The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story (18 page)

“Well,” Jack said, downing the last of his beer. “You’ve invested a lot of time and energy in this poor Protestant.”

“Not nearly enough,” Frank said. “But I have hopes.”

“Ouch,” Jack said. He looked around the yard—around the block. The walls were up, the roof spans going up, and the plywood, felt, and shingles for the roof would follow. It was amazing—the work of days done in an afternoon, just because everyone came together and pitched in.

It was a community effort. He didn’t see his father—he’d probably gone home to rest—but many members of Saint Paul’s remained. He saw familiar faces from Saint Mary’s. Brother Raymond was enjoying what looked like a good Lutheran casserole, and for the first time, the largest group of workers here were from First Baptist, largely thanks to the teenage demolition engineers.

Then Jack saw the one person from First Baptist he did not want here. James. He had parked down the block, was walking across a yard toward Darla with a grim expression on his face. Jack looked off to his right—Cameron had seen him too. His face had gone ashen.

James came up behind Darla, who was laughing with three other women as they poured iced tea into red plastic cups. He
took her elbow and turned her around, iced tea went everywhere, and although Jack couldn’t hear the words, he knew exactly what was happening.

He had known James long enough not to be surprised by anything he did anymore.

Come on. We’re going home.

Let go of my arm.

How can you embarrass me like this? Is that Cameron
? James had looked across the yard, and Cameron appeared as though he wanted to melt into the earth.

Jack took a step toward James and Darla. That’s as far as he got.

Randy Fields had climbed out of his car and crossed the street. Now he was standing in front of Jack with one hand on his belt, where, Jack noticed with surprise, he wore an actual gun.

“Jack Chisholm?” Randy said, and if his jaw had been tight before, it was white now.

“You know it is, Randy,” Jack said. He got ready to step around him. James still had Darla by the arm, and she wrenched it from his grasp. Both of them were red-faced. One of the women was trying to step between them.

“Jack, you’re under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Father Frank demanded, and a panic seemed to rise from some folks nearby.

“Disturbing the peace, assembly without a license, construction without a proper permit, unlicensed contractor,” he said, as though ticking off items on a list. Randy surveyed the yard—and he and Jack could both feel that the mood had become very ugly all of a sudden.

“He’s not doing anything wrong,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
“Nobody is, Randy.” He said the name “Randy” as though he were releasing a fart.

Others stepped forward, gesturing, yelling, and Randy dropped his hand onto his gun.

Jack raised his hands. “Please,” he said. “Please.”

They stopped yelling, made a space for him to speak.

“People get nervous when other people with hammers and power tools start waving them around.” Jack’s eyes pleaded with the ones nearby. “Please. Finish the job. We can work this out. I’ll go with you, Randy. The rest of you, stay and finish the Gobels’ carport.”

“The rest of you need to disperse,” Randy said, although clearly his heart was not in it. He would take what he could get.

“I’ll go with you,” Jack said to Randy. “Don’t push your luck.”

Jack looked across the lawn. Darla and James were gone, although Cameron was in the angry mob still shadowing them at a distance. Jack turned to shoo them back to work. “We can work this out. You all—”

The media had gotten wind of what was happening. They’d been lounging in their trucks—or eating casserole and tamales on the lawn.

Now there were cameras everywhere as Jack was getting hauled off to jail.

He shook his head. Public shame. Again. Fine. Whatever.

“Y’all finish that job,” he called.

“We’ll be right behind you, Twelve,” shouted Dennis, waving a hammer, and it scared even Jack. No wonder Randy thought he might have to shoot someone.

“Finish the job,” Jack said. “That’s all that matters.”

He turned to Randy. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

And with head held high, looking the media and everyone else right in the eyes, Jack performed his very first perp-walk to the Mayfield police cruiser.

“I’ll bet I really don’t want to google myself now,” he muttered, as the door slammed next to him with a sound like the crack of doom.

A
jail cell is not the worst place in the world
, Jack thought as he inspected his cell.
Especially if you’ve got the place to yourself.
The jail had three cells back here, but it was a Sunday afternoon, and no one else had done anything even remotely noteworthy.

