One Christmas Knight

Chapter 11

“Okay, big truck, ya missed me… Come on back” “Thank ya kindly… Think I’ll stay out here awhile.”

1-40-Texas

“I can’t believe it,” Mirabella whispered as she gazed down at her daughter’s tiny head, dwarfed by the breast she was so eagerly nuzzling-so tiny and yet, so utterly perfect. “A girl…”

She thought of the waiting nursery she’d decorated in primary colors and Disney characters. Thank God she didn’t believe in genderizing, and had always hated pastels. But still…

She shook her head and laughed softly. “Here, all this time I’d been planning on a boy-”

“Yeah, well, my daddy had a saying,” Jimmy Joe murmured, lightly stroking the baby’s head with a wondering finger. “You want to make God laugh?” He glanced up at her and for the first time in a long time she saw his dimple. “Just. make a plan.”

“Huh,” said Mirabella absently, and smiled. She wondered briefly that it didn’t seem at all strange to her, that juxtaposition of her baby’s head, her naked breast, and Jimmy Joe’s hand, or even that it had been he who’d shown her how to get the baby to nurse. But then it was a night for wonders.

She didn’t remember very much about the immediate aftermath of her baby’s birth. In a fog of exhaustion, exhilaration and awe, she’d been only dimly aware of Jimmy Joe…tying and cutting the cord, wrapping the baby in one of his own shirts, following instructions shouted over the radio. She thought there’d been some bad moments when he’d worried about bleeding, and it seemed to her that was when the voice on the radio had told him to try to start the baby nursing. And he’d shown her how, by tickling one tiny cheek so that the baby had turned her mouth instinctively, like a baby bird, toward the waiting nipple.

Then Mirabella had felt the most amazing, excruciating tingling sensations, tingles that radiated from her nipples outward and through her entire body. There had been more contractions, but not too terrible or lasting too long. The placenta had been delivered, the bleeding stopped, and soon after that the voice on the radio had gone away. She’d been vaguely aware of someone wrapping her in clean towels and warm blankets, of her sweat-damp nightshirt being pulled gently over her head, and her arms being guided into the sleeves of a warm flannel shirt. How strange and wonderful it had felt to be fussed over and coddled.

She remembered saying, “Look at us-we match,” gazing at the incredibly beautiful, absolutely perfect little face nestled in a bunting of farmer’s plaid and laughing tearfully, and that Jimmy Joe had laughed too, the same way, and had kissed her on the tip of her nose.

But she’d begun to shiver uncontrollably then, in spite of the warm shirt and all the quilts and blankets he’d been able to pile on her. So he’d stretched out on the bed and wrapped his arms around her and held her until the shivering quieted.

“Rest,” he’d crooned to her, as if she were a baby. “Rest now.”

Exhausted as she was, she’d been too full of fear and wonder to rest, afraid to take her eyes from her tiny daughter even for a moment. “I can’t believe it,” she’d said, and was still saying. “I can’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy Joe in a groggy drawl, “I don’t think Eric is gonna suit ’er. Guess you’re gonna have to call her Erica.”

Mirabella glanced at him, but he was still gazing down at his finger, watching it brush back and forth across the baby’s downy head. She could see his wavy, dark-blond hair and matching eyebrows, his thoughtfully furrowed brow and dark cresents of eyelashes, the strong, straight bridge of his nose. Lips that were curved in an utterly besotted smile. And suddenly her chest seemed to swell, and for the first time in her life she understood what the phrase, “a full heart” meant. Her heart was so full she felt as if it would burst. So full it had to overflow-with the tears she’d been saving all her life and now seemed to have in endless supply.

“No.” She paused and drew a quivering breath. “Her name is Amy.” There was a moment of utter stillness, and then through a rainbow shimmer she watched his lips tighten and his lashes quickly drop in a vain attempt to hide the shine of moisture that had caught him unawares. Shaking with emotion, she leaned across the tiny bundle in her arms to kiss his temple, and then with her lips against his hair, to finish in a choked whisper, “Amy…Jo.”

