One Christmas Knight

Chapter 12

“Attention, K man shoppers, there’s a blue-light special at mile marker…” “We got a bear convention goin‘ on-bears in the bushes, bears ever’where!”

I-4U-Tennessee

The helicopter threw a long blue shadow across a sheet of unblemished white as it hovered above the rest-stop parking lot. The snow was frozen so solid even the chopper’s rotors couldn’t stir it up, and it set down like a dragonfly alighting on a sheet of frosted crystal.

Jimmy Joe watched it from the wind-sheltered side of his truck, squinting into the just-risen sun and puffing out clouds of vapor. Being a Southern boy through and through, he was convinced air that cold could kill you, and he was trying his best to figure out how to extract enough oxygen from it to live on without actually letting it into his lungs.

When the chopper’s rotors had slowed to a lazy thunk-thunk beat, the door opened. Two men-one of them the pilot, wearing orange coveralls and a knit ski cap and carrying a paramedic’s kit, and the other an older guy in a fur-lined parka, a Stetson hat and earmuffs-jumped out and headed for the truck with their heads down, walking fast, half jogging. Both were wearing sunglasses. Jimmy Joe stepped forward to meet them, wishing he’d thought to put his on. The cold and the glare were making his eyes water.

The guy in the parka stuck out a mittened hand. He had a large cold-reddened nose and a thick brown mustache that seemed to spread across his face when he grinned. “Howdy. Mr. Starr-it sure is a pleasure to talk to you face-to-face for a change.” He laughed at the “Beg your pardon?” look on Jimmy Joe’s face. “Dr. Austin-I was on the other end of that phone relay last night. How’s ever‘body doin’ this mornin’?”

“Good-doin’ just fine,” Jimmy Joe mumbled. He nodded at the paramedic, who told him his name was Travis, shook his hand, then gestured toward his truck. “Been waitin’ for ya.”

He went to the passenger side and opened the door, stepped up and called softly, “Marybell? You ready for company?”

She was sitting up, swaddled from the waist down in his mother’s old quilt, the baby cradled in her arms. He saw that she’d brushed her hair and fastened the top and sides back from her face with a clip of some kind. She looked about sixteen years old, radiant and a little apprehensive, like a little girl getting ready to take her first trip on an airplane.

“Okay,” she said breathlessly. But her eyes clung to him as if for reassurance, pleading with him-for what, he didn’t know.

He stepped down and gestured for the doc and the EMT to go on in, wondering as he politely held the door for them why it was resentment he felt more than relief. As if they weren’t rescuers, but intruders. He felt like there was a primitive being inside him that wanted to be standing in front of that door snapping and snarling. Like a wolf, guarding his mate and their young in his den. His mate. His woman.

He heard the doctor sing out, “Well, hello there, little lady, how are you doin’ this mornin’? Let’s have a look at this pretty girl, here. You two all ready to go for a ride?” Then he slammed the door shut and turned away with his chest aching and his heart pounding.

He was pacing up and down alongside his truck, grinding his teeth and swinging his arms, too cold to think about anything except how to keep from freezing to death, when the door opened up again and Travis, the EMT, hopped out.

“You wanna give me a hand with the stretcher?” he called out as he loped off toward the chopper.

Jimmy Joe grunted, “Sure thing,” and took off after him.

“That’s one tough little ol’ gal,” Travis said as they were wrestling the basket stretcher out of the helicopter. “Sure is pretty, too.”

Jimmy Joe grunted. “Yeah, she is.”

“This your first baby?”

Jimmy Joe didn’t know quite how to answer that. He stammered around and finally decided it wasn’t worth explaining, so he mumbled, “Uh…no, I got a little boy-”

“No, I mean first one you ever delivered.”

Then he felt a little sheepish and had to grin. “Oh. Yeah, it sure is.”

“Yeah, well…it’s always a thrill. Always a miracle.” Travis bent down and picked up one end of the stretcher and Jimmy Joe got a grip on the other and they headed back to the truck at a jog-trot. Travis threw a look over his shoulder. “Must’ve been quite a night for you.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy Joe panted, “it sure was.” Quite a night. One he wondered if he was ever going to be able to get over. One he sure as heck knew he would never forget.

