McQuaid's Justice

by Carly Bishop

  Meeting the warm brown eyes of Cy’s friend, Amy signed. Cy translated. “That’s the one thing I do understand in all of this, Marcee. I could still hear when my mother died. I know that. But if I can’t somehow get at whatever it was I heard that day, it’s not only hearing that I’ve lost.”

  Amy gritted her teeth. She couldn’t even look at Cy. Because she loved him, loved who he was as a man, what he had been willing to do for Seth, how he was struggling to make it work with her, she could give this a try. If she didn’t, even if Cy was harboring some futile hope of her ever hearing again, she didn’t deserve him—and feeling that way would ruin whatever chances they had.

  “It’s like I’ve lost the soul of me, Marcee,” she finished. “I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but the rest of my life feels...somehow...at stake.”

  “Then let’s do it.” Marcee sat forward in her chair, directly facing Amy. “Cy, I want you to sit as far out of Amy’s visual range as you can and still be able to interpret her for me. Yeah. Over there. Amy, now, if you just focus on my face, do you see Cy?”

  She shook her head. “Barely.”

  “Enough,” Marcee asked, “to distract you?”

  Again she shook her head no, but her nerve was slipping. Marcee had Cy lower the lights, then kept up a running commentary, encouraging Amy to look only at her, only at her lips, to focus and relax and let herself go. Reassuring her that nothing would happen that she couldn’t go along with. That Cy was there for her. That she was moment by moment more deeply focused on Marcee’s lips, only her lips, all the tiny grooves, the shape, the shapes they made, the meaning she imparted.

  Amy began to relax. To remember times when she had done this herself as a little girl, like touching her fingers to the pattern of flocking on the wall, watching her daddy’s lips just reading to her from her storybooks, just reading to her till after a while what he said and what shape his lips and mouth and tongue took began to make sense to her. Began to be faithful symbols for the words of stories she had already known by heart.

  “Okay, Amy,” Marcee’s lips said, “When I say the word ‘now’ I want you to close your eyes for one minute. Don’t worry about how long that is. Don’t count, just trust your mind to know. When I say ‘now,’ just close your eyes and at the end of one minute, open your eyes, and then you’ll be back in your house, in the house in Steamboat where you were a little girl, early in the day before you fell down the mine shaft. Do it ‘not.”’

  Amy’s eyes closed. Marcee looked at Cy. Both of them checked the second hands of their watches. He gave her a thumbs-up. She tested the whole thing by speaking aloud to him, to see if Amy was not yet there and could still sense a separate conversation even with her eyes closed.

  “I’m flying by the seat of my pants, here, Cy.”

  “Pretty fancy pants, Marce.”

  She shot him a half-lewd gesture and sat monitoring the time. At precisely sixty seconds, Amy’s eyes opened, trained on Marcee’s lips.

  “Amy, you’re doing fine. Brilliantly for such a little girl. Now I want you to imagine that you are so smart that you know how to read my lips and say anything back to me in sign language. Can you do that? Spell ‘yes’ for me if you can.”

  Her fingers raced through y-e-s. Cy was holding his breath. He figured Marcee was checking out whether the trance Amy had achieved was going to survive the discrepancy of hearing and not hearing and signing before she ever went deaf.

  “That’s great, Amy. When you see me turn and talk to Cy, you won’t be worried. It will be okay. You’ll be fine. You are fine. Can you tell me how old you are?”

  F-i-v-e. “I’m five. How old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-five.”

  “My daddy,” Amy signed, entranced, Cy repeating aloud for Marcee, “is older than you.”

  “What about your mommy and your brother?”

  “Mommy’s thirty-two. Brent is almost thirteen. Granny Fee is older than God.”

  “I bet she is!” Cy told Marcee, because they’d not thought to mention the fact earlier, that Fiona Reeves was a diagnosed schizophrenic. She followed up on it. “How is Granny Fee today?”

  “Mommy says she’s in a twist.”

  Marcee laughed. “Is that right?”

  “No...well, really, Mommy’s in a twist too.”

  “Why is that, Amy?”

  “She...she—” Amy seemed to freeze.

