Down the Dirt Road (20 page)

   Slumping against the door she waited to see if he would knock.  A full minute passed before she
heard the sound of his boots pacing
the wood planks outside the door.
  He stopped moving right outside the door.

  Instead of knocking, he spoke to her through the tiny space between the door and the jamb.  “I love you Jennie Marshall.  I have been in love with you since I saw you the first time walking down the hall with your freshman schedule and eyes as big as saucers.  It broke my heart when you chose that big oaf as your first love and I’ll admit I was secretly pleased when he messed up as big as he did. 
If I had known how much damage it would do to you- to your heart- I would have beaten him silly until he went back and begged you for forgiveness.  Instead, all I can do now is tell you that when you are ready for someone…for me… to show you what love really is, what a man is supposed to do to let a woman know how special she is, I’ll be here.
”

    She didn’t say a word, held her breath as he spoke low and steady through the door.  When she heard his boots go down the steps, she fought the urge to fling open the door and throw herself into his arms.  How she wanted to be loved the way he said she should be!  But there was no room in her life for someone else, someone who deserved so much more than she had to offer.  Momma was sick
;
she needed
to take care of her.  Then there was the farm and
her job.  That was enough.

  
Wasn’t it?

   Right now it really didn’t feel like it.

   Just tha
t morning, terrorists had killed
thousands of people that had families and jobs. 
With one act of terror, so many lives were permanently changed.  The victims
were
loved and now those closest to them would suffer the pain and sorrow of losing them to a senseless act of violence. 

   U
nexpected death.

  
Kind of l
ike Daddy.

   Her father’s death had left a gaping hole in her heart.

  There was just no room for that kind of pain again.  The idea of getting involved in any sort of relationship with anyone was frightening knowing that the second she opened herself to feeling again, they could break her heart- or worse, die.  Especially someone who put himself in harm’s way on a daily basis.  No, there was no way she was taking any chances. 

   No, she
was
just fine on her own.  She would shower, change and go back to see how Momma was. Together they would navigate the path of Lupus and Momma would be just fine too.

   Her body ached as she stepped into the hot stream of water pouring down from the old shower head that Daddy has always refused to replace with one of those water saver showers.  He said a working man deserved a strong shower when he
came in from a long hard day.  Jennie was grateful
for her daddy’s way of thinking now as her sore muscles slowly began to relax.

    By the time she exited the shower, she had pushed all thoughts of Grayson Jennings and love and relationships deep down into the dark recesses of her brain.  Pulling on a clean pair of denim shorts and a black tee shirt, she knotted her wet curls at the base of her neck.  In twenty minutes she was in the car and making her way back towards town.   Pulling onto Main Street, her mind was focused on getting to the hospital.  If not for the crying woman that stepped off of the curb in front of her car, Jennie might not have noticed what was going on all around her. 

    Slamming the brakes so as to avoid the woman who looked to be about the same a
ge as her mother, she put the car in park and jumped out to see if the woman was OK.  The lady dropped to her knees in the cross walk and threw her arms up in the air.

     “Oh God! Why?!  Why did you let this happen?!”  She cried over and over again.

     Jennie dropped to her knees beside the woman.  “Are you hurt?  Is there something I can do to help you?”

    She shoved a crumpled picture of a young man in her face.  The familiar brown eyes and wide smile of Chris Amos, a boy she would have graduated with had she actually graduated.  “Is something wrong with Chris?”

     The woman clutched the picture to her chest and released an agonized wail.  “Why?  Why didn’t he just stay here with me?  Why did he have to go off to the “big city”?  Why wasn’t our life good enough for him?”

     And then suddenly Jennie knew.  Chris Amos must have died that morning.

    “What happened to Chris?”  She asked gently.

     The woman peered up at her through tear soaked lashes.  “You know my Chris?”

    “We went to school together.  Is he OK?”  She knew the answer before the woman spoke.

    “I don’t know!  He won’t answer his phone but….Oh!  He’s dead!  I just know he is!”

     “Come on, Mrs. Amos, let’s get you out of the road.  Is there someone I can call for you?”

      The woman let her help her to her feet and lead her from the road to a bench on the sidewalk where the city bus
stopped every hour on the hour and half hour.  A small crowd had begun to form, all around her eyes were wet with tears and sadness emanated in waves.  Chris Amos had been well liked in school, were all of the tears for him?

       “What is going to happen to our Nation now?”  A man asked the group.

     “I for one am never goin’ to get on an aero-plane.”  Another man chimed in.

     “Time to start lockin’ our doors at night I guess.”

    
“What is this world comin’
to when a couple a foreigners drive an areo-plane into the side of a building just to let us know they got a beef wit’ us?”

     The whole town was in a state of shock, it seemed.  She had been so consumed with her own troubles, Jennie hadn’t realized the scope of the tragedy.  Here she stood by the mother of a friend of her youth as she cried out in desperation and despair, waiting for any word that her son was safe but knowing in her heart he wasn’t.  She had heard a while back that Chris had struck out for New York City and was doing well in the financial world.  Was someone she had known her whole life a victim of a
terrorist attack?  A shiver ran down her spine thinking how she had wanted to go to the same city and do the same things Chris had done.

    “Mrs. Amos, let me call for someone to tak
e you home.”

    The woman stared up at her, no sign of comprehension in her eyes, only pain and loss.
  She was about to step away to use the payphone outside the gas station on the corner when a young man
not more than fifteenor sixteen
pushed his way through the gathering crowd. 

    “Ma!”  He called out frantically, his eyes searching the faces around him.  “
Ma, where are you?!”

