Where The Heart Is Part 15

work out. Novalee had nodded her head then, too, even though she hadn't really believed it.

But that afternoon, a Mexican family named Ortiz, from the trailer next door, brought over a handmade pine crib and some hot tamales wrapped in corn shucks. The father spoke no English, but smiled while the mother and the three daughters took turns holding Americus.

Dixie Mullins, from across the street, brought diapers and gowns, things her granddaughter had outgrown. Dixie had a beauty shop in the back room of her house, but she didn't do much business. Sister said it was because she carried on conversations with her dead husband while she worked. Henry and Leona Warner, from three doors down, brought a watermelon, some receiving blankets and a sterilizer. They agreed the baby was beautiful, but they got into an argument about the color of her eyes. Henry said they were cornflower blue; Leona insisted they were azure. Sister explained, after they left, that they lived in a duplex-Henry on one side, Leona on the other.

By sundown, Novalee and Americus had everything they needed.

They were fed, settled and in bed in their new home. Maybe Sister was right, Novalee thought. Maybe everything would work out, but she couldn't see how.

The little spare room at the back of the trailer barely held Novalee's bed, the crib and the tall chest for their clothes, but Sister fixed it up with a new bedspread and curtains from Goodwill and some framed pictures she bought at a flea market east of town. Novalee worried about the money Sister spent on her and Americus. She figured the Welcome Wagon job didn't pay much because most weeks when Sister went by City Hall to get the names of new people in town, there wouldn't be more than two or three. Now and then, she worked at the IGA handing out samples of sausage or cheese or some new cracker, but those were long days that kept her on her feet for hours. She 116 never complained, but she took pills for days afterward. "To improve my disposition," she said. Novalee hoped when she went to work at Wal-Mart, she'd make enough so Sister could give up the IGA.

Forney came by each evening as soon as he closed the library. He always knocked three quick raps, then waited for Novalee to come to the door, no matter how many times she called, "Come in."

Each time he came, he brought an alarm clock and two books, one of them for Novalee. He brought her books about convents. He brought books about cowboys. Books on gambling, whales and molecular biology. She read about the planets, jazz and Mexican architecture . . . about polar expeditions, bull-fighting and the Russian Revolution. Once he brought her a collection of essays about love which he handed to her inside a brown paper sack. She read a book about shepherds along the river Tweed in Scotland and one t.i.tled Rats, Lice and History, Rats, Lice and History, a chronicle of infectious diseases and how they altered the world. Novalee started all of them, finished most, skimmed some, gave up on a few, but she couldn't keep up with Forney. The stack of books beside her bed stretched to the window. a chronicle of infectious diseases and how they altered the world. Novalee started all of them, finished most, skimmed some, gave up on a few, but she couldn't keep up with Forney. The stack of books beside her bed stretched to the window.

The second book he brought was for Americus. He would prop her in her carrier on the kitchen table, then put his chair directly in front of her. After he cleaned his gla.s.ses and got a gla.s.s of water, he would set the alarm, then begin to read.

He read for thirty minutes exactly, a different author each night. He read Shakespeare, Plato, Freud, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and he read with deep concentration. From time to time he looked up at Americus to judge her reaction to something he had read.

She never dozed, never fussed, but stayed alert from the first word, her attention focused completely on Forney.

While he read, Sister and Novalee sat quietly across the room.

Occasionally, Sister would nod her head at something she felt Where the Heart Is 117.

deserved a response, or now and then whisper "Amen" when she heard something she believed to be true. She became so involved when Forney read Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, that she cried and held Novalee's hand. that she cried and held Novalee's hand.

When the alarm went off, Forney would close the book, then repeat, from memory, three key pa.s.sages from the reading, as if to suggest to Americus there might be a test.

After the readings, Forney manufactured lots of reasons why he had to hurry away, but he never did. He liked sitting on the porch with Sister, peeling peaches or sh.e.l.ling peas. He liked holding Americus at bedtime, liked the feel of her soft cotton gown, the smell of Novalee's milk still on her breath. He liked watching Novalee as she smiled at something he said, lifting her hair from the back of her neck, bending to put Americus into his arms.

Mr. Sprock's visits were not nearly as predictable as Forney's.

