by Pamela Morsi
“Not for me,” he assured her. “I’m like an athlete. I mean, skateboarding is a sport and all.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen those competitions on TV,” Sierra said. “Where they go up and down those ramp things and twirl the board around.”
“Well, yeah, those competitions are interesting,” he said. “But they’re really kind of setups. I’m into street skating. Ramping, that’s really like ancient history nearly.”
I was honestly surprised at how well Sierra was able to talk to him. It was my experience that her topics of conversation were limited to soaps, celebs and clothes. But she asked him question after question about skateboarding and he talked and talked about it.
Finally he got around to the purpose of his visit.
“I thought maybe we could like catch a ride out to the cineplex and take in a movie,” he said.
“Yeah, sure. I guess we could catch a ride. Most of the guys I date have cars,” Sierra told him.
I knew for a fact that she’d never had a car date in her life.
“I’m getting a car next year,” Seth bragged. “As soon as I get my license. But for now, these four wheels get me pretty much wherever I want to go.” His bravado wilted somewhat. “Except for the cineplex. I always have to catch a ride to get there.”
Sierra giggled. “And I don’t think a skateboard is really made for two.”
He laughed, as well. “We could try.”
Seth jumped up and offered her a hand up. He put the skateboard on the sidewalk and began laughing as they both tried to stand on it.
“Your feet are just way too big,” she complained.
“Well, stand on top of them,” he said.
They continued to try to maneuver. It was easy to see that the real purpose of this was for Seth to have a perfectly good reason to put his arms around her waist. It was why they kept up the clumsy, silly attempts.
“Spence!”
We heard Mr. Tegge calling out from downstairs.
“Spence, your mother’s on the phone.”
He pulled his headphone out of his ear and handed it to me. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
I watched Sierra and Seth for another minute. Then I caught sight of Vern heading out to Mrs. Leland’s garage office. I turned the little umbrella in that direction, pointing straight into the doorway.
“Busy?” he asked her and he walked in.
“Just sorting through some tombstone photos from that cousin in Scituate,” she answered.
“I think church went very well,” Vern said.
“You don’t expect much, do you?” Mrs. Leland scoffed. “She went only because we insisted and she was minimally polite. She couldn’t even manage a smile for Del. That woman is never going to fit in here. She never has and she never will.”
“Phrona,” he said, his tone pleading. “I’m not letting those girls go a second time. You ran Dawn off thirteen years ago. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
“There is nothing that I can do if she is not going to try,” Mrs. Leland said.
“You can try,” Vern said.
“I’m not sure it’s worth it,” she said.
“It’s worth it to me.”
There was a long silence. I adjusted the receiver, worried that I wasn’t picking up what was happening. Then Vern spoke again.
“You have to admit, the girls are wonderful,” he said.
Mrs. Leland sniffed. “Well, the older girl is certainly biddable enough and pretty,” she said. “The younger one doesn’t cause any problems. And she seems to have made friends with little Spencer.”
“They have names, Phrona,” Vern told her. “Dakota has Sonny’s looks and Sierra has his disposition.”
“And they both have their mother’s low-class, trashy ways,” she said.
“I’m ashamed of you,” Vern said, sharply. “Does a background really matter that much to you?”
“It’s not a background,” she answered. “It’s never been that. Not the day I met her, not today. The woman is incapable of forming a bond. She’s been living like a gypsy her whole life and as soon as she’s better, if she gets better, she’ll be off on the road one more time. And her daughters will grow up to be just like her. Bubba chasing butterflies, flitting from truck stop to truck stop as time marches on.”
“Face facts, Phrona! These girls are our family,” he insisted. “The only family we’ve got that exists in more ways than a name on a genealogy tree.”
“You’re the one who needs to face facts, Vernon. Our son was our family. He’s dead and that’s the end of it,” she said. “All of this heritage, from the Puritans, the Revolution, a new nation and the taming of a continent, our family’s history is the history of America. But it all came down to one gray day in the forest thirteen years ago and it ended.”
“My son is dead. I know that,” Vern said. “But I’m not dead and neither are my granddaughters. If you’re determined not to have a life, nobody can stop you.”
Suddenly Spence plopped down beside me. “I’m back.”
I jerked the earphones out and turned the receiver back toward the street, pretending that I was still listening to Sierra and Seth.
SONNY DAYS
17
It had happened so fast, yet in memory every moment was distinct, clear, vivid. The broken piece of limb was coming right at him. The jagged edge as dangerous and deadly as any spear that had ever been thrown. In that instant, Sonny believed that he was taking the last breath of his life. It was all over. He would never see Dawn or Sierra again. He would never know the face of his daughter, yet unborn. This was the end of his life. A stupid, tragic accident on a gray, October morning.
Then, inexplicably, a broad-shouldered back, clad in a flannel shirt and bright-orange safety vest, blocked his sight. The impact of the limb knocked him backward. Then he was staring up into leaves and branches with a heavy weight upon his chest.
His first feelings were of confusion. He was amazed that he was still alive. He was light-headed, dazed. But through his personal fog he could hear the sounds of orders being shouted and the scrambling of people around the area.
