Olney Springs

by Claudia Hall Christian

  Of course, Delphie was right.

  In all the intervening months and years, Delphie had remained right. For the first time in his life, he saw how much his sister had suffered — the house in Monterey; her engagements to the wrong men; Mike’s return in body but not in spirit or mind; and everything that led to her return to the Castle all these years later.

  His heart broke open for her.

  If he’d been a person who cried, he would have wept for his sister. On the outside, she was the girl who had it all, but on the inside, she had shattered when Mike left. As her brother, he should have, at the very least, borne witness to her pain. But he was caught up in his own whirlwind.

  Valerie was still broken, all these years later.

  It wasn’t about who was right and who was wrong. It was about loving someone through their pain. His fixation with being right had left her out in the cold at a time when she needed to be held close. She remained out in the cold through the death of their mother, their father’s insanity, and everything else.

  His sister had yet to come in out of the cold.

  As if someone were instructing him from far away, he realized what he needed to do. He focused his mind on Valerie’s face. In his mind, he whispered:

  “I see your pain. I feel and know your desperate pain over Mike leaving for the Army. I forgive you for blaming me, and I ask forgiveness for not even trying to understand what you are going through. I failed you as a brother. And I am deeply sorry. I love you, Valerie, with all of my heart. I always have and always will. Please forgive me.”

  Not sure if he was doing it right, he said it out loud.

  When he opened his eyes, there was a long brown feather lying on top of the stone. As he watched, the stone disappeared in a puff of smoke. The feather lay where the stone had been.

  For some unknown reason, Jacob picked up the feather and tucked it into his pocket. Getting up, he grabbed his fly fishing rod and whistled for Sarah, who was standing not a foot from him. Laughing at himself, they walked back to the cabin. He set the fishing equipment by the door, relit the fire, shucked his clothing, and crawled into bed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Sarah jumped onto the bed. The crow cawed outside the cabin, and Sarah gave a soft affirming bark. Nothing stirred inside their safe haven. Sarah lay down next to Jacob and fell asleep.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Friday early morning — 3:13 a.m.

  Valerie awoke from a sound sleep. Disoriented by the conflict between her strong emotions and soothing sleep, she looked around. Her father’s eyes were closed, and his breathing was deep. Blane was rocking back and forth with his eyes closed. Valerie touched Blane’s leg in support. He grabbed her hand tightly. She gave his hand a squeeze before letting go. She knew that she couldn’t help him. Like her, he had to get through this himself.

  She slipped off the blankets and went inside to use the bathroom. Opening the door, she found a group of Lipson people and Jacob’s carpenters toasting each other.

  “Looking for a toilet?” Erik Le Monde asked.

  “I was,” Valerie said with a smile.

  He turned to look at a Hispanic man. He nodded, and Erik waved her toward what she knew was a closet. Unwilling to break their revelry, Valerie opened the door to the closet to find three stalls, two urinals, and gorgeous blue-and-white tile on the floor and walls.

  “Wow,” Valerie said and smiled.

  The men and women gave each other high-fives. Valerie slipped into the toilets. She did her business. She said a silent prayer before flushing. When everything went down, she gave her own cheer and went to wash her hands with a liquid soap she recognized was from her secret stash of hand soap. For some reason, Mike’s theft of her soap made her smile. She gave the team an appreciative smile when she came out. Waving off a beer, she returned to her spot on the deck. The grandmother nodded to her.

  Valerie couldn’t see much from where she was sitting. There, the grandfather and another shaman were singing what sounded like one word repeated over and over again. An adult shaman was creating a painting out of sand and the child, Ooljee, was working on the painting. Three shamans were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed. A team of four or five men and women were drumming, while a man stood next to the fire. Valerie wasn’t sure why, but she felt like something was better. She wasn’t sure what, but she felt like something had shifted.

  Valerie looked up when the grandmother came close. The grandmother offered Valerie some water. Valerie smiled and took the cup from her.