It was, finally, too much for Jimmy Joe. Unlike most Southern-raised boys, he’d never been indoctrinated with the taboos against men’s tears; his uppity mama’s opinions had been every bit as radical on the subject of rights and privileges for the male of the species as they were for her own sex. But he’d grown up in the real word, after all, and while he wasn’t ashamed to shed a tear in private if the occasion warranted, breaking down and crying like a baby wasn’t something he enjoyed, or felt comfortable doing in front of other people. The events of the night had already stretched the limits of his self-control just about to the breaking point; dazed and raw, he’d been sagging on the ropes trying to catch his second wind. And now this. He felt as if he’d suddenly been stripped naked. Enough! he wanted to cry. Enough!

For a few moments he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, just sat rigid and vibrating with his arms locked in a protective circle around Mirabella and her baby, with Mirabella’s cheek pressed tight against his forehead. But no male animal tolerates such vulnerability for long. Self-preservation messages sang along his nerves and shouted in his brain: Protect yourself! Take cover! Flee!

Heart hammering, muscles surging, he “fled” to the limits of available space, which in his case was only as far as the front of the cab-to his own realm, his domain, where he’d always been in supreme control-to his driver’s seat. But it was enough. In that familiar space he felt his heartbeat slow and his panicked breathing ease, and a sense of humility and calm settled warm and soft around his shoulders. He looked over at Mirabella, propped upon the pillows, eyes shining in her pale face like silver stars as she gazed back at him, then down at the baby cradled against her breast. He thought he’d never seen such a beautiful sight in all his life. The Madonna herself couldn’t have looked so lovely.

He huffed out air, smiled sheepishly and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Wow,” he said. “Amy, huh?” And then again, “Wow.”

“Would you like to hold her?” she asked softly.

His heart stumbled; his chest quaked. He nodded.

She leaned forward, holding the baby toward him in her outstretched arms, swaddled in his own favorite, his very softest blue plaid flannel shirt. He took her like the precious gift she was, with suspended breath, with gratitude and awe, and held her up so he could see her face-to-face…eye-to-eye. “Hello, Amy Jo,” he whispered. Welcome.

She gazed back at him with her unfocused newborn’s stare, one tiny fist curling and uncurling against one perfect, petallike cheek. And suddenly it seemed to Jimmy Joe that he heard tiny, silvery tinklings and loud, rumbling crashes, the sounds of things falling and breaking all around him. Soft and miraculous as the sound of raindrops falling on flower petals-the sound of a heart falling in love. Mighty and powerful as an avalanche-the sound of the earth shifting beneath his feet, of his life changing forever.

My God, he thought. My God.

He thought how different this was from the way he’d felt when he’d first set eyes on his son, J.J. He’d been so proud, of course. Sorry he hadn’t been there to see him born. And relieved the baby was healthy and strong, glad his own long vigil was finally over, hopeful Patti would stay off the dope this time, and sad because deep in his heart he’d known she wouldn’t. It was only later that he’d come to love that little boy more than his own life.

But this-he’d never felt anything like this before. He felt awed and humbled, yes, but also strong and powerful, invincible and mighty. For this little girl he would slay dragons, move mountains, swim oceans. He would guard and protect her, lay down his life for her, and love her without condition until the day he died.

Behind him, the CB radio gave a little belch of static. He’d forgotten-he’d left the channel open in case the doctor in Amarillo or the state troopers needed to get ahold of him. Now, though, it reminded him of something.

“Somethin’ I need to do,” he muttered. And it pleased him, as he tucked the bundled baby neatly into the crook of one arm, that it felt so natural and easy, and how quickly it all came back to him.

He reached to unhook the mike he’d left dangling across the passenger seat and looked over at Mirabella. She smiled sleepily back at him and nodded. He glanced down once more at the baby nestled against his heart and then, using the hand with the mike in it, he tuned in channel 19.

Only the rush of the open channel filled the cab; in the lonely hours of Christmas morning, it seemed, even the tired truckers had run out of something to say.

Elation filled him. He was grinning from ear to ear as he mashed the button and calmly intoned, “Breaker, one-nine… Merry Christmas, all you drivers out there on 1-40… This is the Big Blue maternity ward. Thought you’d like to know…we got us a little Christmas present here. Mama and new baby daughter are both doin’ just fine. Folks…say hello to Amy Jo…”

Well, the minute he said that, he knew it was a mistake. The radio just about exploded with whoopin’ and hollerin’ and everybody trying to talk at once. He got the volume turned down as quick as he could, but it didn’t help much. From the sound of things, every driver within hearing distance of his broadcast was cutting loose with his airhorn. At the unaccustomed noise, Amy Jo’s eyes, instead of staring with searching intensity at his face, squinched up tight, and her fists started waving and she began to make unhappy squeaking noises.

