Love Lift Me (5 page)

“It’s
always
something
, Hale,” I snapped. “You always act like you care about
me when it’s already too late. And this time…this was the worst. How could
you?”

“Kat…I…I
love you. You know I do. I didn’t mean for this to happen. How could I have-”

“Why’d
you even come here?” I asked, and pulled my hand away quickly. He wasn’t going
to apologize or sweet-talk his way out of this. “To tell me you’re sorry for
ditching me? You had to have known how this was going to go.”

“I
wanted to see you. I was worried.”

“I…I
don’t believe you,” I said. Tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes.
“You should have been there, Hale. I had to take that bus…you…you forgot about
me.”

“Kat,
I didn’t…”

I
turned away from him and stared at the window. Thin beams of light shone
through in wide, golden rays. The new day had dawned.

“My
parents will be back soon. You should go.”

“Oh,
come on. Give me a chance, Kat. I came all the way down here to see you.”

“You
got all the chances I’m willing to give you, Hale.”

“Don’t
be like that. I’m trying to say I’m sorry, girl.”

He
tried to wrap his long arms around me, but I shook him off. “Just go, Hale! I
don’t wanna see you. Go off and play with your dumb friends. Get drunk and
stupid, or whatever it is you do when I’m not around.”

“What
do you mean? I can’t talk to my girl? You gonna kick me out of here like your
Momma did?”

“It
means
we’re through
. And I
ain’t
your girl.”

For
a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something else and just stood there
with a hurt expression. I rolled over and let the tears come, not caring if anyone
else heard. Part of me hardly believed what had happened between us after being
together so long. The other part knew it had been coming for a long time. How
could it be real? He’d hurt me, more than the accident had, worse than I ever thought
anyone could.

Suddenly,
I was thinking back to high school. Things had been so much simpler then.
Falling in love with Hale had been easy. It started with sweet,
little
things like flirty compliments about my smile or thoughtful gifts without
occasion. The gentle way he brushed my hair out of my eyes and behind my ear or
seemed beside himself with joy whenever I was around. He was surprising back
then, and romantic. He always wanted to spend time with me. Everyone thought we
belonged together. So did I.

But
he’d changed. It was so slow at first that I hardly noticed it. In the
beginning, I chalked it up as the typical bickering that all couples must
endure. As things got worse, I was willing to see past the things he did…for
us. At least, that’s what I convinced myself I was doing. The truth was, I was
blinded by more than just all the good things he’d been back then – I was
afraid of being alone.

By
the time the tears were gone, my room was empty again.

Six

I
rummaged through my things, hoping to find the old locket my grandmother had
given me when something suddenly reconnected in my brain and I remembered that
I had given it to Shane.

In
truth, even though I could still see his face after he pulled me out of the
burning wreckage, my memory of the accident had taken a serious jolt and
everything from then was coming back slowly. I’d told him something…and felt
him lifting my head…the rest was mostly a blur for a while. Eventually, most of
it came back to me.

Recalling
in full was both a blessing and a curse.

It
was Shane I thought about while watching the news reports that evening. The man
from the news said the bus swerved to avoid some sort of obstacle in the road,
probably an animal or debris blown about in the high wind. The driver lost
control and ran up onto the shoulder, overcorrected, and then the bus hydroplaned
nearly two hundred feet before the back wheels caught traction on the shoulder
and the whole thing flipped. He said it was a
tragic disaster
, which was
really nothing more than words on a teleprompter to the newsman giving telling
the story.

At
first the reports only gave the numbers. I had no way of knowing if Shane had
lived or not. For all I knew, he was already gravely injured when he managed to
pull me out. After the news cycled again in the morning, they began to release
the names of those who perished.

“Angela
Ashton, twenty eight. George Ashton, thirty. Ray Engel, forty four…” the
reporter droned out the names somberly in alphabetical order. A photograph was
shown of the person that died to accompany each one. Some of the faces looked
familiar, passing glances I recalled from that day. Others I was sure I’d never
seen before.

“Five
passengers survived the accident, one of the worst on record for Jones County.
Three of them are still in critical condition.” Once the reporter concluded, I
switched off the television and sat in stunned silence.

To
my relief, Shane was not on the list of those killed. Twenty-two people in all,
including the driver, had perished. I shuddered to think how close I’d come to being
one of them. Most were from the large group we’d picked up in Raleigh. I continued
to listen each day, hoping to hear Shane’s name or see his face on the screen.
In that time, neither came, and I was eventually discharged. The locket, and
the man that saved my life, seemed lost to me.

