The Last Safe Place

by Ninie Hammon

  Gabriella leaned against the kitchen doorframe for a moment studying the kitchen, then asked, “How’d he do it?”

  “He who do what?”

  “He Jim Benninger. Do … this.” She made an all-encompassing gesture. “It was all I could do to get myself and a rented jeep up that road. How did Jim Benninger get all this furniture—a stove, refrigerator, couches, a recliner—up here?”

  Pedro closed the pantry door, checked out the array of cereal boxes in the cupboard and turned to face her.

  “He brought most of it up here by helicopter, landed in the meadow out back.”

  “A helicopter?” Gabriella felt an empty sensation below her rib cage. She’d thought this place was totally inaccessible, but if a helicopter could …

  “It took some doing, negotiating a chopper in these mountain wind currents. Could only come up on a still morning and they had to unload quick so the helicopter could get out of here before the afternoon storms.”

  “So if it was storming …”

  “A chopper would get blown right off the mountain.”

  Gabriella let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and remembered her manners. “Please sit down. Would you like something to drink? I bought some Diet Pepsi—but you know that because you sold it to me. Or I guess I could make coffee. Do you know if there’s a coffee maker?”

  “In there,” Pedro pointed to a cabinet beside the stove. “It’s one with all the bells and whistles, grinds coffee beans I have to special order from Denver and makes a sound like an F18 Hornet taking off the deck of an aircraft carrier.” He said that with the authority of a man who had actually heard a fighter jet take off an aircraft carrier.

  Pedro settled his large frame into one of the six chairs around the oval oak table that had a bowl in the center piled high with miniature cowboy boots. “I only tried to make coffee with it one time and the result would have eaten the chrome off a trailer hitch. A glass of water is fine with me. It’s pumped here from the creek and then purified. The refrigerator has an ice maker.”

  Gabriella shook her head as she searched the cabinets, found two glasses and filled them with ice water. “A refrigerator with an ice maker. We had ice in a cooler—until it melted, then we put Daddy’s Coors in the creek to keep them cool.”

  She sat down across from Pedro at the table.

  “Yes, but roughing it makes great memories. I bet your family had a wonderful time vacationing in this cabin.” He must have seen the look of surprise and pain on her face. “Forgive me, por favor, I did not mean to pry, I just—”

  Might as well tell him the truth, at least part of it.

  “It was only one summer and it wasn’t exactly a vacation. The aquamarine drew my parents here. And then there was a family tragedy, a death.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.

  “After that, we never came back.”

  “And now?” he asked quietly. She wasn’t expecting the question.

  “Now … Ty, Theo and I need to … get away from the world for a while.”

  Pedro set his water glass down on the table.

  “Speaking of getting away from the world, I think I have been away from mine long enough.”

  “But it’s still raining.” Actually, it was only sprinkling. “You can’t go down that trail in the mud.”

  “It has good drainage—water doesn’t puddle. And it is easier going down. Besides, if I did not travel on wet roads in these mountains I would never go anywhere.”

  He stopped then, and looked at her. The silence thrived, full and heavy.

  “If you need anything, anything at all, Mrs. Underhill, I—”

  “No way. You can balk at Slappy, but I’m Gabriella.”

  He nodded. “I am right down the mountain. I would give you a phone number to call, but cell phone service up here is hit and miss—mostly miss—and Jim never saw the need for a land line. But I weel check on you—often.”

  Gabriella was unexpectedly embarrassed by his solicitousness. It had been so long since anyone had been kind to her she didn’t quite know how to respond.

  He seemed to sense that, too, because he backed off, gave her emotional space.

  “Thank you, Pedro. If you hadn’t ‘tagged along’ I wouldn’t have made it.”

  “That is true, you would not have made eet,” he said with disarming honesty. “But you figured it out. You will be fine now. Except … you need to know. Going down takes a whole different skill set than coming up.” He didn’t have to be intuitive to see her obvious dismay. “Please do not worry. St. Elmo’s Mercantile delivers—at least to this cabin. Jim needed twiceweekly supplies so we worked it out that he would come down to the store on Tuesdays and I would bring supplies up on Saturdays. Of course, that was just an excuse for me to come up here, enjoy the view and spend time with Jim.” He smiled and got to his feet. “Jim Benninger is an amazing man.”