  Marcee looked at Cy.

  “It’s all right. Nothing is going to happen. You’re able to wake up if you want to, Amy. Is this the day that you went outside with your big brother and fell down the mine shaft?”

  Amy gulped. A tear formed in one eye. “Y-e-s.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Amy. You don’t have to do anything, or go anywhere you don’t want to. But maybe you could be a really big girl and go back to before Mommy was in a twist. Can you do that? Go back a little ways?”

  She shivered violently. Y-e-s.

  “Good. Good for you. You’re warm and safe, Amy. What are you doing now?”

  “Playing with HooDoo and Pilly. March Hare and Pigeon too.”

  “Is your brother Brent there?”

  “No, it’s just me and my—”

  Cy swore softly, unable to decipher her meaning.

  Marcee just went with it. “You and what? Could you spell that for me, Amy?”

  M-e-n-a-g-e-r-i-e. She signed again. “My imaginary friends. That’s what Brent calls all my ’maginary friends.” “He’s pretty smart, too, isn’t he? But he’s not there right now?”

  N-o. “Just me and them.”

  “So who is Pigeon?”

  “I don’t know.” Amy looked thoughtful, curious maybe, but not confused. “She just came. She’s shy. She won’t come inside. All the others are scaring her.”

  “Will she come in and play, do you think?”

  “I keep asking her, but she’s shy.”

  Marcee turned to Cy. Amy sat peacefully waiting. “I can’t believe this is working, Cy. Do you know where she’s going with this?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Should I go on with it, or move her ahead?”

  He shook his head. What was happening was the other side of what he would have accepted as real. “Just take her through it, Marcee, till her mother comes into the picture, at least.”

  Marcee turned back to Amy. “Is Pigeon a ’fraidy cat?”

  Cy watched as Amy’s spine curled down, limber as a child, her chin resting on her fist like a child considering what to do with an imaginary friend that wouldn’t come in to play with the others.

  N-o. “She’s going to be o-kay. She’s done with it. I keep asking her but she won’t come inside and play.”

  “Maybe Pigeon will stay nearby and—”

  Amy suddenly blanched, then flushed. “Uh-ohhhhh.”

  Cy’s heart about crashed out of his chest. Amy had verbalized her dismay. Said it aloud. Uh-ohhh.

  “Shit, Cy! Did you hear that? What the—”

  “Go with it Marcee. Uh-ohhh. Just go with it, quick!”

  “It’s okay, Amy. You can wake up any time. What is uh-ohhhh?”

  Amy’s expression grew fiercely angry. Again she spoke aloud. “What-did-you-say? What-was-that-you-said, you-little-bitch! What-was-it?”

  As if she were playing, speaking for each of her animals, taking each role, Amy shifted back to her littler self, but every word was coming out of her mouth, as perfectly pronounced as if she had never been mute.

  “Nothing, Mommy. Don’t-you lie-to-me-who-were-you talking-to?... M-m-my M-march Hare. I was just playing—” Her eyes flew wide open, still focused in her trance, but her face stretched tight in fear and the cords in her neck stuck out. “No, Mommy, I won’t play it anymore—”

  Marcee broke in with her cue word. “Now, Amy. Now you can relax, it’s all over.”

  She began to shiver uncontrollably. His insides roiling, Cy got up to go to her. Marcee warned him off. “Give her a
minute, Cy. Leave her be. She needs to come the way back by herself.”

  “No way—”

  “Cy, if you touch her, I’ll tear your heart out with my bare hands! Now back off.”

  He shot her a look and whirled around, walking away, pacing the room behind Amy, his hands fisted and crammed into his pockets. “Then for God’s sake help her, Marcee.”

  But Marcee just sat there, waiting, for what he didn’t know. It was all he could do to stand back, but he could see Amy had stopped shaking so hard. She clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent her own cries, then signed to Marcee. “I don’t know what any of that means! What did I say? What was it that I said to her?”

  Marcee looked to Cy. “We don’t know, Amy. We don’t know what set her off. I need you to take some deep breaths now—”

  “You mean—” her hands flailed helplessly. “You mean,” she signed, “all this meant nothing?”

