Unconditional (17 page)

“I thought Billy died three years ago.”

“He did.” I couldn't look at Joe as I said the rest of what I had to say, so I kept my gaze on the pale color of the hay bales under the moon's light. “The night he got killed, it was raining. It had been raining for days. Last week, when I went back down there . . . to the Commons . . . it was because . . . it had been raining for days and . . .”

“And?”

I couldn't bear to go on with my story, yet I knew I had to. If I was ever going to get past this . . . this
depression
. . . this barrier that stood between me and living again, I had to tell someone—a special someone—the truth about why I had gone into that alley. For whatever reason God had brought Keisha and Macon into my life that night. And through them he'd brought Joe back as well. Together they'd given me the first glimmer of hope and purpose I'd known for three years.

“After what you've told me, Joe . . . after what you've been through, and
survived
. . . And now watching you hooked up to that machine, knowing that at some point . . .”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“I'm ashamed to tell you that I went down to the Commons that night with a .44 Magnum.”

My tears began to fall in earnest. I refused to hold them back a minute longer. To do so would split my heart wide open, and surely I would die. But in that moment, by some miracle, my heart wanted nothing more than to go on. To
live
.

I looked at Joe. His face was etched in sorrow and concern. “What were you gonna do with that gun, Sam?”

“I went back to the alley because . . . if that was where some man took Billy's life . . . then that was where I wanted to take my own.” I looked at Keisha through my tears—she slept on like the angel she was. “Then I thought . . . I thought I'd found the man who'd done it. Who'd killed Billy. I thought it was Anthony Jones. But . . .” I shook my head.

“Naw, not Anthony. Least, I don't think so.”

I drew in a deep breath. Chuckled sarcastically. “Detective Miller was right. Looks like it was a dead-end road.”

Joe reached his hand toward me. Slowly. Cautiously. Then he laid it over mine. “Been down a few of those myself. But the one thing I've learned along the way . . .” He moved my hand before drawing Keisha's out from under the blanket. “It's not a dead end,” he said, placing her tiny hand in mine, “if it takes you somewhere you needed to go.”

Chapter Sixteen

I took Keisha
back inside the house, laid her gently on the floor, and tucked the blanket around her. Then I kissed her forehead. Light from the fireplace danced across her face, showing off the fresh scar left behind from the night we met. In her sleep, she smiled.

When I returned to the porch, Joe was sitting up with his hands on the railing, leaning forward to watch the moon.

“I need to do something out in the barn,” I told him. “If you wait, I'll help you back inside.”

“Naw, girl. I got it. I'm fine now, really.”

“Okay.”

I took the steps to the stoop, wrapped my arms around myself, pulling my sweater closer to my body. I could feel Joe watching me, and I turned to look at him over my shoulder. His forearms now rested on the railing. He lifted a hand to wave lightly before dropping his chin onto one of his arms.

I waved back.

Inside the barn I flipped the light switch, waited the few seconds it took for the lights to come on, and then climbed the steps up to the loft, feeling lighter than I had in three years. Upstairs I went straight to the desk and lit a candle I used to keep burning while I worked. I believed it brought me peace and inspiration. Now it would lead me someplace new by destroying what I'd been holding on to for so long. Too long.

I pulled the picture of the man in the red hoodie from under the sketch pad
.
After studying it for a moment, I sighed. The paper moved as my breath hit it.

Anthony Jones's face did
not
belong beneath the hood. He'd saved Keisha's life; he hadn't taken Billy's. It had to be true. I had to believe it.

I nodded once, and then dipped a corner of the drawing toward the flame. It caught immediately. I held it until it was nearly consumed, then dropped it onto a tin platter, one of the many items just lying around an artist's studio.

Outside, thunder rolled, catching me off guard. I was feeling better about things, but I wasn't ready for another storm. Like little Firebird, I still hated the rain.

He wanted to know why God gave storms the power to take the sun away. And Mama bird would just smile and say, “You'll understand someday, when you walk on the clouds.”

When the sketch had finished burning—when it was nothing more than memory and ashes—I blew out the candle. I heard thunder again, but this time from far off. If there was a storm out there, it wasn't hitting the farm tonight.

I pulled a piece of paper from one of my blank sketch pads, and a charcoal pencil from one of the Mason jars. A new picture had formed in my head. Before I went to bed, I was determined to draw it.

Morning birds singing
their wake-up song coaxed me from the most peaceful slumber I'd had in years. I rolled over in bed and looked out one of the three sets of French doors leading to the wraparound balcony outside the second floor. The sun still hid behind the hills, and the eastern sky was a brilliant red.

Red sky at morning,
the ancient rhyme played in my mind,
sailors take
warning.

I smiled as I stretched. An old mariner's tale to be sure.
Nothing
could upset this day. Nothing.

After I'd showered and dressed, I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Denise and Brick were already out by the barn with the children. Denise was playing a patty-cake type game with Shannon, one of the older girls. Brick was trying his hand at teaching Macon, Darren, and Bernard the art of roping. Two girls were pushing Chloe in our old wheelbarrow, while Keisha and Peach skipped hand in hand across the yard. When Keisha saw me, she turned and waved. I waved back, amused by her snaggletooth grin and thrilled at seeing the joy on her face.

How different my farm—my home—looked with so many happy young faces running about. I shook my head. No, I decided, Detective Miller was wrong. Very wrong. Good
can
come out of the Commons.

I was looking at it.

The door behind me opened. I turned, expecting to see Joe, but saw Macon instead.

“Good morning, Macon,” I said, welcoming him to the balcony with a smile.

He remained half in and half out the door. “Miss Sam?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I'm hungry.”

