Shooting Starr

Chapter 7

She couldn’t give in to it. Not now. Not here.

She tightened her lips and muttered, “You don’t have to do this.” There was no answer. She could feel his chest and belly bunch and tighten, hear his breathing deepen as he took the stairs at a quick and steady pace. “You’re going to kill yourself,” she said grimly, breathing almost as hard as he was.

He let go a huff of laughter that sounded faintly wounded. “You don’t have a whole lotta faith in me, do you?”

“I don’t mean to insult you, but it’s not like you’re an athlete or something. You drive a truck.”

And yet, all along her side was the unmistakable resilience of firm masculine muscle, and somewhere in the neighborhood of her bottom she could feel the flat, rigid plane of a belly that carried not even a hint of a trucker’s gut. An image rose in her memory…a long, lean form pacing across the barren concrete apron of an abandoned gas station. And the way he’d faced her, the angry-cat tension in him-a hissing, spitting fury one blink away from drawing blood.

Not too lean, though; his arms felt rock solid and steel strong. And-how could she have forgotten?-she remembered the way he’d overpowered her and so easily taken her gun away.

Plus, they’d reached the top of the stairs, and he hadn’t dropped her or keeled over yet.

“I keep in shape,” he muttered. She heard and felt the impact of his foot against a door. Her head reeled as he twisted his body and swung her around to carry her through it.

Before her head had stopped spinning, she heard a faint grunt and felt the bump of a mattress under her bottom…and before she was in any way ready for it, a fearsome emptiness all around her. Panic caught her up like a midsummer Iowa dust devil, taking her breath away. Strange that she should be so terrified at the thought of being left alone when only moments ago she’d thought that was what she wanted most in the world.

“Calvin-” she blurted out, and heard a startled grunt in response. She rushed on, desperate to keep him there if only for a moment longer. “I heard your mother call you that. Okay, so now I know what the C stands for. What about the J?”

“James.” It was gruff and short, but at least he hadn’t withdrawn from her any further. Listening hard, she heard the whisper of a reluctant exhalation. “After my dad. The Calvin comes from my grandaddy-on my momma’s side.”

“Calvin…” Caitlyn murmured it again, drawing it out slowly to divert his attention away from her momentary lapse of poise. The absurd attack of panic was ebbing. Now that she could be reasonably certain she wasn’t going to be abandoned in the next second or two, she felt thoroughly ashamed of her neediness.

I’m only blind, after all, she scolded herself. I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman. I am not helpless. I just can’t see.

C.J. was glad she hadn’t been able to see him wince. His annoyance with her had evaporated. He wasn’t sure where it had come from and was glad to let it go. Ashamed now of caring about which name she chose to call him, he stood looking down at her, thinking how small and hunched she looked-like a sick canary with those feathery tufts of blond hair sticking up out of the bandages around her head. Wishing he knew what to do for her. Wondering if he should go. Wanting to stay.

“I’d rather you didn’t call me that,” he said. “Momma’s about the only one still calls me Calvin.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Her eyes lifted, searching for him, but only made it as high as his chest. He could feel their touch there, a patch of prickly warmth as if he’d rubbed it with that salve his high school football coach used to use for sore muscles. “I loved that comic strip-what was it called?-the one with the little boy and his make-believe tiger?”

He thought about sitting down beside her on the bed, then decided he’d better not, not with sensory memories of the weight and shape and warmth of her body still burned into his muscles, nerves and sinews. He shifted his weight awkwardly instead. “Yeah, I did, too-used to doodle little cartoon pictures on everything, kind of like my signature, I guess.”

“So?”

“So…I don’t know. What was a pretty cool name when I was a little kid didn’t seem so cool for a grown man.”

She tilted her head to one side while she considered that. While he considered what it was about her and this conversation that was making him feel less like a grown man than he had in years. “So, why didn’t you just shorten it to Cal?”

“I did, for a while in high school. I think I picked up the idea for the C.J. from my brother Jimmy Joe-he’d taken to calling his boy J.J., and well, you know…I thought it was-”

“Cool?”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “Yeah.”

She smiled at him-or at his chest, rather-and he smiled back. And then it came to him that for the first time in his life he was in a situation with a woman where his smile and his dimples weren’t going to be of any advantage to him.

Before he had time to mull that over in his mind, he noticed that Caitlyn was rubbing her hands back and forth over the bedspread she was sitting on, sort of stroking the delicate slipperiness of it, feeling it with her fingers in a way that made his mouth go dry. Her head was tilted to one side and there was an expression on her face he couldn’t read.

