The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (19 page)

"You want to leave?" She yanked back, her eyes wide with disbelief. 

"No, I don't wanna leave," he exclaimed. "No. I'd do it, though, if it'd keep you from doin' somethin' you'd regret. It'd kill your folks if you ran off with me, and—" sweat broke out on his lip in spite of the frigid air—"there's some things you don't know about me. Things you might not understand."

She stared at him in confusion.

He rose. "You told me I didn't know what honorable means. You were right. I had to look it up in the dictionary." He rubbed his hand nervously over his hair. "Katie, you can't even imagine what my life was like before you."

She waited, her eyes dark and round in the pale heart-shape of her face.

He shivered, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering. "There's things I haven't told you—"

A door slammed from the direction of the house.

He jerked his head toward the sound. Katie caught her breath and leaped to her feet. The chain link of the dog pen rattled.

"Dogs!" Karl's voice yelled.

Footsteps crunched through the snow toward the barn.

"Oh, God, please, no," Katie whispered, her eyes wide and frantic. "He'll come through here to check the heifers. If he finds us it'll be worse than Dad."

"I'll just talk to him," he whispered. "I'm tired of this sneakin' around."

"No! Dad won't let me see you until I'm eighteen if he catches me with you, not even sit with you in church."

She grabbed his hand. His heart raced wildly as he followed her through the darkness to the hayloft stretching eight feet overhead across half the big room. At the hayloft's ladder, he lifted her to the bottom rung a few feet above the floor. She scrambled up. He jumped for the rung, driving down his boot on the old wood. It broke with a loud crack. He fell heavily to the floor, the rung swinging from one nail above him.

"Gil, hurry," she whispered desperately. "He's coming…Oh, God, please help…"

Gathering himself, he made an adrenalin laced jump. He caught the edge of the loft opening. Straining every muscle fiber, he fought to pull himself up without the ladder. She grabbed the collar of his coat and hauled on it. With a last heave, he rolled onto the floor of the loft.

The door from the tack room banged open.

Stretched out on the hayloft floor on his stomach, he gasped for air, the acrid odor of dust and dry rot filling his nostrils. His heart beat a tattoo against the boards. 

Visible through a crack in the floor, Karl followed the flashlight beam and two dogs—both bobbed-tail blue heelers—into the room. The dogs rushed around, noses to the ground, frenziedly circling the area. Karl quickly swung the flashlight beam across the room.

The beam skimmed over the barn floor near the wall.

His hat!

He jerked up his head to stare across the loft opening at Katie, meeting her wide-eyed gaze.

She drew into a tighter ball, bowing her head on her up-drawn knees in an attitude of prayer. As fascinated as if a rattlesnake lay coiled at his feet, he peered through the crack. Part of his hat brim showed at the edge of the darkness. How did Karl not see it there almost pulsing like a beacon of red light?

"Who's here?" Karl called.

The glow of the flashlight created sinister shadows on Karl's puzzled face as he stood listening. He raked the flashlight beam across the room again then slowly crossed the floor toward the loft. His boot brushed against the hat brim, but he didn't stop until he reached the ladder. Karl raised the flashlight to the broken rung and frowned like he was trying to remember if it had been broken the last time he saw it. He slowly raised the beam of light. Katie shrank silently away from the opening.

One of the dogs growled.

Karl swung abruptly, illuminating the male dog. Its hair raised along its backbone, the dog stalked stiff-legged around the bale of hay where Katie had sat. It stopped, sniffed intently, and then lifted its leg.

Just then, a horrific shriek sounded overhead, like a woman's scream.

The dogs yelped. Karl's flashlight beam jumped, and then swept to the roof. The dogs erupted into fierce barking as metal rent away from its nails and a section of tin rolled rapidly across the roof, clashing metal on metal. A moment later, it hit the ground outside the barn with a crash, and then the dull ripple of tin bounding along the ground faded toward the south.

Karl turned on the dogs. "Shut up, you two idiots!"

The barking silenced abruptly. Karl turned toward the pasture door, and the dogs followed.