  Then the smile faded and he added, his accent more pronounced, “The kind of friend who weel stand by you no matter what choo have done.” The moment passed. “Do you know him well?”

  Gabriella shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Actually, I never met the man.”

  She could tell her answer surprised and intrigued Pedro, but he didn’t ask about it. All he said was, “I will be back in a couple of days. You can follow me down the mountain and I will show you how it is done. You are a quick study.”

  He lifted his hat off the peg by the door, called up the stairs to Ty, “Adiós, muchacho,” and left.

  PEDRO RODRIGUEZ HAD been up and down the trail to St. Elmo’s Fire dozens of times. But he still could not put it on autopilot. Lose your focus, daydream on this trail and you could run right off a cliff.

  This was one of the most dangerous jeep trails in the mountains. Of course, he did not tell Mrs. … did not tell Gabriella that. Though he suspected she would have climbed up the mountain if there had been no trail at all. She looked that determined. That desperate. Maybe even that afraid.

  When Pedro joined the Marine Corps out of high school he discovered he could predict with uncanny accuracy which recruit would make it and which would wash out, could tell who was going to freeze when shots started flying, who was going to take crazy chances, who had something to prove and whose wife had told him she had a headache last night.

  He had always been able to read people. Even before his own heart, his whole soul had been ripped out of his chest and stomped into a bloody lump at his feet. Even before he understood emotional pain on a personal, visceral level so intense he would be forever sensitized to it in everyone he met.

  And all those heightened sensitivities told him Gabriella Underhill was one hurting woman.

  He did not allow himself to picture what must have happened to her that put a scar on her face so disfiguring even a quarter-inch blanket of makeup couldn’t hide it. It had to be a moment-to-moment torment to know people were staring at it or trying not to. Obviously, a bad burn. But what kind and how it happened—he did not like where his mind wandered when he considered the possibilities, so he shifted gears altogether, thought about the curly-haired little boy with oversized Gandhi glasses. The boy had a kind of lost look, too, or maybe Pedro was just imagining it. He certainly wasn’t imagining the old man’s gaunt face, his scarecrow-thin frame and the ashy gray tint to his skin. Just old maybe. Or sick. Pedro’s money was on Door Number Two.

  And Gabriella had never even met Jim Benninger! Oh, how Pedro wanted to call Jim and ask him about her. Could not do that though, even if he had been convinced checking up on the people at St. Elmo’s Fire was a good idea—which he was not. Jim was unreachable, off being a missionary in the wilds of Sudan. Serving and helping, that was Jim. He had invited these people to spend the summer at St. Elmo’s Fire for a reason, though it was possible, even likely, Jim did not know what the reason was.

  Pedro owed Jim a debt he would never be able to repay. All he could do was pass on what Jim ha
d given to him to somebody else, and as he bumped over rocks and down into potholes, he suspected the intended recipient of some act of kindness on his part was sitting up there on the mountainside trying to start a fire in the fireplace with wet wood. Of course, she would figure out how to do that on her own. But maybe there were other things she would not be able to figure out without a little help.

  CHAPTER 8

  THEO HAD FOUND A ROCKING CHAIR ON THE BACK PORCH THAT suited him and sank down into it now with a grateful sigh. He shivered like P.D. shaking rainwater out of his fur and pulled the Indian blanket he’d gotten off the couch up around his neck. Should have bought a hat to cover up his naked skull! Theo hadn’t been able to get really comfortable since he got here, didn’t have a speck of meat left on his boney backside for padding when he sat down and sure didn’t have enough antifreeze in his veins for the wind that felt like it’d blowed right off a glacier—and maybe it had.

