Chasing AllieCat (13 page)

Nineteen

Life Support

July 3, continued

We took Joe’s car to Immanuel-St. Joseph’s Hospital. My first time in his car.

He opened the passenger door, and I was feeling flattered that he was being all gentlemanly, but actually, maybe he did it because he had to move two entire shoeboxes of CDs from the passenger side floor. He also had an iPod plug-in for his stereo, I noticed. There was a deodorizer in the shape of a trombone hanging from the rear-view mirror and emanating a strong pine scent, and an unopened pack of cigarettes under the dash.

He saw me eyeing the cigarettes as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Unopened,” he said. “They stay that way. When I can’t smell cigarette smoke in here at all, I’ll throw them out. Until then, it’s like a test I have to pass.”

I sniffed. “It’s pretty faint already. More piney than anything.”

He grinned, rolled his eyes, and started the car.

The hospital floor was smooth and shiny as fresh winter ice on a river. The place felt just about as cold as the river in winter, too.

Uncle Scout had called the hospital a couple times to check on Father Malcolm, but Joe and I had wanted to stay as far away from this place as possible. I didn’t want to look at Father Malcolm’s beat-up body and mashed-in face ever again. He had been unconscious for two days, since we’d found him in the ravine.

The information desk lady said, “Room 3411,” as if a hospital visit was the most ordinary thing in the world. I suppose it was, to her.

Outside 3411, Joe and I stopped and stared at each other. We didn’t have a clue how we were supposed to behave. He reached out and took my hand, sending a tremor through my body. We tiptoed in together.

Father Malcolm’s broken nose was taped. A tube protruded from his neck, another tube ran into his arm below a cast, one went someplace under the bedcovers, and yet another tube piped yellow liquid from his lower regions. I tried not to look at that one. His eyes on either side of the white nose bandage were both blue-black sockets, from the broken nose or some other blow, I didn’t know. I recognized a heart monitor and a respirator—I’d seen those on TV. He looked gray and scrawny, as if he were sleeping somewhere inside a tent of his own skin.

Barely louder than a whisper, we said, “Hi, Father Malcolm.”

He said nothing. Of course. The only sound was his even, raspy breathing through the respirator. Heavy, like Darth Vader’s breathing.

“Thought we’d come check on ya,” Joe said.

Even breathing.

“We wanted to see how you are doing,” I said, knowing how lame that sounded.

“I’m praying for you, Father,” Joe said.

I jerked my head to look at Joe. “You are?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?” he said.

“I … ” I looked at the priest, and I whispered to Joe, “I guess I don’t pray. But don’t tell him that.” I nodded toward Father Malcolm.

Even breathing. Being chicken and staying away from this place seemed more appealing by the second.

I said, “We wish you’d wake up. We can’t find Allie. Allie Baker. And you know her, somehow. She wouldn’t tell us exactly how. So I guess we need your help. To find her, I mean.” I hadn’t planned on saying all that, but it sort of spilled out. I could feel Joe’s eyes on me. I remembered reading about suicidal people who stayed alive because they found out somebody needed them. Of course Father Malcolm wasn’t suicidal, but this was about keeping him alive. “I wish you could wake up and help us find Allie.”

Even breathing.

“Oh, yes. Everybody want him to wake up.” The voice behind us made us jump. We dropped hands, whipped around, and an Asian nurse gave us a shiny white smile. “Everybody want the priest alive, yes. The police want him alive. Because as long as he is alive, he is not
murdered.
They want to know who did this to him.”

Her smooth, olive-brown face, with dark eyes shining, was all business. She checked each monitor, his eyes, and his temperature in his ear as if taking care of potential murder victims was routine. “Yes, they wish for him to wake up.” Her skin glistened; she was moving so fast, efficient fingers flying, stunning with her blue-black ponytail shining and her easy smile. She could make anybody want to be well. Her name tag said
Zia.
“The police, they want to hear what he has to say. So the police, they say, ‘keep him alive, keep him alive.’ Maybe he can tell police who did this thing to him
.
”

We stared at her, and she asked, “Who, you think, would try to kill a
priest
? Such an
evil
person, to hurt a priest.”

We shrugged. Joe nodded.

“My culture,” she said, shaking her head, “in my culture, you
respect
the shaman. You
never, never
hit a shaman. What about this America? This
free
America? It confuses me.”

“It confuses me, too,” I said.

