Over His Head

Nancy thought Eddy would keep fighting. Instead he deflated. Her heart went out to him. One look at the concern in Tim’s face and her heart went out to him as well. “Tell you what. You and I will go settle him down in intensive care. I’ll introduce you to the people who’ll be looking after him. Your dad has to go fill out some papers anyway, so we can sit with him until he meets us. Okay?”

Eddy shrugged and turned away, all the fight gone out of him.

“Hey, you’re forgetting somebody.” Nancy pointed to the pup, who was scrabbling around on the slick table like a small brown seal.

Eddy looked at her. “Can I carry him?”

“Your dog, remember? Just because he’s here doesn’t mean you can let other people take over completely.” She handed him a clean towel. “Pick him up with this.”

Eddy lifted the pup to his shoulder. He leaned his cheek against the little dog’s silky head while the pup snuggled tight under his chin.

Nancy left Tim with Dr. Hazard as they walked down the hall toward the ICU area. “He’s got to have a name. We can’t just keep calling him pup.”

At that moment Big Little opened the door to the ICU and stepped out into the hall. Eddy stopped so quickly that Nancy ran into him. He must also have gripped the pup, because the little dog let out a tiny yelp.

“Hey, Miss Nancy,” Big said, flashing her and Eddy his brilliant smile. “Hey, young’un.”

Eddy’s gulp was audible.

“Hey, Big,” Nancy said. “Eddy, Big here is our nursemaid. He’ll take really good care of your pup.”

“But…” Eddy looked back at Nancy over his shoulder. She could see the fear and consternation in his face.

“Y’all just come on in here,” Big said. “Y’all can help ole—what’s his name, boy?”

“Just Pup,” Eddy whispered.

“Okay, now you give me JustPup here and we’ll fix him up a nice soft bed.”

“Can I pet him some?”

“Lordy, yes.” Big opened the door to the ICU area and ushered Eddy, JustPup and Nancy through.

“He’s shy,” she whispered.

Big nodded. “Yes’m.” He looked down at his gigantic feet a little sadly. “Guess he’s sceert ’cause I’m so big.”

Nancy patted his arm. “He won’t be once he gets to know you.”

Big set up the ICU cage, sat on the air mattress in the center of the room and invited Eddy and the pup to sit beside him. Big held the little dog as though it were a baby bird while Eddy stroked it. With each stroke he inched closer to Big until he was leaning against his massive thigh.

Nancy checked the large cages first. Wonder of wonders, the mastiff was sitting up on his own. In the small cages, the Jack Russell was already standing, wagging his tail and yapping. Bless Mac Thorn! He truly could work miracles.

“What say we put JustPup here in his house and let him have a nap?” Big asked Eddy. “I got to let out my dog, Daisy, for a little run. Can you throw a ball? Ole Daisy, she does love to chase her ball.” He looked at Nancy and winked.

She backed out. “I’ll come get you in a few minutes, Eddy.”

He didn’t raise his head.

She checked the charts for both the mastiff and terrier, saw that neither had a temperature and that they were receiving their antibiotics. She’d change dressings after she sent Eddy and Tim away.

She met Tim in the reception area where he was still filling out forms.

“Where’s Eddy?” he asked.

“He’s fine. Big’s looking after him. If you’d like to get back to Williamston, I can bring Eddy home in a little while.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“It’s hardly out of my way.”

He handed the papers to Alva Jean, the day receptionist and Big’s current girlfriend, then followed Nancy through the door to the examining rooms and down the hall toward the cavernous large animal area and the staff parking.

In the pasture behind the building, Nancy saw Big with his back to them and his hands on his hips. She realized that Eddy stood in front of him only when she saw his thin arm lob a yellow tennis ball down the pasture. A sturdy beige dog caught it in midair and trotted toward the pair in triumph. Eddy clapped as Daisy dropped the ball at his feet and sat waiting for him to throw it again.

“My God,” Tim breathed. “Who’s that? And isn’t that a pit bull?”

“That’s Mr. Bigelow Little, kennel man, security guard and general associate, and his dog, Daisy. Yes, she’s a pit bull. She adores children. Don’t worry, she won’t attack Eddy.”

“I—they have such a bad reputation.”

“Any dog that’s abused and not properly trained can get a bad reputation.”

At that moment Eddy spotted his father and called to him, “Daddy! Watch, Daddy!” He threw the ball. Daisy chased it, retrieved it and deposited it once more at Eddy’s feet. He dropped to his knees and cradled her head in his arms, then buried his face in her neck.

Nancy heard Tim catch his breath, but all he said was, “Great, son.”

“Eddy looks like he’s set for a while,” Nancy said to him before calling out again. “Eddy, you want to ride home with me? You can feed your pup again before you leave.”

“Can I, Big?” Eddy looked up at the big man with the same trust Nancy had seen in the eyes of everything from wild deer to newborn kittens.

“Sure. How ’bout we put Daisy back in my house and go do that little thing?”

