The Wonder of All Things (4 page)

“All right,” John said finally. He made an awkward motion with his hand, something between a wave goodbye and a gesture of dismissiveness. “I believe you,” he said. “But there’s going to be people who won’t. Your daughter has started something. Something big. People in this world are looking for something to believe in, and they’re going to ask for help. When they do, if you say no—regardless of the reasons—they’re not going to like it.”

He turned and opened the door and finally left, leaving Macon to think about the future of things.

* * *

“Good news, kiddo. You’re getting paroled today.” Macon stood in the doorway of Ava’s hospital room with a small bouquet of flowers in one hand and a gym bag in the other. Floating above the flowers was a pair of balloons. One read Get Well Soon. The other It’s a Girl.

“See what I did there?” Macon asked with a grin, pointing up at the balloons.

“Carmen’s idea?” Ava asked. She sat up in the bed. Her father had never been the type to give flowers.

“Why wouldn’t they be my idea?” he asked Ava as he entered the room.

“Where’s Carmen?”

Macon placed the flowers on the windowsill. Outside the hospital the sun was high and bright. There were still reporters and people waving signs and banners in front of the hospital. “She’s at home,” he said. “She wanted to come, but it was just simpler if she stayed. Leaving the house is a little like heading out into a hurricane. People everywhere. Holding up signs. Shouting. Cheering. You name it. She and the baby don’t need to be a part of all that if it can be helped.”

“She just didn’t come,” Ava replied.

“It’s more complicated than that and you know it,” Macon said, dropping the gym bag on the foot of the bed. “I brought you some clothes to go home in. Go ahead and get dressed. We’re not in a rush, but I’d rather get this circus started.” He sat on the windowsill next to the flowers and folded his arms. “How are you feeling?”

“Fair to middling,” she said.

“Haven’t heard that in a while,” Macon replied. “Your mom used to say it.”

“I know,” Ava said. “She would have come to pick me up, no matter how many people were outside the house.” She sat up on the side of the bed and placed her feet on the floor. The cold ran up from the soles of her feet and tracked all the way up her spine. She still had trouble keeping warm since what had happened at the air show. She told the doctors about it, but they all assured her that it would be okay. They were always assuring her of the “okayness” of things, which did nothing more than convey to her that things were very far removed from okay. They saw her as a child, someone to keep the truth of things from, even if they did not know what the truth of things was. So they went on and on about how much they understood what had happened, and the more they said they understood, the more frightened Ava became. Though she was only thirteen, she knew that the bigger the lie, the more terrible the truth.

“How bad is this going to be?” she asked Macon as she took her clothes from the gym bag.

“We’ll get through it,” he said gently. “Go get dressed.”

Ava took her clothes and went into the bathroom to change. When she came out Macon was standing in front of the television—his neck craned upward at an awkward angle to watch. On the screen there was an image of the front of the hospital. The banner across the bottom of the screen read Miracle Child to Be Released. He switched it off.

“What happened to your hair?” he asked. Ava’s hair was a frizzy black mass atop her head. She had always had exceptionally thick hair—dark as molasses—and she was just enough of a tomboy that she gave it the least amount of attention that she felt she could manage. “Bring me a comb and come sit down,” Macon said, standing beside the bed.

Ava did as she was told. In the years between Heather’s death and the time when Carmen came into his life, Macon had become a very well-rounded single father. While he had never considered himself the type of man who believed in “women’s roles” or “men’s roles,” he had always been willing to concede that, simply from having split the duties of parenthood along the typical gender lines, he had a lot to learn raising a daughter.

And of all the things he had learned on the path of fatherhood, of all the moments he and his daughter shared, it was the simple act of combing her hair that was the most soothing to them both. For Macon, it was the stillness of it. She was thirteen now, and soon she would reach the age when a daughter drifts away from her father in lieu of other men of the world. He knew that these moments, when nothing was said between them and he could treat her like less of a woman and more a child, would become fewer and fewer as time marched forward.