“Wait!”she cried. “You are the kids that save him. I know you. In the newspaper. You know, in my culture, when somebody’s life is saved, you are responsible for the rest of your life.” She lifted her eyebrows at us.

We stared.

“It’s very good you are here talking with him. Yes.” Still talking, she was moving out the door. “It’s good, yes. Sit down.” She pushed two chairs at us and we collapsed into them. “Keep talking. Maybe
you
can wake him up.” And she was gone.

“Wait!” I said to the empty air.

Joe looked at me. “Did she mean
we
are responsible once we save his life? Or Father Malcolm is responsible now that we saved him?”

I shook my head. “No idea.”

“No way am I gonna be responsible for Father Malcolm for the rest of his life,” Joe said. “Just in case you wondered. Except I will pray for him.”

I wanted to say to Joe that this guy was a priest, after all. He must have spent most of his life praying and look what good it did, but I said nothing. Joe could pray for him if he wanted to.

We sat there forever. We listened to the respirator wheezing air in and out of Father Malcolm’s chest. We’d come to the hospital at 8:40 p.m. so we wouldn’t have to stay long, as we would
have
to leave at nine when visiting hours were over. But it was only 8:48. Only eight minutes had passed, and neither of us could think of another single thing to say to try to bring Father Malcolm out of his unconsciousness. Nothing.

Breathing.

There was a whisper of sound in the hall. The nurse again, I expected. She came in silently last time. I turned to catch her on the uptake this time, but it wasn’t the nurse.

It was Allie.

She slid around the corner of the door like an alley cat, silent and graceful. When she was riding her bike, her catlike movements flowed smooth as silk; that ability to land, tire-side down. The alley cat. On her feet, her AllieCatness seemed more unnatural, but I hadn’t seen her walking around off her bike too many times, besides the night when she planted the cue ball in the Last Chance paneling. And I’d never seen her wearing anything but bike clothes.

Watching her grace in that moment, as she stepped through Father Malcolm’s door in jeans and a tank top, I was aware again of how much I wished I
were
her, inside her perfect body with her fearless heart.

Here AllieCat was, flesh and blood, in the hospital room, face-to-face with us, and when she saw us, she got wild-eyed, as scared as the stealthiest alley cat surprised in the dark by a pit bull.

“Allie!” I cried.

She turned, her body one big reflex, and was out the door as quickly as she had come. As silently.

Joe and I were on our feet and out the door after her, with only a second’s delay, but she was already way down the hall, strong, lean legs flying, spiked white hair bobbing, earrings flashing like rings of silver.

Smack! She ran smack,
smack
, into the beautiful Nurse Zia, who’d stepped out of another room at just the wrong moment. A tray of medicine flew through the air, and Zia, schmucked in the chest by 125 pounds of the leanest, fastest muscle around, went flying and landed on her butt on the hall floor, a multitude of colored pills bouncing around her. “Ugh!” she gasped.

“Stop her!” cried Joe.

The nurse made a one-handed grab for Allie’s ankle, but her breath was knocked out and she wasn’t as fast as Allie, who leapt over her and through a door to the stairway.

“Allie!” I screamed. “Stop! Please!” I jumped over Zia, too, shoved through the door, and thundered down the stairs. “Allie! Why—?” The door below me, to the front lobby and the outdoors, banged shut. I knew I’d never catch her, but I followed anyway.

I blasted through the lobby and out the front door. Allie had jumped on a junky bike, not her racing bike, and was halfway across the parking lot. “Allie!” I screamed. “Please come back! I just want to know where you’ve been … Allie!” I started across the parking lot toward her, but she powered away from me, deaf to me and the rest of the world.

I stood there for a half a second. Then I went back inside, trotted up the stairs, panting, to where Joe had stopped to help the beautiful nurse stagger to her feet and pick up the contents of the tray.

“This girl!” Zia fumed as I came around the corner. “This girl—”

“Come on, Joe, let’s follow Allie,” I said.

“You know this girl?” Nurse Zia asked.

“Yes,” Joe said.

“Come on, Joe,” I said, heading back toward the stairway. “Maybe we can catch her.”

“This girl,” Zia said, frowning at the contents of her tray, “she sneaks in here every night, at end of visiting hours.”

“Every night?” Joe and I asked in unison.

“Yes, every night,” said Zia. “Quiet as a cat, this girl. Slinks in here like the spirit of a cat. Like she weighs nothing at all. But now,” she rubbed her chest, “I see she weighs something. Not a spirit after all. So you know this girl. Why, you think, she does this?”

