Loman swung the maul again and the log broke into three even pieces. He retrieved them and tossed them on the pile of splittings. “Just get it over with,” he said. He sat down on the splitting stump.
“I am telling you, I know things you don’t know, things people don’t talk about here,” Truman began. “I’ve got thirty years on you and know this town like you never will. It’s in that building, that church down there where your child goes. You need to get her out of there.”
“What are you talking about? Judy is great with Della.”
“I got no problem with Judy. It’s that place, that building. There’s something dark, something evil about that place. It’s been that way ever since…”
“Shit,” Loman interrupted. “You been smokin’ weed!”
“I’m telling you,” Truman said. “You don’t know this place. I’m just telling you, just telling you.” His voice grew shrill and his arms trembled.
By the end of the following week Truman and Loman had cut and split fifteen cords and stacked it in the clearing at the edge of the forest. They were working on the sixteenth when they heard a siren back in town. They didn’t hear it as it approached out on the highway because the chainsaw was working but when the EMT turned on Greeley Road Truman heard it and hit the kill switch on the saw.
“Hold on,” he said, calling to Loman who was working a good hundred yards away. “Listen.”
Loman stopped, dropped the maul. “Yeah? What about it?”
“Take the truck,” Truman said. “Get down there and find out what’s going on.”
Loman stared back through the forest in the direction of Blue Mountain. Truman had never even allowed him behind the wheel of the truck before, much less told him to drive the damn thing.
“Go,” Truman said. “I’ll walk back if need be. Go.”
Frightened and bewildered, Loman climbed in behind the wheel of Truman’s truck and took off down the trail toward town and toward the siren, which had stopped by then. It was three miles down to Center Street and another quarter of a mile up to the church and daycare center. As he turned up Pine Street, he spotted the rear of the EMT van, parked at the back door of the church building where he’d dropped off his little daughter only that morning.
In that instant, he felt his face go all red and then the thumping of his heart, pounding inside his ribcage. Shit! There was no way Truman could have seen the church from where they’d been cutting and the EMT crew hadn’t even pulled up at the church when Truman told him to check it out.
He pulled in beside the EMT truck, flung open the door and raced into the building. The little room with its tiny tables and chairs, and toys scattered all about, was hushed. The two uniformed EMT techs were bending over a small form on one of the tables. Loman elbowed his way in and as soon as he saw the worn jeans with patched knees he did not have to ask what was going on.
“I’m Della’s poppa,” he said, pressing in and taking the child’s tiny hand in his. He could not see her face since a mask attached to a long plastic hose obscured it.
A little pool of blood lay under the back of her head, matting her long, blond hair. “Oh, shit,” he exclaimed. “How’d she get hurt?”
“She had a fall,” one of the EMTs said. Loman saw the man’s name on the shiny metal name badge he wore over his breast pocket. Adam, his name was Adam.
Adam gently lifted Della’s eyelids. Her eyes were rolled back, showing the whites.
Loman followed along beside Della, still holding her hand as Adam carried her out to the ambulance. Later, he would not remember the ride to the hospital, thirty miles away, nor did he remember checking in at the emergency entrance and hurrying with the EMTs into the treatment room.
That night he sat in a hard metal hospital chair beside Della’s bed, watching her face, watching her tiny chest rise and fall, wanting to will her awake but feeling helpless and scared. He realized that he had never been quite this scared, not even when Kate died, not even when he was told that as Della’s blood father he would be alone raising and caring for his tiny daughter.
It hadn’t been easy. Kate had always taken care of Della’s needs from the day she was born. In fact, on the day of Della’s birth, Kate had seemed to disappear from Loman’s life. It was as if she had been waiting all her life for this moment, when she would have the baby to hold and suckle, and after that she would never have time for him again. He understood, in a way. Babies took a lot of attention and caring, always demanding, always crying. It was a total mystery to him how Kate seemed to know what Della wanted, whether her cries came in the middle of the night or the middle of the day. Kate was always there for her, always knew, always patient, always ready to drop whatever else was going on to attend to the baby’s needs.
