One Christmas Knight

Chapter 9

“How you doin’ back there?” “I’m droppin’ back a little, but I’ll make it.”

I-40-New Mexico

“Why do you always say that?” she asked in a strained and testy voice. “You and Charly-always the same thing: Breathe. I am breathing, dammit. Otherwise I’d be dead. Oh-ow. That hurts.”

“It hurts,” Jimmy Joe scolded, “because you’re not breathin’ right. And you’re all tensed up. Look at you.” Although he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering the knot his own insides were in. “You gotta relax, now.”

He peeled one of her hands off the mattress and sat down beside her. Holding it with both of his, he began to delicately manipulate the small bones in her palm, gently bending each finger, lightly stroking along the tendons in the back of her hand as if he were fine-tuning a musical instrument or an intricate piece of machinery.

And all the while his jaw was clenched tight and his mind was screaming, Charlie? Who’s Charlie?

“Charlie-that your husband?” he casually asked as he watched his fingers work their way from the base of her palm to the incredibly fragile bones of her wrist. He told himself it was to get her mind chewing on something else besides the pain she was in.

But it was hard to overlook the way he felt when she replied, with a funny little snort of laughter, “She’s my coach.” He felt light-headed and sort of goofy, like he wanted to smile but knew he shouldn’t.

“Well, she’s right. You should listen to your coach.” He crooned the words with a perfectly straight face. But inside, his heart was singing like a set of jakes on a downhill grade. She. Not a husband. Not even a boyfriend. She. “Here, why don’t you lie over there, now. Let me rub your back…get that breathin’ goin’ right.”

She shook her head rapidly, emphatically. Her eyes were closed and he could see that she was in that other place now, the place he couldn’t go, concentrating hard on the breath she was taking. The hand he was holding had gone limp and boneless and the other appeared to have relaxed its grip on the edge of the mattress, so he kept his mouth shut and rode it out with her. Which was all he could do.

“It’s going,” she whispered on a long exhalation, slowly rocking herself back and forth. And finally, “There.” And she smiled and opened her eyes. “Gone.” She looked triumphant.

He noticed then the nightgown she was wearing, the outlines of her body clearly visible beneath the cartoon character on the thin T-shirt material-the fullness of her breasts, the pert little button of her turned-out navel. Her bare arms and her feet swathed in his thick white socks looked oddly defenseless, almost childlike.

“You warm enough?” he asked her, lightly brushing her arm with the backs of his fingers, frowning when her skin suddenly roughened with goose bumps. “Let me get you somethin’ to put on…” His voice thickened in his throat.

He loosened his hand from hers in a hurry, heart thumping, and got up to rummage through his closet. He found a plaid flannel shirt, one of his favorites, nice and soft with some blue and green in it that he thought would look nice with her hair.

“Here you go,” he muttered, the words crowding his chest, getting mixed up with air he seemed to have forgotten to exhale. “Put your arm in here.”

It smells like him, she thought as she pulled the shirt around her. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she took in his scent, letting her mind drift, free to follow paths and currents of its own choosing. She saw-no, felt-a beautiful shimmering spring, its water warm and clear and life-giving; felt it surrounding her, bathing her in comfort and security. And then somehow the water wasn’t there anymore and instead it was Jimmy Joe, and for a moment it was he who held her, safe and comforted, in his arms.

“That’s good,” she heard him say softly. “You’re relaxin’ better already.”

She felt his fingers on her forehead, on the spot between her brows where the tension knot would be. And for some reason his touch made her face ache and her sinuses burn with an overpowering urge to cry. She let the breath out abruptly and pushed herself erect, compelled by a confusing combination of fear and birthing instincts to stand, to move, to flee.

“Let me out-I want to go to the bathroom,” she said, querulous and demanding, knowing she was being unreasonable. And not caring.

A chuckle came from close behind her, near enough to stir the hair behind her ear. “You’d freeze to death out there, dressed like that. Come on, now…settle back down here.”

His hands brushed her upper arms. She pulled away from him like a contrary child, insisting, “But I have to go.”

“No, you don’t. You just think you do. You just went not ten minutes ago, you know that?” His voice was gentle, patient. “Wait a little bit. Then if you want, I’ll wrap you up in a quilt and take you.”

