The Wake Up

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  When he grew tired of waiting, Jed said, “Walt, you question the girl. And then the boy, when the doctors’re done with him. But not in the same room. Separately. I’m gonna take our suspect here downtown.”

  He moved toward Aiden, and Aiden stood and prepared for the inevitability of this next undignified moment. For a flash of a second, he swore he saw Jed place one palm on the handcuffs hanging from his uniform belt. But the hand moved away again. Aiden had been wrong. Or Jed had thought better of the idea. Jed took him by one elbow and led him to the open waiting room doorway. Aiden heard Gwen and Elizabeth arguing with the deputies. Pleading his case, most likely. But the words only sounded jumbled and far away.

  “Downtown?” Aiden asked on the walk. “What the hell is downtown? This place doesn’t have a downtown.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, Aiden. You knew what I meant and you know it. Now cut the crap and come with me.”

  Aiden waited for what felt like hours in a drab, tiny room. Just a worn and scratched table with an uncomfortable chair on either side. There was no clock to help him judge the passing of time. Aiden wondered if that was purposefully done—a way to make the subject of their questioning feel his life ticking away without ever being able to gauge how much of it was sliding through his fingers.

  Aiden’s stomach jittered as he waited. His hands were shaking again, but he was so used to that by now that he was only just barely aware of it. More obvious to him was the fact that they were bandaged—that he had several stitches in two places on each palm, where the barbed wire had torn deeply into his skin. And that they hurt. He had said no to painkillers, and his palms stung and throbbed.

  He fully expected to be handcuffed and taken to jail when Jed returned. On the one hand, it was all circumstantial. Just a bunch of coincidences. On the other hand, Aiden figured people went to jail over coincidences all the time. He just never guessed he would be one of them. I suppose nobody ever does, he thought, at the same moment Jed burst back through the door.

  “Okay,” Jed said.

  He sat down on the chair across from Aiden. Then he leaned back, causing the chair to creak ominously, and propped his feet up on the table. It struck Aiden as overplaying his hand in the body language department. Jed had a cigar in his mouth, but it was unlit. In fact, it had clearly never been lit. Jed chewed at the base of it. Aiden assumed there was no smoking in the sheriff’s office. If it had been allowed, he figured he’d be breathing noxious fumes right now.

  Aiden didn’t respond. What do you say to answer the word “okay”?

  “Well now,” the deputy said. “If that story you told me in the car is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . .” He paused. Chewed. “Then your new girlfriend’s son is one stupid-ass little boy.”

  Aiden felt his jaw drop. Literally. “Hey,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be talking about Milo that way.”

  Jed pulled the cigar free from his teeth. It was grotesquely chewed at the base, and slick with saliva. It made Aiden a little queasy to look at it.

  “Surprised to hear you say that,” Jed said.

  “Why would you be? It was a pretty rotten thing to say.”

  It struck Aiden that he had never much liked Jed Donovan. Seemed like something he would have known, and a thing that would not strike suddenly. Aiden had known the man for years, but only at the periphery of his life. He had never had any call to form much of an opinion. Jed was simply there. And Jed was what Jed had always been. But as the grind of Jed’s tactlessness and overall unlikability settled in on Aiden, it came as no real surprise.

  “I guess I more or less thought we were on the same page about the kid. So you don’t think he’s stupid? You have a right to your opinion. Just curious, I guess.”

  “I think . . . I think he was naïve. About cattle. He’s never lived on a ranch before. I guess he thought they were spooky. Didn’t realize they stand up for their young. But no. I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he’s a smart boy. He just has problems.”

  “You can say that twice,” Jed said, and then stuck the cigar back between his molars again.

  “If you knew everything he’s been through, you might see him with different eyes,” Aiden said.

  Then he hoped it was true, what he had just said. He was guessing. Taking Gwen’s word for things. He hoped when he learned the truth about Milo’s past he wouldn’t be sorry he’d stuck his neck out.

