Orion Cross My Sky (10 page)

H
e took
her hand and guided it gently toward the rusted rotor, at eye level with them thanks to the lift that suspended the car in the air. He felt her hand trembling in his, and almost laughed at how unconventional the entire thing was—romancing a woman over an old Plymouth.

Instead, he showed her what he was talking about while he placed his other arm around her waist to draw her near.

“See that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s the cotter pin. We gotta take that out next.”

They both froze for a moment.

There was a loud clang as something hit the metal worktable nearby.

“Ahem,” a voice sounded out. “How’s the
lesson
going, Orion?”

He stepped away from Tammy, crossing his arms over his chest and the long-sleeved dark blue shirt he wore. “Hey, Pete. Everything’s cool.”

“I can see that.” Pete—who was in his late forties, stocky, with blue eyes and a receding hairline—stepped up near Tammy, who rubbed her dirty hands on the ragged jeans she wore. Pete noticed, and handed her a clean shop towel. Smirking, he added, “Tammy is proving to be a very talented little mechanic, but your lover-boy distractions aren’t helping us get this car back to the customer.” He winked.

Tammy blushed, her cheeks turning deep red in the chill that pervaded despite the heated garage.

It was late September, just a week and a half after the pain attack that had sent him to the hospital. Since then, he’d been in and out of work, and sometimes, he wasn’t much use when he was there.

Shocking both Orion and Pete, Tammy had jumped in without being asked to, without even considering the shop’s liability issues or the fact that she had no real experience.

It came to her naturally. He couldn’t help but marvel at her. He didn’t think she realized how brilliant she was. Her logical mind solved each problem with ease, and even though she wasn’t particularly strong, she still worked fast with the help of pneumatic tools.

He noticed Pete had been watching her closely.

And he could tell something was up, because Danny hadn’t shown up for work that morning.

“I ordered lunch,” Pete said, gesturing for them to follow. “Come on, let’s head into the break room.”

As if indulging a curiosity she’d had for some time, Tammy blurted, “Are you related to any of the other Johnsons in the area?”

There were more than a few of them. Orion suspected Alex probably knew something about it, being the town historian.

Pete guffawed, the sound coming from deep in his heavy belly. “My family’s been in Wyoming for generations, but not always in Clearwater. I was raised here. I kinda lost track of all the Johnsons, and my son, Zane, will tell you he gets confused at our family reunions.” As they stepped into the break room, Pete chuckled, his hands on his hips. “My late wife, God rest her soul, always used to tell our boy to be careful who he went out with. And damned if he didn’t end up on a few dates with a cousin last year.”

“We don’t talk about that,” Orion chided. “You know how my good buddy Zane gets when anybody brings that up.”

“Oh, yes.” He sent Tammy a serious glance, but his eyes betrayed his mirth. “Have a seat, kids.”

On the table were two large pizzas, a liter of soda, and three cups. Pete handed them each a paper plate, and they dug in.

“Thanks for lunch, Mr. Johnson,” Tammy said, her bangs slipping over her face.

“Call me Pete.” He took a few bites of the vegetable pizza, then washed it down with Coke before speaking again. “This isn’t completely social. I—”

“I knew it.” Orion leaned back in his chair. “You usually only treat us to pizza when there’s a special occasion. So, what’s the occasion?”

Pete wiped his hands on a napkin and met Orion’s gaze. “Danny walked out.”

“Huh?”

“He quit. Called me just before we closed yesterday and said he wasn’t coming back. Wouldn’t say why. But Zane thinks it’s something to do with his girlfriend. She’s going off to college, and maybe he’s following her. I don’t know.”

“So, we’re celebrating that?” Perplexed, Orion took a bite of his pizza.

“No.”

“Then what?”

Tammy was halfway through her first piece. She almost choked when Pete finally said what he had to say.

“I need a new mechanic, and something tells me Tammy wants a job.”

Orion slapped her on the back. She gulped, appeared to compose herself, and covered her mouth with a napkin. Then she slowly slid the napkin down. “
Me?
A job?”

“Sure. You two have been seeing each other for several weeks, and…well, to be honest, I considered it might be a bad idea. You’re young. If you break up, we could have an uncomfortable situation on our hands here at the shop.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “If you say yes, I need you to promise me that if something goes wrong between the two of you, it won’t affect your work. You gotta be careful working on cars. These things belong to our customers, and if anything went wrong—”

“I’ll take it. I’ll do it,” Tammy interjected, her eyes wide, her tone furtive. “But knowing all that could go wrong, why are you still offering me the job?”

