Book of Mercy (16 page)

“Having a football player?” Antigone asked between pants.

“Quarterback, he says.” The woman nodded toward the man behind her.

Her husband frowned. “Focus here, darling. Remember, we’re going for the biggest touchdown in life.”

The woman and Antigone exchanged grins.

This was the weekly Lamaze class. It epitomized how difficult—and complicated—life had become for Antigone and Sam since Antigone opened Bookhenge. There were couples who approached them at the refreshment table and offered support for Antigone and the library. And then there were couples who refused to make eye contact and made a point of distancing themselves, edging their exercise mats away from Antigone and Sam. Even the leader, a bubbly young nurse from the hospital, felt the tension; she was decidedly flat by the time the parents-to-be rolled up their mats and stepped out into the January night.

“Everyone be sure to come next week,” called the leader as they trudged out. “We’re watching a movie—real footage of an actual birth. It’s a blockbuster.”

Walking into the house, Sam flung his baseball cap on the kitchen counter. “Well, that was fun,” he said sarcastically. Seeing Antigone floundering to get her arms out of her coat, he helped her. “Stop struggling.”

Antigone huffed. Every stitch of clothing—pulling it on and taking it off—was an ordeal for a body eight months pregnant. Her stomach bumped against Sam as he gently divested her of one of his old winter coats, an ugly example of outerwear that was the only thing she could button. It smelled of him, and when all of this became too crazy, she stuck her nose against the soft wool and inhaled great whiffs of sanity, safety, and Sam.

“I can’t help it that people are small minded,” she groaned and slowly lowered her aching back into a kitchen chair. “These are people I’ve known ever since I moved to Mercy. Friends. Customers.”

Sam warmed two cups in the microwave—instant coffee for him and hot chocolate for her. Antigone absently rubbed her back. The phone rang. As he reached for it, Antigone said, “Why bother?”

It was the usual—heavy breathing, whispers in the night, ugly words. “You’re the pervert, buddy,” Sam said, punching the off button.

Ryder rolled in and slouched against the counter. “Another hater?”

The obscene calls had started shortly after the school board meeting, and now they received at least one a night, sometimes more. Afraid the calls would further upset Antigone, Sam and Ryder leaped to answer the phone at home. William took all calls at the café.

“Nut jobs.” Sam pushed the hot chocolate toward Antigone and collapsed in the chair opposite her.

“You’re probably talking about our friends,” Antigone pointed out.

“Not anymore.”

Antigone played with the hot chocolate, stirring and not sipping. She rubbed her back. “There are a lot people who agree with me, you know. They stop me on the street or in the café and tell me so. But it seems harder to remember them than to forget the ones who hate me.”

“People don’t hate you,” Sam said. “They’re just . . . caught up in all this.”

“Haters get off on hate,” Ryder said.

“They’re afraid of what they don’t understand,” Antigone said, “of changing things.”

Sam leaned toward her. “Honey, is it worth all this?” Antigone’s hand fell from her back. Across the kitchen, she felt Ryder tense.

She stared at Sam. “What are you saying?” she whispered.

“I’m losing customers, Tigg.” Sam sipped his coffee. “Arthur has pulled all of his vehicles, the trucks, the backhoes, even the family cars. He represents a hell of a lot of business for us. He owns one of the biggest construction fleets in this part of the state.”

Antigone slumped in her chair. “Oh, no.”

“He didn’t want to do it, he said, but Irene’s on a rampage. She threatened to divorce him if he didn’t take his business elsewhere. And don’t kid yourself. He’s an influential man. He can shut us down with a few words to his golf buddies.”

“Damn that Irene.”

“And I bet if you asked Earthly and William, business is off at the outlet and café, too.”

“I never dreamed . . .,” she said.

Sam reached for her hand. “Arthur implied he’d be back in a shot if you cooled it.”

“Cooled it?”

“Got rid of all these books, and stopped lending them to people.”

“Close the library?” Antigone’s eyes rounded in shock. “You’re siding with them?” she said, untangling her hand from his.

