One Christmas Knight

Chapter 6

“I got me four big boxes a‘ tapes here, and there’s not a one of ’em I feet like listenin‘ to. I’m just runnin’ through the radio, lookin‘ for a station. ”

1-40-New Mexico

One radio station on the whole dial, and it had to be playing Christmas music. Then Mirabella remembered it was the day before Christmas-Christmas Eve. What else would they be playing?

She just didn’t want to believe it was Christmas Eve. How could it be? It didn’t feet like Christmas Eve. On the day before Christmas people were supposed to be snugged up in their houses frantically wrapping presents and stuffing themselves with popcorn and eggnog, or at the very least fighting their way through the mall for some forgotten-till-the-last-minute gift or other, half-deafened by the din of the crowds, canned Christmas carols on the loudspeakers, and those Salvation Army Santas jingling away in every doorway. Who had ever heard of a Christmas Eve spent slogging across a cold, lonely desert along with a lot of other poor hapless pilgrims…?

A shiver went skittering down her spine. Okay, she thought, this is just a little weird.

But there was something almost biblical about the vastness of the landscape, where the Rockies melted gradually into juniper-studded plateaus and twisting arroyos before disappearing completely in the flat, treeless prairie. Out here the horizons seemed to stretch forever and the leaden sky came down to touch them, and somewhere out there in the deep lavender haze where they met she could almost imagine a pyramid or two, and yes, perhaps even a caravan of camels plodding slowly eastward.

“‘We three kings of Orient are;/Bewing gifts we traverse afar,”’ Mirabella sang lustily in her off-key baritone, attempting with sheer volume to dispel the loneliness and depression that was slowly but surely creeping in around her heart. “ ‘Field and fountain, moor and mou-oun-tain,/Following yonder star./OO, star of wonder, star…’” Starr…Jimmy Joe. Her voice fizzled into silence just as the music critic in her belly began expressing his outrage.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she said with a soft and rueful laugh, rubbing at the mushrooming bulge just below the right side of her rib cage. “Bad idea, I know. Wish I’d brought along some James Galway or Pavarotti tapes, but I didn’t think about it. So I guess the best I can do is…” She pushed a button and the radio’s automatic tuner settled on the only available station, which blared forth a lush and throaty, “Blu-blu-blue Chriss-mas.” She settled back in her seat and sighed. “Elvis.”

Although really, she told herself, things could be a lot worse. After all the fuss, the road was “dry and dusty,” as she’d heard the truckers on Jimmy Joe’s CB radio call it, with not so much as a flake of snow or a smidgen of ice that she could see. Traffic was heavy but moving right along, and she was sure that whatever problems they’d been having through Texas-well, they must have gotten them cleared up or they wouldn’t have opened the road, would they? Of course not. Plus, she was feeling much better after Jimmy Joe’s back rub and a good night’s rest, and the Tylenol seemed to be helping because her back didn’t ache nearly as much.

At this rate, she told herself optimistically, she would be in Amarillo in three hours, and maybe, just maybe, she could find a flight going…anywhere. Somewhere south. She wouldn’t even have to tell them she was pregnant-if she kept her coat on maybe they would just think she was fat. She would fly standby, if she had to. Then, if she could get to someplace even close to Pensacola, she could rent a car, and… Yes, she could still do it, by God. She could still get there on Christmas Day. And she would.

When Mirabella put her mind to something, she didn’t give up easily.

Jimmy Joe was glad to be back on the road. It felt good, even knowing what he was heading into, watching those miles roll by, knowing every mile marker he passed put him that much closer to J.J. and home.

Home. He thought about that, focusing his mind on what it felt like to be there, walking himself one by one through the rooms of the big old white frame, two-story house he’d grown up in. Remembering what it smelled like-the smell of canning tomatoes in his mama’s kitchen in the summertime, the wet-dog odor of the back porch when it rained, the sweet, warm fragrance of honeysuckle. He thought of the pantry door where his growth and that of all his brothers and sisters had been charted from the time they were big enough to stand straight and tall, and rooms filled with shabby furniture and cluttered with books and magazines and children’s artwork in crayon and poster paints. He thought of the old tree house, and the silk spider that had spun her web in its doorway.

And he thought about his own house-a real nice house about a mile down the road, solidly built of red brick, with a big front porch and white trim and a nice big sunny kitchen, and great old oaks and pine trees for shade. He’d done a pretty good job with it, too; made it nice and homey for J.J., filling up the rooms with books and pictures and things he’d brought back from his trips, interesting things from all over the country. Navajo rugs and Acoma pottery, and a big old bed he’d found up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, hand-carved from four-hundred-year-old walnut trees.

