One Lane Bridge: A Novel (16 page)
Read One Lane Bridge: A Novel Online
Authors: Don Reid
J. D. began to cry. And he was still crying when Lucille came down the steps. She went to him and hugged him and said, “That’s okay, honey. We all loved her so very much, didn’t we?”
The two-hour drive home from Fayetteville was the shortest trip J. D. had ever made. He was aware of nothing the entire way, and when he reached Hanson, he had no memory of any part of it. He had been on autopilot since he pulled away from the curb in front of Elizabeth Stockendale’s house—or, more precisely, from the moment he had reached into that old wicker sewing basket and touched a small plastic bottle that had traveled through and bridged time in a way he still could not fathom. His mind was numb, slipping in and out of reality, trying to register what had happened to him in the past six days. He attempted to piece it all together as the road signs and mile markers whizzed past his windshield. And it was truly as if they were going past him instead of the other way around. He had no sense of movement or control. And no matter how much he tried to make it all fit, the one word that kept haunting him was
why.
The
what
scared him to death. The
how
puzzled him. But the
why
haunted and ate at him like a hungry demon. He had to talk to someone.
Karlie was his first choice, but he knew it would only drive her further away. She didn’t understand what had happened to him—and how could he blame her? After all, her stand was the rational and conventional one. Ask a hundred random people on the street, and they would all agree with her that he needed psychiatric help. And then there was Jack. His oldest and dearest friend, who’d been with him through boyhood scrapes and teenage dreams and neighborhood pranks and all of life’s problems. They had a bond that couldn’t be broken with sword or hammer. But this … this had broken it. He could see it on Jack’s face. Jack doubted him. Jack had never doubted him before. This was a first. And how could he blame him, either? He had to admit that it
did
sound like the rantings of a madman.
There was only one place he could go, and he suddenly realized he was already headed in that direction. He turned down his second dead-end street for the day. How peculiar that Lizzie and Lavern both lived on a dead-end street.
J. D. walked up the short pathway to the front door and banged the brass door knocker three times. After about twenty seconds, he did it again. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost five thirty. He had stayed a lot longer in Fayetteville than he meant to, but helping Lucille and George clean out some of the rooms had been a comfort to him, and he felt a little closer to Lizzie the longer he stayed. Lucille and George told him to come back tomorrow if he liked, as they wouldn’t leave until sometime Tuesday. He told them he might and meant it.
He was about to knock one last time when he heard a voice from behind him. “Can I help you?”
He turned and saw a woman of seventy-plus years in what he could only describe as church clothes. But then, it
was
Sunday evening.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. I was looking for Lavern.”
“I’m her next-door neighbor, Ruth Lamossto.” She held out her hand to be shaken.
J. D. accommodated her and said, “My name’s J. D. I’m a friend of hers.”
“Well, I’m afraid she’s not at home, J. D.,” Mrs. Lamossto said sweetly.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“Haven’t you heard?” she said even more sweetly and this time with concern in her voice.
“Heard what?”
“Lavern had a stroke. She’s in the hospital in a coma, and it doesn’t look good.”
“What! A stroke? When? When did this happen?”
“Oh, it must have been …” Ruth Lamossto squinted and raised her eyes to the treetops as if the answer might be there and said, “It must have been ten days ago.”
“No!” J. D. almost shouted. “It couldn’t have been ten days ago. I just talked to her.…” But he never finished the sentence with his lips; only in his mind.
I just talked to her this morning. And I’ve only known her since Tuesday.
“I think I’m right about that,” Ruth said with conviction. “This is Sunday, and it was on a … let me see … yes, it was. It was exactly ten days ago.”
J. D. felt an urgent need to sit down. His knees would no longer hold him. He found a chair a few steps away on the small front porch and leaned on it. Ruth continued to talk.
“I’ve seen your car over here a couple of times this week. I thought you were family or a friend checking on the house for her. I can’t imagine you didn’t know.”
It didn’t even cross his mind to try to explain anything to this woman. So much had happened that he didn’t understand; he was past thinking anyone else would. He didn’t even know why he asked the next question.
“Did you see me or just my car?”
Ruth looked a little shocked at the question, but she answered him. “I saw your vehicle out front twice, and then I saw you coming up the walk. Then a few minutes later I saw you leave. I’m not nosy. The only reason I came over just now was because you kept knocking on her door where before you didn’t. Before, you just went on in.”
There was so much more he wanted to ask but was afraid to. The sensory overload might put him over the top.
“What hospital is she at? Here at the General?”
