Adrift in the Sound (17 page)

Lizette looked through the rear window, saw Marian settle beside Greg and gently pull up the blanket, lean down and kiss his forehead.

“What about Lucky?” Lizette said, leaning out and yelling at Marian. “He’s still in the bathtub.”

Marian raked her hair and looked at the trees flashing by. “Shit! Can Poland get him later?”

Leaning over the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the road, he said, “I’ll get Abaya to help. Rocket’s around there someplace. She’ll check on them. I’ll call home from the landing. They can’t stay at the ranch by themselves. Too crazy.” Lizette nodded “yes” to Marian through the rear window.

Poland banked into a turn on the Horseshoe Highway and Eastsound came into view. Lizette scanned the gray and black streets, caught glimpses of the water between white-washed buildings, the sea turning a murky jade in the last shades of evening. She strained her eyes, looking for the lights of the ferry.

At the landing, cars were lined up, hood to trunk, all the way down the hill to the loading ramp. Poland pulled in behind the last vehicle, Fisher on his tail in the V-Dub. The rain fell harder now and Lizette got out and went to Marian with a “now what” look. Greg shivered in the back.

“We can’t stay here.” Marian vaulted out of the truck bed and charged down the hill. “He’s going into shock. Lizette, cover him with jackets!”

At the bottom of the hill, the dock attendant sheltered from the rain in a little shack. He listened to music, the sound intermittently drowned out by the crackling ship-to-shore radio that connected him to the ferries as they crisscrossed the Salish Sea, lumbering endlessly from one island to another.

“Hey, Marian, what’s up?” The man recognized her standing at the door. She’d gone to high school with the guy, not long ago put a couple of stitches in his head after he got his skull cracked in a bar fight.

“Got an emergency. Guy injured at the ranch. I need to move to the front of the line. How long until the ferry gets here?”

“Probably ten minutes, everything’s on time tonight.”

The man stepped out of the booth and checked the long line of cars, put on an orange safety vest over his jacket. He got a couple of orange sticks and started toward the cars. Marian moved up the hill behind him. He signaled the waiting vehicles to pull over, slowly cleared a narrow lane. Marian ran back to the truck, jumped into the cab, said, “Go! Go! Go!” She waved at the cleared path and Poland eased the truck down the slope to the front of the line. Fisher followed with Sandy hanging out the passenger-side window, yelling, “How long? How long?”

“Ferry’s just clearing Deer Point,” the attendant hollered. “It’ll be here any minute.” He looked into the truck’s bed and saw Greg pulled into a fetal position.

“Tell the captain to call ahead, have an ambulance meet us at the dock in Anacortes,” Marian directed. “We’re going to county hospital in Seattle. And, get the deckhands to bring more blankets as soon as we’re onboard.”

“Will do,” he said and picked up a microphone attached to the squawking radio, passed on the instructions.

The ferry rumbled into its berth and the metal vehicle ramp had barely been lowered when Poland lurched the truck forward. The deckhands signaled him to the side, so the truck and V-Dub would be the first vehicles off when they landed in Anacortes. Marian got in the back, unwrapped her blood pressure cuff, called for blankets. She took a reading, turned pale.

Greg looked down at his arm and started yelling that it had scales, millions of scales. Marian hushed him, concerned about delirium setting in so soon. It wasn’t a usual symptom with a ruptured spleen. The ferry fought through the surge, and finally, through the mist, they saw the flashing red lights of the ambulance.

As they docked, the ambulance attendants threw open the back doors of the old Cadillac station wagon and pulled out the gurney, popped its spindly legs into place, waited. Poland shot to the parking lot, backed up to the open doors. Cars moved off the ferry, drivers gawking as they passed the flashing lights and Marian instructing the attendants on how to transfer Greg to the gurney, her foot braced in front of the wheel to keep it from rolling.

Lizette jumped into the back of Sandy’s car and Poland swung his truck around, waved, and got back in line with the other vehicles for the return trip to Orcas.

“Get his vitals,” Marian yelled as she got into the back of the ambulance. “Roll, roll!” She realized the drivers probably didn’t have more than first aid training and elbowed the man out of the way.

She pulled her stethoscope from her black bag and Greg looked up at her as she put on the blood-pressure cuff, “Light’s like cracked crystals,” he said wondrously. “Spinning … fast.”

Marian tucked his arms more closely against his body and brushed his damp hair from his forehead. Siren on, they screamed into the night.

“Far out, man,” Greg said in a vacant, amazed voice. “I’m flyin’ man!”

