The Wishing Garden (28 page)

The first raindrop fell on Savannah’s left hand, the
second on Jake’s beard. Savannah looked up; those three clouds had abruptly merged and turned the color of charcoal. In the time it took to blink, the last bit of blue was swallowed up with a rumble and a lightning bolt that struck Alpine Peak to the north.

Savannah stood up quickly. The blood rain was Emma’s addition, and Savannah wasn’t sure she liked it. She didn’t like this storm, either. It went from drizzle to downpour in seconds, and the rain was cold and sharp as ice.

“Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”

Lightning struck the far peak again, and in the distance they heard a tree splinter, then fall. The dogs came charging up the mountain, their fur standing on end. Savannah grabbed Jake’s hand, but Eli and Emma just laughed. Eli jumped up and pulled Emma with him.

“Uh-ya-ya-ya,” he sang, patting his mouth the way he’d seen television Indians do it. The sky god must have heard him, because the rain came harder and lightning struck that single tree they’d passed, splitting it in two.

“Emma!” Savannah shouted, but Emma was oblivious. She was dancing with her face toward the sky, so certain love was more dangerous than a mountain lightning storm that she’d dare anything now. Probably, she was hoping lightning would strike her, so she could prove she would survive it.

Then, as quick as it came, the storm let up. The lightning drifted right over them and hit Whitmore Peak to the south, then disappeared completely. The rain stopped all at once, and behind it came cold mountain air and an eerie quiet. Eli and Emma stopped dancing, and Eli reached out and took Emma’s hand. Savannah leaned against Jake, but that was worse, because she could feel his heart pounding
off-kilter, one beat here, one long, painfully quiet second, then two beats there.

“Eli,” Savannah said sharply, and the boy dropped Emma’s hand. “Walk with me.” She started down the mountain. When he reached her, Savannah noticed how small his hands were. Little-boy hands. Hands that might have been made for delicate surgeries, except that no one had bothered to tell him that.

“The Five of Wands,” she said when they reached the tree line.

“Don’t start that shit again.”

Savannah shrugged. “It’s a card of struggle, but that doesn’t mean you won’t win out. Reversed, it is the card of contradictions.”

When they were deep in the thick of trees, Savannah looked back over her shoulder. Emma and Jake were still navigating the rubble, and when Emma stumbled, Jake reached out and took her hand.

“Look,” Eli said. “I’m not gonna mess things up with Jake, so don’t worry. I’m keeping this job.”

“Why?” Savannah asked. “He works you to death.”

Eli stopped. He grabbed a shoulder-high pine bough and twisted until it snapped. He started yanking out pine needles one by one. “He’s the only person who ever trusted me not to steal from him, so I never have.”

“Stealing just messes you up. Every time you take something, something’s taken from you. Sometimes a dollar from your pocket, but more often a piece of your heart. Pretty soon, you’re falling in love with innocent girls, you’re getting married and settling down, and ending up just like your parents.”

“I’ll never be like my parents.”

“Every single person says the same thing,” she said. “And then we grow up and see it’s not so easy. Worse, we see they just might have been right.”

“You don’t have to worry about Emma.”

“Oh no?” she said, walking again. “Why is that?”

Eli dropped the mangled remains of the pine bough. “I love her.”

Savannah didn’t look at him, because the words were simple, honest, and most definitely a threat.

Jake worked and slept in his workshop, but even there, his quiet was spoiled. Doug slept most of each day, but Emma blasted hip-hop from the deck. Maggie drove down the drive at breakneck speeds, spooking the blue jays into chattering all afternoon. Savannah went to town every afternoon to drop off her copy and do her readings, then came back and took long walks. Strangely enough, her absences were the noisiest. Waiting for her to come back played like sentimental music in his head, the same foolish song over and over, and he got no peace.

He didn’t get too close to any of them, especially Maggie, who was doing her damnedest to civilize the place. She cooked French cuisine and redecorated his living room with wildflowers and mail-ordered Berber rugs. Whenever Doug woke up, she made sure to smile at him. Because he looked so well rested, she told him she was having the time of her life. Every night, though, after Doug went to bed, Jake could see her through the window to his kitchen, her hand clutching the telephone, her face white and tight. After two days, his post office box started filling up with fruit platters and all-cotton percale sheets.