“Because I can tell you’re going to be one hell of a mechanic. Maybe even better than this kid.” He nodded toward Orion, then winked. “No offence.”

“None taken.” Orion grinned.

“Besides, I’m in a pinch. It’s just me and Orion, and winter’s a busy season. People’s cars get banged up, coolant lines freeze, and all them old ladies want us to install their windshield wipers.” He chuckled. “But in all seriousness, while I’ve observed you working, Tammy, and while I’ve seen the two of you together…I think it’ll be fine. I’m happy to train you, give you all the knowledge I’ve got. I can tell this is what you want.”

“It is, it is!” She was practically bouncing in her chair, which made Orion love her even more. To see her happy filled him with excitement, too.

“Orion works full-time, but I’ll only need you part-time for now. If he has any pain attacks, you can cover for him and make a little extra. And you’ve already been helping out. I want you to know we both appreciate it.”

Orion placed a hand on her thigh and gently squeezed. He wasn’t sure he could express how grateful he was to her, for being in his life and for being there for him when he was at his worst. But he would find a way. Perhaps by writing a poem.

“Thank you so much, Mr.—Pete. Really, thank you, thank you,” Tammy gushed. “I really need a job, this will be great, I just know it!”

Pete chuckled. “Eat your pizza. It’s getting cold.”

T
ammy headed
home for dinner that evening feeling more elated than ever before. She’d left her parents’ house in late August, and freedom was turning out to be better than she could’ve possibly expected. It hadn’t been a full month, and yet, she’d met someone, and she’d even found a job. It seemed too good to be true. Paranoia crept up within her as she realized she was expecting something to go wrong.

Stepping across Main Street, she spotted Old Bruce with his thumb out. He was leaning on his cane, his bad leg extended like a broken branch about to fall off an ancient tree.

“Hey, Bruce.” She had to speak loudly so he would hear her.

“Oh, Tammy.” He lowered his thumb, wavering slightly where he stood. “And how are you today?”

“I’m fine. Just got a job!” she blurted out.

“Good, that’s great. Doing what?”

“I’m a mechanic.”

His eyes narrowed. One corner of his mouth lowered. The wrinkles on his face seemed to droop further, if that were possible, and he cocked his head. “You know, sometimes, I can’t hear out of my right ear, due to a swimming accident when I was a young one.” He chuckled weakly. “I coulda sworn you said
mechanic
, but that can’t—”

“Yes, it’s true. I’m a mechanic.” The words seemed alien to her, but she loved every syllable.

“Well. A young lady mechanic. Wouldn’t you know it.” He shrugged as if resigned to the idea, even though it seemed strange to him. “And where’re you headed now?”

“Dinner. You?”

“Tryin’ to get to my sister’s place. Not many people drivin’ by this evening.” He extended his thumb again. “It’s her birthday, ya know.”

“Oh! Tell her I said happy birthday.” She shuffled her feet. “I mean, when you get there. If I had a car—”

“I know, kid, I know. You hurry home now.”

“See you later.”

She headed down the street toward the apartment building, discovering she felt guilty at her joy when someone like Bruce appeared to have so little in his life to be happy about.

W
hen she stepped inside
, she smelled garlic and tomato sauce. As she entered the kitchen, a cozy heat met her, and she saw Clara peeking into the oven before shutting the door.

“Whatcha making?”

Clara shot upward, slapping a hand to her chest and shrieking. “Oh my God, you scared the crap out of me!”

“Sorry.” Tammy cringed. “I didn’t mean to.”

They both knew the reason why Clara startled so easily. The horrors they’d seen made comprehension between them simpler.

Clara stepped across the room and wrapped her arms around her. They’d held each other and cuddled like this so many times in the past. Closing her eyes, Tammy couldn’t help but flash back to those moments in the attic of her parents’ house, when both girls hid from her father when he was drunk. He always took out his rage on them.

The thought made her clutch Clara tighter, and heat rushed to her face as she held back tears. Grief threatened to emerge, but she squashed it down as she always did. Unable to face those feelings, she set them aside. One day, they would come out, she knew. But she wasn’t ready for them yet.

“Are you okay?” Clara held her at arm’s length and eyed her as if knowing the turmoil that was raging in her heart.

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

Raising an eyebrow, Clara shrugged. “If you say so. To answer your question, I’m making baked ziti. I think it’s done.” She stepped over to the oven and turned it off, then slipped on an oven mitts before pulling out the steaming casserole dish and placing it on the stovetop. “I just finished my homework. Gaven’s working late at the library.”

