Heaven Should Fall

Chapter 30

Jill




Lucia was right. Eddy was in renal failure, and the afternoon turned into a mad scramble to get Cade down to the hospital to make decisions on behalf of his mother, whom Dodge was bringing back from Concord. His father would need dialysis, and even if he got well enough to be released, coming home wasn’t a viable option for the immediate future. Cade didn’t know what to do about that, and so, like so many other things these days, he could only patch up a temporary solution: to set up Leela in a motel adjacent to the hospital so she could come and go easily for the duration. He got home at 11:00 p.m., exhausted both physically and mentally. But the next morning, once he came in after the chores were done and found Candy cooking up breakfast as if everything were normal, he tore into her.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he barked at her. “He almost died up there in his own goddamn bed with his own daughter right there. You don’t have the two brain cells’ worth of common sense it would take to see how sick he was?”

“Maybe I would have if she hadn’t gone dancing off to bring over Lucia. You want to talk about sense—and you never had the sense to tell her we don’t deal with those people?”

“You don’t deal with those people. I couldn’t care less. And Jill did the right thing. I’d much rather bring Randy and his whole damn militia to my door than let Dad just keel over and die. Jesus.”

Candy shrugged loosely and plated a scrambled egg. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

The corner of Cade’s lip curled upward. “So courageous of you to make that decision on behalf of somebody else.”

Casually Candy pointed her spatula in my direction. “Ask your wife about the decision she made for us. Now Dad’s stuck in a hospital, probably all delirious and saying whatever pops into his mind. There’s some things around here you better hope he doesn’t start talking about.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cade said. But Dodge didn’t agree, and whatever he said to Cade about it later seemed to convince him, as well. From that night onward they instituted a system of nighttime watch shifts, switching off every few hours and bringing in Scooter to take a shift as well, imagining the government was about to swoop in over some unregistered guns. At any hour of the night, when I woke to nurse TJ, I could hear their slow, heavy-booted footsteps creaking the hardwood floors, walking the inside perimeter. Cade kept Elias’s gun holstered on his belt all the time now when he was home. The only time he took it off was when he lay down with TJ, and then he would set it on the fireplace mantel, never more than a few paces away.

A few days into this arrangement, I awoke to the clunk of Cade’s gun against the nightstand, followed by the soft, rumpled sound of clothes dropping to the floor. I squinted awake: the clock read 2:00 a.m. Cade climbed in beneath the covers and ran his hand up against my belly. “Hey, you,” he said with affection, and rolled me onto my back. Despite the late hour he was buzzing with energy. The estrangement I felt from him in my heart should have made it easier to push him away at times like this, but instead it only made it harder. In spite of everything, I still yearned to be close to him, to feel once again the kind of intimacy we had shared in the beginning and store it away as a memory. Soon I would be gone, and who knew how long it would be before I would feel that human touch again, or feel even that tenuous sense of connection? Each time with him now the thought would flutter through my mind—this could be the last time—and for a few minutes everything I had grown to resent and disdain and even fear about him seemed to fall away, leaving only the beauty of him, which was the one sure thing he had held on to.

After he was sated, he slumped his arm across me and fell asleep. I never could get used to that unit patch tattoo, identical to the one I had traced on Elias’s skin in moments only he and I had shared. For a while I lay there awake and curled with my back against Cade’s chest, holding his arm with both hands. But the urge to cry grew stronger and stronger, and finally I unwound myself from his embrace and pulled my clothes on quietly, then tiptoed out of the room so I would not wake him with my snuffling.

From the stair landing I could see the light on beside Elias’s chair, a dim star. Downstairs I heard that slow heel-toe double-thump, working its way from the foyer to the living room and around to the addition. I walked on the outside edge of the stairs so as not to let them creak. Scooter looked up as I came down, at first in alarm, then with a somber wave of his hand.

“Hey, Jill,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Hey.” I walked up to the front window, pushed the curtain aside and peered out in defiance of the paranoia. Nobody was there. The dark was absolute, broken only by the lacy line of the treetops and the jagged silhouette of the mountains, contrasting black against deeper black. I let the curtain drop and went to the kitchen to run myself a glass of water from the sink. The TV was off. When Cade or Dodge kept watch they left it on—muted, but with the picture on nonetheless, like a sort of electronic eternal flame lit for Elias. Yet Scooter had no such sentimentality, and so the only light came from the reading lamp beside the chair.

“Hope I didn’t wake you up,” Scooter said. “I try not to walk too loud.”