He was happy there, and so was J.J. And when he had to leave, well, there was the old place and a grandmama right down the road, and you couldn’t ask for better than that. No, sir.

He said to himself, Jimmy Joe Starr, you’re a lucky man. Couldn’t ask for more than you’ve got, and that’s a fact.

When it came to families, he’d always thought it was too bad everybody couldn’t have one like his. They weren’t perfect, nowhere near it, with his daddy dying so young; and his mama could be tough as nails sometimes. And there was his sister Joy Lynn’s two divorces, which was something of a family record, and brother Roy who liked his beer a little bit too much, and his youngest brother Calvin who’d dropped out of high school and never had learned how to work a lick or hold on to a job.

But there was a lot of love in the family in spite of nobody being perfect. And when the holidays rolled around, or somebody’s birthday, and the whole bunch got together-and there would be babies crying and kids running underfoot, and the womenfolk gathered in the kitchen all talking at once, and the men outside arguing politics or throwing a ball around if the weather was good, and the older kids playing hide-and-seek or hunting turtles in the woods behind the house-then he knew how good he had it.

Then he knew-oh, how he knew-that he was lonely.

Much as he hated to admit it, it was the truth. No matter how much he loved his kid, or how great his mama was, or how much he enjoyed his brothers’ and sisters’ company, there were times when it wasn’t enough. Times when he would come in off the road and walk into his house and hear his footsteps echo in a kitchen that smelled of nothing but “empty,” and his big old hand-carved bed seemed cold, and way too roomy for one person. Times he would even feel envious watching his brothers and sisters bicker and squabble with their mates. It had been a long time since he’d had anybody to argue with over breakfast about something as foolish as Walt Disney movies.

I’m going to read to my baby…

Suddenly, clear as a bell, he could hear Mirabella saying that, hear the fierceness in her voice, the joy in her laughter. He could see her face, too, the sparkle in her gray eyes, her nose turning pink, and the wind in her hair…

His heart went bump against his ribs. He muttered, “Christmas,” under his breath and reached over and turned on the radio to see if he could find some music to take his mind off things he had no business thinking about.

He was lucky. On the only clear station in that part of New Mexico he caught Brenda Lee just finishing up “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and right after that Elvis started in with “Blue Christmas.” He left it there and turned the volume up loud so he wouldn’t have to listen to all the talk coming in on the CB about the mess waiting for him up ahead in Texas.

For one of the few-the very few-times in her life, Mirabella was feeling uncertain; she would never admit to being afraid. But as she clung to the wheel of her Lexus and doggedly followed the taillights of the big rig in front of her, she felt a chill. that had nothing to do with the snow blowing past her windshield.

Everything had been fine until about ten miles into Texas, when all of a sudden both lanes of traffic on the interstate had slowed to a crawl. A few miles farther on she’d come to know why. Snow-not from the threatening black clouds overhead, but blown by the wind across that flat, unbroken plain-had reduced visibility to nearly zero. Packed down by the tires of hundreds of eighteen-wheelers, it had turned the road surface into a narrow track of bumpy, rutted ice. The double line of trucks became one, an endless train creeping fitfully eastward at a pace slower than a man could walk. With very good reason. If Mirabella needed more dramatic evidence of the need for caution, there were the dozens of cars stuck in roadside drifts and even a few big rigs jackknifed on the median to remind her.

Oh, God, she thought as she crept past yet another disabled vehicle, what if I…

No. Ice trickled down her spine, and she shivered. No, she wouldn’t even think of such a possibility. It wouldn’t happen to her; she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew enough not to make stupid mistakes. She knew the rules: Don’t brake or accelerate suddenly. Always turn into a skid. She would be okay if she kept her head. She wouldn’t panic. Of course not-Mirabella never panicked.

Oh, but how long could this go on? It was only fifty miles to Amarillo, but at this rate, that would take hours. Ten hours. It would be dark in three. And-oh, God, she had to go to the bathroom now. How was she ever going to be able to wait that long?

She knew the answer, of course. She would simply have to. Because there was absolutely no way she could stop, even if there had been a place to do so in that vast, unending whiteness.

To make matters worse, the Tylenol she’d taken this morning at breakfast had worn off, and now she couldn’t even reach for her purse to get some more. She didn’t dare take a hand from the wheel, not for an instant. But, oh, how her back hurt. The pressure was worse than ever, too. She felt as if she were being squeezed in a giant vise.

