Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (25 page)

When Jer opened the stable door in the cold light of dawn he was met with a low growl. He stopped in his tracks and looked around, trying to place the sound. All the horses were quiet. Nevertheless, he took down a rifle from a rack above the feed buckets, picked up a flashlight and slowly made his way along the stalls. He stopped to check Big Mike's stall.

"You okay, fella?"

Jer reached out to stroke the horse's nose and he heard the growl again from the far end of the stables.

"You guys got a visitor?"

Cautiously, he continued down the line of horses until he came to an empty stall. The gate stood open, and in the corner on a stack of hay he could make out a dark form. He shined the light on it.

"Traveler! What the blazes are you doin' here, boy? You give up on your master? That it?"

As he approached, the dog's tail began to wag.

"What you got there with you, boy?"

Then he saw the white cowboy hat, and the violin case, and his heart lurched. He knelt down beside the dog, pulled back the horse blanket, and gathered the sleeping child in his arms.

"You did good, Traveler. You did good, boy," he repeated as he walked toward his house with the little girl in his arms and the dog at his heels.

* * *

"Does her grandfather even know she's gone?" Ethan asked.

He was watching Jer whip up batter for pancakes in a big metal bowl. The cowboy had more cooking paraphernalia than Ethan had ever seen in any woman's kitchen, even his own mother's, and Jer's pancakes topped anything Ethan had ever tasted.

"Sure he does. Sheriff went around to tell him she was here."

Jer lifted the cast-iron skillet and tilted it to spread the hot oil evenly over the surface. "He hasn't even called. He just doesn't give a damn."

He poured the thick batter into the skillet, then took some eggs from a carton on the counter and began breaking them into a bowl.

"You eatin' with us?"

"If you're invitin'."

"The kid likes her eggs scrambled. Okay with you?"

"Works for me."

He broke two more eggs into the bowl. "You send her back home and she'll just run away again."

He beat the eggs with a fury.

"I've got to think this through," Ethan said.

"Not much thinking to do. This is the way it is."

"I've got to figure out how to handle this, Jer. The last thing I want is child services to come down on us and take her away."

Jer aimed the wire whip at him. "You're one sorry bastard, Ethan Brown."

"What's your gripe, Jer?"

"You could've had her, you know."

"This coming from the guy who told me I'd never be able to live here. That I wouldn't have a friend in all of Chase County."

"Maybe I did, but that was my head talkin', not my heart. I guess I shouldn't have expected a jackass like you to know the difference."

"You're sounding like a man who has a score to settle."

"Maybe I do."

"Well then, let's go settle it."

Jer put down the bowl and started taking off his apron. "I figure I have just enough time to settle things and get back in here to turn these flapjacks."

Ethan pushed back his chair and rose. "I sure hope you're right, pal, 'cause it'd be a real shame to burn 'em."

They shut up when they noticed Eliana standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. Ethan saw the look on her face and it cut through years of memory, back to the time when Jeremy was that age. She looked confused and afraid.

"Where's my mama?" she asked in a clear voice.

The two men only stared at her.

"She isn't really dead, is she?"

They didn't answer, and so she knew this horrible nightmare was real, and her mother wasn't ever coming back. Her innocent face, worn and tired, suddenly dissolved in tears.

Ethan had never felt grief so real and pain so utterly tangible as he did at that moment, and it shook him to his core.

Damn this fire. This wind. Damn God.

Ethan started around the table for her, but Jer got there first and swept her up in his arms.

"Hey! How 'bout goin' out and sayin' hello to Big Mike before we eat? He's waitin' for you to feed him some oats. You wanna do that? Okay?"

Eliana nodded and clung to him, burying her wet face in his bull neck as he carried her out the back door.

Ethan watched them from the window. Then he picked up the spatula and flipped the pancakes.

* * *

After five days, when Charlie Ferguson had made no attempt to contact his granddaughter, Ethan paid him a visit. In his most courteous manner, Ethan presented him with his options.

"Charlie," he began, removing his hat, "I'll be brief. I have here in my hand a complaint against you filed by the State of Kansas in which you, the defendant, are accused of neglect and abandonment of your granddaughter, Eliana Zeldin. And here, in my other hand, I have legal papers all drawn up and ready to sign, wherein you assign sole legal custody of the child to me. Now, tell me, sir, which one would you like to have?"

Ethan had expected a battle. He had expected to be cursed and abused. Instead, without a word, Charlie Ferguson turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Ethan found him going through the drawers, rummaging through the contents with trembling hands.

"Can't find a pen," he said as he glanced up at Ethan. "Looked for one yesterday. Nell came by and said she'd go to the store for me if I'd make out a list, and I tried to find a pen then. I'll need a pen for the funeral tomorrow."

A wave of pity swept through Ethan, and he walked over and laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. It was very thin underneath his sweater, and for the first time Ethan took note of the changes grief had wrought on Charlie Ferguson this year. It was all there, in his slumped shoulders, his gnarled, trembling hands, his thinning, white hair, his dulled eyes.

"Charlie," he said, "we buried her ashes yesterday. Remember?"