  “You may go back to sleep,” the grandmother said.

  Valerie smiled at the woman and drank the water. The grandmother took the cup and wandered back to the ceremony. Valerie looked up at the starry night.

  She had just closed her eyes when Jacob’s face appeared before her. Surprised, she opened her eyes. His face remained before her. Valerie reached out to touch his face, but her hand went straight through the image. She looked up, and the grandmother was looking at her. The grandmother gave her a “go ahead” nod, and Valerie closed her eyes.

  Jacob seemed to be sitting down in a beautiful place. She saw sun and dappled shadow on his face. His hair was a mess, like it always was when he was camping. There was a sound. It took her a moment to realize the sound was water — no, a stream. Jacob was sitting by a beautiful stream. Valerie smiled.

  “Are you fishing, brother?” Valerie asked in her mind.

  He didn’t seem to hear her, which was all right with Valerie. She was just happy to see his face. She smiled. She felt a set of tight claws on her shoulder, and she looked up. The enormous crow had landed on her shoulder. She was looking at the amazing bird when she heard:

  “I see your pain. I feel and know your desperate pain over Mike leaving for the Army.”

  Valerie gasped. She was so shocked by his first words that she couldn’t hear the rest of his words. The crow leaned over and pulled something from her left ear. She looked at the bird and saw cotton in the bird’s mouth. The bird jumped to her right shoulder and completed the same process. The bird flew to the fire on the deck, where it dropped the cotton. The fire flared for a moment, and then settled down.

  Valerie heard everything Jacob had to say:

  “I see your pain. I feel and know your desperate pain over Mike leaving for the Army. I forgive you for blaming me, and I ask forgiveness for not even trying to understand what you are going through. I failed you as a brother. And I am deeply sorry. I love you, Valerie, with all of my heart. I always have and always will. Please forgive me.”

  Her hands went to the place her resentment had been. Instead of the shiny stone of resentment, she found the deep well of love she had for her brother. It was as if the stone had capped that well to keep any love from coming out. With it gone, she felt only love for him.

  “I love you, Jake,” Valerie whispered out loud.

  As if they’d heard her, the meditating shamans opened their eyes and looked at Valerie. The grandfather, who was singing, noticed their look. He followed their eyes to Valerie. He glanced at the shamans and then at Valerie again. Without breaking his song, the grandfather nodded to Valerie and smiled. The meditating shamans did the same thing before returning to their trance.

  When Valerie looked the crow was gone, and the grandmother was standing next to her.

  “You did well,” the grandmother said. “Sleep now. You deserve it.”

  Valerie smiled at the grandmother. As if the woman had wished it, Valerie fell into the first deep sleep she’d had since Mike had left for the Army.

  Chapter Four Hundred and Seven

  In the Bushes

  Thursday night — 10:24 p.m.

  When Valerie looked at Blane, he knew exactly what she was thinking. He’d made her drink every form of noxious tea known to humankind. In the last month or so, he’d been working with her to support her pregnancy. Valerie had lost babies before. They were going to do everything possible to bring this baby to term. He’d even called his friend in L
os Angeles. His friend had arrived on Mike and Valerie’s doorstep with a particularly awful, but effective tea. Blane grinned at Valerie when he took the tea from the grandmother.

  He wished he’d been more cautious. Like something out of The Twilight Zone, his mind spun around and around for what felt like hours.

  When the spinning stopped, he was lying in some kind of plastic basket with a blanket wrapped tight around him. He was warm, full of something wonderful, and completely content. In fact, he was so happy that it took him a few minutes before he realized that he was an infant. He turned his head. Through blurry newborn eyes, he saw a girl next to him, standing on a box on the floor near the plastic basket. He didn’t know how he knew it was a girl. He just knew that she was as important to him as the child lying next to him. Even as an infant, he felt connected to the baby. When the girl left, baby Blane reached out his hand to the baby next to him. He didn’t know how, but he was sure the baby had reached for him, too.

