Into the Free

by Julie Cantrell

  “She has to be around here somewhere,” Mr. Tucker says.

  Janine wanders into the Reggios’ yard. She is talking to the boys, but I can’t hear her tiny voice, and the next thing I know that Reggio kid is pointing up in the tree, straight at me, yelling, “There she is! You see her? Way up there!”

  I panic. I let go of my grip and tumble from my perch more than thirty feet up the tree. Limb after limb after limb of the sweet gum slams against me. I hear branches break with each collision. I taste blood pooling on my tongue. I watch the fall happen from another place, like it isn’t really happening to me but to somebody else. I hear Death laughing, and the swift sound of him racing in to collect my soul. But then someone else appears. He comes out of nowhere. He pushes Death aside. One minute I am falling, the next, I am cradled in his arms, in the warmest, safest place I’ve ever known. He places me on the ground, all soft and gentle-like, as if I’ve landed on a bin full of cotton, and then he disappears.

  CHAPTER 23

  I wake up in the hospital. I am back in Room Three, only this time, I’m the patient instead of Mama. In place of a water pitcher, a tiny Christmas tree is propped in the windowsill. Paper cutouts hang from the branches and a bright-blue angel is nested on top. I think of my sweet gum tree. My fall. And my angel. Then I realize that nurse Diana, the nice one who gave me that cold Coca-Cola the night Jack died, the one who promised to be available but then disappeared, is sitting in the cozy chair, which is still in the room from our earlier stay.

  “It’s about time you woke up,” she says sweetly. “You slept right through Christmas!”

  “Christmas?” I ask. “How is that possible?” I try to count the time in my head.

  “It’s been three days,” she says. “We have all been very worried.”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  Diana’s expression shifts and she says, “What do you think of this darling little Christmas tree? Can you believe Hilda brought this in here for you? She sure did. The most thoughtful thing Hilda’s ever done for anybody, Millie. I think you got to her.”

  I try not to look at Diana’s sad green eyes as I prop myself up on the stack of white pillows. That’s when I realize I have a cast on my arm. I also have bandages wrapped around my chest. I reach to feel my face. Stitches. I know from all the beatings Jack delivered to Mama that broken bones and split skin will heal. But I wonder why I can’t feel any pain.

  “Don’t move, Millie,” Diana says, grabbing my attention. “You had quite a fall. More than thirty feet! Dr. Jacobson says you could’ve broken every bone in your body! No one around here’s ever seen such a thing.”

  I try to process what she’s saying. She adjusts my blanket and continues.

  “You’ve been talking in your sleep. Thanking someone for catching you. For saving you. Doctor said it’s just the effects of the morphine.”

  I think of River, how some of the gypsies believe he’d been chosen by God to do great things when he survived his fall into the river. But for the first time, River doesn’t stick in my mind for long.

  “Where’s Mama?” I ask again, determined to find out what has happened during the time I’ve missed.

  Once again, Diana doesn’t answer. She walks to the window and stares out at the street. It looks to be about midday, and the sunlight catches tears cornered in her eyes.

  “Where is my mother?” I ask again.

  “Millie,” she says, touching the delicate blue angel wings and looking up to the heavens for help, “your mother passed away. Yesterday. I’m so sorry, Millie. I’m so very, very sorry.”

  I want to cry. Or scream. I want to jump out of the third floor window and make this fall really count. But no matter how badly I want to do all of these things, I can’t do anything at all. Just like the night on my grandparents’ porch when I asked them to save Mama and they closed the door on me. Just like the time I stayed hidden while Jack cut Mama’s neck with a knife. Just like the day I crouched under the porch with an armadillo while Jack beat Mama nearly to death in the kitchen above me. I am too afraid. I can’t move at all.

  “Millie?” Diana comes to my side. “None of this has been fair. I’ve seen a lot. A lot. But this …” She brushes my hair back from my forehead and squeezes my free hand even tighter. “I can’t understand this. I just have to believe you’ve got a very special role in this world.”

  I want to swim away in the round green pools of Diana’s eyes. To drift out beyond the sphere of life. Instead, I go, without resistance, to the place Mama always chose. The valley.

