Ashes of the Red Heifer (21 page)

“Don’t let that Jew-boy fool you. It is your fault. Make no mistake.” She hadn’t heard Melvin come up behind her.

The sound of his voice was as abrupt as a slap. She wanted to ignore him. But she opened her eyes and rolled away from the wall. “What do you mean?”

Melvin studied her from her face slowly to her feet, then back to her eyes. “Sixteen years in this family, I heard talk. I know how it was between you and Matthew. You were always his favorite and he doted on you. He spent all his time teaching you about the ranch, taking you with him. Everything for dear little Annie.”

She wanted to punch the smirk off Melvin’s face. “It wasn’t like that.”

He licked his lips and grinned, dirt in a ridge along his front teeth. “What were you and Matthew doing out there together all alone?”

What scum he was. How could her father have chosen him for their family? “Only the sickest kind of mind would think that.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Oh, it ain’t just me. I’m repeating what your very own sister and mother have to say. Why do you suppose he was so anxious to get you married off to a fine Christian fellow such as myself? I’m thinking it was to remove temptation from under his roof.”

Lizabeth and her mother thought that, too? The foundation of Annie’s childhood crumbled beneath her. “You’re all fools. Dad never felt that way about me.”

Melvin chuckled. “So you say. But the fact is you ran. You didn’t stick around to see what would happen to him. He was never the same after that. You broke him.”

She wouldn’t take that responsibility. “That’s shit. After I left, the ranch hit it big time. You guys are more successful than you ever dreamed. Don’t tell me a broken man did that.”

“You want the credit or the blame? He had these notebooks and he’d show me where you’d planned something and then he’d tell me how we were gonna get there. It was all for you and you weren’t even here.”

Annie sank back to the wall and closed her eyes. How had this all gone so wrong? She should have been spending her life there, working alongside her father. The only obstacle had been her father’s god. He always tossed in his divine monkey wrench.

Melvin’s voice reached icy fingers around her throat. “Don’t you dare flash teary eyes and say how sorry you are. That may work on Matthew, but it won’t get far with me. I want you to git your ass away…”

David’s angry voice interrupted Melvin. “What the hell is going on here?”

Annie opened her eyes to see David put a hand on Melvin’s chest and shove him. Melvin stumbled backward, but righted himself, stuck out his chest and balled his hands into fists. “Come on, Jew-boy. Let’s finish this.”

Annie pushed herself from the wall.

A dark-haired nurse in her twenties, wearing green scrubs burst through the swinging doors at the end of the hall. She scurried to the waiting room, her rubber soles squeaking on the spotless floor. Annie charged after the nurse, who made her way to Arlene.

Lizabeth had been standing at the windows and she put a hand to her mouth, waiting to hear the news. Annie stopped in the middle of the room and held her breath. Her mother’s face looked like a plaster mask.

The nurse smiled. “Mr. Grant is stabilized and alert and really anxious to talk to you. He’s tough as nails, as you probably know better than we do, and pretty darned stubborn. But he must love you a lot. He called out your name at times when he should’ve been completely out. The most amazing thing I ever saw.”

Her mother shifted her eyes to Annie. They glinted with satisfaction and she rose with dignity.

The nurse stepped back to usher Arlene. “We never allow people into recovery, but the doctor doesn’t think Mr. Grant will rest until he talks to you. It’s touching to see a man who loves his wife so much. I’ll take you to him, Annie.”

The name seemed to echo and magnify its sound. It could have been shouted into a microphone and repeated over and over. Then suddenly, the waiting room fell deathly quiet.

Annie’s insides burned but her skin felt frozen. She wished she could take back every word the nurse had said. Better yet, she wished it had been Arlene’s name on Matthew’s lips, not her own. “Mom, I’m sorry.”

Her mother’s mouth hung open. She turned to Annie with open hostility. She whirled around and flew back to the chair by the window, wrapped herself around her purse and stared ahead.

The nurse shifted her gaze from Arlene to Annie, looking as though she’d stumbled into a beehive. “Mrs. Grant? I’ll take you to see your husband.”

Her mother drew into a tighter ball and refused to look up. Confusion settled on the nurse’s face.

