She looked at the child’s arm, twisted at an unnatural angle, and knew it was broken.
“Ouch,” Gwen said. “That looks like it really hurts. You’re being super-brave down here. You didn’t move at all, just like I asked you to. That’s really good. Can you be really still for another minute while I figure out how to get us back up to your mommy?”
Tommy nodded, and Gwen turned to assess their situation. It wasn’t great, although they seemed to be in no immediate danger. The shelf of rock they stood upon jutted about three feet out from the edge of the cliff and was about eight feet wide. So there was plenty of room for the trim girl and the little boy, but not enough for anyone else. They could likely just wait right there until the rangers rappelled down to rescue them, as long as she could keep Tommy still and quiet.
“My back hurts, too,” the boy said, rolling over onto his side. So much for waiting, Gwen thought. There was a six-inch tree branch sticking out of the child’s torso. If he didn’t get medical attention, and fast, he wasn’t going to make it off that mountain.
“Mr. M.?” Gwen called up to her teacher.
“Yes, Miss Dimont?” Murden’s head appeared over the guard rail, a scowl on his face. “Your actions this morning have been exceptionally imprudent, but I believe this particular decision may, in fact, be one for the record books.”
“We kinda need to wait a little while for the scolding, if that’s okay. Tommy has a broken arm, and he fell on a branch. It stuck him in the side, and I really need to get him back up to you. Now. Any ideas?”
Murden’s head disappeared, then popped back a few seconds later. “I have nothing here that will aid in such an endeavor. Tommy’s mother is calling the park rangers, who can be here soon with climbing and rescue apparatus. She says that she is a nurse, so perhaps she can be of assistance.”
“She really doesn’t need to see this, I don’t think,” Gwen called up. “Crap,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I need…I need a rope, or something. Anything! It’s barely eight feet, but it might as well be a mile. I’m just not strong…wait. I’m not strong enough. But I know someone who is. Mr. Murden!” she called up.
The teacher’s face, which had vanished from the edge, reappeared. “Yes, Gwen?”
“Do you think you could pull me up if I got close enough? I can’t carry Tommy and climb; I won’t have enough hands.”
Another head appeared next to Murden’s at the guard rail. It was Jared, and he looked a little green as he glanced past the narrow ledge at the drop behind her. “Wow, G. You really got yourself in a good one this time, didn’t you?”
“I don’t have time for your shit, Jared. There’s a little boy down here, and he’s hurt.”
“I know,” Jared replied. “That’s why I’m here. Remember when we used to play basketball in middle school?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your vertical leap was the bomb. It’s ‘cause you’re so skinny. Well, that’s about to come in real handy.”
Jared’s head disappeared, then popped back over the edge, this time under the guardrail. He was obviously lying on his stomach to get closer to her. He held out an odd bundle of straps, then dropped them down to her. The straps, Gwen could now see, were leather belts fastened together to make a rope. The belts fell down the cliff face a few feet, but still dangled a couple of feet above Gwen’s head.
“You gotta jump up and grab the belts. I’ll pull you up,” Jared said.
“Can you pull me?” Gwen asked. “I’m not as skinny as I look. And I’ll be carrying a kid with me.”
“Scott’s here, and with him and Mr. Murden, we can totally haul your narrow butt up a few feet. You just gotta hold on.” He gave her a hard look, and she nodded.
Gwen knelt beside Tommy and said, “Okay, buddy. You’ve been super-brave, and really tough so far. Just one more thing, and I’ll get you back up there with your mom and she can get your arm all fixed up. Okay?” Tommy nodded, and Gwen said, “I’m going to need you to hug me real tight around my chest, okay?”
Tommy got up, walked over to her, and wrapped his good arm around her neck. Gwen took her own belt out of the first three loops on her jeans, then threaded it through Tommy’s belt loops and fastened it back to itself, tying the boy to her. She could only hope that the loops would hold if the child’s grip couldn’t.
“Okay,” she said, crouching down to spring upward. But with the added weight of the child, she could only hop a few inches, nowhere near high enough to reach the makeshift rope dangling over her head. She tried again, and got higher, but still nowhere near the end of the lower belt.
“Come on, Gwen!” Jared shouted. “I thought you were some badass ninja chick or something. Weren’t you going to kick Scott’s ass all by yourself half an hour ago?”
I wasn’t, but not all by myself, Gwen thought, reaching out with her mind, through the mists of time, feeling the power of Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, course through her muscles and bones. She wasn’t alone. She never had to be alone again. She had all her brother Knights, and all the power of Camelot to draw upon. Gwen leapt again, and her legs, charged with the strength of someone used to riding for miles in full armor then spending a day in battle, flexed stronger than she had ever felt them. She wrapped her suddenly strong grip around the leather strap, and held on.
“I got it!” she shouted. “Pull us up.” She looked down into Tommy’s teary eyes and whispered, “It’s okay, buddy. You’re being super-brave, and in just a minute you’ll be up there with your mommy again.”
Four huge tugs later and her right arm and shoulder broke the plane of the ground. Jared let go of the leather belts and wrapped both hands around her wrist. “I got you, Gwen. I got you.” He slid backward on his rump, and Gwen scrabbled up the cliff with her legs, rolling over to shield Tommy as much as she could.