The cab of Jimmy Joe’s truck had suddenly gotten terribly crowded-full of noise and way too many strangers. Mirabella felt lost in all the confusion. She longed for the soft sounds of Christmas songs on the radio, Jimmy Joe’s snoring, the tiny squeaks Amy made when she nursed. She wished they could go back to the way it had been; just the three of them together, cocooned in the truck, isolated from the world and swaddled in intimacy and warmth, magic and-daringly her heart whispered it-love.

Now all of that had been lost, the peace shattered, the cocoon stripped away. She felt jangled and panicky, lonely and unprepared. The world seemed to be spinning too fast, out of her control. She was bundled and lifted and settled and strapped, more like a parcel than a person. People talked around her and over and about her, never to her. She found herself retreating into dazed isolation, cloaked and protected by the paranoia of her newly awakened maternal instincts, clinging to her baby with primal ferocity, her eyes daring anyone to take her from her. Perhaps understanding, no one tried.

She looked for Jimmy Joe, desperately needing the reassurance of his sweet smile and kind eyes, his soft Georgia drawl saying, “There now…everything’s gonna be fine.” He was there, or at least his body was, helping to wrap her in layers of blankets and tuck her into the stretcher, bustling around collecting her belongings, making sure she had everything-her purse, her clothes, her shoes and overnight bag. She followed him with her eyes, silently begging him to look at her, to touch her, to reach out to her in some way that would let her know that the bond that had grown between them through that long, miraculous night was still there.

But he wouldn’t look at her. She couldn’t find him-the Jimmy Joe who’d held and stroked her, guided and sustained her, laughed and cried with her as he’d placed her newborn daughter in her arms. Where was he? Oh, God. Please, Jimmy Joe, I need you.

They were taking her to the waiting helicopter, Jimmy Joe at her head where she couldn’t see him, the man in the orange coveralls at her feet, the big man in the cowboy hat alongside. It was cold, so cold, but Mirabella hardly felt it. Amy was safe and warm, snug in her arms in a thick nest of blankets, and Jimmy Joe was there with her. She knew as long as he was there, she and her baby would be safe.

She felt the stretcher tilt as it was lifted into the helicopter. The doctor climbed in beside her, the man in the coveralls moved up to the pilot’s seat, and the air filled with wind and noise. Jimmy Joe was backing out of the open doorway.

Panic seized her. Struggling frantically, she managed to free a hand from the straps and blankets and fastenings and grab his shirtsleeve. “Jimmy Joe-”

“Yeah, I’m right here.” He wrapped her hand in both of his and she held on to him with all the strength in her body, as if she were dangling over a void and he was the rope. “Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll be in Amarillo in a little bit.”

“Please-” she gasped. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

His inverted face hovered above hers, lined with strain and pinched and reddened with cold. But for the eyes, with their familiar glow of kindness, she would hardly have recognized it. His fogged breath mingled with hers as he smiled. “Sorry…wish I could. Gotta stay with my truck. I’m gonna be along in a little while. Listen, you’re gonna be just fine. You just take good care a‘that baby, now, y’hear?”

“Jimmy Joe-” Don’t leave me!

“Safe trip.” He leaned down and kissed her, quick and hard. She felt his hand slip from her grasp.

The helicopter door clanged shut. A mittened hand patted her shoulder and a kindly Texas voice said, “You just hold tight, now, honey. We’ll be there soon.”

Mirabella closed her eyes as her stomach gave a dreadful lurch. Don’t…leave…me.…

Jimmy Joe stood and watched the helicopter lift off. Watched it until it was just a speck in the sky. He felt as if a great big piece of himself had just been ripped off him and was flying away from him. And if he lived to be a hundred, he wasn’t ever going to be able fo forget the look in Mirabella’s eyes when he’d left her alone in that chopper.

