Royer put his hand on my arm and shook his head. Around us, the nurses began crying. The chief resident turned from the table, the perfusionist buried her face in her hands. Royer eyed the clock. His voice cracked. "Time of death, 11:11 p.m."
The tears came slowly. First a trickle, then the Tallulah. For the first time since Emma died, I set sail into the current. The years of muffled pain, unvented anguish, and stifled sorrow caught me and swept me toward the dam. When I got there, the water flowed over, cracked the concrete, and flooded the valley below.
I fell backward, sending my instruments flying across the room. I bounced off the sterile stainless-steel table, hit the floor, pulled my knees in under my chest, and could not breathe. I opened the eyes of my mind, pulled hard, but could not reach the surface. Below me, the old town of Burton reached up, caught my ankles, and pulled me downward toward the darkness and remnant. Struggling, flailing for the surface, I screamed at Charlie, at the medics to "charge to 300! " and then at Emma to "wake up!" "Hold on!" and "Don't go!" Then I thought of a yellow dress, of a yellow bow floating in the wind, of a little girl yelling "Lemonaaaade!" at the top of her lungs and how something had awakened in me the moment I saw her.
My body shook. I cried hard, out beyond the pain. With every wail, I paid penance for the guilt of my soul, for the sorrow that knows no end, and the shame that was me. It was there I realized there were some sins for which I would never quit paying.
Down in the green, murky coldness near the bottom, I saw Emma. She swam to me, and on her chest I saw no scar. She touched my chin, kissed my cheek, and pulled me up to Annie, lying still, cold, and dead on the table. As quickly as she appeared, she was gone.
Annie lay still, her chest a cold, open wound holding a lifeless heart. On the table next to me sat the pitcher of water. Out of several cracks, holes and crevices, it was leaking water across the table, which was spilling all about me on the floor. I tried to lift it with one hand, but it was too heavy. I leaned in, lifted it off the table, poured it over Annie. As I poured, the blood washed away. The more and longer I poured, the cleaner she became, but the heavier the pitcher felt. With every passing second, Annie's heart filled with blood, her chest began to close itself-no scar.
The pitcher pulled against me, growing too heavy. I slipped, regained my balance, and held the stream over Annie. Losing my grip, I screamed against the weight of it. The weight of everything. Unable to hold it any longer, I lifted it high and poured the water over us both. Standing in the waterfall, I bathed. And for one brief second, came clean. Then my fingers gave way and the pitcher came crashing down, shattering on the stone floor beneath us.
The sound shocked me. I opened my eyes, ripped off my mask, and the wet air filled my lungs. I gasped, coughed, and found the room awash in light. From the distance, Emma whispered. The echo reached out of the void that had been us and spoke and it was then, there, that the words returned. I stood over Annie, my tears falling onto her cold, gray heart, and whispered-the one thing I had not done.
If life is where the blood flows, then death is where it does not.
Chapter 54
ix weeks passed. The summer swell of peace-seekers had long since returned home, and the engineers cracked open the dam, dropping the level of the lake several inches. The quiet residue left in their wake spread across the water and brought with it the cold promise of a long winter. As winter progressed and water needs increased from Burton to Atlanta, the level would drop farther until next spring, when the rains would refill it.
With my home destroyed and the life I had come to lead changed forever, I returned, stood amid the wreckage, and sifted my hands through the rubble. Not much remained. Certainly, not much of worth. I found a few pictures and a couple of kitchen utensils, but little else. As best I could figure, the storm had picked up what was once mine and sent it scattering over the surrounding counties or dropped it in the lake north of us. The disheveled sight of every physical thing I had once held dear left me dumbstruck.
In hopes of finding anything that had been mine, I circled out from the house and spent three days searching the woods. Most of the trees were snapped in two about ten feet up, and all the tops were laid like pickup sticks across the landscape, making it difficult to get around. A couple hundred yards from the house, I found Emma's tub lying on its side with three of the four feet broken off. I ran my fingers along the edge, remembered Emma leaning her head against the rim and smiling at me as the steam rose off her face. I let it be. Another day and I called off the search. I never found the transit case.