One week after she’d arrived, she came into his workshop. “I’m taking Emma to Phoenix. You are in desperate need of a new shower curtain.”

“Maggie, you’ll have to let me pay you for all these—”

She waved him off. “Consider it rent. She and I are going to do some shopping and go out to lunch, have a little girl time. Not that it’s not exciting enough here.”

Jake was working on one of his other projects, a rock star’s bed. He could have sanded it blindfolded, but nevertheless he studied his work closely, because he didn’t think Maggie Dawson would appreciate his smile.

“I’m going to call as soon as we get there,” she went on. “If anything … He’s been sleeping like crazy since we got here, and maybe that’s what he needed. I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think he’d be all right.”

Jake set down his sandpaper and sat back on his heels. “Believe it or not, your devotion is obvious.”

Maggie walked to the small window that looked out on the worst view on the property—the bare slope Frank Simmons had gouged out with a Bobcat, in order to level off a building pad. Jake had put his workshop window there on purpose, so he would never be distracted by the beauty right outside his door.

“Love is just plain cruel,” she said. “I should never have given in to it.”

“I didn’t think any of us had a choice.”

Maggie breathed deeply. She looked smaller up here, more vulnerable to wind and weather. He wondered if she realized the fight was seeping right out of her.

“I appreciate you letting us come here,” she said, still keeping her back to him. “I know it can’t be easy giving up your privacy.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Well, it was nice. I didn’t expect it of you.”

Jake picked up the sandpaper again. “Psychos are people too.”

She whirled around, smiling. “You know about that?”

“Doesn’t seem to be much of a secret.”

“You are a psycho, Jake Grey, and thank God. At least you’re something.”

She walked up the hill, where Emma was already waiting in the car.

“You’re a psycho, too, Maggie Dawson,” he said, as she skidded out of the drive, sending up smokestacks of dust and gravel.

An hour later, while Savannah was still in town reading fortunes, he went into his own house and didn’t recognize it. His countertops held a minefield of hats and fluffy clothing, Maggie’s new fruit platter was piled with more apples and kiwis than five people could possibly eat. His dining-room table had been turned into a cosmetics counter, with lipsticks and nail polishes ranging from ruby red to black, and a dozen shades of blue eye shadow. The air was steamy and lavender-colored, and smelled like the sweet, moist folds of a woman’s skin.

He reached down to pick up a pair of Emma’s sandals, then changed his mind and just left them there. His heart burned as he picked his way to the refrigerator. Who’d have known a man could feel whole just by walking through a woman’s chaos? There were lipstick-smeared cups in the sink, and he just stood there, smiling. It had taken fifteen years for somebody to start living here, and even then it wasn’t him. He found one of Savannah’s rings on the counter, a surprisingly plain silver band, and slipped it into his pocket. Let her come to him to get it back. Just let her come to him.

He opened his refrigerator, then just stood there, stunned. Maggie and Savannah had gone to the deluxe supermarket in town and bought out the place. Mineral
water, organic tomatoes, fresh sliced roasted turkey. Corn-fed chicken, Edam cheese, pre-washed salad and poppy seed dressing.

He’d withstood blood on his hands and hauntings, but the sight of fresh strawberries in his refrigerator nearly brought him to his knees. He was reaching for one when he heard a thump on the stairs. He closed the refrigerator and rushed to find Doug curled up on the top step, a red welt already forming on his forehead.

“A shower,” he was saying. “I didn’t know anybody … It’s so hard on Maggie.”

Jake lifted him up. The man weighed less than one of his dogs, and just went limp. Jake carried him into the bathroom, then set him on the toilet. Doug’s pajama top clung to the C-curve of his stomach. Jake started on the buttons. There were eleven of them, and with each one his throat tightened more, until he couldn’t have said a word if he tried.

He finally got the shirt off, and forced himself not to flinch at Doug’s scent, humusy and damp. When he saw the goose bumps all over Doug’s parchment skin, he reached up and flipped on the heat lamp.

“I can’t get warm,” Doug said. “Not ever.”

