Pat said, "What ... Vincent? Where"s Vincent?"
"He left because the little cabin ... Whittier"s cabin ... it was getting dark, the firewood was wet and we ran out of formula. There"s no heat, but we"re safe. We"re out of the wind."
"Whittier? Where"s Whittier now, Sam?"
"He"s ... Lorrie will explain. Or I will. I have shelter. You have to find Vincent first. And Lorrie," Ben said. The line went dead. Ben grabbed another of the phones and punched in Pat"s number.
"Pat?"
"Yes?" Pat said. "Sam? Listen, the helicopter is coming for you ..."
"Not me! Not yet! They have to find Vincent and Lorrie!"
"... on another trip, Sam ..." Pat said, as the line began, ominously, to crackle, whatever momentary magic that had permitted the connection about to be snuffed, like a match flame guttering. Hearing Stella"s cry, Ben whirled toward the door, into the wind.
"What do you mean, Pop?"
"I"m here!" Pat"s voice came faintly. "Can you put a light on out there? Can you hear me, Sam?"
"I will! I"ll put all the flashlights out in front! That"s all I have."
"Okay," Pat said, fainter now.
"You can call me Ben, Pop," Sam said, suddenly, softly. But no one was there.
Ben found six flashlights and set them heads up, in a line that ended in an arrow, on the shred of ornamental porch to the left of the door. There was barely room on the floor of the porch thing for a stool but there was less snow under the tiny overhang. Why had Whittier even bothered with it? Back inside, Ben wrapped Stella close against him in a coc.o.o.n of blankets, pressing the last of the chilly water to his daughter"s roseate mouth. As she drank, hungrily, Ben reached for a c.o.ke and drained it in a single draft.
Barely thirty minutes later, he heard the whop-whop of the helicopter"s rotors, first indistinct but growing louder, closer. Then a light as blessed as morning swept the clearing with a mighty eye and a magnified voice spoke his name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
The helicopter carrying Ben and his baby set down a good distance out into the clearing, away from the trailhead.
"People are going to run out here," the pilot said to Ben. "They always do. I don"t want them to get hurt."
As the pilot slowed the blades and a soldier held Stella while Ben climbed down, it took his dulled mind a moment to recognize what he had glimpsed as they swept closer and closer to Durand. There were lights-lanterns swinging like pendulums, lights from filming crews mounted on cranes above him, lights like a necklace of yellow pearls from cars snaking up a road that must extend back two miles past Durand. As Ben marched closer, and shielded his eyes, the murmur he heard built to a roar. Everyone behind the police line was cheering. He picked out George and Elena in the silly matching red parkas they"d bought for their honeymoon. He spotted Kerry jumping up and down. Lorrie had her goggles pushed back and Roman raced back and forth in front of her. Then, one slight dark form broke away, skipping neatly out of the grasp of a tall man and running straight for him like a sprinter. His whole life sprang into his throat. Only Beth heard Ben when he swallowed and croaked, "Ma."
She stopped. And then she nodded, rushing forward.
Eliza was suddenly there, too, her arms around his waist, holding Stella between them. Ben pulled them close and thought, Now I can stop. I can relax and sleep forever. It"s over.
But reality snapped its finger under his nose and dragged him back out into the darkness under the whorl of gathering stars.
Lorrie was safe now but Vincent was still out there.
The helicopter surged to life and lifted again, this time with Beth climbing in beside the soldiers. The searchlight began to sweep the direction that Lorrie had pointed out. Holding Stella close, Eliza followed Sarah Switch to the waiting squad car, as reporters and people from the town and beyond closed around them.
Ben kept his place in the field. He was cold, but not so cold as Vincent must now be. After it was obvious to Candy that he would not follow her back to the warmth of the other car, she and Pat stood beside him.
"I"ll wait here for Vincent," Ben said.
Candy said, "Makes sense."
It was the phone"s insistent ringing that woke him. Where was he? Where was the phone? Vincent scrabbled for it on the ground and finally found it in an inside pocket of the vest.
His ankle was pulsing, a hot little nova, threatening to break the leather shoelaces. With the aid of his headlamp, he examined the ugly bulge of swollen flesh curling over the top of his boot under the sock. He was grateful at least that he could feel it, the ankle. Struggling to his knees, Vincent tried to stand, but the ankle shrieked and he fell back down. His pants were soaked through and he was shuddering as if he were having a seizure. Vincent shrugged off the pack and scattered the contents in the snow. Sleeping bag, he thought, pulling off the layers of wet pants. He ripped the wrapper off a peanut-b.u.t.ter bar and stuck it in his mouth. And then he pulled the bag around him. Lying back against a hummock of snow, Vincent fumbled for the stadium warmers, cracking one, then two, then three of them open. He tucked them down into the recesses of his sleeping bag and felt them begin their warming but dimly-as though they were down the street, in another person"s house.