After a week, I looked out over the lake-now clear of debrisand took it in. Maybe it was telling me something. I looked down in the water, saw my reflection, and decided it was.
I drove around the lake to my warehouse, pulled back the canvas, sneezed under a cloud of dust, and loaded up the trailer. By the end of the afternoon, I had made several trips and forced the return of my blisters.
Termite offered to help, so every afternoon when he got off work at the marina, he'd scream across the lake, beach his Jet Ski, and pitch in. The first day he showed up, he handed me several magazines. He shook his head and looked away. "I won't be needing these no more. I seen enough."
Most nights he'd work until midnight. He was tireless, and Charlie taught him, much as he'd taught me, how to turn and craft wood into something that, when finished, exceeded the sum of its parts.
While Charlie and Termite worked to rebuild the workshop and frame a new boathouse, I worked at cleaning up the mess. It took me the better part of a month. Finally, I hired a bulldozer and pushed what remained into a large pile. I got a burn permit, alerted the fire department (who sent a truck just in case), and then Termite lit the pile with a flick from his Zippo.
The fire burned for three days. The only particle of my past that remained was the shirt on my back and what hung around my neck.
We never found the Hacker. We found the engine and part of the steering column at the bottom of the lake beneath where the dock once stood, but the hull, cutwater, and most everything else disappeared into the whirlwind. The same went for most of our tools. We found power cords, a few screwdrivers, and whatever had been stored in the red toolbox, but on the whole, $15,000 worth of machinery had disappeared into the wind.
Oddly enough, the two-man shell that I had restored for Emma and in which she and then Charlie and I had spent many an hour, came to rest in the arms of a dogwood up the hill. Termite helped me pull her down. I patched up a hole in her hull, sanded her, applied several coats of spar varnish, and set her up to dry.
Charlie's house fared pretty well. It had been built into the side of the hill, and the tornado bounced over his house and lauded squarely on mine. He got hurt when he ran out the door to scream for us, only to be thrown back inside by the wind.
Since the day that Annie's heart died, I'd slept in a sleeping bag in the "cave" at the back of the woodshop. Most nights, when I turned out the lantern that lit my small world, Georgia appeared out of the night air, checked my nose, and then disappeared back to Charlie's side. I've heard that submarines deep in the ocean will send sound beacons to search each other out. Between Charlie and me, Georgia is that ping.
The purse stitch I had sewn into Annie's heart created quite a buzz in the medical world. Royer's phone had been ringing off the hook, but I asked him not to give out my number. He said, "It's time you get back on the horse that threw you."
IT WAS FRIDAY. I ROLLED OUT OF MY SLEEPING BAG AND WALKED out of my hole. The morning sun broke the skyline and sent the Sunkist screaming across the atmosphere. Standing on the bulkhead, watching the bream and bass dart below me, I watched my shadow stretch out across the water in front of me.
I jumped into the cold lake, washed off, and was standing in my birthday suit toweling dry when Sal walked down the steps and emptied his pipe. I pulled on my clothes and met him at the bulkhead.
He didn't look at me, but studied the lake, methodically packing his pipe. H
e lit it and puffed thoughtfully. Exhaling, he spoke. "Now that your secret's out, I've got something I want to say to you."
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
"I've been the only doctor around here for ... well, a long time. Probably too long." He looked at me. "It's time to pass the baton. But-" He nodded sternly and pointed the tip of his pipe at me. "I'm passing it to somebody who can run with it. Someone who understands new medicine, and who can offer it to these folks."
He painted the perimeter of the lake with his wafting pipe. "I'm talking about the high-tech stuff that only exists in places like Atlanta, Nashville, and New York." He paused. "I'll pay you the same thing I'm making. Sixty thousand. Royer says that's about a tenth of what you were making in Atlanta, but that's tough. I've never made more than sixty and besides, people around here don't have too much money. And as best I can figure, you ain't in it for the money."