The attendant looked suspiciously at Greg, then at Marian. He asked Marian what happened, why they were taking him all the way to Seattle, instead of Bellingham. She realized she’d have to explain Greg’s injury and her decision to bring him all the way to Seattle.

NINTEEN

POLAND PICKED UP MARIAN
and Lizette on Franklin Street a few days after Greg died. He left the truck running outside Sandy’s, making it clear he had no intention of visiting. He gave Lizette a shy hug in the front hall, whispered something in her ear. Marian clasped Sandy around the shoulders, Lizette patted her round belly, and they dashed for the truck. They rode the eighty miles to the ferry at Anacortes without saying much.

“You left a messy house!” Abaya said, hands on her hips, when they came dragging through the back door at the ranch. The kitchen smelled of onions and meat. “I made venison stew.” Abaya moved past Marian and Lizette to peck Poland on the cheek.

“Silly woman,” he huffed, embarrassed. She gave him a playful pinch and he rubbed his elbow in mock pain.

“Everything was upside down when I got here,” Abaya groused. “You girls made a mess. Some caveman was moaning in the bathroom. I got scared. Then the Rocketman showed up and got the guy out. The toilet backed up.” She pinched her nose to show the stink. “Poland called the pumper. The guy said you shouldn’t wait so long next time. Big mess. Your father never … “

“Thanks,” Marian cut her off, sounded weary. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, both of you. Everything’s jumbled right now. When I dream, my father comes to me. When I’m awake, I hear my mother. Greg is laughing. Lizette is dancing in the orchard. I’ve never felt blown away like this before.”

Abaya wiped away the tears sliding down Marian’s cheeks and turned to Lizette, who hovered by the table. “You missed work. What? You think good jobs are easy to find? I can get someone anytime who doesn’t go running off to Seattle whenever she feels like it. We got business here.”

Lizette bit her lip, sat down, crossed her legs and bounced her foot.

“You hungry?” Abaya snapped.

Lizette shook her head, put on a pout.

“We’ll eat without you,” Abaya said dismissively. “This old man always needs something for his belly.”

She served up the stew, poured milk, and settled into a chair. They spooned through carrots and potatoes, breaking hunks of spiced venison with the sides of their spoons.

“I’m sleeping here with you tonight,” Abaya said. Marian didn’t argue.

After Poland left, they washed the dishes and Marian took a bath. They all sat on the couch in the dark watching TV, sharing the same heavy blanket, the screen’s gray-green light flickering on the living room walls.

Drowsy, they listened to the late news.
“Dedication of the World Trade Center was heavily attended. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller called the towering complex the centerpiece of the city’s downtown redevelopment plans, a sign the recession is ending. In the nation’s capital, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Roe v. Wade, overturning states’ bans on abortion, making it legal in the United States for the first time.”

Marian leaned forward to hear, got up and turned up the volume.
“The outcome of the controversial case could make abortion a constitutional right in America, a move hailed by leaders of the Women’s Liberation Movement and many in the medical profession…. In South Dakota, the FBI and U.S. Marshals continue to struggle with armed members of the American Indian Movement, many of them highly trained Vietnam combat veterans.”
Pictures of scruffy men brandishing rifles flashed on the screen, long pony tails, headbands, fists raised in power salutes, more footage of men in military uniforms and sunglasses.

“Crazy men,” Abaya shook her head. “Somebody’s kids are gonna get hurt. She flipped the TV off, throwing the room into darkness. Lizette thought about Raven, prayed he’d be safe, said nothing.

“Time for bed girls,” Abaya chirped like a mother bird. “You need rest. The phone rang the whole time you were gone. You can look at the messages I wrote down in the morning.”

“Anything important?” Marian asked, sleep in her voice.

“Sure. Why else call on the telephone? For fun?”

Lizette slipped out the back door and headed to the cabin. It felt like years since she’d picked her way down the path and she couldn’t wait to get inside and shut the door. From the cabin’s windows she scanned the water, watched the moonlight dance over the whitecaps, took a deep breath and felt her knees buckle. She dropped into her cot, pulled up the sleeping bag and crashed.

She awoke at first light with a gnawing hunger and hurried to the house. Marian and Abaya weren’t up and she put a pot of water on the stove, searched the cabinets for oatmeal. The phone rang and Abaya, in a faded blue robe, grabbed the receiver off the wall before she could get to the phone. “No. She’s asleep. She can call you when she gets up. What’s your number? OK, OK.”

“Who was that?” Marian stood at the kitchen door. Lizette stirred oatmeal, Abaya beside her.

“Sandy. She wants you to call.”