“You’re not going to carry me!” Mirabella rounded on him, raw and furious. “I’ll walk, or I won’t go at all.”

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. And to her added fury, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a dimple.

Suddenly she felt smothered, as if she was being buried beneath an avalanche of emotions. Confusing, conflicting, overwhelming emotions. “How am I supposed to do this?” she demanded, gesturing wildly. “I can’t do this!”

“What is it you can’t do?” Jimmy Joe’s eyes were soft, his voice tender. She wanted to hit him.

“This! I can’t have a baby here. There isn’t any room. I can’t even walk around. How am I supposed to have a baby if I can’t walk around?”

She hardly heard her own words, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t what she wanted to say anyway. She didn’t know the words for what she was feeling-frightened beyond imagination, utterly overwhelmed by what was happening to her; and not just to her body, but to her heart and soul. And the most incredible thing was that Jimmy Joe seemed to understand it all.

“Shh,” he said. And again, “Shh…hush, now.”

And she felt his arms come around her, wrapping her in his own special scent, his warmth and comfort, just as in her vision. She felt his heartbeat thumping against her cheek and his hand stroking her hair, and the trembling and fury inside her cleared away like storm clouds before a fresh spring wind. She felt her breathing calm and time itself to his…she felt warm again, and safe.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“I know…I know. It’s okay.”

“I’m not really… This isn’t your fault. I know it isn’t. I’m just being…” She paused and gave a small, liquid laugh. “I suppose this is normal, isn’t it?”

His chuckle rumbled softly against her ear. “I imagine it is.”

“I guess you’ve been through all this.”

“How’s that?”

“With your wife.”

“Oh.” He coughed, and she felt him jerk slightly; his hands moved restlessly over her back. “Yeah… well. To tell you the truth…”

It was coming again. She could feel it. Feel it lurking like something dark and terrifying just beyond the reaches of her consciousness. It was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Jimmy Joe, it’s starting again.”

How calm her voice was. But he knew. He could tell by the way her muscles went rigid beneath his hands and her breathing suddenly seemed to drag as if even her lungs had stiffened.

“Don’t tense up on me now… Relax.” His voice growled in his throat. Calm… Stay calm, he thought. How you gonna keep her calm if you’re not?

He clicked his stopwatch, then cleared his throat and asked, “You want to lie down?”

She shook her head, too busy coping with the pain now to answer. He took a breath. Closed his eyes. “Okay.” He heard himself sigh. “Hold on to me now. Let it come…let it come.” And he felt her weight come against him and her breathing time itself to his, while he held her and rode it with her, all the way up the long, dark climb…and down the other side.

All the time he was thinking, Oh God, how am I gonna tell her? Here she was depending on him, counting on his knowledge and experience. How was he going to tell her he was as much a novice at this as she was? God knows, he didn’t want to tell her; she was scared enough as it was. But he knew he had to, because sooner or later he was going to let her down. Better now, he figured, than later, when she was apt to be going to pieces anyway.

“It’s going,” she said on an exhalation, telling him what he already knew.

Then for a while neither of them spoke. He felt her skin quiver beneath his hands and her breath flow warm and easy against his throat, and he thought how much like the aftermath of sex it was; the sweet, fragile time when bodies grow quiet and whispers of secret fears, drowned out by the drums of passion, are heard from again.

Presently she stirred and said, “They’re coming faster, aren’t they?”

He nodded without looking at his watch. Faster, longer, harder. Just like it was supposed to. He wondered how much time they had-half of him wanting things to hold off as long as possible, preferably until help arrived; half wanting it to be over so she wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. He just wished they had some way of knowing. In a hospital, he knew, they would have ways of telling how far along she was. But he didn’t, and all he could do was stay with her and try to make her as comfortable as he knew how, and when the time came, pray to the Good Lord to help them both.

“You know what?” she said, straightening and pulling away from him, restless again. She pushed into the space between the seats, stared for a moment through the windshield, then turned and came back again. He could see the tension between her brows, like the pleats in a tiny accordion. “Is there anything to eat in here? I’m hungry. And thirsty. Really thirsty.”

