My Soul to Keep (26 page)

I
SAT IN MY
truck in the Children’s Medical Center parking lot for a good, long while that night, just staring out my windshield at the pigeon guano that was splattered all over my hood—a scatological Jackson Pollock painting. My hands were numb as I gripped the steering wheel, my mind fixed on the image of the man who had taken Nicholas. His face was everywhere I looked, the way a flashbulb leaves behind a blue silhouette when you close your eyes.

I don’t know why I was surprised by the hatred I felt toward him. I think I’d expected it to feel more clinical than personal. I thought I’d see the picture and file it into the evidence folder and then get out there and start looking for him. Instead, I felt a wave of rage that confused and distracted me. I wanted to see that man suffer. I wanted to be there, personally, when something terrible happened to him. I wanted to hear his screams and watch him feel pain, and I wanted it to last a long, long time.

It scared me how much I hated him. I didn’t want to think about what that might say about me.

I started my truck, the familiar rumble nagging me to schedule that tune-up. I reached for the radio and turned the knob, then remembered about the antenna. My hand fell to my lap as the cab of the truck filled with the sound of static. For some reason, I started to cry.

The parking lot was almost empty. It was late—almost eleven by now. I had plenty of privacy to sit there and blubber like a child in my ’72 Ford pickup, doors locked, windows open. As though it made any sense at all to sit in this part of town with the windows open at night. As though the locks would help if the windows were down. But the warm night air was a comfort after another day of unrelenting tension and excessive air conditioning.

I dug in my bag for a Kleenex and blew my nose. The truck lurched as I released the brake, pressed my foot down on the clutch, and threw the transmission into reverse. I turned to look behind me, then felt a chill crawl up the back of my neck.

I cocked my head, listening, hoping I was wrong. But there it was. The buzz. The snake was here. Somewhere in the truck. With me.

I threw my shoulder against the door and jumped out of the truck, forgetting momentarily that I’d already put the transmission in gear. The engine belched with a jerk and rumbled to an abrupt stop. Then the truck began to roll slowly backward out of the parking space. I hopped into the cab and set the emergency brake, then jumped back out without shutting the door and stared at the truck, my chest heaving, sucking in deep breaths of hot, sulfury night air.

I was at a complete loss. What do you do when there’s a snake somewhere in your pickup truck? Do you call animal control? The police? Is there someone who will come and just shoot the beast? Do we have people who do that? I looked around frantically and spotted a man in a uniform standing near the lot’s exit gate, about thirty yards away.

“Excuse me!” I shouted. I began running toward him. “Can you help me? Please help me!”

He turned and bolted in my direction, moving with the agility of a running back, and met up with me under a bright fluorescent light. I checked the embroidery on his blue uniform. His name was Jeffrey, and he was a Parkland security guard.

“You ran,” I said. “I can’t believe you ran. Thank you so much!”

He unsnapped the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Are you in danger, ma’am?”

“Not the kind you’re used to,” I said, panting. “Do you have a gun or anything?”

“What’s the problem, ma’am? Can we start with that?”

“There’s a rattlesnake in my truck. How’s that for a problem? I don’t know what to do.”

He blinked. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

“I heard it.”

“But you didn’t see it?”

“Have you ever heard a rattlesnake in person, Jeffrey? It’s not really a matter of opinion.”

I followed behind him as he strode toward my truck—obviously the scene of the trouble, backed as it was halfway out of the space, door standing wide open, dome light shining weakly.

We stopped a couple of yards away. I held my breath.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said at last.

We inched closer. No rattle. I reached over gingerly and jiggled the door, sure the noisy hinges would set the varmint off. But still no sound.

“Maybe it got out.” I bent down and looked underneath the truck, then stood and scanned the lot, surveying for possible snake hiding places.

“I don’t see anywhere it could have gone,” he said, his eyes following mine. “Lot’s empty. No trees, no grass.” He looked around. “What are you doing parked way out here in Oklahoma? A woman really should park a little closer in.”

I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea. Believe me, I tried. I got here …” When did I get here? I couldn’t remember. “… forever ago. This was the only empty spot.”

He pointed at my hood. “I see you’ve met our pigeons.”

We both looked up at the ledge, the thought occurring to us simultaneously. There they were, feathers puffed out, sleeping with their heads tucked underneath their wings.

“I guess the pigeons didn’t hear the rattler, huh?” he said, doubt creeping into his voice.

“That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“No ma’am.”

“They would have flown off, wouldn’t they?”

“I would, if I were a pigeon.” He pulled his flashlight off his belt and shined it up at them. “You sure you heard a snake?”

“I’ve had a rattler at my house the last few days,” I said. “I keep hearing it, but I never do see it. Maybe it crawled under the hood of the truck when the engine was warm. Don’t they do that sometimes?”

“How long did you say you’ve been here?”

“I don’t know. Hours.”

“And you believe a snake stayed in your engine all the way from—you drove here from where?”

“I live in Oak Lawn. About fifteen minutes from here.”

“So a snake stays in your engine block from Oak Lawn to Children’s Medical Center. That’s fifteen minutes, no traffic. Then it sticks around for several hours waiting for a ride home?”

I could feel my expression tightening, the muscles of my neck starting to contract. The rage was back, rising up inside me and taking over what was left of my brain. I wasn’t mad at Jeffrey, of course. He was merely pointing out the obvious. I was mad at the lousy rotten fink who had gotten me into this mess.

Peter Terry. The skunk. He loves embarrassing me.

“Sounds pretty implausible, huh?” I said.

“Afraid so.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Let’s pop the hood.”

We gave the truck a thorough going-over. We looked in the wheel wells and checked behind all the tires, in the bed of the truck, under the spare. We checked every cranny under the hood, Jeffrey shining his flashlight around and humoring me as I pointed at places I wanted him to illuminate. Bless his soul, he even stretched out on the hard ground and scooted himself under the truck for a look at the undercarriage.