  He couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t stand her wild disappointment. He strode to the sofa and crouched low in front of her. Tears stained her cheeks. He wanted to hit something, lash out somewhere, God knew where. “It’s okay, Amy. We’ll figure it out. I promise you. We’ll figure it out.”

  But he could see she had no idea she had spoken aloud. And he had no idea how he was going to keep his promise. He moved out of her way when she stood, but he thought she’d turn to him. Instead she looked uncertainly around her, at him, at Marcee and then asked for a cool washcloth to wash her face.

  He ought to be used to her turning away from him by now, doing something else, any damned thing except let him have any part of being there for her. Holding her, for Chrissake. Was it too damned protective of him just to want to hold her?

  He guessed it was. He paced the confines of Marcee’s comfortable, plain-potatoes living room like a caged animal. When his pager began to vibrate on his belt, he started.

  The number was a 970 exchange he didn’t recognize. He snatched up the portable phone sitting on Marcee’s rolltop, logged in the string of numbers to access his calling card account, then the number on the pager. The voice at the other end stopped his pacing cold.

  He listened for a couple of minutes, asked what questions he thought Susan could handle, then told her he’d be in Cedar Bluffs as soon as he could get there.

  “Cy?”

  He turned around. Marcee was the one who had spoken, but Amy was the one he told. “My dad’s had a stroke.”

  She came straight into his arms. Now, he thought bitterly, when it appeared to her that he was in need, it was okay, when comforting wasn’t okay when she needed it. She was so hard, so prickly, so fiercely independent she couldn’t even see she was giving him what she wouldn’t take for herself. He wanted to turn away from her, wanted to make the point, but he was scared this was going to be the last time he would hold her.

  He buried his face in her hair and clung to her for all he was worth for all of thirty seconds, then pushed her back gently as he could, which wasn’t very gently at all, and picked up his hat.

  “I’m leaving now, too,” she signed, sensing more was going on with him than worry over his dad’s stroke, grabbing up her coat. “I’ll walk out with you.” She turned and took Marcee’s hands, wordlessly thanking her for what she’d tried to do.

  Marcee stopped Cy at the door. “Tell Susan for me, they’re both in my prayers, Cy.”

  He gave her a brief hug, then walked out. Amy didn’t catch up with him till he had his truck door open.

  “cry?”

  He flung his hat onto the bench seat. “What, Amy?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re what’s wrong, I guess.” He shrugged. His heart felt leaden. His jaw cocked sideways. “You tell me. We aren’t going to get past this, are we?”

  “Not if you won’t tell me—”

  “Cut it out, Amy.” He swore. “You turn away from me when you’ve just gone through something like that—” he flung his arm back toward Marcee’s bungalow “—and I’m supposed to take it and still think you could give a simple damn whether I’m there or not?”

  “Cy, it wasn’t like that—”

  “No?” He took hold of her arm. “Do you get what would happen if you weren’t deaf? If we were what...Jesus, I don’t know...ordinary people? If you weren’t scared half to death that I’ll think you’re a weakling or defective or inadequate or God knows what if one time, just once you let me be the strong one?”

  She swallowed convulsively, hurt and angry, misunderstood—another shortcoming he wasn’t ever likely to defeat. “I’m not ordinary, Cy. I am deaf. I can’t hear you. I’m not defenseless, but I’m afraid when you look at me, that’s what you see, no matter what pair of rose-colored glasses you put on.

  “When you tell me to stay put no matter what danger you’re in...or you have to make sure I’m not in walking into an ambush or when you want to take care of every little thing. I can’t live like that. If I could suddenly hear you, Cy, I couldn’t live like that.” Tears skidded down her soft, alabaster cheeks. “I didn’t mean to turn away from you. I didn’t mean anything by it. I love you till I ache with wanting to be right for you, but I don’t know how else to be besides the grown-up version of a little girl who had to pull up her own socks and go on.”