“Uh…sure do ‘preciate all your good wishes,” he said as soon as he could reclaim the channel again. “Let me tell you, it’s been a long night, and I think mama and baby could both do with a little peace and quiet, so, uh, we’d ’preciate it if you’d use your lights instead of your horns to say hello while you’re passin’ us by… Thank ya kindly, an’…y’all have a Merry Christmas, now. Ten-four.”

After that things got quiet, except for an exuberant toot busting loose now and then. Jimmy Joe put away the mike and gave his full attention to the baby, who by this time was getting warmed up pretty good. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Mirabella, riled and worried as a mama bear hearing her cub squall, but instead of handing the baby over to her, he cuddled her closer and gently joggled her while he crooned, “Shh…it’s okay, sweetheart. Hush, now… hush.” And he began to sing to her the way he always used to sing to J.J., and just once in her too-short life, to another precious little girl.

“Bye baby bunting,

Daddy’s gone a-hunting,

Gone to get a rabbit skin

To wrap the baby bunting in.

From the nest he’d made for her in his sleeper bed, Mirabella watched him rock and sing to her newborn baby and didn’t once think about how politically incorrect the lullaby was. Strange shivers and tingles ran about beneath her skin like pulses of electricity; a lump she couldn’t identify sat in her chest-was it panic? was it fear?-and no matter how many cleansing breaths she took, she couldn’t ease it. She wanted to cry-what else was new? She wanted to laugh.

Oh, God, what is this? she wondered. Could it possibly be normal? Something she’d missed in all those books she’d read, some kind of postpartum high, perhaps. It would certainly explain why she seemed to see him as a blur in a wash of shimmery golden light.

But it wouldn’t explain the desolation and longing she felt, seeing him over there in his seat, so far away from her. So far away. The emptiness in her arms where her baby should be-that she understood. But what was this chill all around her where his arms had been? Why did she feel so lost without him near her, so lonely without his body next to hers? Come back! she wanted to cry. Please come and hold me again. Her face ached with the pressure of her longing.

He must have seen something in her expression, because he rose slowly and came to lean over her, crooning as he settled the once-again-peacefully-sleeping baby in her arms. Crooning to her, not the baby. “There now…it’s okay. Here she is…here she is. Yeah…see there? Everything’s okay now.”

And as she gazed down at her daughter’s face-so perfect, so lovely-a sob shuddered through her. No, it’s not okay. We’re not enough, Amy and me. We need you. Please stay. We’re not complete without you!

“Hey, now,” he said huskily, sitting on the edge of the bed. She felt his fingers under her chin, gently lifting it. Felt his thumb brush at the wetness on her cheek. “What’s all this, hmm? Come on, now, Marybell, don’t cry.”

She raised her eyes to his face, able to see it clearly now that he was close to her again, even without her contacts. She could see his kind, warm eyes, his sweet, familiar smile.

Oh, God, what am I doing? she thought. What am I thinking of? After everything he’s done for me. After everything I’ve put him through…

She sniffed and said in a low voice, “I’m okay. It’s just…I think I’m just really tired.”

“Sure you are.” He stroked the hair back from her temples, and she tried, really tried not to find anything but his own natural compassion in the tenderness. “You just lie back there and sleep. I’m not gonna let anything happen to your baby.”

She nodded, but couldn’t tell him how she felt inside-trembly and wired, her nerves jumping around inside her like popcorn in a popper. “You must be exhausted, too,” she said huskily. “Jimmy Joe, I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to thank you-”

“Oh, hey-” he began, but she put her fingers to his lips.

“For everything you’ve done. I know I must have put you through hell.”

He kissed her fingertips, then shook his head, eluding them. “Naw, you were great,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You were fantastic. Beautiful.”

She smiled ruefully at him. “I don’t think so. I seem to remember I hit you a couple of times.”

