by Lisa Wingate
I felt myself bonding—with Sy, of all people. If he hadn’t been covered with sweat, sawdust, and garish tattoos, I might have hugged him. “Thank you.”
He stepped back, as if the expression of gratitude made him uncomfortable. “Oh, hey, it’s cool. Go on and look for the Tedster. Tell him I need my dolly back.” A lock of artificially blue-black hair fell over his eyes as he grinned impishly and headed off toward the living room. I hoped that, if my father woke up and found himself sitting with a rock-star-slash-construction-worker rather than Ifeoma, he wouldn’t go into shock.
I hurried to my car and backed out of the driveway, then continued down the street to the corner, where the construction sites came into view. I searched among the trucks, cement mixers, welders, stacks of brick, rock, insulation, and supplies. No sign of Teddy. One of the workers passed by the front of the building as I pulled up to the curb. I recognized him from my last visit to the site. “Excuse me.”
The worker—Boomer, I remembered now—stopped and looked over his shoulder, shrugging long dreadlocks off his chin. “Hey,” he said, seeming friendlier than during my previous visit. “You lookin’ for that guy that likes the paper cups?”
My heart skipped into my throat. “Yes.” Please let him be here. Please. “Have you seen him?”
“Hang on a minute,” he said, then he hollered into the building. “Rusty. His mama’s here.”
Rusty leaned out a second-story window, taking off his cowboy hat and swiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He waved, then disappeared and a moment later came out one of the doors. “He’s out back.”
Boomer motioned for me to follow as Rusty started around the corner of the building. Crossing the lawn and passing through the narrow alleyway between the condos, I tried to imagine why Teddy would have been here for hours, and why the crew would have allowed him to wander around the site. It was probably against company policy, and undoubtedly dangerous.
When we rounded the corner, my stomach dropped to my feet, and I instantly felt sick. In the shade beside one of the trucks, Teddy was curled up with his knees against his chest. His clothes and skin were covered with soil and stains, and his hair hung around his face in sticky, dirt-encrusted tangles. “Teddy?” I whispered, but he didn’t answer, just pulled his knees tighter and shied away. “What happened? What’s wrong?” My mind spun as I tried to imagine how Teddy could have ended up like this.
“Boomer got him a little upset, I think,” Rusty answered.
I turned on Boomer, clenching my teeth to contain my rising fury. “What did you do to him?”
Boomer fanned his palms at me, his eyes wide against his dark skin. “Hey, lady, I was just tryin’ to do my good deed for the day. I didn’t know the dude was gonna go all Rainman on me. I was comin’ back after break, and I seen him up by the school. He was pickin’ up trash and stuff by the fence, and the kids was throwin’ their Cokes over the wire, kind of like a game or somethin’. I guess it was a game. Dude was laughin’, runnin’ in and out from the street to see if he could get the cups before they hit him with stuff.” Squinting at me, he gauged my reaction, then squatted down next to Teddy. “It just didn’t seem right, okay? I didn’t mean to scare him. I just wanted those little butt-heads to know if they didn’t stop throwin’ stuff, I was gonna kick me some tail.” Shrugging the dreadlocks over his shoulder, he frowned. “I didn’t know the dude was gonna freak out. When I got him in my truck, he kept talkin’ on about Dolly bein’ mad. You Dolly? Anyway, I told him not to worry about Dolly, and dude just started rockin’ back and forth like this. He didn’t want nobody to mess with him, or nothin’. I had to get back to work before the foreman marked me late, so I just brung him here and let him set. I figured sooner or later, he’d get over it and go home.”
A baseball-sized lump rose into my throat as I squatted down next to Boomer. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to him, or to Teddy, or both. The sense of order that I’d started to cultivate came crashing down around me. I didn’t know what to do or say.
I sank down next to Teddy and covered my face with my hand, my hopes in freefall. I was fooling myself, thinking I had this situation under control, believing that I ever could. On any given day, despite the rules, despite the stacks of newly purchased plastic cups in the garden house, despite the hired help, despite the dangers, Teddy might decide to wander off in search of restaurant trash.