  The next morning, I wake to find Diana still by my side. “Wake up, Millie,” she says, rubbing my arm gently and talking in her soft, soothing voice. I wake in a bit of a daze, not sure if Mama and Jack are really both dead, or if I have dreamed it all. But then Diana says, “I need to get you ready for the funeral. Mr. Tucker has made all of the arrangements. They’re going to do a joint service. Your mother and father together.”

  I feel as if a fissure has opened beneath me, pulling away everything in my life. All of a sudden, I am completely alone in the world. I want River to come back to Iti Taloa and take me away with the gypsies. But even that seems like a dream. It’s been eight months since I’ve seen him, kissed him. Six since I read his letter. For all I know, he’s never coming back. I’m starting to wonder if he ever existed in the first place.

  Wishing for River is a waste. It doesn’t matter how much I want him here with me. He’s gone. Long gone. I have no choice but to get out of bed and attend my parents’ funeral. Without him.

  “I’m going to help you get through this, Millie,” Diana says with resolve, as if she’s spent time thinking about me. “I promise. I won’t leave your side. ”

  The gravity of Jack’s and Mama’s deaths has pulled me so far beneath the world of the living that I can barely move. Diana helps me move to the side of the bed and I finally understand Mama’s pain. It isn’t the broken bones or the busted skin that hurts. It’s the shattered spirit that deals unbearable anguish. “I’m not going.”

  Diana exhales. “Come on, Millie,” she says softly. “It won’t be easy, but you can do this.”

  I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do anything. But I’m too tired to argue, so I let Diana lift me out of bed. She has bought me a new black dress, and I help her slip it around my broken arm. I prop myself up in the wheelchair as she runs a brush through my hair. She sweeps it up in the back with a silver clip. She gives me special black socks to cover my swollen feet. My shoes will not fit.

  “You look beautiful,” she says, holding a mirror to my face. But I barely recognize myself. I have a thick bandage wrapped around my forehead, and a straight line of stitches sewn across my left cheek. My lips are swollen and cracked. My nose is blue, and my eyes are ringed with scrapes and scratches. I look like Mama, the night Jack left her to die. It feels odd to see myself like this. I imagine Mama must have felt the same way when she was pulled off the kitchen floor.

  I certainly don’t look beautiful, but I try to be grateful that Diana wants to convince me otherwise. “Thanks,” I say, smoothing my one good arm over the soft black fabric of the dress. “Mama made me a new dress once. It was blue. For a dance. No one’s ever given me a store-bought dress. I like it. I mean, I never really needed one. Mama did people’s laundry, so I got tons of things. Good stuff. Too small for other people.”

  Diana nods politely, but I notice her face twitch when I admit I’ve never had a new dress. “Let me make sure the driver’s ready downstairs.” She hands me a magazine and says she’ll be right back.

  She leaves the door cracked, and I glance at the cover of the magazine. It shows a family gathered together for Christmas dinner. A big goose sits at the center of the table, surrounded by steaming sweet potatoes, green beans, and a ham patterned with cloves and a glaze of honey. All around the table, people sit. A black-and-white dog begs for bits, and a decorated tree fills the corner of the room.

  I toss the magazine ba
ck onto the bed, sit in the wheelchair, and stare at the tiny Christmas tree, thinking about the angel and the man who caught my fall. Was it Mr. Tucker, the rodeo manager? Mr. Reggio, the rough-edged neighbor? Mr. Sutton, the respectable planter?

  For some reason, I can’t shake the idea that it was Sloth. But Sloth is dead. Buried and gone. Seeing his ghost is one thing. Believing he caught me when I fell is another thing entirely. Maybe hitting my head has confused me. But I feel certain someone caught me. Memories and facts are getting all muddled together in a morphine-blurred swirl, and I can’t figure it out.

  A chorus of voices floats down the hall. Diana has returned, bringing a crew of singing nurses with her. “Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas, dear Millie. Merry Christmas to you!” They each hold wrapped gifts and cards. Nurse Hilda, the burly nurse with the harsh voice, speaks first: “I guess it’s never too late for a Christmas miracle.” Everyone laughs. Although I haven’t cried since Diana told me of Mama’s death, the tears come now.