At four AM Della’s eyes fluttered open and Loman leaned over her, whispering to her tenderly, “Hi, Honey. You were sleeping.”
Della’s eyes rolled back in her head again and her eyelids closed. Loman pressed the call button and when the nurse came he told her what had happened.
“That’s a good sign,” the nurse said. “She’ll be fine now. You should go home and take some rest. We’ll look after her.”
As if in a trance, Loman nodded. He leaned over the bed once more, squeezed Della’s hand, told her he was leaving for a while but would be back soon. And then he left, hitch hiking back home. He found Truman’s truck, still parked where he had left it at the church, got in and drove it over to Truman’s house. He left the truck in the driveway with the keys in the ignition. By the time he’d walked the two miles back to his own place the sun was coming up and he thought of calling Truman to tell him he wouldn’t be showing up for work that day. Then he remembered it was Sunday and Truman never worked on Sunday. The Sabbath, Truman always called it, the Lord’s Day of rest.
It was after eleven PM when Loman awoke, still drowsy, rubbing sleep from his eyes and staring around the room, not at first recognizing where he was. He stood up, padded barefoot into the bathroom, lifted the seat of the toilet and pissed, the stream driving into the bowl with a satisfying splatter. By the time he finished, the sense of foreboding he’d gone to bed with had begun to seep back into his world. With no phone in the house, he couldn’t call and find out how Della was doing.
He fixed himself coffee, then spread peanut butter over two thin slices of pumpernickel bread and wolfed them down. The coffee cleared the sleep from his head and he relived in his mind the horrible trip to the hospital in the back of the ambulance, with the EMT holding the mask over Della’s face, her tiny body strapped to the litter, her head stabilized with a strap across her forehead so she could not move. “What will happen to me if I lose her?” he cried, filling the narrow house with his voice.
He barely remembered hitching a ride to the hospital that morning, picked up at the edge of the highway by a logger, heading back out to Staryles’ Forest where they were cutting redwood again. The driver knew Loman, had met him somewhere, he said. When Loman told him the story of what had happened to Della, her fall at the daycare center and the drive into Santa Rita hospital, limp and unconscious on the litter, the driver shook his head, told him, “I’d go nuts if that was one of my kids. Hope it all works out.”
“She’ll be fine,” Loman said. “She’ll be fine.”
At the hospital, a gray lady ushered him upstairs, then down the long corridor to a special room where they had Della. This was a very different room than where she’d been last night. There were machines of some kind on a rack beside her bed, and outside at the nurse’s station there were TV screens that flashed lines and numbers. He stopped at the threshold of the room, peering in at Della. She was so tiny in the big bed that he could barely find her. There were tubes coming out of her nose, taped to her face, and wires coming from her scalp, which was now covered with what appeared to be a white bandana. Loman could not see her hair and wondered if they had shaved her head.
Several minutes passed as he tried to take it all in, to convince hi
mself that this was really his daughter lying in the bed and not a stranger. It was only then, after accepting the fact that it was truly her, that he saw the figure at the foot of her bed. Truman had pulled a chair up close to the bed and was leaning against the cold steel of the foot board, head pressed against his forearms. He was mumbling prayers for Della’s recovery. Loman only heard a few words, Lord this and Lord that, and something about sparing this innocent one.
“What are you doing here?” Loman asked, incredulous, his voice low, not wanting to disturb people in the next room. He felt like grabbing Truman by the collar and dragging him out of the room.
Truman held up both hands, as if in surrender, but then rose to his feet, threw back his head and reached toward the sky, crying, “Praise God, she is whole again!” At that, he turned to Loman and asked him, in the most nonchalant voice, “How did you get here?”
“I hitched a ride,” Loman said. “What are you doing?”
Truman swept his arm ceremoniously in the direction of Della’s bed. Loman stared in disbelief. The little girl was sitting up, looking a little confused but smiling, her eyes wide and bright.
“I’ll be outside,” Truman said, then disappeared into the waiting room. He pushed past Loman, who was still standing in the doorway, unable to move.
