“You know what?” she said, straightening and pulling away from him, restless again. She pushed into the space between the seats, stared for a moment through the windshield, then turned and came back again. He could see the tension between her brows, like the pleats in a tiny accordion. “Is there anything to eat in here? I’m hungry. And thirsty. Really thirsty.”
“Shoot,” he said under his breath, thinking hard. The truth was, he’d never been one to carry much with him in the way of food and drink. Truck stops being as plentiful and convenient as they were these days, if he had his druthers, he preferred to do his eating in something that didn’t vibrate. And as far as fluids were concerned, well… he’d learned the hard way that whatever he took in, sooner or later he was going to have to find a place to get rid of it, so unless the weather was hot and dry and he had to be careful about dehydration, he was apt to go real easy in that department.
Then he remembered the orange juice he’d brought her-was it just this morning? Yes, it was still there in the little alcove at the head of his bed where she’d set it down. She hadn’t drunk much of it. He reached for it and at the same time grabbed the plastic bag he kept his pocket change in.
He gave the orange-juice bottle a shake and held it out to her, smiling as her face lit up and she came for it like a hungry lamb. “There you go,” he murmured, guiding her until she was sitting on the bed again, “you stay here and sip on that. I’m gonna go see if I can find us some vending machines.”
Eyes closed, already drinking, she made wordless sounds of acquiescence and gratitude while he found the lantern, checked the beam, then braced himself, opened the door and stepped once more into that strange, unearthly night.
He was struck at once by the stillness. The quiet growl of the big diesel engine behind him, the constant rumbling of the trucks passing in endless procession just beyond seemed to have no connection with the land or the scene spread out before him. The wind had died down, leaving a quiet cold that burned like fire in his lungs. In the east there were clouds, lit to shades of indigo and silver and milky white by the rising moon, while under the light of the shrouded moon and brilliant stars the snow lay like a pale blue blanket across an empty land.
“Silent night! Holy night!/All is calm, all is bright…”
To take his mind off how cold the night was and how alone he felt in it, he sang the words of the carol in his mind as he made his way to the cinder-block shelter that housed the vending machines, keeping time with the crunch of his footsteps in the frozen snow.
“O little town of Bethlehem,/How still we see thee lie…”
He fed coins into the machines until he couldn’t feel his fingers, stuffing the pockets of his vest with packets of cheese and peanut-butter crackers, Oreo cookies and cans of 7-Up.
“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by…”
The coins were gone. Breathless with cold, hugging his goodies-filled vest and feeling like Santa Claus, he retraced his steps to where his truck sat patiently grumbling, giving off welcoming plumes of vapor like smoke from a farmhouse chimney. Halfway there he slipped on an icy patch and almost fell on his butt, interrupting his silent singing to utter aloud a cussword so inappropriate in that context it made him whoop with laughter.
He was still chuckling, singing, “Here comes Santy Claus,/ Here comes Santy Claus,” under his breath as he climbed into the cab, but the song and the laughter both fizzled out when he saw Mirabella sitting in the front seat, looking wide-eyed and clutching the CB mike in both hands as if it were a wild bird she’d just captured.
“Someone was there,” she said in a hushed and excited voice. “I was going to turn on the radio. I thought I’d try to find some music. Then I heard crackling, and I think…a voice. But it was so faint. So far away. I tried to answer, but I don’t think they heard me. Oh…” She broke off to wipe a furious hand across her eyes and nose, and he took the mike from her gently, ever mindful of emotions so perilously near the surface. Well aware that some of them were his.
He slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him, then eased on over into the space between the seats, pulling cellophane packages out of his vest pockets with one hand while he thumbed the mike on with the other. Mirabella watched him hungrily until he grinned and handed her a packet of cheese crackers.
“Mayday, channel 9, Mayday… Come on.” He listened to silence broken only by rustling paper and munching sounds, then fiddled with the tuner and tried again. “Mayday, Mayday, anybody out there listenin’?” He heard a faint crackling and caught and held his breath while he listened with every nerve cell in his body. But whoever it was trying to reach him, the signal was too weak and too far away.
“Jimmy Joe…”
He felt something lightly touch his face and realized only then that he’d been listening with his eyes shut. When he opened them he felt as if his heart was turning clear over inside his chest, because he could see then that it was her hand that lay along his beard-stubbled jaw, her fingers stroking back the hair just above his ear. He couldn’t remember exactly but he thought it was the first time she’d touched him like that, of her own accord. And when he looked at her he knew everything he was feeling must be right there in his face for her to see.
“Jimmy Joe, it’s all right,” she said, and stopped a tiny, silent burp with her hand. She shook her head and went earnestly on, smelling rather touchingly of Ritz crackers. “Even if nobody comes, I know everything’s going to be okay. You’re here…”
He shook his head and had to look away from her, the back of his hand, clutching the CB mike, pressed hard against his lips.
“I mean it,” she whispered earnestly, “I’d rather have you for my coach than anybody. Promise you won’t leave me.”
“Lord help us, I ain’t goin’ anywhere!” he exclaimed, his voice raspy and full of bumpy laughter.
“Um, shame on you, you said ‘ain’t.’ What would your mama say?” She was laughing, now, too, but stopped when she picked up her own thread again. “I mean…even if somebody comes. Please don’t leave me. Promise you’ll stay with me until my baby is born. Please, Jimmy Joe.”
He grabbed at her hand, but it was going to be a little while before he could bring the words up out of the jumble inside him. He waited, head bowed, holding her hand while he worked at it, and when he was pretty sure he had his own voice back he cleared his throat and said, “Marybell, there’s something you’ve gotta know.” He lifted his head and looked straight at her then, facing up to the truth like a man, like his daddy had always taught him. And because he knew he was going to let her down, it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Especially with those big trusting eyes of hers gazing into his.
He took a breath. “I didn’t lie to you. I did go to those childbirthing classes with Patti-my wife. I just… See, I never got to go through the actual birth with her. It was just the way it happened. Both times I was out on the road. The first time-”
“Contraction,” she gasped, and then went right on breathing like that, way too hard and too fast.
He yelled, “Slow down!” just to get her attention, but she stared at him and didn’t ease up on the breathing even a little bit, and he knew she was caught up in it and didn’t know how to stop. He took her face in his hands and felt her skin growing clammy to the touch.
“Breathe with me, dammit,” he said between clenched teeth, hoping he wasn’t going to start hyperventilating himself.
She shook her head frantically. He could feel that her jaw had gone rigid, see her eyes darken with panic. Lord, he thought, forgive me. He took a deep breath. And then he kissed her.
As kisses went, he supposed it wasn’t much. On a thrill scale, he would have had to rank it somewhere below an electric toothbrush and a fresh stick of cinnamon chewing gum. But it did what it was supposed to do, which was to stop her breathing long enough for her to get control of it again. To shock her enough to break the grip of her panic, like a slap in the face or a bucket of cold water. That was the way he meant it, and he hoped she would know that and forgive him for it.
The trouble was, his
It might not have been so hard if she’d stiffened up and pulled away from him like he’d expected she would. But instead, after the first frozen moment, the first shocked gasp, she leaned into his mouth-hard, and then harder, as if she couldn’t help herself, as if in some strange way there was a connection between the kiss and the cataclysm that was taking place in her body. It almost made a kind of sense to him, although he couldn’t have explained why
