Little Town, Great Big Life

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  Belinda yelled, “Lyle? Lyle!”

  “Yeah?” He was getting all confused, holding the phone and trying to put the car into gear.

  “This just happened so fast. I am already headin’ for the hospital.”

  “You are what? Wait! I’m comin’…you…wait!” he ordered, pointing at the air.

  “Well, Lyle, I cannot tell this baby to wait. She is comin’, and I am not gonna have her in this car! If you want to join me at the hospital, you come on there!”

  Belinda snapped the phone closed and threw it on the seat beside her as another contraction swept her.

  Gripping the wheel with both hands, she remembered to pant and attempt to relax, as she had been learning in her birthing classes. As the contraction eased, she whispered, “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I’m gettin’ you to the hospital. Mama is takin’ care of you.”

  She punched the gas pedal.

  Belinda had driven the highway all her life and knew every inch of it, where to slow down and where to go like the wind. Her Chrysler 300 easily passed a large John Deere towing a cotton wagon, and two oil-field pickup trucks in a row.

  Just then she heard a siren. In the rearview mirror, she saw a patrol car’s lights flashing. Lyle’s car, with Lyle at the wheel and all but pushing her bumper.

  Her cell phone rang. She managed to answer, hearing, “Lyle says pull over.”

  It was Giff’s voice.

  “I do not have any time to waste. Y’all just come soooonnn!” Another contraction. She watched the clock and saw they were barely a minute apart now. There had not been anything about such a rapid progression in any of the information she had read. What she should have paid more attention to was how to slow it all down.

  Lyle stayed right on her tail. He was afraid to pass her and end up in a race.

  Three cars ahead of Belinda heard the siren and pulled off the road to let them pass. When she reached the edge of town, a city squad car appeared ahead of her, leading the way. They had to increase speed to keep ahead of Belinda.

  At the hospital emergency entrance a number of people hanging about turned at the sound of the sirens. They watched a police car, a Chrysler 300 and another police car come racing up. Both squad cars’ doors flew open, and policemen hopped out and hurried toward a woman who struggled out of the Chrysler. The onlookers wondered what she might have done, and at least one ducked behind a pillar, in case the woman had a gun.

  Lyle reached her first, and Belinda took hold of him. She was then amazed to see Andy Smith right behind Lyle’s shoulder.

  “What are you…?” But a wave of pain sent her bending over.

  Lyle swept Belinda up into his arms. Leaving the other men gaping at him, he strode easily to the double doors. Two men in white coats hurrying through the doors met him with a rolling bed.

  A bare ten minutes later, with a lot of yelling by almost everyone, little Desirée Jane entered the world, in the hospital, just as her mother had determined.

  Her father, unfortunately, saw it all and promptly fainted.

  Dr. Zwolle appeared around the curtain.

  Belinda sat up in the bed, lipstick refreshed, holding her precious bundle of joy, with Lyle leaning close.

  “So I hear you have a fine, healthy baby girl.” The doctor, smiling as big as if she were responsible, came forward to admire the baby that Belinda held toward her.

  The doctor took the baby carefully and talked to her as foolishly as all adults. Then she handed her back to Belinda. “You had this one easy as pie. You need to have a couple more.”

  “Maybe so,” Lyle said, grinning broadly at Belinda.

  Belinda quickly looked down into the face of her angel, running her eyes over her in an intensive search to catch anything wrong that the doctors might have missed.

  That evening Belinda was reminded of when John Cole had been in the hospital. At one point, there were fourteen people crowded into her room. Jaydee sat on one side of the end of her bed and Naomi Smith on the other. A short woman with her hair in a braided crown squeezed in, presented Belinda with a lovely wrapped gift and joined in the conversation. Belinda kept trying to recall who the woman might be. After some ten minutes, it was discovered that the woman was really the aunt of the woman in the next room. Vella returned her present before she left.