  Present-day Blane smiled at the memory. Now he knew when he’d been born. And he knew the first time he’d seen Jacob.

  His mind spun again. Around and around and around he went.

  He landed in the bushes at Cheesman Park. He was young — eight or nine, maybe. Last night, his evangelical Christian foster father had come home raging drunk, again. Blane had awoken to the man stuffing a pillow into Blane’s mouth, again. The gay-bashing man had violently raped Blane in the room next to where his gay-bashing evangelical Christian wife slept, again. When it was over, the man had returned to his wife, again. Blane had already told his caseworker about his foster father’s actions. He’d already been called a liar. Blane know his only option was to leave. He had slipped out his window. He’d run as fast as he could possibly go while crying hysterically and bleeding. As if it were the Hilton, Blane had crawled into this bush and cried himself to sleep.

  “What are you doing?” a boy’s voice came from outside the bush.

  “Sleeping,” Blane said in return. “What are you doing?”

  “Who — me?” the boy said. “Nothing.”

  The boy dove into the bushes where Blane had been sleeping.

  “You don’t look so good,” the boy said.

  “I don’t feel good,” Blane said.

  “What happened to you?” the boy asked.

  Blane had looked at the boy for a moment. The boy was about his age. He noticed that the boy sort of looked like him. He squinted at the boy.

  “You can tell me,” the boy said. “I won’t think bad about you.”

  “My foster dad . . . hurt me last night,” Blane said.

  The boy gave Blane a long look before looking sad. For a moment, the boy simply looked at Blane, and Blane looked back.

  “You need a doctor,” the boy said.

  The boy’s eyes were honest and kind. The boy nodded to encourage Blane. The boy held out his hand.

  “Come on,” the boy said.

  “Where are we going?” Blane asked.

  “We’re going to the doctor,” the boy said. “I know where to go because I’m a Boy Scout.”

  Blane gave a derisive snort.

  “I know,” the boy said, blushing. “My mom makes me go. It’s important to her, so I go. It’s mostly stupid, but sometimes we get to go camping and stuff. That’s nice.”

  The boy crawled out of the bushes. He held out his hands to Blane.

  “Come on,” the boy said.

  Blane had no idea why, but he took the boy’s hands and let him pull him from the bushes. The boy helped Blane to standing. Blane weaved, and the boy put his shoulder into Blane’s armpit and his arm around him.

  “You’re cold,” the boy said.

  The boy set Blane down on the ground. He took off his rain jacket and a thick, handmade sweater. He carefully helped Blane into the sweater and jacket. Blane tried to protest but was too weak to do much of anything. The boy whistled for a cab. Blane thought they were in trouble when the cab driver wouldn’t take them until they showed him money. The boy pulled a dirty wad of money out of his pocket, and the cab driver relented.

  “Where’d you get that?” Blane asked when they were settled in the back.

  “What?” the boy asked.

  “The money?” Blane asked.

  “I worked for it,” the boy said. “My parents own a construction company. My sister and I work there at night after school and on the weekends. I’ve been saving up.”

  The boy nodded.

  “What are you saving for?” Blane asked.

  “Oh, nothing important,” the boy said. He patted Blane’s leg. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  That’s the last thing Blane remembered. The next thing he knew, he was waking up from surgery at Denver Health hospital. Someone had called Social Services, and his social worker’s boss was standing next to his bed. Somehow, someone had paid for everything not covered by Denver Health and Social Services. The social worker wanted to know who was paying for things for Blane. He tried to tell the social worker about the boy, but no one believed him, of course. At least, they weren’t sending him back to the same foster home. The wife thought Blane was a “devil” who brought out the worst in “people.”

  A week or so later, Blane was released from the hospital. The hospital returned his old clothes — which were, somehow, miraculously, clean — and the thick sweater and the boy’s rain jacket. The boy had put his gloves and hat in the pockets of the jacket. Tucked deep into the inside pocket, the boy had stuffed two twenty dollar bills and a note that said: “Keep these so you can always get away. Jake” Blane had grinned the whole way to his new group home.