“How sick am I?” Ava asked. Her voice was assertive—not like that of a thirteen-year-old girl, but like that of a woman deserving answers.

Macon was almost finished with her hair. He had combed it and smoothed it and fixed it into a very neat ponytail. He took pride in how well he had learned to manage his daughter’s hair. “I don’t know, Ava,” he said. “And that’s the truth. The fact is, nobody really knows what the hell happened. Nobody knows how Wash got better. Nobody knows how you made him better.” He sat on the foot of the bed, as if a great weight were being loaded upon his shoulders, word by word. “Wash seems okay, but they’re doing all kinds of tests to be sure—not quite as many as you’ve been through or as many as they’ve still got up their sleeve for you, but they’re definitely putting him through his paces. They kept him here for observation for a couple of days after everything happened, but then Brenda made a fuss and let her take him home. Brenda says he’s feeling fine. But I think there’s still something weird going on with him.” He laughed stiffly. “As if all of this doesn’t qualify as weird enough.” She rested her head against his shoulder.

“As for you, Miracle Child, you’re just a whirlwind of questions,” Macon continued. “Hell, the only reason they’re letting you go home is because I’ve had enough of you being trapped in here. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m learning how to maneuver through all of this attention. You’d be surprised how much clout you get when you can threaten to hold a press conference if people don’t let you take your daughter home.”

“Do they want me to stay?” Ava asked.

“Some do,” Macon replied, “but not because they’re afraid for your life, just because they want to poke and prod you. And I’ve got nothing against tests, but they just want to do things they’ve already done. They all agree that you’re out of danger and, for me, that’s enough.” He took her face in his hand and kissed her forehead. “I won’t let them have you permanently,” he said.

“What’s wrong with me?” Ava asked.

“They’re saying there’s something going on with your blood cells. There’s some type of anemia, which is the reason you’re so cold all the time. Or maybe it’s the iron deficiency. At least, that’s what they think. Nobody is really willing to say with certainty what’s going on. If you don’t like what one doctor is telling you, just wait five minutes.” He cleared his throat. “But the one thing they can all seem to agree on is that you’re on the mend, and that’s enough for me to get you the hell out of this place. I’ve spent too much time in hospitals over the years. Both of my parents died in this very hospital. But I’ll get you out of here.”

There was a knock at the door and, before Macon or Ava could answer, the door was flung open and a pair of men entered in a rush. They were both dressed in scrubs like doctors, but something was wrong. They were too young to be doctors and, even more than that, they were wild-eyed. Macon and Ava leaped up from the bed.

“You’re her!” one of the men said. He had brown hair and a wide, bumpy nose. “We just need help,” the man said quickly. “Our dad, he’s sick. He had a stroke a few weeks ago and he’s not getting any better.”

The second man was shorter, with long blond hair and a sweaty upper lip. He only looked at Ava as the first man spoke. There was both fear and need in his eyes.

“He can’t move his right side,” the first man added. He huffed as he spoke, his words running together. It was obvious that they had used the doctors’ outfits to get past security. Macon pulled Ava behind him. He placed his hand on his hip—out of habit as sheriff. He had expected to find his pistol there, but he’d left it locked in the glove compartment of the squad car when he arrived in the hospital. He took another step back, keeping Ava behind him and opening the distance between her and the men.

Ava peered over his shoulder, frightened. Even with everything Wash and her father had told her about how things had changed since the incident, she hadn’t truly believed them. Perhaps she had not wanted to understand. There is always comfort in pretending that change has not happened in life, even when we know full well that nothing will ever again be the way it was.

