Authors: Julie Johnston
Little Red Lies (30 page)
Time to stop eavesdropping
, I think. This is not a conversation meant for me. I head for the bathroom, where I meet Granny coming out with a hot water bottle. “Oh, these aching joints,” she whispers. “They give me no peace, even after such a delightful evening.”
“It was fun,” I agree.
“The reason I’m having trouble falling asleep, tonight,” she says, “is because I keep seeing Jamie’s girlfriend, that nice Ellie Cooper, looking at him as if he’s the only person in the world. That’s a rare thing, you know? I’m happy for your brother, happy he’s able to pack so much into his life.”
“Yup, me, too. She’s one in a million.”
“Night-night, then.” Granny gives me a tired smile, shuffles into her room, a little stooped, the hot water bottle slung by a string over her back.
On my way to bed, I notice that Jamie’s desk light is still on. Sometimes, he falls asleep with it on. By now, I feel tired enough to fall asleep myself and flop into bed, pulling the blankets up around my ears.
Letters not sent
.
A moment ago, I was lying on top of my bed, not sure whether I had been asleep. I think I was drifting in that half-life between waking and dreaming, when time seems to stop, although the hands of the clock keep up their usual rounds. In that gentle country between sleep and awareness, I was able to believe war existed only in some book I’d read, and so did my illness. I was fine, and Coop was fine, and as soon as we untangled our fishing lines, we would head for the river
.
And, then, I thought I was back in France, lying in a field, and Coop found me and pulled me up into an airplane, where we drank beer and laughed out loud as we flew far above the world. Below us, planes were bombing their own soldiers, soldiers were shooting children, children were shooting children. But up we flew, escaping into the night-filled sky, where we seemed to float on a sea of stars
.
Something woke me. At first I wasn’t sure what, but as I lay there, I soon recognized the wail of a train as it steamed closer. Funny, I thought. Trains don’t usually stop here in the middle of the night. I started to shiver, even
though I had all my clothes on. My desk lamp was still on. I looked at my watch and saw that it was
3:20.
I remembered there had been something I wanted to do. I’d meant to just lie down for a moment or two while I got up a head of steam. I hadn’t intended to drift into sleep
.
I got up and sat at my desk and pulled out this old pile of papers I’ve been working on for so long. The string tying it together is beginning to fray. I leafed through the letters I hadn’t sent to you, Rachel, and smiled at some. Others brought pain. I turned to the last one I wrote overseas. Here it is
.
About two minutes ago, I found out that I’m going home. Home! I hardly know what that means. I feel like laughing and crying at the same time. I want to think it will be just like it was when I left, that nothing will have changed. I want everything to go on as if the war never happened, but my common sense tells me this is a vain hope. Too many have died. Too much has happened
.
Just now, off in the back of the house, I heard the baby whimpering, getting started on his nightly howl. I was still shivering and pulled on a sweater. I listened for someone to get out
of bed and go to him, do whatever it is they do to keep him from waking the whole household, but nothing happened
.
The baby switched into a higher gear. I thought Granny usually got up in the night with him because she was usually awake anyway. Not this time, apparently
.
Maybe I’ll go. I’m thinking on paper now. And do what? I find that half-crying, half-moaning thing the baby does really hard on the nerves. I hope I don’t faint because I feel a little funny right now. I guess I’ll be all right if I hang on to things
.
I roll over in bed and wake with a start. Turning on my bed lamp, I see that it’s 3:20. I don’t know what woke me, but I lie here listening. I think I hear the wail of a train, but that can’t be. It’s only the wind. I roll onto my other side but can’t get back to sleep. A few moments later, I hear footsteps. Jamie’s? They’re heading down the stairs, but wait. They’re veering off, going back to the sewing room, I mean the baby’s bedroom.
Hardly. Why would he go back there, when he has so successfully avoided contact with the baby up to now? He’s probably going downstairs for a bite to eat. I get up and put on my bathrobe and slippers because the baby is beginning his nightly whimper. It usually turns into the
kind of cry that makes you think he will be heartbroken if no one comes to pick him up. Granny usually gets up, but maybe she’s taken a sleeping pill. Big-hearted me! All right, all right, I’m coming.
When I get to the baby’s room, there’s Jamie, in the middle of the room, lit by moonlight flooding through the window, making it almost as bright as day. Perhaps this is what wakened the baby. I watch Jamie watching the wee thing as he scrunches up his face to bellow while he tries to stuff his fist into his mouth.
Suddenly, Jamie is aware of me in the doorway. “Is he really our brother?” he says.
“No, he dropped in from some other galaxy and decided to stay.” I want to comment on Jamie’s actually showing an interest in the kid, but I’m afraid of spoiling the moment.
“I don’t think he looks like any of us,” Jamie says.
“Don’t be silly, he’s the dead-spit of you. You need to see him in daylight. Want the experience of changing him?”
“Good God, no!”