She looked at Ryder. He walked over and touched her shoulder. “Don’t do it. Who cares what those bastards think?”

“Stay out of this, Ryder,” Sam growled.

“She loves that place,” Ryder argued.

“I’ve got to think about Antigone’s health and our baby. I can’t take care of them if the bank forecloses on the garage and I don’t have a job.”

“And the kids depend on it,” Ryder said.

“Ryder!” Sam pushed away from the table and rose. Ryder stepped back. “Leave her alone. This is family business.”

“And I’m not family,” Ryder nodded in understanding.

Antigone flinched. “That’s not true. Sam!”

Ryder stilled. When he stood up to Sam, Antigone realized he had grown since coming here. She watched them, and it seemed, to Antigone, that in this sudden face-off, Ryder was hardening before her very eyes. When the transformation was complete, that stranger she hated, City Ryder, was back. “Spit it out, Mr. Big Shot Mechanic,” he whispered, steel coating every word.

“You’re just a guy passing through.” Sam glared at the boy. “Look her in the eye, and tell her you haven’t thought about leaving.”

“Ryder?”

Ryder avoided Antigone’s stare.

“She must have seemed like easy pickings for someone like you,” Sam sneered.

“Someone like me?”

“A user. You saw a good deal, and you grabbed it.”

“I was doin’ fine before she came along, and I can do it again.”

“You’ve grown soft, Ryder.” Sam nodded toward the door. “You couldn’t make it out there.”

“Fuck you!”

“That’s your response to everything, isn’t it, Runaway Ryder?”

Antigone grabbed Sam’s arm. “Sam, stop it!”

“I don’t have to put up with this shit.” Ryder whirled, stomped to the door, and grabbed his coat from the hook on the wall. “I’m outta here.”

“Good!” Sam shouted.

Antigone struggled to stand. She pushed against the table. “Ryder, wait!”

Ryder stopped with his hand on the doorknob and looked back at her. “Antigone, I . . .” And then he was gone.

The slam of the kitchen door was like a shot, and Antigone raced to the door. Flinging it open, she started after him only to be held back by Sam’s arms wrapped around her. “No!” she cried, struggling. “Go after him.”

Ryder was no longer in sight. The cold January night had swallowed him up. Sam tugged her back into the house and shut the door. “It’s freezing out there. You don’t even have a coat on.”

“We can’t just let him go.” Antigone turned in his arms, fists balled against his chest. “Sam, please.”

“He’ll be back.”

She couldn’t believe Ryder was gone. Somehow since that day on a deserted road when he’d chewed her out for trusting him, he’d become hers. He’d become family, as much as the child kicking inside her. She pushed Sam away. When Sam reached for her again, pleading, “Tigg,” she held her hand up.

“Don’t touch me.”

She turned away and lumbered down the hall and up the stairs to bed.

Moments later, she appeared at the top of the stairs. She threw a pillow and blanket down at her husband. They glared at each other. “So that’s the way it’s going to be?” Sam shouted. Antigone folded her arms above her big belly. He hurled the linen toward the couch and pointed a finger at her. “You’re gonna miss me. You don’t like to sleep alone.”

“I’ll manage!”

And she did, until the early morning, when she shuffled downstairs, wrapped an afghan around her, and settled down on the floor by the couch. She laid her head next to Sam’s. She was almost back to sleep when she felt herself being lifted, carried up the stairs, and tucked gently into bed. She relaxed into Sam’s warmth. She felt a breath near her ear, one word: “Sorry.”

R
YDER FELL QUICKLY BACK
into old patterns of survival that had once been second nature. He sought the shadows. He walked in silence and listened with senses so alive he was buzzing inside. He avoided the company of humans. But he was uneasy living that way now. Something was missing. Some edge he used to have was gone, and he lived in terror of screwing up, of looking the wrong stranger in the eye, of falling asleep in the wrong place at the wrong time. He felt unprepared for unpredictability. And on the wild side, the unplanned was the only constant in life.

