“Is there someone you can call?” the vet asked.
And Amy Raye thought of Farrell, and she asked to use the vet’s phone. When Farrell answered, there was too much noise in the background. He was at a bar with some friends. Julia was visiting her mom. And in that second when Amy Raye first heard he was in a bar, she was angry at him that he could be drinking and having a good time while Saddle was hurt and might not make it, and she was angry that Farrell, whose love had come to her like the wind on the mountaintop and thunder in the rain, could be out drinking with friends while she was gone. She was irrational and alone, and she needed Saddle to be okay. She needed Farrell, and she needed to go home.
The vet operated on Saddle. He would be watched for twenty-four hours.
“And what about you?” the vet had asked. “You’ve been injured, too.”
Amy Raye walked with a limp, and blood was on her jeans and on the hem of her shirt.
“I just want him to be okay.”
“And if he could talk, he would say the same about you. Here, let me take a look.”
The gash on Amy Raye’s hip needed stitches and needed to be cleaned.
“I don’t have insurance,” Amy Raye told her. “And I don’t have enough money.”
“I can take care of that,” the vet said. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“I can stay in my truck.”
But the vet lived close by, and after she stitched Amy Raye’s hip and bandaged the wound, she brought Amy Raye home with her, scrambled eggs and fried bacon, made coffee and poured orange juice, and Amy Raye ate as if nothing had ever tasted better. She slept a few hours on the woman’s sofa, took a shower, and then went back to the hospital to be with Saddle, and she thanked God for good people, for this woman whose husband had left her, and whose heart had refused to become bitter, for Lew, and for her grandfather, and for someone as kind to her as Farrell.
As soon as the bank opened and Amy Raye picked up the money Farrell had sent her, she stopped by a grocery store to buy dog food and a sandwich and snacks for the road. After she made her purchase, she saw some hikers, a college-age group, who were replenishing their supplies. One of them had just put his cell phone away. Amy Raye asked him if she could borrow it. She would pay him ten dollars. He told her to use the phone. He didn’t want her money. He told her to take her time. They were in no hurry.
She dialed the number. The phone on the other end rang too many times. She almost hung up. A familiar voice answered.
“Nan? It’s Amy Raye.”
The person on the other end gasped. “Oh my God. Where are you? Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry, Nan. I don’t have a lot of time. Is Grandpa there?”
The silence on the other end lasted long enough for Amy Raye to know something was wrong.
“Aims, it’s been nearly six years. No one knew how to reach you.”
“Where is he?” Amy Raye asked.
“Aims, he’s dead. He’s been dead four years now.”
Nan’s words were like a truck, a very large truck, hitting Amy Raye in the middle of a road, while she had been standing there looking in another direction. Her eyes filled with hot liquid. The air seemed to thicken.
Their conversation lasted a few more minutes, long enough for Amy Raye to learn that her grandfather had developed lung cancer, that it had spread to his brain, and once it was in his brain, he had gone fast. Nan had since gotten married to Danny Foster, a local boy whom Amy Raye remembered from school. Nan and Danny had moved onto the farm. They’d needed a place to stay. Grandma Tomlin needed their help on the farm.
But her grandmother wasn’t there when Amy Raye called, and when Nan pressed Amy Raye for information, she was still trying to take everything in and said she couldn’t talk. She said she was borrowing the phone from someone she didn’t know. She said she would call back another time.
She gave the college boy his phone. She walked out of the grocery store and got into her truck. She turned onto the highway and headed in the direction of the animal hospital, and as she drove, she screamed her lungs empty, and hit the steering wheel until her palms turned blue. And back at the hospital, she wiped the tears from her face; she got out of the truck and went in to get Saddle.