A Forever Thing (19 page)

Fancy remembered lines from the old movie The Land Before
Time. “Three-horns don’t play with long-necks.”

Tina folded her arms across her chest. “Go to bed, Tina.”

Fancy laughed with her at the new game.

“What are you two talking about?” Theron asked, clearly mystified.

“It’s a kids’ movie about dinosaurs. One dinosaur is Little Foot,
and one is Sarah. One is Petri, and one is always saying, `yes, yes,
yes.’ It must be one of her favorite movies,” Fancy explained.

“I’m calling my ex-mother-in-law as soon as we get home.
Maybe she can shed some light on the whole situation.”

“It might be a good idea. Where’s she from?”

“Pampa.”

“Panhandle, huh?”

“That’s right. I grew up in Shamrock. Maria, in Pampa. She
came to work at the bank in Shamrock. Had a friend who helped get
her the job, but her folks have lived in Pampa for years. I just assumed that’s where she went back to after the divorce,” Theron said.

“Pie or cake?” Fancy asked as she carried the desserts to the
table.

“Both. It’s a holiday,” he said.

Tina finished her cake, went to the bathroom with Fancy’s help,
and curled up on the sofa for a nap.

“Right now I miss that remote control,” Theron said.

That caused Fancy to think about what she missed. “I’m going
out for a walk. I’ll be back after a while.”

“Cabin fever or kid fever?”

She put on his coat over her T-shirt and found gloves in the
pockets. “Cabin. Tina is precious.”

“Don’t stay out too long. Those tennis shoes won’t keep your
feet from freezing,” he said.

She nodded and opened the door to a blast of still-icy wind and
looked up at a sky the color of fog. Snapping twigs could still be
heard across the pastures. Every so often a big branch had all the
weight it could endure, and the break was louder than a shotgun
blast.

She walked around the house to the back and down a path toward an old barn. The ground was slippery, but she quickly got her
bearings on how to travel on ice without falling. A black cat darted
out of the barn when she started inside to inspect it. She jumped
and remembered the black cat that had started her downhill slide
into bad luck. The barn was as cold as the outside even if it was
free of ice. Loose hay was strewn around the floor. A rat scampered across a rafter, but she didn’t see anything else. She started
to climb the ladder to the loft, but the idea of more rats kept her on
the floor.

She picked up a hoe handle to use for a walking stick and meandered on down the pathway toward the trees in the distance. It
wasn’t anything like walking on the beach, barefoot in the sand
and listening to the surf, but it wasn’t all that bad. The ice made everything glitter and glow. She could imagine the shine it would
have if sun rays were bouncing off it.

A single bright red cardinal lit up the black-and-white world in
front of her. It hopped around on the ice, flew up to land on an icecovered twig, and sang as if the day were bright and beautiful. She
guessed the bird only had one song and used it no matter what the
circumstances.

Fancy gave herself a stern lecture. She had many things to be
thankful for that day. She was alive and had friends and family
who loved and needed her. It didn’t matter if it was raining or
sunny, they didn’t change their attitude toward her, so what right
did she have to carry around a chip on her shoulder?

The pathway narrowed in and around the mesquite trees. She continued to walk, sometimes climbing up a slight incline, sometimes
nearly falling on her rear end when the slope went downward. By the
time she reached the edge of a creek or river, she was tired. She used
her hoe handle to chip away enough ice from a frozen log to sit down
to rest.

A squirrel scooted across the ground not two feet from her. A
raccoon lumbered down to the water and pawed at the edge. She
felt sorry for the old boy. Water all around him on everything, and
yet he couldn’t find a drop to drink. Two deer walked up behind her
with their heads hung low. Lucky critters; it was too cold and the
roads too slippery for the hunters to be out with their guns that day.

The cold began to seep into her bones. It was time to make her
way back to the cabin before she really did have a problem with
frostbitten toes. She stood up, took one step forward, and her numb
feet flew out from under her as if they had a mind of their own. She
could have been watching the whole thing on an old black-andwhite television show running in slow motion. She threw her hands
out to break the fall, but she wasn’t going forward. The back of her
head hit the log she’d been sitting on, and for a split second it hurt
like the devil. Then everything slowly faded to black.

