Where the Heart Is (34 page)

“You’d better be careful, Benny. All this practice at telling lies, you’ll get good at it.”

“I’m sorry, but . . .” Benny shrugged his shoulders, then slid down in his chair and put his head back.

“But what?”

“You want the truth?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ve never had a date, Novalee. I’ve never even been with a girl.”

“Well, you’ve got some time. I mean, you’re . . .”

“Seventeen! Almost every guy I know has already . . . they’ve already had two or three girls by the time they’re seventeen.

Novalee sighed and shook her head.

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh, a lot happened to me when I was seventeen.”

“Well, nothing’s happened to me! Nothing good. Nothing bad.

Nothing period!”

“Benny, what are you talking about. You’re a track star, won all those awards. You think that’s nothing?”

“Look, Novalee. I know what happened to you when you came here, when you were seventeen. I know some guy ran off and left you. And I know you had Americus in Wal-Mart.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that was awful for you then, but those were real experiences.

You know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I mean, you weren’t stuck in Mr. Pryor’s algebra class at eight-thirty every morning. You didn’t have to suit up for basketball on Friday nights so you could sit on the bench. You haven’t spent your whole life in Sequoyah pruning pear trees and mulching pines at the Where the Heart Is

Goodluck Nursery. See, everything about my life is the same. Always the same.”

“Benny . . .”

“I read those books you gave me, Novalee. All those stories about people going off to places like Singapore and Tibet and Madagascar.

People who race cars and hop freight trains. Go up in balloons, climb mountains. Explore places where no one else’s ever been. Stories about people who write plays and make movies. People who fall in love.”

“You’re going to do some of those things, Benny.”

“Going to? When? I’ll be eighteen tomorrow—and I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Good! Then everything’s out there in front of you, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“Think about this, Benny. What if you’d already done it all?”

“What do you mean?”

“What would be left? What would the next thrill be? What would be the fun of waking up every morning if you’d already done it all?

Huh? What would you do?”

“I guess I’d do some of it again.”

“But it wouldn’t be as wonderful the second time around. Benny, we can’t all go to Singapore, and some of us are never going to climb mountains or make a movie. But you run races and I take pictures and everyone looks for someone to love. And sometimes, we make it.

Sometimes, we win.”

“Yeah.”

“Things will look different in the fall, when you go off to school.”

“Oh, Novalee. I’m afraid I’ll just be doing more of the same old stuff.”

“No! You’ll be learning new things, meeting new people. Exciting people. Lots of girls.”

“That’d be nice.”

“And I’ll bet you’ll meet some special girl. Some girl you’ll want to be with all the time. Why you won’t be able to sleep or eat because she’ll be on your mind all the time, and—”

“Novalee, I’ve never kissed a girl.”

“You will, Benny. You’ll kiss a whole lot of girls.”

“But I don’t know how. I won’t know what to do.”

“Oh, it comes pretty naturally, I think.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Benny . . .”

“Just once. And I’ll never ask again.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m not a girl.”

“Twenty-five’s not old.”

“It’s a lot older than seventeen.”

Benny lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. “I’ll be eighteen in three more minutes.”

Novalee studied his face for a moment—the face of the ten-year-old boy who had leaned out of a truck and touched her . . . the face of the boy at twelve, running on a mountain ridge . . . the face of the teenager who loved rain and hawks and wild plums. Then she leaned across the arm of her chair, leaned toward Benny Goodluck and took his face in her hands and brought it to her own. As their lips met, he closed his eyes, and in the light of the moon and under the branches of the buckeye tree, they kissed. And it was the greatest adventure of his seventeenth year.

NOVALEE WAS CONVINCED that luck could be passed on from parent to child just like the shape of a nose or bowlegs or a craving for chocolate. Americus did, after all, have Novalee’s widow’s peak, her green eyes, the same smile. So it seemed almost natural for her to inherit her mother’s bad luck with sevens.

So far they had survived it, but sometimes just barely. They had lived through the seventh month of the pregnancy together. They had endured the seventh day of Americus’ life and managed to make it through the seventh month. But now, they faced the greatest challenge of all—the seventh year. Americus had just had a birthday.