  It soon became apparent that one reason for the crowd in her room was the curiosity of everyone wanting to talk to Lyle about the bigger story of Andy Smith. Lyle was both a new father and a hero who had helped capture Andy Smith, or saved him, depending on the slant of the story and who was telling it, and effected the return of the carousel.

  Andy Smith, whose name was really, of all things, Ansel Sullivan, was also heralded as something of a hero, depending on the slant of the story. It turned out that Andy had been part of a gang of nationwide cargo thieves. The FBI had been watching him, until he went into hiding in Valentine. Working with the sheriff and John Cole in secret, Andy had made some calls that located the carousel but had also revealed where he was hiding out, and then the thieves had come after him.

  “We didn’t capture him,” said Lyle. “He about run us down to turn himself in.”

  “Well, he didn’t have any choice but to do that. If you’d had those fellas after you, you would have done the same,” said Jaydee. “They saw him and took off after him, and Munro grabbed one by the ankle and Willie Lee grabbed his other leg. Fayrene had just poured my coffee, and she screamed and poured coffee everywhere. Got it on my new shirt.” He pointed to his chest. “Then there was all this poundin’ from the kitchen. Andy had shut the back door, and Woody hit one of those fellas with a pan.”

  Everybody started chuckling and putting in remarks. Marilee said she came into the café right in the middle of the whole thing, and Julia said she heard it from next door, where she was delivering a package.

  “The sheriff and John Cole knew about Andy a number of days ago,” put in Emma. “John Cole can keep a secret.”

  “I talked to the FBI man a few weeks ago,” Vella said. “He came in the drugstore and just chatted. I knew he was somethin’ in the government.”

  “His ex-wife really wanted him,” Tate said. “She was the actual one in charge down t’ Dallas, and she sent those two fellas. They were not playin’ around.”

  “So Andy told where the carousel was? Is it…?”

  “Well, he only thought…”

  “I don’t think he…”

  “Poor Fayrene. Has anyone talked…?”

  No one noticed that Belinda did not say anything. As people talked, she would look up at the faces around her and catch snatches of conversation, but then her gaze and total attention would return to her newborn daughter.

  She kept studying the tiny fresh-born face, the delicate curve of her cheek and her velvet-soft skin, the tiny eyebrows, the fringe of imperceptible eyelashes. All the happenings of the previous hours, the mad dash to the hospital and all the excitement of discovering the truth about Andy and the carousel, none of that mattered one whit in the face of the reality of being a mother holding her child.

  Several times the nurses came to take the child to the nursery for testing. Belinda had all but gotten up and gone with them. She was the mother, and she was ready to slap people silly at the sound of her baby’s cry, which she was certain she could pick out above the others floating the short distance down the hall.

  Just then, she carefully laid her Desirée Jane between her legs and loosened the cotton blankets. She got hold of one of the tiny hands, marveling at how small and perfect it was.

  The tiny eyes came open, and Belinda gazed into them.

  “Look…her eyes are open,” someone said.

  “Hey, there…”

  “Are they blue?”

  “Only because she’s new…too early to tell for certain.”

  “Look at all that hair.”

  “She looks like Belinda.”

  “I think she favors Lyle.”

  Belinda looked ar
ound to see heads crowding around her own, adults making all manner of foolish faces and noises.

  Then her mother’s head came pushing up next to Belinda’s. “You need to wrap her up—babies like to be swaddled.”

  Her mother’s hands were suddenly there, taking hold of the blankets.

  Belinda pushed her mother’s hands away and cuddled the baby up close to her neck.

  Conversation began again around her.

  She could feel her mother’s eyes as she rocked Sweetie Pie back and forth.

  “I really think you should wrap her up,” said her mother. “Here’s a new blanket I bought her.”

  Belinda took the blanket and, with the voices twirling all around her, whispered to her daughter, “Welcome to your world, Sweetie Pie.”

  They were alone at last. The lights in the hospital room were low. Lyle, sitting on the chair, leaned on the bed, and Belinda bent near, with Sweetie Pie, as they now called her, sleeping peacefully between them. They kept gazing at her, then foolishly grinning at each other.

