Where The Heart Is Part 38

Delphia glanced at the townhouse, a two-story no-frills brick in a neighborhood going to seed. A miniature golf course across the street was boarded up and covered with graffiti.

"I guess family just don't count for much no more," w.i.l.l.y Jack said.

"But you said he helped you out once. Sent you money for bail."

"Yeah, and he ain't forgot it, neither. Threw that in my face, too. I had to stand there and listen to a d.a.m.ned sermon."

"Well." Delphia yawned. "What do you think we oughtta do?"

w.i.l.l.y Jack fished another benny from his pocket and pulled the tab on a warm can of Coors.

"Wanna go back to San Bernardino?" she asked.

"What the f.u.c.k am I gonna do in San Bernardino? Sit around with my thumb up my b.u.t.t waiting for that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Pink to show up? Wait for him to hand me my G.o.dd.a.m.ned money so I can get my guitar out of hock?"

"Maybe you could get another guitar. Maybe you could find something cheaper for now and-"

"How many times do I have to tell you this," w.i.l.l.y Jack said, his patience running thin. "There ain't another another guitar. The Martin is the guitar. The Martin is the only only guitar. Now do you understand that?" guitar. Now do you understand that?"

"Okay. Okay!" Delphia started up the Pinto. "So what do you want to do?"

"Drive, Della. Just drive and let me think."

He reached into the back, dug through the debris of fifty thousand miles and came up with what he was looking for, a half-full fifth of Beam's 8 Star. He took a long hard pull at the bottle, then eased back in his seat and fixed his eyes on the road.

305.

He needed to figure out what to do about the Martin, figure out some way to get it back. Because without it, he was nothing. He'd known that the first time he held it in his hands. Maybe, he thought, he'd just break into the p.a.w.n shop and take it. Or maybe he'd track down Pink. Beat him, kill him if he had to. But he knew that was crazy.

He knew that didn't make any sense.

But making sense was not going to be easy. For the last forty-eight hours, w.i.l.l.y Jack had been gobbling bennies and eight b.a.l.l.s, he'd dropped some acid and smoked some gra.s.s and he hadn't slept a wink.

Give me your hand He wasn't surprised when he heard her voice. When he was f.u.c.ked up, he could almost count on it.

It had started while he was still in prison, sometime after the Indian had restarted his heart. In the beginning, it wasn't so bad. Just her voice . . . always her voice.

Feel that?

But later, when he was with Night River, she started talking to him while he was asleep. He'd wake up with a pain in his heart that twisted and burned . . . but the voice wouldn't go away.

Can't you feel that . . . ?

He turned the bottle up, swallowed again and again until he felt the warmth of the whiskey spread through his chest and into his belly. The yellow line in the middle of the highway was beginning to 306 blur, so he closed his eyes and tried once again to think about the Martin.

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

"I don't feel nothin'," he said.

"What?" Delphia stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't say anything."

They were quiet for the next few miles until Delphia pulled off the highway and the Pinto rattled to a stop outside a hardship cafe on the edge of town.

w.i.l.l.y Jack said, "What are you doing?"

"I'm beat. Let's have some coffee, get something to eat."

"h.e.l.l, we don't have time."

"Why not? What's the big hurry?"

"I gotta get some money."

"Where? Where you gonna come up with money?"

"Gotta go . . . gotta get my guitar." His words were so slurred that Delphia had to guess at what he said.

"You need to get something in you besides that whiskey."

"Now don't you start . . ." w.i.l.l.y Jack tried to shake his fist in her face, but it floated up and hit the rearview mirror.

"Suit yourself." Delphia slipped the keys out of the ignition, crawled out of the car and slammed the door.

w.i.l.l.y Jack fell over a curb and tore the knee out of his jeans. When he pulled himself up, he dug a piece of gravel out of the heel of his hand, then veered away from a complex of empty loading docks.

He'd walked more than a mile from the cafe where Delphia had parked the Pinto, wandering through a maze of deserted streets with boarded-up warehouses and weed-choked parking lots.

307.

The sun was almost directly overhead when he crossed a viaduct and slid down a gra.s.sy hill into the train yard. The heat had softened the tar under his feet so that he felt like he was wading in mola.s.ses.

He saw a train backing down the rails across the yard, an engineer at the controls. He caught a glimpse of a brakeman perched on the back of an engine as it pulled slowly out of the yard. And he saw a teenage boy asleep inside a box car. But no one saw w.i.l.l.y Jack. No one saw him stumbling down the tracks, lurching from side to side.

When he fell against the tank car, he knocked some skin off his forehead, but he was able to stay on his feet.