“Shoot,” he said under his breath, thinking hard. The truth was, he’d never been one to carry much with him in the way of food and drink. Truck stops being as plentiful and convenient as they were these days, if he had his druthers, he preferred to do his eating in something that didn’t vibrate. And as far as fluids were concerned, well…he’d learned the hard way that whatever he took in, sooner or later he was going to have to find a place to get rid of it, so unless the weather was hot and dry and he had to be careful about dehydration, he was apt to go real easy in that department.

Then he remembered the orange juice he’d brought her-was it just this morning? Yes, it was still there in the little alcove at the head of his bed where she’d set it down. She hadn’t drunk much of it. He reached for it and at the same time grabbed the plastic bag he kept his pocket change in.

He gave the orange-juice bottle a shake and held it out to her, smiling as her face lit up and she came for it like a hungry lamb. “There you go,” he murmured, guiding her until she was sitting on the bed again, “you stay here and sip on that. I’m gonna go see if I can find us some vending machines.”

Eyes closed, already drinking, she made wordless sounds of acquiescence and gratitude while he found the lantern, checked the beam, then braced himself, opened the door and stepped once more into that strange, unearthly night.

He was struck at once by the stillness. The quiet growl of the big diesel engine behind him, the constant rumbling of the trucks passing in endless procession just beyond seemed to have no connection with the land or the scene spread out before him. The wind had died down, leaving a quiet cold that burned like fire in his lungs. In the east there were clouds, lit to shades of indigo and silver and milky white by the rising moon, while under the light of the shrouded moon and brilliant stars the snow lay like a pale blue blanket across an empty land.

“Silent night! Holy night!/All is calm, all is bright…”

To take his mind off how cold the night was and how alone he felt in it, he sang the words of the carol in his mind as he made his way to the cinder-block shelter that housed the vending machines, keeping time with the crunch of his footsteps in the frozen snow.

“O little town of Bethlehem,/How still we see thee lie…”

He fed coins into the machines until he couldn’t feel his fingers, stuffing the pockets of his vest with packets of cheese and peanut-butter crackers, Oreo cookies and cans of 7-Up.

“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by…”

The coins were gone. Breathless with cold, hugging his goodies-filled vest and feeling like Santa Claus, he retraced his steps to where his truck sat patiently grumbling, giving off welcoming plumes of vapor like smoke from a farmhouse chimney. Halfway there he slipped on an icy patch and almost fell on his butt, interrupting his silent singing to utter aloud a cussword so inappropriate in that context it made him whoop with laughter.

He was still chuckling, singing, “Here comes Santy Claus,/ Here comes Santy Claus,” under his breath as he climbed into the cab, but the song and the laughter both fizzled out when he saw Mirabella sitting in the front seat, looking wide-eyed and clutching the CB mike in both hands as if it were a wild bird she’d just captured.

“Someone was there,” she said in a hushed and excited voice. “I was going to turn on the radio. I thought I’d try to find some music. Then I heard crackling, and I think…a voice. But it was so faint. So far away. I tried to answer, but I don’t think they heard me. Oh…” She broke off to wipe a furious hand across her eyes and nose, and he took the mike from her gently, ever mindful of emotions so perilously near the surface. Well aware that some of them were his.

He slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him, then eased on over into the space between the seats, pulling cellophane packages out of his vest pockets with one hand while he thumbed the mike on with the other. Mirabella watched him hungrily until he grinned and handed her a packet of cheese crackers.

“Mayday, channel 9, Mayday… Come on.” He listened to silence broken only by rustling paper and munching sounds, then fiddled with the tuner and tried again. “Mayday, Mayday, anybody out there listenin’?” He heard a faint crackling and caught and held his breath while he listened with every nerve cell in his body. But whoever it was trying to reach him, the signal was too weak and too far away.

“Jimmy Joe…”

He felt something lightly touch his face and realized only then that he’d been listening with his eyes shut. When he opened them he felt as if his heart was turning clear over inside his chest, because he could see then that it was her hand that lay along his beard-stubbled jaw, her fingers stroking back the hair just above his ear. He couldn’t remember exactly but he thought it was the first time she’d touched him like that, of her own accord. And when he looked at her he knew everything he was feeling must be right there in his face for her to see.