  “Be that as it may,” Jed said, and then creaked his chair dangerously again. He was a lot of man on not much chair. But it was holding his weight for now. Aiden noted that the phrase “be that as it may” was usually only the first half of a thought. But not for Jed Donovan. The deputy struck off in a completely different direction. “While we’re on the subject of why people do the things they do . . .” Jed paused for an awkward length of time. As though he’d given Aiden enough of a hint, and Aiden could now take over the conversation. But Aiden had no idea what he was driving at. “You take my advice about that . . . mental health professional?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I did.”

  “Good to hear, Aiden. Good to hear. You want to tell me the person’s name?”

  “My psychiatrist?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Do you have a right to ask me that?”

  “Yes and no. I can ask anything I damn please. You’re under no legal obligation to answer. But let’s just say if you cough up a name I’ll be inclined to believe it’s the truth that you’re seeing somebody. If you won’t answer the question, I’m left to wonder. If you know what I mean.”

  A child would know what you mean, Aiden thought. Jed was anything but subtle.

  “Dr. Hannah Rutledge,” Aiden said. “She has an office in Bakersfield.”

  “I’m sure she does,” Jed replied. “I’ll look her up in the white pages, of course, but I’m sure she does. So what did you find out?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This big change you went through recently. What does this Dr. Hannah Rutledge think about it?”

  Aiden just sat a moment, noticing that his mouth was open. He pressed his hands more deeply between his thighs to hide the shaking. Of course it was a mistake. It hurt terribly. It was all he could do to stifle a cry of pain.

  “Isn’t that between me and my psychiatrist?”

  To Aiden’s surprise, Jed broke into a wide good-old-boy grin. “Can’t blame a guy for asking.”

  “I think maybe you can,” Aiden said. “If a person couldn’t do it, then I wouldn’t be doing it right now.”

  Then he kicked himself for saying it. Because he was more or less at the mercy of Jed Donovan. But with guys like Jed, it didn’t pay to be meek. They seemed to smell the weakness and move in for the kill.

  Before Aiden had time to learn Jed’s reaction to his words, the door opened from the outside. Aiden swung his head around and saw Walter Mann stick his head into the room.

  “Jed, can I talk to you?”

  Jed creaked his chair forward into a normal position and hauled his considerable bulk upright. He leaned over toward Aiden as he walked by, which made Aiden wince.

  “Don’t go ’way,” he said.

  Jed laughed, as though that had been a merry little joke they could all enjoy. Then he locked Aiden into the room alone.

  “Seems you’re free to go,” Jed said, bursting back in. Startling Aiden. He sounded almost . . . disappointed.

  Aiden stood and flexed his hands gently, feeling as he did that they were still shaking. He wondered how many days or weeks they would shake this time. Before he could shrug all this off and settle again.

  He did not say anything in reply.

  “You don’t even want to know why I sprung you?” Jed asked as Aiden headed for the door.

  Aiden stopped. Turned. Scratched his head.

  “Yeah. I guess I do. Just seems like, when a guy like you says I’m free to go . . . I don’t know. I figured that’s not a moment
to hang around and ask too many questions. But, yeah. Fine. I’ll bite. Why am I suddenly being believed?”

  “Well, all three of you had the same story. First off. Not proof positive, because you could’ve told them what to say on the way to the hospital. But Walt didn’t think so. He didn’t think the boy sounded rehearsed. Said he was pretty anxious to get the story out. Talked Walt’s ear off, in fact.”

  “Milo? Talked somebody’s ear off?”

  “Yeah, I was surprised, too. Seems the kid was pretty impressed with you because you saved him.”

  “He couldn’t have thought I would just leave him to get killed.”

  “You’d have to talk to Walt about that. Or Milo.” As he spoke, Jed looked down at a folder he’d set on the table in front of him. Not up at Aiden at any point. Aiden wondered if Jed would have looked him dead in the face if he’d gotten to make an arrest. If he didn’t have to let Aiden go. “Thing is, kid kept saying he saw you out of the corner of his eye, and he never saw anybody move that fast in his life. Girl said the same thing. Said you were like a superhero, moving at superspeed. Of course, she already thinks the sun rises and sets on you. Milo, now, he seems less inclined to be your fan. But today . . . I think the feeling Walt got is that the kid thought . . . the boy, I mean . . . you know . . . it being Milo and all, and all the trouble he’s prone to causing . . . that he sort of expected you might have slowed your step just the tiniest bit. Anyway, that wasn’t the corker. The doctor sealed it for us. Said the kid has a bruise on the top of his foot that’s a perfect outline of a cloven hoof. So there’s no doubt that the damage was done by . . . well, I want to be perfectly politically correct like you’re supposed to be these days, so let’s just say a Bovine American.”