"s.h.i.t," he said as he swiped at a trickle of blood in his eyebrow.

He pushed away from the car and staggered back and that's when he saw the letters swimming only inches away from his eyes. He had to squint to bring the words into focus.

"Union Pacific," he said as clearly and distinctly as a sober man.

"Union Pacific." And with the sounds of the words came pieces and parts of an old memory.

w.i.l.l.y Jack's breath quickened as he reached up and traced the letters with his fingertips. Then he rested his head against the warm metal of the tank car and hoped, more than anything, that he wouldn't cry.

He wouldn't know for five days that he still had his fingers, wouldn't know until then that he still had his thumbs.

But he would remember the smell of something dark and fresh . . .

and a pain that had teeth and claws.

And he would remember someone picking up one of his legs and bringing it back to him . . . someone who, like him, was trying not to cry.

308.

Give me your hand.

And he would remember the sound of her voice calling from somewhere above him.

Feel right there . . . That's where the heart is.Part Four

Chapter Thirty-Three.

L EXIE, what do you think of this?" Novalee pulled a denim shirt-waist from a jumble of clothes piled on a patio table. EXIE, what do you think of this?" Novalee pulled a denim shirt-waist from a jumble of clothes piled on a patio table.

"It looks okay."

"Here." Novalee held the dress up to Lexie, then made a face. "No.

This would swallow you," she said as she tossed it back on the pile.

They had been making the round of garage sales since seven-thirty to find Lexie some "skinny" clothes. She had lost sixty pounds and four dress sizes while her jaw was wired shut and even now, months later, she was still in her old size 22Ws. But Novalee was determined to change that.

"How about this?" She held up a black and white striped pantsuit.

"Isn't that a referee's uniform?"

"No. You'd look good in this. Why don't you . . ."

But Lexie was as little interested in clothes as she was in food. The 312 only thing she'd bought all morning was a game of Operation, which was keeping the kids entertained in the car-all the kids except Brummett.

He had just left for Outreach, a summer camp for boys in crisis.

And ever since Roger Briscoe, Brummett had been in crisis. He became more angry and sullen every day and had been caught twice stealing baseball cards from the IGA.

Pauline wasn't stealing, but she still had nightmares and she was still fearful of men. The psychologist at County Mental Health said she needed a strong male role model in her life, which had sent Lexie into a spell of depression that lasted for weeks.

"Lexie," Novalee said, "here's a pair of elephant earrings. Look at their trunks." Novalee handed the earrings to Lexie, who believed elephants with raised trunks brought good luck. When she worked the posts through her ears and posed for Novalee's approval, it was clear Lexie could use a change of luck.

Her ruined eyelid drooped and blinked out of sync with the other.

And her lips, her once-perfect lips, were crimped and pinched with zigzag ridges of scar tissue, even when they smiled.

When they got back to the car, they found Peanut asleep, the twins in a fight, and Americus and Pauline sitting on the hood singing "Old McDonald."

"Novalee, I guess we'd better get back to the house. By the time we get the kids some lunch, it'll be noon and I'm supposed to look at that apartment today."

"Lexie, I wish you wouldn't be in such a hurry to move."

"Hurry? We've been there long enough now that by squatter's rights, we own your house."

Lexie hustled Americus and Pauline into the car, then crawled in behind them.

313.

Novalee said, "You want to stop by and see the apartment now, on our way home?"

"No, I need my car." Lexie leaned close and lowered her voice.

"Remember, I have to stop by the police station." As she settled Peanut on her lap, she added, "For all the good it'll do."

The police had turned up four Roger Briscoes, but only one was from Fort Worth, and he was fifteen years old. Of the others, one was black, one was blind and one had been in prison for twenty years.

By now, the case was growing old, but a policeman would call from time to time and ask Lexie to come in.

Novalee started the car, then pulled into the street when the first fire truck raced by.

"Hope I turned off the coffeepot," Lexie said.

Seconds later, they heard another siren.

"Can you smell smoke, or is that my imagination?" Novalee asked.

"I smell it, too," Americus said.

At the next light, a police car blocked the right lane and a policeman was directing traffic, moving cars one at a time into the left lane.

"Everyone wants to go see the fire," Lexie said.

"Can we, Momma?" the twins screamed. "Can we?"

"No."

When Novalee reached the corner, she rolled down her window.

As she eased the Chevy around the policeman, she said, "Can I get through on Taylor?"

"I doubt it," the policeman said. "They're backed up six blocks in both directions from Locust and First."

Novalee's grip on the steering wheel tightened. "Locust and First?"