A truck crawling by on the interstate saw him standing there and blasted an airhorn greeting. Jimmy Joe lifted his hand and waved, then started walking back toward his big blue Kenworth, still idling faithfully away as it had through that long, cold night. She looked a mite road-weary, he thought, covered with grime and snow sludge, mud flaps crusted with frozen mud. He promised himself the first truck wash he came to after he got out of this mess, he was going to pull in and give her a nice bath. Himself, too, while he was at it.

And they were both going to be needing some fuel pretty soon; the Kenworth’s tanks might have a few more miles left in them, but he was running on empty. The snacks he’d gotten from the vending machines were all gone, except for a halfeaten package of peanut-butter crackers. He ate those and washed them down with warm 7-Up, then tidied the sleeper as best he could and disposed of the trash. After a safety check of his rig and a last visit to the rest stop’s freezing-cold toilet facilities, he was finally ready to roll.

First, though, he turned up the volume on his CB radio and took down the mike, then waited until he got a lull in the conversation. “Uh…this is the Big Blue Starr,” he drawled. “I’m over here at the rest stop at the twenty-eight-mile stick… Gon’ be joinin’ you here in a minute. I’d ’preciate it if you’d give me some room… Come on.”

As it seemed to be more and more often these days, it was a female voice that came back to him. “You got it, Big Blue. Sure am happy to hear from ya again. How’s the lady and her baby doin’? Ever’body okay?”

“Doin’ just fine. Chopper picked ’em up this mornin’. They’re headin’ for Amarillo as we speak.”

“We sure are glad to hear that. We been prayin’ for ya. My husband Tom, here, and me, we’re drivin’ team. Got two little babies ourselves, over there in Enid, Oklahoma. We’re still hopin’ to get home in time to hug ’em and tell ‘em Merry Christmas, but…I don’ know. If this don’t clear up pretty soon…”

“How’s it lookin’ over that way?”

“Uh…pickin’ up a little, they tell me. Looks like they finally got the overpasses sanded, anyways. Sun’s gettin’ up there now, though. Gon’ start gettin’ slick, here, pretty soon.”

“Thanks,” said Jimmy Joe. “I’ll watch it.”

“You do that. Pass on our good wishes for us, if you see the lady and that little baby again, would ya? ’Preciate it.”

“I’ll do that. Y’all have a safe trip, now.”

“Back at ya. Ten-four.”

Jimmy Joe hung up the mike and put his rig in gear, sending up a little prayer as the first of eighteen wheels bit into unbroken snow. He churned down the on-ramp and a hole opened up for him. He eased the blue Kenworth into it and once more became part of the long caravan of trucks ploughing steadily eastward.

It felt real good to be on the road again, and heading for home at last. But for some reason, without Mirabella and the baby in it the cab seemed awfully quiet to him. And empty.

It was past midday by the time Jimmy Joe rolled into Amarillo. He’d made one stop, at a gas station on old Route 66 just west of Vega, where he’d bought a few gallons of diesel and shaken the hand of the man whose voice, coming through on the radio emergency channel, had guided him through the long night just past.

Turned out the fellow, whose name was Riggs, had a pretty good garage and a tow truck besides, so he’d given him some money and Mirabella’s car keys and asked him to go pick up the silver Lexus as soon as the roads cleared up enough. Riggs had wanted him to stay and have a bite of breakfast, but hungry as he was, he was even more anxious to be on his way. So he’d settled for a cup of coffee and a quart of chocolate milk, and then he was on the road again.

On the outskirts of Amarillo, the going got a little easier. The bright sunshine hadn’t warmed things up much-just enough to melt a thin coat of water on top of the ice that made it about as slick as grease. But at least the overpasses and the on- and off-ramps had been sanded. And the streets leading to the hospital had been well plowed. It looked like about half of the parking lot had been scraped clear, too, and the snow pushed up in a pile over to one side.

He parked his rig next to the pile and set the brakes, and was indulging in a good stretch when he noticed that the parking lot seemed to be an awfully busy place, considering it was Christmas Day. He noticed several TV-news trucks and vans with satellite antennas sticking out all over them.