“Daddy,” Della called. “What’s that?” She pointed at the bank of computer screens whose wires were hooked up to various parts of Della’s body.
“I don’t know. They’re to make you well. They belong to the doctors.”
Della wore what appeared to be a white turban, a wrapping of bandages that hadn’t been there the night before. She looked like a little Hindu goddess, sitting there in the middle of the big white bed.
“Someday, Daddy, I want to be dead.”
“What? No, honey, no you don’t.”
“I mean someday…I’m not dead now.”
“No. You’re not.” Loman could not think of anything else to say. He walked over to Della’s bedside and leaned across the soft covers to look at her. “Don’t talk about being dead,” he whispered.
“Mommy’s dead,” Della said.
Loman nodded. “Do you want some ice cream or something? I’ll ask the nurse to bring you ice cream.”
“I like ice cream.”
Loman pushed away from the bed and pressed the call button for a nurse. He paced the room, waiting for the nurse. As he walked past the door he spotted Truman in the waiting room, reading Field and Stream. Truman was a good hunter. Every winter he gave Loman a package of frozen venison steaks and some venison sausage. Loman did not look up from his magazine. The nurse pressed past Loman and went to Della’s bedside.
“For goodness sake,” the nurse said. “Our little Buddha girl is awake!” She turned to the monitors on the rack beside the bed, took up a clipboard hanging there and started writing down notes. “I’m so glad you’re back with us,” she told Della, holding her wrist and finding her pulse.
“I dreamed about Mommy,” Della said. “Mommy’s dead.”
The nurse glanced at Loman, as if to confirm if that were true. Loman nodded. “And did you and Mommy have a talk?” the nurse asked, careful not to sound like she didn’t believe her.
“She didn’t talk. She was busy.”
“I see,” the nurse said, glancing again at Loman. She recorded something on her pad.
“She wants some ice cream,” Loman said. “Could she have ice cream?”
“I think we can take care of that,” the nurse said. She turned, walked toward the door, and beckoned for Loman to follow her out to the desk. When they got there, she asked how long Della had been awake and told him she couldn’t understand why her being awake hadn’t shown up on her desk monitor, as it should have.
“Truman, he was here first. He was here.”
“Mr. Truman?”
Loman nodded, pointing in the direction of the waiting room. The room was vacant now.
“He was out there a minute ago.”
“It’s good news, seeing her awake like that,” the nurse said. “You must be very relieved.”
Loman nodded. “I’ll take her home.”
“That’s up to the doctors. They should be around soon. They’ll talk with you. I’ll call down for some ice cream for her.”
Loman went out into the hall to look for Truman. He was nowhere to be seen, probably in the bathroom down at the end of the hall. He decided to go back to the room and see if Della wanted him to tell her a story.
The doctors swept brusquely through Della’s room, checking charts, looking at the clipboard with the notes the nurse had made, barely acknowledging the little girl with the white turban, sitting up and eating ice cream with a pink plastic spoon. Loman waited in the corner, staying out of the busy doctors’ way, not wanting to be a pest. He wanted to ask them about taking Della home today but suddenly they were leaving and there seemed no way of stopping them. He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching their backs as they disappeared down the long corridor on their way to other rooms and other patients.
He thought again about looking for Truman, wondered where he’d gone. Then he returned to Della’s side. “Baby,” he said. “I’ve gotta go home. There’s lots of things I’ve gotta do before bedtime.” He couldn’t stand being in the hospital with its smells and strange sounds and people in clean white uniforms rushing around. And what was there to possibly say to a little girl who had barely learned how to talk?
“Can I have more ice cream?”
“I’ll tell the nurse. She’ll bring you some.”
Della laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. “My eyes make stars,” she said.