“Okay.” Eddy scooped up the ball, then did what Nancy was sure was a miraculous thing in Tim’s eyes. He grabbed Big’s huge hand and walked off toward the small bungalow at the back of the parking lot without a backward glance at his father.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IS THAT ALL it would have taken? Tim wondered. One puppy and Eddy was fixed?

Obviously not. But for the first time since Solange had been killed Eddy was showing signs of behaving like a normal boy. Once the novelty wore off the puppy, Eddy might well fall back into his silent misery. Tim prayed that wouldn’t happen. He doubted the puppy would work the same magic with Angie and Jason, although they both loved animals. They wouldn’t get to meet it until it came home anyway. If it survived.

Tim wasn’t surprised they hadn’t come downstairs earlier when they could have met the puppy. Like most teenagers, they could sleep through a riot. Even in their small Chicago apartment, nothing woke them on Saturdays before noon—not even police sirens.

Maybe Nancy Mayfield would find the key to unlock the normal parts of Jason and Angie. For the first time since he pulled away from his city apartment, he felt absolutely certain he’d done the right thing moving his family down to Williamston.

If he’d listened to Solange and gotten them out of Chicago earlier, she might still be alive.

His pigheadedness had destroyed their marriage and killed her. He’d live with his guilt for the rest of his life, not only for her death, but also for the life he’d forced on her, the choices she’d made.

No matter how much she’d demanded they all rely on her since Solange’s death, he knew he’d been right to get his children and himself away from his mother-in-law, too. He’d certainly used her, but then she’d used him as well. She’d tried to submerge them all in permanent mourning. Solange would have been furious.

Tim had never called her anything except Madame, nor had she asked him to. The French term for mother-in-law was Belle Mere—Beautiful Mother.

And Madame was still a beautiful woman, small, reed-slim, with that innate chic that French women seemed to possess as a birthright. Solange had been even more beautiful than her mother. She was also clever and funny—at least in the old days.

Madame didn’t hesitate to tell him she thought Solange could have done better for herself than a workaholic high school vice principal and adjunct professor. He might never even become a full principal or a full professor.

Solange had been three months pregnant with Jason when they’d married, so Madame considered her damaged goods. Madame had never forgiven Tim for that, either.

Actually Solange had seduced him, not that he needed much seducing. She saw him as an up-and-coming graduate assistant with a Ph.D. and a prestigious academic career ahead of him. He saw nothing except her beauty and charm.

“You never appreciated her,” Madame railed at him. “You have no passion. You work all the time for no money and no prestige. Why else do you think she went back to graduate school? Why else did she take a lover?”

He’d endured her tirades and her guilt trips. The children needed her, and she had lost a beloved daughter.

Had he lost a beloved wife? He’d been furious when he let Solange out of the car to go to her French class, where her professor lover waited for her. She’d been just as furious with him.

Yet when the police came to tell him she was dead, he’d felt as though his heart had been torn out of his body. He grieved for what they had been to each other, for the love they had shared. The love they might have found again had she lived. A marriage, even a marriage gone bad, must be grieved.

The children missed her, loved her, but they also hated her for abandoning them. Jason and Angie’s rebellions were a form of acting out the unhappiness they felt. Didn’t make them any easier to endure.

Nobody expected to be touched by sudden violence. No, not touched—struck, bashed, torn apart. His children had been secure in a stable environment. Then, suddenly, that security was ripped away.

Tim pulled into the parking lot of the Collierville supermarket, took a parking space, turned off his ignition and simply sat.

He’d been so certain his goals were Solange’s goals, too. Work long hours to gain a more prestigious position to make more money.

Looking back, he saw that she needed him then, and not at some future date when he could afford to relax a little.

But he’d never had the chance to tell her.

He climbed out of the SUV, went into the grocery, took a cart and wandered through the unfamiliar aisles trying to remember what he said he’d buy for the house. What was the only kind of shampoo Angie would use? What kind of cereal did Eddy want? He should have made a list.

Tim picked up two dozen eggs. The kids were getting pretty sick of pizza, and he could make a great omelet.

His basket overflowed with microwave meals.

He checked his watch at the checkout line. He’d been gone three hours. It was after eleven. But in an unfamiliar house, Angie and Jason might be up and causing God-knows-what havoc.

He had remembered the extra half-gallon of orange juice for Nancy to replace the one he and Eddy had downed.

The orange juice gave him an excuse to see Nancy again. Among other things, he wanted to speak to her about those Halliburton people, to find out what he could do to make amends for kicking them out.

Before yesterday, when he’d literally run into her, he would have sworn he didn’t have any libido left. He’d almost forgotten how soft a woman felt.

He turned into the driveway of his new house. From the outside, all seemed serene. The inside looked serene, too. Apparently Jason and Angie weren’t even aware that he and Eddy had been gone, that the Sheriff had visited. His note lay untouched on the kitchen counter. He made half a dozen trips to carry in the groceries and found a place for them. He tried to recreate Solange’s system, but this kitchen was gigantic compared to the galley kitchen in their Chicago apartment.

To get to the pantry, he had to edge between the boxes still to be unpacked. He’d tried to label each one, but after a while, he’d run out of steam, so at the moment he wasn’t certain where the coffeemaker was hidden. He definitely needed caffeine.