With its hackles still raised, the male dog stopped to sniff the hat then lifted a leg on it. With the air of one satisfied by a job well done, the stupid animal bounded after Karl and its mate into the storm.

In the complete darkness, Katie collapsed with a release of pent up breath.

He sat up. Smothering a sneeze on his coat sleeve, he fished his handkerchief from his back pocket. "I've gotta get out of here before he comes back," he muttered, wiping his nose. "I'm gonna look like a real idiot if he finds me hidin' in here."

"Well," she whispered sharply, "we definitely wouldn't want that."

"Hey," he said. "I like Karl. If he finds me here he's gonna think the same thing I'd think if I found some clown in the barn in the middle of the night with
my
sister. He'll try to kick my butt and I wouldn't blame him." He fumbled around on the floor searching for the loft opening.

She grabbed his sleeve. "What are you doing?"

"I have to get my hat and you've gotta get back in the house."

"We can't get out until he comes back. He'll see our tracks in the snow."

"At least I'll get my hat before that idiot dog comes back. That hat cost me a hundred bucks."

He hoisted himself into the loft again just as Karl and the dogs returned. A few minutes later, the door to the house slammed. Tossing his hat to the barn floor, he jumped down after it then lifted Katie down.

"Give me your hat," she said. "I'll clean it."

"What if somebody sees it?"

"I'll make sure they don't." 

He gave her the hat then stood for a moment rubbing the back of his neck. "Geez. What a wreck." He looked at her. "You've gotta let me talk to your folks."

"No," she whispered fiercely. "You've got to give me some more time to work on them, Gil. If you do it now, it'll be an automatic no."

"Katie, this sneakin' around ain't gonna work."

She stiffened. "Nobody made you come."

"I know that. I wanted to see you, but what if Karl had found us? It'd have been pretty darn embarrassin' if nothin' else."

"Go home, then." She stepped away. "I wouldn't want to embarrass you. You won't have to worry about it anymore."

"C'mon, cut it out. That's not what I meant." He glanced over his shoulder. They didn't have time to fight about it now. "You've gotta get back in the house."

She turned on her heel toward the door.

"Katie, c'mon." He grabbed her arm. "Don't be this way."

She shrugged out of his grip and vanished into the darkness.

Outside the barn's back door, four inches of snow already blanketed the ground, still falling heavily.

If the near exposure of his and Katie's secret hadn't cooled his overheated blood enough, stumbling for a half-mile across rocky ground in blizzard conditions would have. He finally reached his pickup and started home, but preoccupied by his nearly frozen feet and blinded by the wall of snow in his headlights, he almost missed the turn onto his grandfather's lane.

At the last instant, he slammed on the brakes, jerking the wheel of his truck. The brakes locked up on the slick road, sending the truck into a broad-slide. The truck slid into the ditch, made a complete roll then slammed back down onto its tires. The left side tires exploded off the chrome rims with deep, booming reports like heavy artillery fire. The left fender smashed into an old cottonwood tree at the bottom of the ditch. His head rebounded off the window like a baseball hitting a barn wall. Glass shattered. His shoulder drove into the doorframe, crumpling the metal like paper.

The truck's motor revved to a scream for a long moment then abruptly cut off, leaving a white blanket of silence over the motionless night.

Chapter Twelve

The door into the old ranch house seemed unnaturally heavy. Gil shoved at it several times before he finally got it to swing open. He stumbled into the house and to the hallway outside his grandfather's bedroom with no recollection of how he had gotten there. Snow tumbled off his jeans and boots to melt into little pools on the wood planks of the hall.

"Gramps," he croaked, holding to the wall.

The old man's bedsprings creaked and the lamp beside his bed switched on.

"Son?" His grandfather jerked on his pants, hurriedly pulling suspender straps over bare and hairy shoulders as he rushed from the room.

"Gramps, Katie…"

She had been with him. Hadn't she? He frowned, trying to concentrate. 

"What's happened?" his grandfather asked sharply. "What about Katie?"

"I…don't remember. Gramps, go look." He groaned. "God, don't let her be dead…"

Shivering violently, he closed his eyes, replaying that night with Darlene. The odor of her freshly spilled blood had filled his nostrils…Her head had slumped motionlessly over the wheel of her smashed car…She never moved again.