  He paused, half glanced up at Aiden, and seemed to leave space for Aiden to laugh. Aiden didn’t laugh. Somehow hearing a good old boy make fun of political correctness did not strike Aiden as funny.

  He realized Jed was looking more or less at his shaking hands, so Aiden slid them into his jeans pockets as gently as possible.

  “Anyway,” Jed continued, “the damage was consistent with said hoof being jammed down on the kid’s foot at the same time as he got knocked over. Bunch of muscles and tendons torn right at the edge of that bruise. So there’s just not a lot of leeway on what happened.”

  “Okay,” Aiden said. “Good.” He turned to leave. But then he stopped in the open doorway. Leaned on the doorjamb, one hand still in his pocket, the fingertips of the other pressed firmly to the wood to quiet the shaking. “Just one question, though, Jed. If all you had to do was talk to the doctor to find out what kind of injury it was, couldn’t you have done that first?”

  “First?”

  “Before you dragged me in here like a common criminal. Yeah. How did you even get called in on this? If the doctor could tell what the injury was by looking?”

  He was pushing his luck now, and he knew it. He should just go. But somehow a line had to be drawn in the sand. Because Aiden sensed they could walk through the steps of this troubling dance again if he wasn’t careful. And if his life wouldn’t give him a break.

  “Actually, we . . . didn’t exactly get called. We were at the hospital for a different reason and we saw you carry the boy in. Look. Aiden. It’s like this, my friend.” They were not friends, but Aiden let it go by. “A few minutes ago you were talking like you wanted to stick up for that kid. So if we have a choice of going too hard on a person who might be abusing him, or not going hard enough, which do you prefer we do?”

  “I guess that’s a valid point,” Aiden said. “I just wish you’d been around when his father was abusing him.”

  “You and me both, Aiden. You and me both. I would’ve given that son of a bitch a taste of his own medicine.”

  An image flooded into Aiden’s head. Milo, standing in his front yard with a lasso around his neck. Aiden’s knuckles white on the knot.

  “That never works,” Aiden said.

  Jed’s eyes came up. Questioning. But Aiden knew he would never make Jed see the point, and he didn’t intend to try. So he just walked out.

  Walter Mann drove him back to the hospital.

  “So what did Milo say to you, exactly?” Aiden asked in the first block or two of the drive.

  Walter sighed. Aiden watched Walt’s hands flex and release on the steering wheel. Flex and release. Another nervous tic?

  “He described what happened,” Walt said. “Same as you and his sister described it. He was feeling kind of embarrassed about it. He kept saying, ‘I thought I could scare the cow. But it turned out the cow scared me.’ He was almost laughing about it, but you could tell he felt the fool. Why?”

  “It’s just kind of odd. Usually he never says much of anything to anybody. Not if he can help it.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Jed said. But he was talking a blue streak today. He knows he almost died. He gets that. You can tell. I think that’s why he was so talky. Still all full of that adrenaline from looking death in the eye. It’s not lost on him that you saved him. But it’s more than that. More than just your saving him. Seems like you did the impossible to save him. Or the near impossible, anyway. I don’t think he knew you held him in high enough regard to work so hard for him. I don’t think he thought anybody did. I’m sorry we had you under suspicion. But you know how it is. At least I hope you do. What’d the boy want to go and scare a cow for, anyway?”

  Aiden stared out the window, watching the town flash by. His town. The place he’d lived almost all his life. The place where he’d thought people knew him. Trusted him. But maybe even Aiden hadn’t known Aiden until recently.