Abaya turned from the stove and looked out the kitchen windows. “It’s April and raining like January, cold. You just left her house … She’s a dumb one.”

“Did you make coffee?” Abaya waved to the copper-colored electric pot on the counter with her wooden spoon, and Marian got a mug from the cupboard. Abaya dropped a glob of oatmeal on the floor, bent gracefully and wiped it with a damp rag.

“Did she say anything else?” Marian looked at Abaya’s small frame, at her narrow back.
Lizette’s right
, she thought,
the world is filled with fairies and elves
, and went to her bedroom, returned with her black midwife’s diary.

Marian leafed through the diary’s pages, stopped when she found the notes on Sandy.
Belly measurement large for estimated gestation. Blood pressure a bit high, but within normal range. Firm cervix, strong heart sounds for both mother and baby. Most recent urine results normal for all panels. Next visit, one month.
She looked at the calendar and saw she was supposed to see Sandy in two weeks.

She took her coffee to the living room and dozed by the fire, thought about the ranch, its cross-fenced meadows and fruit orchards, how it looked in the spring when she got off the school bus and skipped up the road to the house, blossoms everywhere. She understood that she lived at the ranch, not just physically, but in her mind and spirit. She took the familiar smells of bread baking, the quality of light in the kitchen on a summer morning, the sound of bleating lambs with her wherever she went. The fertile essence of her family’s land kept her grounded, a force she worked against and folded into. She realized she couldn’t survive without the ranch, that she’d been lax with her heritage, her livelihood, and felt ashamed.

The image of her father, barrel-chested and gruff, came to her as she sipped from her coffee mug. She saw his dusty hat pulled down to shade his eyes. She pictured him talking in a knot of ranchers, laughing, offering advice while she spied on them from the dark shadows of the barn. She listened to the talk about fruit markets and flock management. Shepherds came and went. Old Doc McClellen made vet calls and they talked dosing and breeding. He always let her help him with the sheep. And, there were orchard workers and foremen, but always, throughout Marian’s life, there was Poland, standing outside the circle of men, directing them without them realizing it.

“Chopped enough wood for a week,” Poland said as he came in with an armload and laid it beside the fireplace. “Gotta go,” he said to Marian, shifting from foot to foot. “How long you staying?”

“A couple of days. I’ve got a couple mothers at Friday Harbor to check on. After that, I’ll be home more. Promise. Lizette can handle anything that comes up in the meantime,” surprising herself at the easy answer, showing how much she relied on her friend.

Poland snorted and led Abaya out the back door. She heard Lizette’s voice in the dooryard and Abaya’s shrewish tones, caught words: “sick,” “hurt,” “confused,” then giggling, and knew they were talking about her.

The phone rang, but before she could get up, Lizette burst in the back door and rushed to answer it.

“Hey, Sandy. Who’re you doing?” She laughed and continued, “I mean what’re you doing? Contractions?” Lizette went blank, checked in the living room for Marian, who got up, wondering first at Lizette’s bubbly greeting on the phone, probably glad to be home, she guessed, and grabbed the phone.

“Are they regular?” Marian ran through her list of routine questions. “How many minutes apart? Are they in your lower back? Is the baby moving? Has it dropped? I don’t know. It’s too soon for labor. Wait, stop yelling.” She knew mothers in labor were usually more subdued. “Start timing them. Is Rocket around?”

Marian covered the mouthpiece, said to Lizette, “Can you go back down there? She’s all alone, scared. I know it’s not time yet, probably Braxton-Hix contractions. But, I’ve got other mothers to check here.”

Lizette dreaded returning to Seattle, but didn’t complain. She got nods of understanding from Poland and Abaya, who were loading the truck and went to the cabin. She gathered her things into her canvas bag, pulled the sleeping bag over her pillow, scanned the water’s surface for a sign of the long-finned hunters, then padlocked the door and set the key on the ledge above the window. Marian ran through instructions as they drove to Orcas Landing: “Get Sandy to the women’s clinic, I’ll call ahead. If there’s any blood, call the women’s clinic immediately. Make sure she rests, puts her feet up. Her blood pressure is running a little high … Can you do this?”

Lizette nodded, but wondered. Sandy usually did whatever she wanted. She felt like driftwood bumping around the sound, tossed here, dragged there, pulled by the tides. When she got off the ferry at Anacortes, she trudged to the bus stop, took the express to Seattle. She knew Rocket would help her batten things down, but felt awkward about calling on him, and, as she looked out the bus window at the blur of green forest and meadows, felt alone and threatened. She put those thoughts out of her mind and reminded herself to make an appointment with Dr. Finch.