One Christmas Knight

then sang out, “Well, g‘mornin’, sunshine. You feelin’ better?”

She crept in between the seats, wrapped like an Indian in the comforter from the bed-an old quilt he’d borrowed from his mama’s house-and eased herself into the passenger seat. He knew he ought to tell her to fasten her seat belt, but a quick look over at her, the way she was holding herself, made him think…maybe not.

“Jimmy Joe…” She took a deep breath and pulled herself up straighter, and he could see that she was trying hard to recover some of the dignity she’d lost back there in the snowbank. “I think you should know… My, uh, my water broke.”

Oh, Lord, he thought. Lord, no.

But she took another breath, shakier than the first, and went on with it like somebody scared silly but determined to make a full confession. “Back there. It…startled me. That’s why I lost control of my car.” Her voice, which had started off calm and strong, got gradually fainter until she finished in a whisper, “I have to get…to a hospital. I think I’m going to have my baby…now.”

Chapter 7

“Eastbound, you got your ears on?”

I-40-Texas

Well, Lord, Jimmy Joe thought, if you’re listenin’, this would be a real good time for a miracle…

Because he knew that all the “Maydays” and all the prayers in the world weren’t going to get an ambulance out on that track of rutted black ice, and if one did manage to get here, there wasn’t any way in the world for it to get back to Amarillo with Mirabella-not with a solid line of trucks plugging up the road. Not unless it could fly. And until the wind died down and the snow quit blowing, there wasn’t much chance of that, either.

The best he could hope for was to keep going, keep heading for Amarillo, and hope he got there before the baby did. Amarillo… no more than fifty miles, now. At this rate that was ten hours. Ten hours.

He didn’t know why he wasn’t more surprised: Scared, yes, but not surprised. Icy sweat filmed his upper lip and ran in a trickling trail from his armpits and on down his ribs. Maybe we’ll make it, he thought. Sure, we will. Babies, especially the first one, can take a long time.

“Jimmy Joe?” Her eyes were dark, beseeching.

“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat, wondering how long he’d been sitting there in frozen silence. “I heard what you said.” He realized he was still holding his CB mike pressed against his chest and reached out to hang it up, stretching his arm slowly…stalling.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry. He glanced at her, then transferred his scowl to the left-hand mirror instead, where beyond the endless line of headlights he could see streaks of red in between the layers of black and purple clouds. Somewhere out there behind him the sun was going down. It was going to get dark soon.

“Hey,” he said, “let me ask you something.”

Hearing the hoarseness and the edge in his voice, Mirabella caught her breath and waited. She wanted him to look at her with the calm, reassuring eyes she remembered-eyes the warm, comforting brown of teddy bears and chocolate. But he kept his face turned away from her, and the angle of his head and the set of his jaw had a tense, angry look.

“You said your back’s been burtin’ you. That a steady kinda hurt, or more off and on?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “Off and on, I guess. I just thought it was the Tylenol taking effect. I thought I was aching because of too much sitting. I thought I was just tired. I never thought-”

Jimmy Joe was muttering under his breath. He broke off to ask, “How long has this been goin’ on?”

Wretchedly, Mirabella whispered, “Since yesterday, I think.”

Then he did finally look at her, with eyes that were more black than brown and in no way comforting, and exclaimed, “Good night, woman, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you know enough to know when you’re in labor?”

She flinched at the word-an appalling thing to do, but she couldn’t help it. Even though she knew she’d earned his anger, it seemed so unexpected, so incomprehensible, more frightening than anything that had happened to her so far. To her utter dismay she began to tremble, and then to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be now!” she wailed. “It’s not supposed to be for another month. I just thought…I was, you know… uncomfortable. I never dreamed… It’s not supposed to…”

Another month. Oh, Lord. He remembered now; she’d told him that. Lord help us, he thought. A month early-a preemie. Oh, hell. Oh, damn. Anything but that. He felt himself go icy cold, then numb.

But not too numb for it to occur to him he’d forgotten who he was dealing with, to know he’d lost control of himself, and as a result now he had a very upset woman on his hands. Not too numb to feel like a bully, and thoroughly ashamed of himself.

He took a deep breath and stretched his arm slowly across the space between them, gripping the back of the seat, near enough to her to touch the quilt she’d wrapped herself in. “Easy… You just take it easy, now,” he muttered. A tremor went through him as he felt the slippery warmth of her hair against his fingertips. “It’s gonna be okay…it’s gonna be okay.”

She bowed her head so that her hair pulled through his fingers like a shuttle full of silk floss through a loom. It slithered forward across her cheeks and his hand found her neck instead. In a voice he could barely hear she whispered, “Jimmy Joe, I’m scared.”

Scared? He wanted to tell her he was scared, too; as scared as he’d ever been in his life before. Lord, how scared he was. He wanted to tell her-and God, too-that he didn’t want any part of this.

No, Lord, I don’t want ever again to hold a too-tiny baby in my hands and watch it slip away before it even has a chance to live. Not again, Lord. Not again.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said for the third time, trying to make himself believe it. His voice sounded like the scratched 78-rpm records Great-granddaddy Joe Doyle used to play on his windup phonograph. “We’re only fifty miles from Amarillo.”

He could feel her turn to look at him, with a gaze both direct and solemn. “How many hours?”

Since he never had been any good at telling lies, instead of trying to think one up he gave her neck a little squeeze and then took his hand away. In his scratchy gramophone voice he said, “I put a call out on the emergency radio channel. We’ll get you some help out here, don’t you worry.”

Then he had an inspiration. Taking his mike down from its hook, he held it out to her and showed her with his thumb how to work the speaker button.

“Here,” he said, “why don’t you give ‘em another call right now? You just mash on this right here when you want to say somethin’, then let er go so you can listen. See there? Go on, give ’er a try.” If nothing else, he thought, it would give her something to do, make her feel, if not better, at least maybe not so helpless.

One of her hands crept from the folds of the quilt and took the mike from him. It came as a shock to him to feel how cold her fingers were. He heard a soft sniff, a throat-clearing cough, and then in a low voice, “What do I say?”

“You probably oughta start with ‘Mayday,’” he said dryly, trying out a grin to see if it had any effect on his spirits. It didn’t, and his words came out with an impatient edge. “Then, I don’t know. Tell ‘em it’s an emergency. Tell ’em where you are. Then…shoot, just tell ’em what the problem is.”

“I’ve never done this before.” She gave a nervous, hiccuping laugh. “I feel funny.”

He looked over at her, saw her trying to smile, and the sheen of fear in her eyes. His voice gentled. “No trick to it,” he said softly, dragging his eyes back to the road. “Just hold it up to your mouth, mash the button and talk. Nothin’ to be bashful about.”

“Okay, here goes…” He heard her take a breath, clear her throat. “Okay… Mayday, Mayday. This is an