The Song of David

Tag would need more time to heal now, and the knowledge made me angry all over again. I wanted the cancer on blast. I didn’t want Tag waiting any longer. He didn’t seem upset by the delay whatsoever. Just subdued. Troubled. Unsure of himself. He watched Millie with such hunger and regret that it was hard to stay angry with him. But I managed.

“You’re all coming home with me. At least for the next few days,” I insisted, arriving at the only solution I could come up with. We were nearing the Levan/Mills exit, an exit that boasted a few abandoned vehicles, several stray cows, and a man-made reservoir that wasn’t much to look at. The freeway bypassed Levan completely, and the one exit, several miles from the town, was the only way to access it without backtracking from Nephi. Funny, Levan was just a blip on the map, a speck, but Georgia and Kathleen were there, and suddenly I was incredibly homesick for the town I once hated.

I caught Tag’s gaze in my rearview mirror, and he stared back at me steadily. He’d lifted his head from Millie’s lap and straightened to a sitting position.

“You’re all coming home with me,” I repeated firmly.

He broke eye contact and turned to Millie, but she was already nodding.

“Okay,” she said easily, and I released the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

Henry was the only one smiling. “Did you know the average jockey weighs between 108 and 118 pounds?” he asked. Apparently, he was looking forward to riding again. “But a jockey has to be strong,” he added. “Because the average racehorse weighs twelve hundred pounds and can run forty miles per hour.”

I pressed the pedal down, flying toward home, leaving the average racehorse in the dust.





I SPENT THE first three days at Moses and Georgia’s house holed up in my room. Georgia brought me food that I didn’t want to eat, and I slept as much as I could. But on the fourth day, I was restless, irritatingly restored, and I couldn’t hide in the room over Mo’s studio forever. Even though I wanted to. They’d put Henry in the single bed in the baby’s room—Kathleen still slept in a cradle in her parents’ room—and Millie took the guest room on the main floor. It was a big house, a nice house, and I loved the people in it, but I had purposely avoided them.

Moses had stomped in that morning with the painting he’d done of David and Goliath and set it down on an easel facing my bed. Then he plunked down a huge bible, just tossed it in front of me, and opened it to a section that he had highlighted in red pencil.

“David kills giants. Giants don’t kill David,” he barked, slapping the book. “Read it.” He stomped back out again.

I picked up the book, liking the heft in my hand, the silkiness of the pages. It had gold lettering engraved on the cover—Kathleen Wright—Moses’s great-grandmother, the grandmother his daughter was named for. From the looks of it, her bible had been a trusted friend. It surprised me that Moses read it, but he obviously had, at least long enough to find the passage of scripture he wanted me to read. I turned back to the opened page and read the highlighted sections.



And it came to pass, when Goliath arose, and came, and drew nigh to meet David that David hastened, and ran toward the army to meet Goliath. And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote Goliath in his forehead that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over Goliath with a sling and with a stone, and smote Goliath, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran, and stood upon Goliath, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and cut off his head therewith.



Moses had underlined the part where David ran to meet Goliath. Eager little beaver, that David. The biblical David apparently enjoyed fighting too. I sighed and shut the book. I wasn’t terribly inspired. I knew what Moses wanted, but deep down, I wasn’t convinced, and I wished he would hear me out. Moses was all about seeing, but he could stand to listen every once in a while.

I could hear Georgia and Henry outside my bedroom window. The room overlooked the round corral, and Georgia was walking Sackett in slow circles, Henry perched happily on his back, chatting away like talking was his favorite thing and not something he struggled with at all. Georgia was damn good at what she did, and I marveled at the little miracle that Henry was here, enjoying the benefits of my friendship with Georgia and Moses. If nothing else, that was something I could hold onto. I hadn’t messed everything up. It wasn’t all bad.

It was just mostly bad. Including the way I smelled. I desperately needed a shower. In addition to the bed, Moses had a huge sink and a toilet tucked away above his work space, but no shower. I would have to brave the rest of the house for that, and it couldn’t be put off any longer.