Novalee had kept the celebration small and quiet, as if too much attention might invite disaster. But the party had been without incident. There was no earthquake, no flood. Not a scraped knee or a bee sting, not even a sunburn. The weather was beautiful, the ice cream didn’t melt and no one spilled the Kool-Aid. An almost perfect day.

Even so, in the weeks that followed, Novalee couldn’t ignore the dread she felt, dread that chilled her skin and tingled her scalp. She knew something was coming. She just didn’t know what or when.

Sometimes she almost wished whatever was going to happen would come on, so she could get it over with.

She didn’t have long to wait.

The newspapers had stacked up for three days while she finished developing pictures of a wedding she had shot in Keota the weekend before. She didn’t get around to Monday’s paper until Thursday night, just after Americus had gone to bed. She was working through them quickly because she still had to wash her hair and dry a load of clothes.

She was scanning pictures and headlines when she saw it, a short column tucked between ads on page seven.

VICTIM’S WHEELCHAIR STOLEN

A legless man identified as W.J. Pickens was discovered Sunday afternoon in the men’s room at a rest stop near Alva. Pickens, who lost his legs in a train accident, had been trapped since sometime late Friday night when he was robbed of his wheelchair.

According to Pickens, an unidentified male picked him up outside of Liberal, Kansas, where he was hitchhiking. As they neared Alva, Pickens became ill and the driver pulled in and parked at the rest stop.

Pickens said he wheeled himself into the men’s room, but the driver followed him inside and fled with the wheelchair.

On Sunday afternoon a survey crew heard Pickens’ calls for help and notified the Sheriff’s Office in Alva.

Pickens, who left California two weeks ago, said he was hitchhiking to Oklahoma to search for his child and the child’s mother, whom he had not seen since 1987.

Pickens was admitted to Woods County General where he remains in guarded condition.

Novalee didn’t do her laundry or her hair. She made two quick calls, then got Americus up and took her to Moses and Certain’s.

After she filled her car at the Texaco, she headed for the highway.

Willy Jack’s eyes were closed when she stepped inside the room and for a moment she thought he was dead, but then she could see the rise and fall of his chest beneath the thin hospital gown. His skin, a sickly yellow, seemed too big for his body, like he’d shrunk inside it.

She watched him sleep and wondered what pictures he saw behind his twitching eyelids. Suddenly, his body jerked, a powerful jerk that shook the bed. He twisted toward the door.

“What did you say?” He fixed her with his eyes. They were the color of bile, the skin beneath them puffy and gray. “What did you say?” he asked again, insistence at the edge of his voice.

She let him struggle to pull her image into focus. She hadn’t come to help him with anything.

“Novalee?”

When he lifted his head off the pillow, she could see his scalp through the thinning hair at his temples.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

He pulled himself up on his elbows and stared across the room at her. “Novalee.” Then he smiled. “I was coming back to find you.”

“Why?”

The question hung between them like something solid and thick.

“What were you going to do, Willy Jack?” Her voice was even, without heat. “Were you going to come back to the Wal-Mart where you dumped me out?”

“Novalee . . .”

“Did you think I’d still be there waiting for you?”

“I just wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Really?”

“Look . . .”

“You’re a little late though. About seven years.”

Willy Jack let his head sink back into the pillow, then rubbed at his forehead. An IV needle in the back of his hand had made the skin look waxy and bloodless.

“I come back because I needed to tell you something about Americus.”

Novalee stiffened. Her muscles tensed, her weight shifted. Then her eyes went flat and hard as she measured the threat of him.

“How do you know about her?”

Willy Jack heard something in her voice, something strong and dangerous, something he didn’t know.

“How did you find out?”

“My cousin, J. Paul.”

“You’re telling me a lie!”

“He said the police called him a few years back. The baby was missing and they wanted to know where I was.”

“Willy Jack . . .”