In fact, Mirabella was absolutely certain she had never been so miserable in her life, and that things couldn’t get much worse than they were right now.

A few minutes later she knew how wrong she was.

Suddenly there was a soft pop, and she felt a flood of warmth and wetness, a simultaneous release of pressure. She gasped. No-she felt as if the air were being sucked from her lungs.

For the first time in her life her mind went completely blank, as if someone had pushed a button and instantly wiped her data banks clean of every rational thought and all common sense. In short, she panicked.

And then she hit the brakes.

The next thing she knew she was clinging uselessly to the steering wheel while the world outside her windows passed by in a dizzying white blur. There were horrifying lurches and teeth-jarring crunches and explosive popping sounds and things flying at her from all sides. Air bags! Thank God-she was engulfed-all but smothered-in air bags. Then there was stillness…and silence, except for a soft whimpering, which Mirabella realized with utter horror was coming from her.

She was no longer uncertain. Nor was she afraid. Now she was positively terrified.

She knew what had happened. The impossible. The unthinkable. Her water had broken. And it had shocked her so badly she’d done just what she knew she shouldn’t have, which was tromp on the brake, and as a result her car had skidded off the icy road and was now stuck in a snowbank, like those of all the other poor souls she’d passed and pitied. And now she and her baby were in big trouble. Desperate trouble.

Oh, God, she thought, what am I going to do?

Get ahold of yourself, Bella. Don’t panic.

All right, it was a little late for that last bit of advice. But she did need to get ahold of herself, stay calm, and think.

Okay. The first thing she had to do was get help. Please-somebody help me!

But she couldn’t just sit here and wait for someone to come along. There was no telling how long that might be, and she had to get to a hospital now. So there wasn’t any way around it; she was going to have to get out of the car and try to flag someone down. Someone… someone in one of the endless caravan of trucks that continued to growl slowly by, only a few yards and a whole world away.

Jimmy Joe had lost the New Mexico radio station, which was just as well. He had no business listening to the likes of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” when he had enough to do just to keep his rig on the road. The CB was really cracklin’, too, what with a few hundred drivers all stuck in the same place and all trying their best to relieve the tedium and tension.

“Eastbound, you got a four-wheeler on the side at mile marker…”

“Yeah, you got two more down here… ”

“Hell, you got ‘em everywhere! I quit countin’.”

“Federated, you okay down there?”

“Yeah…think I got me a little problem…

“Man, I mean, this is criminal. ”

“Can you believe an interstate in this condition?”

“Anybody got any idea what it’s like in Amarillo?”

“S’pose it’s like this all the way to Oklahoma?”

“Oh, man, I sure do need to?ee. ”

“Well, you better open up the door, then, ’cause you ain’t gonna find no bushes out here!”

“Uh…eastbound. on that four-wheeler on the side…looks like you got somebody out of the car, trying to wave somebody down. Ah, hell…looks like a lady-you believe that? What’s she doin’ out here, anyway?”

When he heard those words Jimmy Joe felt a jolt that went right through his insides. What’s she doing out here? Wasn’t that just what he’d said to himself the first time he’d set eyes on that crazy red-haired pregnant lady from California? The one he hadn’t been able to get his mind off since.

A four-wheeler on the side and a woman trying to flag somebody down-he sure didn’t like the sound of that. How many women could there be, out here all alone in conditions like this? He picked up his mike, thumbed the Talk button and growled, “Uh, what’s the twenty on that four-wheeler with the lady wavin’? Come on…”

He waited through some crackling and muttering, counting his own heartbeats, before the answer came back. “Uh…cain’t see the mile sticks… Make it ’bout a mile past the grain elevators at the Adrian exit. That’d be…what, twenny-two?”

Jimmy Joe watched the grain elevators at the Adrian exit crawl past his windows and swore out loud, which was something he didn’t do often, having had his mouth washed out with soap more than once in years past for that offense. He did so now because he knew it was a good twelve miles to the next exit, which at this pace was going to take him more than two hours, and that meant there wasn’t going to be any way he could get off the interstate. And there sure wasn’t any place to pull over to the side. So it looked like, if he was going to stop and pick the lady up, he was going to have to do it the hard way, which was to stop the whole blamed line of traffic.