Macon was
always
hungry. “You don't say? Well, we'll get something to eat on the way back. How does that sound?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

I looked again at my guests on the lawn. “Hey, Macon?” I said, turning back to him.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Where's Joe?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I guess he's still sleeping. Want me to wake him up?”

I wasn't surprised by this news, seeing as Joe and I had stayed up so late.

“That'd be nice.”

Macon nodded. “I'll get 'im.”

He started to close the door behind him. “That's okay. Leave it open. I'll come inside in just a minute.”

I leaned my shoulder against the post and returned to watching the children. I looked across the yard and the field, up to the multicolored leaves painting the hills. The sky had turned a pristine azure, with only a few white fluffy clouds gracing the blue.

Just then, Denise spotted me from the barnyard. She smiled and waved. I did the same.

“Miss Sam!”
A distressed cry pierced the moment.
“Miss Sam!”

Macon!

I turned around and dashed into the house. Macon met me halfway up the stairs. I grabbed him by his shoulders to steady us both. His eyes were wet with tears. “What is it—?”

“It's Joe, Miss Sam! There's blood everywhere!”

I turned him toward the bottom of the staircase. “Go get Brick and Denise. Run!”

Macon made a beeline for the front door, and I headed straight for Joe's room. Macon had left the knotty pine door to the bedroom partially open. I could hear the dialysis machine beeping.

I pushed the door fully open.

Joe lay on the floor, the machine no more than a foot from where his hand was sprawled outward, as though he'd tried to get to it but failed.

Blood pooled thick on the hardwood floor. His blood.

Joe was dying.

After I'd called
9-1-1, I found Brick talking with Macon, suggesting strongly that he not mention anything to the other children. A new level of maturity seemed to rise up in the boy, inching him toward manhood.

Then, while Denise tended to Joe inside, Brick and I loaded the kids onto the bus along with all of their belongings.

Brick said to me, “I'll get them on back to the Commons. Let their mamas and the others know what's going on.”

I placed my hand on his arm. “Thank you, Brick.” I looked at my watch. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”

“Let me get these kids outta here.”

I watched the bus drive away. The children hung from the windows, shouting their good-byes and waving frantically. I waved back, forcing myself to remain calm. To appear as though nothing was in the least bit wrong when everything had, once again, turned upside down.

As soon as they were out of sight, I ran back into the house.

Denise knelt over Joe's body with a large towel pressed against the port and catheter. Blood had seeped up to mid-thigh of her jeans. She looked at me, her eyes frantic with worry. “He's still bleeding.”

“The ambulance is on its way,” I said, joining her, kneeling at Joe's head. “I don't know what else to do . . .”

Denise squeezed my hand with one of hers. “Pray, girl. Pray like you've never prayed before in your life.”

“Okay,” I said, though I wasn't sure I knew how anymore. There hadn't been many conversations between God and me since Billy died. Last night's talk with Joe had been the closest thing to church I'd attended since the funeral. For three years now part of me had struggled to believe, the old question of how a benevolent God could allow such injustice as Billy's death rearing its head at least once a day. Now, just as I was beginning to sense purpose in my life again—just as I opened the door to Joe's way of thinking—
this
happens.

“Denise?” I asked. “Do you believe that God is good all the time?”

Her face grew resolute. “I do. In spite of everything I've seen in my life, Sam . . . I believe it. And I believe Joe having this collapse right now—that's in God's timing too. It's in His hands. God knows when the right time for a transplant is. Maybe that time is now.”

“What if it isn't?”

“Then God knows best about that too.”

Sirens blared in the distance. I looked from this beautiful woman—so full of faith and hope—to the open bedroom door behind me. “Here they come. I'll meet them out front.” I stood.

“Denise?” I said, looking down.

“Yeah, baby?”

“You love him, don't you?”

“With everything I got.”

Out the front door I saw two ambulances barreling up the road. I stepped on to the front porch and stood behind the same chair Joe had recuperated in the night before. I placed my hands around the back of the chair and squeezed.

It dawned on me then, and I wondered: Had Denise thought I was asking about Joe? Or about God?

Denise rode in
the ambulance with Joe, while I followed behind in Billy's truck, breaking every speed law in Davidson County and most of Tennessee. Turned out, the hospital was the same I'd taken Keisha to, so I felt as if I knew my way around. After parking, I found my way to the same waiting area and sat across from the same nurses' station as I had not so many nights before.

Denise met me there. “They're stabilizing him.”

“So he's . . .”

She breathed deeply. “He's alive, baby. He's alive.”

I fell into her arms, crying.

She squeezed me once before saying, “Girl, I've got to run to the house. Get out of these clothes. I've got blood everywhere. If some of the kids should come up here later, I don't want them to see this.”

I nodded. “I'll wait right here. I won't leave, I promise.”

She smiled. “I know you won't. I won't be long.”

I sat in the same seat I'd occupied the night of Keisha's accident. I stretched to look over the station high-top counter, and then up and down the halls for the nurse who had been so helpful and kind that evening, but she wasn't to be found. I realized then that noon hadn't even arrived, and she was probably a night-shift nurse.

I clutched my purse, pulling it closer than was really necessary. I stared at my feet, just as I'd done that night, acutely aware of the conversations at the nurses' station, the occasional foot traffic up and down the hall. Other than the night Billy died, I had never felt this alone before.

When God's all you got to talk to, God is
who
you talk to
.

I hung my head. “God,” I whispered. “I know it's been a while, but . . . my friend Joe. He's very special to me. And I know he's special to You.” I thought of Macon and Keisha. Bernard and Peach. And Chloe and Darren and all the others. “He's special to an awful lot of kids too, God. So . . . if it's all right for me to ask this, could You please make sure Joe doesn't die?” I choked. “Because I really don't think I could stand to lose anyone else right now . . .”

I pressed my hands into my face and sobbed.