“You had off tonight?”

“Yep.” Clara grinned. “I love my job. Wait…something’s up.” She tossed her oven mitts on the counter. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Tammy slumped into a seat at the small kitchen table.

“There’s a glint in your eye, if that’s the word I want. How was your day?”

She couldn’t hold it back any longer. “I got a job. I got a job at the shop, I’m working at the shop.”

“Wow, don’t talk so fast. You mean the garage? You got a job at Pete’s?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh, that is awesome. I’m proud of you.” She dished out two generous helpings of baked ziti and brought them to the table. “Want some water?”

“Sure.” Tammy was bouncing in her chair again like she had at lunch. She couldn’t contain herself.

Clara filled two glasses of water and grabbed a couple napkins before taking a seat and placing a glass in front of Tammy. “Okay, fire away.”

“Danny, the guy who was working with Orion, quit yesterday. So, Pete was in a pinch and he asked me if I wanted the job. He saw how I helped out when Orion couldn’t work as fast, or as well, and he said I was a good mechanic. He said I could work part-time, and they’ll train me, and, oh…Clara, I’m so excited! I can’t believe this is happening. I’m really a mechanic.”

“What do your parents think of this?”

“They don’t know yet.” She bit into her dinner, which was delicious; her cousin was turning out to be an amazing cook.

“What do you think Aunt Nan will say?”

“I don’t care.” She stopped eating to look up at Clara. “And I care even less what Dad will think.”

A heavy silence descended upon them as they ate, forks clinking gently against their plates. Finally, Clara sipped her water and cleared her throat. “Your mom called me today. Uncle Harris is doing worse. He’s going in for another round of chemo.”

Tammy said nothing.

“She, uh…she wants you to go over, Tam.”

“What the hell!” She tossed her fork down on her plate. “What’s the deal with this happening all of a sudden? I’ve been gone from there less than a month, and all of a sudden, Dad has a fucking tumor?”

The words rushed out of her, and she realized she’d become so much more brazen since leaving. She never would’ve talked like this a few weeks ago, and it amazed her that such a short time could cause her entire life to unravel and change so quickly.

“Do you know anything about how they found it?”

“No. Just something about Dad having vertigo, I don’t know.”

“Maybe they knew already and just didn’t say anything.” An expression of recognition seemed to cross Clara’s face. “Do you remember…”

A heavy silence passed between them. They both stopped eating, and it was as if they were transported back in time.

“What?” Tammy mumbled.

“I don’t know, sometime last month. Maybe it was earlier than that. Do you remember what you said?”

She shook her head.

Clara leaned against the table, crossing her arms. “You said your dad was getting
dizzy
. This has probably been going on for a long time. Longer than we realized.”

Instead of replying, she picked up her fork and continued eating. The food had become tasteless, the air suddenly chilled.

The last thing Tammy wanted to do was visit her father. But she knew she would have to. Sooner or later, she would have to.

W
hen she arrived
at the library, Alex wasn’t there yet. She went upstairs and grabbed a book of Shakespeare’s plays and sank into a comfy chair in the reading area.

The only sound was that of paper rustling as an old man nearby read the local newspaper.

Tammy leafed through the old tome and sniffed the pages, a habit she’d picked up as a child. The scent of the old paper and ink brought her to a place where she was safe and content. She couldn’t deny the euphoria she experienced with a book in her hand.

“What are you doing, young lady?”

Tammy startled and looked up. Old Bruce was standing there, his one bad leg stuck outward like a rotting tree trunk as he leaned on his gnarled cane.

“Hello.” She nodded to the chair beside her. “Have a seat. I was just reading.”

“Looked more like you were gettin’ ready to eat the thing.” He chuckled.

“I like to sniff books.”

“Sniff ’em? Really? My sister does that.”

“I didn’t think anyone did that except me, or maybe Clara.”

“Who’s Clara?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“My cousin. She loves to read as much as I do.”

“Good for you, reading books.” He held a worn copy of a Charles Dickens novel. “Looks like you and I both like the old stuff. Reading got me through the war. I was in Vietnam. Hell, total hell. But this—” He patted the cover of the book. “This got me through. Don’t know what I would’ve done without books.”

“You…you saw a lot of action?”

The wrinkles around his glistening eyes seemed to deepen, and for a split second, Tammy saw darkness and horrors, people being cut down like weeds. She blanched, her stomach turning.