“Oh, no. They took her right on to Raleigh. I haven’t been over because I just don’t like to drive that far anymore, but I’ve talked to her nephew, and he says it’s just a matter of time. She hasn’t been awake since it happened. Ten days now in a coma. It’s such a shame. And there’s no reason to drive over there. They’re not letting anyone in to see her.”
J. D. walked to his car without saying good-bye or thank you. Ruth Lamossto stood in her neighbor’s yard and watched him get in the car and drive away. He was certain she was staring at his license plate.
J. D. had never felt more alone. The one ally who believed him and believed
in
him was gone. Whoever she was, she had guided him through everything when those closest to him wouldn’t even talk to him. She had become some sort of angelic chaperon to see him through this most difficult and confusing time. But how … and what was she …? Hadn’t she said once she was very spiritual? He began examining his short but very personal relationship with Lavern. The facts chilled him.
She had always known when he was not being truthful. That Light in her eye. There was something she’d said to him … about seeing things that aren’t there. “No. If you see it, it’s there. Think of it as dimensions. Not illusions,” she’d said. But what about Dr. Annata? Come to think of it, neither he nor his staff ever really acknowledged that they knew J. D. was coming that day. Maybe Lavern just knew Annata was a pill pusher and anyone with fifty dollars could charm their way in and get what they wanted. And the phone calls. He had always answered the phone himself at home. Karlie never actually talked to her, and he was sure Lavern’s voice wouldn’t actually be on his answering machine. He was afraid to ask Marge or anyone at the west-end restaurant about it. He had a pretty good idea what they would say. That he was sitting in that booth alone, drinking coffee with a second empty cup across the table from him. They would all probably agree with Karlie and Jack that his next stop should be a hospital room of his own.
And maybe they were right.
There were just too many things that would never make sense to a right-thinking person. And no matter how hard he tried to reason out each situation, he just couldn’t find sanity in the solution. It was time to see the doctor Karlie had wanted him to see from the very beginning. He was ready to resign himself to that fate. Or
nearly
ready.
There was still one place he could go. One person who wouldn’t turn him away or doubt him.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been there, but he noticed that the sun was beginning its descent. The room, facing the west, had lost its evening glow, and the lamp on the mahogany nightstand was quickly becoming the brightest light in the room. He and his mother were on their third game of checkers. She had won the first, and he had won the second. He remembered this was how it always turned out when he was a little boy and she played with him in front of the TV on Sunday nights. She would always let him win one and then lose one so that the third game would really feel like a championship. For all he knew, she was doing the same thing tonight.
“I don’t know what possessed you to come over on a Sunday night, but I’m sure glad you did. Does this mean you’re not coming Tuesday?”
“No. I’ll still be here Tuesday. And if you let me win this game, I may even come back Friday.”
They both laughed, and she took two of his men. Without looking up from the board she asked, “What is it, J. D.? What’s on your heart?”
“Nothing, Mom. I’m fine.”
“I can see it in your eyes and your whole face. Are you well?”
“Yes, I promise you, I am. I know you told Angela you thought I might be sick, but I assure you I’m okay. And speaking of Angela, what did you tell her that made her go back to school?”
“Oh,” Beatrice said innocently, “did I say something that nudged her in that direction?”
“Yeah. She told us some story about me wanting to quit and wait on Karlie to graduate from high school and how you and Dad both had a problem adjusting to college life. You and Dad never went to college did you?”
“Now, J. D. I never actually said you quit school. I didn’t tell her how it turned out. I was just letting her know that she wasn’t alone in the feelings she was having. That’s all.”
“So the end justifies the means, and little white lies fall by the crimson path and all that stuff, huh?”
“You have such a nice way of putting it, J. D. It’s your move.”
He took one of her men.
“Is it Karlie?” she asked.
“Is what Karlie?”
“The thing that you’re worried about. Is there a problem with you and her?”
“No, Mom. I told you. It’s not anything. It’s not anything that has anything to do with family.”
“It’s those restaurants, isn’t it? Two are just too many.”
“And no, it’s not the restaurants. Business is fine, and so is everything else. And as soon as one of us wipes off this board, I’ve got to get out of here. Karlie will think I left her.”
She took two more men and leaned back against her pillow. The game was over. J. D. stood up, leaned down to kiss her cheek, and said he would call in a couple of days. He wiggled her toe through the sheet with his fingers as he walked past the foot of her bed.
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too. I only wish you trusted me.”
“I trust you.”
“Whenever you need to talk, I’m always here.”
J. D. stopped in the doorway. He looked at his mother and saw the sincerity in her face and promised her, “Mom. I’ll tell you all about it one day. Right now I don’t feel like talking about it. But maybe … Mom, let me ask you one thing before I go.”