“Wonder what’s goin’ on?” he muttered to himself as he climbed out of the cab. He hoped it wasn’t some sort of disaster or other. Happening on Christmas-that sure would be a shame.

The hospital’s front entrance and main waiting area were all a-tangle with people, quite a few of them carrying video cameras, the rest standing around drinking coffee out of plastic cups and looking out-of-sorts. Several of them kind of stared at Jimmy Joe when he walked in, which was a reminder to him that it had been a couple of days since he’d showered and shaved. He was glad he’d put on a clean shirt and his good boots and changed his trucker’s vest for his fleece-lined Levi’s jacket, but he knew from the glimpse.he’d caught of himself in the glass doors coming in, with his two-day beard and bloodshot eyes, that he was no prize. On the other hand, it was Mirabella he’d come to see, not a bunch of strangers, and he had an idea she would forgive him if he looked a little rough around the edges.

He eased his way through the crowd with a few “Beg your pardons” and “‘Scuse me, ma’ams” and made it up to the reception desk, where a sweet-faced, gray-haired lady wearing a pink pinafore was trying her best to ignore all the hustle and bustle.

She flicked him.a glance. and said, “May I help you?” in a tone of voice that warned him she would rather not.

He cleared his throat and leaned as close to her as he could across the countertop so he wouldn’t have to shout his business to the whole world over the noise. “Uh…yes, ma‘am, I’m lookin’ for the maternity department?”

The lady in pink folded her hands together as if she was about to say her prayers and gave him a look that wasn’t much warmer than the temperature outside. “Of course you are. And the patient’s name?”

“Uh…yes, ma’am. That’d be Mirabella…” Damnation, what was it? “Uh, Waskowitz. She and her baby were brought in this morning.”

“Yes, sir, and are you a member of the family?”

Whew, thought Jimmy Joe, if that voice had been any colder it would have given him frostbite. A moment later, when he thought about it, he knew what he should have done was lie-just say, “Yes, ma’am, I’m her brother,” or something like that, and be done with it. But the habit of honesty was so ingrained in him, by the time the inspiration came to him, he’d already blurted out the truth.

“No, ma’am, I’m not. I guess you could say I’m a friend.” He saw right away that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, so he shuffled around and cleared his throat some more, and then jumped back in with, “But I know she’ll want to see me. My name’s Jimmy Joe Starr, and, uh,… Well, see, I was with her when she bad her baby. In fact, she, uh, had it in my truck. And…well, I promised her I’d come by and see her, soon as I could. Just to say hi, you know, make sure she’s okay…”

Somewhere along in there, it came to him that the people around him had gotten real quiet. In fact, he figured he could have heard a pin drop. He kept lowering his voice and leaning closer to the lady in pink, trying his best to keep his business private, but when he did that, it seemed to him that everyone in the place sort of leaned with him.

Then all of a sudden it was like a dam had burst. The whole roomful of people surged in around him, everybody trying to push everybody else out of the way, people shoving microphones and video cameras in his face and shouting questions at him, all talking at once.

“Mr. Starr-Mr. Starr!”

“Over here-”

“How did it feet-”

“Are you the trucker-”

“What do you think about being called a Good Samaritan?”

“When did you know you were going to-”

“Had you ever delivered a baby before, Mr. Starr?”

“Mr. Starr-Mr. Starr!”

“How does it feel to be a hero, Mr. Starr?”

Oh, man. Once when he was a kid, Jimmy Joe remembered, he and his oldest brother Troy had hooked a hornets’ nest while they were fishing. That was pretty much the way he felt right now, like he wanted to cover his head and make for deep water.

But they had him cornered, and it looked like there wasn’t much hope he was going to be able to make a run for it. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the lady in pink making her escape; all he could hope was that maybe she’d gone for reinforcements.

