the world together.
4
Tom stared at the ceiling and watched as light crept through the open window to his right. He didn’t have a doubt in the world that he could lie there all day. He could watch the sun slowly arc from right to left as the yellow turned to orange and finally to red, signaling the end of the day. He could. He almost did. But in the end, he swung his feet out and over the bed.
It took courage to face this world. Tom knew that truth well—call it the second commandment of the Gospel according to Dr. Thomas Alan Norcross, surpassed only by A good marriage is built upon a solid foundation of communication. It was a statement drilled into the minds of every patient, followed by his or her first name to make it sound unique and personal: “It takes courage to face this world, ________.” But Tom also knew there were days when the urge to wave the white flag was so deep and overwhelming that doing so seemed not only right, but good.
He rubbed his eyes and thought this would be one of those days. Knew it, just as he knew what was waiting for him on the other side of the closed bedroom door—more guilt, more misunderstanding. More pain. All things that would be easier to bear on the other side of a decent night’s sleep. But sleep hadn’t come to Tom last night, nor to Ellen. There had been too much Barney, too much Mabel. There had been no talk between them of what had happened that night or what would happen the following day, no mention of Leah and the look on her face when she came running from Mabel’s room. There had just been the mockingbird and the nightmare.
Courage, he told himself.
He showered, shaved, and donned a pair of gray slacks and a white polo shirt that was much more comforting to his patients than to himself. The mirror showed the truth of all he tried to hide—the sunken face, the bloodshot eyes, the unnamable weight. From the hallway came the now-familiar thunk, thunk, thunk of Leah’s plastic chair that meant it was time for breakfast.
Tom smiled the best he could as he came down the hallway. Ellen busied herself in the kitchen. Leah and Allie were already at the table with the plastic blue-and-yellow chair between them. Both girls were still in their pj’s. Neither yawned, though Allie looked a bit droopy. Understandable, he thought. For not the first time in the last eight hours, Tom pondered the foolishness of allowing the girls into Mabel’s room.
“Morning,” he said.
“Hi, Puh-Pops,” Leah answered. She eyed his clothes. “Say hi to the R-rainbow M-man.”
“Hi to the rainbow man,” he muttered.
“You look awful snappy, Mr. Doctor Norcross,” Allie offered. She looked across the table to Leah and smiled. “Whatcha doin’ today, mowin’ the yard?”
Ellen spoke from the kitchen in a voice that was tired and flat: “It’s Wednesday, Allie, which means Tom has to work.” She turned back to flip the pancakes on the stove. “Isn’t that right, Tom?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
There was nowhere he could look without facing some degree of either hurt or disgust—Ellen’s back was still to him, Leah had donned her puppy-dog eyes, and Allie simply scowled as if she smelled something rotten.
Leah said, “Muh-Mommy, can you come help m-me pick out some clothes?”
“Can’t it wait until after breakfast?” Ellen asked. “It’s almost ready, and Allie’s mom will be here soon.”
“Puh-please?”
Ellen turned and met Leah’s eyes. Tom was sure that what came next was evidence of the telepathic bond between mother and daughter, because then Ellen said, “Sure, let’s go. Pops has plenty of time until he leaves. Isn’t that right, Pops?”
Tom knew he didn’t have a choice. And he did have time. Meagan’s appointment wasn’t for another hour and a half.
“Coming, Allie?” Ellen asked.
“No’m,” Allie answered. “I reckon I’ll just sit here and parlay with Mr. Doctor, if he don’t mind.”
Tom smelled a trap. The way Allie smiled, arms crossed in front of her, told him as much.
“That would be fine,” he said. “I’d love to parlay with you, little Allie.”
Ellen and Leah headed down the hall. Allie offered a wink as Tom took his seat at the table. That was fine. He had a few questions to ask Allie as well.
Allie leaned back and stretched. Slivers of sunshine fell onto the table from the slats between the blinds. The rainbow man’s seat glowed. There was a brief but powerful moment when Tom realized the reasons behind his hatred of that chair. Leah had placed it—and therefore the rainbow man—directly opposite him, as if challenging Tom’s place as head of the family. The notion seemed ridiculous on the surface (not to mention more than a little childish), but Tom hung on to it nonetheless.
“So,” she said. “Goin’ to work today.”
“Yep.”
Allie nodded. “That’s good. Miss Ellen’s pancakes sure do smell fine, huh?”
“They do,” Tom said. Whether it was the wearine
ss that came from lack of sleep or the sort that came upon a person slowly, his patience began to wane. “Is this what you call a parlay, Allie? Because I’ve never had one.”
Allie leaned back and looked down the hallway. “I’m supposed to be tellin’ you how bad it is to go to work when Leah’s hurtin’ so. You know, ’cause we watched Miss Mabel pass and all. And I don’t mind sayin’ she’s right.”
“Okay,” Tom said, “point taken. But it takes courage to face this world, Allie. Some people don’t have that courage. It’s my job to help them find it.”
“I think you can live life just fine without courage.” Her arms untangled themselves from in front of her and spread out onto the table. She touched the spots where the sunlight settled as if they were petals on a flower. “I ain’t scared of nothin’, mind you. But Leah is. I think Leah’s scared of most things. But she has faith, Mr. Doctor. I don’t think you need courage so much as you need faith. That makes the difference.”
“Maybe so,” Tom said. He thought he may have been right about Allie Granderson all along—she’d make a fine counselor.
“Anyway, I done chatted about that now. I know you’re goin’ to work no matter what I say. So I reckon we can move along to the real reason I wanna talk.”
“Which is?”
Another look down the hallway. “If I show you something, we’ll have that thing where you can’t tell nobody, right?”
“You mean confidentiality?”
“Yeah. That. Right?”
“Sure,” Tom said, and for a moment the questions he had for little Allie Granderson went away. His hand went to his chin.
Allie reached into the waistband of her pajamas—pink with the faces of several smiling Disney princesses; Tom would never have thought that was Allie Granderson’s style—and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She passed it to him beneath the table as if committing treason.
“What’s this?”
When Mockingbirds Sing (9781401688233) Page 17
