Autumn Blue

by Karen Harter

  Sidney smiled, remembering the faith of her mother. “I think I need to spend a lot more time with you, Amilia.” She stood, gathering their teacups. “But right now I’d better get to the soccer game in progress.”

  As Sidney returned from the kitchen, she heard a loud shout from outside. It was an alarming cry, spraying adrenaline through her veins like fireworks. Amilia frantically pushed herself up as Sidney rushed to the front door, throwing it open. Outside, Enrique lay on the cold grass, his hat lying upside down on a nearby shrub. Tyson scrambled up the porch steps, breathless. “Call 911!”

  Sidney spun around, but Amilia was already punching the number into her phone.

  “What happened?” Amilia’s hands were shaking and she missed the numbers the first time.

  “Enrique had a heart attack or something. He just doubled over. He’s grabbing his chest.”

  Sidney looked around helplessly. Alex was at his father’s side. She grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa and ran down to the yard, but Alex was already scooping his father into his arms. “Hang on, Pop. Let’s get you in where it’s warm.” Sidney walked alongside, draping the blanket over Enrique and tucking it between him and Alex’s chest. “Can you find an aspirin?” Alex asked.

  She ran to Amilia’s medicine cabinet, scanned until she found a small bottle of Bayer, then rushed to the kitchen for water. She returned to where Alex had laid his father on the sofa, passing him a single pill. Amilia hovered over them, leaning heavily on her walker. Her knuckles were white. Sidney caught Tyson’s eye and gestured toward an armless chair against the wall. He brought it quickly, awkwardly helping the woman transfer her weight into it. Sidney took her hand as the siren at the volunteer fire department across town began to blare.

  “Here you go, Pop. This will thin your blood. Lift your head a little.” Alex took the water glass from Sidney’s hand. Enrique gasped, turning his head away. “Pop, you’ve got to get this down.”

  “Mijo,” the old man’s voice was raspy. “Juramelo antes que me muera.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Pop.” Alex forced the aspirin between his father’s cracked lips and brought the glass to his mouth. Water spilled down his chin. “Swallow it.”

  Sidney couldn’t tell if the pill went down. Veins stood out on Enrique’s dark hand as he clutched desperately at his chest; his face twisted in pain.

  “Perdona a Ernesto,” he rasped.

  Who was Ernesto? Pardon him for what? Sidney wondered.

  “I don’t want to talk about this now! We’ll talk tomorrow. Did you swallow the pill?” Suddenly Enrique’s face relaxed. “Pop?” Alex cried, shaking him slightly.

  The eyes fluttered. “Promise me, mijo.” His voice was so weak.

  “I’ll do anything you say, Pop. I promise. Just stay with me. Stay with me, Pop!”

  The muscles in Enrique’s lined face slowly relaxed even more. His hand went limp and slid from his chest. Sidney’s breath caught in her chest. Amilia gasped, falling forward and dropping her head on her old friend’s shoulder as all signs of life drained from him.

  The sirens grew louder. They were coming down Digby now. Tyson, who had been standing off to one side, backed away. His eyes were wide and troubled. He had never witnessed death before. Sidney gave him a straight-lipped smile through her tears. Ty inhaled deeply before turning bravely toward the front door to wave in the aid car.

  Alex moved the limp body to the floor and began performing CPR. His back was to Sidney as he attempted to breathe life back into his father’s lungs. He raised his head, murmuring, pleading in Spanish between sharp compressions of Enrique’s chest. The only word Sidney recognized was Papa. Amilia bent over one lifeless hand, which she held to her lap, stroking it like a sleeping cat while silent tears ran down her ruddy cheeks.

  The emergency crew swept in, relieving Alex and displacing Amilia to another chair as they dropped their equipment to the floor. Sidney placed her hands on the older woman’s shoulders, watching and praying as technicians hooked up a heart monitor and other devices, turning away when shock paddles were applied to Enrique’s chest.

  When they had done all they could do, Alex stood tall, following the gurney out the door. He paused to glance back at Amilia where she sat rocking silently in her chair. A long look of understanding passed between them. “I’ll stay with her,” Sidney said.