Jake took off Doug’s slippers and pants and underwear, and was glad then that he was a hermit with a thick beard and false eyes, because that way Doug couldn’t read him. Jake would never be the one to break his heart. Doug hunched over, his hands the only things still their original size, spreading across a puckered knee and a half. A strange clump of hair had grown in on the back of his scalp, straight out and surprisingly gaudy, the color of Oriental poppies. His penis leaked continually, and the urine was cloudy, the color of cream of mushroom soup.

Doug tried to breathe deeply, but only shuddered.
Jake reached over and turned the hot water on full. Doug shuddered again, and had to rest his head against the counter.

Jake rolled up his sleeves and tested the water. When it was right, he lifted Doug up and set him down gently on his feet. “Hold on to me. Tomorrow I’ll nail in a safety bar.”

Doug held him around the waist. Jake ignored his drenched shirt and picked up a washcloth and soap. As softly as he knew how, he washed the man’s back and stomach. Doug’s skin flaked off easily, and the layer below was pale pink. He quickly swiped the urine off Doug’s penis, and neither of them looked up. Despite the running water, he could hear Doug crying.

He washed the man’s legs and arms and scalp, and the bathroom quickly filled up with enough steam to hide the worst of it. Finally, he turned off the water and grabbed the thickest towel he could find. He wrapped it tightly around Doug’s body.

“Sit here,” he said, putting him back on the toilet. “I’ll get a fire ready.”

He went out into the living room and filled the fireplace with kindling and six pieces of the wood Eli had split. He lit a match and waited until it was raging. The afternoon was destined for ninety degrees, but from now on there would be a fire in his hearth day and night.

He went upstairs and changed his shirt, then picked up a warm gray sweat suit for Doug. He took it into the bathroom.

“Figured we’d get dressed today. What the hell.”

Doug managed a weak smile. He shivered when he dropped the towel, but Jake quickly helped him on with his clothes. After, he tried to lift him to his feet, but Doug shrugged him off.

“Thank you,” he said, not looking at him. “I’d like to try to do it myself.”

Jake stepped back while Doug ran his hands along the counter. He gripped the faucet and hoisted himself to his feet. After a moment’s unsteadiness, he slid one foot forward, and Jake went into the living room and poked at the fire.

He didn’t turn around while Doug shuffled from wall to side table to couch, where he finally sat down. When he was settled, Jake handed him some of his gardening magazines. He moved his own chair near the door, where he could get some air and work on a few designs. They didn’t say a word for an hour, until they heard Savannah’s car pull up in the drive.

“Thank you,” Doug said quietly, without looking up.

“You’re welcome.”

Savannah walked inside. She stared at the fire, but only took off her baseball cap and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She walked over to the couch and kissed her father’s clean forehead, hovering there for just a second, just long enough to breathe him in.

“Jiminy, I’m starving,” she said.

She began singing some ridiculous tune about rabbits hop hop hopping on their way to meet the mouse, but not before she passed Jake’s chair. Not before she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

Eli parked by the Dansk outlet and lit a cigarette. Across the lot, by Fieldcrest Cannon, Rick Laufer flashed his headlights twice, then gunned his Mustang. Eli turned on his own engine, but not the lights. He clamped the cigarette between his lips, inhaled a lungful of black smoke, and hit the accelerator.

Zero to sixty in seven seconds. He aimed straight
for Rick’s car and only, at the last possible second, swerved left. He did a three-sixty on two tires, leaving skid marks Prescott teens would be admiring for years. He laughed the whole time, because what the hell did he have to lose? If he didn’t die young, he’d be stunned and, probably, disappointed.

Rick got out of his Mustang, a beer in his hand. “You motherfucker,” he said.

They drank the Flagstaff wheat beer Rick had stolen from the local microbrewery and smoked half a dozen cigarettes apiece. When Jack and Pippen arrived, they didn’t waste a second.

“We’re gonna need a grand,” Rick said. “Maybe more. This is serious shit. These guys have cousins in Colombia. Hell, if we play it right, we could be their local distributors.”

Eli let the ashes from his cigarette fall on the back of his hand. He was hardly listening. He was thinking, instead, of meeting Emma a mile down the road from Jake’s place, so the dogs wouldn’t bark. He was thinking about her climbing into his car and filling it with the scent of lemons and longing. He was thinking about running his hands down her smooth, tawny stomach, and how many times, in an hour, he could make her smile.