In Plain View (29 page)

Grace clucked and dug her pocketbook from under the seat. She unsnapped the latch and passed Rachel a cloth handkerchief.

Rachel nodded her thanks. “I wasn’t so happy there were hard words between my father and me, but I wanted to know what was all that business with the fire truck. I thought maybe I would see Thomas.” She wasn’t crying yet, but her voice had gone high and light enough to break glass.

“I knew Father wasn’t in that barn anymore. He’d gone to help with cleaning the milking equipment. I went up to the loft window. From up there, I could see the lights sparkling, the fire truck, all those people. My foot kicked that,” she nodded at the binoculars, “and I found the phone buried next to it under some hay.

“I knew it was Thomas’ phone. He let me use it once. I couldn’t think how it got into the barn. I took the phone and went to call his fire station so I could leave the message I had this phone. I thought he must be working with the others over in the field. Maybe that’s what had made Father so angry.”

“That’s when I found you under the bush.”

She nodded in agreement. “I was afraid someone might find me using it if I stayed in the barn.”

Grace squeezed her hand. All three of us did some more staring out the windshield. The hood of the Galaxie stretched almost to the horizon from where I was sitting.

“How do you suppose your dad ended up with Tom’s phone?” I asked.

“Father must have seen Thomas. That’s all I can think.”

“Seen him?”

“Yah. Maybe in town? Friday is farmer’s market.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t have the heart to point out she didn’t believe it herself. “Has the phone been on the whole time?” There was enough power to read the LCD.

“No. We only turned it on to call you.”

I took a deep breath and scanned the menu for the calling record. My cell number was first, with the date and time of Grace’s call noted in the corners of the tiny screen. I hit the menu button to see previous calls, going back once, twice, and then some.

“Oh man.” I started to shake with the full-body-willies.

Seven calls were stored in the phone’s memory. On a guess, I’d say they were all placed within minutes of Tom Jost’s death. I searched my pockets for a pen and scrap of paper from Jenny’s hospital admittance. I copied all the numbers down, so I wouldn’t lose anything to the phone’s waning charge. The first and last numbers were the same. Maybe it had been busy?

One of the numbers, I didn’t need to write down. It was the number for WWST.

Rachel watched me making the list. She pointed to the number that had been called second. “That’s the number for our phone at the dairy.”

“Do you know any of the others?”

She shook her head.

I put Tom’s phone back in Rachel’s lap and took out my own.

“This’ll only take a minute.” I called each number and made a note of who answered.

The
Clarion.

Police non-emergency.

Firehouse, station six.

And one number identified as no longer in service.

Television, news, police, his partners in fire—this wasn’t a call for help. This was a staged media event.

Tom himself placed the calls that brought everyone to the scene. But how had the phone gotten into his father’s hands? I mumbled to myself for a while. Yucky thoughts. It was hard to tell if Grace and Rachel were concerned or disgusted. I waited to be asked something, anything.

Nothing.

Coming up with questions is never my problem. “Rachel, why give these things to me?”

She bowed her head. “I saw the box you brought my father that day. You knew already.”

“Knew what?”

“My father had those binoculars in the barn. I think he saw Thomas die.” She was crying now, jagged glassy tears. “And he sent me off to do my chores.”

She surprised me. Naive doesn’t mean stupid, but I didn’t expect her to be able to visualize the ugliness of the situation.

“I didn’t know. I only guessed,” I whispered. “Neither of us knows what happened—not really. How your dad got the phone. Or how he felt inside.”

Grace clutched Rachel’s hand in a grip that made the knobby knuckles of her old hands bulge. “Leave God’s business in God’s hands,” she chided.

Rachel’s face showed the struggle to calm herself. “You asked me about the binoculars before, when the camera was there. I didn’t speak the whole truth. I don’t want to hide from things I know. If I will begin a new life now, I will begin right.”

Every wrinkle on Grace’s face was tight with concern.

“I’ll do what I can. To make it right.” I wanted to offer Rachel some sign of comfort but I was afraid to touch her bare hand. She seemed so new to the world I occupied, I feared the contact of my bare hand on hers might pass some unseen ruin, some
Englischer
pox, invisible and deadly to those historically unprotected. Instead, I leaned into her shoulder. Just for a moment.

