Her Wild Oats (31 page)

Major Booty and Lonesome Al even felt guilty, though they couldn’t have told you exactly why. They had just been kind to a kid with his thumb out on the side of the road, had even tried to help, most certainly saving him from being picked up by murderers, molesters, or worse. Still, there might have been a better way to handle things, somehow or other.

Mr. Teagle and Miss Rench, the marching band chaperones, felt guilty because they had been distracted from their usual backseat-driving diligence by a sudden inexplicable crush that had developed between them. They were certain that God was somehow punishing them for their misdeeds.

Everyone in the band family felt a sickening, overwhelming sense of guilt for the fact that they had each individually wished Dickie would just get lost.

*

All those times Oats had wished that Dickie would disappear didn’t mean he ever wanted him to die. Well, that might not even be true. There were times when Dickie was in full-tilt torture mode that Oats might have thought he wished him dead. But the reality of the fact was much less satisfying—not what he’d have expected if you had asked him a couple of weeks before. If he had the power, Oats would have rewound the tape and undone everything, even Dickie’s death.

Arizona came over to report that a couple of other people were in Intensive Care, but no one else was dead.

Oats asked her if she knew what had happened, and she said she’d been there in Sarah Jean’s minivan.

According to what the police said and what Arizona had seen for herself, the church bus was rolling down the highway going south and Sarah Jean was driving her minivan north toward the radio station.

“Maditrude said to turn. But at the last second, we saw Dickie’s car swerve around a north-bound eighteen-wheeler, right into the front of the school bus. Your mom stopped short and Kira went flying forward and slammed into the dashboard. Both the bus and the eighteen-wheeler slammed into Dickie’s car at the same time.”

There was nothing the paramedics could do for Dickie. Stephanie had been put into an ambulance and taken, unconscious, to the hospital. The kids on the bus endured numerous broken bones and broken instruments, but miraculously, most of them were going to be fine. One girl had been pretty badly injured, with a lot of broken bones.

“What about Melody?” Oats asked. “She was on the bus, right? Is she OK?”

“Who’s Melody?”

“You know, the red-haired baton twirler!” Oats said, a little louder than perhaps he intended.

Arizona saw tears well up in his eyes.
Oh, there’s a girl!
She tried not to smile.

“I promise I’ll go check. I’ll find out what I can.”

*

He just shook his head, thinking if he shook it fast enough back and forth he would somehow keep himself from crying. While they waited for the doctor to arrive with more news, all he could think of was trying to remember if Dickie had any kids. The best he could come up with was hearing “Not that I know of,” with that cynical laugh, but Oats didn’t know if that was something he actually remembered or just thought Dickie might say. And he wasn’t sure if it was even OK to remember him sounding mean if he was really actually dead.

Arizona let him sit there for a while with his head in his hands, patting his shoulder softly. Somewhere in the background he heard kids from the bus praying, and then footsteps coming down the hall. He looked up thinking maybe it was the doctor, and he saw his dad, his brother, and his best friend all coming toward him, followed by Hoagy. Oats had never been so glad to see Eddie, or even Hank Wilson, but the best part was looking at Greg and saying to Arizona, “It’s my dad.”

She smiled and punched him lightly on the arm. “Yeah, it sure is.”

It wasn’t until a little later that Oats realized he hadn’t bothered to send his mind spinning around about who was or wasn’t his dad, and what assholes they all were for lying about it. His dad was there, and that was that.

“Hey, guys, thanks for holding down the fort. I just went to get a quick look at Pete,” Sarah Jean called as she rounded the corner of the hospital corridor.

His mom was there, too.

So they all stood around on one end of the hospital hallway, with the marching band kids on the other end. And eventually they heard a door open and a tall, white-haired man in a white coat came marching toward them, looking very serious. He walked over to the little group and introduced himself as Dr. Abel. Everyone nodded solemnly.

“Who here is family?” he asked.