“Did I hear you say this room used to be yours?”

Then he realized what the look on her face was. She was teasing him. Unexpected delight gathered in his chest like bubbles in a glass of soda pop.

“Yeah,” he said, letting his grin leak into his voice, “but that was a while ago. The decor now is all Sammi June’s-that’s Jess’s daughter-”

“You told me about her. You said she’s away-in college?”

“That’s right.” C.J. snorted. “Here and I thought you were asleep when I was telling you that.”

There was a pause while he watched a smile hover over her lips, the way he’d once watched, with breath suspended, a butterfly light on his finger. Then, hushed and husky, she asked, “Tell me the truth. Is it pink?”

In the same kind of voice, teetering on the edge of laughter, he intoned, “Oh, yeah.”

“Rosebuds?” It was a horrified whisper.

“Nope. Butterflies-little bitty yellow ones.”

“I had tulips.” She sighed, and her smile took on a wistful quality that made her seem even younger than she was. “Pink ones-two different shades, hot and baby-with green leaves.”

He didn’t know whether it was the smile or the silvery sheen that had come into her eyes, but all at once C.J. had a tightness in his throat and a tingling behind his eyes and nose. This, naturally, prompted the typically masculine urge to get the hell out of there before he did anything to disgrace himself. He was trying to think how to do that without coming across as a heel or a craven coward when Jess came in. He almost kissed her, he was so relieved.

“I brought up your things,” Jess said as she set the small sports bag she’d brought with her on the foot of the bed.

“Can’t be much.” Caitlyn was groping for the bag with one hand. “The clothes I was wearing, um, before, I guess? They gave me the basic necessities when I was in jail, and Mom brought me some things in the hospital, but-” She stopped, and C.J. saw her throat move as she swallowed. Her eyes darted back and forth, and there was a desperate look in them now, as if, he thought, they were trying to find a way out of a trap.

“Well, I, uh, guess I’ll leave you two to figure things out,” he muttered, backing up until he bumped into the bedroom door, which he grabbed on to as if it was the only oar in a sinking rowboat. “I’m gonna, uh, I’ll just…okay, well, I’ll be down in the kitchen if you need me.”

If you need me?

As he made his escape Jess was saying to Caitlyn, “Don’t you worry about a thing, I’m sure we can find you anything you need. You’re welcome to borrow Sammi June’s clothes-she isn’t gonna mind a bit. You look to be pretty near the same size.”

His sister had the situation well in hand, it appeared. What he couldn’t figure out was why he didn’t feel happier about things turning out the way he’d planned. Maybe it was selfish, but he hadn’t planned on and didn’t much like feeling useless.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and found his mother standing by the stove stirring a big pot of butter beans. She looked around when she saw him, and her face lit up the way it always did when she set eyes on someone she cared about, even if it hadn’t been but a few minutes since she’d seen them last. Unless she happened to be displeased with that particular person at that particular moment, of course. That was the great thing about Momma, C.J. thought-she never left you in any doubt as to what her feelings were.

“Sit down, son,” she ordered as she put down the spoon and picked up a potholder, and C.J. did so with no arguments. His stomach had begun to growl with his first whiff of that roast chicken, and he watched hungrily as his mother took a plate out of the oven that was already piled high with chicken and mashed potatoes and what looked like fried okra. She added a spoonful of beans and then ladled some gravy over the mashed potatoes and set the plate in front of him.

Mumbling, “Thanks, Momma, looks good,” he picked up his fork and dug in. The first bite tasted so good he caught himself making little humming, crooning noises. His mother chuckled. “Granny Calhoun used to say you know the food’s good when you start singin’ to it.”

He grinned and took a big slug of milk, then said, “Guess I was hungrier than I thought I was.” He was thinking about Caitlyn, up there in the dark, wondering if maybe she was hungrier than she’d thought she was, too. He thought he might take her up a plate, soon as he was finished…

While his mother was getting herself a glass out of the cupboard and pouring it full of buttermilk, he found himself looking around the kitchen, taking in the usual clutter of lists and notes stuck on the door of the fridge with magnets, the pencil and ink marks on the pantry door frame where everybody’s height had been measured since long before C.J. was born, the sweet potato plant in a macramé sling left over from the seventies hanging over the sink and the row of late tomatoes ripening on the windowsill, the red teakettle on the back burner of the stove and the drainer that was never empty of dishes. He’d seen all those things so many times without thinking much about how they might look to a stranger, caring only about the warm fuzzy feelings they brought into his heart.