  “You better stop that right now. You’ll ruin your stitches,” Hilda says, quick to wipe her own tear before it falls down her cheek. She hands me a gift and says, “Maybe this’ll cheer you up.”

  I think back to Christmas mornings with Mama and Jack. Mama always made sure I had something nice to open each year. Jack would sit in his chair, smoking a Pall Mall and drinking whiskey. Then he’d stuff his mouth full of Mail Pouch tobacco, like he was trying to swallow a hard-boiled egg. Whole. Mama would sing holiday hymns, like “O Holy Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I never had many gifts, but I’d unwrap each one, slowly, trying to make the magic last.

  I always loved Christmas. We’d invite Sloth. We’d all share a big hen and stuffing and pecan pie for dessert. It was never the perfect picture you see in magazines, but it was close enough to perfect for me.

  But this is different from other years. Not only has Christmas already come and gone, but all these strangers have shown up just to let me know things are going to be okay. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Hilda yells. “Don’t be a lady. Rip it!” This draws more laughter from the crowd. I struggle with my broken arm, so she opens it for me, anxious to show me the special treat.

  It’s a framed newspaper clipping of Jack and Mama’s wedding photo. There is no article beneath, just a simple caption: Jack Briar Reynolds and Marie Evangeline Applewhite, Married June 6, 1924.

  I have never seen this picture before. Mama and Jack look young and beautiful, as if there really was a time when they were happy together. “Where did you find this?” I ask between tears.

  “Let’s just say I have connections,” Hilda says, standing the framed photo up on the windowsill beneath the tree.

  I continue unwrapping gifts from the blonde nurse who stutters, the redheaded dolt who threatened to call the cops on me, the orderlies who helped feed and bathe Mama during her short stay, and even one from Dr. Jacobson. A tube of pink lipstick, a box of creamy chocolates, a dainty floral broach, a silver vanity set, and a leather journal with a pen.

  I focus on the crinkling sound of paper being crumpled, the slicing sound of it being torn. I put all of my energy into watching light reflect from the shiny wrappers. The ribbons, tied in fancy bows, slip between my fingers, smooth and soft. I think of Mama, and I cry.

  “Enough of all this,” Hilda says. “Let’s drink up!” She pours everyone little paper cups of frothy eggnog and asks Diana to make a toast. I know she is trying to make the best of the situation. I appreciate the attempt. “To Millie,” she says.

  “And to miracles,” adds Hilda.

  “And to Mama,” I add. We drink the eggnog, and we wipe our tears.

  “Oh, goodness,” Diana says, “We’ve really got to go. We’ll be late.” She grabs one last gift from her oversized handbag and places it under the tree. “We’ll save this one for later,” she says with a wink.

  Hilda grabs the chair and wheels me down the hall. Diana walks ahead, opening doors and calling the elevator—the only one in town. The three of us ride together, me stretched across the backseat of a sedan, my arm propped up against the window, Hilda and Diana squeezed tight against the driver. The wind blares, and I worry for a moment they may be taking me to East.

  The barren trees flash by, and I call out to them in the silence of my own mind, “Save me.” Just as in my dream, they sing out, “In the spring. In the spring. We will save you in the spring.”

  I don’t know if it’s the morphine, or the exhaustion, or just the effort to cling to a promise of something magic, something safe, something bigger than me and Mama and Jack. But I want it to be real. The singing trees. The helping hand of Mother Nature. An angel swooping down to catch my fall.

  “Please tell me. What happened to Mama?” I ask Diana and Hilda.

  They look at each other, neither wanting to take the question.

  “Did she kill herself?” I ask.

  “We’ll talk about it later, Millie. Let’s just take one step at a time right now,” Diana says.

  I need to know, but I am so tired. The medicine and the pain and the gifts and the grief and the world have worn me down. Maybe Diana is right. Maybe I am handling all I can right now. I close my eyes and hope the trees will sing me to sleep. I want to dream it all away.