“Hell, I was in prison. I never heard nothin’ about it till a year ago when I saw J. Paul. But that’s how I knew about her. That’s how I knew where she was.”

“But you didn’t know if I got her back. You didn’t know if she was dead or alive.”

“You’re wrong, Novalee. I knew. I knew she was okay and I knew she was with you. In Sequoyah.”

“How? How did you know that?”

“I called your house.”

“You what?” She was fighting for control, but the words crackled with anger.

“Oh, I never said nothin’ to her. Anyway, you usually answered the phone. But a few times, she did.” He seemed to drift away, then he smiled. “I heard her voice . . . and that was enough. Got me through some bad times.”

“You were coming for her, weren’t you?”

“Coming for her? What do you mean?”

“You were going to try to take her.” Novalee could feel the muscles of her face tighten. “You were going to take her away from me.”

“How could I do that?”

“What? Willy Jack Pickens do something so low as to steal a child?”

“Steal her? That’s what you think?” Willy Jack grabbed the rails of the bed and pulled himself up. “What the hell you think I’m gonna do, Novalee. Run away with her?”

He yanked at the sheet that was covering him and threw it on the floor. “I’m not doing a hell of a lot of running these days.”

His legs ended just below the knees. Novalee wanted to look away, but she didn’t. She knew that’s what he was after. He wanted to shock her, but she wouldn’t let him get by with it. She wouldn’t let him get the best of her. Not ever again.

She walked to the end of the bed and looked, without flinching, at the puckered flesh. The thick, ugly scars.

“How did you know I was here, Novalee?”

“I read about you in the newspaper.”

“What did it say? Poor pitiful cripple can’t get off the floor of the john?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, if the cripple can’t even manage to get out of the toilet, how the hell’s he gonna get in your house and steal your girl? ’Course, if he finds a phone booth and changes into Superman, then—”

“Don’t try to get funny. Don’t try to change this.”

“And how would the cripple take care of her once he got her? Now if he could grow legs and if he could get a new liver, then maybe . . .”

“If you think I’m going to feel sorry for you, you’re wrong.”

“Then maybe he could run Disney World.”

“Why did you come back here?” Novalee’s voice was growing louder.

“Or maybe he’d go into banking.”

“If it wasn’t for Americus, then why?” She knew she was losing it, but she couldn’t stop.

“I suppose he could become a judge.”

“Why?” she screamed. “Why are you here?”

The only sound came from the hall, cushioned footsteps and the swish of nylon as a scowling nurse marched in.

“You have a problem in here?” She looked from Willy Jack to Novalee. “I could hear you all the way down the hall.”

“Sorry,” Willy Jack said.

Then she saw the sheet on the floor. “What in the world is going on?”

“It just slipped off.”

“Oh.” She gathered up the sheet and dropped it beside the door, then pulled a fresh one from the top of a closet. “I thought maybe you were jumping on the bed.” She flipped the sheet open and let it settle over Willy Jack, then she checked his IV. “I’ve got a shot for you if you need it.”

“I’m doing all right. Let’s wait.”

“You let me know,” she said. “And no more rough stuff down here.” Then she wheeled and walked out, closing the door behind her.

Novalee went to the window and stared out. The sky, almost cloudless, appeared to be a strange shade of green through the tinted glass.

“Novalee.” Willy Jack’s voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “I done a bad thing to you. The worst I ever done to anyone, I guess.

But then, most of what I’ve done’s been bad.”

Novalee was listening, but she didn’t trust what she was hearing.

She knew better.

“Now I know there’s not much to redeem me. Not much at all

’cause I only done two good things in my whole damned life. And I don’t suppose it took much to do either one . . . but they was both my doin’.”

Novalee listened for the snarl, then turned to look for the smirk he could never hide, but she couldn’t see it.

“I fathered a child, a sweet child, I imagine, if she’s anything like her mother. And I wrote a song. A damned good song. But, of course, I screwed around. Messed myself up. I ran away from one of them . .

. and I got the other stole from me. Hell, I probably deserved it. But that don’t change the goodness of either one of ’em. And I hope that counts for something.”