Now, though, everything looked and felt different to him. Instead of the familiar warmth there was a strange sweet sadness inside him because of one particular stranger upstairs who couldn’t see any of it, and he wondered why he regretted that so much. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself being in that room and not able to see it. He thought how he’d describe it for somebody blind…

“You tired, son?” His mother’s voice was gentle.

He shrugged away the sweet sad thoughts and didn’t try to explain. He looked down at his plate, saw it was empty and pushed it away. Across the round oak table from him his mother sat quietly watching him and sipping at her glass of buttermilk. She’d take buttermilk, he remembered, when her stomach needed settling down-during stressful times, mostly. He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly and wondered why it was so hard to tell somebody you love a whole lot how much you appreciated what they were doing for you.

“Momma,” he finally said, “about Caitlyn-” Then he picked up his milk glass and set it back down and frowned at it. “I really do appreciate you doin’ this. I mean-”

His mother waved a hand the way she might’ve batted at a fly and made a sound he couldn’t have spelled if he’d tried, then added, “Lord knows it isn’t the first time I’ve taken in something or someone you kids figured needed watching out for.”

“Yeah,” C.J. said, “but you never had to deal with somebody blind before.”

“Phoo. Granny Calhoun was mostly blind, there at the end.”

“Granny was old, didn’t do much but sit in her rocker. Caitlyn is-”

He broke it off, and his mother prompted, “Caitlyn is…?”

But he didn’t know what it was he wanted to say, so he snapped, “Well, she sure ain’t old.”

He waited for her to scold him for saying ain’t, but she just looked at him and after a while she set down her buttermilk glass and said, “I know who she is, son. I’ve seen the news, read the papers. I know she’s President Brown’s niece. I know she’s the one you told me about that hijacked you last spring.”

C.J. scowled at the glass he was turning round and round on the placemat in front of him and cleared his throat a couple of times. “So,” he finally said, “if you know all about her, how come you’re still willing to take her in?

His mother took a sip of buttermilk. “I said I know who she is. Didn’t say I knew all about her. The question is, do you?”

He lifted his eyes and studied her face long and hard, but for once in his life he couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say. After a minute or two she rose, picked up her glass and carried it to the sink. She took a plate out of the cupboard and picked up a pie server, and while she was cutting him a big slice of squash pie and topping it with a spoonful of whipped cream, she said with her back to him, “You know the fact she’s kin to the president doesn’t carry much weight with me. Any more than the fact that she hijacked you and your rig at the point of a gun.” She whipped around to face him and pointed at him with the pie server, and her look was the one that could put the fear of God in a guilty man’s heart. “Not that I approve of what she did, mind you. You told me she said she did it because she believed she didn’t have any other choice, that she feared for that woman and her little girl’s lives. Calvin James, tell me the truth, now. Do you believe her?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I didn’t then, but I do now. That’s why-”

She shook her head, stopping him there. “The newspeople can’t seem to make up their minds whether she’s a hero for refusing to tell the judge what she did with the child and going to jail to protect her, or a misguided do-gooder keeping a little girl from her daddy. I want to know what you believe.”

He leaned back in his chair and gazed at his mother with narrowed and burning eyes. He thought he knew, now, what she was angling for. The one thing that really counted in Betty Starr’s estimation of a person’s worthiness. “Momma,” he said with gravel in his voice, “what you’re wantin’ to know is, what’s in her heart. Is she a good person? Does she have a good heart…?”

“Well, does she?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I believe she does.”

“Well, then.” She plunked the pie down in front of him and turned back to the sink. “That’s good enough for me.”

C.J. let his breath out like a steam valve letting go. “It’s just real important nobody knows about her being here.”

His mother faced him again, leaning against the sink and smiling wryly. “That’s going to be a little bit difficult, isn’t it? The way people come and go around here-your brothers and sisters, the grandkids-it’s like Grand Central Station.” Said his momma, who’d never been north of the state of Virginia in her life. “We can’t exactly keep a beautiful young woman hidden away in the attic, like one of those romantic suspense novels.”

C.J. grinned, thinking that his mother could surprise him now and then. “It’s not going to be for all that long, Momma. Just a few days…a couple of weeks…just while she gets her feet under her and some strength back.” And her eyesight?

And, he thought, while the FBI guys are working out a plan to nail Vasily.