*

It was the weirdest feeling, standing there next to her hospital bed. At first Arizona thought she was going to throw up. Her eyes were closed and she was hooked up to beeping, blinking machines, and there was medicine dripping into an IV. It just didn’t make sense that this person lying in the bed was Stephanie, her arch nemesis, the woman who had stolen her husband’s heart. Where was Jerry, anyway? Wasn’t this woman his responsibility? Typical. And what was Stephanie doing in Dickie’s car? Meanwhile, Arizona was stuck here, ministering to the woman she detested on principle. It wasn’t fair.

Dr. Abel explained that Stephanie had been badly banged up in the crash, but “her vitals look good.” Still, she was having what they call a “failure to thrive” and they were worried that she wasn’t responding to treatment. If you asked Arizona, nothing looked good. All the visible parts of her that weren’t covered up by bandages were bruised and swollen. Part of Arizona wanted to turn around and run, and part of her wanted to jump into the hospital bed and just cuddle up and go to sleep.

Kira was in the next bed and it was a close tie as to who looked worse. She had two raccoon-like black eyes, a couple of missing teeth, and a huge purple honker of a nose. But she was awake and alert, and not shy about pressing the call button to ask for more pain meds.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Stephanie moved like she was waking up. She looked a little confused for a minute, then her eyes focused on Arizona’s and her mouth moved into a little bit of a smile.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“I’m here.” It was all Arizona could think of to say.

Stephanie winced. “Hurts,” she said.

A nurse bustled in and gave Stephanie an ugly-looking shot, then offered to bring in a chair. Arizona said no, thanks.

Arizona walked over, closer to the bed, and Stephanie leaned forward and reached for her hand.

“I think your friend wants to tell you something,” the nurse said.

“She’s not my friend.”

But Arizona bent down so her ear was near Stephanie’s mouth—her breath smelled awful—and hung in there, reluctantly waiting to hear what this woman might have to say.

*

Oats wandered down the hall toward the marching-band kids.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Does anyone know where Melody is?”

“Room 146,” said a tall kid with a bandage on his nose. “But I don’t know if you’re allowed in there.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Melody was hooked up to about a million beeping machines, arms and legs in complicated traction devices. She reminded Oats of the guys you see in the hospital in old movies after they fall off the roof.

He stood next to her bed for a couple of minutes before she opened her eyes and saw him there. She smiled a minimalist version of her usual big wide grin, then opened her mouth, trying to say something.

“Gocher arp,” was what he thought he heard.

“What?”

“Your harp,” she said again. “Your harp.” The nurse looked at Oats kindly.

“Sometimes,” she said with grave authority, “when patients come to they think they’ve crossed over and are looking at their spirit guides. She thinks you’re an angel playing a harp, see? But really—there’s a very good chance…”

Oats couldn’t believe anyone could be so clueless; but then, how could the nurse know? He reached into his pocket and pulled out his “A” harp. A snippet of a tune came into his head—the tune he’d written for her the day they met, “Melody’s Song.” He started to play slowly as the whole song came back to him. The nurse looked at him disapprovingly, but then thought better of it when she saw Melody relax into the pillow, smiling.

“Hmmm, that’s the first time she’s really been able to rest since she was brought in,” the nurse whispered. “Let’s let her sleep for a while. There will be plenty of time for visiting later on.”

Oats wandered back down the hall, looking for his family. Eddie and Hank Wilson came bounding in from outside.

“Hey, man, we’ve been looking all over for you! Wanna have a wheelchair race?”

“Sounds fun, but…I want to see what Arizona’s up to first.” He spotted Arizona leaning against the wall, looking sad and pale. She looked up with a weak smile.

“Hey, who likes hot chocolate?” Arizona asked.

“Me, me!” Hank Wilson shouted. They found a table in the little hospital cafeteria and Arizona somehow came up with enough change for vending-machine hot chocolate, then even more miraculously reached down into her purse and pulled out a Mad Libs game. And that’s how they spent most of the night, playing Mad Libs and drinking sweet, watery chocolate out of Styrofoam cups, burning their tongues numb and falling asleep one by one on each other’s shoulders, waiting for Stephanie, Kira, and Melody to decide to live.

*

Veronica Alvarez and Billy Jones, two nurses who worked at the Central California Medical Center, stood outside the emergency-room door, smoking their afternoon stealth cigarette together as they watched a car full of kids and musical instruments pull out of the hospital parking lot and on to the highway.