  Belinda said in a low but firm voice, “I have something to tell you.”

  Lyle’s eyebrows went up. His dear face regarded her expectantly.

  She took a deep breath and launched in. “I spoke with Winston. It was a dream, but it really was him. I know. And now I want to tell you…about something. I wish I had been able to tell you a long time ago….”

  She told him then. Everything. All about her heartbreak over the abortion, and how ashamed and fearful she had been all the months of carrying Desirée Jane, and on to what she had learned in the dream. When she finished, both she and Lyle were crying.

  He reached for her. “I love you, Belinda. There is nothing you can do to change that. I love you and always will.”

  And Belinda knew clearly in that moment that Lyle was one of the rare ones capable of such unconditional love, and that she was truly blessed by God. She was a woman loved, and more, she was at last a woman who knew how to let herself love.

  EPILOGUE

  From the Beginning,

  We’re All Looking for a Happy Ending

  THE DAY OF VALENTINE’S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION arrived. Everyone marveled at the weather—high of seventy-two, faint breeze and a satin-blue cloudless sky.

  All over town, those people who had attended several celebration committee meetings six months previously and remembered the arguing that had gone on about changing the date to late spring, said, in so many words, “Winston was right. November is lots better than if we’d waited until next June or July. We would have sweltered.”

  Belinda dressed her sleeping nine-day-old daughter in a pink outfit with frills and a cap, wrapped her in a pink blanket and put her in her pink-print car seat.

  “Looks like an explosion of pink,” said Vella, who had come to accompany Belinda and the baby to the park. Lyle had been gone since early morning, preparing for security and crowd control.

  “Oh…let me get some pictures. And of you, too.” Vella positioned Belinda. “I want to send some to my friend Gérard over in France.”

  Belinda smiled proudly for quite a few flashes. Then, “Okay, come on. I want to get there before Sweetie Pie wakes up and needs feedin’. Mama, you bring the stroller.”

  “I am Big Mama,” said her mother pointedly.

  When Belinda headed toward Main Street, instead of the park, Vella asked her where she was going.

  “To see if I can get Fayrene to come to the celebration,” Belinda said. “Woody said he could not get her to go.”

  “Uh-huh. And why should you be able to do it?”

  “I don’t know, Mama.”

  Belinda parked in front of the café. There were only three other cars parked on the street, although there was quite a bit of traffic going in the direction of the park. Leaving her mother in the car with the baby, Belinda hurried into the café.

  The café was empty of customers. Carlos and Luwanna sat at the counter, chatting.

  “Fayrene’s upstairs,” Luwanna told her, pointing with a curious expression.

  Belinda mounted the stairs. She had only been up to Fayrene’s apartment one time, and that long ago. She called out, “Fayrene…it’s Belinda.”

  Fayrene met Belinda in what appeared to be a small living room decorated so as to make Belinda feel she was stepping back in time to the seventies. No wonder Fayrene wore that awful blue eye shadow.

  “What is it?” asked Fayrene. Her skinny body was all tight, and her eyes were red, and she had a wadded tissue in her hand.

  “I want you to come join us at the centennial celebration.”

  Fayrene’s eyes widened, and then she turned her back. “That’s very nice of you, but I’m busy today. I have a café to run.” She sat and started putting on shoes.

  “Oh, come on, Fayrene. Luwanna and Carlos can handle it for a few hours. It isn’t like there’s any customers downstairs. Why should people come in, when they can get free barbecue and Coca-Cola out at the park? We’ve closed the drugstore for the whole afternoon.”

  “I don’t want to go…and with the drugstore closed, the café definitely needs to stay open.” She jerked her shoelaces.

  Belinda looked down on the top of Fayrene’s head, seeing the outgrowth of gray hair at the crown.

  “Are you gonna stay holed up in this café for the rest of your life? So, you made a little mistake about Andy. Things could have been a lot worse. Let it go and get on with your life.”

