A Trashy Affair (28 page)

Denver, a city that knew how to deal with snow, had its main roads plowed, but the airport remained closed. She swore Merlin seemed pleased about that. He made a phone call, asking the person on the other end if he’d arrived too late for a visit, hung up, and told her he had to go out. Seeing his face go bleak, Jane put a hand on his arm.

“Where?”

“I’m going to see my gunner’s widow. I should have done it when I got home, but didn’t have the guts to face her.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“Yes.”

That one word answer told Jane enough. She got in the truck and helped him follow the directions to a street still two feet deep in snow and lined with small homes. Merlin’s big tires crunched through this insignificant barrier and carried them up a driveway beside a house with a large blue spruce in the yard and a small pine tree, the size a single woman could manage, sitting in the picture window, its Christmas lights glowing in the night. Margo Bailey opened the door immediately because who could miss the sound of Merlin’s truck bearing down on them? She held a toddler, newly bathed with his red hair slicked back and clothed in footie pajamas patterned with little airplanes. They waded toward her across an unshoveled walk.

“Sorry about that. My father keeps saying he’ll cover over and dig me out, but he hasn’t made it yet. Come in out of the cold. So nice to meet you, Merlin Tauzin, after all my husband said about you. Can I offer you some coffee, hot chocolate?”

“No, thank you, we can’t stay. This is Jane Marshall, my uh…”

“Friend and tenant,” Jane said. “Merlin insisted on driving me to Bozeman to be with my parents for the holidays when the airports closed.”

“Yes, I thought he’d be that kind of guy, always there for a person in a crisis.” Curvaceous with dark hair framing her pretty face, Margo Bailey had wide blue eyes that held less happiness and more wisdom than she should have possessed at her young age. She led the way to the room with the Christmas tree and a single stocking hanging on the fireplace.

“I can’t put gifts out yet, not until Santa comes tomorrow night, or he’ll get into them.” She hugged her son affectionately. “Say hi to Mr. Tauzin, Scotty.” The child hid his round blue eyes in his mother’s red sweater.

“I guess I’m pretty scary. I haven’t shaved in two days. He looks like his daddy and has the same name.”

“He’s at a shy age right now. Yes, we had another name picked out but after…anyhow, I decided to name him Scott Jordan Bailey, Jr. for his father. My husband said if we had a girl we should name her Merry after you.”

“Now that would be terrible to do to a little girl. Good thing the baby turned out to be a boy.” Merlin kept his eyes on the child, unable to look directly at the widow, glanced at Jane, and came back to the boy.

“I want to thank you for keeping his father alive long enough to come home on leave and give me this baby.”

Jane would have described the expression on Merlin’s face as agony when he looked at her before blurting out, “No, don’t say that! I got him killed trying to save those other men, and they were shot down later, all of them dead. Scotty died for nothing.”

Frantically, Merlin dug in the pocket of his navy jacket, unbuttoned but not taken off because he wanted to flee back outside into the freezing night as quickly as possible. “I want little Scotty to have this. It won’t replace his father, but…” He offered an open box holding a medal, a propeller on a starburst hanging from a red, white and blue ribbon, the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Margo folded his hand over the box. “No, you keep that for your own son someday.” She gazed sideways at Jane when she said those words. “I have the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for Scotty. We both know my husband could have died over there any day of the week by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You tried to save some lives. He would have said ‘Go for it, Magician’.”

Merlin’s head came up. “He did, those very words just before…but it doesn’t change that he died, and I didn’t. They try to shoot the pilot and got him instead because I swung my chopper around at just that moment to pick up those other guys.”

“Listen to me, Merlin Tauzin. I want only two things from you. Stop blaming yourself and stay in touch. I’d like Scotty to know a man who flew with his father.” With her blue eyes tear-filled, Margo wiped her face on the back of her little boy’s pajamas, the ones with the airplanes on them.

“I can do that, stay in touch. I swear.” He met those brave, blue eyes for the very first time.

“No need to swear. I believe you. Now, coffee, cookies?”

“No, we need to go. Maybe on my way back, I’ll stop by again and take the two of you to dinner.”

“If you do, I’ll cook. Scotty is a bad little boy in a restaurant right now, always wanting to get down and throwing his food on the floor.”