“Is that the last of them?” Veronica asked Billy.

“Not quite,” answered Billy. “All the ones who could travel safely have been picked up by family members and driven home, but there are a couple yet who aren’t ready to be moved. That chubby little guy with the tuba, and the cute girl—baton twirler, I think someone said.”

“What about their chaperones?”

“They’re fine. They lit out as soon as all the parents arrived. That was something, huh?”

“Sheesh, I’ll say. Nice kids, but all that praying was starting to get on my nerves. They were so loud.” Veronica dropped her cigarette onto the blacktop and stomped it flat with her white sneaker.

“Good singing, though, huh?” Billy sighed. “Reminded me of my church back home. It’s a blessing not more of them were hurt. Now we can attend to the ones who really need us without so much distraction.”

“How are the two women doing?”

“Touch-and-go on the blonde. As for the brunette, she seems pretty out of it. Keeps hitting that morphine button. You’d think she was a three-hundred-pound biker, not a tiny little thing. Baton-girl’s parents are out of town. Someone said her grandma’s coming to help out.”

“Grandmas can save the day. I don’t know what I’d do without my mother taking care of the kids when I work,” Veronica said softly.

“I hear you.”

*

It took a few days and a hell of a lot of harp playing, but Melody finally decided to wake up and greet her friend. One night Oats left the hospital as she dozed; the next morning he walked into her room to see a freshly scrubbed, wide-awake girl with a flower stuck behind one ear, complaining about her tasteless breakfast while devouring everything on the tray. Oats ran to her side.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Silly! What for?”

Hank Wilson, shy for the first time anyone could remember, hung back in the doorway, holding Greg’s hand.

*

At about the same time in the next room, Bobby Lee Crenshaw’s cell phone rang. It was the dreaded “shit or get off the pot” call from his record label, and he hung up the phone unsure about exactly what to do. Greg found him staring glumly out the window of the visitors’ lounge.

Bobby Lee told Greg the whole story: he had missed too many dates on the tour, his record label wanted to drop him, and they were even considering suing for breach of contract. Unless he picked up where he’d left off after the Bakersfield show, his recording contract and his finances were down the toilet.

“No one there cares about my wife, or Dickie or Pete. They just want to earn back their advance. That’s the only thing that matters,” Bobby Lee confided. “I know I haven’t done everything right, but shit, man, I have really tried to take care of business and keep the show on the road.”

“So do it, man,” Greg suggested. “We can handle things here.”

“There are some problems. Like, do you really think Sarah Jean is going to let Oats anywhere near my tour again? And it surprises me to say this, but he has become crucial. He’s the one who gets all the ‘kid steals the show’ press. He’d be missed. Then there’s Dickie. I still can’t believe he’s dead.”

“I know, and I know you loved him. But look, if you need a guitar player there’s one right over there who’s about as good as they get.” Greg pointed over to the other side of the building, where Hoagy leaned against the wall, talking to Arizona. “I bet Hoagy would go out with you for a few dates at least till you find someone else. As for Oats, you never know. Sarah Jean seems to be feeling a little better. That woman might surprise you—she surprises me just about every day of my life.”

It didn’t take long to work out the guitar-player details. Hoagy would be delighted, he said, to join Bobby Lee’s tour for as long as he was needed. Arizona, however, was another story.

“Look,” she said, “I hate to leave you in the lurch as tour manager, but all this stuff that’s happened has got me thinking. I want to go home and try to work things out with my husband, and there are some work issues I need to clear up, too.”

“Didn’t you quit your job at the restaurant?” Bobby Lee asked, confused.

“Uh, yeah. But there’s this other job—um—offer in LA, closer to home.” She didn’t see the point in explaining that working for Grayson Lathrop had been her real job all along. “I’ll hang in with you through one more gig, and then I’m sorry, but I’m sure you can find someone else.”

“I’ll be happy to room with Oats,” Hoagy added quickly. “I know that was an issue in the past.”

The last order of business was getting Sarah Jean to agree to let Oats out of her sight. The little group entered the hospital waiting room to find Oats and Hank Wilson both draped on her lap watching cartoons while their mother snoozed. She opened her eyes when they walked in.