Unclouded Day

  Chapter Eleven

  Late the next morning they emerged onto a paved blacktop highway, and not long after that they caught a ride from a farmer in an old Ford pickup truck. Within fifteen minutes, they found themselves dropped off at a gas station in Jasper.

  “Well, here we are, back in civilization,” Rachel said, rubbing her hands together.

  “Yeah, sort of. But we’re still a long way from home, and we’ve got no way to get there,” he pointed out.

  “Well. . . let’s get some real food for a change, and we can think about that while we eat, okay? I’m starving,” she suggested.

  “Absolutely. I don’t ever want to see another pear in my whole life,” he agreed, laughing.

  They bought some cheap flip-flops at the gas station so they wouldn’t have a problem getting inside a restaurant barefooted. Then they walked down the street a few blocks till they found a pizza joint and ate to their heart’s content.

  Brian was eager to get home, now, but he was having a hard time thinking of a way to make it happen. The car was still lost out there on some forsaken dirt road in the middle of nowhere outside Snowball, but he wouldn’t even begin to know where to look for it. Nor did they have the time.

  “Do you know anybody we could call?” Rachel asked around a mouthful of pizza.

  “Not that I can think of. If I call my mom or my aunt then that’ll probably just get me locked up for a while, and I can’t let that happen till I make sure Brandon’s all right, at least. Do you know anybody?” he asked.

  “Not that I’d want to call just yet,” she admitted.

  “There’s always Adam, I guess. He’s got a truck,” he suggested doubtfully.

  “You mean Adam Crenshaw, the football player?” she asked, raising one eyebrow skeptically.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. You don’t like him or something?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not that. I guess I just never realized you and him hung out together all that much,” she explained.

  “We didn’t used to,” he said wryly. Adam was the best friend that money could buy, but he was embarrassed to tell Rachel something like that.

  “Would he come this far? And what would his mom and dad say about it?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’d do it if I gave him enough money. And his family lets him do anything he wants, pretty much. No worries about that,” he told her.

  “How much have you got left?” she asked.

  “About five hundred dollars, I think. I’m pretty sure he’d do it for that,” he told her.

  “I guess we could ask him. I can’t think of any better plan,” she admitted.

  “He’s at school right now, but I could still text him,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “You could if you had a phone,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah, true, but I bet we can find a cheap one somewhere in this town, don’t you think? Let’s ask the waitress when she comes back. She ought to know,” he said.

  They asked, and the waitress gave them directions to a dollar store just a few blocks away. As soon as they left the pizza parlor they went directly to the store to pick up a cheap phone, not to mention some clean clothes. Brian didn’t bother buying a charger for the phone; he didn’t expect to keep it long enough to need one anyway.

  “There you go. I knew we could do it,” Rachel told him after they left the store. Both of them had changed clothes in the bathroom, and thrown the old ones in the trash. Both of them still needed a real bath, but at least they didn’t look like homeless people anymore. Brian stood in the parking lot and fiddled with the phone until he got it activated, then he looked up at Rachel.

  “Guess I better text Adam and see what he’ll do. What do you think I should tell him? He’ll want to know how we got here and what’s going on, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Just say you’ll tell him about it when he gets here. I’m sure we can think of a good story between now and then,” she said, and then Brian focused his attention on typing the text message.

  “Okay, he said he’ll come,” he said after a few minutes of back-and-forth.

  “Great!” she said.

  “The only catch is, he can’t leave till after school, so he won’t be able to get here before probably seven o’clock or so. We’re supposed to meet him at the courthouse, cause he can find that on the map without too much trouble. And he did ask what was up, just like I knew he would. So he’s expecting the whole story as soon as he gets here,” he said.

  “We’ll think of something before then,” she repeated.

  After that, Brian gathered up his courage and called Carolyn, reluctantly. He didn’t think she could figure out where he was if he called her on a cell phone, and he was anxious about Brandon. A lot could have happened in three days.

  “Hey, how’s Brandon?” he asked when she picked up the phone. He half expected her to start yelling at him the second she heard his voice, but she must have decided to take a different approach this time.

  “He’s still not doing very well, Brian. He’s got pneumonia. If that matters to you at all, and if you want to see him, come to the hospital tonight, if you can. He’s in room 328,” she said. She sounded tired beyond words, as if she didn’t even have the energy to care whether Brian showed up or not.

  “I’ll try,” he told her, not liking the news at all.

  “Do you need me to come get you somewhere? Nobody’s mad anymore, Brian, I promise. Just come home. Please,” she asked him.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got a ride. I’ll be home tonight as soon as I can,” he promised.

  As soon as he got off the phone, he looked at Rachel.

  “Would you mind too much, if we stopped to check on Brandon first, before we go home? Aunt Carolyn says he’s not doing too well. It’ll be on the way, more or less,” he told her.

  “Sure. I’m in no hurry at all, if you think Adam won’t mind waiting,” she said.

  “Adam would wait for ten hours barefoot in the snow, if he thought he could make a buck doing it,” Brian said dryly.

  When Adam finally got there at 6:45 that evening, Brian was so eager to leave that he had the door open almost before the wheels could stop moving.

  “That much of a hurry, huh?” Adam asked, laughing a little. Patti Sue was with him, of course, even though he hadn’t bothered to mention it earlier. It was a tight squeeze to fit all four of them in the seat.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Let’s blow this place,” Brian agreed, and so that’s exactly what they did.

