Everybody's Hero

by Karen Templeton

  "Joe! Joe!"

  Seth jerked—he hadn't even heard the Blazer pull up because he must've dozed off or something. Kristen, however, who'd gotten to her feet awfully fast for somebody with such short legs, was nearly over to the car by the time Seth pulled himself together. She was going on to Joe about how they'd been seeing pictures in the clouds, and Joe looked over and grinned for Seth as if he were real proud of him, which made Seth feel all warm inside and kinda sad at the same time. Then Dani came out onto the porch and said the enchiladas were just about ready, and sure enough, Seth got a whiff of green chili that made his stomach growl. So for the moment, things weren't too bad.

  But even he knew better than to trust in the moment.

  * * *

  Joe had to admit, a bellyful of his mother's enchiladas and homemade sopaipillas went a long way toward mellowing him out. At least enough to make him tolerable in polite company for a little while.

  "So," Danielle said, covering the leftover enchiladas with foil, "you thought any about where you and Seth are going to live after you finish up here?"

  So much for feeling mellow.

  "Not as much as I should have," he admitted, leaning back in his chair in the dining area. On the other side of the room, Kristen and Seth were watching one of the Spy Kids movies, both on their stomachs on the floor and their chins propped in their hands. "Although I should probably think about looking for a house since my apartment's only a one-bedroom."

  "In Tulsa?"

  "Where else?"

  "If you get this promotion, you mean?"

  "I'll get it, don't worry."

  "I'm not worried," his mother said mildly, stacking plates in the dishwasher. "Whether you get it or not. But don't count your chickens, mijo. Although a house would be nice. Someplace with a big yard, so Seth could have a dog, maybe." Then she slipped in, "Maybe we could find a house together."

  Joe knew he should say, "Sure, why not?" or something equally agreeable, but the words refused to budge from his brain.

  "It's not that outlandish an idea," Danielle said when he didn't respond, sparing him a glance as she opened the refrigerator to put the enchiladas inside. "I could help you with Seth. And it would be good for the kids, giving them time to get to know each other—"

  "Seth's not your responsibility," Joe said, then lowered his voice. "And you've got your hands full with Kristen as it is."

  She looked at him oddly, but then she shrugged. "It was just a thought," she said, and then his cell rang, cutting off anything further she might have said.

  "J-Joe?"

  "Taylor?" Instantly, every nerve cell went on full alert. "What's wrong?"

  "Oh, God, Joe—something's the matter with Oakley, he can't move his hind legs! I—I went to call him to go for a walk with me and he couldn't get up! I'm so sorry to bother you, but he's too heavy for me to get into the truck to get him to the vet and I tried everyone else but nobody's home—"

  "I'll be there in two minutes," he said, already halfway to the door.

  Chapter 14

  Joe pulled up in front of Taylor's and bolted from his car, leaving the engine running and his door open as he ran around to open the hatch. Taylor was sitting on the porch next to the prone dog, holding his huge head in her lap and crooning, "You hang on, you overgrown fleabag, you hear me?" over and over, periodically swiping at the tears streaming down her face. Joe'd never seen her look so completely destroyed, and it ripped him wide-open inside.

  "If you can just put him in the truck for me so I can get him to the vet—"

  He shot her a quelling look, then squatted down to stroke the dog's side. "Hey, you old pain in the butt," he said softly, "what the hell'd you do to yourself?" The dog made a funny noise in his throat, then lifted his head to schlurp a sloppy kiss across Joe's chin. "Yeah, I love you, too," he said, hefting the enormous beast into his arms and starting back toward the Blazer. "Only pardon me if I don't kiss you back, okay?"

  "What are you doing…?"

  "He'll be more comfortable in the Blazer."

  She didn't argue. Not that it would've done her any good. "I already c-called the vet's emergency number," she said, and he guessed from her voice she was shaking real bad inside. "He's m-meeting us there. It's out on the highway, about halfway to Claremore."