“Hey, lady, you all right?” Boomer asked, like he was wondering if he’d traded one emotional meltdown for two.
“We can help get him in your car, if you want,” Rusty suggested. When I didn’t answer, he leaned over my shoulder and said it louder. “You want us to help get him in your car?”
“Dude don’t want nobody messin’ with him,” Boomer warned, standing up. “He’s pretty strong.”
I shook my head, wiping my eyes as I struggled to think. Try to put Teddy in the car by force? Try to reason with him? Sit here until he finally stopped rocking and agreed to leave? Meanwhile, Ifeoma was searching the area, and my father was home alone with Sy.
“Teddy?” I said finally. “We need to go, all right? Daddy Ed might wake up, and we need to be there.” I reached toward him, but he pulled away. “Come on, Teddy, we have to go, so these men can get back to work. You can’t stay here.”
Teddy stopped rocking. From the building, someone hollered at Boomer, then spat out a string of expletives, asking where the nail gun was.
Throwing up his hands, Boomer paced a few steps away, then came back. “We gotta do somethin’, man. Foreman’s gonna come back any minute, and the dude can’t still be here.”
“Teddy.” I tried to make my voice low and firm. “We have to go now. Nobody’s mad at you, but we have to go.” Slipping my fingers under his arm, I folded my legs under myself and lifted upward as if I could single-handedly bring him to his feet. My skin bonded to his in a sticky film of dried soda pop.
Teddy whispered something, but I couldn’t make out the words.
I pulled on Teddy’s arm again. “Come on, Teddy. We can talk in the car.”
He didn’t budge.
“Want us to get him up?” Rusty offered.
Someone shouted for Boomer again. “Listen, I gotta go,” he said. “Holler at me if you need help.”
Teddy repeated himself a little louder. I leaned close, but I still couldn’t make out the words.
“Teddy, I can’t hear you.” I hovered somewhere between relief and frustration. At least Teddy was talking. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, and we’ll talk on the way home.”
Teddy shook his head vehemently, slanted a glance up at Rusty, then tucked his chin and leaned close to me. “I don’ got Sy dolly. Sy gone be mad.” His voice was hoarse from crying, still little more than a whisper.
I rubbed a hand over my collarbone, feeling my pulse go back to normal. “Sy’s not going to be mad. He’ll understand. We’ll buy him a new dolly.”
“Sy gone be mad. He gone be real mad.”
I tried a new tactic. “We’ll go find the dolly. Do you know where you left it?”
Teddy’s hands tightened against his chest, and he ducked away, as if he wanted to avoid the question altogether.
“I got a dolly you can borrow,” Rusty offered. I’d completely forgotten he was there.
“I think we’re okay, but thanks,” I said. If Teddy hadn’t been covered with dirt and dried soda pop, the conversation would have seemed almost laughable. “Where did you leave Sy’s dolly, Teddy? Is it at the school?”
Teddy shook his head.
“Did you park it somewhere along the way?”
Another negative response.
“Did the kids take it from you?” The image of Teddy running around the fence while kids threw trash at him made my skin burn with anger.
A look of apprehension pressed Teddy’s mouth into a frown, and he turned to me, his eyes wide, shifting nervously between Rusty and me. “The man get mad at the kids. He real mad.” He sucked in a quick breath a
nd his mouth began trembling. “I don’ wan’ get the kids trouble.”
“Teddy.” My body went limp, and I rested my cheek against his hair. It smelled sticky-sweet and earthy, a mixture of sugary syrup and catsup, dirt and sweat. “Teddy, you didn’t get the kids in trouble. They got in trouble because what they did was wrong. It’s wrong for people to do mean things to you, Teddy. It’s not okay.”
Teddy’s body relaxed against mine, sagging over my shoulder, his weight pressing me into the ground until I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.
“Boomer ain’t mad at you, dude,” Rusty reassured him. “Them little butt-heads just needed a lesson, that’s all. Rich little brats move in here, and they think they own the neighborhood. They’re lucky all Boomer did was yell at ’em.”
“Let’s just go home,” I whispered, pushing Teddy off my shoulder. “Come on, Teddy.”