Picking up his mike again, he thumbed it on and growled, “Breaker…this is the Big Blue Starr. I’m gonna be slowin’ down here in a little bit. Gon’ try an’ pick up the lady. Just don’t want anybody crawlin’ up my back door…”

From all up and down the line the responses and assurances came crackling back at him. And then, loud and clear, one that made his blood run cold:

“Oh, Lordy, looks like she’s got one in the oven, and from the looks of ‘er, she’s ’bout to pop, too. Somebody better get ’er, quick.”

“I’m on it,” Jimmy Joe said grimly into the mike as he checked his mirrors once more and then turned on his four-way flashers. “Hey, yellow truck-J.B. Hunt, that you on mah back door?”

The answer came back-a woman’s voice, calm and confident. “I got you, Big Blue. You got lotsa room…go for it. Ten-foh.”

“Thank ya kindly… ’Preciate it.” He hung up the mike as the word was being passed back up the line.

A strange calm settled over him, the way it did sometimes when his way, though difficult, seemed clear and certain. Outside his windows the white crept by, yard by yard, while inside the cab he counted off the seconds with his own heartbeat and the chatter on the radio faded into a tense and waiting silence. In his mirrors he could see the J.B. Hunt truck’s headlights dropping back. How much longer? he wondered. A mile past Adrian-that would make it ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Seemed like an hour already…

At last he saw her, a tiny figure standing hunched and forlorn beside her disabled car, too dispirited now to even wave. There was no mistaking the silver Lexus or that red hair, either, although the rest of her didn’t bear much resemblance to the Mirabella he’d come to know. Nothing very uppity about her now, that was for sure. Not a trace left of that know-it-all tilt to her chin. She looked cold and scared, plumb done in and all alone. “And what will the poor robin do then, poor thing?”

Carefully manipulating brakes and gears, he eased his truck to a gentle stop. Behind him, in an unbroken line that stretched clear back to New Mexico, one by one the other drivers did the same. Then, while a thousand rigs sat idling on the icy interstate, Jimmy Joe set his brake, opened the door and stepped out into the teeth of that freezing wind. It just about took his breath away.

He made his way around the front of the Kenworth, holding on to the bumper and slipping and sliding on the unevenly packed ice. When he got around to the other side, Mirabella was just struggling through the ridge of filthy black snow thrown off by all the truck tires. She was bent over, half crouching, with both hands held out to keep her balanced, and through the wind-whipped ribbons of her hair her eyes reached for him like prayers. In all that whiteness, the palest thing he could see was her face.

“Jimmy…Joe,” she gasped, clutching at him. “I have to…get to…” And now he could hear what he couldn’t before. She was sobbing.

“Easy…easy, now,” he said, soothing her the way he did J.J. when he’d had a bad dream. “It’s okay…I gotcha. You just hold on now… Here, put your arms around my neck.”

She did as she was told, her big, scared eyes never leaving his face, and somehow he got his arms under her and lifted her up like a baby. Praying that the Lord would guide his feet because he sure couldn’t see where to put ’em, he carried her through the rocklike frozen sludge to his truck, set her down on the first step while he got the door open, then braced himself and levered her up and into the cab.

“Stay there,” he told her-unnecessarily, for sure-as he slammed the door shut. Plowing back through the snow to the Lexus, he got the keys out of the ignition and her pocketbook from the front seat, then popped the trunk. After he’d locked up the car again, he grabbed what looked to him like an overnight case out of the trunk, slammed it shut on a mountain of Christmas presents and ran for his truck, thinking he might just about make it there before he plumb froze to death.

Back in the Kenworth’s nice warm cab, he found Mirabella still sitting in the passenger seat where he’d left her, shivering so hard he could just about hear her bones rattle. “Hey there, Marybell,” he said with forced cheerfulness as he heaved her luggage into the sleeper, “aren’t you s’posed to be in Florida?”

Her big, terrified eyes followed him. “I have…to get… to the…ha-ha-” But the shudders racked her and she couldn’t get the words out.

“Come on back here-let’s get you warm.” He took her by the shoulders and gently eased her around and then to her feet, guiding her like a sleepwalker.

He knew he didn’t have much time, that he had to get the rig rolling again, but he couldn’t very well leave her the way she was, either. Silently asking his brother and sister drivers for patience, he began to talk to her in an easy, soothing voice while he shucked off her worthless coat and sat her down on the bed, then knelt down and took off her ruined shoes. The thin, calf-high stockings she was wearing were soaking wet too, so he hiked up her pant legs and peeled them off. Then he opened up his locker and got out a pair of his nice thick winter socks.