     “She’s here!”  Jennie called out waving him over.  “Your mother is sitting over here!”

    Breathless, the boy finally made it through the crowds and stepped in front of his mother.

     “Ma!”  When she didn’t look up at him, he dropped to his knees and grabbed her hands.      “Ma!  He called!  Chris called!  I just talked to him!  He’s OK!”

     “He called?  You heard his voice?  You actually heard my baby’s voice?”  She spoke hesitantly as though she was unwilling to believe the news could actually be true.

   “Yes!  Yes!  He’s OK!  He made it out before the second one collapsed!  A firefighter found him in the stairwell and helped him out.  He’s gonna be OK.”

     “Oh, thank you, Lord Jesus!  Thank you!”  Mrs. Amos dropped to her knees on the sidewalk beside her son and hugged him hard.  “Thank God, my baby is OK.”

     Confident that Mrs. Amos would be just fine now that she knew Chris was going to be all right, she stepped away from the gathering of towns people and returned to her car still sittin
g in the middle of the road way where she had left it.

    As she pulled away, the crowd slowly began to dissipate.  In the rea
rview mirror she could see Mrs. Amos, supported on the arm of her son slowly making their way down the sidewalk.  As she passed the electronics store, a dozen televisions set up in the window were all tuned to news channels.  Images of the World Trade Center collapsing and planes crashing flashed in unison from television to television.  She turned on the radio to distract her but every channel had something on about the tragedy.  Witnesses to the crashes stuttered their stories in a jumbled rush of
words, one man even broke down as relayed his narrow escape from the collapse of the first tower.  Another woman was out of breath, talking to a reporter as she ran for the George Washington Bridge to get as far from the tragic events as possible.

    By the time she made it back to the hospital, she was crying again, unable to turn off the news reports and witness accounts the entire way trip.

     The nurses greeted her at the desk as she passed by to Momma’s room but their moods were somber, the smiles gone from their faces.

    She was pleased to see Momma awake and sitting up.  Her cheeks had color in them again and she was eating a late lunch of tuna salad sandwich and fruit filled jello.  What upset Jennie though was the wetness on her mother’s cheeks and the sad look in her eyes as she turned he head to greet her daughter.

     “Oh, Jennie!  It’s so awful!  Did you hear- see- what happened this morning?”

     “Yes, Momma.”  She pulled a chair over to sit by her mother’s bed.  The television was showing the clip of the
plane hitting the second tower for about the hundredth time.  “I saw it on the news this morning while you were asleep.  It’s horrible.”

     “Devastating.”  Momma murmured.  “In my day nothing like this would have ever happened.  I am so glad that your father isn’t here to witness this.  He would join up the Army faster than you could say Osama Bin Laden.  Your Daddy was a patriot, you know?”

    There was pride mixed with sadness in Momma’s words.  Jennie picked up her mother’s hand and held it, pleased that her skin felt so much warmer than the day before.

    “I know he was Momma.  Daddy was a real good man.”

     “That boy was here earlier.”

     Jennie’s head snapped up.  “What boy?”

     Momma’s eyes sparkled with mischief.  It was the first time in two years Jennie had seen anything other than pain or sadness in Elise’s eyes.  “That handsome young police officer that brought you down here last night and carried you around like you were a princess in a fairy tale story.”

     “Momma!  He did
not
!”  Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment.  “I hurt my knee real bad, he was just helpin’ me out!”

    “It’s OK, Jennie girl.   You don’t have to get so worked up.  It’s all right if you like the boy, you are a young woman, I expect you to be meetin’ someone one of these days.  He’s a nice boy and your Daddy would like him too.”

    “I don’t
like
him!  He came to the house when you got hurt.  That’s all.  He was just doin’ his job.”

    “Was it his job to come back this morning and take you home?  Was it his job to drop in and check on me on his day off?”

     “Oh come on, Momma!” 

     “What?  He’s a handsome boy, considerate.  What would be wrong with just getting’ to know him?”

     “I don’t have time in my life for anything else right now.  I have my job, the farm…you…”

     “I don’t need my daughter concernin’ herself with my health.  I can handle taking a few pills and eating right all on my own.”

     “Is that it?  Is that all you think there is to it?  Lupus is a disease, Momma.  A very serious disease that never goes away.”

      “Don’t you be getting’ all serious on me now Jennie girl.  The doctor came in while you were gone and told me all about it.  As long as I take care of myself and do what needs doin’ I’ll be fine
for a good long time
.  I’m feelin’ better right now than I have since before your Daddy passed on.
  Who knows how long I’
ve really been sick?
”

     
“Really?  You are?”  Jennie was more relieved to hear that little bit of news than she wanted to let on.  After her mother’s comment to the doctor yesterday about how quickly Lupus could be fatal, she had been afraid that Momma was going to let the disease ravage her so she could join Daddy in Heaven.

    “I really am, sweet pea.  I am going to be all right.  I don’t want you puttin’ your life on hold for me anymore.  Give yourself a chance to live and find love.
”

    “I’m not interested in falling in love.”  Jennie grumbled.  “Love just ends up breaking your heart.”

    “Not all boys are like Michael, you know Jennie girl.”

    Just then the nurse came in to the room.  “You ready for me to check your vitals, Mrs. Marshall?”

     “Only if you will tell me that I can go home.”  Elise laughed and Jennie watched her mother in surprise.  Her mother’s mood was completely different from how it had been for the better part of two years.  How was it possible for her to have come so far in just a few hours?  Jennie was skeptical that it was entirely due to the medications. 
Something else was going on, she was certain of it.