In the meantime, he had to try and make the best of it. And one thing he wasn’t going to try to do was outshout everybody. Neither was he going to shuffle his feet and look like some dumb Cracker-his mama had taught him better than that. In fact, it was his mama’s methods he called on, particularly the one she used to always use to get the attention of a classroom-or a kitchen-full of kids all squabbling and hollering at once. He raised one hand, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and then…just waited. He waited until everybody got quiet again, which didn’t take as long as a person might think. When he wasn’t hearing anything except some rustling around and nervous coughing, he opened his eyes. And it seemed like everybody drew in a big breath and held it.

He pointed to a woman standing right in front of him, with sleek dark hair pulled back in a French twist and a familiar look about her, although he couldn’t place her. He took a breath, hesitated a moment, then let it out in a rush and said, “Who are you people?”

Then everybody laughed, and it seemed like he’d made a whole roomful of new friends.

The woman he’d pointed to waved her microphone but this time remembered her manners and didn’t poke it in his face. She said, “I guess you’ve been a little out of touch, Mr. Starr. This is a great story-Good Samaritan trucker delivering a baby on a snowbound interstate, on Christmas Day. It’s a wonderful story. The whole country’s been following it, ever since word started coming in last night. It seems you’ve become quite a hero. What do you think of that?”

Jimmy Joe looked at. all those microphones and video cameras pointed at him-at a respectful distance, now-and for a few moments he didn’t say anything. He was thinking about Mirabella. Remembering…so many things. Like the images in a kaleidoscope, fragmented and rearranged into images of unimaginable beauty.

Terrified eyes, shivering voice… “I think I’m having my baby…”

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

“Can’t…make a mess!”

Furiously… “Can’t you understand English?”

“I ca-an’t!”

The imprint of her fingers on his arm… the feel of her mouth.

“Too many mountains… more mountains…”

“If you say that one more time, I’ll kill you!”

“Amy… her name is Amy.”

“I’ve never made love before…”

“Please…come with me!”

“Don’t leave me…”

He had to cough, clear his throat and take a couple of deep breaths before he could speak, and when he did his voice was still so raspy it didn’t even sound like him.

“Well, first off, I’m no Good Samaritan, and, uh…I’m sure not a hero. What I did wasn’t any more’n any other person I know of woulda done, under the same circumstances. The only hero here is that lady lying up there in that hospital bed. She‘s-” And then he had to stop and cough some more. “Well, she’s just about the bravest person I ever saw, is all. And, uh…well, that’s all I’ve got to say. Now, if y’all will excuse me…”

He turned blindly, thinking he knew how a trapped wolf felt just before he started gnawing his leg off, and there was a big burly fellow in a rent-a-cop uniform reaching out to him and saying in that quiet, no-argument cop way, “Sir, you want to come with me, please? Right this way.”

Beyond the security guard Jimmy Joe could see the lady in the pink pinafore hovering, holding open a door marked, Hospital Personnel Only. From the pink in her cheeks and the smile on her lips, it looked like she might have warmed toward him quite a bit since she’d spoken to him last.

The security guard touched Jimmy Joe’s elbow and raised his voice and said, “Okay, folks, that’s all. You want to step aside and let us through, please?” He ushered Jimmy Joe through the door and the pink-pinafore lady closed it smartly after them. Jimmy Joe could just imagine her glaring in frosty triumph at the thwarted reporters left on the other side.

Left alone with the security guard, he didn’t know exactly what to expect-whether he was about to be hustled out the nearest exit, or what. It sure wasn’t to have the guy clap him on the shoulder and say, “Son, I’d sure like to shake your hand. That was a wonderful thing you did. God bless ya.”

Feeling too dazed and confused to argue, Jimmy Joe muttered some sort of thank-you and shook the guy’s hand, which was about the size and texture of an old fielder’s mitt. For some reason that made him think of his dad, and that brought a lump into his throat.