“If we get a choke chain on it we can drag it off with a tractor,” he heard someone say distinctly.
“That could injure them worse. Let’s do it by hand. Cut these back and we’ll heave it off.”
The branches above him began to move and something cut deep into his chest.
“I’m here!” he screamed. “I’m alive.”
There was jerking and shaking of the leaves all around him as the branches were broken away.
“Oh, hell, no,” he heard someone say. It sounded like Lloyd.
Then he saw Caney’s face above, his brow was furrowed and his complexion sallow.
“We’re going to get him off of you,” he said.
“Him? Who?”
“Lonnie,” he answered as he grabbed Sonny under the armpits. Somebody counted to three and Caney pulled.
Sonny glanced down toward his boots and saw the top of Lonnie’s bald head and the shoulders that had stepped in front of him. He realized that the weight on his chest had not been just the tree, it had been Lonnie, as well.
“Is he all right?”
Caney didn’t answer that. He dragged Sonny some distance from the fallen tree.
“Just lay here quietlike,” he told him. “We don’t know how bad you’re injured. By now they’ve got an ambulance on the way and the paramedics will come up and get you.”
Sonny watched as Caney headed back up to the accident. He stopped by the side of the trail and threw up. There could be no more implicit indication that the circumstances were bad.
Nobody said anything to him about Lonnie. Not the guys on the crew, not the ambulance attendants, not the people in the emergency room. But they didn’t have to. Sonny saw the accident again and again in his mind. He saw the jagged, killer limb coming toward him. He saw his friend step in front, taking the brunt of the force.
&nbs
p; “Lonnie saved my life,” he told Dawn later in the hospital. “He stepped in front of me on purpose, killing himself and saving my life.”
She didn’t dispute his claim. How could she? His chest had a shallow, three-foot-long gash in it where the limb had pierced his body. It had gone completely through Lonnie to get there. Sonny’s leg was badly broken and required surgery and a set of metal screws. He was a mass of small cuts and bruises. But he was alive. Lonnie was not.
Sonny’s parents came to the hospital the next day. He was so glad to see them. He had missed them, though he hadn’t until that moment realized how much. After they tearfully, anxiously assured themselves that Sonny was all right they both relaxed.
“We tried to come see you last night,” his mother said. “Your wife wouldn’t let us in.”
Vern shushed her with a warning look. Sonny actually smiled.
“Mama, she’s scared and she’s alone,” he said. “You’re right about her. She doesn’t know how to have a family. We’re just going to have to teach her.”
His mother was momentarily speechless.
“She’s home with Sierra this morning,” he said. “She didn’t have anyone to baby-sit for her. Last night she left her with a neighbor, but she can’t just do that with people she hardly knows.”
“No, certainly not,” Phrona said, haughtily.
“That’s what I mean about not understanding family,” he told her. “She should know that you and Dad would gladly keep Sierra for us. Especially in an emergency like this.”
His mother, obviously, didn’t know what to say. But his father did.
“Of course we would. And we will,” he said. “I’ll go give her a phone call. We’ll go by and pick up our granddaughter on the way home. That way Dawn can spend the entire afternoon and evening with you.”
They kept Sonny in the hospital for five days, though they let him out on furlough the morning of Lonnie’s funeral, which he insisted upon attending.
They all went, his parents, his wife, his daughter. Vern rented a minivan, which was easier for Sonny to get in and out of. They traveled together, through gray misty weather and the gloom of low clouds. Lonnie’s family lived in Strawberry Plains. The sanctuary at Assembly of God was packed to capacity.
Perhaps because it was known that Sonny had been in the accident, or maybe just because it was convenient, the Lelands were directed toward the front of the church. They were seated right behind the Beale family, with Sonny in his wheelchair in the aisle.
He would have known Lonnie’s children anywhere, Sonny thought. The two older girls were pretty, just as he’d said. And the boys all looked like younger versions of the man himself.
The preacher talked about Lonnie’s love for his late wife, his devotion to his children, his kindness among those in his community. Sonny was drowning in guilt. When he looked at Lonnie’s family, he felt terrible. But when he looked at Sierra all sweet and smiling and Dawn, nearly big enough to burst with the new baby, he was so grateful to be alive.
They filed past the open casket. Lonnie, barbered and wearing a suit and tie, looked only vaguely reminiscent of the man that Sonny knew.
After the graveside service he had Dawn wheel him over to talk to the family. The oldest daughter’s name was Tonya.
“I wanted you to know that your father saved my life,” he told her.
The story came out of him exactly as he remembered. It felt good to tell it, to share the obligation of remembering it. Sonny opened his shirt and showed the still red and angry scar from the limb that had passed through Lonnie’s body.
Sonny’s recitation was such a relief. But Lonnie’s teenage daughter didn’t look as if she were comforted.
“Do you think he did it on purpose?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sonny told her. “Of course he did. He was very brave and noble.”