I
wasn’t going to give up hope. He was still out there.
Alive
. Maybe he
would find me. Once I was better and I could leave mother for a while, if he
still hadn’t…well, I’d go looking for him myself. I wanted to thank him for
what he did, and maybe even take him up on his offer for a night out on the
town.

At
the end of the third day, after getting fed up with the bland food and the
infernal beeping of the machines all night long, I had to admit I was ready to
leave the hospital sooner than they wanted me to go. It was like pulling teeth
to get the doctor to sign for my release. I think he finally did it because he
was getting tired of being yelled at by mother.

For
eight grueling days after that, I didn’t do much else besides rest, punctuated
by bumbling trips around the house on crutches. The doctor gave me a brace,
with express instructions not to take it off until the staples were removed. I
must have looked pretty strange hobbling around like that. It felt like pure
freedom the day Daddy took me to the outpatient center on the edge of town and they
took out everything and the brace came off. Finally, I could bend my knee again.

A
little over three weeks after the accident, things were starting to get back to
normal. Well, as normal as things got around the Atwater house.

“Kat,
go on and sit down, child,” Mother chastised me from her position manning the
enormous old stove in our kitchen. The thing had cooked thousands of meals
since they had gotten it installed in the late sixties and it was built strong
enough to withstand a nuclear explosion. “If you don’t stay off that leg, it
ain’t never gonna heal up right!”

She
had on her apron, which really wasn’t much more than a piece of oft-bleached
canvas that was even older than the stove. That particular accessory had been
worn by her mother, and her mother before. The strings were tied in a knot
around the back and hung down over her backside. They’d probably been that way
for forty or more years; trying to untangle them would be pointless.

Still,
she wasn’t one to go about unmanaged like that knot in her apron - Her
mostly-white hair, which had been a golden, honey-blonde twenty some years ago,
was curled up and looking neat from a recent trip to the salon. The simple,
floral dress she’d picked up in the mid-nineties during a winter sale at fancy store
in Wilmington hugged her narrow hips and swished to and fro under the apron as
she busily worked the kitchen. She still had on a pair of white flats that
she’d been wearing since church let out. They looked terribly uncomfortable and
clicked on the wooden floor with each step, but she wouldn’t take them off her
feet until the entire family settled down later in the evening.

Mother
was just like that. She never traded comfort for appearances. A person that had
never met her would have absolutely no idea that she was fighting cancer and
that’s the way she wanted it.

I
sauntered up beside her and placed a warm bowl of mashed potatoes on the counter.
“My leg doesn’t even hurt anymore, Momma. The doctor took the staples out weeks
ago. See?” I twisted my leg around and showed off my scar. It was still not
completely finished healing, but the ugly red line had already receded to a
pinkish-white hue. Although I never thought it would be classified as a “cute”
by anyone, I was glad that it wasn’t any worse. She turned away from the frying
meat in her cast iron skillet and gave it and me a cursory glance.

“That
don’t matter, young lady. You ought not to be cruising around here like that so
soon after having surgery.”

“Says
the woman that
also
just had surgery,” I shot back at her with a laugh.
“Look at you sashaying around in here. Come on and let me finish cooking that
stuff. You’re the one that should be taking things easy.”

She
really should have been. Mother had started her chemotherapy treatments before
I even got back home from the hospital and they were starting to take their
toll. Daddy drove her in to the cancer clinic and sat with her five days a week
and they were gone for hours at a time. She’d barely touched more than a few morsels
of food for days and her already petite frame was becoming increasingly thin. I
could tell she was getting tired, but I knew she wouldn’t slow down a bit until
she had no other choice.

“I
ain’t never taken anything easy young lady, and I ain’t fixing to start anytime
soon. Supper will be done in a bit and I aim to finish cooking it without you
all up under my feet. Go on and take you a seat in the parlor till I call.”

The
parlor - that’s what she called the living room. When I asked her why she
didn’t just call it that a long time ago, I was told to hush. I figured she
just liked making it seem fancier than it was.

“Hey
Lil’ Bit,” Father said from behind his Sunday paper as I walked in from the
narrow hallway outside the kitchen. He had both feet kicked up in the recliner
and was enjoying his one day of rest for the week. A pair of bifocals rested on
the end of his nose. “Did the old bat give you the boot again?”

“What
did you just call me, George Theodore Atwater?!” resounded loudly from the
kitchen.

“Nothin’
dear!” He smiled and folded up the paper before raising one hand and whispering
over to me, “She’s got ears like one though, don’t she?”

“You
better be careful, Daddy. You know she’s going to get you one of these days.” I
said and scrunched down on the end of the sofa. They were always teasing each
other like that. “Momma sure wouldn’t take that kind of fooling from anyone
else without clocking them one upside the head with her frying pan. She might
get tired of it one day, you never know.”