The second she was fully on solid ground, she reached down and unfastened her belt, setting the little boy free to clamber over her and run to his mother as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. Ranger Rick was already there with a big, red first aid kit, and Gwen could hear the siren as an ambulance pulled into the parking lot below. She lay flat on her back, looking up at the blue sky, feeling the strength of Gawain and the Round Table flow out of her, leaving her exhausted.
“Damn, Gwen. That was crazy,” Jared said, sitting cross-legged beside her.
“Yeah, remind me not to do that again.”
“It was really brave, though.”
“Thanks for pulling me up.”
“What else was I supposed to do, leave you there? Then who’d give me apple slices at lunch?” Gwen reached out and lightly punched him in the leg.
They stayed there catching their breath for a moment, then Jared spoke again. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“I just don’t understand it, and it makes me a dick.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll try to do better. And I’ll make Scott be less of a dick, too.”
Gwen laughed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Jared.”
Jared chuckled. “Okay, I’ll try to make Scott be less of a dick.”
They both laughed and clambered to their feet as Mr. Murden walked over to them. “Are you injured, Miss Dimont?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. That was very brave, and also very stupid. Please try to learn the difference between the two. Now, I believe we were only beginning our tour.” He turned and walked off to the rest of the class, Gwen and Jared in tow.
Scott walked up as they came to the main group of students. “Good job, Jared. Saved the kid, and the freak. You oughta get a merit badge or something.”
Jared didn’t say a word, just looked at his best friend for a long moment, then kneed Scott in the balls and walked right on past. Gwen covered her mouth with a hand to hide the smile, and felt a familiar click in her head, in the part of her that touched the magic of the Round Table. She looked at Jared, her mouth agape, and saw him limned in a whi
te light, as if an aura surrounded him. It looked like Camelot had found another Knight. She smiled as she walked up the trail. Poor Jared had no idea what he was getting into…
18
Dancing with Fireflies
She stands by the edge of the yard
barely out of earshot
(at least that’s what she’s pretending
just like I’m pretending not to notice
she’s pushing boundaries again)
and whirls round and around,
sturdy baby-fat legs grapevining
on her twirling tippy-toes,
blond curls dancing in the dusklight
until she collapses,
wreathed in giggles and grass stains,
laughing up at the starlight starbright
first star she sees tonight
dancing with a million dizzy fireflies
as the world s l o w l y
ends its whirligig trip through the milky way
and everything settles on right-side-up again.
19
The Christmas Lights
Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, when all the women were running around to the mall looking for the latest sale on this or that, Jeremiah Green would get up early, go to the garage, and get down the cardboard boxes of lights. Then he’d get out the ladder, the hammer, and the extension cords and set to work. He’d work most of the day, with a break around lunchtime for a sandwich made from yesterday’s dried-out turkey on white bread with French’s yellow mustard and Miracle Whip and maybe some celery on the side with salt sprinkled on it. He’d sit on the porch in his old flannel shirt eating his turkey sandwich and celery, and crack open a Pabst from the cooler in the garage.
Helen didn’t cotton much to drinkin’, so he only had a beer on those rare occasions when she was gone and he had the house to himself. Most years a six-pack bought after the Fourth of July would last the rest of the year, then he’d allow himself another beer or two for New Year’s after Helen had gone to bed. She’d long since given up caring about watching some silly ball drop, figuring that she could tell it was a new year when she looked at the calendar the next morning at breakfast. The day changed every evening without her help; she didn’t need to stay up past her bedtime just to ring anything in.
Jeremiah liked to watch all the commotion on the tv, so he usually stayed up and had himself a beer or two while that Clark fella nattered on until he fell asleep. Then he’d wake up sometime in the middle of the night and go to bed.
Then once he finished his turkey sandwich, Jeremiah (not once in his eighty-two years was he ever Jerry or Jer, or God forbid, Jed) would lean the ladder up against the side of the house and start to string the lights. By the time Helen got home from shopping with her sisters, it would be full-on dark, and Jeremiah would be back inside watching Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy if she ran particularly late. Once she got home and got all her prizes deposited in the front bedroom for later wrapping and distribution, they’d go out in the front yard together and take a minute standing on the lawn of the house he bought when he got home from the war, a time he never really talked about, not even to Helen.
They’d admire his handiwork, Helen would remind him to put the ladder away before they went to bed, and he’d reply that it would get done eventually, and anyway, what if there was a light burnt out? Then he’d go up to the outlet he had installed on the porch by that Reynolds boy down the street just for this purpose, and he’d plug in the main extension cord.
With that, the whole front of the house, roofline, bushes, little cedar tree by the driveway and all the porch railings burst into white light, and the whole neighborhood could tell that the holidays were upon them. There were never any colored lights, at least not since 1973 when Jeremiah shaved off those sideburns. There were never any flashing lights or strobe lights, and never any plastic Santas and reindeer on the roof. There was just a bright white celebration of Christmas.