Theron picked up a book and stretched out on a bunk. His eyes
grew heavy, and he dozed until Tina crawled in beside him and
wiggled around until she was in the crook of his arm. They slept that way until he awoke with his arm asleep and her eyes prying
holes in his face.

“Did you have a good nap?” he asked.

Her eyes were huge, and she shook her head from side to side.

“Why not?”

“Scary things.”

“What scary things?” Theron asked.

“Monsters.”

“I’ll chase those scary monsters out of here. They won’t live in
our house,” he said.

“Promise?”

“I promise. No more monsters.”

“Where’s Fanny?” she asked.

“She went for a walk. She’ll be back soon, though”

She slid out of his embrace and set about getting her boots on.
“I want to go”

“We’ll go out in the yard and feed the birds, then come back
inside and watch them from the window. Your clothing isn’t warm
enough to be out long, and Fancy wore my coat,” he said.

“Okay,” Tina agreed.

He looked at the clock before they walked out the door. It was
after three, and Fancy had left just before one. The back of his neck
prickled with fear. He had no coat. Tina’s clothing wasn’t warm
enough for a hike. But they had to find Fancy. He checked the porch
to see if she’d just stepped out for a breath of air while they slept, but
she wasn’t there.

“Tina, we’re going to go find Fancy. We’ll take the dishpan sled
and wrap you in a blanket.” He talked as he put both pair of sweat
pants on her and an extra pair of socks.

He remembered his father’s lucky hunting jacket in the bathroom closet and tugged it on over two extra shirts, and he picked
up another blanket in case Fancy was sitting somewhere with her
feet frozen to the ground. He grumbled as he settled Tina into the
dishpan and wrapped the blanket firmly around her. She giggled
and squealed at the idea of another ride in the homemade sled.

The barn caught his eye, and he hoped he would find Fancy
settled in a corner playing with a nest of kittens, so he headed in that direction. When he got there, he yelled several times, but there
was no answer.

On his way out he noticed the round holes poked every two to
three feet in the ice. He stopped and studied them. No animal he
knew made a track like that, but a walking stick could.

“Good girl,” he mumbled as he followed the tracks.

“Tina’s a good girl?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Theron said, but his heart wasn’t in the joke.

“Look, Daddy. Red bird.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Tina quipped.

The tracks led him to and through a copse of mesquite trees so
thick, he could barely drag the sled among them. According to the
tracks, Fancy was headed for the river at the back side of the property, and that was not a good sign. Right then he didn’t care that he
couldn’t hide his feelings; he just wanted her to be safe and back
inside the warm cabin. The holes stopped on the side of a logand Fancy was lying in a frozen pool of blood on the other side.

“Fancy, can you hear me?” he called out.

No response.

He stretched the blanket out on the ground, gently picked her up,
and laid her in the middle of it. Then he tied a knot in both ends,
leaving her inside the cocoon, hoping he could carry her over his
shoulder. He quickly saw that that plan wasn’t sound. What if he
injured her further?

“Fanny asleep?” Tina asked.

“Yes, she is, and we have to get her back to the house. Will you
sleep with her?”

Tina nodded.

“Okay, I’m going to put you in the blanket and pull you both
back to the cabin. You won’t be afraid, will you?” Fancy was still
breathing, so the important thing was to get her back to the cabin
and warm her up.

After he undid the cocoon, Tina slung one arm over Fancy’s
chest and hugged up to her side. “Shh. Fanny is ‘sleep.”

It took him thirty minutes of slipping and sliding to get them
home. His fingers and feet were numb with cold, but he kept moving. When they reached the porch, he carried Tina inside and set her in
front of the blazing fireplace.

“Take all your clothes off, and put on a pair of panties. Can you
do that?” Theron asked.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said.

Theron raced outside and gently picked Fancy up from the blanket. She didn’t make a sound and was limp as a dishrag. He liked
her much better with fire in her eyes, fighting him on every front.