He turned and began walking up the steps, scanning the lake again. Then he looked at me. "Folks around here need a good doctor, and you, boy, are a doctor. One of the best I ever seen.
"I'll wait to hear from you. Offer's open until you close it." He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his eyes. "I saw what you did with Annie. I was standing in the corner of the room." He shook his head. "Don't let the doubt get you." He poked me in the chest. "It almost got me, but ... well, if you're going to be a doctor, and I mean be a doctor, you've got to deal with that now. 'Cause it's not going to get any easier." He paused long enough to catch his breath. "But that's the thing about doctoring. It's not about you. It's about them."
He took a long look across the lake, then eyed my neighbor's empty house next door and Charlie's cabin across the lake. "And them," he whispered, "is worth it."
Sal walked away, climbed into his Cadillac, and drove off.
I dangled my legs over the bulkhead and looked across the finger of the lake where Georgia lay sunning herself just outside Charlie's front door. Her sprawling across the doormat was akin to a DO NOT DISTURB sign on a hotel door. Charlie had found Georgia useful, but not in all the ways I had anticipated. His new sleep schedule had been difficult to get used to, and made training for next week's Burton Rally all the more difficult. Some days we were lucky if we got on the lake by noon. Occasionally I went alone. Although, I'm not sure I've ever been truly alone on the lake.
Around ten, Cindy tiptoed down to the lake and dangled her legs beside mine. She was staying in a house up the road a couple hundred yards. My neighbor, a broker from New York, had rented it to me for the next couple of months. At least until we could find Cindy someone who would grant her a mortgage to buy someplace else. The process had been working more smoothly since I called the bank and told them I'd cosign.
Ever since the surgery, she had come down here daily about this time to check on me. In a sense, she was taking my pulsechecking to make sure I still had one. She seldom said much, but neither did I. She'd dangle a few minutes, soak in the sun, breathe deeply, and then disappear. We shared something now that few others did or could. I'd often spot her down here at night as well, walking along the bulkhead. I guess the quiet soothed her. We both needed some of that.
After a few minutes, she turned to me and said, "Your turn or mine?"
"Mine," I said, smiling, knowing full well that she knew whose turn it was.
She nodded, hid her smile, and leaned her head back, closing her eyes behind the sunglasses that had been propped on top of her head. I walked up the stone walk and out the gravel road that led from where my house used to stand, and would one day stand again.
At the neighbor's doorstep I took off my shoes and crept silently to the door of the master bedroom on the first floor. The windows all around the house were open, and a gentle breeze brought fresh air into the house. I pushed open the door, and there, propped in bed, eyes closed, and face flush under the warmth of too many blankets, lay Annie.
I knelt next to the bed, and her eyes opened. "Is it time?" she asked.
I nodded.
She opened her mouth, I placed the two pills on her tongue and held the glass of water for her to swallow. She blinked lazily and whispered, "I had a dream."
I leaned closer.
"I met your wife. She was walking along the lake."
I nodded. "It was one of her favorite places."
"Then she did the strangest thing."
"What's that?" I said, taking her temperature and counting her pulse.
"She knelt down next to the water, lifted out a little boat, and gave it to me."
"That's not so strange."
"No, that wasn't the strange part. It was the sail. It was made from a letter. One she'd written to you."
I had never told Annie about Emma's letters. Other than Charlie, no one knew about them.
I checked Annie's bandages, pulled the covers up around her neck, and tucked her in. I kissed her on the forehead, crept out, and pulled the door behind me. Walking down the back steps, I bumped into Charlie coming to read to Annie. He had Eloise in one hand and was feeling his way up the steps.
When he heard me, he stepped out of the way and said, "Been looking for you."
"Yeah?" I said doubtfully, knowing by the look of his hair that he'd just woken up.