  “Hard to say, Walt. He’s different. I’ll give you that. He didn’t exactly scare a cow. He scared a calf. Little baby calf. And the mother went after him for it.”

  “He didn’t tell me that. He made it sound like he scared a big, fat, dangerous cow.”

  “No, he was picking on someone more his own size. But I can see how he’d be embarrassed to say.”

  “I suppose.” Walt pulled up in front of the hospital emergency room and shifted his squad car into “Park.” “I’m sorry for your trouble with us today, Aiden. We try to get it right, but it doesn’t work every trip out of the gate.”

  Aiden sat silent for a moment, feeling his palms throb with pain.

  “Now would it have killed Jed to say that to me?”

  “You know how he is, Aiden.”

  “I suppose.”

  Aiden climbed out of the car and shut the door carefully. Put the whole ugly incident behind him. At least, as best he could.

  “You just missed the doctor,” Gwen said when he sat down at her side again. “Is everything okay with the sheriff?”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  He leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek but she turned her head toward him and offered her lips instead.

  “Good,” she said when their lips parted. “I don’t even see why they hauled you in. It was perfectly clear what happened. You saved his life.”

  “They’re looking out for the boy. They do that with kids. Give them the benefit of any doubt. Anyway, I got a decent apology. So what did the doctor say?”

  He watched her face fall. Collapse would be a better word.

  “Oh, it’s bad, Aiden. It’s a mess. He has a bunch of bones in his foot that are not so much broken as . . . well, crushed. And a very complicated fracture in his ankle from being knocked down while his foot was pinned. And a bunch of torn ligaments. They’re going to have to do surgery.”

  “Oh,” Aiden said. He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t imagine what. He wanted to say, “Sounds expensive,” but it seemed unforgivable to prioritize money that way. He wanted to ask if she was coming apart, but he couldn’t think how to approach it. “When?” was all he could manage.

  “Maybe this afternoon. We’re waiting to find out. And look. Aiden. You had nothing to do with this. You don’t need to bail us out this time.”

  “Not true,�
� Aiden said, and shook his head too vigorously, and too many times. “I had everything to do with it. I was the one in charge of watching him.”

  “You were just a handful of steps away from him. It was all him. It was not you at all. Who runs at a cow and yells ‘Boo’?”

  And, at that strange juncture of events, Gwen began to cry openly.

  “I hate to even ask, but how much longer do you have to work at the market before health insurance kicks in?”

  “Almost another month. But it’ll be okay. At least, I think it will. I’ve been thinking we’ll apply for some kind of government assistance. But just . . . keep your fingers crossed I don’t make too much to qualify.”

  “No,” Aiden said. “No. It’s not going to be like that.”

  “You can’t cover this, Aiden. It’s going to be huge.”

  “I’ll sell the rest of my cattle. That’s all. It’s silly not to.”

  He looked up to see Elizabeth standing over their bench.

  “I’m hungry again,” she said. “Can I go to the cafeteria?”

  “Sure, honey,” Gwen said, still crying.

  “Can you come with me? I hate to eat in a place like that all by myself.”

  “I have to stay here in case the doctor comes back,” Gwen said. “But Aiden is the same way. So he knows just how you feel. Why, we maybe wouldn’t even be together right now if he could walk into a restaurant by himself. So he’ll go with you. Won’t you, Aiden?”

  “I would love to,” Aiden said. “It’s almost three in the afternoon and I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

  “Wait for him in the hall a minute,” Gwen said. “Okay, honey?”

  Elizabeth backed up a few steps, then turned and walked out of the room. Aiden waited, feeling a bit frozen, to hear what Gwen didn’t want to say in front of the girl.

  “I’m not sure I can ask you to do that with the cattle, Aiden. I know everything that’s involved with it. You know. For you. On the . . . emotional side.”

  “It’s as good as done, Gwen. We’ll go away when all this dies down, and I’ll have somebody come get them while we’re gone. They’re not a bunch of giant pets. I don’t know what I think I’m doing with them. When fall comes I’d have to get a job just to feed them. No. I’m not a cattle rancher anymore. The cattle need to go.”