  He looked at Sidney without a sign of recognition, his features like chiseled stone. It was the face of the deputy who had once stood ominously on her porch, sending shivers down her spine. Now she understood. It was just a mask. A hard mask to hide his pain. She wanted to touch him, to brush the dried concrete spatters from the hair at his temples, but she knew at that moment in time he could barely even see her. “Alex, I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded gravely before turning to head down the steps. He crossed the yard to the driveway next door, where his patrol car was parked, and ducked inside. The blue lights began to flash as he backed out, but he must have changed his mind. The lights went dead and he followed the ambulance bearing his father’s body down Digby Street.

  25

  IT WAS WEIRD,” Ty said, sweeping a trowel across the top of the wet concrete. “One minute he’s gibing us about doing a bad job on his sidewalk, and the next minute he just croaks.”

  Millard frowned. He too was on all fours, smoothing a section of the sidewalk that was to run between Amilia’s pink house and the gray one next door. It didn’t make much sense to finish the project now, he thought. After all, the guy wouldn’t be passing this way again. But it seemed important to Tyson, who had called Millard immediately after the ambulance had taken the deceased away. Now they were fighting the elements to level and smooth at least the section that had already been poured before it dried. “That was the way it was with Art Umquist down there at the hardware store. I went in to get a mole trap from him one day, and the next day he was gone.” Millard had regretted his little tirade about the price of mole traps ever since. At least he could have asked about Art’s wife and kids before he let the battered and poster-plastered door of the store slam behind him. “Art and I used to fish and hunt up in these mountains.” He sat back on his haunches, scanning the hills and stretching his achy back. “Death is a fact of life, they say. I guess you just can’t take anybody for granted. They might not be there when you turn around.” With Molly he’d had some warning because of her sickness. He knew death was coming for her, but still its arrival had hit him like a truck barreling through a red light.

  Ty got quiet on him for a while, their screed scraping the top of the gritty mixture and making a sound like long, slow strokes of sandpaper. Sissy and Rebecca were playing beneath the trees in the adjacent yard. Millard had picked them up from their soccer game on his way to help Ty. Cute kids. They had nearly chattered his ears off between the sports field and Digby Street.

  “That would just suck to have someone in your family die.”

  Millard glanced over at the boy. “Yes. It does.” He had hated the term when he first heard Ty speak it, instructing him that it was an offensive perversion of the English language. But at the moment he couldn’t think of a phrase more suiting. “It really sucks!” He was surprised by Tyson’s laugh. The boy grinned at him like he had just gone up a notch or two in status. Well, hell’s bells. If that was all it took, he should have taken up shallow street slang a long time ago.

  The little girls ran up, pinching multicolored leaves together at their stems. “Look what we made,” Rebecca said. “Fans.” They fanned their faces, Rebecca like a haughty queen and Sissy as if her face were on fire.

  “Oh, beautiful,” Millard said. “Look at all the bright colors. Yellow oak, red maple, green rhododendron.”

  “They’re for Amilia,” Sissy said. “To cheer her up.” Sissy leaned against Millard’s shoulder and surveyed the concrete project. “You guys are doing a good job.”

  Millard chuckled, exchanging a glance with Ty. “Are you sure?”

  She
nodded. “Yup.”

  The next thing he knew, her pudgy fingers were playing with his hair. “I can see your skin all over. You don’t have much hairs on your head.”

  He thought to pull away or to stand. It felt strange having someone touch him in such a personal way.

  “I wish you were our grandpa, Mr. Bradbury.”

  Rebecca plopped onto the cold grass beside them. “Me too. Our grandpa died when we were little. Ty remembers him but we don’t. Mom has pictures of him, though.”

  Millard stared at the fan in Rebecca’s hand. Living and dying leaves overlapping in a truly beautiful design. His boy, Jefferson, died on a cold fall day like this. The leaves always made him remember. They were lovely now, but soon they would be brown and mottled, tapped down by winter rains into the soil beneath the trees. Dead for a season. But new life would come in spring. Molly was gone, yet he knew in his heart she still lived. She knew God. She and Jefferson had prayed together every night.