Then I got out of the car.

Grace called out, “Wait.” She maneuvered herself out of the vehicle more slowly, no surprise. That old steel car door had to weigh more than she did.

I walked around to the trunk end and propped my butt against a back fin. Grace came around the back fender, her chin tilted high to look at me through glasses speckled with rain drops. “Rachel told me about that business with the television camera. I certainly hope we can trust you to use your better judgment regarding that recording. It wouldn’t be too good for this girl to have her private things on the TV right now.”

My “better judgment”? That would give Ainsley a laugh.

I heard the
splat
and
ping
before I felt anything. I looked up. It was raining again. I started to laugh, one of those private, unhinged sounds that cause most folks to back away. With my face raised to the drizzle, I managed the words, “I understand.”

Her thank you was crisp and perhaps, a little dubious.

“I don’t understand, Grace. What was Tom Jost trying to do? This wasn’t your typical depressive slide into suicide. He planned something. He was making a point.” My lack-of-sleep headache was becoming a full-frontal pain lobotomy. “Wasn’t he?”

“Maybe the bad things that happen in this world aren’t something we can understand. Maybe all we can do is keep walking.”

“Walking away doesn’t help. Look at the mess they got into when Tom walked away. Rachel, her dad, Tom—they had this whole community looking out for them. People keeping them in line, keeping them connected.”

Grace made a soft exhalation, the sound of someone exhausted by irony. “And so do we, Miss O’Hara. So do we. Look at all the trouble we still get into. But each time we fail, we always have the chance to start again.” Her crumpled, arthritic hand took hold of my sleeve, slid down to my fingers and gripped me there. She gave my hand a shake. “Use my old face all you want, but be careful of Rachel, you hear me?”

I did my best to nod.

I hiked back toward the grassy space where the camera sat resting on a tripod. It didn’t take long to break down the equipment for transport. A couple of fire-guys stomped into range, one of them clanking along in fifty pounds of cutting-edge fire apparatus, the other wearing only knee-high rubber boots, a heavy canvas coat and six inches of beard. Mutual aid requested and provided. I hefted the camera into place and got the shot of them walking past the smoldering ruins of the house.

It was all I could take. I shut the camera down and packed it in.

Another time, another place, I’d be rolling gobs of tape. I’d be smooth-talking the guy in charge for personal interviews. This time, the ashes of another man’s life were sticking in my throat, and all I could think of was where I’d rather be.

The hospital. Jenny.

My phone rang. Never fails. The mundane knows no rest.

“What?” I snapped the last of the camera box buckles closed.

“Don’t give me that ‘what?’ bullshit,” Richard Gatt roared right through the terrible cell signal. “Where the hell are you and why is my nephew on his way to the hospital with second-degree burns?”

At last, someone who spoke my language. “Because he thinks he’s Dudley Frickin’ Do-Right and doesn’t follow directions.”

“You’re the one who sent him there. Why weren’t you on the
frickin’
scene? This is totally unacceptable…” Gatt raved on for a while.

He was right. My being there would have made a difference. My being there would have made a difference to Jenny, too. I imagined Tom Jost making those calls, calling for witnesses, right before he jumped—and I had to sit down.

The grass was wet and cool under my pants. It felt so good, I laid down. The inside of my skull pounded at the shift of altitude, then eased with the chill. The air smelled a little better down here, too. Less smoky.

Cows made noises nearby. I concentrated on the cows.

As soon as Gatt took a breath, I told him, “I’ll have a story on your desk tomorrow morning. Consider it my resignation.”

“Shut the hell up, O’Hara, I’m not finished talking. And you aren’t going anywhere until my story is one hundred percent in the can, if you ever want to work again in this business…”

Blah, blah, blah. Heard all of this before. Nice cosmic irony, though. “‘Isolation is a powerful tool for behavior modification,’” I quoted.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Gatt yelled right back. “What the shit am I supposed to tell my sister?”

“Tell her—her son’s a hero. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I quit.”

11:18:44 a.m.

I could hear the television through the door when I finally made it back to Jenny’s room at the hospital. Relief and regret hit me together. Jenny had woken and I’d missed it.

I should be so lucky.