Annie cleared her throat. “I’m Annie.”

The nurse colored and managed a pained smile. “I see.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Why did she feel guilty and dirty? She’d done nothing except work hard and love her father. His feelings and her mother’s pain didn’t lie at her feet. In fact, Annie wanted to see her father. It might be the last time.

But the pain didn’t stop. Her head didn’t convince her heart. She bit back an apology to her mother. Annie walked past Lizabeth, Melvin, and David, out the waiting room door ahead of the nurse. “I’d like to see him now.”

The nurse caught up and passed in front of Annie, holding one of the swinging doors open for her.

Her feet felt like cement blocks, her legs like rubber bands.

The nurse stopped beside an open door. Inside lay her father hooked up to monitors with tubes going into his arms and oxygen running under his nose. He didn’t look too bad, considering Annie had thought he was a goner.

He was pale but not ghostly. His eyes closed, he looked peaceful except for the medical technology hissing and humming around him. Thoughts tumbled through her head as she approached the bed. What words could tell him how much she loved him? It occurred to her now that he would always be at the ranch, surrounded by people who would never know him the way she did. She knew how lonely that could be.

How to say good-bye forever? She reached out and touched his veined, callused hand where it rested on the white sheet. He opened his eyes. They had a watery, far-away gleam as he studied her.

Tears threatened Annie, fueled by the hard lump rising in her chest. “Hey, Dad,” she whispered.

He blinked and focused more intently on her. “Take the heifers. Take what you want and leave.”

Pain landed in her stomach as though it were a cannon ball. What had she expected? A blessing? Maybe blanket forgiveness or repentance? “What made you change your mind?”

He wagged his head slowly and his eyes glistened. “God spoke to me.” His voice rose barely above a whisper and he wheezed after each sentence. “I’ve been waiting for a vision and now it’s happened.”

Disappointment filled Annie until she wanted to sink to the floor. He wasn’t helping her or doing it for the good of mankind or even to save his family. He did it because he thought God told him to. Melvin had been wrong; he didn’t love Annie with undying devotion, he’d forgotten all about her and was blindly following something he’d dreamed in a post-operative muddle.

His tongue slowly ran across dry lips. “Listen to me, Annie. You can give the Jews what they want because God will take care of it in the end. They want their Third Temple. They don’t know Jesus was the chief cornerstone of it. And we, his faithful, are living stones.”

Annie barely heard his words. She watched him, remembering their life, hoping to keep him in her heart by memorizing his face. She dipped a cotton swab in water from his bedside table and wet his lips. “I’m sorry, Dad. I never meant for this to happen.”

He looked in her direction, but she couldn’t be sure he saw her. His sentences seemed disconnected, his thoughts snippets of memory. “The holiness of the Temple is replaced with the divinity of Christ. God will destroy the Third Temple in the earthquakes predicted in Ezekiel and Revelation. Don’t worry about that. Protect yourself.”

Sadness enveloped her. She slipped her hand under her father’s cold fingers and squeezed them. “Thank you for the heifers. I’ll leave the money at the house.”

Alarm flared in his eyes. “No money. Just take them. God said, ‘Do not try to take advantage of Israel as they seek to turn back to God.’”

He might just as well quack at her for all the good his words did. “We’re leaving tonight. Good bye, Dad.”

She turned and his hand closed around hers, bringing her back to face him. New strength seemed to fill him and his eyes lost their dreamy quality. “When the battle of Armageddon is waged, all the Jews will be destroyed to burn in eternal fires. All except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who turn to Jesus, the true Messiah. Annie, be in those legions. Let me see you in heaven.”

His words broke the lump from her throat and sent the flood of tears from her eyes. He’d offered her farewell and love wrapped in his own style and she understood the emotion behind those words. He’d never tell her he loved her or that he was proud of her, but he wanted her to be in heaven and that meant the same thing.

In their old way, they connected on whatever intuitive level they knew each other so deeply. She could only think of it as their souls touching. She smiled at him, the tears dripping their salt over her lips and into her mouth. She didn’t have to speak; he knew what her words could never say.