  His mind spun around and around again. He was looking out someone else’s eyes.

  “Every single day for the last two and a half years, you’ve said that you couldn’t wait to get your very own scooter,” a adult woman Blane knew to be Celia Marlowe yelled. “It’s been, ‘I want to work late.’ ‘Give me another shift.’ ‘Let me do it.’ ‘I need the money for my red scooter.’ ‘Red scooter. Red scooter. Red scooter.’ For two years!”

  Blane knew from experience that Celia was slow to anger. Once she was angry, she was a force to be reckoned with.

  “I decided that I wanted something else more,” the body Blane was inhabiting said.

  “So you don’t have the money,” Celia Marlowe said with a sneer. “Or your jacket. Or your sweater. Do you have any idea how long it took to knit that sweater? The wool alone cost a minor fortune! And now it’s just gone?”

  “I don’t have the money or my jacket or my sweater that you worked so hard to knit for me. I’m very sorry.”

  When Blane heard the boy’s voice, he knew he was inside of Jacob. He looked around. They were standing in a tiny kitchen in what looked like a small, worn, but well-loved house. Blane felt Jake lift his shoulder in a shrug.

  “Did you or did you not buy a scooter?” Celia Marlowe asked.

  “I didn’t buy a scooter,” Jacob said. “And I don’t have the money or my jacket or my sweater anymore.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have the money anymore?” Celia Marlowe asked. “What could you have possibly done with your sweater and jacket?”

  “I don’t know what other way to say it,” Jacob said. “I don’t have the money anymore. I don’t have my sweater or jacket, either. I’m very sorry.”

  “I trusted you to take one day off school to get what you have said that you wanted,” Celia Marlowe said. She threw her hands up in the air. “For years!”

  “I know,” Jacob said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do what we had agreed that I would do.”

  “And what did you do, young man?” Celia Marlowe asked.

  Inside of Jacob, Blane felt a well of emotions rise in the boy — Jacob’s strong and confusing attachment to Blane, Jacob’s desire that this boy be safe and well, and Jacob’s deep confusion about caring for someone he didn’t even know. More than anything, Jacob didn’t know what any of these feelings meant about him. Jacob was un
able to put all of these confusing feelings into words. He shook his head.

  “You are grounded, young man,” Celia Marlowe said. “For a month, at the very least. That’s extra chores, no going out, working for free at the company — the whole nine. For the next month, at the very least: you go to school, you go to work. That’s it. And I’m going to speak with your father.”

  Celia pointed to Jacob.

  “You’re in big trouble,” Celia Marlowe said.

  “I know,” Jacob said. “If it matters at all, I am very sorry that I disappointed you.”

  For what felt like a long, long time, Celia looked at Jacob. Blane felt Jacob’s shame for upsetting his mother; Blane had a sure sense that she wouldn’t understand what had happened today. Celia pursed her eyebrows.

  “Come here,” Celia Marlowe said.

  She held out her arms and hugged Jacob tight.

  “I love you, Mom,” Jacob said.

  “I love you, too,” Celia said. After a minute, Celia added, “You’re still in big trouble.”

  “I still love you,” Jacob said.

  Celia held him a little tighter before pushing him away. For emphasis, Celia pretended to still be angry. She pointed to the bar counter.

  “Do your homework,” Celia said.

  Jacob pushed aside a stack of unopened mail and took his books out of his backpack. He read his book and filled in the worksheets while Celia cooked. More than an hour passed before Jacob looked up. Celia was standing at the stove trying to make something like a meal out of cheap hamburger and canned tomatoes.

  “Mom?” Jacob asked.

  “Mm-hm,” Celia said, scowling at the concoction in front of her.

  “Is it possible that I have a twin?” Jacob asked.

  “A twin?” Celia laughed. Turning to look at him, she scowled and added, “There’s not a chance in this world that you have a twin.”