“Thank goodness some kids didn’t try to build an illegal tree house,” Jack shouted through the bars in the direction of the police office, but Randy offered no response.

Jack was fine. Most of the comforts of home. He had a bed and a wooden chair, and in the corner were a toilet and sink.
Like a Motel 6 without ESPN
, he thought. Too bad about ESPN, actually. Another Sunday evening and he was missing the playoffs again.

Randy had told him he had to process some paperwork and then he’d give him his phone call. That had been awhile ago. Jack was going to call his father, although he had some serious doubts that Tom would have enough money left in the family coffers to make bail. Operating as an illegal contractor? That could be a hanging offense.

“Randy,” Jack called after half an hour or so. He heard a flush from the bathroom down the hall, and called again when the door opened.

“What?” Randy yelled back.

“How about my phone call?”

He heard Randy groan, then footsteps coming back into the jail. “You are making my life a nightmare, Jack. I am dealing with a public relations disaster out here.”

“And I would be filled with sympathy for you, Randy,” Jack said. “If I weren’t in jail.”

Randy actually snickered at that. “Okay. I’ll let you out to make your call. But nobody is on the desk today, and I’ve got what looks like a full-scale protest out here.”

He opened the cell and indicated a desk nearby with a phone. “One call. And not to the
New York Times
.”

“Oh, Randy,” Jack said. “You know me so well.” He sat down, realized he didn’t know Tom’s cell, dialed the home number.

The phone rang four times and went to message. “That’s weird,” Jack said. He hung up.

“Hey, Randy,” he said. “My dad didn’t answer. I’m calling my sister.”

“I said one call,” Randy shouted from the front office.

“La la la,” Jack said. “I can’t hear you.”

He called Mary’s number. No answer there, either. Maybe she was still at the building site.

In any case, Jack was not going anywhere.

The noise in the front office was getting louder—Jack could hear voices, thought he recognized some of them. Was that Dennis? Hoo boy. He walked out to the duty officer’s desk, where Randy had stationed himself.

“Hey,” Randy said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m escaping,” Jack said. He looked around the room. Thirty people from the Gobels’ were in the room, shouting at Randy. All that would fit. A sample of broadcast media, cameras, and reporters was also present. Jack raised his hands, and they quieted down a bit.

“I thought I said to finish up the garage,” Jack said.

“Built without a proper permit,” Randy muttered.

“They’re finishing up,” Warren Koenig answered. Jack saw that his brother Van, the state senator, was standing next to him and nodded a hello. “We came down because Father Frank said we had to get you out.”

Father Frank was at the front of the mob. He and Brother Raymond were counting through a stack of checks and bills.

“What are you doing, Frank?” Jack said. “Nobody can afford this. I can just sit back there. If somebody could get me ESPN—”

Frank passed the money across the desk to Randy, who began counting it reluctantly.

“We’ve got to get you out, boyo,” he said. “It’s your father.”

Jack felt his stomach lurch, and he leaned into the desktop. “What happened?” he asked, and he started to come around the counter.

“You’re still in jail, Jack,” Randy said, not taking his attention away from his counting. “Until I say you’re not.”

Jack stopped, leaned across the counter again. “Frank. Brother Raymond. What’s happening?”

“Mary found Tom unconscious at the house,” Frank said. “High fever. Difficulty breathing.”

“They took him by ambulance to Kerrville,” Raymond said. “They’ll know something by the time we get there.”

“Oh my God,” Jack said. He looked at Randy, making tidy little stacks of fives, tens, twenties. “Can you hurry up?”

“Officially,” Randy said, now tallying the checks, “we’re not allowed to take personal checks. And I’m not supposed to release you before you go in front of a judge.”

That brought an outcry from the assembled, although Randy did not look up from his counting.

“But unofficially,” he said, “I do not want you here. Any of you.” He laid down the last check with a flourish. “That’s it. Five thousand dollars bail.” He put the money and checks into an envelope, wrote Jack’s name and the amount on the outside, and put it into a metal box that resembled the tackle box Jack had owned as a kid.

“Are you kidding me?” Jack asked. “Five thousand dollars?” He didn’t know whether to be offended or to laugh. “Am I a flight risk?”