“’S okay…I had it comin’.” His dimples flickered on and off, like signal lights.

“I know I yelled mean things at you.”

“Hey, I told you to, remember?”

She allowed herself a brief ripple of laughter, throaty and precarious. “Well, anyway…I just want to apologize, okay? For the god-awful mess I’ve made of your truck, for any really weird and embarrassing things I might have said or done…”

He winced as if she’d poked him and made an exasperated clicking sound. “Now there you go again. You worry about the doggonedest things, you know that? Woman, you just brought a brand-new life into this world! You got nothin’ to apologize for, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly, and he laughed and leaned over and kissed her. So naturally, so easily, as though he’d done it many times before. And her heart stood still.

“Although…” he said thoughtfully as he drew away from her. She blinked and struggled to focus on the teasing glint in his eyes. “Now that you mention it…”

“Oh, no,” she groaned, closing her eyes. “I knew it. What did I do?”

“Well, now, there was one thing you said was kinda cute-really had me goin’ there for a while.” He paused for dramatic effect, showing his dimples.

“Tell me,” she breathed. “I can take it.”

“You told me you’d never made love before, and since that’s not very likely to be true, I was kinda wonderin’ if you could tell me what you mighta meant by that.”

“Oh, God.” Heat flooded through her, rose from her belly and chest and rushed up into her cheeks. She tried to cover her face with her one free hand, desperately wishing she had something bigger-like a grocery sack, maybe. “I can’t believe I told you that,” she whispered. “I never tell anybody that. Ever.” Her deepest, most closely guarded secret. Oh, God. Oh…damn.

“Yeah? Why not?” His voice was light, and she didn’t notice, then, how still he’d gotten.

She took her hand from across her eyes and glared at him. “Well, how would you feel?” she asked hotly. “If you were pushing forty years old and still a virgin, would you go around admitting it? It’s not like I planned it that way, you know. It’s not like that’s what I wanted. It just happened.”

“Are you tryin’ to tell me…it’s true?”

Humiliated beyond bearing, she couldn’t look at him, could only hear the shock and utter disbelief in his voice. “Well, technically, I don’t suppose I am anymore. But…yeah, it’s true. I’ve never made love before. Ever.”

There was a gust of incredulous laughter. “Marybell, I don’t know how to tell you this, but unless I just witnessed the Second Coming, that just ain’t possible.”

She flicked him a pitying glance, then fastened her mortified glare on the front windshield. “What century are you living in? Of course, it’s possible. Didn’t you ever hear of artificial insemination?”

After a stunned silence, he repeated it. “Artificial… insemination?” The words seemed to hang in the air like an accusation. He rose from her side, moving slowly and stiffly, and paced the two careful steps to the front of the cab. Standing there facing the windshield, rubbing mechanically at the back of his neck, he said hoarsely, “Are you telling me…you did this by yourself? You went and had this baby…and you’ve never-Oh, man. I mean…I don’t believe this.”

“It’s not what you think,” Mirabella said in a low voice. He was looking at her now, and in his blanched face, his eyes seemed almost as black and cold as the night outside the windows. Looking into them she suddenly felt desolate and afraid. Words tumbled urgently from her. “I’m not…gay, or anything. I just always wanted children. I always took it for granted I’d have them someday-the usual way-you know, meet somebody, fall in love, get married. But that didn’t happen. I never met the right one.” Until it was too late. Until… tonight.

She took a deep breath and went on, looking down, now, at her baby’s face. Her voice grew calm and soft. “I thought, maybe it was never going to happen. And meanwhile, the years were going by, and I was getting older. I didn’t have forever, you know? Maybe I could have settled for something less. Settled for anything. Anyone. Just so long as he gave me children. But…” She shrugged, and her lips curved into a smile that ached all through her tired body. Mirabella had never “settled” in her life. “I thought this way was better.”

And it was. It was. She’d seen enough of her friends suffer in bad relationships to know that. Her way was better. She was right. She knew she was right. Don’t you dare judge me, her heart cried. I have my baby, and it was worth it. It’s worth it.