From outside came the sound of footfalls running though the hallway toward the room. The second man looked back over his shoulder. “Shit,” the man said. He tugged his brother’s arm, as if to prompt the man to run. Then he stopped, realizing that they would not get far and, more importantly, that they had come to plead their case. So he stepped past his brother and toward Macon and Ava. “We just want our dad to get better,” the man said. His voice was full of sadness and insistence. He pointed at Ava. “She can do for our dad what she did for that boy,” he said. “That’s all we wa—”

His words were cut off as a pair of policemen came racing into the room. They tackled the two men to the floor. The man with the bumpy nose hit hard against the linoleum. Blood trickled from his mouth. But never, not even when another police officer stuck a knee in his back as he was handcuffed, never did he take his eyes off Ava. Never did he stop asking her to help his father.

* * *

Coming out of the hospital was as terrifying as Ava had expected it to be. It was a blur of yelling and lights and cameras and people calling her name. The policemen formed a wall between her and the crowd, leaving enough room for her and Macon to make it to their car. Parked in front and behind the car were state policemen, their lights flashing.

The sea of faces called her name again and again, and she could not help but look at them. Each time she turned to see who was calling her name, a wall of light flashed before her eyes. She could not count how many reporters there were, how many cameras, how many people holding up signs that read Ava’s Real and It’s a Miracle. Her eyes landed on a woman waving a banner that read Help My Child, Please. She had frizzled blond hair and heavy lines around her eyes and she looked worn down by the world around her. She did not chant or cheer like the others. She only looked at Ava pleadingly.

Then they were inside the car and the wall of policemen surrounded them.

“Not so bad,” Macon said. He’d driven his squad car. It was one of two the small town of Stone Temple owned. When he switched on the lights atop the car, the police cars in front and behind did the same. And then the car in front started off and Macon followed as they slowly made their way out of the hospital parking lot, past the crowds, through the streets of Asheville toward the highway.

“I don’t know what to do with all this,” Ava said as the crowds disappeared behind them.

“Do the best you can,” Macon said. “Just don’t get lost in it.”

Just as Wash had promised, home was not home anymore. The town of Stone Temple had always been a town that the world did not care to bother itself knowing. It was named after the Masonic temple that once stood in its center. But it was well over eighty years ago that the temple burned to the ground, along with a good portion of the town itself. The population, on average, was counted somewhere around fifteen hundred, and for the most part, it was the kind of place that people didn’t even pass through on their way to better locations—not since the building of the bypass almost twenty years ago. But there were still businesses that made life possible. And there were still people being born, living and dying here.

Stone Temple was an odd beauty. The town lived in a cradle of old trees and older mountains. The main road in and out of town rested on the shoulders of the mountain. In places, it promised to cast a driver off, to send them tumbling down the slopes that were covered in oak and pine and birch or, in some sections, covered in nothing but the unforgiving and constant rock.

But Stone Temple was peaceful, quiet. It was a place that slept.

All that was changed now.

It took hours to drive the length of the winding mountain road. Even before they’d entered the city, Ava could see how different it all was. In the fields along the outskirts, Ava could make out tents and vans, RVs and cars, all spaced in a field that had been harvested and sat bare and waiting for the next planting season.

“What do they all want?” Ava asked her father.

Macon grimaced, trying to keep his eyes on the road ahead. The state police had done a decent job of clearing the path into Stone Temple, but they could not remove everyone from the small road. People stood on foot—sometimes on the narrow edge of the road, other times in the oncoming lane, even though doing so meant they would have little place to go if someone came along the road out of Stone Temple.

“Turns out,” Macon finally said when he felt that he could split his attention enough to reply to his daughter, “all of that stuff people used to talk about, all that stuff about wanting to keep the world out, about wanting to keep Stone Temple a secret. Well, it went right out the door when folks started opening up their checkbooks.” He glanced at one of the fields brimming with people as they passed. “Gotta make a living, though, I suppose.”

The closer they got to town, the busier things became. The road leading into Stone Temple was two lanes, climbing and falling through the mountains, full of blind curves and steep drop-offs. It was generally a quiet road, but now it was inundated with vehicles, the traffic thicker than Ava had ever seen it. The police escort slowed to a crawl as they came up behind the wall of cars. Those passing in the opposite direction stared at Ava like rubberneckers watching a horrific accident.