“Jimmy Joe, it’s all right,” she said, and stopped a tiny, silent burp with her hand. She shook her head and went earnestly on, smelling rather touchingly of Ritz crackers. “Even if nobody comes, I know everything’s going to be okay. You’re here…”

He shook his head and had to look away from her, the back of his hand, clutching the CB mike, pressed hard against his lips.

“I mean it,” she whispered earnestly, “I’d rather have you for my coach than anybody. Promise you won’t leave me.”

“Lord help us, I ain’t goin’ anywhere!” he exclaimed, his voice raspy and full of bumpy laughter.

“Um, shame on you, you said ‘ain’t.’ What would your mama say?” She was laughing, now, too, but stopped when she picked up her own thread again. “I mean…even if somebody comes. Please don’t leave me. Promise you’ll stay with me until my baby is born. Please, Jimmy Joe.”

He grabbed at her hand, but it was going to be a little while before he could bring the words up out of the jumble inside him. He waited, head bowed, holding her hand while he worked at it, and when he was pretty sure he had his own voice back he cleared his throat and said, “Marybell, there’s something you’ve gotta know.” He lifted his head and looked straight at her then, facing up to the truth like a man, like his daddy had always taught him. And because he knew he was going to let her down, it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Especially with those big trusting eyes of hers gazing into his.

He took a breath. “I didn’t lie to you. I did go to those childbirthing classes with Patti-my wife. I just… See, I never got to go through the actual birth with her. It was just the way it happened. Both times I was out on the road. The first time-”

“Contraction,” she gasped, and then went right on breathing like that, way too hard and too fast.

He yelled, “Slow down!” just to get her attention, but she stared at him and didn’t ease up on the breathing even a little bit, and he knew she was caught up in it and didn’t know how to stop. He took her face in his hands and felt her skin growing clammy to the touch.

“Breathe with me, dammit,” he said between clenched teeth, hoping he wasn’t going to start hyperventilating himself.

She shook her head frantically. He could feel that her jaw had gone rigid, see her eyes darken with panic. Lord, he thought, forgive me. He took a deep breath. And then he kissed her.

As kisses went, he supposed it wasn’t much. On a thrill scale, he would have had to rank it somewhere below an electric toothbrush and a fresh stick of cinnamon chewing gum. But it did what it was supposed to do, which was to stop her breathing long enough for her to get control of it again. To shock her enough to break the grip of her panic, like a slap in the face or a bucket of cold water. That was the way he meant it, and he hoped she would know that and forgive him for it.

The trouble was, his body didn’t know it. All his mouth knew was the shape and texture of hers, and the messages that got sent along his nerves to his brain were all about how sweet and good it tasted, how warm and soft it felt. And so of course his brain-not the thinking part of it-had to go and put the word out to other parts of his body: happy, joyful, excited messages, clanging Christmas bells and choruses singing “Hallelujah.”

It might not have been so hard if she’d stiffened up and pulled away from him like he’d expected she would. But instead, after the first frozen moment, the first shocked gasp, she leaned into his mouth-hard, and then harder, as if she couldn’t help herself, as if in some strange way there was a connection between the kiss and the cataclysm that was taking place in her body. It almost made a kind of sense to him, although he couldn’t have explained why or how. He only knew it affected him deeply-more profoundly than any kiss ever in his life before.

It ended when the contraction did, but for both of them the shock of it seemed to linger, so that their first words were whispered across an airless space of only inches.

“What did you do that for?”

“You were hyperventilating.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No-that’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“I know.”

He felt her grip on his forearms ease; until then he hadn’t noticed how her fingers were digging into his muscles. She sat back, widening the space between them. He watched her draw in a breath, long and deep, then slowly let it out, at the same time lifting both hands to sweep and hold the hair back from her face. He noticed that she still looked horribly pale-almost greenish. The residual effects of the carbon-dioxide imbalance, he was sure.

He smiled at her and lightly touched her cheek. “You gotta watch that, you know? Next time, you keep your eyes on me, you hear? Breathe with me. That’s assumin’ I’m not hyperventilating.”

She didn’t smile back; her eyes had a glazed, distant look. But as he watched, he saw them darken and focus on his face, and she nodded gravely. “I will. I’ll try. You have to help me, Jimmy Joe.” He nodded, and she took his hand and held it in both of hers. “We didn’t have much time to practice this, did we? We barely had time to get to know each other.”

