One Christmas Knight

Chapter 7

“Eastbound, you got your ears on?”

I-40-Texas

Well, Lord, Jimmy Joe thought, if you’re listenin’, this would be a real good time for a miracle…

Because he knew that all the “Maydays” and all the prayers in the world weren’t going to get an ambulance out on that track of rutted black ice, and if one did manage to get here, there wasn’t any way in the world for it to get back to Amarillo with Mirabella-not with a solid line of trucks plugging up the road. Not unless it could fly. And until the wind died down and the snow quit blowing, there wasn’t much chance of that, either.

The best he could hope for was to keep going, keep heading for Amarillo, and hope he got there before the baby did. Amarillo… no more than fifty miles, now. At this rate that was ten hours. Ten hours.

He didn’t know why he wasn’t more surprised: Scared, yes, but not surprised. Icy sweat filmed his upper lip and ran in a trickling trail from his armpits and on down his ribs. Maybe we’ll make it, he thought. Sure, we will. Babies, especially the first one, can take a long time.

“Jimmy Joe?” Her eyes were dark, beseeching.

“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat, wondering how long he’d been sitting there in frozen silence. “I heard what you said.” He realized he was still holding his CB mike pressed against his chest and reached out to hang it up, stretching his arm slowly…stalling.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry. He glanced at her, then transferred his scowl to the left-hand mirror instead, where beyond the endless line of headlights he could see streaks of red in between the layers of black and purple clouds. Somewhere out there behind him the sun was going down. It was going to get dark soon.

“Hey,” he said, “let me ask you something.”

Hearing the hoarseness and the edge in his voice, Mirabella caught her breath and waited. She wanted him to look at her with the calm, reassuring eyes she remembered-eyes the warm, comforting brown of teddy bears and chocolate. But he kept his face turned away from her, and the angle of his head and the set of his jaw had a tense, angry look.

“You said your back’s been burtin’ you. That a steady kinda hurt, or more off and on?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “Off and on, I guess. I just thought it was the Tylenol taking effect. I thought I was aching because of too much sitting. I thought I was just tired. I never thought-”

Jimmy Joe was muttering under his breath. He broke off to ask, “How long has this been goin’ on?”

Wretchedly, Mirabella whispered, “Since yesterday, I think.”

Then he did finally look at her, with eyes that were more black than brown and in no way comforting, and exclaimed, “Good night, woman, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you know enough to know when you’re in labor?”

She flinched at the word-an appalling thing to do, but she couldn’t help it. Even though she knew she’d earned his anger, it seemed so unexpected, so incomprehensible, more frightening than anything that had happened to her so far. To her utter dismay she began to tremble, and then to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be now!” she wailed. “It’s not supposed to be for another month. I just thought…I was, you know… uncomfortable. I never dreamed… It’s not supposed to…”

Another month. Oh, Lord. He remembered now; she’d told him that. Lord help us, he thought. A month early-a preemie. Oh, hell. Oh, damn. Anything but that. He felt himself go icy cold, then numb.

But not too numb for it to occur to him he’d forgotten who he was dealing with, to know he’d lost control of himself, and as a result now he had a very upset woman on his hands. Not too numb to feel like a bully, and thoroughly ashamed of himself.

He took a deep breath and stretched his arm slowly across the space between them, gripping the back of the seat, near enough to her to touch the quilt she’d wrapped herself in. “Easy… You just take it easy, now,” he muttered. A tremor went through him as he felt the slippery warmth of her hair against his fingertips. “It’s gonna be okay…it’s gonna be okay.”

She bowed her head so that her hair pulled through his fingers like a shuttle full of silk floss through a loom. It slithered forward across her cheeks and his hand found her neck instead. In a voice he could barely hear she whispered, “Jimmy Joe, I’m scared.”

Scared? He wanted to tell her he was scared, too; as scared as he’d ever been in his life before. Lord, how scared he was. He wanted to tell her-and God, too-that he didn’t want any part of this.