Her father closed his eyes and his breathing became deep and regular. Annie leaned over and kissed his clammy forehead. She let her gaze linger a moment on his pasty face, then she walked toward the door.

“Annie.” His voice sounded weary.

She turned. “Yes?”

“Don’t let Melvin catch you. He’ll use it against me. Against you.”

TWENTY-ONE

       Annie leaned back in the pickup, trying desperately to forget her father lying in the hospital. He’d probably survive this heart attack but then what? He’d go back to his life of bitterness and hatred.

Annie couldn’t stand thinking about Lizabeth and her mother; the pain of knowing they hated her was too great. All the years she’d been away from the ranch she’d dreamed about her homecoming. It had never been this bad in her worst nightmare.

David drove silently, his foot heavy on the gas. In a couple of minutes they’d turn north to the ranch. She had to think about what was ahead.

David’s hand rested warmly on her knee, a constant pressure to remind her she wasn’t in this alone. The vaccine case sat between them on the seat.

Annie sat up. “Okay, here’s the plan.”

David seemed relieved she hadn’t fallen into catatonic despair.

She put her hand on top of his. “They told us the plane would land at two o’clock this morning.”

David nodded slightly. “Where is the pick up point?”

Annie flipped open the glove box, looking for paper and pen. “A few miles to the north. The highway runs across a large, flat meadow. It’s about the only place a big plane could land and not run into hills.”

David kept his eyes on the road. “How are we going to get the heifers there?”

She found a fast food sack on the floor and ripped it open, smoothing it flat on the top of the vaccine case. She drew a diagram. “Here’s the barn and set of corrals where Dad’s got the heavy cattle locked up so he can keep an eye on them.” She drew some squares at the bottom of the page and a large circle on top of that. “This is the ranch yard, about fifty yards across, all dirt and gravel.” To the left of the big circle she drew a big square and little square. “This is the new sale barn and Lizabeth’s house.” On the top of the large circle she added another square. “This is Mom and Dad’s house.” Between the main house and the barn, along the right side of the circle, she made a few small boxes. “And these are the chicken house and a few out buildings.”

David glanced from the road to the diagram and nodded. Thank goodness for the flat, straight road that let them maintain their speed.

Annie studied it a moment. “Okay, from Dad’s house down to the barn, there is a wire fence that separates the headquarters from the hay meadow. There’s a gate behind Dad’s house. We’ll cut the heavies out while it’s still light, run them through the chute in the barn and vaccinate them with the formula I brought. Then, when it’s late, we’ll sneak them across the headquarters here.” She indicated a line straight through the middle of the diagram. “And through the gate. From there, we take them across the meadow, over the hills and to the shipping pens.”

David looked at her. “Why the shipping pens?”

“We’ve got to have the cattle contained when the plane lands or they’ll panic and scatter. We’ll trail the cattle to the pens and load them in the trailer. Then drive to the plane.”

“Why not load them in the trailer at the headquarters?”

Her stomach clenched. “Melvin might be home by then. We can sneak six heifers across the yard by horseback. But a rattling trailer would wake anyone.”

David turned off the highway and onto he gravel road. “So why not take them to the pens this afternoon?”

“The shipping pens are along the road Melvin might use when he comes home. Six of Dad’s best heifers waiting around the shipping pen might make him suspicious.”

“Won’t he see the trailer then?”

“We’ll hide the trailer close by, behind a hill. He’d only see it if he were looking for it. And no, we can’t keep the heifers in the trailer in the sun all afternoon with no water or hay.”

The cattle should move easily with three horseback riders following them.

David raced across the cattle guard and slid to a stop in the ranch yard. Annie jumped out of the pickup.

Moshe hurried over to them. “We need to get the cows.”

She patted his back. “We’ve got a few more hours of daylight and then we’ll be waiting around for the plane.” Annie headed for the old barn. She pointed to a long aluminum trailer parked next to the sale barn. “You boys get the stock trailer hooked up to the pickup. I’ll saddle the horses.”

Within half an hour, they’d hauled the horses to the shipping pens and unloaded them. Because they had to leave the trailer and pickup at the pens, they’d ride horses back to the ranch. She gave them a quick lesson on the rules of riding.