Hannah Grace (20 page)

"Uh-uh!" He poked a warning finger in her face.

"Gabe," she emphasized, shoulders sagging in resignation. "Don't you have to go to work?" she asked in a shaky voice. "There might be crimes in the works at this very minute." It suddenly occurred to her that he'd far outstayed any other of his morning visits, and it bordered on downright improper.

Just then, the back door swung open and a gasping, wideeyed boy ran through it, sliding to a halt in front of them.

"Dusty!" Jesse exclaimed, the grin spreading across his narrow face to reveal the gap in his teeth.

"What?" both adults asked in unison.

He hooked his thumb behind him. "Dusty!"

"I know. Some of those canned goods have been sitting there a while. How about I give you a cloth and...?"

His grin turned under. "No, I mean my dog!" he corrected. "He's Dusty."

"Well, the dirty mutt's probably never had a bath," Gabe said.

Jesse frowned, propped his hands on his hips, and stared at them as if they'd both gone loco. "His name. It's Dusty."

Realization struck Hannah and Gabe at the same time. "You've named him, then?" Hannah asked.

When Jesse gave them a satisfied nod, they all smiled, easing Hannah's recent tension. "Well, I guess that settles it, then," Gabe said. "Dusty stays."

ell, so here you are. I've been looking all over the hospital for you, young man. Your mama would like to see you." The tall, skinny woman dressed in white from head to toe, starting with the stiff cap pinned into her flat hairdo and continuing down to her white, spotless shoes, wore a pale, rigid expression to match the rest of her. She crouched down beside Jesse, picking up the hem of her skirt to shield it from the mound of gray dirt he'd found on the side of the three-story, brick structure.

"You couldn't have found a cleaner place to play?" she asked in a severe tone, which he easily ignored because it seemed more important to study his work of art than to listen to her lecture.

Stick in hand, Jesse continued laboring over the picture he'd been drawing in the dirt, a square house with a front door and a big window, and, on the roof, a chimney with smoke swirling out the top in little ringlets. And those little round things in the front were flowery bushes, although he'd probably have to explain that to anyone who asked.

Also in his picture were a sun and moon because it was neither day nor night at this place. He'd determined that no one ever slept here, the bright electric lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling making it impossible, not to mention all the noise those nurses and doctors made. Off and on, his mother dozed, of course, but mostly she just coughed and cried when she didn't think he saw-and grew too weak to lift her hand to his cheek.

They'd made a little bed for him next to hers, something the cranky head nurse said completely broke the rules. Where else can he go, someone had asked, unless we send him to the home? The way they said the home made his gut squeeze into a hard ball.

He stared at his stick drawing, wondering what he could do to improve upon it. He wanted it to be nice since it would be the house he'd buy for his mother someday when she grew stronger and could breathe better. A frown pulled so tight across his brow that it almost hurt. The stupid house looked crooked. Out of anger, he drew a big line through it, then several more, until it was nothing more than a pile of dirt and dust.

The nurse seemed not to have noticed, just tugged him up by the arm. "Come on, brush yourself off now. Your mama's waiting for you."

When he walked through the door, his mother's brown eyes, mournful and saggy, brightened a smidgen at the sight of him. She looked skinnier than a twig, her black hair matted around bony cheeks, and he could hear her uneven breaths from across the room. "There's-my little-man," she said, her voice seeming to come from some far off place. She pulled out a scrawny hand from under the sheet and patted the bed. "Come-sit by-your ma."

The nurse nudged him forward. The bed stood high off the floor, but he managed to climb onto it by putting one foot on a chair and hoisting himself up. Once he was situated, the nurse, looking harried and distracted, left without a word.

"What have you been doing?" his mother asked.

He shrugged and angled his eyes at the scary looking machines and wires surrounding her bed. The sight of one tube attached to her arm by a long needle made his stomach churn uneasily.

"When you gonna leave this place, Ma?" he asked, impatient. For reasons he couldn't explain, his mother made him mad. Why'd she have to go get sick when they were just starting to figure stuff out? It had always been just the two of them, ever since his pa died in that horse accident a few years ago, that is, and she'd always promised him she'd never leave him. Times were tough, yes, but they were going to make it. She said so a hundred times. Now look at her.

Sadness crept into her eyes again. "I-I don't think I'll be able to leave, Jess, so-we need to talk about some things." She swallowed and winced. "Now, you have to-listen to me." It was difficult to hear her husky voice, so he leaned closer. She opened her mouth, but for a second or two, nothing came out. Then, "I have talked-to some people at The Children's Relief Society-and..."

A burning feeling filled his throat. "No! What you talkin' about? 'Course you're gonna leave." This he spoke too loudly for hospital rules. "You got that job at the rest'rant, remember? What'll that man think when you don't show up? And what about that new apartment you said we was gonna move into on 32nd Street?" His anger rose to new levels, and he felt guilty for it, but he continued ranting anyway. "All you need's a little more medicine, and you'll be fine. I ain't going to live with anybody but you."