“Not my idea, Jack,” Randy said, locking the box with a padlock and putting it into a desk drawer. “I think you were supposed to sit in jail for a long time. But like I said, I’d just as soon not have you around.” He closed the drawer and locked it with a key.

Randy slid a manila envelope down the desktop to him. His personal effects. Wallet, change, cell phone, keys. Jack saw that he had seven messages on his phone, most from Mary’s cell.

“Your hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at three,” Randy said. “Municipal court. I’d bring an attorney.”

Jack barely heard him. “Where’s my dad?” he asked. He had somehow forgotten, but wherever it was, he needed to get there in a hurry.

“Kerrville,” Raymond said.

“I’ll drive you,” Father Frank said. “I don’t mind speeding. In fact—”

“I’ll come with you,” Raymond said, and he and Frank nodded at each other. “If we get pulled over, two pastors—”

“Three,” Frank said gently. He took Jack by the arm, led him through the throng, down the hall, and out to Frank’s old Chrysler. Jack got in the passenger side. Brother Raymond climbed in back, moved Frank’s box of cassette tapes. Irish reels. Seventies rock.

“What is all of this?” Raymond asked, as though he were being asked to sit next to a pig carcass.

“Pure gold,” Frank said, throwing the car into reverse. And off they went.

They made the drive in short time, and didn’t encounter a single officer of the law. “What’re the odds?” Frank asked. He seemed a little disappointed.

Tom was at Peterson Medical Center, across the Guadalupe River on the south side of town. Mary had told Jack that they were in Emergency.

Frank pulled into the clergy space in the parking lot with practiced ease. He and Raymond had done more than their share of hospital visits. They hurried into the ER reception area. “Tom Chisholm?” Jack asked the nurse on duty.

“Relation?” she asked, looking up at him.

“He’s my father,” Jack said.

“And to these gentlemen?” she asked, making a note in the computer.

“Clergy,” Brother Raymond said.

The nurse nodded, impressed, and buzzed them back. “Number eight, straight back past the nurse’s station.”

They walked back. The nurse’s station was on the right; a paramedic crew was wheeling somebody into a bay on the left, his shirt bloody, his head bandaged. Father Frank stopped and made the sign of the cross before joining them in bay eight.

Tom was hooked up to a ventilator. Jack felt tears come to his eyes, and then Mary was in his arms, and she was weeping. “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God you’re here.”

A doctor was bent over Tom and entering data into his tablet PC. He turned and saw the new visitors. “Jack, is it?” he asked. He was about Jack’s age, short graying hair, dressed in pale green scrubs with a white jacket thrown over them. “I’m Dr. Powell. Glad you’re here. Really glad. You’re medical power of attorney.”

“What?” Jack said.

Mary nodded. “Always have been, it turns out.”

“Well,” Jack said. “That’s just—dumb. I didn’t even come back here until—”

“We lost him on the way over here,” the doctor said. “And you were unavailable. So the paramedics intubated him. Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“Of course I want that,” Jack said, trying not to shout. “Why wouldn’t I—”

“It’s just that he’s got a DNR on file,” Dr. Powell said. “Do Not Resuscitate. We found it when he checked in. But this isn’t the cancer.” He showed Jack an X-ray of lungs, cloudy white. “The cancer has weakened him, sure, and that might have made this infection opportunistic. It’s viral pneumonia.”

Frank and Brother Raymond had already gone over to the bed. Frank had taken Tom’s hand, the one without the IV and
sensors. Raymond had taken out his pocket Bible and put one hand on Tom’s sweaty head.

“Is he—” Jack looked back at the doctor. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He could be,” the doctor said.

“My daughter—his granddaughter—is coming on Friday,” Jack said. “This is her first visit.” Mary nodded, took his arm.

“Even if he gets better,” the doctor said, choosing his words carefully, “I think he’s probably still going to be hospitalized.” He shook his head. “His age, his condition—it means every illness is much more serious.” He took a step closer, put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and spoke gently. “He shouldn’t even be here.”

“In the hospital?” Jack asked, baffled.

“On the planet,” the doctor said.