"Yeah," he said. He reached up, ran his fingers across my face, held them there for a moment, and then squeezed my cheeks in an attempt to point my face and eyes toward his. When he was sure he had my attention, he cracked the book he was carrying and slipped an envelope from inside. "She said I'd know when to give this to you. Best I can figure, it's time."
Emma's handwriting was unmistakable. I snatched it out of his hand. "She gave this to you?" I said in disbelief.
Charlie nodded.
"When?"
"'Bout the time she and I drove to town and opened that safedeposit box."
"You knew about that all along?"
"Yup
"When were you going to tell me?"
Charlie shrugged. "I wasn't."
I stared at the envelope. "You got any more secrets I need to know about?"
Charlie smiled. "Not at this time, but I'll keep you posted."
I ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter.
Dear Reese, If Charlie's given you this letter, then you've met someone.
I looked at Charlie in disbelief.
I asked him to hold it until he saw you wanting to offer that tender heart of yours to someone else. Don't worry. There's enough love in your heart for two women, and when you get here, we'll let God sort it out. Whoever she is, she is blessed and better for it. Reese, never forget that you were born, and sent ... to bind up broken hearts. I know. I've always known.
I looked out across the lake and heard Emma's whisper.
Reese, don't hold it in. Please don't live any longer in pain and loss. Remember, I'm better now. I'm me. When you get here, you 71 see. But between now and then, offer the gift that is you.
I was thinking yesterday of how the water looks whenever we go rowing. The wake disappears, the ripples from the oars fade into the shore and are erased forever. Life on the water, there's never any past. And upfront, the view is all future.
I love you. Always will. Death can't take that away. Now, go. And live where the life flows.
Ever yours, Emma
Charlie looked at me. "Well?" He raised his eyebrows and searched the sky for flashes of light. Waving his head back and forth, he asked, "What's it say?"
I smiled, tucked the letter inside my shirt, and held his hand up to my face, where his fingers traced the lines of my smile and felt the slippery tracks of tears cascading down the cracks. I whispered, "Charlie ... I can see."
I jumped off the porch, landing on a pad of evergreen needles, and ran flat out. I flew through the woods, the tree branches pulling at me, and jumped over the downed trees like hurdles. I slid down a small hill and felt the earth give beneath me. Somewhere above me, I flushed a mourning dove that rocketed through the treetops li
ke a jet. I reached what used to be the dock and would be again and dropped the shell into the water. I zipped up my shirt, the letter pressing against me, strapped in my feet, and pulled hard on the oars.
The shell jumped forward. I pulled again. Three more long, deep pulls and the Tallulah caught me. I dug in, arching my back against the water. The water pulled back, but I dug in deeper and pressed hard in with my legs. Lighter without a second person, I glided atop the water like the breeze. Within minutes, sweat stuck the letter to my chest.
Crouching into a spring, my knees tucked into my chest with arms extended, having sucked in as much air as my lungs would allow-I dug in. Pushing with my legs and starting the long pull with my arms, I exhaled. Fully extended, body bloated on lactic acid, I gorged on air as deeply as my lungs would allow. At the top of my pull, I lifted the blades and pulled my knees into my chest, once again sucking in air the entire way back down the boat. With each pull, I emptied myself, again and again and again.
On the water with Emma, one last time.
In our wake, circles appeared. They grew outward, overlapped, then disappeared completely. The sun warmed our backs, sweat stung my eyes, and the breeze pressed against us. Over my shoulder, the water spread out like polished ebony. I saw all future and a fading, and forgiving, past. And on the air, I heard the echoing whisper of Emma's laughter and felt the gentle touch of her fingers on my face.
I turned around at the dam, my head caked with sweat that trickled down my face, stung my eyes, and sat salty on my lips. The sun sat low and painfully bright. No man is an island. I pulled against the current and pushed my back into the breeze that would slow me. Three hours later, I returned, spent and clean.
(2006) When Crickets Cry Page 30