“Here ya go,” he said gruffly. “Put these on-get those feet warmed up.” But she just looked at him.

After a moment it became clear to him that she wasn’t up to putting the socks on alone, so once again he skinned up her damp pant legs and did it himself. He couldn’t help but notice how cold her feet were, and how small and defenseless they looked. The socks came clear up to her knees. He told himself it wasn’t all that different from helping J.J. get dressed on those winter mornings when the boy didn’t feel like waking up and going out in the cold to catch the school bus. But as small as her feet were, they weren’t a little boy’s feet. They were a woman’s. And the way he felt when he touched them wasn’t anything at all like he felt when he was dressing J.J.

He got her eased down on the bed and the blankets tucked in nice and snug around her, then left her and slipped back into the driver’s seat. For a moment he sat and listened to the living, breathing, waiting silence coming over the CB radio. Then he picked up the mike, thumbed it on and drawled, “Uh…this potty stop was brought to you by the Big Blue Starr. Hope y’all enjoyed it… Ten-foh.”

He grinned as the radio erupted with whoops and hollers and crackling static, with everybody within earshot trying to talk at once. A few nearby drivers cut loose with blasts from their airhorns. Then he hung up his mike and put the Kenworth in gear, and slowly, slowly the line began to move again.

When he was pretty sure things were going along okay, nobody taking any unscheduled side trips into the median, he glanced around and called hopefully, “Hey, you doin’ okay back there?”

He thought he heard her whisper, “Fine…” But through the open door of the sleeper he could see that she was still curled up on her side with the blankets cuddled close, and that her eyes were closed. She was still shivering, too. He turned up the heat another notch and went back to concentrating on keeping his rig on the road, but worry was beginning to gnaw at his insides.

The channel 19 airwaves were pretty much back to the normal chatter, drivers bitching and moaning and looking out for one another, just generally doing what they could to keep their spirits up. Jimmy Joe listened to it while another couple of miles crawled by, then once again picked up his mike. He thought a minute, then thumbed it on.

“Uh…anybody seen any bears lately? Come on…”

That got him some guffaws and some rude remarks.

“Hell, there ain’t no bears out here. Ain’t no place for em to hide.”

“I ain’t seen a smoky since yesterday. Cain’t say’s I miss ’em.”

“Westbound…anybody out there?”

“Ain’t no bears gonna be movin’ westbound. They do, they ain’t gonna get back to Amarillo, not unless they can fly.”

“How come there’s never a bear around when you need ore?”

Jimmy Joe let a breath out, taking his time about it. It was pretty much what he’d expected, but he didn’t like it. After thinking about it another minute or two, he punched the mike button again. “Breaker…this is Big Blue Starr again. I’m gon’ be switchin’ channels here for a while, gon’ try and raise somebody over on nine. Uh…I could use a little help. Got a lady here in need of transportation right quick, that’s ’bout the…twenty-four-mile yardstick. If you got any bears in your neighborhood, I’d appreciate it if somebody’d flag ’em down. Ten-foh.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. When he had channel 9, the emergency channel, tuned in, he listened to nothing for a few seconds, then thumbed on his mike once more. He spoke in a low voice with only a trace of his trucker’s drawl.

“Mayday… Mayday… This is Blue Starr Transport. I’m eastbound on 1-40, about three miles east of Adrian…got an emergency situation here. Repeat-this is an emergency. Come back…” He listened hopefully, then tried once more. “Mayday, Mayday…anybody out there listenin’?”

There was only silence.

“Jimmy Joe?”

Oh, Lord. He held the mike against his thumping heart while he cleared his throat, then sang out, “Well, g‘mornin’, sunshine. You feelin’ better?”

She crept in between the seats, wrapped like an Indian in the comforter from the bed-an old quilt he’d borrowed from his mama’s house-and eased herself into the passenger seat. He knew he ought to tell her to fasten her seat belt, but a quick look over at her, the way she was holding herself, made him think…maybe not.

“Jimmy Joe…” She took a deep breath and pulled herself up straighter, and he could see that she was trying hard to recover some of the dignity she’d lost back there in the snowbank. “I think you should know… My, uh, my water broke.”

Oh, Lord, he thought. Lord, no.

But she took another breath, shakier than the first, and went on with it like somebody scared silly but determined to make a full confession. “Back there. It…startled me. That’s why I lost control of my car.” Her voice, which had started off calm and strong, got gradually fainter until she finished in a whisper, “I have to get…to a hospital. I think I’m going to have my baby…now.”