“We still got time,” he said, his voice husky. But she shook her head.

“I didn’t tell you-I had two contractions while you were out there. Two. Jimmy Joe. Hard ones. It seems like there’s hardly any time between them. I just feel like one big raw nerve.” She said the last words with a kind of breathy desperation, then paused as for a moment or two she struggled to regain control. She cleared her throat and continued in a low voice, clinging to his hand. “So, I guess it’s getting serious. Isn’t it?”

There had been a couple of other times in his life when he’d wished and prayed for something to be different from the way it was, and he’d never wished or prayed any harder than he was doing right now. But he knew from past experience that in the end all a person could do was accept what was. So he nodded and said, “Yeah, it is.”

And now she did smile, a little crookedly, with her head tilted to one side. “So, it’s true? You’ve never done this before, either?”

He ducked his head and made a rueful clicking sound with his tongue. “It’s the truth. Missed the big event completely.” Lifting his eyes back to hers, he forced himself to smile. “So I guess I’m as much a novice as you are.”

“I kinda doubt that,” she said dryly. Then after a moment, “Jimmy Joe? A while ago you said-” she frowned, and his heart began to beat faster “-both times. What did you mean? You told me about your son-J.J., right? So, what…”

Impulsively he lifted his hand, the one she was holding, and added his free hand, enfolding both of hers in the process. Closing his eyes, he pressed them, his and her hands together, against his lips. His throat had locked up tight, but she waited in patient silence, not rushing him but not letting him off the hook, either. And presently he swallowed past the pain and began to push words against their tightly clasped fingers. Eventually they came more easily, and to make room for them he let their hands fall to the space between his knees-though he didn’t let go even then, and neither did she.

“J.J. was my second baby,” he said. “My first was a little girl. Patti-my wife-was pretty heavy into drugs and alcohol then. She’d promised me she’d quit, you know, but she lied about it, and I was gone so much, what with tryin’ to get my business goin’-my daddy had just passed away not long before, and I was out there on my own for the first time… Ah, hell.” He stopped, shaking his head. He’d made the same excuses for himself so many times. “The fact is,” he said, exhaling in a rush of guilt, “I didn’t keep as close a watch on her as I should have. She had the baby early…way too early.” He heard Mirabella’s soft sound of distress-he’d been waiting for it-and pushed past it before she could say anything.

“My little girl was born so tiny and sick, I reckon she never had a chance. I was out on the road. When I got there, they had her on life support-just this tiny little scrap of life, all hooked up to tubes and wires. Patti, she didn’t want to have anything to do with her, wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t even come to see her. I guess I couldn’t blame her, really. They told me my little girl couldn’t live without those machines, wasn’t ever going to have a chance for a normal life. And they asked me if I wanted to hold her. So they unhooked her and wrapped her in a little pink blanket and put her in my hands. It seemed like she hardly weighed anything at all. They had this rocking chair…and I sat there and rocked her and sang to her until she left me…”

His words became whispers, then nothing. It hurt too much. His chest, his throat, his whole body, like an old wound torn open again, raw and fresh as if it had happened yesterday. But how could he tell her about that when she was in so much pain herself? He had no right!

His face was wet. He knew some of the moisture and warmth he felt was his own tears, but there was something else there, too. Something miraculous. Somehow there was the soft flow of breath, her breath, issuing from her lips as they gently brushed his cheeks, his eyelids, his brows. And her fingers, stroking through his hair.

“I’m sorry…” It was a whisper of sound-no more-breathed against his temple. “Another contraction… Please hold me.”

Nothing had ever seemed more natural to him than to do as she asked. He pushed his fingers through her hair and cradled her head in his palm and drew it gently down, tucking it into the hollow beneath his chin. And it felt to him as if he’d been keeping that place for her for all of his life; a special nest, just for her head. Her arms came around his neck, not frantically clutching, but holding fast with complete and unquestioning trust. His hands stroked down her sides and around to her back to find the place where the pain was sharpest and the tension lurked, and as he began a kneading, circling pressure, he felt the breath gush through her in a sigh of sheer relief.

They rode it out that way, facing each other across the space between the seats, arms wrapped around each other, legs comfortably sandwiched, breathing almost as one being… Entwined like lovers.

How natural it seemed. How sweet and easy.