“Anyway, with Sammi June and J.J. just startin’ a new semester of college, they’re not going to be getting much time off until Thanksgiving break, probably, and Jimmy Joe and Mirabella off in Florida with the little kids for two weeks, that takes care of the closest ones. Jake and Eve are already in on it, and Charly and Troy-”

“‘In on it…’ Just what is it we’re all ‘in on,’ Calvin James? Who are we hiding her away from? They’ve been saying on the news they think it was somebody with a grudge against the local authorities up there in South Carolina that fired those shots, and it was just bad luck those poor women got in the way.” His mother paused while her eyes took on a narrow, considering look. “But that’s not true, is it? You and Jake-and that means the FBI-think it was that billionaire, the little girl’s father. Isn’t that right? You think he had his wife killed and that he’s going to come after Caitlyn. That’s why all the secrecy. Oh, my lands…” She leaned against the sink, fanning herself.

Ashamed of himself for all the trouble he was dumping in her lap, C.J. rubbed his eyes and said unhappily, “Momma, I wish I could tell you more, but I promised Jake-”

She made that swatting motion again. “We’ll handle things as they come, don’t worry about that.” She leveled The Look at him again, the one he was sure could see inside his brain. “What I want to know is, what’s all this got to do with you?”

He shifted in his chair and squinted guiltily at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t just offer up your family’s home to shelter a notorious stranger without good reason.”

C.J. snorted. “I’d think it was pretty obvious why-”

“And by good reason I don’t mean because there’s somebody maybe trying to shoot her. The FBI is more than capable of stashing away people where nobody, not even billionaires, can find them, and I’m sure they’d’ve done just fine without your help.” Her eyes narrowed even more. “But you didn’t want that, did you? You wanted that girl where you could keep an eye on her-you personally.” After a little pause to let him squirm some more, she asked softly, “So what is it about her, Calvin James? What does this girl mean to you?”

He knew from sad experience it wasn’t going to do him any good to lie, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hem and haw and try and beat around the bush as long as possible. He stretched back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face and finally settled on “It’s complicated, Ma.”

Typically she came to her own conclusion, and as usual, managed to hit the nail on the head without any help from him. “You feel responsible for her. For what happened to her.”

He agreed defensively, “Well, yeah, I do. People keep telling me I shouldn’t, but they’re wrong.” He gave his mother a hard, fierce look, but inside his head he was seeing himself standing in the yellow glare of a yard lamp with the racket of a springtime night all around him, and Caitlyn’s silvery eyes pleading with him. “The simple fact is, she asked me to do something for her and I said no. Instead, I turned her in to the police. And I don’t care how right-minded it seemed at the time, if I hadn’t done that, none of what happened would have happened. A woman wouldn’t be dead, she wouldn’t be-”

“Son-” Gentle now, his mother pulled out the chair closest to him and sat in it. “You can’t go back and undo it. No matter what you do, you can’t unfire that gun.” She reached to touch his hand, but he wasn’t in a mood to be comforted.

“No, I can’t.” He snatched his hand away and felt wretched and mean for doing it. “But I intend to do what I can to make it up to her. Set things right.”

“How are you going to do that? You can’t give her back her eyesight.”

He was too angry with her to answer. Because, of course, he knew she was right.

She studied him for a while in a sad, faintly amused way that irritated him even more, then said softly, “I expect by making it up to her you mean you’d like to do something big enough and good enough to cancel out the wrong you think you’ve done her. What you want is to be her hero.”

He snorted. “I’m no hero.” No, his inner self said, but you want to be. You want to be a superhero and make the world turn the wrong way around, make time turn backward and give you another chance to save the woman you…

“Son, you’re not a superhero,” his mother said, in the uncanny way she sometimes had of seeing inside his mind. She rose up out of her chair and snatched his empty plate and milk glass out from under him, then stabbed at him with a spare finger. “You just remember that, when this-this Vasily fellow comes looking for that girl of yours, you hear me, Calvin James? Your body won’t stop bullets.”

Caitlyn woke to her perpetual darkness and, wide-eyed and listening, sought to understand what it was about this particular morning that was so different from other mornings in her recent past. It came to her at last. It’s so quiet.

It came to her, too, that quiet was very different from silence. As she’d discovered during her time in the hospital, silence spoke with many languages; silences must be deciphered, interpreted, understood. Quiet, on the other hand, was…peace.

One thing hospitals and jails had in common was that they are never quiet. It occurred to her that this was the first time in many, many weeks that she’d had a chance to think…really think about everything that had happened and where she was now and what the future might hold, to think without shock and pain and fear, without the shadowy specter of Panic lurking like a stalker just beyond the edges of her mind’s eye.

The first thing she thought about was what a wonderful relief it was to wake up this morning and not feel terrified. It was somewhat of a mystery to her why that should be so; she was still definitely blind, still almost certainly in danger, still very much alone among strangers, just as she’d been yesterday.