He’d been on the road for four days. After leaving Antigone’s, he hitchhiked south seeking to escape the numbing cold—in the air and in his heart. He’d failed to plan his grand exit well; he had not snatched up gloves or a hat as he blasted from the warm house. He hadn’t taken any of his stuff: the seashell Star had given him, the book bag Antigone had bought him, his phony birth certificate. He had gone over the scene in his mind again and again. He should never have let Sam goad him into losing it. Anger was a stupid emotion. And if there was anything Ryder hated, it was being stupid. Stupid people didn’t last long in his world.

January was cold even in the South. He hadn’t expected that. And he was hungry. He kept to the back roads, gravel and dirt trails like the ones where Antigone had taught him to drive. He accepted rides from poor black farmers in rusted-out old pickups. He trusted them more than the rednecks who reminded him of Art Crump Junior barreling through the countryside as if they owned the place. He watched them from the woods, holding his breath, as they spit gravel and drunken laughter, flying down the road.

Ryder stood near the edge of the woods, deep and shadowy. Spread before him was a brown field, the tobacco long harvested. In the middle of the field, perhaps a hundred feet away, was a thicket, and in the middle of the thicket was an old oak, its limbs spreading out like scarecrow arms. And under the oak was a beacon of light, a campfire, small and bright. He stared at the fire with longing. For the past hour, as dusk came on, he’d studied the man hunkered over the fire. He watched the man pull a dead rabbit from a cloth bag, gut and skin it with the flick of a wrist, and ram it on a spit. Now, it was cooking over the fire along with two cans with crude wire bent for handles. They hung from each end of the spit, sandwiching in the turning rabbit carcass. In one, the man poured water and beans. In the other, he boiled plain water. The smell of coffee wafted from a pouch lying on the ground by his boot. Throughout all of these efficient and precise chores, the man’s back was to him, so Ryder nearly jumped when the man shouted, without turning, “Want some?”

Ryder froze. He didn’t answer.

“I got plenty, if’n you’re hungry.”

“How do you know I’m here?” Ryder asked, remaining by the tree.

“’Cause, boy, I got eyes in the back of my head. Don’t you?”

Ryder assessed the man, the location, the cold, and his growling stomach. It was worth the risk. He could outrun the guy if things turned bad. Slowly, he approached the warm fire. His body heat seemed to pour out of his wet kicks, and his cold toes felt like they were going to snap off any minute. He moved with caution, never taking his eyes off the man, who continued to cook dinner. Ryder squatted on the opposite side of the fire. He splayed his hands and stretched them toward the heat.

The man was big, powerful, with massive hands and shoulders. He was darker than Ryder, nearly the color of coal. He seemed to find Ryder’s precautions amusing and let out a huge laugh. Ryder jumped. The man’s face, which Ryder bet had come up against a number of hard objects in its lifetime, folded into a joyful expression. His deep voice sounded like something you would hear on the radio. Ryder didn’t trust him.

“I don’t normally eat dinner guests,” the stranger assured him with a side glance. “But, I bet you’ve heard that one before.”

Ryder watched his every move. “You could say that.”

“Good. It’s best not to believe in the kindness of strangers.”

Sharing the darkness and aloneness with another human being made Ryder think of the Professor. Of course, Rabbit Man and the Professor were nothing alike. The Professor had insisted there was good in everyone, even sorry bastards like this one. Rabbit Man looked like he’d seen and done some shit in his time, and Ryder didn’t want to know about any of it.

The cuffs of Rabbit Man’s old Army jacket were dirty and frayed. His pants, now thin and torn, were Army issued, too. His boots were scuffed and muddy, but they looked warm. Rabbit Man wore no gloves and handled even the flame-licked tin cans and steaming rabbit meat with his bare scarred hands. Wrapped around his neck was a bright orange knitted scarf.

Across the fire, Ryder saw something sparkle and leaned closer. A fork poked from Rabbit Man’s breast pocket. It was heavy looking, probably solid silver, and fancy. The longer Ryder stared at the fork, the more it captivated him. It glowed in the firelight.