“Anything, honey.”
He knew it was a long shot, but they were of the same age and same generation, and she wanted to help—so why not?
“Mom,” J. D. said as he sat back down on the straight chair by the bed, “did you ever know a woman by the name of Lizzie Clem?”
“Clem? No. No. Never knew a Clem named Lizzie.”
“Or maybe Elizabeth?”
“No. That either. I don’t think so.”
“How about an Elizabeth Stockendale?”
“Elizabeth Stockendale. No, I don’t think so.”
J. D. sighed. He’d given it a try. He hadn’t thought there was much chance his mother could help, but he had made an effort and, bless her heart, so had she.
“Now, I knew a
Beth
Stockendale.”
“What did you say?”
“Beth Stockendale. That could be short for Elizabeth, couldn’t it?”
“Yes, it could. How did you know her?” J. D.’s heart was leaping from his chest again. He was sure his face was as white as the sheets on his mother’s bed.
“Don’t you remember her? No, I guess you wouldn’t. But you do remember that summer when you were ten years old, don’t you? You and your sister had ridden your bicycles up to the grocery store for ice cream, and, stubborn as you both were, you tried to ride home eating your Popsicle with one hand and steering with the other. I shudder just thinking about all of it again.”
J. D. remembered all of this very well. He shuddered too.
“Well, as you were pulling out into the street, you turned right in front of a car, and it hit you and sent you flying. There you were, lying in the middle of the road, bleeding from the head, your sister hysterical, and your father and I at home with no idea of what was going on. Traffic stopped and lined up on both sides of the streets. Someone called the rescue squad, and your sister took off running home to tell us what had happened. You were unconscious. Unconscious and bleeding.”
Much of this story was vivid to J. D., but he couldn’t sort out what came from his memory and what came from all the family retellings of it.
“There was a lady in one of the cars lined up in traffic, she was from out of state, and she ran to you and sat down in the road and cradled your head in her arms, waiting for the ambulance. But it didn’t come. They waited for I don’t how long; so many different people told me the story later. She finally said to one of the drivers of another car, “We’ve got to get this boy to a hospital. Do you know where one is?” and the man said he did, and she grabbed you up in her arms and sat in the back seat of that man’s car and held your head. When they got to the emergency room they said she carried you in by herself. Wouldn’t let anyone else touch you till the doctor got there. And then the doctor got there and got you all fixed up—you do remember that you were in the hospital for three days and two nights, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that.”
“Well, when that doctor, Dr. Corbett, got you fixed up—by that time your daddy and I were there—he told us that if that woman hadn’t brought you in when she did that he couldn’t guarantee you would have lived. It was that bad and that close. He was mad as a hornet at the rescue squad. The woman who carried you—the woman who saved your life—her name was Beth Stockendale. She was just passing through and happened to be right there, or you might not be here tonight.”
J. D.’s throat was paralyzed, and his mouth couldn’t form the words he wanted to say. When his mother asked, “Don’t you remember your daddy and me mentioning her name?” all he could do was shake his head no.
“She called every day for a week and checked on you. Such a sweet woman. But she lived out in the Midwest somewhere—Kansas or Missouri. I don’t remember anymore. We wrote letters back and forth for a while because I was so grateful to her and what she had done. We would trade Christmas cards, and she always asked about you. ‘How is my beautiful little John?’ she would say. She always called you John. But then as time went on, we sort of lost contact with one another, and I’m so sorry we did. I think about her often.”
Lizzie knew! She knew that boy she saved was the man who had saved
her
life when she was a teenager. She had the pill bottle with his name on it and the date. She had kept it all those years, and when she learned who the unconscious boy in the hospital was … she
had
to know. And then one day, she moved back and lived so close but never contacted him. He wondered if she had come in his restaurant and eaten dinner and watched him. Or driven by his house the way he had driven by hers. Or maybe she was afraid it would upset the dimensions. Isn’t that what Lavern had called them? Dimensions?
And now he knew the
why.
Why all of this had happened. He had saved Lizzie’s life so she could save his. And Lizzie had saved his life so he could save hers. His head spun at the implications until he landed on a singular truth:
We’re all connected in God’s universe, even across generations. And we’re all in need of one another.
His mother squeezed his hand there in the twilight and, as if she could read his mind, said, “He does work His mysteries, J. D. He does work His mysteries.”
And J. D. Wickman knew his hard and desperate prayers had been heard, handled, and answered. Answered by the Architect of Time, a grace-filled and caring God.