Sometimes he came in the mornings, bringing fresh tomatoes or peppers from his garden. Sometimes he came in the evenings to sit on the porch and drink tea. He always had something interesting to show them-a rock shaped like a rabbit, a potato that looked like a man's b.u.t.t. He brought peac.o.c.k feathers and foreign coins, arrowheads and old postcards. Once he brought a gold tooth in a bottle that he found floating at the lake.

Novalee didn't know when or where Mr. Sprock and Sister found time to be alone, but sometimes, when Sister said grace, she asked the Lord's forgiveness for fornicating again.

Mr. Sprock often brought Novalee seeds and young plants for her garden, which was beginning to burgeon with color. The morning glories, a foot tall and climbing, wound around a trellis Mr. Ortiz had made for her. All the geraniums and pansies she had received in the hospital were thriving in that corner of the yard, as well as white 118 candytuft, scarlet rose mallow and purple coneflowers she had added since she got home.

In a lot behind the trailer, she had found some white rocks she used to circle the buckeye tree in the center of the yard. It hadn't grown any that she could tell, but the trunk had lost its powdery film, a sign, she had read, that indicated returning health. The gardening book Forney had given to her for her birthday was already looking worn.

Just behind the trailer she started a small vegetable garden with potato eyes and onion sets, then lettuce seeds Dixie gave her. She added asparagus crowns for Sister, who claimed if they took root, they would grow for a lifetime.

Sometimes Mr. Sprock would come in the evenings to bring some new seeds or help her weed the garden, then he'd stay over to hear Forney read. Mr. Ortiz came a few times, too, and when he was there, Forney would read louder-hoping, perhaps, that volume would ensure comprehension. Afterward, when there was talk about the reading, Mr. Ortiz would voice his opinion, always with enthusiasm, always in Spanish.

Sometimes Dixie came over with ice cream she had mixed up. Forney would turn the crank and freeze it, then they'd eat on the front porch until mosquitoes drove them inside. Dixie never ate ice cream herself.

She said it gave her diarrhea. Novalee believed she went to all that trouble just so she could hold Americus for a couple of hours. Once Henry and Leona had a fish fry in their backyard, but they argued all night over whether the baby should sleep on her back or her belly.

On the Fourth of July, the Ortiz girls set off their fireworks in the street while everyone gathered on Sister's porch for lemonade. Mrs.

Ortiz had made Americus a bonnet of red, white and blue and the girls posed her with a flag so they could take her picture.

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Novalee sometimes worried about all the attention the baby was getting. She wondered if too many could love her too much. But Americus flourished. She never grew fussy with a crowd around.

They could pa.s.s her from hand to hand, from arm to arm and she wouldn't make a peep. She could sleep on Forney's shoulder, in Dixie's lap or across Leona's knees. She could awaken to the smiles of the Ortiz girls, a waltz with Sister or the touch of Mr. Sprock's hand.

Novalee could hardly imagine that one tiny creature could create so much love. And that was the problem: the more Novalee loved her, the more she feared she might lose her.

At times Novalee's fear would come rushing at her, so sudden it would be gone before she quite knew it was there, like a flash of disconnected memory. Or, it might settle on her slowly, press against her chest, build until her heart pounded with it. Now and then it was less insistent, only some vague uneasiness, a fragment of a bad dream nagging at her. But at its worst, it was real . . . a shadow, a shape lurking just beyond the edge of the light.

Always, it came without warning, without cause-while Americus was in her bath, her spindly arms and legs soaped, slippery as cooked spaghetti . . . as she drifted into sleep, a lazy eyelid just closing out the light . . . her mouth stretched into a lopsided O . . . her hand curled into a fist, the twitch of one tiny finger.

And with Novalee's new fear, the old superst.i.tions held greater peril. Dreams of locked doors could invite croup or measles. Gray horses or broken shoestrings might signal pneumonia or scarlet fever.

Two crows in the same tree might foretell polio. Or worse.

But the greatest portent of disaster, her nemesis-number seven- now sent her running to Americus, running to feel for lumps or fever, to look for spots or swelling . . . to check her mouth, her heart, her lungs. A seven, any seven, was a scourge, a plague, an affliction, but 120 weeks earlier, at the moment Americus had begun her seventh day of life, Novalee had confronted the most terrifying seven of all.

The night was filled with lurking strangers, the morning with rabid dogs. Every mosquito carried malaria, each gas jet leaked deadly fumes. Knife blades became savage weapons; a gentle breeze, a killer storm.