Unable to solve that puzzle, she put it aside and moved on to the second thing that was missing from her life this morning: pain. Okay, not completely missing; there was enough tenderness under the bandages that still encased quite a large part of her head to make her wince and gasp when she touched it with exploring fingers. But the pounding, nausea-inducing headache that had been her constant companion in the days following the shooting had faded to a hum in the background of her mind.

Having determined that much, her fingers moved on, lightly now, tracing the bandages…then her eyebrows…her nose…cheekbones…lips. Exploring the shape of her own face. How odd, she thought, that I’ve never done this before. What must I look like? She’d been swollen and bruised. Was she still? Were her eyes still bruised? And my hair! Did they shave my head? Do I have any left? Gingerly she felt the top of her head, breathed a long sigh when she felt the familiar short, slippery tufts. Badly in need of washing, she was sure, but there.

She’d never been vain, but now she would have given anything for the chance to look in a mirror and see her own reflection looking back at her. She’d never thought before how vulnerable it made a person, not to be able to check out her own appearance before presenting herself to the world. How awful not to be able to tell if she had a smudge of dirt on her face, spinach in her teeth, food spilled down her front, clothes that didn’t match. A rooster tail in her hair!

She threw back the covers. Trembly, she sat on the edge of the bed and explored her body as she had her face. Arms…shoulders…collarbones…breasts. What was she wearing? Oh, yes-cotton bikinis and a camisole top that Jess had said belonged to her daughter, Sammi June. Jess had told her they were pink-Sammi June had evidently been very fond of pink-with a little edging of lace. Yes, she could feel that and also three tiny buttons on the front of the camisole near the top. She felt bones in unexpected places; she’d lost weight. Small wonder…

She stood up carefully, feeling brave and very tall in her personal darkness. She put out her hands and the left one brushed something-a lampshade. Yes-on the nightstand! And there were all the little plastic bottles with her medications Jess had put there for her the night before. A glass of water.

Feeling her way, she moved clockwise around the room, identifying the door to the hallway, then a tall dresser, and another door, this one obviously a closet. Then a rocking chair…oops, and a small desk. Then…a window. She explored it with her fingers and discovered that it was very much like the one in her room in her parents’ house in Sioux City-an old-fashioned wooden sash, double-hung, with a locking lever. She moved the lever and tried to open the window. It slid up easily-evidently the former occupant of the room had liked fresh air, too. It rushed in, cool and light across her face, and she gave a little sobbing gasp of joy. Prickles filled her nose and eyes, then tears; she hadn’t expected she would ever feel joy again.

Sinking to her knees, she rested her arms on the windowsill, and then her chin. How do I tell, she wondered wistfully, if it’s morning or night?

But wait-it was the bright and busy twitter of birds she heard, not the ratchety chorus of frogs and insects that filled Southern nights. Daytime, then. As if in confirmation, she heard the creak and bang of a screen door, and someone’s-Jess’s-voice talking to the dogs. “Hey, Bubba… Hey, Blondie. Yes…good girl…down now. Okay…yes…aren’t you a good ol’ boy…” And the eager woofs and grunts and whines they made in reply.

How she longed to be out there, too! Could she? Why not? But…by myself? Do I dare?

Yes, she told herself firmly. I do. I must.

Yes…because the one thing in the world she feared more than being blind was being dependent. I won’t, she thought, as memories of last night’s attack of panic rose like a nightmare specter to taunt her. I can’t. She closed her eyes and felt again the warm and solid strength of C.J.’s arms around her…how good they’d felt…the chill of loneliness when he’d left her. She shuddered. Never. I’d rather be dead.

Using the windowsill for leverage, she pulled herself up and methodically continued her circumnavigation of the room. Finding herself back at the foot of the bed, she discovered the pair of sweats she’d taken off last night and put them on, being careful to get the backs and fronts right. Tags to the back! She made the bed, taking quite a long time at it and stumbling over her sandals in the process. When she had it smoothed to her liking, she sat on the slippery bedspread and put on her sandals, then rose, lightheaded and triumphant. So far so good.

What I need, she thought, is the bathroom and some food. In that order. Jess had shown her last night where the bathroom was. Her toothbrush awaited her there, at position “two o’clock.” She’d smiled when Jess said that. And there was soap and a washcloth-nine o’ clock-and warm water and soft towels. How good it would feel to brush her teeth, wash her face…

Her stomach growled. Lord, she was hungry!

Yes! You’re alive! Good morning, Caitlyn Brown…and welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.