For over fifty years, from the time the armistice was signed and Jeremiah came home from Korea, he dragged that ladder out of the garage every November and lit up the night sky in a celebration of the season, of family, and of just being alive.
Until this year. When Helen passed in August, Jeremiah sat down in that vinyl recliner in the den with a Pabst, probably the first time in thirty years he’d had a beer in August inside his house, and it seemed like he didn’t move from that chair for months. Neighbors would come to visit, to see how he was holding up, and he’d tell them, in the stoic way of octogenarian men who’ve seen young men die, that he was doing about as well as could be expected.
As well as could be expected didn’t really amount to much, he thought to himself after the well-wishers, the pastors and deacons, the neighborhood widows and friends of his children that had moved away years before and were back in town visiting their own parents had left. As well as could be expected was getting up three times in the middle of the night to pee and being confused every single time when he went back to bed and there was no one there. As well as could be expected was fixing his own breakfast every morning and finally going into the garage to drag out the old coffee pot that Helen had wanted to toss out twenty years ago when they got the new programmable kind but he wouldn’t let her for fear that just this thing would someday happen and he’d have to make his own coffee and be too old and near-sighted to read the instructions on the damn thing and besides, what does a coffeepot need all them damn buttons for anyhow? You just put the coffee in it, put some hot water in it, and it turns into coffee. It doesn’t need a clock in it, much less more buttons than one for off and one for on.
So as well as could be expected wasn’t really very well at all, if he would take the time to think about it. Which he didn’t, because Jeremiah was never a man to spend too much time in deep contemplation. But now, at 82, there wasn’t a whole lot left for him to do except sit. And think. And since thinking was less appealing, he managed to lose himself in some of the seventy-six channels of eternal drivel that spouted from the 19” color television that sat in the living room on top of the old console tv that had finally breathed its last some eight years ago. So Jeremiah sat. And watched tv. And that’s how most days went. He watched tv until bedtime, watched the late news, and went to bed, where he lay awake listening to the silence beside him until sleep finally took him off for a couple of hours at a time.
So on this Friday after Thanksgiving, instead of listening to Helen get up at the crack of dawn to go shopping with her sisters, then getting up to drink the coffee she left for him in the machine he never did figure out how to operate, then heading out to the garage to start on the decorations, he sat. He turned on the tv and watched a little bit of that, then fixed himself a dry turkey sandwich with Miracle Whip from the leftovers from the turkey that the Methodist women brought by on Wednesday.
He ran out of mustard last week and kept forgetting to put it on the list that hung on the refrigerator. If he didn’t write it down, he wouldn’t remember to get it when he went grocery shopping this Sunday, either. He had taken to grocery shopping at eleven on Sundays so he didn’t have to worry about seeing any of the church women in the store. Helen had always been real active in the church, but with her gone, he didn’t see much sense in him going. He figured he and God still had a few things they needed to sort out from about fifty years ago, but they were the sort of things a man needed to talk through with his maker face to face, and going to church wouldn’t do him a whole lot of difference one way or the other.
As he was sitting, not really enjoying his mustardless sandwich but not really not liking it either, he started to hear some rattling around in his garage. The neighborhood, which had been full of young veterans when they moved in all these years ago, had seen its ups and downs, and was currently on the beginning of one of the up periods, which was to say that there were a lot more people living there at the moment who could be considered down than up, but in general they were hard-working people who didn’t cause too
much trouble. The people on the tv liked to talk about it as a neighborhood “in transition,” but Jeremiah just thought that was a fancy way of saying there were some poor people that lived there, some white people, some black people, and some Mexicans thrown in for good measure. There was some crime, sure, but in general it was decent place to live. But when he heard somebody rattling around in his garage, he didn’t run out to go look and see what they might be stealing.
It’s not that he was afraid that whoever was in his garage might hurt him. He’d known pain at different times in his life—you didn’t make it past fourscore years on this earth without getting hurt more than once—but he just really wasn’t that interested. And as the day wore on and the noise in his garage continued off and on, he finally decided that if there was something worth taking out there, they should have already took it and left him alone, so he went to the back door and stuck his head out to yell at whatever hooligans were back there.
But by this time whatever perpetrators there had been were already gone, so all he saw was a closed garage door and a quiet back yard. He went back inside and dozed in front of his tv for the rest of the afternoon, watched a little football, not that he knew or cared anything about any of the schools playing, but it was something to pass the time, and napped a little more.
Along about seven o’clock, he started to listen for Helen’s sister Mary’s car, and then remembered that Mary didn’t drive anymore after she got so blind they took her license away last summer, and besides, she wasn’t going to be dropping Helen off tonight anyhow. But as he stood in his kitchen alone, feeling once again the lost feeling of someone who is missing something that he just can’t quite put his finger on what it is, there was a knock at his front door. He had left all the porch lights off to keep folks from coming by to check on him since he didn’t really feel like sharing another afternoon of how you holdin’ ups with somebody who he didn’t really give much of a damn about and he figured didn’t give much of a damn about him either, so the knock was a little surprising. He figured it was a kid, since they weren’t usually smart enough to figure out that when the porch light wasn’t on it meant that the body inside didn’t want to be bothered.
Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails Page 18
