(2006) When Crickets Cry (27 page)

Annie shook her head. "Nothing other than the usual."

I leaned against the wall and slid down, coming to rest on the carpet, my head in my hands. I felt my own heartbeat returning to somewhere close to the normal range and the color returning to my face. Then I walked over to Charlie, who stood looking as disbelieving as I felt, still holding the phone. I grabbed it, apologized to the lady on the other end, and hung up.

With two hands, I gently took the skillet from Cindy and placed it in a drawer. Then I fetched a shovel from the garage, walked over and around the objects Cindy had flung in the general direction of the living room corner, and found a five-anda-half-foot pine snake coiled up, hissing, scared halfway out of his mind. I scooped him up with the shovel, walked out the back door, and released him in the fern about fifty yards from the house.

Then I leaned the shovel against the back door, walked back inside, helped a shell-shocked Cindy off the countertop, and then sat down on the couch.

Charlie spoke first. "Somebody want to tell me what's going on?"

Annie was the first to laugh. A low giggle, which pretty soon grew into an all-out howl. She sat on the couch, kicked her heels, and laughed hysterically.

"It's not funny," Cindy said. "That thing could've ... could've ... eaten us."

"Charlie," I said, starting to laugh, "come on in, but walk slowly because most of the house has recently been tossed into this general area."

Cindy grabbed a loose pillow and threw it at me. I threw it back, and five minutes later the air in the house was full of floating feathers. Charlie shuffled over, tripped over a couple of pillows, felt his way along the countertop, and then Annie took his hand and led him to a seat on the sofa.

I looked around and said, "So, I guess you really don't like snakes."

Cindy looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "I need a vacation. A long one. Somewhere on a beach in an easy chair with an umbrella in my drink and little men in grass skirts bringing me refills." She looked around the house and then at me. "But wow! You got here fast."

"Yeah, well ..." I pointed at Annie. "I thought you were calling about her."

The realization finally hit her. Cindy put her hands to her face and covered her eyes. A minute or two passed while she put herself in our shoes. Then she said, "I'm sorry, Reese, I just didn't think. . ."

She pointed around the room, apparently following what had been the path of the snake. "I was looking at that snake. It was hissing, and I was running out of things to throw."

I laughed again. "Evidently."

"It's not funny. I almost wet myself when that thing started crawling across the living room straight for us, doing his little tongue in and out, bobbing his head back and forth and hissing. To me it looked like an anaconda or something."

"I'm not sure who was more scared, you or him."

"I think I lost ten years off my life."

"You know, a pine snake won't hurt you. We want those around. They eat other snakes."

"Well, excuse me, Mr. Zookeeper," Cindy said, smiling. "I just failed to ask him for his license and registration when he walked in the door."

We helped them clean up, then ambled down the walk toward the boat, which Charlie had fortunately remembered to turn off. We loaded up, and Cindy threw us the bowline. She sank her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and looked a bit embarrassed. "Sorry, guys."

I held out my hand. "Don't even think about it. You did the right thing."

I bumped the stick into drive, and Charlie purposefully bumped it out.

"Hey, we're doing a pig on Saturday and wanted to know if you guys want to join us."

I looked at Charlie. "We are?" He elbowed me, and I said, "I mean, we are. Right, we've been planning it a long time."

Cindy smiled. "What do you mean, `doing a pig'?"

"Ohhhhhhh." Charlie licked his lips, ran his fingers along his belt line, and did his best Ray Charles imitation. "That's where we take this whole pig, usually about a hundred pounds, and cook it all day, low and slow, and then spend the evening pulling off some of the best pork you've ever tasted. Essentially, it's a mountain of sin on a plate, and most folks don't eat for about a week afterward."

"About like that Transplant you guys made me eat."

"Something like that." Charlie nodded.

Cindy thought for a minute, no doubt running her work schedule through her mind. "What time you want us?"

"'Bout noon. And bring your bathing suits."

Cindy looked at Annie, who was nodding. "See you at ..." She slapped her forehead with her open palm like she had forgotten something and said, "Oh! Dang!"

Charlie heard the smack, the change in tone of voice, and said, "What?"

I interrupted her. "Don't worry. I'll pick you up, right here. Noon."

Cindy smiled, put her arm around Annie, and walked back up the walkway, keeping one eye on us and one pointed in the general direction of where I had released the snake.

We revved the engine, idled down the creek, and emptied into the Tallulah where we skirted the no-wake zones. As we pulled into the boathouse, Charlie put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. "Looks like you better get to town and buy us a pig."

"Yeah," I said, turning the wheel, lining up with the lift, and then cutting the engine. "I gathered that."

"Oh, and ..." He turned around with a huge grin on his face. "Don't forget the grass skirts."

walked down Main Street Tuesday afternoon carrying a plastic bag overstuffed with two drugstore grass skirts that were spilling over the edges. Walking up the sidewalk en route to Vicker's Meat Market, I saw a lady wearing a baseball hat walking directly toward me, led by her husband and two children. When I saw her face, something snatched the air out of me and left me standing like a man with no skeleton.

Shirley. Her son had grown two feet. He was handsome and strapped with muscle. Her daughter had long hair, had turned beautiful, and had long legs like her dad. Harry was barrel-chested and walked proudly down the street, his name printed on his shirt.

