Читать книгу The Wind Comes Sweeping - Marcia Preston, Marcia Preston - Страница 8

A July morning, eight years and seven months ago…From the right seat of the single-engine Cessna, Marik looked out across a bluestem pasture beyond the runway of a country airport. The bleached tips of the grass rippled like an ocean in the Oklahoma wind. The pasture looked solid enough to walk on, but looks were deceiving; the thigh-high grass could conceal a coyote or a newborn calf, or even a person. She imagined lying down in the grass, hiding from the ache that filled her spongy stomach.

A clear sky umbrellaed the landscape. Far to the southwest, toward the ranch, a few clouds hugged the horizon. She leaned back on the padded seat and watched her father on the tarmac, going through his preflight checks. He examined the gas sumps for water, lifted the cowling and checked the oil stick. She’d done it with him dozens of times, but today she had no desire to copilot, or to be in charge of anything. She was just a passenger, sore and tired, going home without a baby in her arms.

She closed her eyes and saw a tiny face, ruddy with frowning, the puffy eyes squinted shut. My daughter, she had thought, trying on the phrase like an unfamiliar wrap. But not for long.

The alarming red imprint of forceps just behind the temple. No harm, the nurse said, perfectly normal for a first delivery. The mark would go away.

The only thing beautiful about a newborn, she thought, is the fact of its being, the miracle of its life.

Then the nurse took her away.

The attorney sat in the hospital administrator’s office, his hair streaked with gray. A crucifix on the wall of the office…the smell of furniture polish. On the desk, a photo of two small children, a boy and a girl. She glanced at them and turned away.

Manicured hands laid the papers before her.

The room felt cold. She pulled the collar of her robe around her neck. Beneath her robe she wore the pajamas her father had brought her, cream with pink roses. His hand lay warm and familiar on her shoulder.

“Are you sure, honey? Once you sign these papers, there’s no going back.” His voice low, his face creased and tight.

They had talked it over endlessly; nothing else to say.

“It’s the right thing. Isn’t it?” Her voice raspy, not like hers.

“I believe it is, yes.”

Now she picked up the gold pen, scrawled her name, handed it back without looking up.

“I know it’s hard,” the attorney said. “But they’re a wonderful couple.”

Her father’s arm supported her when she tried to stand.

In the antiseptic-scented hallway, a woman in a seersucker robe passed them and peered at Marik’s puffy face. Marik turned away, laid her forehead on her father’s shoulder.

“I couldn’t get through this without you,” she whispered.

“You don’t have to,” he said, petting her hair. “I’ll always be here.”

Her father ran his hands over the prop blades, checking for blemishes. A yellow sun flowered in the east, heating the cockpit through the high windshield. The Cessna rocked as J. B. tested the flaps and trim tabs, manually working the ailerons and rudder. Marik thought, not for the first time, how young her father looked. Too young to be a grandfather, she told herself, but didn’t believe it.

A widower for fifteen years, J.B. was still lean and fit. When he came to visit her on campus her freshman year, her roommates had flirted with him. If he had moved to town instead of staying on the isolated ranch after her mother died, he probably would have remarried. But he loved the ranch, and he wanted to raise his daughters there.

Now lines of worry etched his sun-weathered face, and she was responsible for those lines. She would make it up to him, stay on the ranch and help him run it, like a son.

J.B. climbed inside the four-seater and buckled himself in, yelled the regulation warning out the window—“Clear the prop!”—though there was no one close enough to hear.

The Cessna’s engine fired to life and the plane shuddered. She watched the oil pressure come up while her father checked the fuel gauge and the alternator. He tested the magnetos one at a time, listening for roughness. Queenie was running like a dream. She always did.

J.B. looked at her. “How are you doing?”

Her episiotomy pulled like barbed wire and her swollen breasts throbbed with every vibration of the engine.

“Fine,” she said.

“Let’s fly.”

He handed her a headset and she put it on. The engine revved and the Cessna strained forward, lusting for the sky. At the end of the runway her father brought the plane around, checked the mags again, switched the radio to tower. They were the only aircraft on the strip. Clearance for takeoff came immediately and Marik laid her head back, waiting for the plane’s slight sideways skid after liftoff, like a feather caught in a breeze.

J.B. banked right. Wind buffeted the plane like a motor-boat on choppy water until they gained altitude and leveled off. The hospital was several counties from home, where she could remain anonymous, but the flying time would be short. There was nothing to do but watch the horizon until they approached the grass landing strip on the ranch.

Her dad’s hand reached over and covered hers. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Once we get you settled in, I’ll drive to town for some groceries. And anything else you need me to pick up.”

Like extra maxi-pads. Breast pads, a prescription. Would the clerk at the Pacheeta Wal-Mart recognize him and wonder about his purchases?

She hadn’t been off the ranch since she’d come home, sequestering herself in the house, her car in the barn. No one else had known she was home and pregnant except Monte, whose silence was ironclad, and Daisy Gardner. Daisy had put them in touch with a private adoption agency, and she, too, would never breathe a word.

All of them would protect the awful thing Marik had done.