No, Lord, I don’t want ever again to hold a too-tiny baby in my hands and watch it slip away before it even has a chance to live. Not again, Lord. Not again.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said for the third time, trying to make himself believe it. His voice sounded like the scratched 78-rpm records Great-granddaddy Joe Doyle used to play on his windup phonograph. “We’re only fifty miles from Amarillo.”

He could feel her turn to look at him, with a gaze both direct and solemn. “How many hours?”

Since he never had been any good at telling lies, instead of trying to think one up he gave her neck a little squeeze and then took his hand away. In his scratchy gramophone voice he said, “I put a call out on the emergency radio channel. We’ll get you some help out here, don’t you worry.”

Then he had an inspiration. Taking his mike down from its hook, he held it out to her and showed her with his thumb how to work the speaker button.

“Here,” he said, “why don’t you give ‘em another call right now? You just mash on this right here when you want to say somethin’, then let er go so you can listen. See there? Go on, give ’er a try.” If nothing else, he thought, it would give her something to do, make her feel, if not better, at least maybe not so helpless.

One of her hands crept from the folds of the quilt and took the mike from him. It came as a shock to him to feel how cold her fingers were. He heard a soft sniff, a throat-clearing cough, and then in a low voice, “What do I say?”

“You probably oughta start with ‘Mayday,’” he said dryly, trying out a grin to see if it had any effect on his spirits. It didn’t, and his words came out with an impatient edge. “Then, I don’t know. Tell ‘em it’s an emergency. Tell ’em where you are. Then…shoot, just tell ’em what the problem is.”

“I’ve never done this before.” She gave a nervous, hiccuping laugh. “I feel funny.”

He looked over at her, saw her trying to smile, and the sheen of fear in her eyes. His voice gentled. “No trick to it,” he said softly, dragging his eyes back to the road. “Just hold it up to your mouth, mash the button and talk. Nothin’ to be bashful about.”

“Okay, here goes…” He heard her take a breath, clear her throat. “Okay… Mayday, Mayday. This is an emergency. Uh…I’m in a truck-Blue Starr Transport-on I-40. Let’s see, that’s about fifty miles west of Amarillo. We’re stuck in traffic, and I’m, uh, well, I’m in labor. And, uh, we need help. So…please send someone. Please. Help…

“What now?” she whispered after a tense little silence. “Nobody’s answering.”

“Did you remember to let go of the button?”

“Oh…shoot.” She swore under her breath. Another few minutes of silence went by. “Still nothing. Shall I try again?”

“Sure, might as well.” Then he had to smile as this time she jumped right in with a self-confident singsong. He had to hand it to her-the lady did learn fast. Sounded just like a born trucker.

“Mayday, Mayday, this is an emergency. Repeat, this is an emergency. I am in a big rig owned by Blue Starr Transport, stuck in westbound traffic on I-40 about fifty miles west of Amarillo. I am in labor and in need of assistance. Please respond. Mayday.”

Together they listened to crackling static and breathing sounds. Then in a flat, expressionless voice she said, “Well. So much for that.” From the corner of his eye he could see her hand reaching toward him.

Wordlessly he took the mike from her and hung it back up, wishing he could have taken her hand instead, just because sometimes when there wasn’t anything to say, it was kinda good to have a hand to hold on to. But the mike was there in the way, and by the time he had it taken care of, the moment had gone by. So all he could do was try and find some words.

“We’ll keep ‘er on that channel,” he said gruffly. “Just keep on tryin’. Sooner or later we’re bound to raise somebody. Meanwhile, maybe you oughta go on back there and lie down for a while. Seems to me if you keep quiet, things might slow down some. Get out of those wet things, too, while you’re at it. I know I’ve got some clothes back there you can wear. Couple of sweatshirts, some long johns…”

“Jimmy Joe…” Just that.

The way she said it, the way she was breathing, got his attention real quick. He looked over at her, his heart jumping right out of his chest. “You havin’ a contraction?”