“Oh,
she knows I’m only kiddin’ round. ‘Sides, she likes it.”

“Says
you.” I said while looking out the front windows and into the yard. “Where’s
Abby? I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Miss
Highlander and her daughter drove up with a vanload of girls and picked her up
this morning. Your sister is supposed to be at a study session with her friends
at their house,” father said. “I ‘spect she’s doing anything but studying,
though. You know how that is.”

“Oh
yeah. You get a bunch of teenage girls in one room and the last thing they want
to talk about is history, or math, or schoolwork. They’re gossiping about
something, probably boys. I was the same way when I was thirteen.”

“Too
old for dolls, too young for a father to get some gol’ darn rest and stop
worryin’. I ain’t so bad with her as I was with you, though. I reckon I had all
my heart attacks and sleepless nights ten years ago when you was still a
teeny-bopper. Best thing I can do now is trust that she’s got a good head on
her shoulders and knows to stay out of trouble.”

I
fondly remembered the way I’d been as a teenager and offered, “Try to tell her
what to do, and she’ll just do the opposite.”

“Them
boys know I got a shotgun,” he said with a chuckle.

“Yeah,
they probably heard about it from their older brothers, Daddy. Did you really
have to pull that ol’ gun out of the cabinet and polish the barrel every time a
boy came over to take me out?”

He
nodded sternly. “Sure did. A little fear does wonders on young men that want to
date one of my daughters.”

I
rubbed my thigh near the healing incision. It was still achy and sore. Not much
longer, I hoped, and the pain would go away.

“How’s
that leg?” Father asked, and folded the paper over to the next page. “All
healed up enough to drive your Momma to the clinic tomorrow?”

“I
think so.”

“Good.
Dale and Francis have been a big help on the farm over the last couple weeks,
but I’ve gotta get back out there ‘fore the fall harvest. Probably even hire them
kids from down the road to help out with it this year when the time comes.”

“Mr.
Johnson’s boys? Last time I saw them they were still learning how to ride a
bike. Have they really gotten that big?” I asked and Daddy nodded his head.

“Sure
have. They came over early spring and asked for some chores to earn some
spendin’ money. I told ‘em to clean out Ruby and Zip’s stable and they did a
right fine job of it.”

I
thought about our horses. How long had it been since I even saw them, much less
had a ride? Taking Zip for a gallop around the meadow was one of my favorite
things to do after I got home from high school or when I came home for visits
during college. He was a fully grown stallion by now.

“Nice
to have good help ‘round here,” father said lazily and finished off his glass
of tea. “Paid ‘em both ten dollars for their trouble. You shoulda seen ‘em race
outta here to go spend it. Why, ten dollars was more than I made in a month pullin’
tobacco when I was that age. Now, you can’t even fill up a tank of gas with it!”

“Maybe
tomorrow, after I get back home with Momma, I’ll go see if Zip wants to run
around the field a bit.”

Daddy
gave a heavy nod and said, “Oh, I suspect he will. I swear that horse has been
missing
you
, darlin’. Hain’t acted the same since you left for school. Ruby’s
just as dumb as ever, though. Damn horse still goes left when I pull ‘er
right.”

“She’s
headed for the glue factory,” I said, echoing one of Daddy’s favorite,
not-actually-serious expressions about the old mare. That got another quick
laugh out of him.

“Dang
right. I couldn’t do it, though. I’ve had that horse for twenty some odd years,
and for some reason, she sure does love your momma. Obeys for her. She’d give
me more hell than the devil if I ever did somethin’ like that to her.”

“When
was the last time Momma took out Ruby?”

He
pushed up his glasses and lifted his chin. “Oh, been a good while, Lil’ Bit.
Maybe back this spring, but I don’t rightly recall. She tol’ me she aims to get
out for another ride on the old girl as soon as she’s all better.”

“She’s
determined not to let this slow her down,” I said.

“Nothin’
slows her down. The car could have four flat tires and she’d still make it to
church on time. That’s just how she is.”

“I
know. Just don’t let her push herself too hard, Daddy.”

I
crossed my bum leg underneath the other one. It was getting tiring to look at.

“I’ll
do my best. There’s somethin’ else you should probably know about,” Daddy said
uncomfortably and shifted in his chair. “I was gon’ wait till after supper but
I guess now’s as good a time as any.”

“What?”

“Had
somebody else call me up the other day, lookin’ for work. He don’t know much
about farmin’, and ain’t the most reliable sort, but he’s got some skill as a
mechanic.”