Maybe it’s just being in a hospital again, he thought as the guard whisked him past offices and through storerooms and up an echoing concrete stairway, through clanging steel doors and then down polished corridors that smelled the way hospitals always do. Like most normal healthy people who don’t actually work in one, Jimmy Joe wasn’t fond of hospitals. Which wasn’t surprising, considering that with one exception, his associations with them, starting with having his tonsils taken out when he was seven, were all pretty bad. The arm he’d broken playing football hadn’t been serious enough to get him past the emergency room, but then there had been his dad’s first heart attack, and then the last one. He remembered the long night in the waiting room, he and his brothers and sisters sprawled and draped over every available piece of furniture, and at dawn, the doctors coming with headshakes and expressionless faces. And the worst shock of all had been watching his mama’s face turn old before his eyes.

Not very long after that, there had been Amy-the first Amy. And then, for a while, regular visits to a different kind of hospital, where patients shuffled aimlessly through the corridors or sat and looked out the windows with blank faces and empty eyes. Then there had been the exception-JJ.’s birth. But even that hadn’t exactly been a happy time in his life. That had been almost eight years ago, and he’d done his best to avoid hospitals ever since.

“She’s been askin’ for ya,” the security guard told him as they turned down a corridor painted in cheery shades of rose pink and aqua green. Jimmy Joe could hear trays clanking and people laughing. And mixed in with the regular old hospital smell was a new one, one he remembered well-diapers. “We’ve been tryin’ to keep that horde downstairs away from her until she’s had a chance to rest up a bit. Here ya go-you can go on in.”

And suddenly there he was, standing outside a closed door that he knew Mirabella was on the other side of, and he didn’t have a single idea in the world what he was going to say to her once he opened it. He felt like it had been days, maybe even years, since he’d seen her, instead of just a few hours. In his truck, it had seemed as if they were the only two people in the whole world, and that somehow the two of them and Amy Jo and everything they’d been through together had gotten woven into one whole cloth, like a beautiful tapestry, or one of those Navajo rugs he’d brought back from his trips. For some reason he’d thought they would be that way forever.

But from the instant that helicopter had set down in the rest-stop parking lot, he’d known it hadn’t been real, and that the world didn’t belong to just the three of them, after all. This was somebody else’s world, and he, for one, didn’t feel real comfortable in it. In this world, Mirabella and her baby girl were a media event, and everybody was trying to make him out to be some kind of hero. Well, he sure didn’t feel like a hero. What he felt like was a man who’d just lost something precious to him-something so rare and beautiful he was afraid he wasn’t ever going to come across it in his life again.

The security guard waved to him and moseyed off down the corridor, nodding to a couple of nurses along the way. A nurse bustling by did a sort of double take when she saw Jimmy Joe, and smiled, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree.

“It’s okay,” she chirped. “You can go on in. She’s been waiting for you.”

He nodded his head, took a big breath, and tapped on the door. A voice-like Mirabella’s, and yet not quite hers-said breathlessly, “Yes-come in!”

The wide hospital-room door swung open and a woman he didn’t know stood there beaming at him. She had shiny brown hair cut short but in a way that nicely suited her features, and greenish-blue eyes that crinkled at the corners. And although the two didn’t have one single feature in common that he could see, he knew this woman was Mirabella’s mother. In some strange way he couldn’t put a finger on, she just reminded him of her.

In a hushed and excited voice, like someone trying not to wake a sleeper, she said, “Hello-you must be Jimmy Joe. The front desk phoned to let us know you were on your way. Oh, I’m just so happy to meet you. Bella,” she called softly over her shoulder toward a partly drawn curtain, “you have a visitor.” And then back to Jimmy Joe again, taking his hand and towing him inside. “Please, come in. I’m Ginger, by the way-Bella’s mom.”

“Ma’am,” Jimmy Joe mumbled politely. As the door whisked shut behind him it occurred to him that he’d never felt so awkward in his life, or more conscious of the quarterinch of stubble he was wearing on his face. Why hadn’t he thought to bring something-flowers, maybe, or a baby gift?

And then Ginger was pulling back the curtain, and there she was. And he suddenly remembered how he’d thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life before. And forgot he’d ever held her naked body in his arms, massaged her feet or whispered love words into her sweat-damp hair. It was all he could do to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth long enough to mutter, “Hey, there, Marybell, how’re you doin’?”