Novalee checked the windows, guarded the doors, walked the floor. She saw danger in every car that came down the street, whether she recognized the driver or not. The few times she dozed, she saw w.i.l.l.y Jack running at them, his face twisted into a vicious grin.

She held Americus in her arms from midnight till midnight. And when it was over, when the danger had pa.s.sed, she wondered how they would survive the seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh year.

Chapter Twelve.

W ILLY JACK ARRIVED at the New Mexico State Prison on a Monday and by the following Friday, he had six st.i.tches in his r.e.c.t.u.m, a broken nose, a nickel-sized chunk of flesh out of his left b.u.t.tock and a bruise the size of a Frisbee on his chest. Prison was going to be a hard place for w.i.l.l.y Jack to get used to. ILLY JACK ARRIVED at the New Mexico State Prison on a Monday and by the following Friday, he had six st.i.tches in his r.e.c.t.u.m, a broken nose, a nickel-sized chunk of flesh out of his left b.u.t.tock and a bruise the size of a Frisbee on his chest. Prison was going to be a hard place for w.i.l.l.y Jack to get used to.

They'd fast-forwarded him out of Santa Rosa. He was in the county jail only nine days before his trial, which lasted just over an hour, and his sentencing took less than three minutes. He was going to do fourteen months in prison whether he behaved himself or not, but then, good behavior had never been a quality w.i.l.l.y Jack aspired to.

His prison troubles had started early. The broken nose came on the first day when the guards tried to lock him in his cell, an incident that got him three days in isolation. The chewed b.u.t.tock and torn r.e.c.t.u.m came about on the second night when he was raped by a pair 122 of brothers named Jabbo and Sammy who bought him from the guard in solitary. The bruise on his chest, seemingly the most minor of his injuries, was, in fact, the most serious. It transpired because he wouldn't give his devil's food cake to a desiccated little man called Sweet Tooth-an odd name for a man with no teeth.

By the end of the first week, w.i.l.l.y Jack had been in the infirmary four times. The doctor, Dr. Strangelove to the inmates, found w.i.l.l.y Jack to be wildly attractive, a situation that would not work to w.i.l.l.y Jack's advantage. Dr. Strangelove's response to s.e.xual attraction was physical pain-and his craving for w.i.l.l.y Jack was strong. When he packed w.i.l.l.y Jack's broken nose, he stuffed it with so much cotton that the soft tissue of the septum was perforated. When he treated the wound on w.i.l.l.y Jack's b.u.t.tock, he added a pinch of Drano to the salve he slathered across the teeth marks around the soft, torn flesh.

And when he st.i.tched up w.i.l.l.y Jack's r.e.c.t.u.m, he signed, with a flourish and fine suture, his name.

w.i.l.l.y Jack's cell mate was a Navajo called Turtle who didn't know how old he was. His eyes looked like the whites of runny eggs, and his skin was so thin w.i.l.l.y Jack could see the blood oozing through the veins that snaked across the old man's temples. And he didn't talk much. In fact, they didn't speak until the fifth night, the night w.i.l.l.y Jack's heart stopped.

He was asleep when it happened, when the pain inside his chest rolled him onto his back and pinned him to the mattress, but it was the silence that brought Turtle to the side of the bunk, silence that made him stare down into w.i.l.l.y Jack's face.

"This heart. It ain't beating," Turtle said. His voice was soft, his speech unhurried in the comfortable way men talk to themselves about malfunctioning carburetors and misfiring pistons.

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w.i.l.l.y Jack tried to speak, shaped words with his lips to tell the old man to get help, but the pain inside his chest choked off sound.

"It ain't beating," Turtle repeated.

w.i.l.l.y Jack could feel the pressure building inside his belly, then ballooning beneath his ribs and chest where Sweet Tooth had hit him.

"My grandfather's heart stopped beating once," Turtle said. "For three moons."

With his chin tilted up and his lips peeled back tight against his teeth, w.i.l.l.y Jack gulped for air, fought for breath.

"Charlie Walking Away told us he was not dead. Told us to be patient. So we were."

w.i.l.l.y Jack's arms began to whip from side to side, his fingers scratching at air.

"But it is not an easy thing to wait for a heart to beat."

