Lee Martin - Late One Night

“I’ll sit right here with you,” Missy said. “I won’t leave you alone. Did you ride in the ambulance with Wayne?”

Lois nodded.

“Then I’ll wait right here, and when it’s time, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“You’ve always been good to me, Missy. And you were good to Della, too.” Lois pressed her finger to her lips, shushing herself. “Oh, just listen to me going on about myself. Shame on me. Is it one of your own that’s brought you here? Don’t tell me something happened to Pat?”

“No, it’s not Pat.” Missy hesitated, not sure whether what she was about to say would upset Lois. “It’s Brandi. She fainted.”

“And you were with her?”

Missy nodded. “At the high school. She was talking to Angel.”

“About Ronnie?”

“She was about to tell the story that Ronnie told her just before Biggs arrested him. Then she passed out. Angel’s back there with her now.”

Lois crooked her neck to peek around Missy at the double doors. “My poor grandbaby. She’s been through a world of hurt. I hope there’s no more on down the road for her, but it looks like Ronnie’s going to have something to answer for come the judgment.”

_________

Biggs was waiting in the driveway when Shooter and Captain got home. His patrol car was idling, a cloud of steam roiling out from the tailpipe.

Shooter pulled alongside him and turned off the truck. “Go on in the house,” he said to Captain. “Get out of your school clothes. Go on.”

By this time, it was close to five o’clock. Only a few minutes of daylight left. Shooter got out of the truck and watched Captain hurry by the patrol car and on up to the front door. He had a key, and he used it to let himself in.

A pair of Canada geese flew overhead, honking as they came to settle in the barren cornfield that ran along the side of the house toward the woods. Shooter knew that those geese mated for life and they were protective of each other. If one was hurt or sick, the other would guard it, not leaving until the mate got well or else died. It was a beautiful thing, Shooter thought. A very beautiful thing.

Biggs was out of his patrol car, unfolding to his full height. Shooter said, “I thought you were coming after suppertime.”

“This can’t wait.” Biggs hunched his shoulders against the cold. “I need to get your boy’s story right now.”

He slammed the patrol car door shut, the noise echoing across the fallow fields. The car door startled the Canada geese, and they lifted into the air, the gander trumpeting the alarm call. Soon they were flying over the woods.

Shooter watched them go. He stood there in the open country, his head tilted up to the sky, and he thought how easy it must be for God to look down and see everything there was to see.

“Wild geese,” Shooter said. “Just looking out for each other. Just trying to get by.”

_________

The doctors found out that Brandi had passed out because her blood pressure was high.

“They say I’ve got toxemia,” she said to Angel, who had come to sit beside her gurney while she waited to see if she’d be discharged or admitted.

“What’s that?” Angel asked.

“Sometimes pregnancy causes the mother’s blood pressure to go up. Pregnancy-induced hypertension. It can happen with first-time moms like me.”

“Will the baby be okay?”

Brandi closed her eyes a moment as she said a silent prayer. Then she explained to Angel how the placenta might not get enough blood and how if that happened the baby wouldn’t get enough oxygen and food and would have a low birth weight.

“But that might not happen,” she said. “Now that we know what’s what, there are things I can do to make sure I deliver a healthy baby.”

Those things turned out to be eating less salt, drinking eight glasses of water a day, and bed rest. The doctor told her she could go home, but he wanted her in bed most of the time, lying on her left side to take the weight of the baby off her major blood vessels.

“Who’s going to take care of things around the house?” Brandi said after she’d listened to the doctor and tried to imagine everything she’d have to do. “Who’ll take care of me?” she said, not knowing whether Ronnie would be back anytime soon, if ever, and there were the girls living with Missy and Pat. Brandi closed her eyes and thought about what might happen with Ronnie, wondered whether anyone would ever believe the story he’d told her. Then she said, “My family all lives in California. I don’t want to go all the way out there.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to the baby,” Angel said. Then a nurse came in to take out Brandi’s IV and Angel stepped out through the curtain so she’d be out of the nurse’s way and so she’d have a chance to find Missy to tell her she was worried about what was going to happen to Brandi.

Shooter and Biggs went into the house, and to Shooter’s dismay, Captain was just standing there, as if he’d been watching out the window, still in his school clothes. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. That ratty-assed bomber’s jacket — Shooter knew he should have thrown it out, but it was one of the last gifts Merlene had given Captain, and Shooter couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. But now here was Biggs, eager for Captain’s story.

“You ought to get out of those school clothes,” Shooter said. He glanced at Biggs and lifted his eyebrows. “You know how boys are. Always ruining their good things. Go on and change, Wesley. We’ll wait.”

Captain headed toward the hallway, his head down, but as he tried to get past Biggs, Biggs reached out and grabbed him by his coat sleeve.

“This won’t take long,” he said. “I need to ask some questions and then get back to the courthouse.” He said to Shooter, “You understand.”

“Well, at least let the boy take off his coat.”

Biggs let go of Captain’s sleeve and said, “Sure. No harm in that. Go on, son. Make yourself comfortable.”

Captain lifted his head and found Shooter’s gaze upon him. Captain opened his eyes wide, asking his father what he should do, and Shooter gave him an almost imperceptible nod, but it was enough to tell Captain to go ahead and take off his coat. He slipped his arms out of the sleeves and then folded the jacket across his arm, bunched it up into a wad that he hugged to his stomach.

“You got a belly ache?” Biggs asked him.

Captain shook his head no, and then he sat down on the couch, the coat still clutched to him.

“Wesley.” Shooter sat down beside him and put a hand on his back. “Tell the sheriff what you saw the night Della’s trailer burned. That’s what he’s come to hear.”

At the courthouse, the deputy said to Ronnie, “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

“Looks like what you all want it to look like,” said Ronnie.

“Bought a can of gasoline the morning of the day the trailer burned and another can that night. We found that can in Brandi’s shed, almost a gallon still in it, and she said you used it all up in her car that morning. Looks to me like you used that can again later.” The deputy listed all the evidence that seemed to be adding up to Ronnie’s guilt. “Footprints that match yours found behind the trailer. A T-shirt smelling of gas. Shooter Rowe’s story. And now this? Ronnie, do you know what’ll happen if a jury finds you guilty?”

“Lock me up, I expect.”

The deputy nodded. “For a good long while. Forever, if the State’s Attorney can prove premeditation. And, Ronnie, if you ask me, that won’t be hard to do. I doubt you’ll ever see the outside again.”

It was then that the deputy noticed the first sign of emotion from Ronnie. His lip quivered, and his eyes got wet, and he tipped his head back, his nostrils flaring, as if he were fighting as hard as he could to keep whatever he’d held secret all those weeks balled up inside him.