I stopped, looked for an exit, and couldn't find one. The street was too open, the shops to my left too confined, and it was too late to turn around. Shirley's eyes passed over me. Something in her brain registered, and she looked again. She let go of Harry's hand and started toward me. I stopped next to the newspaper machine, pulled down the bill of my cap and fumbled for two quarters, hoping the earth would open up and swallow me.

Shirley eyed me with suspicion, looked past the hat, the long hair, and the beard, and then her face lit up like a bulb. "Dr. Mitchell?" she whispered.

I spilled a dollar's worth of change across the sidewalk.

She touched my shoulder as if she were touching a ghost. `Jonathan?"

I turned slowly, the quarters circling my feet like swirling water, and looked at Shirley's face-she'd gained weight, which was good-and saw the tears welling in her eyes.

I took off my sunglasses and hat and ran my fingers through my almost shoulder-length hair. I took her hand in mine, felt a strong distal pulse, and said, "Hey, Shirley. You ... you look great."

She wrapped her arms around my neck as the rest of her family gathered around. I shook Harry's hand and marveled at their son who was taller than I was. Shirley said, "He's been awarded an appointment to the Academy."

She studied me while the silence that surrounded us spoke volumes.

"I heard about ... about Emma." She put her hand across her heart as the tears fell off her face. "And I heard what you did. About me, I mean. I'm so sorry."

She hugged me again, and I felt how strong her back had become. Shirley had made it. She was a survivor. And based on the look of things, she'd live to see her grandkids.

She let go, and I tried to break the tension. "Royer treating you well?"

Harry spoke up. "Yeah, next to you, he's the best." He looked at Shirley and then back at me. "No kidding, he's taking great care of us."

Shirley smiled and wrapped her arm around Harry. "I can run three miles without stopping." She patted Harry on his flat stomach and said with a smile, "I'm not setting any speed records, but we're healthy and ..." She choked back the emotion. "And we're good."

She wrapped her arms around my neck a second time, as if I'd disappear if she didn't, and squeezed as hard as she could. Her children edged in closer, put their arms around me, and even Harry joined the group hug that they were staging front and center in downtown Clayton.

Harry handed Shirley a white handkerchief from his back pocket, and she tried to laugh.

"Whoever had this heart before me must have been a real crier," she said, "because I didn't used to be this emotional."

It had belonged to a twenty year old, but I never told Shirley that. She needed to be able to live, not feel guilty for doing so. And I don't know how she'd ever heard about my phone call with Royer. Sometimes it's hard to keep stuff like that quiet. Even in hospitals.

I looked down at Shirley's daughter, who reached up and hugged my neck. She kissed me on the cheek and said, "Thank you, Dr. Jonathan ... for saving my mom."

My name echoed in my ears and sounded strange, stiff and starched, though I knew it was stained.

I nodded and put my sunglasses back on while I still had control over my eyes.

Harry saw I was having a difficult time, so he herded them in front of me and said, "Okay, okay, we've embarrassed the doc enough for one day. You guys get going. Our reservation won't wait forever."

Shirley kissed my cheek and as she did, her tears ran down my face. They tasted salty and sweet.

The four of them leaned on one another and walked off down the sidewalk while I steadied myself against a lamppost and looked inside the shell of me. A minute or so later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Sal Cohen stood smiling at me with a curious look spread across his face. He pointed down the sidewalk and said, "Friends of yours?"

A tear slipped out from beneath my glasses. I looked down at Sal, nodded, and whispered, "Yeah. Old friends."

Sal took off his hat, wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and let his eyes follow them down the sidewalk. He gave me a knowing look. "Feels good, don't it?"

I watched them walk away and nodded. When I caught myself nodding, I looked back at Sal, but he was gone.

sat in the tub for almost two hours, soaking, sleeping, sipping some red wine, and thumbing through the last month's Chest. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when I dried off, dressed, and walked into my office and shut the door. Charlie would be on the dock in a little less than three hours and, if my passwords still worked and could get me the access I needed, I had some work to do. There was always the possibility they had locked me out, but if I knew Royer, he'd have made sure they kept my accounts and codes active. I'd probably be leaving a trail that could lead Royer right to my doorstep, but I'd take that chance.

AFTER A DAYLIGHT ROW WITH CHARLIE THAT LEFT ME SPENT but feeling temporarily clean, I left him rolling around on the dock with Georgia and returned to the house to put on a pot of coffee. The voice-mail light on my phone was flashing. Even before I punched the Play button, I had an idea who it was. The tape rewound and then clicked forward. Background noise filled the air, and Royer's voice launched in without even a hello.

"Hey, Doc, although to be quite honest, I'm being a bit liberal with the term. Our IT people called me pretty early this morning and said somebody'd been playing with my confidential files. Said whoever'd done it knew all my old codes and most of the shortcuts. Poked around a good bit, read several active files, and then left without stealing or rearranging a thing.

"Well, almost. The person did do one very interesting thing. Wrote a note in Annie Stephens's file to request a TEE. That was my first cue that I wasn't dealing with some twisted computer hack hell-bent on deleting my files. But anybody who suggests a transesophageal echocardiogram for Annie knows two things: the risk is too great, and she can't pay for it.