  "Yeah, I know where it is," Joe said, gently laying the dog onto the old blanket he always kept in the car, hearing the passenger side door slam shut in tandem with his closing the hatch. After he got in and gunned the accelerator, he said, "It's gonna be fine, honey, you'll see—"

  "And maybe it won't!" she said, her gaze jerking to his. "Not everything can be fixed, you know!"

  Despite knowing it was her worry talking, and not her, Joe couldn't help the bolt of pain that lanced through him. "I'm well aware of that," he said stiffly, "but predicting a bad outcome isn't gonna do any of us a lick of good, is it?"

  She yanked her head back around. "I'm sorry, it's just…"

  "You're scared, I know. It's okay." Dusk was rapidly giving way to dark; Joe put his headlights on, their straight beams' piercing the gloom a comfort, somehow.

  "Where's Seth?" Taylor asked suddenly, like maybe he'd forgotten him somewhere.

  "With my mom and sister. We were over there for dinner. And we were long since done," Joe said in a voice meant to cut her apology off at the pass, although whether it worked on Taylor or not remained to be seen. "He wanted to come, but I thought it was better if he didn't."

  "No," she said after a couple of beats. "Especially if…" She stopped.

  Joe glanced over, his insides cramping at the expression on her face in the murky light. "You got any idea what the problem might be?"

  She shook her head. "He was fine at dinnertime. At least, I thought he was. I'd taken him out with m-me when I went for a bike ride this morning, so I guess I just thought he was worn out from that, although…" She rammed a hand through her tangled hair, let it drop, then shifted in her seat as if she couldn't get comfortable. Finally, she unlatched her seat belt so she could twist around to touch the dog.

  "Put your seat belt back on, Taylor," Joe quietly ordered. "I don't need to be worrying about you as well as the dog."

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her give him an odd look before sitting around again and clicking her shoulder harness back into place.

  "You probably think I'm crazy, getting so worked up over an animal."

  Joe frowned. "Why would I think that?"

  A shrug was her only reply, giving Joe the impression she was having a struggle with hanging on to her emotions.

  "Honey," he said, not looking at her, "only a fool wouldn't understand how much of a friend Oakley is to you. When he hurts, you hurt. That's just logical."

  "Never mind that you called him a pain in the butt."

  "That's because he is." He looked over, so she'd be sure to see he was smiling. "But in my experience, most family members are pains in the butt. Doesn't mean we don't love 'em anyway."

  She contorted herself as much as the seat belt would allow to look back at the dog for a moment, then faced front again and said, "You ever have a dog as a kid?"

  Joe shook his head. "Nope. My father thought they were too much trouble. But then, he seemed to think his kids were too much trouble, too."

  His own response caught him off guard, although not nearly as much as it would have a few weeks ago, when he would have rather cut out his tongue rather than letting anybody see inside his head. But somehow, around Taylor, it didn't seem right keeping everything all bottled up inside the way he usually did. Except she didn't comment, which was unusual for Taylor, he thought. He looked over to see she'd turned her head.

  "Go ahead and cry, if you want," he said. "I can take it."

  Something like a laugh burbled from her lips before she said, "I'm not c-crying."

  "Well, that's okay, then. But should you want to, don't feel you have to hold it in on my account."

  She sat stone still for a c
ouple of seconds. Then she yanked open her purse and rooted around in it until she unearthed a package of tissues, barely getting out, "You may regret saying that," before the floodgates opened.

  One hand firmly clamped around the steering wheel, Joe reached over and cupped the back of her neck, letting his fingers tenderly massage that sweet little hollow under her skull, as if he could take all her sorrow and fear into himself, somehow, and bear her burden for her. Because while he'd been telling the truth about not being one of those men who got all weird when a woman cried, that wasn't the same as not being profoundly affected by a woman's tears. This woman's tears, in any case. It was just his nature to want to fix things. But like she'd said, not everything was fixable, a fact which wasn't always easy to accept.