“Tammy, war is hell. Don’t let nobody tell you different.” Their gazes met, and he nodded in understanding. “Something about you, kid.” He brandished the book as if to make a point. “You’ve seen things. You’ve seen the shadows in a man’s heart.”

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

In that moment, their connection deepened, and she wanted to hug Old Bruce. She wanted to pat him on the back and console him as though he were a little child.

But she didn’t. Instead, they stayed there and chatted for a long time, until the librarian came over and asked them to quiet down.

Bruce chuckled and leaned in close to whisper. “We’re gonna be the talk of the town, you and I.”

She didn’t mind.

T
he historian’s
office smelled like old newspapers and dust. Alex was running a little late, but the telltale rumble of a Harley Davidson had announced her arrival. She’d rushed in, the buckles on her motorcycle boots clinking, clad in dark blue jeans and a leather jacket, looking more like a bassist from a heavy metal band than the town historian of Clearwater.

Now, Tammy sat in front of the computer in the office, after Alex had shown her how to enter details about various documents and photographs into the archives.

“See, right there,” Alex said, indicating the screen. “Just type in whatever you can—names, dates, any other pertinent information. Don’t forget to save it. Hopefully, as long as the town implements it,” she added with a huff, “this’ll be put online so residents, students, researchers can access our archives easily.”

“You mean, none of this is backed up?” Tammy gave her an incredulous look.

“Well. It is.” She nodded toward an external hard drive. “It’s just not online. Makes me damn nervous, I’ll tell you that. Hey, how’s Orion doing?”

“He’s all right. He’s just trying to hold himself together until his appointment with his neurologist.”

She didn’t know what it was like to go through what he did, day in and day out, and she didn’t want to know. Her inner self warred with the desire to take his pain away, and the terror of it. And every time she mentioned it, he insisted he wouldn’t wish trigeminal neuralgia on his nastiest enemy, that it was called the
world’s worst pain
for a reason.

She looked up at Alex, who eyed her forlornly. “I don’t know what to do for him.”

“Just be there for him. There’s nothing else you can do.” She averted her eyes to the filing cabinet, then grabbed a stack of papers to continue her work. “Believe me,” she added. “I know what I’m talking about.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother had trigeminal neuralgia.”

“Really?” Tammy turned the wheeled chair so she was facing her, almost forgetting the task at hand.

“Yeah. She had it as long as I can remember. She was in a car in London once, years ago. There was a bad accident, and her head was hit from behind. She was thrown forwards.”

“Ouch,” she mumbled.

“Right, ouch.” Alex flipped through some files, carefully slipping papers into their designated places. “She didn’t get checked out right away, and even if she had, they probably wouldn’t have figured out about the neuralgia until later, anyway.” She turned grabbing another stack. For a moment, she stood there with a faraway look in her eye. “The rosary I gave Orion belonged to her.”

“Oh!” Tammy’s eyes widened. “I forgot about that. I’ll make sure he gets it back to you.”

Alex held up a hand, shaking her head. “No. Let him keep it.”

“But—”

“That rosary kept Mom alive for years. The condition worsened as she got older. She was in horrendous pain every day. She clutched that rosary all the time. I swear to God, it kept her going some days. Somehow. Orion needs it.” She leaned against the cabinet for a moment before adding in a soft tone, “I don’t want it back.”

After a long silence, punctuated only by the rustling of paper and the clicking of the computer mouse, Tammy said, “I was reading about it. I read that sometimes, trigeminal neuralgia can be caused by a tumor.”

“That’s true.”

“My father’s dying of a brain tumor.”

Alex turned and stared at her. Their gazes met. She was well aware of the fact she’d shared this information as though she were talking about the weather.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “When did you find out?”

“Just recently. And anyway, I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

“Why?”

“My father and I, we…things aren’t good.”

“I see.”

“Alex, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, kid.”

Tammy fought off the annoyance she felt at being called a
kid
. She wondered how old Alex was, then dismissed the thought. “My mother wants me to go visit my dad. I don’t want to. Should I?”

Seeming to sense the weight of the conversation, Alex sat down across from her. “It’s that bad, huh?”

“It’s worse,” she said softly.

“How long do you think he’ll live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if it were me, I’d want the closure.” She shrugged. “Of course, I don’t know what really happened. But it may be something you need to face up to.”

Tammy cringed. “What about your parents? What happened with your mother’s trigeminal neuralgia?”

Alex placed her hands on her thighs and stared off for a moment before replying. “She couldn’t handle the pain. She killed herself.”

Without missing a beat, she stood from her chair and got back to work.