“Kids his age are like that. I have a nephew a little older. Okay, Jane, long drive ahead tomorrow. Let’s get some rest.”

Margo Bailey, still holding Scotty, saw them to the door. She coaxed a bye-bye wave from the boy which brought a smile to Merlin’s weary face. He trudged into the snow, breaking a better path for Jane, opened the door to the truck, went around and started the engine to warm the cab. Jane hung back a minute.

“Thanks for telling him that. Maybe he’ll be able to sleep at night now.”

“I’m glad I could help. You are more to him than he can say, you know. He must have looked at you half a dozen times as if you were holding his lifeline.”

Jane shook her head. “But he won’t say.”

“He got these words out, and that must have been hard. Don’t give up on him, Jane.”

“People keep telling me that. I’ll try a little longer.”

“Come on, woman! We’re wasting precious fossil fuel here,” Merlin called.

Somehow, those words made her feel better, too.

****

Jane braced herself for the nightmare, stayed awake anticipating Merlin’s thrashing and frantic calls for backup because the visit with Margo Bailey must have brought every excruciating minute of his ordeal to the forefront of his mind. She waited to talk him down, then put her arms around him and hold him for the rest of the evening. She could afford the loss of rest because no way would he allow her to drive Big Blue through the snow, and she could sleep while he steered.

Merlin slept deeply, barely moving by her side, allowing her too much time in the darkest hours of the night to think of their relationship if he ever admitted they had one. He’d certainly been unable to define it for Margo, the understanding widow of his best friend, mother of a sweet, fatherless boy, but that pretty-faced woman pegged Merlin perfectly. Always there for a person in a crisis. That said it all. Would he now feel an obligation to care for Margo and Scotty, enter their lives and stay there permanently, maybe offering marriage out of guilt or a growing affection after several months of contact?

“How jealous and petty can you be, Jane?” she muttered in the dark. If Merlin could leave her that easily, he did not love her in the first place. She waited, not realizing she’d finally fallen asleep until the sound of Merlin in the shower made her open her gritty eyes.

They got another early start following the trail of freight-hauling big rigs that heated the paving of the road and cleared the interstate. Out of Colorado and into Wyoming, they moved steadily north through steep, rolling hills where snow fences held back the drifts from the traffic below. The sky stayed a frigid pale blue until Merlin’s truck crossed into Montana. Wooly, gray clouds rolled in, and the flakes began to fall hard enough to warrant using the windshield wipers. At a pit stop for gas, bathrooms, and hot coffee in Billings, the convenience store owner, a Sikh with a beard and turban, warned them the road ahead would be closed by the blizzard before they reached Bozeman. He might have been an all-seeing, all-knowing swami because his prediction became true right outside of Livingston where the big-ass truck got shunted onto a side road by a line of orange traffic cones and closed gates across the interstate.

Merlin held their vehicle slow and steady on the loop of back roads they traversed. He made his way down the middle of the road certain he’d see the headlights of any oncoming cars through the heavy sheet of snow, and they would notice the sharp, blue-white glow of his LEDs in plenty of time to pull aside. Jane, not so certain, dug her nails into the leather seat cushion and held her breath on every turn. When the inevitable happened and another insane driver trundling along through the heavy weather in a big SUV approached, Merlin began his gradual journey toward the side of his lane. As the SUV pushed past, the big tires of the truck hit ice and went into a slow fishtail toward a huge snow bank. The truck’s rear end thumped against something hard and straightened out again in Merlin’s skilled hands. Still, he stopped, backed up slowly, and turned on the spotlights across the top of the cab.

“This is really no time to check for dents,” Jane chided.

“It’s not dents that worry me. We hit something way sturdier than a pile of snow.”

He drew on the black knit cap that made him look like a thug or a longshoreman and his gloves, buttoned up the navy peacoat, and got out to do an inspection. Jane watched as he probed the snow bank. An icy crust fell away from a white fender where the truck hit. Beneath that, two black tires canted into the air as Merlin gradually exposed the rear of an old van nose down in a shallow ditch. He swept off a softer covering and revealed a large rear window. The spotlights penetrated the interior. Without hesitation, Merlin climbed into the rear of his truck, cleared the snow off of his toolbox, and took out a hammer. Shielding his eyes, he smashed the van’s window and cleared the jagged edges of glass with his coat sleeve.