"Don't say ain't," she murmured between shallow breaths. "How many times I got t' tell you it's not-proper English? If you want to-go places-in this world, y' got t' talk proper."

He didn't care about proper English. Mounting fear nearly swallowed him whole. "Let's go home today, Ma," he begged. "I can take care o' you. We can go back to that mission place and..."

She rubbed his arm with shaky fingers. "Shh. We can't go back there, my precious son. I-I'm very near to dying, I'm afraid."

He didn't know what it was that made him suddenly go still as a rock, but he did. In fact, he didn't even take a breath until his lungs screamed for air-he just sat there and stared at the big round clock over her head, watched its hands move in obedient strokes, counted each noisy, endless tick, tock, tick. In all the time they'd spent together-eight years next month-he'd never heard her talk like this.

"The Lord-will take care of you," she was saying. "You must learn to trust Him. People will-fade away, but Godwill always be with you."

She continued pushing out words, but none of them made sense to Jesse, whose mind was still stuck on the "dying" word.

Finally, his gaze went back to her face. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks. With every ounce of strength his mother could muster, she dabbed at the tears with the corner of her sheet. "You got to be strong-you hear me? And brave. I'm goin' to-need you to be..."

Just then, she screwed her narrow face into a frown and took a gasping breath, which set off a string of coughs so loud that Jesse had to cover his ears. A nurse he had never seen before hurried through the door, looking all business-like. He jumped off the bed and ran to a corner, where he hovered, unseen, while his mother gagged and heaved and the nurse did things to the machines like flip switches and touch the wire going to her arm and yank her up to pat her back between her shoulders.

After an interminable time, she settled down, but the air coming through her mouth sounded raspier than before. Something with the weight of a rock lay heavy in his chest.

When the nurse left, he tiptoed close to his mother once more and touched her colder-than-usual hand tucked under the sheet.

He might have thought her dead right then if it weren't for the few hushed and garbled words eking by her dry, cracked lips. "L-love you, Jesse Ray."

He didn't know how long he stood there staring at the grayish face he used to consider the prettiest sight in the world.

Dusty nudged Jesse out of his trance, a long stick clenched between his teeth, eyes pleading with him to give the twig a good toss. Seated on the bottom step of the back stoop, he reached up and rubbed the dog's velvet ear, then made a fast swipe at the dampness around his own eyes. He'd been thinking a lot about his ma lately, which always made him sad, so he welcomed Dusty's interruption.

"What you want?" he asked the brown and white pooch, giving him a friendly pat and watching dirt particles drift through the air. Dusty whined and tilted his head to one side, eyes and ears drooping in equal amounts.

"Okay," he relented, wrenching the stick from the dog's mouth and throwing it as far as his arm would allow, almost to the back alley, where horses and buggies passed in steady succession. Dusty whipped his lean body around and dashed after the stick. In the distance a train whistled, indicating its approach.

With the whistle, another memory floated to the surface, this one of the time he'd hitched a ride on a car toward the back of a train to get to the next town. When he slipped through the crack in the big doors, he was surprised to discover a roomful of freeloaders, mostly guys with long, unshaven faces, hats that shaded their shifty eyes, and ratty clothes that stank so bad he nearly retched.

"Where you off to, kid?" a toothless fellow asked, his back against the wall, legs drawn up, one bony knee sticking out of a three-corner tear. "Hain't you got no family?"

Jesse had slid to the floor, playing brave. He placed his tiny pack of supplies next to him-mostly stuff he'd found in garbage barrels-and let his eyes adjust to his new surroundings. He shrugged in nonchalance. It took every ounce of courage he could muster not to let the tears fall. "Nowhere special," he answered, settling against the hard wall, wanting to close his eyes but wondering if it was safe. His young bones were weary from running.

`Ain't you a might small for gallivantin'?" asked another drifter, this one hunched and wrinkled and looking every bit as ancient as Mr. Carver, the man who sold fruit from his kiosk on Becker Street, a four-block walk from the mission where he and his ma used to live. He'd passed the little market every day on his way to second grade at Edison School, and, if he was lucky, Mr. Carver would slip him a shiny apple to add to his meager lunch sack.

"I'm older 'n I look," Jesse said, sitting up taller.

"Yeah?" the drifter asked. "What's you got in that bag? You got anythin' good in there?"

Jesse placed a hand over his little bundle, ready to protect it from the first guy who tried to wrest it from him. It wasn't much, but it was all he had to his name.

"Leave the kid alone," boomed a voice from the back. "First one who lays a hand to him or his belongings answers to me."

At that, a hush fell over the gathering; shortly thereafter, the train started moving, then humming, over the tracks. Jesse meant to thank the stranger later, but the whirring sound lulled him to sleep, and, by the time the big locomotive crawled to a stop at St. Joseph's train station and he opened his eyes, it was too late for thanking anyone. They'd all jumped off ahead of him, leaving him the lone passenger.