Never again…

He glared around the room gulping air like a landed trout, struggling to fill his lungs. His legs buckled and he slid heavily down the wall to a seat on the floor.

His grandfather's face came into focus. "Gil, think. Where's your truck?" The old man shook his shoulder.

He yelled in pain and the room spun around. "Wrecked it at the end of the lane.  Go see if Katie was…"

Bile rose in his throat. With his stomach heaving, he clutched his bleeding head with one hand. The other dangled to the floor, useless. The room kept spinning.

"Jon—" his grandfather's voice boomed above him at the telephone—"check and see if Katie's in bed." The old man stood silent for a moment. "Okay. Gil's wrecked his truck out there at the turn to my place. I might need some help over here." His grandfather hung up. "She's okay."

His fear released, but black spots swarmed like gnats before his eyes. He licked his lips, swallowing hard. "I'm gonna toss my cookies."

His grandfather glared around then hurried to fetch the five gallon bucket full of kindling wood beside the front door, shoving the bucket at him just as he vomited. Then the old man gathered the blankets from his own bed and knelt stiffly to cover him. "Where you hurt besides your head?"

"Arm. Shoulder."

His grandfather eased off his coat.

He yelled again.

"It's broke between the elbow and shoulder," his grandfather said, working gently down the arm. "I'll call an ambulance."

"I don't want an ambulance," he said, gritting his teeth. "Just get your bone bag and put me back together."

"Son, you ain't thinkin' straight. You didn't even know if Katie was with you."

"I was havin' a…flashback…or somethin'. I'm okay now."

"What's the date?"

He paused. "December third or fourth, I think."

"When's your birthday?"

"February eighth."

"Why do you want me to set your arm? I'm no doctor."

He met his grandfather's gaze, his jaw clenched. "Gramps, I don't wanna be the kind of man I am anymore. I wanna be like you."

"Son, I don't want you to be like me." The old man's worried gaze probed his. "I want you to be like Jesus."

"I'm serious, Gramps." His gaze on the old man's didn't waver. "I need to do this."

***

The next morning his grandfather stepped into the bedroom doorway and one of his white collarless shirts striped with thin, vertical blue lines covered his chest instead of just his suspenders. From where he lay on his grandfather's bed, Gil opened his right eye—the other one had swelled shut.

"How are you this mornin', Son?" his grandfather asked unsmilingly.

He swallowed. "Thirsty."

While his grandfather left for the kitchen, he cautiously examined his stiff face with the fingers of his right hand. A series of cuts and abrasions covered most of his jaw, his cheek and the left side of his forehead. Strips of bandage held closed the lips of a gash on his cheekbone. He shifted on the bed, wincing when he couldn't straighten his bad knee.

His grandfather returned with a glass of water. He lifted his head and swallowed it all then the old man looked intently into his eyes, pulling down his eyelids one at a time.

"Still got a headache?"

"Little bit."

"Seein' two of anything?"

"No."

"Mmhm. You've got a whale of a bruise on your shoulder." The old man leaned over to peer at it. "How's the arm?"

He carefully moved his arm, heavy in its cast, then flinched at the pain in his shoulder. "Not too bad." He grinned feebly. "My messed up knee's a little more messed up, though."

His grandfather pulled back the blankets and leaned over to examine the knee. "Well, it ain't pretty."

"Never was."

"Swelled up twice its size."

"I think I rammed it into the dash."

The old man balled up a pillow and placed it under the knee. "That feel better?"

"Yeah."

"Talked to your mama." His grandfather pulled up the blankets. "She said she'd come if you want her to."

"No. It's just a tap on the head and an arm. That ain't nothin' next to what I usually have."

The old man sat on the chair beside the bed, eyeing him. "Were you with Katie last night?"

He covered his eyes with his right arm. Slowly, he nodded.

"I told Jon a while back I thought that might be what was goin' on."

He moved his arm to stare at his grandfather in surprise.

"Son, it wasn't hard to figure out."

He covered his eyes again. "If he knew, why didn't he catch us?"