  That jeep ride up the mountain three days ago had just about done him in. He shuddered at the thought of it, bouncing and banging around, holding on for dear life with his eyes squeezed so tight shut even the scared tears he was crying couldn’t slip through. Got to the top and that storm hit and he feared he was going to ride a lightning bolt into the presence of his maker. And when that didn’t happen, he was certain he’d close his eyes that first night and not never wake up, that his brain needed way more oxygen than he was sucking in, panting like P.D. chasing a rabbit.

  That didn’t happen, neither. He just kept on going like the Energizer Bunny. No, more like one of them Timex watches that takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

  Theo heard Ty holler and watched P.D. bound across the meadow. The two of them had adjusted easily to the altitude, far quicker than Theo or Gabriella. Theo paused about every three steps to catch his breath; Gabriella fared better, but after a couple of trips up and down the stairs, she was panting, too.

  The dog dived into Piddley Creek and splashed water all over Ty. The creek was only two or three feet deep but the snow-melt-off water had to be frigid. Which didn’t appear to bother Ty any more than it did P.D. That spot in the back corner of the valley had become the boy’s home-away-from-home since the moment he hopped down out of the jeep here. He’d already captured a couple of frogs and brought them back to the house, claimed he could see trout in the water, swimming around with the minnows—though Theo doubted there was fish that big in such a small creek. But then, how would he know? He’d lived his whole life in cities. The only trout he’d ever seen was on a plate, covered in cornmeal and fried up with hushpuppies and … but maybe he was thinking of catfish.

  Lord, your ways is strange ways. You said that, mind, I didn’t. ’Fore we got here, I’s beginning to think that boy had plum forgot how to smile. What’d he have to smile about? But now, you couldn’t scrub the grin off his face with steel wool. Maybe you bringing us here ... wasn’t such a bad thing. They’s less tightness around Gabriella’s mouth, too, so I s’pose you did think this through better than it looked to me like you did at first. I might a been wrong. Maybe. Amen

  Theo allowed his eyes to travel up the mountainside behind the hanging valley, up, up, up past the boulder field and the bristlecone pine forest all the way to the snow-dusted rocks at the summit and the dry wash that extended down from it on the east side, facing the chalk cliffs of Mount Princeton. He’d been practicing. Was able to look up at the top now without feeling dizzy hardly at all. Now, the front of the cabin, looking down from it to the valley floor—that was another thing altogether. Every time he so much as glanced out one of them front windows, the world started to spin and he had to swallow hard not to upchuck on the hardwood floor. What a sense of humor God had, putting Theodosius X. Carmichael up on the side of a mountain. Theo almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it.

  He wiggled around a little on the chair cushion, which was the only thing between the bones on his backside and the solid oak of the rocker seat.

  “Ain’t got enough meat on my butt for even one good cheek.”

  And since he’d gotten sick, he’d probably lost fifteen pounds; all his clothes had got baggy and he’d caught Gabriella looking at him sometimes like maybe she could tell. He hadn’t planned on hanging around long enough for her to figure things out. It being cold enough up here he could wear sweaters in June—that’d help for a little while. But eventually … Well, he’d worry about eventually when eventually got here. No sense fretting about it now.

  Gabriella came out the back door through the mudroom and sat down in the rocker next to Theo’s and he saw Ty and the dog turn and head down the creek through the woods. She was wearing jeans and an untucked plain chambray shirt, and had her short, curly blonde hair tucked back behind her ears. She looked ten years younger without that long black hair and those pointed bangs, and dressed normal, not in that black gothic stuff. Pretty, even. Except for the scar on her face. The sight of the uncovered scar sickened Theo. Oh, not because it was ugly—which it certainly was—but because of what it meant, because of who was responsible. It had cost Gabriella her looks and Smokey his life.

  “You know, the view is a whole lot prettier out front,” she said.

  “Yeah, way up here in East Jabib ain’t the end of the world, but I bet you can see it from that front porch.”

  She smiled and looked more relaxed than he’d seen her in … maybe than he’d ever seen her. This place was sucking the tension out of Gabriella just like it was Ty. Oh, how Theo wished he didn’t hate it here as much as the two of them loved it.