“It’s not you. I just couldn’t sleep.”

“I know what you mean.” He had made his way to the dining room now, gazing through each window at the backyard, or at least what he could see of it through the screen porch. A handgun was tucked into the back of his jeans, bunching his shirt at the small of his back. “I’m looking forward to the end of all this.”

I drank down my water. “Won’t be till Eddy gets home, I guess. And who knows how long they’ll keep it up after that. It’s the most paranoid thing I’ve ever heard of, thinking an old man’s going to start mumbling about his unregistered guns in his sleep.”

Scooter shook his head slowly. His gaze drifted up to the second-floor landing, then returned to bore into me. In a lower voice he asked, “Is that what they told you?”

He sat down in a kitchen chair, then leaned forward to tug the gun from the back of his pants and set it on the table. His face was so young, but those wire-rimmed glasses gave him an owlish look. With his pale skin and high-and-tight haircut, he had the earnest look of a missionary. I said nothing. I could only hold his gaze and wait for him to go on.

“Now’s a good time to get out, Jill,” he said. His voice had grown so quiet that the low syllables bumped against each other like marbles, but his meaning was clear enough. “Remember what I said to you about Randy.”

Fear prickled at the back of my neck. “What’s going on?”

“If I knew I’d tell you. I figured you knew more than I did. You live here.” He glanced up at the landing again. “I don’t think they trust me enough anymore to say. But I know they’re not watching the property twenty-four-seven because they’re worried over Eddy. That never even came up.”

I felt panic tightening my chest as I pictured TJ fast asleep in the laundry basket beside the bed, clad only in a diaper and a thin white undershirt, and the keys to the Jeep in the pocket of Cade’s dirty jeans. I had waited much too long to make my escape plans, as if this moment would never come, when all along I knew it would. “Well, what did they say?” I demanded. “How much time do I have?”

“It has to do with getting retribution for Elias, that’s all I know. If I knew details none of us would be here now. Maybe I would have turned him in already.” At the sight of my fearful gaze he lowered his voice to a conciliatory whisper. “I’m sure they won’t do anything till after your kid gets his ear thing done. Cade loves his son and all. I know he’s planning to be around for that. But if I were you I would go straight to Randy’s from there. I wouldn’t mess around.”

“Have you said anything to anyone? The police?”

“No, they wouldn’t do anything. There’s plenty of people up here who make that same kind of noise. I’d get thrown under the bus for it, and they’d think it was nothing special. Except Cade always wants to be the special one. That’s the one difference, I guess.”

I sat down wearily in the chair closest to his and rested my temple against my hand, gazing out the window at the Jeep. Crescents of moonlight reflected off the curve around its headlights, a sharp glint against the darkness. If only it weren’t for TJ. I wished desperately that I could call upon my mother to get us out of here, give us shelter, frame up the step-by-step plan to untangle our circumstances. But that was nothing more than an idle wish. There was only me.

“I understood it at first,” said Scooter. “When the government isn’t just, people ought to rise up. But the cloak-and-dagger stuff, it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t the way to honor Elias. He was a soldier. He fought in a uniform. He didn’t deceive anybody.”

In my life I haven’t felt a great deal of regret, but I felt it then. It was like a dissolving in the pit of my stomach, a sense of waste and lost time. The seam of my shorts felt damp from Cade, and again I pictured him dozing upstairs, peaceful and complacent with no right to be so, draped half over my side of the bed. As the regret moved through me I felt it trailed by a fresh burst of anger: at what a stooge he had made me, how easily I had mistaken his ambition for character, and how now I would have to scrap this life and cobble together a new one, again—but this time with a child who deserved better. The thoughts twisted together into a tight bundle of rage. But I needed to push that down for now. Throwing my energy into the chaos of anger would only make things harder for my son.

“Thanks, Scooter,” I said. I looked away from the window and into his eyes, nervous and grave as they were. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you trust me like this.”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders and rubbed at a smudge on his gun. “You know what, Jill, I hate feeling like a snitch. The rights and the wrongs here run together until I don’t know for sure which is which anymore. But the one thing I know is, the whole reason Elias was in Afghanistan was to fight the ones who brought down buildings full of innocent people on 9/11. So if somebody says they’re going to go and do that same kind of thing in Elias’s name, I’m going to speak up. If I follow that way through it, doing what seems right and logical, I guess I can feel okay when it’s over.”

I nodded, but more than anything I wondered what those last three words would mean.