Charlie paused in his search and looked up at Ethan with confused eyes.

"Did we?"

"Yes, we did."

"Was I there?"

"You were there. Nell brought you." Ethan pulled out a chair. "Here, friend. Sit down. I have a pen."

The house was dreadfully still. It was such an ugly, repellent stillness, thought Ethan, thick with loneliness and misery.

Charlie turned through the document and with arduously precise strokes of the pen signed his name where Ethan indicated. Ethan took the signed document and left quickly. His own loneliness was all he could bear. He had no stomach for Charlie's.

There was, in Cottonwood Falls, that type of person who saw God's wrath in every misfortune. But no one faulted Ethan Brown for Annette Zeldin's death, except Ethan Brown himself. So when he'd walked into the county coroner's office and requested they turn over to him the Frenchwoman's charred remains, they did so with respectful deference. And when he took her remains in the back of his truck to have them cremated, no one questioned his authority. And despite the fact that the plot next to Emma Reilly Ferguson was destined for her husband, no one dared contradict him when he gave instructions for a small grave to be dug, just large enough to accommodate the urn. Nell said she was grateful to him, because Charlie wasn't making much sense these days, and somebody needed to take charge. So he took care of matters quietly, and got word to the few friends she'd had.

He went out early to the cemetery that morning and waited while they dug the grave. The fertile topsoil of the Flint Hills hides a layer of hard rock from which the hills derive their name, and even a small grave for a small urn took a long time to dig. He stood in the warm sun with his hat in his hands recalling how he had first seen her standing here less than a year before and thinking how life can turn on a dime, without a warning.

Jer brought Nell and Eliana, and Father Liddy did the service. The Winegarner family were all there as well; Matthew's father pushed his wheelchair through the cemetery to the gravesite, and his mother brought his violin to him. At the end of the service, the little boy opened the case and took out the violin. Confidently, he tuned the strings and rosined his bow, and then he played "Amazing Grace," followed by an Irish lullaby. The boy's playing was remarkably clear and melodious. When he had finished, he put his violin away, and his father wheeled him back to the car and they drove away.

Jer took Nell and Eliana back home, and then Ethan climbed down into the narrow hole and Father Liddy passed him the urn. Both of them stayed until the grave was filled.

Over the next few days several arrangements of flowers appeared on the grave, sent by Annette's violin students. Father Liddy left a bouquet, as did Nell. Jer came by the next evening with a vase of red roses. Two dozen of them, which Ethan thought a bit excessive. But at the end of the week a high windstorm passed through that part of Kansas, blowing over semis and knocking down power lines. Two people were killed in the storm, with record winds of up to sixty mph, and Annette Zeldin's grave was swept clean of every trace of human remembrance.

Chapter 26

The nurse assigned to Katie Anne's therapy had heard from the ICU staff about her patient's miraculous return to life, and from the day she met the young woman, she believed there was something indeed special about her. Katie Anne had taken to confiding in her, and the nurse had developed a sincere fondness for her patient. She had worked with many burn victims, but this young woman was unusual. Through the pain there was a continuous struggle to be free of it all, as though she had some knowledge that this torture, this crucified, lost flesh, all would be past; as though she were able to live in the future and distance herself from the gruesome and tedious task of healing her body. And this future, for her, seemed to be full of hope, although her husband gave her little of that.

* * *

The nurse stood behind her, hair tucked under a cap and her mouth covered with a mask. Carefully, she began removing the top layer of bandages from her patient's back.

"Ethan was in love with her," Katie Anne said.

"Who?"

"With the little girl's mother."

With deft, precise movements, the nurse lifted the gauze squares and dropped them into a metal basin. The young woman flinched as she pulled back the bottom layer, revealing the moist, raw flesh underneath.

"It's looking good. I don't see any infection." She continued peeling off the gauze. "And now she's coming to live with you, the little girl?"

"Yes." Katie Anne winced.

"Sorry about that. You sure you don't want to up the pain medication?"

"I'm sure."

"So, about the little girl..."

"Eliana."

"That's a pretty name."

Katie Anne was silent as the nurse began applying fresh sterile bandages. "I think you'll be able to start some therapy in a few days."

"When can I go home?"

"When you've got new skin."

"I wasn't really pregnant, you know."

The nurse remained silent.

"I did it to keep him." She paused. "It was a pretty awful thing to do."

The nurse looked down at Katie Anne, studying her inquisitively. The redness on one side of her face had gone a shade purple, and there were still bandages on the other side where she had third-degree burns. There were parts of her skull where the hair would never grow back. She had lost her left ear altogether.

"You don't believe this was a punishment, do you?"

"I don't know. But I think this little girl is a way of atoning for what I did."

* * *

Ethan had tried to be supportive in those first weeks of her recovery. He drove an hour and a half to visit her every evening, and then drove an hour and a half back to the ranch. There was never a visit when he didn't bring her something, a card from a friend, a new magazine, her favorite CDs from the house, a little sprig of spring flowers. But his smiles never touched his eyes, and his thoughtfulness was bolstered with platitudes, not love.