  “I’d rather look up the mountain than down it. Any crime in that?”

  “Theo, are you afraid of heights?”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, woman! Theodosius X. Carmichael ain’t ’fraid of nothin’. A piddling little old mountain, why …” Why was he ashamed to admit it? Maybe the good Lord brought him up here to beat some of that stubborn pride out of him, wanted to humble him so he wouldn’t be strutting around heaven like some banty rooster. Theo sighed. “Not afraid, ’xactly. More like … scared spitless. I look down into that valley out there, it’s all I can do not to spew my breakfast all over my shoes.”

  “Theo, why didn’t you tell me? What else are you scared of you didn’t tell me?”

  “Water.” It just popped out. He bristled instantly at the incredulity on Gabriella’s face. “Now, don’t look like you ain’t never heard nothing so pitiful in all your life. I ain’t scared of water like bathwater or rainwater, puddles, creeks, things like that. Just … deep water.”

  “Heights and deep water. You fall off a cliff into a lake?”

  “Not a lake. And didn’t nobody fall.”

  “Somebody pushed you—who?”

  “You the wrong color for us to be talking ’bout a thing like that.” Oops. Probably shouldn’t have said that.

  Gabriella was so shocked it took her a moment or two to respond—long enough for Theo to figure out there was no “probably” about it. He absolutely should not have said that. Soon as she caught a breath she went off like a bottle rocket.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t you dare play the race card with me! Why’d you come with us if me being white—?”

  “I shouldn’t a said that—okay? I …” He couldn’t say he was sorry, never had been able to say that. So instead he told her, “Don’t get your panties in a wad. My son marrying a white woman … I ain’t gonna lie—I advised him against it.” He held up his hands before she could jump on him. “I’m just telling it like it is. I thought it was a bad idea because I knew it would cause trouble for the both of you—and don’t you tell me it didn’t. Or that it ain’t hard on Ty sometimes, too.”

  She didn’t argue with him.

  “You a fine woman.” He couldn’t believe he’d said that! Was being sick making him soft, or was that what happened to you when you brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen? “Ty’s a good boy. I ain’t much of a grandfather, but I’m the only one he got and for whatever time I got
left—”

  “Whatever time you … are you all right? You … don’t look good. Are you sick?”

  Stepped in it again.

  “I’m seventy-four years old. I traveled a lot of miles in my life, girlie, and most of them roads wasn’t paved.”

  The details of his issues were private. Might not ever have to explain nothing, might be like that doctor said, that he’d just drop over dead one day.

  He’d finally given in and gone to a doctor after he got where he was afraid to drive. Sometimes he’d go completely blind for two or three seconds. His hearing came and went, too, like some little kid was playing with the volume knob. And every now and then he got so dizzy he’d swear he’d downed a whole bottle of Boone’s Farm in one gulp—when hadn’t a single drop of alcohol passed his lips in ten years. Had the AA chip to prove it!

  Them doctors had poked and prodded him, took scans and X-rays and way more blood than he figured he had to spare. Then that doctor said it flat out. A little Asian man who could barely speak English, looked like the moon-faced Chinaman who sold tickets for a nickel to ride the Jack Rabbit at Kennywood Amusement Park when Theo was a boy.

  “Mr. Carmichael,” the doctor said. “You have …” and then he said a word so long it used up almost a whole breath.

  “You mind chopping what you just said into bite-sized pieces so I can gum it—left my dentures in my other suit.”

  Blank look.

  Before the doctor could point out that Theo had all his own teeth, he told the little man, “No mayonnaise talk, okay?” Theo didn’t waste his time with folks who used words that had more letters in them than mayonnaise.

  Blanker look.

  “Small words … like in a fortune cookie?”

  Big smile.

  “Ah, yes sir. A brain tumor. Cancer. You are fortunate man. It is operable. We remove it, you be good as new. You have surgery very soon, though. You wait, too late.”

  “And if I don’t want you to cut my head open?”

  “You die slowly, maybe. Or you drop over dead. Hard to say.”