He began gathering himself up. Rusty helped him to his feet as I stood waiting.
“Y’all be careful,” Rusty said, then headed back to work.
“Thanks.” The word was inadequate, but I didn’t know what else to say.
My body felt weak and rubbery as I led Teddy through the alley, then across the uneven dirt at the front of the construction site. My head floated somewhere above the situation, as if I were watching it rather than living it, as if all of this couldn’t possibly be real. I felt myself detaching from it as we climbed into the car.
“You mad, A-becca?” Teddy asked.
“No, I’m not mad,” I answered numbly. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted to drive home, lock myself in a room, and not think of anything. “I need to go home and sit down a minute. I don’t feel too well right now.”
“We gone get Sy dolly?”
I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “Where’s the dolly, Teddy?” Wherever it was, we were going to leave it and go back later.
“The church.” Teddy swung his finger in a general westward direction. “Past-er Al church.”
“The little white church?” I gasped. “You walked all the way to the little white church?” The church was even farther from the house than the school. “Teddy, why would you do that? Why would you walk all the way to the church?”
“I gone get com-pooter,” Teddy replied simply. Now that the crisis was over, he’d returned to his normal, cheerful manner. As usual, we were talking in two completely different universes. I couldn’t imagine how we’d moved from the dolly to the church to computers.
“What computer? If you wanted to go to the church, why didn’t you tell me? I would have driven you there. Teddy, when you want to go places, you have to tell me. You can’t just walk off.”
Shaking his head, Teddy threw his hands in the air. “You say, Teddy, go get it.”
“I told you to go get files, Teddy, in the house. What computer? What are you talking about?”
Teddy threw his hands up again. “Daddy Ed com-pooter. I gone get Daddy Ed com-pooter.”
All right, let me get this straight. “You took the dolly to the church to look for Daddy Ed’s computer?” How in the world did Teddy get such a crazy idea?
He nodded emphatically, relieved that he’d finally made himself understood. “You say, ‘It be easy we got Daddy Ed com-pooter, Teddy.’ I gone get Daddy Ed com-pooter.”
“At the church?” A painful tenderness flowed through me, left me warm with the realization that, whether it made sense or not, Teddy had pushed the dolly all the way to the church trying to do something for me.
He nodded again. “Kay-Kay take Daddy Ed com-pooter to church.”
My mind sharpened with the realization that Teddy’s actions weren’t as random as I’d thought. “Kay-Kay gave Daddy Ed’s computer to the church? When?”
“The big sale. Past-er Al church.”
My thoughts raced forward. “Big sale? Like a rummage sale? The church was having a rummage sale?”
“Yup,” Teddy confirmed. “Big sale. Lotsa stuff.”
“How long ago?” Could it be possible that the computer was still there, that I could get it back? “Did she take it before Hanna … your mom got sick, or after?”
“After Mama gone hop-sital.”
Alarm bells rang in my head. Why would Kay-Kay be taking things to a church rummage sale while Hanna Beth was in the hospital? “Did your mom ask her to?”
Teddy shrugged.
“When you went to the church today, did they still have the computer there? Did you talk to anyone?”
Teddy shrugged again. “Nobody there. No Past-er Al today.”
“No one was there?”
Teddy shook his head. I checked the clock on the dash as we pulled into our driveway. It was after five on a Thursday. Not much chance anyone would be there tonight, but tomorrow, I knew where I’d be first thing in the morning.
CHAPTER 22
Hanna Beth Parker
There was a new sense of urgency in me, a feeling that something wasn’t right. It stirred me in the dark hours of the morning, whispered, Get up, get out of bed, Hanna Beth Parker. You’re needed.
I struggled to decipher it, wondering if it was my imagination or a whiff of premonition. The sensation was uncomfortable, tight and tense like a muscle about to be knotted by a spasm. Had I dreamed something? Or perhaps there was a storm on the way, and I was only feeling the changes in barometric pressure.
Using the pull bar, I turned to the empty wheelchair, just a shadow in the dim hallway light. I wanted to rise up and wheel around in the darkness, check on things the way people do when startled from sleep by an unexpected sound—look in the corners, open the closets, make certain nothing was hiding there.
