Into the Free (12 page)

CHAPTER 18

Andy Riggins is the first bull rider to leave the gates. He’s aiming for eight seconds tied to the back of a bucking beast. Three more riders fight for glory before Jack is announced. Meanwhile Jack prepares his rope, stretches his legs. Then Jack’s name is called. My heart races. I stand on my seat to see every wrinkle, every grimace, every shadow, every bead of sweat.

Jack’s left glove is wrapped tightly with the bull rope, which is tied snug behind the bull’s front legs. A bell hangs beneath the bull’s thick chest. The big black beast must weigh close to two thousand pounds. He barely fits into the chute. Jack’s right arm is free, and he uses it to pull the bull rope tighter around his left hand. A current of dust rises as he settles himself onto the bare back of the bull, adjusting his legs around the creature’s belly. Concealed beneath the brim of his western hat, his eyes take a quick glance at the crowd. They match those of the bull. Angry. Ready to fight. A younger cowboy leans into the chute and tightens the rope, pulling four or five times to reduce the slack. Jack nods his head to signal “Go.” A tight-lipped man clicks a stopwatch as the gate is pulled open.

Adrenaline rushes and I can’t hold still. I try to keep balanced as I stand on my seat. I bite my nails and bounce up and down with the nervous jitter of a squirrel. Eight seconds. Eight seconds to watch Jack in a way I have never done before.

There’s no taking him down. The bull twists and turns and jerks and jumps. He bucks and buckles and spins and rolls. His tongue lashes and his eyes flash. All the while, Jack rides, arm flying high, heels held tight against flesh, toes turned out. I know he will conquer that bull. There is no other option. Jack is king.

The timer pulses. Five–six–seven–eight. The buzzer screams. The crowd cheers. The announcer praises Jack, “Now that, folks, is how you ride a bull!”

I’m still cheering when Jack falls from the bull’s back, his left hand still tied to the rope. His legs kick the ground as he struggles to bounce back up on the raging bull’s back. He can’t get enough leverage to loosen his hand. His body is dragged across the arena like a convict’s chain. The weight of the bull, thrashing and bucking and stomping, snaps Jack’s legs like twigs.

Two bull riders jump in and circle the bull, trying to release Jack’s hand, but they struggle. They reach for the bull rope. They miss. One manages to release the flank strap, but it doesn’t matter. The bull takes perfect aim to slam Jack’s wilted body against the splintered rails of the arena. The final blow is a sharpened horn, driven hard and heavy into Jack’s chest.

The crowd’s cheers turn to gasps. Then to silence. A heavy silence, louder than anything I’ve ever heard. Cowboys, their red bandannas waving, painted barrels rolling, tin horns blaring out from every angle, all try their best to distract the bull. Everyone is standing on their seats. I don’t know whether to run down to him or stay where I am. If I move, I have to take my eyes off him. I don’t want to take my eyes off him. I want to see him. I want him to see me. I shout, “Jack! Jack!” A man behind me tells me to quiet down.

Every person in the arena is silent. Jack is left bleeding and beaten and barely breathing, like he has left Mama so many times before.

Four men lift Jack out through the gate. When I can no longer see him, I take off running. I hear the doctor on hand say, “Get him to Mercy.” The men load him into the back of a truck. I try to climb in with him, but a burly cowboy shoves his leathered hand in my face and stops me.

I shout, “He’s my father! He’s my father!” Bump runs to my side, nods to confirm to the others I’m who I say I am. Without a word, the burly man moves aside and lets me climb into the back. Bump and a couple of others climb up with me. The wheels start churning while we work our way around Jack.

The ride to the hospital feels short, but my sense of time is blurred. Past, present, future spin together in my head. Words Jack has said. Things he has done. All those times he’s hurt Mama and left me at home to put her back together again. Hate and anger and shame. Every broken promise. Every threat. All those times I had wished Jack would die. That he wouldn’t come home. That he’d leave for good. Now, I look at Jack, the holes in his chest and his western shirt soaked through with blood. Although his eyes are open, he doesn’t see or hear or know. He is dying next to me, but it feels like I am the one who can’t breathe.

For years I have wanted Jack to suffer. Now that it’s really happening, I want my father to wake up and to see me. To know that I am here.

Jack is unconscious and spewing blood. It rushes around his torso, spilling onto my skirt. “Is he dead?” I ask the doctor.

“Close to it,” he answers as he works to plug Jack’s open torso with rags to stop the flood of blood.

“Please, God,” I pray. “Save Jack.”

When we arrive at Mercy, five or six white-clad nurses meet us at the truck to carry Jack through the swinging wooden doors and into the cold examination room. It’s really a cell. Portable panels of cloth divide a large room into three sections. We thread ourselves through the maze, around a massive white scale and shelves that hold jars of cotton balls and bottles of iodine. Everything smells of rubbing alcohol and bleach.