“Well,” Jack said, nodding slowly. “I guess he had a few things he was living for.”

“I hope he still does,” Dr. Powell said. “I’ve got a bed in ICU where we can monitor him around the clock.” He checked his watch, made a notation, looked up at them. “We’ll give him the very best care we can. He’s going to need a lot of rest. But I’ll okay family visitors in ICU for the first night.” He made one final notation, closed the cover of his tablet.

“Thank you, Dr. Powell,” Jack said. They shook hands, Mary thanked him, and the doctor went out into the hall, where Jack heard him asking the paramedics, “Okay, what do we have?”

The slow and steady
beep beep beep
coming from the monitor could have been heart rate or something else—Jack had not done enough time in hospitals to know—but it was a comfort. It meant Tom was alive, was going to keep on living at least for a while.

“I was worried,” Mary said. “About him. About you.”

Jack looked over at the bed, at the two clergymen praying. “I had good friends,” he said. “Have,” he corrected, a note of wonder in his voice.

“How was jail?” she asked, digging an elbow into his side.

“Not as great as they make it out to be,” he said. “I’m glad you were here. I’m glad you’ve always been here.”

She nodded. “Me too.” She sighed. “I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Tom was moved up to ICU an hour and a half later, and Frank and Raymond took the opportunity to depart, promising they’d be back. Mary and Jack took turns sitting by Tom’s bed during the night. Dennis sat with whoever was in the ICU waiting area—he had arrived shortly after Jack and couldn’t convince the nurse he was of sufficient relation to be allowed back. They had little room left for anyone else as it was.

“I told them Tom was my future father-in-law,” Dennis said around three a.m., after he and Jack had drunk their third Dr Peppers from the vending machine downstairs. “Does that mean I’m, you know, going to hell or whatever?”

“Is Tom your future father-in-law?” Jack asked.

“I hope so,” Dennis said. “I’ve asked her, you know. To marry me.”

Jack shook his head. “She never told me. What did she say?”

Dennis shrugged his wide shoulders. “She told me that she loved me,” he said. “And she said she was tabling that motion for the current fiscal year.”

“Ah yes,” Jack said. “That MBA is doing everyone a world of good.”

Mary sent Jack home around five to get an hour or two of sleep and to open—or close—the store.

On the drive back to Mayfield, Jack listened to his messages—the ones from Mary, in ascending panic, one from Father Frank telling him they were on their way—and then realizing he probably wouldn’t get the message, “you being in jail and all”—and one from Danny Pierce.

“Jack,” he said. “Why haven’t we heard an answer from you? Martin told me he called you. We want you to come back. I want you to come back. I don’t know what you’re playing at down there, but we’re in a world of hurt and all people can talk about is bringing you home.” There was a long silence, and Jack prepared to delete the message, and then Danny said, “I can’t do this job, Jack. I thought maybe I could. I had a good teacher. But I can’t. Please come home.”

Jack put the phone on the dashboard, took a deep breath, put his hands at ten and two. There were a lot of curves coming his way.

His sleep when he got home was anything but restful. In his dream, someone was shooting at him.
Bang bang bang.
He was ducking behind a bus or some kind of big machine, and zombies roamed about. He was supposed to save a woman or maybe she was going to save him. It was all unclear up to the point when he awoke and realized that someone was banging on the door.

“¡Déjame en paz!”
Jack shouted, before realizing that he was not in Isla Mujeres, and it was probably fruitless to ask someone in Mayfield to leave him alone, in Spanish no less.

He padded barefoot downstairs, still in his clothes from the work site, jail, and hospital, and he opened the door.

A uniformed sheriff’s deputy stood on the front porch. It
was one of Shayla Pierce’s ex-husbands. Buddy. No. That was the name of the bar. Barry?

“Jack Chisholm?” he asked.

“You know it is,” Jack said. “You were three years behind me. What is it now? The jail want me back already?”

Buddy/Barry looked at Jack as though he were speaking—well—Spanish. Then he handed Jack an envelope.

“You are hereby served,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

Jack opened the envelope. Being served is never a nice thing. He expected—what? A summons to a hearing? A lawsuit from the Gobels because they didn’t like their garage?