After I do all the dirty work, I hand him to Jamie, who nearly drops him. “I didn’t think he’d be so heavy,” he says. I steer them to the rocking chair and show him how to bundle the baby up close, leaving the blanket a little loose at the top for him to get his hands free. “He likes that,” I say.
“There’s something I want to do,” Jamie says. “I want to take him outside and show him the stars.” This doesn’t seem strange to me, on a starry night like this. I go down
the back stairs first, and Jamie follows, holding the baby close to him in one arm and clutching the banister with his other hand. In the glow through the window, the kitchen is transformed. You can almost hear the moon calling us, begging us to come out.
In the backyard, the baby snuffles at his fist and makes tiny attempts to cry. “Hush, little baby,” Jamie says. We watch him blink at the moon and then reach out. “You can’t have the moon,” Jamie says.
When the Martians come to call, this is the scene I’ll describe—me and my two brothers under a starry sky. At this very moment, I know I’m happy. This is what it’s like to be human.
“Ah,” the baby says, “ah-ah-ah.”
Jamie smiles down at him. “I think he’s trying to say something to me.”
“The stars look really close tonight, don’t they?” I say.
“You can’t have all those stars, little guy. Me and Coop have first dibs.” Jamie is silent for a moment. “I know what I’m going to do,” he says finally. The baby is nearly asleep in his arms.
“What?”
“You’ll find out.”
Jamie is shivering. “Can you carry the baby for me?”
“Hand him over.”
Cradling him, I follow Jamie back inside. I’m right behind him as he struggles up the stairs to his own bedroom.
We’re both tiptoeing, both afraid to speak. It must be the motion that lulls the baby back to sleep. Gently, Jamie takes him and puts him on his bed, up near the pillow, all snugly tucked up in his baby blanket.
Jamie’s shivering like mad, now. He has to sit on the side of his bed to catch his breath. I hand him a jacket from his closet, but he ignores me. All I can do is stand in the doorway, quietly watching. He manages to push himself upright again to go and sit at his desk, where he tears a sheet of paper from a pad of foolscap. Slowly, painstakingly, he writes something in large letters, so no one will miss it, and props it against the lucky fishing lure Coop gave him so long ago.
I am intensely curious but wait, hoping Jamie will explain in good time.
He goes back to his bed, manages to kick off his shoes and slip under the covers without waking the baby. He sighs deeply. “I feel better,” he whispers so quietly I can hardly hear him, “in spite of being cold as a block of ice. This little guy makes me feel good, you know? He’s going to go far. Way into the future.”
Another sigh leaves his body, as if he’s releasing something he’s held inside too long. He turns on his side to face the baby and pulls him close. The baby’s soft, sweet breath warms his face and Jamie snuggles in, his arm around the top of the baby’s head, knees drawn up close to his feet.
I creep closer, softly, and lie down on top of the covers, on the other side of our little brother. “You’re still shivering,” I whisper, turning to face Jamie.
“A little bit.”
I put my arm over his arm. “Look, we’ve made a nest for Baby X.”
“Not Baby X any longer.”
I lift my head to look at him, but his eyes are closed. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t explain right away. Instead he says, “ ‘Rub-a-dub-dub.’ ”
It takes me a minute to think what he means. “ ‘Three men in a tub’? How about, two brothers and a sister in a bed? Or, here’s one. How about this? ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe’? You used to know that one. What comes next?”
He doesn’t say anything. I wonder if he’s drifting off. In a moment he whispers, “… ‘The little stars were the herring fish That lived in that beautiful sea.…’ Can’t remember the rest. Funny, the blanket’s warm, but the cold is deep inside me. I’m a bit drifty. Need to tell you something before I drift out too far.”
“What?”
“I named the baby.”
“What did you say?”
“The baby,” he says. “I named him.”
“Just like that? You suddenly gave him a name?”
“Shh!” He whispers, “His name is Cooper James McLaren. I wrote it down.”
I am silent for a moment. “It’s good,” I say quietly. “It fits him. He’ll grow up just fine with that name.”
“You’ll have to keep an eye on him.”
“I guess somebody has to. God knows, his parents can’t be relied on.”
“He’ll like the climbing tree down near the swale. You have to take him. Show him how to get a good foothold on those lower branches.” Jamie smiles in the moonlight coming through his window. “And don’t forget to show him the Milky Way.”
“I remember how it goes now,” I say.
“Mmm?”
“ ‘All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
’T was all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought ’t was a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing the beautiful sea—
But I shall name you the fishermen three: Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.’ ”
Each breath seems like a sigh as it leaves Jamie, a contented sigh.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“Mmm?”
“Don’t leave us.”
“Okay,” I think I hear him say.
Softly, in the moonlit night, Cooper James breathes peacefully beside me.
THE END
ALSO BY JULIE JOHNSTON
Hero of Lesser Causes
Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me
The Only Outcast
In Spite of Killer Bees
Susanna’s Quill
A Very Fine Line