  “Amy.” He pulled her into his arms and cradled her tight, till he couldn’t tell anymore if it was his own heart flailing that he felt. or hers. He still didn’t know when he found himself still standing in the middle of the godforsaken street watching her taillights fade away like autumn bonfires in the night.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He had to go take care of his horses and stock, but by seven o’clock in the morning, Cy walked into the Chaparral County Community hospital in Cedar Bluffs. Between the three of them, he and his brothers had been stitched up, X-rayed, patched together, bandaged and encased in plaster casts so often as teenagers that the emergency room nurses knew them by name, birth order and usual reason for the ER admission.

  His father, though, had never been a patient here, and would rather have found himself pushing up daisies than occupying one of the sixty beds. If he’d had any say in the matter, they would have had to knock Jake McQuaid cold to keep him here.

  Walking the short, brightly lit hall on the second floor, Cy found his father’s room. Susan greeted him at the door, her prettiness ravaged by worry and a sleepless night. She waved him inside, then moved silently into his arms. He held her tight for several long moments, and watched his dad stretched out, sleeping peacefully though there were tubes hanging out of him and monitors everywhere.

  It hit him that he’d never seen his father sleeping. Not once. Not even dozing through some television program. It wasn’t right, Jake being so out of it, laid out on the slab of a hospital gurney.

  Susan pulled back and shoved a hand through her graying blond hair. “They tell me he’s going to make it. They just don’t know about any lingering brain damage.”

  Cy nodded. “I spoke to the doctor. He told me they used some new drugs to dissolve the clot?”

  “Yes. Some kind of blood thinner. They have to be concerned for the next couple of days that the medication doesn’t make him bleed, I guess.”

  “How doped up is he?”

  “He hasn’t woken up yet. But I guess that’s what they want. He’s responsive to pain, so they’re not worried about him being in a coma.” She touched his lapel. “Can you stay a while?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you go on home for a bit and get some rest?”

  “I don’t want to leave, Cy. I couldn’t sleep anyway. But I wouldn’t mind going downstairs to get a hot chocolate or something. As long as you’re here with your dad.”

  “I’ll stay, Susan. And I’ll have them come get you if he wakes up.”

  He sat in the chair next to Jake where Susan had stationed herself, probably holding his liver-spotted hand, when a memory flashed in his head of his dad kneeling on the kitchen floor, washing Susan’s long, narrow feet with
a terry cloth towel worn down to the nub.

  A pang of envy so strong he forgot to breathe went through Cy. He and Cam and Matt thought of Jake as about as tough as a man came, but what kind of dyed-in-the-wool tough guy washed his woman’s feet?

  Yeah, it was jealousy, pure and simple. He lost his train of thought when his pager vibrated at his waist. He took the pager off his belt, checked the number and reached for the phone. The switchboard in Denver connected him to Brimmer’s office. Mike’s secretary told him the President was about to preempt nationwide programming with a statement on the Reeves nomination.

  He hung up and used the bedside control to switch on the TV mounted near the ceiling opposite the bed. Susan reappeared with a mug filled with hot chocolate just as the presidential seal gave way to the news anchorman prefacing the President’s remarks.

  He started to get up out of her chair, but she said she’d rather stand, so to sit still. “What’s going on?”

  “Something to do with Byron Reeves. My office just paged to let me know.”

  The video feed switched to the President preparing to speak from the podium where most major White House press conferences were held.

  Leaning against the door frame, Susan sipped at her chocolate. “Do you know what he’s going to say?”

  Cy started to shake his head, but the camera angle widened and he knew then. “He’s about to name Byron Reeves to the Supreme Court. Reeves is the one standing closest to the President. The other one is the judge’s brother. Perry Reeves.”

  “Your investigation must be over then?” she asked. Cy didn’t know how to answer Susan’s question, but he was spared when the prepared speech began.

  “In recent days, as we have all come to know, there have been various attempts made to blacken the name and block the appointment of the Honorable Judge Byron Reeves to the Supreme Court. Despite the passage of so many years, Judge Reeves’s successful prosecution of the Jessup kidnapping and Salt Lake City bank robbery has been cited as an example of poor judgment unbecoming a nominee to the bench of the Supreme Court, in its most favorable light, and a case of felony conspiracy with the kidnap victim herself in a less friendly interpretation of the facts.