  At that moment he wondered if they were up there in heaven, still praying for him. He had thought it was his autumn—but it was beginning to feel more like spring. He glanced at Tyson, who was still working the top of the sludge while regarding the conversation with apparent interest. The boy had thought to call him. “I need your help,” he had said. Millard couldn’t recall the last time someone had needed him prior to the Walker family’s invasion of his safely structured life. He let his arm reach around little Sissy’s back and gave Rebecca a wink. “Well, I suppose we could pretend I’m your grandpa.”

  “Then what should we call you?”

  Millard pushed himself up from the ground to relieve the burning sensation in his knees and rolled his head to stretch a cramp from his neck. “Well, let’s see. I’m not your real grandpa. I suppose—if it’s all right with your mother—you could call me Grandpa Bradbury.”

  “Can I write my name in the sidewalk, Grandpa Bradbury?” Rebecca asked.

  He chuckled. “That’s probably not a good idea, seeing as how this is not our sidewalk.”

  The front door opened and Sidney stepped down from the covered porch with a tray in her hands. She was such a pretty girl, Millard thought once again. Funny—she had not struck him that way when they first met. He had thought her cheekbones were too prominent, her nose a little sharp. But those green eyes of hers, whether laughing or crying—and he had seen a lot of both—were mesmerizing. She was intelligent, too. That young man Jack had better get his head in the game, and Millard wasn’t thinking football. Judging by what had come out of the guy’s mouth during that Sunday afternoon and evening together in the Walker home, he had never read anything more literary than the sports page. A woman like Sidney was bound to weary of that real soon.

  “How’s it going, guys?”

  Ty sat back on his heels, lifting his eyes to Millard’s.

  “I think we’re about done here,” Millard said.

  “Wow. It looks perfect.” Sidney balanced the tray of sandwiches and cookies on top of Tyson’s ten-gallon tool bucket. “Your reward.” She turned toward Rebecca. “Honey, can you go in and get the juice pitcher and cups from the kitchen counter?”

  “Wait for me,” Sissy said, heading off behind her sister.

  Her mother used her arm as a roadblock. “Not now, Sis. Amilia’s resting on the couch.”

  “But we made fans for her!”

  While the men rinsed their hands under the hose, Sidney admired the girls’ leaf bouquets, saying they looked like Technicolor peacock tails and suggesting that Rebecca arrange them on the table beside Amilia for when she awoke. A minute after she went into the house, Rebecca returned.

  “Sissy, come on in!” Apple juice sloshed and dripped down the sides of the pitcher as she delivered it into her mother’s hands. “She was already awake, Mom. I tiptoed—I promise. She wants to visit with us!”

  Sidney shook her head as the girls scrambled away. “She’s a strong woman. Enrique was more than a neighbor. His wife was her best friend, and when she died, Amilia helped him raise his kids as if they were her own.” Her eyes grew tender. “I can tell she really loved him.” She stared at the poured section of sidewalk, which stopped abruptly at the border of the yard next door. Two-by-four forms continued to extend like train rails to the front stoop of the silent house. “I wonder if Alex will still want to finish this.”

  “He never told me what to do,” Ty said through a mouthful of fried-egg sandwich. “He just took off. I didn’t think it would be good to let it dry the way it was. Nobody could walk on that mess.”

  “You made the right decision,” Millard offered. “Worst-case scenario, it can be jackhammered out. I guess it’ll depend on who moves in next door.” He ate only half of a sandwich and began scraping and hosing down tools. Fried egg, no ketchup, white bread. Definitely not the fare one would expect if it was coming from Sidney’s own pantry.

  Millard had grown fond of his neighbor’s cooking. It seemed to surprise Rita that he could prefer hot potato-leek soup and apple bread fresh from the oven over the bricks of frozen entrees that she delivered. Of course, Rita was probably thinking that Sidney was slowly poisoning him while wooing her name onto his will. Rita’s suspicious thoughts revealed more about his daughter than he wanted to know.

  It grieved him. He had been a good teacher but a lousy father. He raised an intelligent daughter, pouring into her every bit of information that she could receive. Perhaps he had dumped Jefferson’s share in too to make up for what the boy lacked.

  If only Millard had understood the truth before it was too late. Jefferson’s loving, joyful heart was of greater worth than the national archives stored in a brain. He was the teacher, and Millard had been the mindless pupil shooting spit wads in class. Now, Millard knew that his own values had been perverse lies. Where Jefferson was now, in a place where a person’s honor had nothing to do with knowledge or physical appearance or wealth, Jefferson Walker wore a crown.