Loman could not let go of the picture in his head of Truman with his arms raised, crying out to God, standing there at the foot of Della’s bed. What right did he have to make another man’s child his business! Truman did not know Della. He had not even known Kate. For that matter, he had never declared himself Loman’s friend. Cutting wood together was another matter. That was about money. Religion got in the way. Religion made trouble. It taught men like Truman they were to take other people’s salvation upon themselves. “Salvation!” Loman spit out the word, as if it were poison. His anger rose, quickly becoming rage as he thought of Della, so small and helpless in the bed, and Truman hovering over her calling to a God Loman neither knew nor wanted to know.
Something old and large and grievous swelled inside his anger, something from long in his past. It was another church man, standing over Abel, Loman’s stepfather, who crouched before the church man, down on his knees, hands raised in prayer. Deacon stood above him, holding an ax handle high over Abel’s head, then suddenly struck and struck again, screaming something about God and Jesus. “Jesus, Son of God,” he remembered Deacon screaming, over and over again.
Abel was dead and Deacon went free, praised for serving a mysterious force that Loman could not understand. In the small village of Edenton, in the mountains where it happened, there was only the word of the church, and the church declared Abel a sinner. It was too much for the mind of young Loman. Forever after he remembered Deacon’s cold cruelty as he struck Abel again and again, breaking bone and tearing open a wide slash in the side of Abel’s face, so that he no longer resembled Abel or anything that ever lived. Then Deacon calmly climbed into his truck and drove away. Broken and maimed, Abel’s body lay in the dirt only a few yards past the kitchen door, moving only slightly for much of the afternoon, low whimpers like a small animal’s issuing forth from his bleeding mouth now and then. Nobody went to his side. Nobody went off to find the doctor. Loman remembered his mother’s screams when it began, then her sobbing, continuing until the sun went down and into the next day. When the sun came up again it was Monday and she went out to dig a shallow grave. And that was all. Abel was gone forever.
Truman was one of them, like Deacon. Loman did not know what Truman’s position was at the church but it did not matter. They had no right to take other’s salvat
ion upon themselves. What was this terrible God of theirs who gave men the right to hold judgment of another man’s life and beat him to death? Who was this God who told others how their neighbors should live? Who was this God who sent a man to the sick bed of another man’s child to cast prayers over them without asking permission? What did he intend?
One did not need the permission of this god to judge and punish.
The hospital released Della the next day and Loman borrowed the neighbor’s pickup to go down and get her.
“Watch her close,” the doctor told him, “and try to keep her from any roughhousing. She’s had a concussion and that’s something we’ve got to take seriously.”
Loman filled out the papers for social services, as there was no way that he would ever be able to pay the $1,883.00 hospital bill. When he handed over what he was able to complete, the clerk told him that a social worker would help him with the rest. Was there a phone where he could be reached?
“Got no phone,” he said. He gave them his neighbor’s number and the clerk told him they would be contacting him in the next few days. The social worker would leave a message for what day she wanted to meet with him. He promised he’d show up.
Loman knew where Truman would be on Monday, in the woods where they’d been splitting logs. He planned accordingly. Truman would never miss a day’s work except for Sunday, of course. At seven AM the appointed day, Loman walked Della to her play-school at the church and calmly told Judy Reeves about everything that had happened at the hospital and what the doctors told him. She promised to keep an extra careful eye on Della. Then Loman went up Pearl Street and across the open field between Palmer’s Market and the fire department garage, and then up the mountain where Truman was cutting.
“Goddamn churchy fuckers,” Loman muttered under his breath as he climbed the hill in long strides. It took fifteen minutes to clear the hill up the muddy trail. Then it was downhill for a ways, where it turned into a narrow jeep trail that wound back and forth, snaking along the steep grade. He knew the trail well, having walked it every morning for the past three weeks. His anger spun in his head, churning like whirlpools, raising dark memories that wouldn’t let loose of him. Damn them, he whispered as his lungs pumped, laboring up another steep grade. He saw the pictures in his head of Truman at the end of Della’s bed, back in the hospital, praying for her. Praying why? Loman couldn’t understand what Truman had wanted, what he was trying to do. If he’d succeeded, would she have become something she wasn’t, something not herself?
Backland Graces; Four Short Novels Page 6