The cowboys make sure Jack is in good hands before heading for the door. I yell behind them, “Please go get my mama!” Bump gives me a nod to let me know they are already on it. I’m glad he’s been making all those deliveries. He’ll know where to find her.

One of the nurses says, “You can’t stay back here.” Before I know it, a bone-thin nurse with flat hair and pencil lips has wrapped her arm around my waist and is leading me away from the examination room where my father is dying. I am left waiting in the lobby with Sloth. He is standing in the corner, hands in his pockets, right foot crossed in front of the left, like always. He nods and smiles, as if to say, “I’m with you.” It’s been a long time since he’s visited me, and I am glad to see him again, though it’s crazy to feel comforted by the presence of a ghost. I’m willing to let the madness take over, if it means I don’t have to feel afraid anymore.

One man, dressed as Santa Claus, sits on a green chair with a young freckle-faced girl in his lap. Santa eats peanuts while the girl holds a cloth to her bloody nose and pulls at a scab on her knee. Taking in the scene, Santa realizes I must be Jack’s daughter and says, “Don’t worry, child. Cowboys never die.”

I’ve heard it time and time again. Cowboys never die. But just in case, I keep saying my prayer, “Please, God. Save Jack.”

I am sixteen, no longer a little girl, but a part of me wants to believe that Santa doesn’t lie, that God answers prayers, and that Sloth is with me still.

A polished blonde nurse brings in a fresh pot of coffee and sets it on a small porcelain table near the window. She places her clean hands on my shoulders and bends over to look me in the eye, like adults usually do to little kids. Her name tag shows “DIANA” in tall black letters. She whispers in a soft, sweet little mew-mew voice, “Someone has gone to get your mother. You need to wait here. I’ll let you know when you can see your father.”

She is so calm and proper that I obey without a second thought. I sit down right where she points and wait for Mama to arrive. There’s no telling how Mama’s going to take this news.

Santa and the girl soon follow another nurse down the sleek-tiled hallway. Sloth has vanished again, leaving me with one last man snoring loudly in a corner chair. His legs are stretched across to one side and his head tilts against the wall, so that I am staring directly at the top of his bald head. He is either sick or drunk. His skin is a putrid gray, like a dying whale, and covered in large liver splotches, like puzzle pieces strewn across a kitchen table.

I wait for Mama. I repeat my prayers. I map images of bulls on the bald man’s head and try to believe that cowboys never die. I have plenty of time to think about my life as Jack’s daughter. How I’ve held out hope that he’d change, but given up on him at the same time.

As I sit in the hospital, I try to remember what Mama told me. That Jack’s not all bad. A touch of Mama’s cheek after dinner. A gentle glance her way across the kitchen table. A kind word whispered just before night. Once, while Mama was shelling crowder peas on the porch steps, Jack walked out the front door. The screen door squeaked and popped back into place as he sat down beside Mama and handed her a fresh glass of sweet tea. Dew dripped from the glass. A sugar spoon tinked against the rim. Mama sipped a long cool drink, wiped her lips with the corner of her apron, and smiled.

Jack gathered a fistful of peas and began to help. They sat shoulder to shoulder. I watched from the distance, trying desperately to maintain the exact same rhythm on the front porch swing, knowing, somehow, that the creaking and groaning of the rusty chains was holding the moment together. One missed note of the ancient song, and Jack would be snapped back to his angry self.

I listened to the sound of the peas as they dropped into the tin bucket. I kept swinging. Peas kept dropping. For the moment, Jack remained the kind of man who would bring someone a drink just to make her happy. Not because it was expected, but because it was a nice thing to do. In moments like that, I thought Mama might be right. That Jack wasn’t all bad, and that somewhere, deep down inside of him, we were a family.

I am pulled from my memories when the sweet-voiced nurse Diana yells down the hall for backup. Two nurses run to the examination room. I don’t care if I’m not allowed. I follow.

The colors of chaos spill around me. Little pulsing hues of warning. I am hit with an old, familiar smell, a haunting odor that brings me back in time to the moment when the mama mutt dog swallowed the last of her puppies. The sour smell takes over the room, marking the moments of a soul leaving this world. I feel it too, the sting of a spirit slipping through into the nether. The eerie feel of Jack’s
being
brushing my skin, as he stamps memories upon my forehead. As he drafts a message down my spine.
“Forgive me?”

My tongue holds the salty taste of fear. And then I see the pale looks of exhaustion. Defeat. And that same glazed look of pity, when the kind nurse finally notices me, says, “Jack is gone.”

CHAPTER 19

Before I have a chance to cry, Mama appears in the open doorway of the examination room. She stands alone, wearing her housedress. Her hair is matted. Her eyes are wide open, the act of blinking no longer an option. She stands motionless. “Jack?” she whispers.