She nodded rapidly, clinging to him with eyes suddenly gone dark and scared. “I guess it must be.”

“Okay… okay.” He gripped the wheel and stared a hole in the windshield, hoping he didn’t sound as scared as he felt, hoping he didn’t drive right up the tailgate of the reefer truck in front of him. “Now…”

What now? It had been a long time since he’d attended those childbirth classes with Patti-J.J.’s mama. All he could remember about them was a lot about relaxation, and something called “cleansing breaths.” Which, judging from the sounds she was making, Mirabella already had down pat.

Finally getting up enough courage to look over at her, he saw that she had her eyes closed now and was concentrating on those breaths for all she was worth. It gave him an odd, lonely feeling to watch her, as if she’d gone away somewhere, to some place he could never follow. Nothing for him to do but keep his mouth shut and drive, until finally she let out her breath in a long, slow hiss and finished it up with, “Oh, boy.”

“Bad one?” he asked awkwardly, fully aware of the fact that no matter how she answered him, he would never really understand. Nothing like childbirth to make a man feel totally useless, he thought. Probably why in ages past at times like this the womenfolk were always sending the men out to chop wood or boil water or hunt buffalo, just to make em feel like they were good for something.

“Not so bad.” She said it with a relieved chuckle, like a kid finding out that the punishment he’d been dreading wasn’t so terrible after all. “If they don’t get any worse than that, I can handle it.”

“How often you havin’ ’em?”

“I don’t know.” She shifted restlessly. “I guess we’d better start keeping track.”

“Okay, say we start-” he pulled back the sleeve of his sweatshirt and got a good look at his watch, adding a couple of minutes for the time they’d been talking “-now. Okay, now, you tell me the minute you feel the next one comin’ on, y’hear? And right now before it does, you best get on back there and lie down.” He jerked his head in the direction of the sleeper. “Get some rest.”

Then he caught a replay of himself. He shook his head and made a sound that was full of all the self-disgust and helplessness he felt. “I beg your pardon-don’t mean to be givin’ out orders. I just do it so I’ll feel like I’m doin’ somethin’.” He gave her about half a grin, which was the best he could muster.

“That’s okay.” After a moment she gave a soft laugh and added dryly, “You probably ought to get in some practice while you can. Looks like you’re going to be my childbirth coach.”

With that she got up and eased herself between the seats. The quilt got hung up on the gearshift and he reached automatically to unhook it for her, taking more time than he needed, fussing with the dragging end like a bridesmaid with a bridal train while he tried to get some spit flowing in his mouth again. He’d never known his mouth to be so dry. Fear. That’s what it was.

But he couldn’t let Mirabella know. That was why he scraped up a little laughter and kind of a confident, know-it-all tilt to his head and drawled, “Childbirth coach… Oh, yeah, I sure do remember that. Those classes, now… I reckon that’s what they’re for, don’t you? Make the father feel like he’s actually doing something worthwhile, even if all it is is propping his wife up and yelling at her to do what she’s already doing anyway.”

“You went to childbirth classes?” He heard the surprise in her voice along with the soft grunts and scuffles she made as she settled herself back in the sleeper. “Really?”

“Sure did. Went with my wife when we were expectin’ J.J. It was a while ago, though-don’t know how much of it I remember.” Traffic having stopped for the moment, he twisted around to look at her and then had to laugh out loud at the pure disbelief on her face. “Why, what’s that for?”

“What’s what?”

“That look. What‘sa matter? You don’t think I’ve been to childbirthin’ class?”

“Well…it’s kind of hard to imagine.”

“Yeah?” His eyes were bright, teasing. As uncomfortable as she was with the way the conversation had turned, Mirabella was glad to see his smile again. “Why’s that?”

“Oh…well, uh…” she faltered, realizing that as usual she’d put her foot in her mouth, and there wasn’t going to be any way she could answer that without it sounding like a putdown. And the galling thing was, she had the feeling he knew it, and didn’t mind.

“Doesn’t fit my image, huh?”