* * *

As the sun rose the following morning I lay quietly beside Cade, listening to the peaceful rhythm of his breathing. I wondered how I was going to get through the next days, living alongside him knowing all that Scooter had told me, wondering every moment if my words or actions would give away my plan to leave him. I felt my mind shuttling itself into survival mode—locking its doors, sealing its windows with tape, filling up the bathtub with water to last the duration—doing whatever would help it press through the day ahead, accomplishing what needed to be done without incurring further damage. Once Cade had left for work, I loaded TJ into his car seat and drove over to the U-Store-It. Any calls I made from the little office would be listed on the phone bill, but I figured by the time the family received it, I would be gone.

I let myself in with my key, and dialed. Dave picked up on the third ring.

“Jill,” he said, and even over the fuzzy connection I heard happiness in the way his voice lifted. “Been wondering how you’ve been. What’s going on?”

My laugh was short and hard. “Things with Cade aren’t going so great. I need to get out. Like, Wednesday.”

“Oh, jeez. Well, you know you can come here whenever you need. Come now if you want.”

Silently I started to cry. My throat grew too tight to speak, and I moved the receiver away from my mouth so he wouldn’t hear my breathing. TJ twisted the long, curling cord between his fists, catching my hair in his grasp and pulling painfully, but I didn’t care. I could go home now. There was an end to this, and it was Wednesday.

“Can you get down here?” he asked into my silence. “You need gas money or anything? I can wire it to you. Where are you, New Hampshire?”

“Yeah.” I forced an even breath, then said, “My son is having surgery on Wednesday. I can’t leave till after that, but it’s outpatient. Cade will get a ride in to work once it’s over so I can keep the car in case there’s any complications later and I need to take him back in. But my plan is to leave straight from the hospital and just keep driving.”

“Wow. Sounds like things are pretty bad over there.”

I blurted a quick, humorless laugh at the understatement. “I can’t even tell you, Dave.”

“Is he beating you? What is it?”

I couldn’t let Dave know the details—not this way, over the phone. If I told him what Scooter had said to me he would probably leave Southridge before the call had ended and show up at my door, throwing everything into disorder. So I only said, “I’ll explain when I get there.”

There was a long silence across the phone line. Then Dave said, “Jill, let me come up and get you. I don’t like the sound of all this. Sounds like you could use a backup in case something goes wrong.”

“No, don’t go to all that trouble. Just be at camp when I get there.”

“Uh-uh. No. The most dangerous time for a woman in your position is when you try to leave. That’s when people get killed.” I heard drawers opening and slamming shut. “I got a pen. Give me an address where to meet you.”

I thought about the tires on the Jeep, worn almost bald. It was a long way down the state, through all the long stretches of woods and past so many abandoned houses and motels, miles between towns. If I broke down and he came looking for me, I’d have no place to go. I said, “The hospital.”

“Where your kid’s having his surgery, you mean?”

“Yeah, in Laconia. I’ll meet you in front of the emergency room. I’ll try to be there at noon. We should be done by then.”

He wrote down the information I offered him, asking for specifics about the door I’d come out from and what the family members looked like, just in case. As I spoke I saw Dodge’s long black truck pull up in front of the office. I slammed down the phone and moved toward the door, holding TJ across my chest with his head cradled in my hand. Dodge sauntered toward the door, keys in hand, with Scooter close behind him.

“Didn’t expect to find anybody here,” he said. “Something going on?”

“No. Just using the phone. The pharmacy got TJ’s prescription all mixed up. Had to call the doc.”

Dodge’s gaze was cool and narrow. I hiked TJ higher on my shoulder and asked, “You need any help, as long as I’m here?”

“Thought you needed to go to the pharmacy.”

“Well, they won’t have it ready for half an hour. I can work.”

He pondered that, then shook his head. “Just replacing some lightbulbs and a lock.”

I nodded and slipped past him out the door. As I clipped TJ’s car seat into place in the back of the Jeep, I could see him in my peripheral vision standing steady at the window, watching me. I figured he knew then that something was up. Anxiety buzzed in my veins like a swarm of bees. You can climb in this car and drive south and never come back, I told myself. But that would mean starting from scratch with TJ, with a new doctor and a new set of paperwork to get medical care from the state. It would set us back by months. That time meant pain, and infection, and all the risks that had convinced me to overrule Cade in the first place to get the state’s aid for TJ. I had made this decision already. It was too late to second-guess myself.