“But we needed him,” Tonya said, her eyes welling with tears. She gestured toward her brothers and sisters in and around the green awning that sheltered their father’s grave. “How will I keep our family together without him?”
Sonny had no answer for her.
With Sierra to care for, Sonny on a walker and Dawn poised to give birth any moment, Vern suggested that Sonny and his family temporarily move in with them. Both Dawn and Phrona were horrified with the suggestion, but Sonny accepted so quickly that neither had time to make an open protest. Not that complaints were not made to their respective husbands.
Dawn declared adamantly that she “would never set foot in that woman’s house.”
Sonny could tell from Vern’s haggard expression that his mother’s objections were relentless. But on the day of his release from the hospital, Sonny, Dawn and Sierra moved into the Leland house. The two women coped by having as little interaction as humanly possible and not passing one word between them. The atmosphere was tense, occasionally hostile. But it didn’t seem to bother Sierra, who blossomed under the constant attention.
Rocky loved the big backyard. And although Phrona complained about having an animal in the house, she fixed him a bed in the laundry room and made sure he always had food and water.
Sonny’s boyhood room was on the back of the house with its own doorway to the garden. But the front bedroom with a wide bathroom attached was the most convenient for convalescing. It was a small area for three people, but Vern immediately conceived the idea of enclosing the adjacent porch to add nursery space.
The renovation work was relatively minor and Vern paid a bonus to get it done quickly. It was all but finished the day Dawn went into labor.
She had seen the doctor the previous day. He’d pronounced her healthy and stable, and that she was at least another week away from delivery. So, Vern and Sonny felt perfectly safe when they headed out to an appointment with the orthopedist.
The two sat in the waiting room for quite a while. Just talking, waiting. It was almost strange—what a golden time it was for them. To simply chat as father and son was a luxury both had missed.
“I don’t think Mama and Dawn are ever going to like each other,” Sonny told his father.
Vern nodded. “It’s amazing how much bad blood they’ve managed to conjure up between them in such a short time. But I wouldn’t worry too much. You know that no woman, not Madame Curie or Mother Teresa would be good enough for her son. Keep that in mind.”
“I considered asking them out,” Sonny joked. “But I worried that Ms. Curie was a bit old for me and Mother Teresa really had her heart set on being a nun.”
The two laughed together.
“Dawn does have her problems,” Sonny said more seriously. “Sometimes I think she’s like a wounded bird. But she’s my wife and the mother of my kids. I love her. She’s smart and funny and full of energy. She has potential to create a happy, full life for herself.”
“If she loves you and the children,” Vern said, “then I think that wounded bird has everything she’ll need to fly again.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Sonny said.
Vern wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulder.
“When I think about the accident,” Sonny told him, “I think about not being here for her. I just really worry.”
Vern nodded. “That’s part of it,” he said. “When you take on the responsibilities of a wife and kids, worrying about them just comes with the territory.”
Sonny agreed. “But if something did happen to me,” he said, “I know I could count on you and Mama to help Dawn. She’d have a hard time raising those kids alone.”
“Of course we’d be there for her,” Vern assured him. “Just like I know that when I’m gone, as long as your mother is still living, you’ll take care of her.”
“Well, of course,” Sonny said. “That’s what family is all about.”
“Yes.”
The doctor took X rays of Sonny’s leg and was pleased at how well the bone was healing around the metal screws.
“You can start putting a light weight on that leg,” he told him. “But take it
easy.”
Sonny exchanged the walker for crutches and felt considerably lighter. The mood on the way home was jovial and carefree. When they pulled up in the driveway, they were surprised that Sonny’s car wasn’t parked there.
His brow furrowed. “I don’t think Dawn ought to be driving,” he said.
“I hope she and Phrona didn’t have some kind of falling out.” Vern worried. He pulled up closer to the garage.
Sonny immediately opened the door and began the slow, careful process necessary to get out of the car.
“Wait!” his father said. “There’s a note on the back door.”
Sonny stayed where he was, craning his neck to see what was happening. Vern hurried to the back step, pulled the note off the door, read it quickly and rushed back to the car.
“Dawn went into labor, they’re at the hospital,” he said.
Sonny shut the passenger side door and reattached his seat belt. His father was already backing out of the driveway.
The afternoon traffic was already picking up and it was slow going as they got closer to the hospital. They were stopped at a traffic light when the showcase from a shop window caught Sonny’s eye.
“Pull in here,” he said.
“What?”
“Pull in here.”
Vern did as he was told.
“You want me to get something?” he asked Sonny.
“No,” his son said. “I want to do this myself.”
Sonny managed to get out and hobble into the flower shop. In only a couple of moments he was headed back to the car with a huge bouquet of yellow roses tucked under his arm.
Vern helped him into his seat. The fast-paced exertion was tough on him, but he looked happy.
Cutting through on side streets, Vern managed to make up some time and they were at the E.R. entrance to the hospital in no time.
“Get out and go find your wife,” Vern told him. “I’ll park the car.”
With directions from an orderly he passed in the hall, Sonny found his way to the birthing center.
“My wife, Dawn Leland, is here somewhere,” he said.