I felt as if I could do it. Yesterday had been a good day. After a session in the therapy room, Gretchen pushed me down to the commons area rather than returning me to my room.
“Might as well leave you here,” she said gruffly, but the corners of her mouth twitched, cracking her salty mask. “No sense going all the way back down the hall.”
It was wonderful to be out among people again, watching visitors and nurses come and go. Claude found me, and we played a one-sided game of chess in which Claude positioned most of my pieces for me, then we watched the Oprah show and the news. Mary came a bit later, and I took my supper with the ambulatory patients. My plate was liquid and mush, but I felt like a human being again, even though I still required help with the spoon. Mary’s boys came in from the van, and they sat with us, little Brady watching with consternation the spectacle of an adult being spoon-fed like a little child. He couldn’t understand that this felt like a triumph.
Mary chatted on about the construction at my house. Perhaps she was trying to explain why Rebecca hadn’t come today, but I understood. Rebecca had her plate full, and now that I could see a day ahead when I would be going home, these long, slow hours weren’t so unbearable.
“Teddy got car,” Brady offered, crinkling a brow as he tracked the slow progress of the spoon from the tray to my mouth. “He got wotsa car. Got blue car, red car …”
“Hey, one car, two car, red car, blue car,” Brandon observed. Mary laughed and ruffled his hair. It was good to see Brandon brightened up and feeling better, coming out of his shell a bit. He was still silent and sullen much of the time, like a little boy with too much on his mind, but the hollows were gone from beneath his eyes and his cheeks had a healthy glow. He laughed once in a while. Living on Blue Sky Hill with a yard to play in and a warm bed at night was good for him.
Mary looked better, too. Her hair was freshly washed, and she’d gained a little weight, not quite the sallow rag doll she’d been. Dr. Barnhill seemed to notice her when he passed our table. He smiled at Mary, and she fluttered her gaze away, folding her hands in her lap.
“Wee-da?” I asked, just to make conversation. I knew that Ouita Mae had left with a cousin two days ago to travel to Houston and make arrangements for having her things packed up and moved to Claude’s house. I missed my daily visits with Ouita Mae.
Claude tried reading my book to me, but everything reminded him of some old story, so it wasn’t a very successful endeavor.
“She’ll be back tomorrow,” Dr. Barnhill answered. Then he and Claude began talking about preparations at Claude’s house.
After a while, I asked Mary to take me to my room, and she obliged. She and the boys sat with me for a while, watching Wheel of Fortune. Little Brady even curled up in the bed with me, and I rested my chin on his head, drank in the little boy smells of sweat, and sand, and hand soap from the washroom.
It had been a good day yesterday, a good evening. Claude and I had watched the moon rise outside the window. He’d quoted an old poem I hadn’t heard in years.
Moonbright, moonbright,
Ah, so sweetly shines,
She swings her hair,
She swings her hair,
A bonnie lass,
A smile fair,
A fallen star,
She flies toward dawn.
My heart falls earthward,
Unaware.
He’d laughed and said he hadn’t remembered that verse since he was a boy, before he went off to the war.
I imagined that he was thinking of the pretty girl on her pinto horse. When he left, I fell asleep feeling boneless and weary, but content.
So why was I lying here in the darkness now, doom pressing down on me like the heavy lead cloak the dentists use? Why did I feel smothered, trapped, as if disaster were speeding around the corner and I was powerless to stop it?
I listened for Claude in his room next door, but there was no sound. I wished, for once, that the screaming woman would start into one of her tirades and wake him. I didn’t want to be alone, but I wasn’t sure why.
I pushed the nurse’s call for Ifeoma. She came a few minutes later. “Why do you lie awake now, missus?” she asked, checking me over.
“My houwse?” I didn’t have the words to express my vague unease. Even if I could have put together a full sentence, I couldn’t have expressed it properly.
“The house is good, but you must rest.” Ifeoma wasn’t one for nonsense. She was always efficient, seldom indulgent. “You must sleep now, missus. Shall I bring a medication to help you rest?”