  My mind is snapped back when the road turns to gravel, and I figure we have reached the funeral home. I open my eyes. We aren’t at the funeral home at all. We have turned into the rodeo arena. The place where Jack took his final fall. The world I visited only once, on the day of Jack’s death. A place where rules are broken and women are strong and monsters become heroes. “Here?” I ask. “The funeral is here? Not at a church or a funeral home?”

  “Too big a crowd, Millie. Jack was quite the star,” Hilda says.

  Out my window, trucks and cars are trailing into the lot. Buggies and bikes, too. Even horses and mourners on foot. It seems the whole town has shown up to bid Jack farewell. The driver pulls as near to the entrance as possible and parks his car. He walks around to open the front passenger door, and then retrieves the wheelchair from the trunk. The two nurses help move me from the car to the chair, a very awkward maneuver with my rigid cast and swollen feet. Onlookers try not to stare, but their whispers burn me as they pass.

  I’m just about to tell Diana I don’t want to do this, when Bump appears. “Mr. Tucker’s got a row of seats reserved for us right through here,” he says. “We won’t have to make it too far.” He takes my hand.

  I can’t look at him. I don’t want him to see my pain. Instead, I stare at the ground. A row of leather saddles lines the walk, a tribute to Jack and the many rides he survived before his final fall. It is difficult for Hilda to maneuver the chair along the uneven surface, where strings of straw-filled potholes and patches of gravel fight against the metal wheels. The air smells of cow dung and horsehair and burned fields. Fitting for Jack maybe, but Mama deserves more.

  Bump takes control of the chair and pushes me up a small ramp, where the livestock are loaded, past a few tight turns, until we finally reach the designated spot. Hilda helps him park the wheelchair in the aisle, and she and Diana take their seats. The crowd is growing by the minute, and the large outdoor arena is already filled. I can’t imagine where all of these people are going to sit. Bump stands next to me, and Hilda tells him, “You better squeeze on in, cowboy.”

  An announcer’s rehearsed voice punches the airwaves with precise diction. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending the services of Jack and Marie Reynolds. Please join us for an opening prayer.” He sounds like the ringmaster in the summer circus.

  Everyone stands but me. I am injured, of course, but if I really wanted to, I could stand for the prayer. I just don’t want to. I want to sit and watch the thousands who have removed their hats and bowed their heads and closed their eyes to ask God to bless the souls of my mother and my father. Strangers who don’t know the first thing about Jack and Mama. Or me. Spectat
ors here to witness a dual funeral in a rodeo arena. A show.

  I am reminded of the beautiful gypsy telling her story in front of the campfire. The story of their queen and the legendary crowds who attended her lavish funeral. Jack’s funeral will go down in history too, no doubt. Once again, Mama rests in his shadow.

  I want something to happen to make it all go away. But nothing will delay the inevitable. I listen to the prayer and fight the urge to scream out, like Jack at my brother’s funeral, “You pray to a madman. He’ll torture you, too. Just wait and see. Fools, all of you!”

  Instead, I blink back tears as sets of champion Clydesdales pull two sleek wagons out into the center of the arena. Diana reaches down and pats my knee and says, “It’ll be okay,” as cowboys, awkwardly dressed in suits and ties, work in sync to draw the simple wooden caskets out of the wagons and onto a center stage. Jack and Mama are side by side, still, quiet, and at peace.

  Thank goodness, no vendors are selling pickles and root beer. Mr. Tucker has managed to resist the temptation to turn the funeral into a moneymaking event, but still, I feel as though it’s all a big production. A spectacle for the masses. A lie.

  Mr. Tucker gives Jack’s eulogy. Tells the story about how Jack first came to work for him in the rodeo. Calls him a son. “They’ll never be any rider better than Jack Reynolds,” Mr. Tucker says. “Jack represents the fighter in each and every one of us.”

  Then Miss Harper, the sweet librarian, stands to say a few words about Mama. Shares her love of reading, how she knew the Bible back and forth. “Jack may have been a fighter. I can tell you that he was. But Marie, she was a survivor,” says Miss Harper. “Life threw hard blows her way. She did what she had to do. She got through one day at a time.”

  By the time they both finish, there’s hardly a dry eye in the stands. Diana leans down to my ear and whispers, “That was really beautiful, Millie. Would you like to say a few words?”