“I guess it just seems like a Yupppie thing,” Mirabella hedged lamely. Not a truck-driver thing. How awful it was, to discover that she was a snob.

“What, you don’t think we got Yuppies in Georgia?” His eyes were attentive, his smile gentle and off-center.

“Oh, I’m sure.” Shame made her snappish. “But you’re not.”

“Now, how do you know what I am?”

The two things Mirabella hated most were, number one, being teased, and number two, being bested in a verbal battle. The first of those usually brought on an urge to stamp her foot and scream. Fortunately, determination not to succumb to the second almost always gave her a strong enough incentive to resist that urge and hold on to her temper.

“I’m from L.A.,” she said dryly. “If there’s anything I know, it’s Yuppies, and believe me, you’re not one. Anyway-” She broke it off, suddenly both furious and panicstricken, because she’d just discovered that the last thing she wanted to do was try to define Jimmy Joe-even to herself, much less to his face. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said. It’s just-I never would have thought Southern men were into that kind of stuff, that’s all.”

“Now, there you go,” Jimmy Joe said, overdoing the vexation just enough so she knew he was kidding. “Where do you get your ideas about Southern men? I bet every single thing you know about us Southerners you got from redneck jokes and country music.”

“I don’t listen to country music,” she said stiffly; she considered the very term an oxymoron. “And I think redneck jokes are…” His sudden laughter and her own latent sense of good manners stopped her.

“Hey-not all of us Southern men are rednecks.”

“I never thought you were!” But she could feel her face warming. There it was-the R-word, the one she’d been trying to shut completely out of her mind. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she’d ever thought of him that way. But she had, at first-okay, sure, cute as the dickens, but a redneck nonetheless. And now she felt ashamed of that.

“Now, what do you think a redneck is?” he persisted, his eyes bright and teasing, his drawl exaggerated. “Pert‘ near anybody that talks with a Southern accent, right?” He shook his head, making a “Shame on you” sound with his mouth. “That’s prejudice, you know that? You Northerners think anybody talks with a Southern accent has got to be ignorant, otherwise we’d a’ learned to talk ‘right.’”

“I do not,” said Mirabella stiffly. But she’d already begun to perk up, stimulated by the promise of a good argument, by which was about anything that didn’t touch her on a personal level.

“Sure you do. Take ‘ain’t.’ You Northerners think sayin’ ’ain‘t’ is bad grammar, but I’ll tell you somethin’ I bet you didn’t know. ’Ain‘t’ was considered perfectly fine grammar in Shakespeare’s time. That’s right. That’s the thing about Southern grammar-you Northeners might think it’s bad grammar, but that’s not necessarily true, see? What it is, it’s just Southern, is all.”

Mirabella could never, but never pass up a chance to be right. So she couldn’t resist reminding him, “You don’t say ain’t.”

Jimmy Joe let her see his grin before he shifted gears and turned to face the front again. “Yeah, but that’s because my mama was a schoolteacher. She’d skin me alive if I ever did.”

“Aha!”

“Aha, nothin’. She never did let me take the Lord’s name in vain, either, and lots of educated folks do that-includin’ Northerners.”

“Including me,” she had to admit.

Jimmy Joe was plainly on a roll. “You want to know what’s ignorant?” he said, smacking the steering wheel with an open palm. “I’ll tell you what, you get these people tryin’ to talk like Southerners, sayin’ ‘y’all’ when they’re only talkin’ to one person-now that’s ignorant.”

Mirabella suddenly realized that she was smiling. And that she wasn’t afraid anymore. And that she no longer knew whether this discussion had a point to be made, or cared whether she won or lost it. It was just…fun. Fun to be with him. Fun to listen to him. Arguing with him was less a matter of winning than stoking a fire, just so she could bask in the stimulating warmth of his voice. It was a totally new experience for her, and one that for the moment, at least, seemed to have taken her mind completely off the other new experience she was caught up in.