Jimmy Joe suddenly realized that she was waiting for him to say something, watching him with a wry and weary smile that was going to haunt him from now on. Not the smile so much as the pride and disappointment he could see in her eyes. But he didn’t have any words to give her. He never had been one to spend them freely, and the ones he did, especially at important moments like this one, he generally liked to think about first, to make sure they were the right ones and a true indicator of what he was feeling. Right now he didn’t know what he was feeling, and he couldn’t think. So he stayed silent.

He’d taken a deep breath, then didn’t seem to know what to do with it. The air in the cab already seemed too dense, charged with tension and cluttered with emotions. He thought suddenly that he was going to suffocate if he didn’t get out of there and get some fresh, uncrowded air.

“I, uh, think I’m gon’ go use the rest room,” he mumbled, and grabbing up his sleeveless, down-filled vest, yanked open the door and dived out into the night.

The door slammed. Mirabella winced involuntarily and closed her eyes.

She felt bewildered and abandoned, but at the same time vindicated, never more sure of the rightness of her decision than at this moment. Relationships were just too hard. Men and women never really understood one another. They were like alien species, struggling to cohabit on the same planet, each believing they’d figured out how to speak the other’s language when in reality neither of them had a clue. And while it was true that some people did seem to find ways to make it work, those relationships always seemed wonderful and miraculous to her, like stories of scientists cohabiting with chimps, or gorilla mothers rescuing human children. As far as she could see, most marriages-even seemingly happy ones like her own parents’-were quiet daily struggles just to understand and be understood.

I don’t understand, she thought. What did I do to make him look at me like that?

It couldn’t be the fact that she’d had a baby-a moment ago he’d told her, with glowing softness in his eyes and tenderness in his touch, what a wonderful thing she’d done. And if he didn’t particularly approve of the way she’d done it, why on earth should it matter so much to him? What could possibly make him look at her with such pain and disappointment in his eyes? As if, in some indefinable way, she’d betrayed him.

It was one of the few times in Jimmy Joe’s life he wished he’d had the courage to go against his mama and take up smoking. Then at least he would have an explainable excuse for what he was doing, stomping up and down in the bitter cold, trying to keep his extremities from freezing. Funny how nobody ever seemed to think it was crazy to risk a case of frostbite just to grab a few puffs of a cigarette.

But he couldn’t think of any kind of reasonable explanation for not wanting to go back inside his nice warm truck just yet. He was just so…well, hell. He didn’t know what he was, that was the problem. He didn’t know if he was mad, or disappointed, or what. He for sure didn’t know why it mattered so much.

Well, yeah, he did, too. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

He thought about how he’d felt when he’d first run into Mirabella back there in New Mexico; how he’d judged her selfish and irresponsible for doing what she was doing, making a trip like that all alone; how angry it had made him to see her putting her child at risk. He hadn’t known what to do with those feelings then, when she’d been no more than a stranger to him. And he sure didn’t know what to do with them now that there was so much more at stake.

And that was the crux of his problem. Because somewhere along the way he’d gotten to know her, even thought he was beginning to understand her.

Somewhere along the way he’d fallen in love with her, even though she was as different from him-with her sophisticated big-city ways-as night was from day. And not only with her, but with her baby, too. And now he just couldn’t figure out how in the name of heaven he could have done such a thing. How could he love a woman when her beliefs and her whole way of thinking and living were completely different from his?

You just do.

The answer didn’t come to him like a revelation or anything, with beckoning stars and singing angels. It had been in his heart all along, and what he was doing out there freezing his butt off in the Panhandle wind was trying to get used to having it there. Trying to get used to the pain it brought him. Because yeah, he loved the woman, in spite of all the ways she was different from him. No doubt in his mind about that at all. And even if she loved him back-which was by no means a given-there wasn’t any way in the world it was ever going to work out between them.

So, what was he going to do? What could he do?

Well, he knew the answer to that one, too. What he was going to do was go back there to his truck and keep the woman he loved and her new baby girl warm and safe until somebody came to take them away from him forever. And while he was doing that, he would be trying his best to understand how a beautiful, bright, funny woman could think it was okay to have a baby without ever knowing what it was like to make love to a man, and how she could do something so selfish as to deliberately deny her child the chance to grow up in a home with both a mom and a dad in it.

And, he thought, remembering the pain and disappointment in her eyes when he’d left her, if that didn’t work, he would do his best to pretend it didn’t matter.