His cell phone rang again. This time, Vincent caught it in time, holding it between his palms.
"Vincent? Vincent!"
"Vincent," he said. "Yes."
"It"s Mom. Are you okay?"
"Okay. Yeah."
"Ben"s here with the baby. Your words are slurring," Beth said.
"I"m cold. I"m only cold."
"Hold on, Vincent. The helicopter"s here. Can you hear it?"
"I can hear it. I"m not up on Everest, Ma. I"m cold is all."
"I can hear you like I was standing next to you," Beth said.
"I wouldn"t be so unpleased if you were standing next to me."
"They"re fast. We should be there any minute," Beth said. "Okay, I"m getting in the helicopter now ..."
"All good, Ma. Let"s let them bring me in, in style. For the news cameras. I am an Oscar winner."
Beth"s voice was drowned by the thickering of the blades but Vincent heard her say, "... a signal?"
A signal.
Vincent needed to think. He held his mind out and shook it like a box of nickels and fishhooks.
Well, his headlamp was one. It was a signal.
And the mirror.
Vincent placed the mirror on his chest and began to tilt it back and forth, back and forth. When the phone rolled out of his hands and disappeared beneath the snow, he watched it as a dog might, curious but unable to act. He tilted the mirror once more, back and forth.
"Stay on the line, Vincent," Beth called from the snow. Unaccountably, that seemed funny. "Vincent? Vincent?" Beth called again.
"I see a reflection down there," said the second pilot. "Look. At two o"clock. I see someone shining something ... there, just above that big clearing. I"m going to sweep it again. See it?" The medic riding shotgun nodded.
"I see it. Either it"s random gla.s.s ..."
"No, it"s moving. Somebody"s moving it."
"He"s not answering anymore," Beth interrupted, leaning over to see, her stomach heaving at the sudden cant of the aircraft. "Do you think he"s conscious?"
"Either he"s moving it or the wind is," the pilot said. "Could be the wind. But I just picked up something with the searchlight for a second that"s bright blue ..."
"His sleeping bag is blue!" Beth said. "Did you hear me? He has a blue sleeping bag!"
Vincent lay in the snow and thought of summer light streaming through trees. He was riding his bike past the red house. Ben was shooting hoops but he saw Vincent and turned and walked toward him, growing taller and older as he walked. "Hey, Vincent," he said. "Hey. Wanna play Make It, Take It? You scared?"
"Not scared exactly," Vincent said slowly.
"Don"t be scared. We"re going to just lift you onto this board and start a line and get some fluid in...."
"Why?" Beth demanded. "Why not just put him in the helicopter?"
"We"d start a line in h.e.l.l, ma"am. And we don"t put him on the board until we do a flashlight check to see if there"s anything going on with his spine and his brain...."
So, excruciatingly slowly, the medics did just that. "Looks good," the woman said quickly. "Okay, buddy. Here we go." Vincent looked up at the person shining lights on him. It wasn"t Ben. Green guys with double lights above their eyes were lifting him onto a bed and carrying him. One held a full bag of fluid above his head.
Cool.
This was also pretty funny, considering.
The Martians were landing.
Thoughtfully, they had brought his mother. She looked pale but she smelled so clean.
The pilot told her, "We"re going directly to St. Luke"s in San Francisco, ma"am."
"We"re ready," Beth said evenly. As though Vincent weighed nothing, the soldiers strapped him to a board and loaded him like lumber into the aircraft.
"His hands and feet don"t look too, too bad," said the medic, gingerly removing Vincent"s gloves and touching his fingers, removing his sodden boots and socks. Beth could tell that the medic was lying. "Can you feel my hand, Vincent? Can you feel this?"
"What?" Vincent answered. The medic was pinching his finger as hard as she could.
One of Vincent"s feet was huge and red and one was small and shriveled, but both looked diminished, poached. Beth breathed in and out slowly.
As they sped over the hills toward the gold-beaded net that was the lights of San Francisco, Vincent told Beth about Bryant Whittier"s desperate, hopeless death, about the small house and the eerie clearing.