“Hey-I’ll tell you what a redneck is, if you want me to.” Jimmy Joe’s accent was suddenly thick as molasses. He.looked back at her and she saw that although his face was perfectly straight, his eyes were liquid with laughter. She held her breath, keeping back her own.

“Now, you know, what rednecks enjoy doin’ more’n anything in this world is to lay around in the woods amongst a bunch a’ hounddawgs, old washin’ machines and cars that don’t run, and drink Red Dog beer and shoot at things… occasionally one another.”

Mirabella let out a snort of laughter. Jimmy Joe held up a finger, paused as if to give it some thought, then continued in a nasal singsong. “Then, one step up from there you got yer good ol’ boys. Now a good ol’ boy reveres his dogs. In his esteem, his dog ranks above his wife and kids, but probably somewheres below a good huntin’ rifle and his pickup truck, which he likes to decorate with replicas of the Confederate battle flag. Don’t laugh-” Mirabella, who was trying not to wet herself more than she already was, made a strangled sound. “Miss Marybell, I swear to you-” he solemnly made a crisscross on his chest and held up his right hand in a “Scout’s honor” sign “-I am not a redneck. Never in my life have I used an old tire for a planter or called anybody ’bubba’-oh, well, except for Bubba Johnson back in junior high school, but you can’t hardly count that, bein’s how Bubba was his given name.”

I know what he’s doing, she thought. Somehow, in spite of her desperate snorts and giggles, he must know about the quivery, achy, tear-filled reservoir inside her that was ready to overflow without warning. And obviously he was no more eager than she was to have that happen-although whether it was a matter of gallantry on his part, or whether like most men he was simply chickenhearted when it came to a woman’s tears, she couldn’t decide.

Either way, she was grateful to him. Grateful for the arguing and the laughter, grateful for the distraction, for the opportunity to recover some of the dignity she’d left back in that snowdrift. Grateful for the chance to forget, for a little while at least, what lay ahead of her, and how grave her situation was. It wasn’t easy to do under the circumstances, but since he seemed to be trying so hard to help her, she did her best.

“Speaking of given names,” she said after the laughter had run its course, making a poor job of smothering a yawn as she curled on her side on the sleeper’s wide bed and snuggled the quilt around her-discovering that through the curtain of her lashes the back of his head and neck looked surprisingly mature, the spread of his shoulders broad and powerful. “Jimmy Joe-is that really yours? Or is it a nickname, like…short for James Joseph?”

His chuckle seemed to stroke her auditory nerves, soothing as a caress. “Just Jimmy Joe-that’s it.”

“Huh. Nobody ever calls you Jim?”

“Jim was my daddy’s name. His daddy was James, and I think the Joseph came from another granddaddy-that’d be Joe Doyle. To avoid confusion, I got Jimmy Joe. Does beat the heck out of Junior. Hey,” he said with another of those caressing chuckles, “it was good enough for the president of the United States.”

She murmured, “Jimmy just seems-” Right. That came to her balanced on the edge of sleep, and she felt an odd little flare of surprise. And then a flutter near her heart.

“Hey, you know, you can call me anything you want to.” For some reason his voice had grown husky. “Shoot, call me Jim if you want to.”

She smiled and murmured, “Too late-I’ve gotten used to Jimmy Joe, now.” She would have a hard time calling him anything else. Jimmy Joe. What a sweet, gentle sound…

“How ’bout Mirabella? How’d you ever get a name like that? Especially with a last name like-”

“Waskowitz? Yeah, I know-awful, isn’t it? My dad’s family was Polish-I think they shortened the name somewhere along the line. My mom-she was a teacher, too, by the way-she’s just kind of this unique person-part English, part Irish, but I think she picked our names based on whatever her kick happened to be at the time. My sisters are Sommer and Eve. Don’t ask me how I got Mirabella.” She yawned unbashedly. “I looked it up one time. It means-”

The word evaporated in a puff of air that blew every last vestige of sleep fog from her brain and left her senses blasted and cringing. The nagging ache in her back, which up to now she’d been able to ignore, sort of like a radio turned down low, had suddenly intensified as if someone had given the volume knob marked Pain a wrenching twist to the right.