The doctor looks at Mama and shakes his head. My heart has all but stopped. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

I expect her to scream. Instead, she keeps whispering, “No, no, no, no, no,” as if she has the power to change what has happened by refusing to accept it.

Then she looks up and yells his name: “Jack!” She rushes to his bed and grabs him. White cotton sleeves surround her, pulling her, consoling her. But she won’t calm down. She is clawing at Jack. Squeezing his hands. She shakes his arms, kisses his cheeks, his lips, his eyes, all in a desperate, surreal series of movements. I try to wrap my arms around her. She pushes me away, hard and angry.

The doctor pulls a sheet over Jack’s face.

Mama is moaning now. She prays out loud, then curses God. The nurses try to calm her, but Mama won’t stand for it. After all these years of being invisible, she is finally ready to fight the forces that have been slamming against her.

It’s taken nearly an hour, but Mama is finally quiet. Jack’s boots rest beneath the gurney. His belt and buckle hang from a corner chair. His hat is dusty and bloodied.

The clock on the wall ticks—the only noise left in the room. The commotion has faded now. Only a somber-faced doctor and nurse Diana remain with Mama and me. Plus Sloth’s ghost, back again. He watches from the edge of the bed as the doctor announces 6:32 p.m. as the time of death. The doctor leaves the room without looking me in the eye. Diana touches Mama’s elbow. It is time for me to leave too. Mama asks for a moment alone with Jack. Diana pulls me out into the kitchen. She opens the icebox and hands me a frosty bottle of Coca-Cola. I take my time, savoring the slow, cool burn.

Diana stares at me. She probably expects me to cry. But I don’t. I want to make the whole situation go away. So I slide into the sound of the Coke sloshing in the bottle and try to focus only on how the bubbles pop when I tilt the bottle too fast.

I almost don’t even hear Diana say, “We need to get your mother a room of her own. We’ll make her comfortable. Help her rest a bit. Do you have some family or friends we can call to come get you?”

I have no one. Sloth is dead. Jack is dead. River is who knows where. And there’s no way my grandparents would come and support Mama. Especially if what she’s doing is mourning Jack. All I have left in this world is Mama. And I sure am not going to leave her, no matter what they say.

“I’ll just stay here with Mama,” I tell the nurse, trying to swallow. I place the empty bottle on the counter, and we walk back to the examination room. I look at Mama. I can see in her eyes, she’s about to take a long, hard fall. Deep into the valley.

Diana nods cautiously. Then she helps Mama find a seat in the hall and gives her a clipboard of papers to sign. Mama stares at the clipboard as if she can’t figure out what to do with it. I take it from her and do my best to fill in the blanks, to patch together the scattered bits of anything I know about my father.

Name—
Jack Reynolds

Date of Birth
—July 30, 1901

Date of Death
—December 21, 1942

Time of Death
—6:32 p.m.

Age at Death
—41 years

Preceded in Death by
—

Jack didn’t seem to have anybody in the world but Mama and me. I remember the photo in the box. The one that proved Jack has a brother. Two parents. I still know nothing about them, except that his mother was Choctaw and his father Irish. “Mama, what do I put here?”

She looks at the form and says, “Jack’s been on his own as long as I’ve known him.”

I leave the answer blank and move on.

Faith
—

I’ve never known Jack to care much for religion. He never did understand the whole idea of Mama reading the Bible and saying her prayers. I try to sum up Jack’s faith. I am snapped back to the age of seven. I have a high fever and Mama is afraid I will die. She holds a cold wet cloth on my head and prays over me. “Ain’t no point in that,” Jack says. I leave that line blank and move on.

Services to be conducted by
—

I only know the name of one preacher in town. My grandfather, the Reverend Paul Applewhite. Jack would come back to kill me if I let Reverend Applewhite read his funeral, so I leave that part blank too. Someone else will do the job.

I look to Mama for help. She is rocking back and forth, cradling herself in her arms, softly humming. I put the clipboard down on the shiny green tile and hug her tight. She tunes out the pain, filling in those hollow spaces inside herself. Her eyes are gray. Skin, sallow and dry. Over the years, she has become fragile, so tiny she has nearly disappeared completely. I notice it now more than before. How broken and weathered Mama looks, compared to the pretty nurse, Diana.

Diana’s shiny white shoes tap into view. “I have a room for you, Mrs. Reynolds.” Mama doesn’t move, so Diana and I wrap our arms around Mama and pull her to her feet. The nurse’s pale-pink nails look out of place against Mama’s arm. All marked up with stamps and bangers. The nurse realizes we aren’t going to be able to walk with Mama, so she pulls a wheelchair from the hall and we ease Mama into the seat, like an antique doll, prized and delicate, as if you could love it to pieces.