“No idea. Sorry. Wish we knew.”

“Joe, come on! We gotta follow her!”

“Sorry,” Joe said again to Zia, and followed me back down the steps, two at a time.

Outside, we bolted to Joe’s car, slammed the doors, and Joe backed out so fast he almost hit an old couple tottering from the hospital visitors’ door toward their car. We squealed out of the parking lot and up the road, turned toward the big downhill on Marsh Street, but Allie, in her alleycat way, had disappeared.

The only living thing we could see was a stray German Shepherd–looking mutt loping down the sidewalk away from us.

“Least he looks like he knows where he’s going,” I said. “Wish we did.”

“Sadie? That reminds me of the dog we saw in LeHillier, after we found the priest,” Joe said. “Remember?”

I looked, but the dog had already disappeared over the hill.

Twenty

Dead Ends

July 3, continued

Joe guided the car down the hill, but we knew that we were looking up and down side streets in vain. We drove around for twenty minutes without any hope of seeing her.

“I don’t get,” Joe said, tapping the steering wheel. “Why she’d run from
us
.”

“Allie only mentioned Father Malcolm
one time
to me, and I could tell there was something she didn’t want to talk about, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. I don’t get it, either. Why would she come see him every night, but run from us? What’s the connection?”

Joe shrugged and drove back up the hill to a spot where we could look over the town. Lights twinkled across the valley and reflected on the river. Joe put the Grand Am into park and turned off the ignition. He squeezed my knee and left his hand on my leg.

“What now, Sadie-Sadie?” he asked. I liked it when he called me that.

I said, “We probably go home and get ready for the race tomorrow.” I flopped my head back on the headrest. “Or we chicken out and don’t race. Joe, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’ve never raced before. I don’t want to do it without Allie there.”

“No, Sadie-Sadie. You’ve got to race. This is what you’ve been training for. You’ve been working for this all summer, and you’re gonna kick some butt in the Beginner class. You have to go ahead and do it.”

“
We
have to,” I corrected.

“Naw, I might chicken out.”

I punched him lightly in the shoulder.

“Okay, okay.” He grabbed my hand to stop a second punch. “We. And maybe, maybe, Allie will show up at the race.”

“I sure hope so. And there’s a $250 purse,” I said. “I can’t imagine her not showing up with a chance for a big win like that. Especially after what Mike said about her being seeded first.”

“At least now we know she’s okay. Physically, anyway,” Joe said.

The sun had long since dropped over the edge of the world and the last of the dusky light was slipping away. From here, we could see the steeple of St. Peter’s and Paul’s Catholic Church, the one for the School Sisters of Notre Dame on Good Counsel Hill across another gorge, two Lutheran churches and a Methodist, but not Father Malcolm’s Catholic church.

“So you really pray for him? Father Malcolm, I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know if I believe in God or not,” I said after a pause. “If I did, I’d pray. Did you mean it when you said that’s why you never swear? Respect for God?”

He nodded.

“Do you believe it does any good—praying, I mean?”

“I’m sort of scared not to believe it. Since my brother died, especially. I’d rather pray into empty air and have it do nothing, than not pray if God really is listening.”

“Isn’t that what they call hedging your bets?” I asked.

“I guess. Sort of chicken-shit, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.” I shifted in my seat. “Or smart, maybe. Like fire insurance for eternity.”

“Very funny.”

“You’ve got a lot to lose if there
is
a God. And nothing to lose if there
isn’t
one,” I said.

“Except maybe a lot of energy and time,” Joe said. “But a person can lose
hope
without God, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it make the universe sort of hopeless?”

“You mean, like hope for your brother … to be somewhere besides just dead?”

Joe pulled his hand away.

I said, “But if you pray and pray and nothing happens, isn’t that more hopeless than thinking we’re on our own, and that we have to do everything we can for our own selves? Take charge of our own lives, instead of waiting for God to do something?”

Joe looked out his window, and I started to think I’d screwed up everything with him forever. Finally he looked back at me. “You’re right, I guess. I can’t stand the thought of John being
nowhere
. So I want to believe in God and all that. I have to.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about John.”

“It’s okay.”

I put my hand on his leg. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him—and would never tell him—that I was sure his brother was dead. Just dead. Lights out.