“Where have you been?” Tonya sat propped up on the second bed, reading
People
magazine.

I swear her lime-green sweats were glowing. They hurt my eyes.

With relief, I saw Jenny was still flat out, shut-eyed, unconscious in the bed.

The television, mounted high in the corner of the room, was tuned to reruns of
Little House on the Prairie.

I laughed. “Are you watching PAX channel?”

“Shut up, you. Don’t even start with me.” Tonya snapped her words like a nun’s ruler crack. “You’ve been gone for hours. Where’ve you been?”

“There was a fire at the farm. Everything took longer than I expected.” I considered elaborating but the details were not likely to help my case.

“A fire?”

“The Jost house burned to the ground. Ainsley went in and pulled the old man out. The doofus managed to burn his hands pretty badly in the process.”

“Oh Lord.”

“And then, Gatt called while I was out there.” I plopped down on the foot of the bed. “Then, I quit.”

“You
what?
” Tonya said. “I thought the point in sending you out there was to keep you from losing the job?”

I’d had three hours of sleep. I stunk of smoke. My favorite black pants were covered in mud, my shoes in cow shit. My motorcycle was still sitting in Curzon’s parking lot—in the rain. And both my young charges were currently receiving emergency medical attention. I think it’s fair to say my judgment was not operating at peak performance.

On the television, Laura and Pa casually led a cow up a grassy hill. With all the things on my mind, what came out of my mouth was, “When I was a kid, I loved this show.”

“What is the matter with you!” Tonya flapped an all-inclusive hand. “How could you let this happen?”

“Let what happen?”

“That poor baby—”

“Which one?”

“That is the most lame-ass—”

“They weren’t
my
drugs,” I pointed out.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“They were anti-anxiety meds. And they were in a free sample pack.”

“Are you serious? Where did she get something like that?”

“I don’t know! You had a sample pack of meds in your gym bag. The stuff for your back, remember? Where did you get those?”

“From my doctor. That’s the only place you can get them.” Her voice dropped. “Oh Lord, did Jenny think she was taking something for pain?”

“That would be my bet.”

Tonya was paralyzed by the thought of contributing to Jenny’s condition. Her voice was a monotone. “I’d never forgive myself—”

“It’s not—”
your fault,
I started to say.

“Of course it is! Yours and mine—this child has no one else.”

“
That
I am fully aware of,” I said. Loudly.

We both turned and looked at Jenny. She kept right on sleeping.

“I do not understand you.” Tonya’s voice dropped to a steamy whisper. “Why do you prefer living in hell?”

How did she do that? Stick me where I never expect, and bleed a wound I didn’t even realize was open. I clapped my mouth shut and started counting to one hundred, while gesturing in large useless motions.

Tonya went into nurse-mode, fluffing pillows with double-fisted punches, snapping the sheets smooth and tucking them under the mattress with a kung-fu chop. Normally, she was the kind of person who flowed in motion, never looked off-balance or clumsy. At that moment, she looked like dry sticks animated. I didn’t get up from the bed. I made her work around me. As she jerked the blanket into position, I nearly fell off the edge.

“You have a life, a beautiful, precious girl-child put in your hands. Something other people would die for.” She waved at Jenny, laid out like an effigy. I knew she was speaking of herself. Tonya would have gladly accepted Jenny into her life. Through me, she already had.

“What else am I supposed to do, T? I don’t know how to be the mom.”

“There are only two requirements,” she said with all the patience of someone explaining the how-to of bar soap. “You commit to the long haul. And you consider her needs first. She won’t always get top priority, but she always gets first consideration.”

“I’m committed.”

“You haven’t even moved out of your apartment yet! How committed is that?” Tonya’s voice amplified with every word.

My eyes kept drifting toward the television screen. It was impossible to turn away from the flash and comfort of those familiar images—the smiling faces and sugary landscapes, figments of our collective, mass-consuming unconscious. Even knowing all that I know, doing all that I do, I sighed.
Little House
had shimmered before me in childhood reruns, like the mirage of heaven hammered into me on Sunday mornings. There was the wise, kind father, the patient, loving mother, and the sisters who all lived together in a land where truth was known, justice was served and love begat love, never suffering.