He settled for a glass of milk.

He’d forgotten to pick up a Saturday newspaper. He’d have to call the subscription desk to arrange service, assuming they delivered this far out in the country. He took his milk into the empty living room—well, empty of everything except the randomly arranged furniture—and sank into the love seat in front of the bow window overlooking the porch.

He believed in writing To-Do lists, but at the moment his day-planner was buried somewhere among the boxes. He’d have to rely on his memory. Never a good idea, but he didn’t even know where he could find a pen and a piece of scrap paper.

First, call his rental agent and find out about the Halliburtons. Then call them himself, and see if he could do anything to mend fences.

Next, check in at Maybree. With only a few weeks until school started, the office staff might be working on Saturday. His first staff meeting was scheduled for eight-thirty Monday morning, but it wouldn’t hurt to seem eager.

He’d already sent the Maybree secretary a notice asking how he should go about hiring a housekeeper. She’d posted it on the staff bulletin board, but he didn’t know yet if she’d had any queries. He’d check on Monday.

If the school couldn’t help, then he’d insert the ad he’d already written into the local papers. He wanted someone who knew the area. He also doubted anyone would be willing to make the commute from Memphis five days a week.

At some point, he’d wake his two older children and get them to help unpack.

He was reaching for the phone when out the window he saw a big crew cab pickup that had seen better days—much better days, as a matter of fact—roll up across the lane. It was towing a large open-sided stock trailer. Behind it another truck—this one a big professional hauler—pulled up towing a flatbed trailer.

One man climbed out of each truck. They moved so precisely in unison they seemed to be performing a well-rehearsed dance.

Each wore a pristine white T-shirt under equally pristine and well-pressed bib overalls. Each wore a broad-brimmed straw Stetson on top and a pair of shiny brown work boots on the bottom. Still in unison they pulled on heavy work gloves.

They were probably in their early sixties, although they might be anywhere from fifty to eighty. From the way their biceps stretched the cotton fabric of their T-shirts, he suspected they’d be able to handle a herd of buffalo.

As they turned their brown and craggy faces toward his house, he noticed they both wore perfectly trimmed white beards. Tim laughed. Twins. Tweedledum and Tweedledee grown middle-aged and transplanted from Wonderland to West Tennessee.

He wondered what they were doing across the street, so he kept watching.

One walked around to the back of the stock trailer, opened the double doors and stepped back.

Two immense gray draft horses backed out of the trailer and stood quietly. Both wore heavy work harnesses. Even at this distance Tim could see each harness was shiny with fresh oil.

The twins each took a horse and attached some sort of pulling apparatus. Then they walked up Nancy’s lawn and disappeared around her house. The horses followed without lead line or direction.

Tim had never seen horses that big. When he was a kid visiting in the summer, his grandfather had kept a couple of mules to plow his garden, but they looked like miniature donkeys compared to these big guys. The twins must be nearly as tall as he was, but their horses dwarfed them.

He was considering whether to trail along after them to find out what they were doing, when he heard a clatter from the staircase to the second floor.

“Daddy! Did you see?” Angie slid on the wood floor and caught herself on the back of the sofa. “Horses!” She raced to stand at his shoulder. “Where’d they go? Can we follow them?”

“Is your brother up?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled. “Jason? No way. Come on!”

He looked at the light in her eyes, a light he hadn’t seen in much too long. Taking her outstretched hand, he let her pull him up from the window seat and followed her gallop at a more sedate pace.

Before he reached the lane, she was pelting across Nancy’s lawn like an ordinary kid. “Angie, wait up!” he called after her. If she heard him, she didn’t slow down to wait for him. He jogged after her and saw her reach the men and their rigs halfway across Nancy’s back pasture.

“Hey, young’un,” said one of the men. “Whoa-up, Henry, Herb.” The two horses stopped and stood quietly.

Angie froze. He saw her mouth gape in awe as she realized for the first time that what she’d thought were ordinary horses were in reality gray giants larger than any she’d ever seen in her life.

Tim put his hand on her shoulder. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Tim Wainright and this is my daughter, Angie. Sorry to have bothered you, but Angie saw the horses and…”

The man nodded gravely at Angie. “Girls and horses.” He pulled off his glove and stuck out his hand. “I’m Phil Cobb. This here’s my brother, Phineas.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Them’s Henry and Herb. Best pair of loggin’ horses in four states.”

“Logging? With horses?”

“Yessiree.” At that point Phineas stepped up, pulled off his glove and shook hands not only with Tim but with Angie. He nodded and stepped back without saying a word.

“Us Cobbs been logging with draft horses four generations I know about. You want to cut and sell a few hardwoods out of the middle of your woods to buy you some seed for spring, call on Cobbs. We’ll bring in ole Henry and Herb here. Once we’re finished cutting and moving the logs out, you won’t never know we’d been in your woods, ’cept maybe the boys’ll leave you some piles of fertilizer.” He chortled. “Course you got to get in line. Me and Phineas, here, we’re pretty well booked up into next spring.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.