I want to cry for the loss of my father. I want to grieve the fact that no matter how much I have always hoped he could love me, it is too late. Things will never change now. I want to curl up in Mama’s lap, let her hold me like a child. Instead, I push my feelings to the very back corners of my mind and walk with my head up as Diana pushes Mama’s wheelchair down the hall.

We take Mama out of the examination area through wooden double doors that swing back and forth. We pass the nurses’ station, where a hefty nurse with a bulldog grimace greets us coldly. “Room Three,” she barks, giving me an irritated glare that clearly says, “You do not belong here, child.”

In Room Three, Diana helps me transition Mama from chair to bed. “I’ll put a pitcher of fresh water on the windowsill. Try to get her to drink. There are extra blankets on the shelf. I’ll order dinner,” she says.

I nod to thank her.

“If you want to stay with your mother, I’m afraid there won’t be any comfortable place for you to sleep. It’s really against hospital policy for children to stay the night. But we’ve made allowances this time, given the circumstances. I’ve requested a comfortable chair and an extra pillow. Maybe that will do until you make other arrangements,” she says, smiling. She must understand my reluctance to leave Mama all alone.

“The doctor will make rounds in the morning. If you need anything, the nurse on duty is Hilda Ostenhiem. Don’t let her scare you. If that doesn’t work, tell them you want to talk to me. Diana Miller. Okay?”

I stand still when she hugs me. Diana’s hug is warm and open. It says, “Everything will be all right.” But this happy nurse has no idea how it feels to be me.

Still, I want her to stay and find me a cozy chair and a fluffy pillow and make all the bad things go away. She leaves briefly and returns with the pitcher of water. “I have to go now. I have a little girl at home who’s probably getting pretty hungry. It’s my one rule. We always have to be home for supper. And I’m already three hours late.”

I imagine her going home to serve warm beef stew to her daughter, a miniature version of Diana, with her own clean dress and shiny new shoes. I can almost taste the creamy potatoes and thick brown broth, warm cubes of beef, bay leaves, and pepper. I have cooked it a million times for Mama. I usually end up eating it alone for about ten days straight, trying not to waste any leftovers.

“Thanks for all your help,” I say, trying not to show my shame. “We’ll be fine.”

Diana leaves and I curl in next to Mama, like a comma. Her wide pupils fix on the ceiling and don’t acknowledge me at all. I sing the hymn she’s been humming, a familiar one she has sung to me many times over the years.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind but now I see.

My clothes are covered in Jack’s blood, a scent that reminds me I’m not the only one here. But it’s not the comforting company of Sloth I feel. This is different. It’s the same presence that has been on my trail for years. First, when I was just a tiny thing, watching Sloth slaughter a hen who didn’t want to die, then when the mutt dog crunched the bones of her own breathing puppies. Later when I held Sloth’s hand under the magnolia and spent the night at Sloth’s grave, and again today, when I watched Jack fall from the bull at the rodeo, his veins leaking blood through his chest while the fans stood and stared. The darkness followed me here, to Mercy Hospital, where he stole Jack away from us, once and for all, and now he’s here again, in Room Three, trying to take Mama, too. I know him now, by name. He is Death, and he warns me that he isn’t done quite yet.

Mama continues to ignore me. I sing for her again, pulling the verses soft and low. Mama closes her eyes. I lean my head against her pillow and let my voice drift off.

Two dinner trays arrive, carried by a large woman in a starched pink uniform. She places the trays on the windowsill next to the water pitcher and leaves the room without saying a word to Mama or Death or me.

I climb down to inspect the meal. “Look, Mama. Steak and gravy. Mashed potatoes. Let’s try some.”

Mama won’t take a single bite. Not even a sip of tea. Her eyes milk over. I can’t help wondering if her heart has stopped. I remember what Sloth taught me on all our hunts. How to approach slowly and check for breath or a pulse, make sure the game is really dead. I lean in close to Mama. Weak drafts of air move in and out. Her pulse is steady but slow. She’s alive, barely.

I rush down the hall to find our new nurse, Hilda. She stands, large and sturdy, over a pile of medical charts. “Mama’s not doing too good,” I tell her. “I think she might be dying.”

“Is that what you think?” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Yes. I really do. She’s barely breathing. I can’t get her to wake up. I think she’s letting go.”

“Well, people don’t just let go. Something has to do that for them. Cancer or heart attacks or shotguns,” she says, chuckling to herself. She is quite amused.

“I’m not kidding,” I bite back. “Something’s really wrong. If you can’t come check, then please call Diana. She’ll come.”

This does it. The nurse slams down the chart. With wide, hard steps, she moves down the hall. Her arms don’t bend when she walks, and she makes short, terse little wheezes with each breath. When we get to Room Three, Mama is exactly as I left her. Still, quiet, pupils wide. Out of touch with the world around her. I want to tell the nurse that Death is watching us. That he is hovering over Mama.