It was only a few more days. We could make it.

* * *

I got home shortly before lunch. Candy was preparing macaroni and cheese from a box and ignoring the slapstick fighting her sons were doing all over the dining room. I settled TJ into his high chair with a bowl of rehydrated peas and hoped he would survive the older boys while I went looking for Cade.

It was Saturday, and normally at this hour on a weekend he would be catching up on lost sleep, having returned to bed after finishing his morning shift. Now, though, his sleep schedule was particularly skewed by the night watches, and I found our bed empty. Returning to the first floor, I caught sight of him through the broad windows of the screen porch, standing at a table set up outside the shed. I headed out across the yard, and as I approached I felt a wave of dread at the realization that he was working on another pipe bomb right out in the open air, not even attempting to conceal himself. So Scooter wasn’t exaggerating, I thought. I moved toward him cautiously, wondering if he had assumed I was away from the house and would startle at seeing me. But instead he only looked up and raised his hand in a wave.

I called him in to lunch, and he took his time, finishing up the details of the bomb and making small talk with me without any hint of apology or shame. As he spoke I watched his hands—those palms beautiful and square, his fingers as strong as a pianist’s and firm in a handshake. I thought about how it had felt when he cupped my face, kissing me for the first time, enveloping my jaw in his warmth. He had so much potential then, so much skill. And here he was now.

“You know what we need?” he asked, and when he spoke my name it shocked me back to the moment at hand. “A weekend away. No whining kids, no animals to feed, no parents in the next room keeping things all quiet and inhibited. No sitting watch at three in the morning like we’re the goddamn Branch Davidians. Just you and me in a motel room someplace, getting friendly.”

I supposed that was his way of telling me the strain of it was getting to him, too. I supposed that, like the government jobs he still applied for and the college-class schedules he still composed before each semester, this was his way of reaching out to touch the Cade he had been before Elias died. That Cade just needed a break from the daily grind, and nothing in his life was so overwhelming that an afternoon of good sex couldn’t knock it back into perspective. He wanted so much to believe that, deep down, he was still the same guy. And for better or worse, I suspected that was true.

“There’s an alumni weekend at our alma mater next month,” I said sarcastically. “We could go to that, if you haven’t blown yourself up by then.”

He snickered and came around to kiss me. “‘Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.’”

So this is how it is now, I thought. I imagined the freedom to work under the light of day must have felt pretty good to him. The arrogance of it filled me with a rush of bitterness, but I tried to ride it out and let it go. I wasn’t going to be here much longer. And his trust in me, now, was unfounded. As soon as TJ came out of his surgery, I had phone calls I would make.

Cade brushed the dust from his arms and walked over to the spigot to wash his hands. As the dirt fell away, he mentioned, “I’m heading down to D.C. on Monday.”

“To blow stuff up?”

“No,” he said, in a voice that suggested I was being ridiculous. “Gonna put out some résumés. Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration. See if I can get any nibbles.”

“You’re kidding, right?” He wiped his hands on his jeans and glanced up at me, and I continued, “You really think you could pass a background check right now? Seriously?”

“Sure I could. My record’s clean.”

“Cade.”

He stood and shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta have a plan A and a plan B. I’ve been on Plan B ever since we moved here, but I’m still amenable to Plan A. In fact, I’d prefer it. Whether or not they give me a fair shake is their call. In the meantime, I can multitask.”

I shook my head. “That’s insane.”

“No,” he said right away, his tone strident. “What’s insane is the state of this country, and the state of the VA in particular. It’s shameful and it’s a dishonor to the people who served. I’ve never wanted to do anything with my life except make this country better, and through the proper channels. But whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it’s the right of the people—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. To alter or abolish it. You’ve said.”

He shot me a reprimanding look and began walking toward the house.

“TJ’s surgery is Wednesday,” I said, falling in step just behind him.

“That’s okay, I’ll be back Tuesday night. I wouldn’t miss his surgery. Dodge and I will go down in his truck and I’ll leave you the Jeep. I doubt the Jeep would make it that far anyway, with the tires the way they are.” He stepped through the porch door and waved to TJ. “Hey there, little buddy.”

At the sight of his father TJ slapped the high-chair tray with both hands and arched back with a grin of utter delight. Nothing could make me feel more awful than that. In the long run, though, maybe it was healthier—for my son to come away with some deep core memory of a father who loved him, and to imagine the idealized man he might have been. Because I often wished I’d stopped there, too.