Jane opened her door. “What on earth are you doing? That’s vandalism!”

He reached inside the stranded van and lifted out one small body, then another, two rosy cheeked, well-bundled unconscious children. He laid them in Jane’s arms.

“Try to wake them. Keep them in the fresh air.”

He returned to the van and snaked himself inside, returning with a groggy woman and dragging her through the opening. Lightly slapping her flushed cheeks, Merlin urged her to breathe deep.

“Where’s my husband, my kids?”

“Your children are over there with Jane. I don’t see any man around.”

“He went…he went for help after we slid off the road. I kept the motor running for heat. Got so sleepy, the children all quiet in the back.”

Jane jostled the larger boy, the smaller girl with her knees. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, please, wake up.” For your mother, for Merlin, for me.

Shoving his duffel aside, Merlin helped the woman into the truck. He rummaged under a seat and brought out a thin square of silver cloth, flipped it open. “An emergency blanket, warmer than it looks. We need to keep the windows down for a while. We’ll look for your husband along the way. Jane, how are the kids?”

She started to say unresponsive when the boy opened a pair of large gray eyes so beautifully fringed with long, dark lashes they should have belonged to his sister. “Mom?” he said.

“Right here, baby. Come under this cover with me.”

Merlin made the transfer from Jane’s lap. “Don’t let him go to sleep again, okay? Jane, keep the daughter up front and work on her. We’ll search for the dad as we go.”

With everyone stowed, he killed the spotlights that made a blinding white wall of the falling snow and eased the truck forward. Slowly, it crunched along, one mile, two. They approached a short bridge over a small river.

“There,” he said, stopping the truck by a break in a drift going down to the water. A flicker of light went on and off like the tail of a firefly. Once more, he turned on the spotlight but saw nothing. Getting out, he moved carefully to the brink of the hole. The light flickered again.

“Help me!”

“We’ll get you out.” Into the bed of the truck again, he found a length of yellow nylon rope and tied it to the silver knob of his trailer hitch. “I’m throwing down a rope. Can you pull yourself up?”

“Don’t think so. My arm is broken.”

“Can you tie it around yourself or just hang on?”

“Yes, I’ll try.”

Merlin gave the unseen man a few moments before starting the truck again. He angled its body across the road until he could go no farther. Leaving the cab, he pulled the rope up the remainder of the way until a hunter’s cap appeared on the verge, then the head and torso of a man clinging on for dear life with the rope doubled wrapped around a gloved hand. Merlin offered a strong shoulder for support and helped the fellow to the truck. He got his burden into the backseat and placed the husband under the blanket with his family.

All the while, Jane continued to pat the little girl with the rosy cheeks of a baby doll and a fringe of blonde curls peeking out beneath her pompom cap as if she were burping a baby. “Breathe deep, breathe deep, breathe deep.” The child gasped and vomited on her shoulder and the back of the leather seat. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Merlin. I did not see that coming.”

“Makes no never-mind at all. Be back in a minute.”

He retrieved his rope and coiled it into the toolbox, took out some rags, and handed them to Jane. “Please tell me there is a hospital in frickin’ Bozeman because I’m driving a fuckin’ ambulance right now, not a truck.”

“Said a bad word,” the little girl murmured.

Merlin laughed. “I do think she’ll live.”

“Mommy, want Mommy.” She held out her hands toward the backseat. Jane hoisted her over to join her family.

“There is a hospital not too far off the main road.”

“Thank the Lord God and Baby Jesus for that. Everyone ready? We got thirty more miles to go in this crap. Another reason you should stay in Louisiana, Jane. No snow!”

“And the others would be…” she thought but did not say.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Rescuing and dropping the entire McAllistair family off at the hospital to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning, hypothermia, and the single broken arm set their arrival time back two hours. On Jane’s directions, Merlin turned into an old neighborhood that had hit rock bottom judging by the huge, rundown houses turned into apartments momentarily made lovely by the coating of snow. They stopped on a street in the process of clawing its way up again with a row of beautiful restorations. Midnight approached by the time they parked in front of a three-story Victorian home with fish scale shingles ornamenting its gables and dainty spindles enclosing a generous porch. Considering the many lights in the windows, Jane’s family, all of them, waited up.