  “I feel like such a fool. Everybody is sayin’, ‘Fayrene lost another one.’ ‘She falls for everything in pants.’ You think I don’t know how you and everyone else has made fun of me forever? You just wouldn’t know how it feels to always make mistakes with men. You’re just always so certain about everything.”

  Fayrene finished tying her shoes and stood. Belinda found she had to look up at her.

  “Just ’cause I know how to appear not to make mistakes doesn’t mean I don’t make them,” Belinda returned in a similar bitter tone.

  Seconds of tense silence ticked by.

  Then, grabbing patience, “Oh, Fayrene, every woman alive has made mistakes with men, and every man with women. Every one of us makes all sorts of amazingly foolish mistakes. But that’s just how life is. And I say again, things could have been worse. You could have lost all your money and the café.”

  “I know, and it terrifies me. It’s all I’ve got.”

  Fayrene’s voice dropped so low with the last that Belinda only faintly heard the words. But she heard clearly the pain, and it unnerved her so much that she said the silliest thing.

  “All you lost was a bit of pride, Fayrene. But you gained so much more. You did get your books all caught up-to-date.”

  Fayrene shook her head.

  Belinda thought hard. “Sugar, when you think about it, Andy took refuge here. That says somethin’ good about you. You did a good thing. You pretty much showed him a better way of life, and saved him until he was willin’ to give himself up to witness protection. By what you did, you also probably saved our carousel. It really was all part of a larger plan.”

  Belinda was surprised at this idea popping into her mind. It was a very good argument.

  Fayrene glanced up with a sigh. “Well, good ol’ Fayrene. She gives men a place to rest and hide. I’ve been doin’ that all my life.”

  Then, frowning, she asked, “And what do you care, anyway?”

  “Lord a’mercy, I don’t know, but I do. We’ve known each other for as long as I can remember. And what would Lyle and I do without the café’s steaks and raisin pie? Who else in the world ever even heard of raisin pie? You think this café is all you have? Look, you and this café together are a part of this town, Fayrene. You have lots of friends who care about you—people depending on you to keep a halfway balanced state of mind. Now, go fix your makeup and come on with me and let them prove it.”

  Fayrene pressed her lips together.

  “Come on, Fayrene. You can sit with me and Oran…. Oran could
use some cheerin’ up. You are not the only one with problems, you know.”

  Fayrene took a breath, then headed toward the bathroom. “What’s wrong with Oran?”

  “Oh, you know, he gets those blue moods. It’s his war stuff actin’ up. We all got to cheer him up.”

  As she watched Fayrene touch up her face, she thought that her next project was going to be to get Fayrene to lay off the blue eye shadow.

  The stone-and-steel arch over the entry said Centennial Park and would for the next hundred years. To change the sign to read Winston Valentine Centennial Park would have required a brand-new purchase, and everyone agreed this was a foolish expenditure.

  “I don’t know what they are goin’ to call the park after a hundred years,” said Belinda, who became disgruntled all over again about the matter as she drove beneath the sign, following a string of vehicles ahead of her.

  Larry Joe Darnell was on parking duty. He waved her to a stop. “There’s a parkin’ space saved for y’all up by the carousel building. Got your name posted.” While bending to look in the window, he remained several feet from the car; likely he would never forget Belinda hitting him with a newspaper.

  In an effort to make up, Belinda blew him a kiss. Turning the wheel, she cut away from the line of traffic and took the curve toward the carousel building. Some distance down from the building, but at the curb, an empty space between the mayor’s and Jaydee’s cars appeared with a post and a sign reading: Blaine. Fayrene jumped out to move the sign, and Belinda pulled in to park.

  The women piled out of the car and began gathering the baby and all the necessary paraphernalia. Belinda loaded Fayrene down with lawn chairs and a picnic box. Just then Oran appeared.

  “Let me help you ladies.”

  Oran and Fayrene went on ahead, leaving Belinda getting Sweetie Pie and her car seat attached to the stroller, with her mother offering safety tips, as if Belinda had not already done it half a dozen times.