An apology was sitting primed and ready on his tongue when he climbed back into his truck, but he never got a chance to give it to her. She’d gone to sleep at last, with the baby snuggled on her bosom, cozy as a bunny in a nest. And again he thought he’d never seen a more beautiful sight.

He went and knelt beside the bed, feasting his eyes on the two of them, mother and child. He picked up a strand of Mirabella’s hair and let it run like silken strands through his fingers. “Ah…Marybell,” he whispered. He’d never felt such a fullness inside. He touched the baby’s head with a single finger, wondering at the incredible softness of it, like the velvet fuzz on a butterfly’s wing. Amy Jo… He’d never felt such sadness. He wondered why it was he seemed destined to hold his sweet baby girls only once-just long enough to fall in love with them-and then lose them forever.

Mirabella awoke to the loveliest sound. Someone was singing “Greensleeves”-or rather the Christmas version, “What Child Is This?”-in a very nice tenor voice. Could it possibly be Jimmy Joe? No-the radio, of course. But what were such a nice voice and such a beautiful song doing on a country-music station? It had to be a country-music station, there wasn’t anything else out here in the middle of the Texas Panhandle.

Then she realized that she was hearing something else. Something amazing. For the first time in her life she was awakening to the sound of a man snoring in her ear. She listened to it in sleepy bemusement, finding it oddly pleasant, thinking how surprising that was. She’d always thought she would hate sleeping with a man who snored. She turned her head slightly…and felt the tickle of hair on her lips. Her heart lurched and warmth burst inside her. Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God…it’s true. I do love him.

And her logical mind quickly responded, Nonsense! It’s the circumstances. You only think you do because you were in trouble and he came to your rescue, dummy. Like a knight on a big blue charger. In fact, wasn’t that what they used to call truckers? The Knights of the Road…?

The baby nestled below her breast stirred, arching her tiny body and shooting out one fist like a miniature pugilist. So that’s what she’s been doing, her mother thought, gazing down in teary adoration. No wonder her legs had been going numb.

She moved her legs experimentally and was pleased to find that they seemed to be in working order, although they felt as though they each weighed several hundred pounds. Conversely, the middle part of her seemed light as a feather, if a little loose and jiggly, like half-set gelatin. And, when she laid an exploratory hand on it, it was not nearly as flat as she’d hoped. The lower part of her torso, the part diapered in thick layers of towels, it seemed wisest not to disturb.

Soon, she thought. It was getting light. Help would be coming soon.

She watched the light turn from blue-gray to mauve, and to a beautiful shade of rose…and then to gold. And suddenly streaks of blinding radiance shot across the sky and frozen landscape, splashed like molten fire over the dashboard and front seats and onto the bed where she lay with her baby in a sleeping man’s arms.

She gasped at the sheer glory of it, and Jimmy Joe’s snoring instantly stopped. He lifted his head from the pillow beside hers, his eyes going first to the baby then to her face. Reassured, he propped himself on one elbow and frowned at the light.

“Wha’ time is it?”

“Morning,” said Mirabella huskily. “That’s all I know. Christmas morning.”

“Everything okay?”

She nodded, unable to take her eyes from his face. For a long, seemingly endless time he gazed back at her without speaking. Then he leaned down slowly and kissed her.

She’d never been kissed like that-never. His mouth was so firm and warm and soft; strength and sensitivity wrapped in satin. It felt so wonderful. It made her feel like crying-like a beautiful sunset, a touching movie, a sad song, tiny children singing. It was nourishment-food and drink-and warmth and shelter and loving arms all rolled into one incredibly sweet, impossibly lovely touch. She wanted it to last forever.

But of course it couldn’t. Her cheeks and eyelashes were wet when he lifted his head. She gazed at him through a silvery blur, trying to read the messages in his glowing brown eyes, finding tenderness and puzzlement and wonder and fear, knowing they must be reflections of hers. Her lips trembled as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

Her heart was hammering so loudly she could hear it. Or was it his?

But he’d suddenly gone still, listening as she was. And she knew it wasn’t thundering pulses she heard. They both closed their eyes and their bodies relaxed together as the silent beauty of the morning, and that fragile and precious moment, were shattered forever by the clatter of a helicopter’s rotors.