He carried her inside and kicked the door shut with the heel of
his boot. He laid her on the sofa and removed her shoes and wet
socks. Her toes looked pink and healthy. Then he slid off her jeans
and T-shirt. He grabbed a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, a thermal knit shirt, and socks and redressed her. He wrapped her in a
clean blanket before he rolled her over to check the wound on her
head.

“Fanny still ‘sleep?” Tina asked from the fireplace.

“Yes, she is,” Theron said.

“I’m cold, Daddy,” she said.

Theron hurriedly dressed her in her pajamas, then went to the
kitchen, ran a basin of water, and rustled under the sink for the
first-aid kit.

The wound had bled, and Fancy’s hair was a complete mess. He
poured a cup of warm water over it, letting it run back into the basin. When it was clean, he poured hydrogen peroxide over it. It bubbled and worked its cleansing magic. He wasn’t sure how to proceed
from there. He tried to put a gauze pad over the wound, but the tape
had nothing but hair to stick to.

“Guess we’re going to have to shave a spot, and she’s not going
to like it,” he told Tina, who was watching, wide-eyed, from the
end of the sofa.

She pointed at the bloody water. “That’s yucky.”

“Yes, it is. Why don’t you go read your doll a book by the fire? I
bet she’s cold.”

“Bambi. She wants me to read ‘bout Bambi.”

“Good. You do that, and I’ll get Fancy’s head all fixed.”

He found scissors and a razor in the bathroom and clumsily but
meticulously shaved half an inch all around the wound. He didn’t remove any more than necessary, but still the results were disastrous. He cleaned the wound once again with hydrogen peroxide
and then stretched Steri-Strips across it, hoping they would help
pull the scalp back together. After that he applied a gauze bandage. He didn’t know what to do with the rest of her wet hair. Let
it hang over the bandage? Pull it up in some fashion?

“I’m not a hairdresser,” he moaned.

Tina spoke so close to his elbow that he jumped. She pointed to
her pigtails. “Make it like mine.”

Sure enough, if he parted Fancy’s hair down the middle, the
wound lay perfectly in the part.

Tina removed her purple hair bands and handed them to him,
and he wrapped them around the clumps of hair. He made a neck
pillow of a blanket and positioned Fancy’s head so that the bandage had no pressure on it when he rolled her back over. She was
still frighteningly white.

He checked her pulse again, and it was strong. While he cleaned
up the mess, Tina sat beside Fancy, holding her hand. Theron sat
down beside his daughter on the floor and stared at Fancy. She looked
even younger than sixteen with her hair pulled back away from her
face in pigtails.

“Fanny still ‘sleep?” Tina asked.

“Maybe for a long time. She bumped her head.”

Tina kissed her on the cheek. “Wake up, Fanny. Time to eat”

Fancy didn’t wake up.

Tina leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Chocolate cake.”

Still Fancy didn’t stir.

“Are you hungry, Tina?” Theron asked.

She nodded.

He checked the clock above the mantel but couldn’t see it. How
did it get dark so quickly? When he lit the lanterns, he was more
than surprised to find that it was six thirty. No wonder his child
was hungry.

He pulled leftovers from the refrigerator and started heating
them in the microwave. Then he remembered that she liked macaroni and cheese, so he filled a small saucepan with water and set it
on the stove.

By the time he had food on the table, she was sitting in her chair.
No whining or fussing, just waiting patiently.

“Macky cheese!” She grinned when she saw it.

“That’s right, and if you eat a good supper, there’s more chocolate cake.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said.

Theron couldn’t find a smile, so he turned his back for a moment.

Fancy smelled food cooking. It had to be coming from inside the
motel, because she was on the beach. Only something was terribly wrong. The ocean was frozen. The white sand looked like an
ice-skating rink, and the man who rented chairs and catboats wore
a fur-trimmed parka. He was barefoot like always, but his toes
were black.

She yelled at him that everything wasn’t what it was supposed
to be, that he needed to put on boots and socks, but he only smiled
and waved. An elderly lady approached her from the east end of
the beach. As she got closer, Fancy recognized Hattie. She was
bundled up in a gray wool coat in a late-fifties style. Her hair was
dark and wavy, and she was smiling. She motioned for Fancy to go
with her on down the beach, but Fancy shook her head.