Turtle's words started drifting away, rising through something inky and thick floating over w.i.l.l.y Jack's body.

w.i.l.l.y Jack would not remember the singsong pattern of sounds in Navajo or the tapping of Turtle's gnarled fingers on his chest. But he would remember, though not until much later and always when he wanted not to think of it, the sound of Novalee's voice, thin and distant like an echo.

Give me your hand.

w.i.l.l.y Jack squinted, trying to see through something dark and murky that separated them.

Feel that?

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He remembered then her telling him about the heart.

Can't you feel that tiny little bomp . . . bomp . . . bomp?

Had she been talking about his heart?

Feel right there.

Or maybe she had asked him . . . could it have been . . .

That's where the heart is.

And finally he felt a muted thump inside his chest. Then, moments later, another . . . then two . . . beats out of time, stumbling, staggering to fall into the rhythm Turtle tapped out, the rhythm for w.i.l.l.y Jack's heart to follow.

Claire Hudson, the prison librarian, had sad eyes, eyes that looked even sadder when she smiled. A big smile, which did not decorate Claire's face often, could fill her eyes with tears, as if smiling resulted more from pain than happiness.

She was a big woman who had to shop for queen tall pantyhose and size eleven shoes, double E. She wore dark clothes-stiff gray gabardines, navy twills and black serges . . . boxy suits with high necks, long sleeves and tight collars. Claire avoided garments with lace, bows and fancy b.u.t.tons and she owned no jewelry, not even a watch. She held a strong disdain for anything showy, allowing herself only one extravagance: Band-Aids.

Claire Hudson carried Band-Aids in her purse and pockets, in her suits and in her bathrobe. She kept them on her desk, the dash of her Where the Heart Is 125.

car, her bedside table, with her gardening tools and in her sewing kit.

She stuck them in teapots, vases and bowls, in her lunch sack, between pages of her Bible and under the pillow on her bed.

She wore them constantly and in abundance-from her scalp to the soles of her feet. She wore sheer, clear, medicated and white and she used specific sizes and shapes for certain areas of her body . . .

circular spots for her throat and face, juniors for her fingers and toes, three-quarter by threes on her torso and one by threes on her arms and legs. Occasionally she mixed them to form overlapping protection if the need arose.

She covered warts, moles and ingrown hairs . . . pimples, cuts and fever blisters . . . burns, abrasions, hangnails and bites . . . eczema, psoriasis, scratches and rashes. Claire had spent her life, all sixty-one years of it, hiding her injuries from the world-until she opened the most painful wound of all to prisoner number 875506: w.i.l.l.y Jack Pickens.

She was just applying a fresh medicated junior to a paper cut on the pad of her index finger when she saw w.i.l.l.y Jack for the first time, when he entered the library with a crew coming in to clean.

"Finny," Claire shouted at w.i.l.l.y Jack. Then she collapsed.

She was carried to the infirmary where Dr. Strangelove revived her with smelling salts, but not before he peeked beneath a dozen of her Band-Aids, disappointed not to find raging infections and disfiguring wounds. By the time Claire had recovered and returned to the library, the cleaning crew was gone. But it didn't take her long to get w.i.l.l.y Jack back.

When he walked through the door, she once again called him Finny, this time her voice little more than a whisper. w.i.l.l.y Jack edged a couple of feet into the room, then stopped and studied Claire suspiciously.

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"Come on in," she said, motioning him toward her desk. "It's okay."

"They said I'm supposed to mop up a spill in here."

Without taking her eyes from w.i.l.l.y Jack's face, Claire shook her head, a gesture of disbelief.

"It's just incredible," she said. "Incredible."

"What?"

She picked up a framed photograph from the corner of her desk, stared at it several moments, then handed it to w.i.l.l.y Jack. An enlargement of a snapshot, it showed a young man standing on a stage playing a guitar.

"Can you believe it?" Claire asked.

w.i.l.l.y Jack wasn't sure what he was supposed to believe, but he nodded as she handed him another picture. In this one, the same boy held a trophy in one hand, a guitar in the other.

"That was taken at the State Fair. He was eighteen."

w.i.l.l.y Jack could tell the pictures were old, but he didn't know if that was a clue.

"Feel like you're looking at your twin, don't you?" Claire said.

Then w.i.l.l.y Jack knew what it was he was supposed to believe. He and the boy in the pictures looked alike.

"Yeah," he said as he handed the photos back to Claire. "Who is he?"

"My son, Finny."