One Christmas Knight

“I don’t know. I kicked them off, I think.”

He found them in the folds of the comforter and knelt to help her into them, noticing that they went on easily enough. He remembered that swollen feet at this stage of the game were not a good thing, so that eased his mind in one small way.

“There you go,” he grunted as he got to his feet. “What else d’you need? Your pocketbook?” She was already wrestling with the sleeves of her coat. He helped her with that, found her purse and hooked the strap over his shoulder, then bent to get an arm around her and hoist her to her feet.

“It’s okay, I can make it,” she protested. “You don’t have to help me.” To Jimmy Joe her breathlessness sounded not so much cranky as desperate. Hearing it, he did as she asked and let go of her, and after hovering anxiously for a moment, went to open the door for her instead.

“I heard the CB,” she said as she eased herself between the seats, moving like a rig backing into a loading bay. “Did I hear right? Did they say the road’s going to be…opening soon?”

She’d paused, apparently to catch her breath, so he pulled the door closed again to save the heat. “That’s what they’re sayin’ ’Bout noon, looks like.”

“What time is it now?”

“Goin’ on eleven. Plenty a’ time, if you want to wash up…have some breakfast.” He pushed the door open, stepped onto the running board and held out his hand to help her down.

But she’d spotted his pillow and paperback on the seat; he could see her looking at them with that little pleat of frown wrinkles between her eyes as she squeezed by. She transferred the frown to him as she took the hand he’d offered and asked, not with gentle concern but in a sharp, accusing tone, “Did you get any sleep?”

Jimmy Joe couldn’t help but grin, she sounded so much like his mama. “I dozed some,” he said, easing her down to the ground. “Mostly I just read.” Then he had to laugh; the way she glared at him, you would have thought he’d confessed to spending the night in a honky-tonk bar. “It’s okay. Hey, I like to read.”

“You do?” For some reason that seemed to surprise her. Then she shook herself-or maybe it was a shiver as the cold wind hit her-and said, “Oh, that’s right-I saw your books.”

They’d turned and started slowly walking together toward the truck-stop cafe, and since she seemed to have forgotten he still had her hand, he kept it and tucked it into the bend of his elbow and covered it with his to keep it warm. Looking down at her, he could see that her nose was turning pink and her face had a pinched look to it, and he knew she would go faster if there was any way in the world she could. That high-plateau wind cut like a razor- you could smell the snow in it. To keep her mind off it he picked up the thread of the conversation they’d been having about books, asking her in a polite way if she liked to read.

Her shoulder nudged against him as she shrugged. “I’ve never been much of a reader. It’s not that I don’t like to read-it just seems like I always have too many other things to do.”

“Yeah? What do you do when you want to just…you know, relax?”

“Relax?” She made it sound like a word she’d never heard before. Glancing down at her, he saw that she was frowning again, thinking about it.

He didn’t pursue it, just shook his head and said, “I guess I can’t imagine not readin’. Probably because my mama used to read to me, from the time I was too little to remember. She read to all of us kids. You know…startin’ with those little picture books with animals in ‘em, then Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss, all the way through the Little House books and Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island. Seems like there never was a time we didn’t have a book goin’.”

The wind caught her hair suddenly, and unfurled it like bright red party streamers around her face. She grabbed at it, gathered it in one hand and held it while she looked up at him, squinted an eye shut and asked, “How many of you were there? You mentioned your sister…”

“Three sisters, three brothers.”

She gasped. “Seven! My God, how did she find the time?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy Joe with a shrug. “She just did.”

For a few moments she didn’t say anything, just walked along with her head down, her hair caught up in her hand. He felt her take a deep breath. “My mom read to my sisters and me, too. I don’t know why it didn’t take with me.” She let go of her hair then, and shook her head as if saying to the wind, Go on, have your way with it, I don’t care! He saw her face light up with some intense emotion he didn’t know the name of- something fierce and joyful and proud-and she said, “I’m going to read to my baby though. I’ve been buying books, all sorts of books. Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss and those little picture books with animals in them.” And suddenly she laughed.

Jimmy Joe wondered if it was the first time he’d ever heard her laugh. He knew it was the first time he’d heard her laugh that way-a sound as merry and as good for the heart as sleigh bells on Christmas morning.

It also occurred to him that it was the first time he’d heard her talk about her baby like that-as if it was a real live person and not some kind of condition. He wanted to hear more, ask her some questions, like whether she wanted a boy or a girl, and what she planned to name it, and whether the kid’s father was going to be around to help her walk the floor at two in the morning. But they’d reached the truck stop’s double entrance, and there was nothing for him to do but hold the doors for her, first the outer, then the inner, and he had to really hop to it to get there before she did. And he was sorry.

Inside, she left him with a distracted wave and made a beeline for the bathroom. He watched her go, then went to see if he could find them a table in the cafe. As it turned out, he didn’t have any trouble; with the word out about the road opening, the drivers’ section was emptying out fast. There was a stirring in the air, a buzz of energy like the revving of diesel engines, all those drivers itching to be on the road again-most of them, like him, heading home. He felt it too, the restlessness, the building up of energy inside him, the pull of loved ones waiting and watching for him. But for him there was something else, too; kind of an uneasiness, as if he was leaving something unfinished, something undone. Something important.

While he waited for Mirabella to come out of the bathroom, he ordered coffee-regular for himself, decaf for her-then thought about calling J.J. He still had hopes of making it home by late Christmas Day if he drove straight through without stopping. But he didn’t want to get the boy’s hopes up until he was safely through the Panhandle, so he didn’t make the call.

He was scowling at the menu when Mirabella joined him. It was starting to be a habit, he thought, the way she would show up at his elbow, taking possession of the space around him so that suddenly even the air he breathed seemed filled with her-her presence, her scent, her energy.

She looked different this morning. She’d scrubbed her face and pulled her hair back and fastened it on top with some kind of clip in a way that made her seem even younger than she had before. Not the old-fashioned movie star now; more like a high-school cheerleader. But it was more than that. It seemed to him there was a new kind of quietness about her…

But it wasn’t until she was easing into the booth across from him that he finally put his finger on what was different. It was her arrogance, that uppity tilt to her chin that was missing. And that worried him.

The first thing she said to him was, “How come you’re not on the phone? Aren’t you going to call your son and let him know you’re on your way?”

Which reassured him some, being the sort of bossiness that he’d already come to understand was just her basic nature. So he smiled and said, “Naw, I’ll wait a bit. Like to make it through Texas, first. Then I’ll know I’ve got a shot at gettin’ home by Christmas.”

She nodded and looked quickly down at her menu, but not before he caught a glimpse of shadows in her eyes. That and the tiny quiver of her mouth made him ask, even though it wasn’t any of his business, “What about you? You got folks waitin’ on you?” Like a husband, maybe? That would explain it, he thought, if she was tryin’ so hard to get to him, to be with him for the holidays. He could almost understand that.

“My mom,” she said, still looking down at the menu. She swallowed and added, “And my dad,” in a whisper he could barely hear.

Then he wondered why talking about her daddy made her choke up so, but poking into people’s business, getting them to spill their personal secrets wasn’t something he’d had much experience in or felt comfortable doing. So all he said was, “They’re in Pensacola, you said?”

She glanced up at him and cleared her throat, and he could tell she was back on steadier ground. “Yes- Pensacola Beach, actually.”