Doctors were waiting on the rooftop at St. Luke"s when the helicopter set down. They hurried through the doors and down the elevator to the ER. Three nurses rushed Vincent through the double doors while another ushered Beth into the treatment area part.i.tioned off by a bright yellow curtain. Beth stepped outside while the team cut off Vincent"s clothes and doctors began the slow warming process of his limbs. When Beth stepped back inside, Vincent was wearing a brightly patterned blue hospital gown. He still smelled of smoke and sweat and his cheekbones reigned over a face so dirty and gaunt that only the grin and the game face he put on for Beth bore a resemblance to the son she knew.
Eventually, the ER resident said, "You"re a lucky guy. A few degrees colder and you"d have been way worse off than you are. This goes fast. You"ll be practically as good as new, with a little luck, in six weeks or so. So, you going to make a movie about this, huh? Who"s going to play me?"
"Not for anything in the world," Vincent said. "I"m thinking romantic comedies, although my girlfriends have told me I"m neither funny nor romantic."
The doors closed.
Beth retreated to the cafeteria, where she ate something off every gla.s.s shelf, from toast to a grilled cheese to chocolate pudding. She read a magazine article about fitness after forty and gave up when she got to the lunges. Then she spent fifteen minutes in the washroom cleaning her own face and putting on lipstick and mascara. Finally, she called Pat and learned that the family were all on their way to the Marlborough Hotel on Powell Street. Some of them were in Sarah Switch"s truck, others in Bill Humbly"s car. The twenty miles from Durand to the city might take an hour, Pat said, mostly because the reporters" trucks combined with San Francisco traffic had the road backed up like the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago on the night of a home game.
"I thought they would put on lights and sirens," Pat said, sounding as disappointed as a kid who"d missed the parade. There was a huge whoop then, as Humbly and Switch did exactly that and began to muscle their way through the parallel silver grid of cars.
Beth relaxed. Tonight, their lonely room at the Lone Star Inn would be empty.
She walked past the hospital room, 112-the one to which a floor nurse had said Vincent would be moved. There was a cushy reclining chair inside and someone bustling around, setting up stands and affixing what looked like wings to the bedside. Beth wandered on, covertly glancing at half-opened doors the rooms of which seemed nearly empty. Thankfully, a quiet hospital night.
Having killed as much time as she could, she went back to the door of the emergency room. She asked, "Is Vincent Cappadora awake?"
"You"re his mother. We met before," the nurse said. "Well, he is sort of. He"s groggy. We"ve kind of knocked him out on purpose. They have a lot of work to do. But you can wait in his room for him. I"ll get another chair in there. Or a cot if you like."
"That"s okay," Beth said. "I can sit in the chair that"s in there. I peeked inside. It looks pretty comfortable."
From one of the hospital"s tiered windows, Beth glanced down at the street. It was nearly midnight, and news trucks and throngs of reporters clogged the street in front of the hospital. She supposed there would be more back at the Marlborough Hotel as well as back in Durand. Beth had already heard about a one-hour special planned by Katie Couric that would include an interview with everyone from Bill Humbly to, Beth supposed, Roman the dog.
Briefly, Beth thought of Claire and Blaine Whittier and whispered the tag end of a prayer for them.
"The one chair is fine," Beth said again.
"For both of you?" the nurse asked.
"Both of who?" Beth asked. "You aren"t getting Vincent to sit up tonight?"
"I meant you and his brother."
"His brother"s in there? Are you sure? I just came past," Beth said.
"So did he, the other way," the nurse told her.
Beth walked back down the hall to the door and leaned in through the small opening. When she let her eyes adjust to the gloom, she saw that the big leather chair indeed was now occupied. Ben sat there quietly, his hands in his lap. He still wore his dirty wind pants, but his shirt was clean, his hands and face washed, his hair wet-combed.
At that moment, she heard a gurney rattle up behind her.
Vincent was wheeled past, a white sheet pulled up to his bare chest, the blue-flowered hospital gown over his shoulders. Both hands were wrapped in gauze and secured to individual boards and his ankle was suspended on a thick, formed foam block. The doctor with him explained to Beth that the fracture on his ankle was serious, but would mend. The packs on his hands and feet would bear watching and would be changed throughout the night. "We"ll hope for the best," the doctor said.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that your son could lose a finger or a toe. Or more. I hope not," the doctor admitted. He and the nurse began to guide Vincent toward the room. For a moment, Vincent opened his eyes.
"We did it, Ma," he said, his voice something above a croak and below a squeak.