Naturally, we found no snake.

He dusted himself off and shone the flashlight back into the bed of the truck, illuminating my newly purchased antisnake gear. “Looks like he doesn’t stand a chance if you find him.”

I shrugged. “I like to be prepared.”

He switched off his light and wished me luck. I thanked him profusely and prayed once again to disappear into the pavement. Once again, the Almighty stamped “DENIED” on my application.

I drove home in a cloud of radio static and white-hot anger, giving in at last to the brutish day and to the long, agonizing disaster of this week.

My house was dark and lifeless when I got home. I unlocked the door, threw my stuff down, and went back out the front door to get the mail. The bulb shattered as I flipped the porch light on, startling me just about out of my skin and fraying the last of my nerves.

I stood there for a second, forcing myself to stay calm, then turned and walked back into the house, glass crunching under my feet. My house is well supplied, of course, so I opened the door to the garage and flipped the light switch. The bulb burst with a flash and a loud pop. Glass sprinkled to the concrete floor.

Standing frozen in the doorway, I counted to a hundred, concentrating on each number, determined to manage the panic—the panic that I knew was the object of the game. I absolutely refused to give Peter Terry the satisfaction.

Using a pair of pliers I found in my truck, I wriggled the shattered bulb out of the socket. Then I pulled a box of bulbs off the shelf, screwed a new one into the socket, and flipped the switch. The warm yellow glow of a 60-watt GE Bug Lite filled the garage.

I turned off the light and went back through the house to the front door, where I pulled another Bug Lite out of the box, repeated the procedure, and screwed it into the socket. It exploded in the next moment—the switch was still on—and I let fly a string of cuss words that would embarrass a sailor. (Another one of my Top Ten Terrible Traits.)

I took a deep breath and was grateful, for once, to be alone in the world. Better that than inflict my foul temper and even fouler mouth on any innocent bystanders. I sat down on the porch steps and stared up at the night sky.

I hate city lights for obscuring the stars. Someone should shut the place down after midnight, just to give city kids a fair shot at seeing the universe once in a while.

Squinting at the dim points of light, I searched for my favorite constellation, Orion the hunter. It reassures me somehow to see him up there, with his belt and his weapons all geared up for some ancient clash of grand celestial combat.

I couldn’t make him out tonight. Probably too late in the year. I sighed, feeling strangely abandoned.

Peter Terry was here. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. The bulb thing was obvious. That was his style—vandalism with a creep-out factor. But the rest of it—the snake, Christine’s strange symptoms, Nicholas’s disappearance—you could choke a horse with all the evil in the air.

I sat there a long time, for once appropriately reverent, my attention turned toward the heavens, where I knew the answers lay. It occurred to me to pray, so I prayed for Nicholas, for Christine, for Liz and Maria. And for myself. It took the edge off the tension, if nothing else. In the end, I felt a little less forsaken. Though at this point, I’d just about convinced myself the cavalry would never arrive.

A good half hour passed before I stood and surveyed the damage. I had to hand it to Peter Terry. He got points from me for creativity. On his last visit, he’d vandalized my water heater, which I thought was a pretty innovative way to ruin somebody’s peace of mind. Days of frustration, frigid water, blue-toed showers, inadequate laundry facilities. Not to mention a sizable bill from Paulie’s Pretty-Quick Plumbing Repair.

There was one more bulb in the box. I decided to make one last stand and see if I could end the day with a victory. I stood tiptoe on my front porch and reached for the socket with my pliers, thought better of it and checked to make sure the switch was off, then wriggled the base of the shattered bulb out of the socket. It took a few minutes, but I wrenched it out of there, screwed the new bulb in and flipped the light on.

The bulb blew up in a cloud of smoke and sparks, glass tinkling delicately as it landed on the porch around my feet.

“Nice touch,” I said out loud, and I walked back into the house and locked the door firmly behind me.

A
LL THE LIGHTS INSIDE
the house worked. I was grateful for that much. Sometimes Jesus just gives me a little present. Maybe God had posted sentries at the doors and windows or something.

The rabbits were restless. I couldn’t tell if it was because they’d been alone for so long or because they were afraid of the snake. Whatever it was, they kicked and squirmed when I picked them up. They scuttled under the bed as soon as they hit the floor, then refused to eat anything until I made them a little picnic on my bed and let them munch up there in relative safety.

While they dined on their crunchy food, I unloaded my five new snake traps and my twenty-eight-pound tub of Snake-A-Way from the bed of my truck and began placing the traps strategically around my yard. One under the front porch, one under the back porch, one beside the back gate (as though a snake would bother with a gate), one in the garage, and one under the hood of my truck—just in case.

The lid of the Snake-A-Way snake repellent had apparently been sealed with concrete. I broke two fingernails and a screwdriver before I budged the thing. I scooped out a cupful and walked the perimeter of my house and backyard, sprinkling as I went, my peace of mind blossoming as I moved. I felt better somehow, hedging my bets. I sprinkled the garage, returned the cup to the tub, hammered the cap back on, and got ready for bed. I decided to leave the glass on the porch for later. I’d dealt with enough messes today.

I slept like a stone that night, the sentries guarding, perhaps, my peace of mind as well as my doors and windows. I needed the sleep badly and woke up feeling rested for the first time in days.

After a quick breakfast, I sliced some apples for the rabbits, then
walked the perimeter of my house, checking my snake traps. They were empty, as I knew they would be, though one had attracted a number of fire ants, which were now entombed in the brown, smelly glue. That left a phone call to the hospital on my morning to-do list—all was well—and I was out the door for the pool, looking forward to a long swim.