“Mirabella…that’s a mouthful. Everybody always call you that? Your family… friends?”

When he didn’t get an answer, the first thing Jimmy Joe thought was maybe she’d finally dozed off. He wasn’t sure what made him look back, but when he did he could see that even though she had her eyes shut, she definitely wasn’t sleeping.

“Focus,” he barked, which was the first thing that popped into his head as his heart gave another one of those bad leaps, banging against the wall of his chest. “Breathe.”

Damnation, he thought. Damn. He could hear her begin to whimper, making a sound like a hurt puppy that had to be about the worst thing he’d ever heard in his life.

He just did remember to check his watch. “Nine minutes,” he yelled. Was that a good thing? He wasn’t sure, but he thought it must be good, because didn’t the pains have to be a whole lot closer together before things really got serious? Maybe they had more time than he’d thought. Maybe the road would improve. What he ought to do was get back on the radio again and find out what was going on up ahead. Maybe they would make it to Amarillo, after all.

But then, he thought, what if they didn’t? It was almost dark now. At the rate they were going, it was still a good many hours to Amarillo. And then, what if somebody jackknifed and blocked the road? Meanwhile, Mirabella was back there all by herself, having those pains, which were only going to get worse. She needed somebody to be with her; somebody to make her do those breathing things she was supposed to do. Dammit, he couldn’t very well help her and drive at the same time!

What should he do? If he was going to help her, he was going to have to pull off somewhere. But if he did that… Everything inside him went cold and quiet. Because he knew that if he did get off, he wasn’t going to get back on again. He would be committed. Unless by some miracle help did arrive in time, whatever happened, it was going to be just him and Mirabella. Him, Mirabella, and a baby that was bound and determined to show up four weeks ahead of schedule.

Oh, Lord, help me, he thought. What should I do?

It was right then that his headlights picked up the sign for a rest area that was coming up, next exit, just one mile ahead. A rest stop-that was a whole lot better than one of the crossroads, with their overpasses and uphill off-ramps, where he would stand a good chance of jackknifing his rig. And there would be a rest room, water, maybe even a phone. He let out a breath that was almost relief, figuring if that wasn’t a sign of some kind, he didn’t know what was. Almost as if the decision had been taken out of his hands.

“Bella…” It came from the sleeper on a soft cushion of air, much like a sigh.

Jimmy Joe, who was busy changing radio channels, glanced back and said, “I beg your pardon?”

She was sitting up straight, rocking back and forth slightly. Her face was pale, her eyes dark and calm. She gathered her hair away from her face with one hand and took a quick breath, then smiled. “Bella. That’s what my family calls me. And most of my friends. You want to hear a joke? It means-”

Channel 19 came crackling in, drowning out the rest. He unhooked the mike and held it while he waited for a lull in the chatter, but when one came he didn’t hit the Talk button right away. Instead he looked back at Mirabella and got her eyes for just a moment, and he said softly, “Means ‘beautiful’ -I know that much Italian. And I never heard a more fittin’ name.”

He grinned at the stunned silence he got in reply as he thumbed on the mike and intoned, “Breaker, one-nine… This is Big Blue Starr. I’m gon’ try an’ get off here at this rest stop east of Adrian. Uh… I got a lady havin’ a baby here, so if any a’ you drivers happen to run across any help out there, I’d ‘preciate it if you’d send it my way. I’m gon’ be listenin’ to channel 9 for a while… Anybody knows anything about delivering babies, I’d sure like to hear from you over there… Ten-four.’

He hung up the mike and got the channel changed just as the rest-stop exit sign was picking up the glow of his headlights. He flashed his running lights and switched on his turn signals and sent up a prayer.

“Hang on,” he muttered to Mirabella as he turned the Kenworth’s nose onto the snow-and ice-choked ramp.