  By the time they got to the vet's a few minutes later, though, her tears had more or less dried up, and she was more or less back to being the tough little thing he knew. The vet, a big, burly gray-haired guy of about fifty or so, came right out the minute they pulled up, swiftly removing Oakley from the back of the Blazer and carting him inside and on back to the exam room. After asking Taylor several questions, he then said he had a few ideas but needed to take some X rays to be sure. He said they should go back to the waiting room and he'd be out to talk with them as soon as he knew anything.

  Joe led Taylor out to the bare-bones waiting area; on a Sunday night, they had the place all to themselves. He steered her over to a padded bench, pulling her down with him and wrapping one arm around her shoulders. She seemed to think over the wisdom of this for a moment or two, then leaned into him. Other than the occasional dog yapping or plaintive, questioning meow from the back, the place was almost eerily quiet.

  "Now, see," Joe said quietly, "would you have been able to do this—" he squeezed her shoulder "—with any of those other people you'd tried to call?"

  She let out a little muffled laugh. "Probably not. Since their wives might not have understood. Well, I did try calling Sam Frazier, but we don't have that kind of relationship."

  Silence descended like a lead curtain, trapping on the other side all those unspoken questions both of them were dying to ask and neither was about to. Taylor suddenly pulled away to snatch a dog-earred—as it were—copy of Dog Fancy off the low table in front of them, madly flipping through the pages like she were going be tested on the contents in the morning. Joe calmly—on the outside, anyway, since anything having to do with relationships rendered him decidedly not calm—tugged the magazine from her fingers and said, "So what kind of relationship do we have?"

  "When I figure that out, I'll get back to you, 'kay? So give me back my magazine—" she plucked it back out of his hand "—so I can keep both my mind and mouth occupied before I get myself into any more trouble."

  Joe leaned over and riffled through the other mags, finally settling on a five-year-old U.S News & World Report. Some time later, Dr. Harrison came out, looking relieved.

  "X rays look good, no apparent spinal trauma or arthritis, so I went on a little search-and-destroy mission and found this." He held up a vial containing something that looked like a grape with legs. Taylor visibly recoiled.

  "Ohmigod. That's what got my dog?"

  "Tick poisoning is rare, but it does happen," the vet said. "For some reasons, a few of the buggers secrete a toxin that causes paralysis. And possibly death, if not caught in time. You were smart to get Oakley in to me as soon as you did."

  Her hand went to her throat as she visibly paled. "I check him for ticks every single night in warm weather…how on earth did I miss one that size?"

  "With all those skin folds?" Dr. Harrison chuckled. "Don't beat yourself up. Took me nearly twenty minutes to find it, too. And we doused Oak with tick spray, too, just in case the critter brought buddies to the dinner party." Then he went on to say he'd given the dog a painkiller and some antibiotic, he wanted to keep Oakley overnight but that the dog should be up and moving again within hours. So Taylor was to go on home and put her mind at ease since, in all likelihood, the dog was going to be just fine.

  "You're sure?" Taylor said, and Joe could see it was going to take some convincing to get her to leave, but the vet smiled and said, "I imagine you'll be cussing him out again in a day or two at the most," which seemed to assuage her enough for Joe to at least get her outside and back into the truck. But she kept her eyes on the clinic until they were too far away for her to see it anymore. Then she turned around and sighed.

  "I really am pathetic," she said, and Joe got irked with her and told her if she said that again…well, she just better not, was all.

  Got a little laugh out of her, though. Then she remarked again about the grossness of the swollen tick, and Joe—knowing full well what he was doing—said it was a shame, though, the vet hadn't popped it so they could've seen the blood spurt all over the place. Sure enough, she let did this whole shuddering, "Ick! Ick! Ick!" thing, her hands waving wildly in the air, which he found every bit as entertaining as he'd hoped. Then they both laughed, her with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head, and she may have mumbled something about men never growing up. Since she didn't seem unduly perturbed, however, he didn't take her comment too seriously.

  Even though it was closing in on ten o'clock, he figured he'd better call his mother and Seth and let her know what was going on. Except Danielle said Seth had fallen asleep on her bed a half hour before and under no circumstances was Joe to disturb him.