I squeezed his knee and started to pull my hand back to my own lap, but he grabbed it and held my hand in both of his. “Sadie. I’m glad it was okay that we talked about him.”

“Joe, he was your brother. Of course it’s … okay.”

We sat without saying anything, holding hands, looking out over the hills, watching the city lights fighting off the darkness. “I forget what a beautiful city this is,” I said.

“Easy to, with what we see every day,” Joe muttered. “The trailer court in LeHillier is at the opposite end of this world.” He slid one arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. A thrill shot through my whole body. “Thanks, Sadie.”

I nodded against his shoulder, my heart pounding, and I wondered if he could feel it.

“You’re gonna kick butt in the race tomorrow,” he told me.

I waited, feeling his fingers on my shoulder. His face was getting really close to mine in the near-dark, but he was studying my hand, which he was still holding, looking at my fingers, not my face. He said, “I think you’ll surprise yourself.” He let go of my hand and touched my cheek with his left fingertips. “In the race, I mean.” He looked into my eyes and said, “Sadie-Sadie. I wish I knew what to do.”

I held my breath, not sure what he meant, and not wanting to break the spell.

“We’re not really cousins,” he said.

“I know,” I breathed. “I never worried about that, exactly.”

He leaned his forehead against mine. “I’m glad. What are you scared about?”

I sucked in my breath, trying to figure out how to explain that I was afraid he liked Allie more than me, that I’d never really felt like this before, that without Allie, we weren’t really whole, but I couldn’t say all that.

And he said, “For the race, I mean?”

I had to concentrate, to remember the question and to answer. Nothing seemed to matter just now besides his arm around me, the nearness of his face, how his lips would feel. I forced myself to focus, and whispered, “Everything. I’m scared about everything. The downhills most, the downhill turns. How—how about you? You scared?”

He pulled back enough to look me in the eye. “I’m scared I’ll freeze at the top and be too petrified to be able to go down.”

I nodded, thinking about how I’d seen him do this. “You just go, Joe. Don’t hesitate. Don’t think. Just pretend it’s you and me, following Allie.” I grinned. “Ride through the chicken.”

“What? The chicken?”

“Something Allie said to me. I said I was chicken to race. She said, ‘Sadie, everybody’s chicken. You just have to do it anyway. Ride through the chicken.’ ”

“Sounds like a butcher shop. A-1 Bike and Butcher.”

We laughed.

Joe said, “What if Allie doesn’t race? And we can’t find her?”

I felt myself deflate a little. Joe was touching me,
touching me, holding me,
and talking about Allie.
Again.
Maybe he did really like
her
and just wouldn’t admit it. Why, still, every time he touched me, did he have to talk about
her?
Or maybe she was our glue, and without her, there wasn’t an
us …
not even a Joe-and-me
us.

He ran his fingers up my left forearm. “Speaking of a butcher shop, you think seeing the priest beat up like raw meat just freaked her out? Some people can’t handle blood. Maybe she took off because she was so freaked out.”

“Allie?” I pulled back to stare at him. “You’re kidding, right? She’s tougher than that! Allie—
Allie
is
not
freaked out by blood, for chrissake.”

“How do you know? Maybe it’s the one thing in the world she’s a wuss about. There has to be something.”

“Allie? A wuss? You kidding? She sewed up her own leg one time when her chainring cut her open and she needed stitches and didn’t have health insurance, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t think that much of anything freaks Allie out. She has more guts than y—”

Joe pulled his arm away, and I realized too late what I was about to say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
that.
I just meant that nothing freaks her out. I know it wasn’t just … the … blood.” But my words were lame and I lost steam while I tried to backpedal.

“Well, sorry!” Joe turned and put both hands on the steering wheel. “Sorry I’m more of a wuss than Allie.”

“Joe, you’re not—” I reached out, touched his arm, but he shrugged me off and stared out across the river valley.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, but he didn’t respond.

Finally he said, “So if she wasn’t freaked out, why did she take off?”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t freaked out, Joe. Just that it wasn’t the blood. Something else freaked her out.”

“What, then?”

“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be doing this, would we?”

“Oh, wouldn’t we?” Joe sighed heavily and turned on the ignition. “I was hoping you and I would be doing this anyway.”

“Wait. Joe. Yes! I was hoping that too. That’s not what I mean! I can’t say anything right.” I wanted his arm back, wanted the moment back, wanted more than anything to take back my words, to have his face close to mine.

But he guided the car toward home and I sank against the passenger door.