  If Millard had been wiser, he would have taught his daughter to value what was eternal more than achievement. She would not be capable of such suspicion—of what he reluctantly recognized as downright greed—if she had learned to embrace the substance of her brother’s innocent heart.

  “I’m going to stay with Amilia until the family arrives,” he heard Sidney say over the splashing sound of the hose. “Alex’s sister called to say they’ll be here soon. Ty, you can go home with Millard whenever you guys are ready.”

  Rebecca and Sissy burst out the front door. Sissy tripped on the steps, diving headlong onto the grass. She jumped to her feet without brushing off the front of her grass-stained pants.

  “Amilia wants us to put this in the sidewalk!” Rebecca announced. She held out a brass oval with the raised pattern of a violin. “It’s a belt buckle. It belonged to the man who died.”

  “She showed us some animals he carved out of wood with a knife, but they made her cry.” Sissy tipped her head sympathetically. “She doesn’t want them in the sidewalk.”

  Millard tested the concrete. Might be too set. They had finished their job in the nick of time. “Try it in this corner,” he suggested, passing the buckle to Ty. The boy pressed it into the stiff mixture, working it gently. His sisters knelt beside him, watching intently.

  For some reason Millard’s eyes stung as he observed the children, and it wasn’t because of the wind that swept down from the mountains and tossed autumn leaves into the damp air. The knot in Tyson’s face had loosened and his brown eyes were soft, wondering. He had momentarily forgotten to be tough and cool. Tyson was being a boy.

  The kid that had invaded Millard’s home four weeks ago was arrogant, angry, and lazy. Millard could go on—and he often had as he lay awake in bed at night, regretting the obligation he had imposed on himself like a suicide bridge-jumper in midair. What a waste for a young man of obvious intelligence to be content with doodling skulls and graffiti around the frayed holes in his jeans. The boy had been impossible to like—let alone love.

&
nbsp; Millard raised his eyes above the mountaintops, beyond the hazy clouds to what he perceived might be heaven. Perhaps he had been given a second chance to love an unlovable boy.

  26

  ENRIQUE ESTRADA was buried beside his wife on a hillside overlooking the winding trail of Sparrow Creek. To the south, a thick soup of fog rested in the bowl of the mountains, obliterating the town of Ham Bone from sight. Sidney shivered, wrapping her black coat tightly around her slender body.

  There was no priest, which surprised Sidney; she had assumed that Enrique was Catholic. Instead the eulogy was delivered by the minister of the small Reformed Episcopal church where Amilia attended along with Alex’s sister Carmen’s family.

  Alex had two sisters and a brother; all of them gathered around the grave site with their spouses and children. A dozen or more friends of the family, mostly of Mexican descent, were scattered about. Sidney felt like an intruder, though Amilia had begged her to come. Alex had pushed her wheelchair up the slick, grassy slope to where it leveled off. He tucked a blanket around her, kissing her lightly on the cheek before stepping off to one side. The rest of the grieving family clustered close to Amilia, alternately resting hands on her shoulders and bending to whisper into her ear or pass fresh tissues. Carmen, the daughter that Sidney had seen with Alex at the school play, knelt beside the wheelchair and clasped Amilia’s hand. Sidney had met Carmen briefly the day of Enrique’s death, when through her tears she had expressed gratitude to Sidney for staying with the distraught Amilia until they arrived. The children called their surrogate grandmother “Mi-Ma.” Truly she was the matriarch of the family.

  As the short ceremony progressed, there were muffled sobs among the crowd. But Sidney’s silent tears were not for Enrique. She had hardly known him. It was the sight of Amilia that wrenched her heart. The love of her life lay a few feet away in a sealed box, soon to be lowered into desolate, solitary silence. No more shared meals, or sunny afternoons on the porch, or dreamy melodies wafting from his violin. She would never adjust his collar again. The finality of it all seemed more than the woman could bear. She suddenly looked like an old lady, stooped and frail. The hushed children stared at her, wide-eyed, apparently frightened by the stifled sobs that tore from their Mi-Ma’s throat, lingering echolike in the cold, damp air.