  "You just leave him be," she said when he tried to protest anyway. "I'll sleep out here on the sofa bed. Then I'll take him on over to camp in the morning." Then she lowered her voice. "Kristen's been asking me if she could go, too, but I didn't know if it would be okay or not, so I didn't say anything. But since you're with Taylor, could you ask her?"

  "Ma, it's for little kids."

  "Your sister wouldn't care. And you know, the more she gets out and interacts with people, the better it is for her."

  By now, Taylor was whispering, "What is it?" so he finally told his mother to hang on and asked her about Kristen coming to day camp.

  "Oh," Taylor said. She thought things over for a second or two before saying, "I don't see why not. We have visitors all the time."

  "I heard," Danielle said. "Tell her thank-you and we'll see her tomorrow," then she disconnected the call without saying goodbye, which was nothing unusual for his mother.

  "Seth fell asleep over there," he said, slipping his phone back in his shirt pocket. "So it looks like I don't have to rush back to get him." Which he realized could have definite…overtones. Now the question was…did he want them to?

  He felt her gaze on the side of his face and glanced over. "What?"

  "How long have you been beating yourself up for not being able to accept your sister's condition?" she said gently.

  He nearly drove off the road. Feeling his jaw tighten as he reclaimed control of the vehicle, he said, "I have no idea what—"

  "Joe. This is me you're talking to."

  The odometer clicked over another mile. Then he said, "A long time."

  "Because it's something you can't fix?"

  "Maybe. I never stopped to analyze it, you know?"

  She laid a hand on his wrist and said simply, "It's okay," and then promptly changed the subject. "You really shouldn't talk on your cell while you're driving, you know."

  He looked at her as long as he dared, and not because of the cell phone comment, then smiled and looked back at the road. "That wouldn't be you being worried about me, would it?"

  "You? Heck, no. I'm the one sitting in the death seat."

  "Never mind that it's been a good five minutes since we've passed another vehicle."

  "There are other things to worry about. Like deer, and…" She made a circular motion with one hand. "And cows…and…things that, you know, appear unexpectedly. From out of nowhere."

  "I'll be sure to keep an eye out," he said, not even trying to hide his smile. "But in any case, I wouldn't worry if I were you." He nodded toward her
side of the dash. "Airbags."

  "Ah. So what you're saying is, if we crash because you're distracted on a phone call, I might still end up with two broken legs, not to mention nasty airbag burns, but hey, I'd still be alive."

  Joe actually considered keeping his thoughts to himself, but apparently, thinking about it and actually following through were two different things, because he heard himself say, "Honey, believe me…as long as you're sitting beside me, distraction-wise, the cell phone is the least of your worries."

  "Oh," was all she said, but Joe figured there was a lot more where that little word had come from.

  A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of her house, the atmosphere was suddenly—well, not so suddenly, actually—charged between them. The air was thick and sultry and honeysuckle-scented, the kind that clung to your skin. Crickets chirped and peepers peeped and neither of them made a move. Or said anything for some time. Until finally he heard the sharp intake of her breath, followed by a breathy half laugh.

  "The place seems so…unfinished without Oakley." She looked out the window. "Like half the porch is missing."

  Slowly, Joe reached over and skimmed a knuckle down her cheek.

  "I don't have anywhere I have to be tonight," he said softly.

  She turned to him, smiled and said, "Oh, yes, you do."

  * * *

  Thank you, Lord, Taylor thought as Joe followed her into the dark, still house, for letting Joe be the one to suggest he stay. And not just because I'm thinking about sleeping with him again, she hastily added, but because I really don't feel much like being alone right now.

  She could practically hear a voice from above going, Uhhuh. Right.

  Okay, so if things went in that direction, she certainly wouldn't mind, but it was true. She didn't want to be alone, and Joe was who she wanted to be with, but there was no way she was going to do the needy female bit. So Joe's taking the lead had been a profound relief.