  “So what happened to you the past few days, buddy boy? You got no idea what kinds of things people been saying,” Adam said as soon as they were out on the highway.

  In fact, Brian had a pretty good idea what kinds of things people had probably been saying, but he didn’t much want to think about all that. He’d find out soon enough without guessing.

  But in the meantime, he told Adam the story he and Rachel had cooked up about deciding to run away from home together and getting lost in the woods for several days after her car broke down. It was true enough as far as it went, and if Adam wanted to think there was some secret romantic thing going on behind the scenes, then that was his own business.

  He must have believed it, because he didn’t question anything. But after a while Patti Sue said something that made Brian’s skin crawl with uneasiness.

  “You look different, Mad Dog,” she said, looking him up and down.

  “Different? Like how?” he asked, pretending he didn’t know.

  “I don’t know, exactly. You’re just. . . I can’t quite put my finger on it. Did you cut your hair, or something?” she finally asked, lamely. Brian laughed.

  “No, I’m just the same as I always was,” he told her.

  “No, she’s right. Something’s different about both of you,” Adam said, glancing at him and then at Rachel for a few seconds before turning his attention back to the highway.

  Brian shrugge
d and said nothing to this. What could he tell them, after all? That he’d drunk from the Fountain of Youth and had power and life they’d never dreamed of? He could imagine exactly what they’d say to that. All things considered, it was best if he simply let the subject drop.

  But Patti Sue kept glancing at him from time to time, and it was hard to keep pretending he didn’t notice. She was trying to be discreet about it, but she was getting more and more obvious. After a while even Adam started to notice it. Brian saw the scowl developing on the other boy’s face, and he could see the way Adam’s hands were gripping the steering wheel. He was angry, and sooner or later he’d say something, if Patti Sue didn’t stop it.

  Adam was doing the same thing himself, though, for he kept stealing glances at Rachel when he thought no one was looking, and the only thing that kept him from being as brazen as Patti Sue was the fact that he had to pay attention to the road.

  Brian had no idea how to handle the situation. If he said anything, then that would only cause a fight later on between Adam and Patti Sue; in fact at this point they’d probably already have one anyway, even if Brian kept his mouth shut.

  But he was blessed if he could think of anything to do about it, and he found himself forced to endure the increasingly uncomfortable ride for almost another two hours. He was glad when Adam dropped them off at the courtyard of the hospital.

  “Hey, thanks for coming to get me, buddy,” he told Adam, and gave him three hundred dollars.

  “No problem, Mad Dog,” Adam said, still glaring at Patti Sue.

  “Uh, why don’t you and Patti Sue go ahead home, Adam. I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, and I’ll just get a ride the rest of the way with my aunt or something,” he suggested. He didn’t think he could stand another hour with those two.

  “Sure thing, bud. See you at school tomorrow,” Adam said curtly, and left. Patti Sue couldn’t resist looking back at Brian through the rear glass one more time before they pulled out of the circle drive, though, and he groaned inwardly. Was she really that stupid?

  “That’ll cause trouble. Just wait and see. I bet they’re fighting already,” Rachel commented, and Brian laughed.

  “You think?” he agreed.

  He shook his head and put it out of his mind. No doubt he’d soon hear all about whatever mini-scandal resulted from it; who called whom what names, and when, and whether it resulted in a break-up or not, and so forth. The gossipy details of such things were the bread and butter of social life at school, the juicier the better. But Brian had more important things on his mind at the moment than whether or not Adam and Patti Sue had the nastiest fight in the history of junior high schools everywhere. They could deal with their own problems.

  “Come on, Raych, let’s go,” he told her, turning away from the drive and heading for the front door.

  They entered the building, and it didn’t take long to navigate the busy halls and elevators to reach Brandon’s room, but here they hit a snag. There was no one there.

  “Where is he?” Rachel asked, looking at the empty bed.

  “I don’t know. We better ask,” Brian said, not liking this at all.

  They walked back to the nurses’ station, and Brian put both elbows on the counter.

  “Can I help you?” one of the nurses asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I hope so. I went to my brother’s room but he’s not there anymore. Can you tell me if maybe they moved him somewhere?” he asked.

  “What’s the patient’s name?” she asked, reaching for a binder full of papers.

  “Brandon Stone,” he told her. As soon as she heard that, the nurse looked hard at him, and then seemed to be at a loss for words for a few seconds.

  “You’re his brother?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Can you please tell me where he is?” he asked, beginning to be a little scared.

  “I know I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this, but I’m afraid your brother passed away a little over an hour ago. I’m so sorry,” she said, laying a hand on his arm.

  It was Brian’s turn to be speechless now, and he could hardly breathe past the hard lump in his throat.

  “Would it be possible for us to see him, anyway, just for a minute? They were very close,” Rachel asked, and the nurse hesitated again.

  “I think they already took him down to the basement. I’m not sure what they’ll say, but you could go down there and ask them,” she finally said.

  “Okay, thanks,” Rachel told her.

  Brian heard all this without really taking it in, so lost in his own grief that nothing else seemed to matter. But when he felt her grab his elbow and start pulling him down the hall, it roused him from his stupor just a bit.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, dully.

  “Down to the basement, to ask them if they’ll let us see him for a minute, of course,” she explained. Brian dug in his heels and made her stop.

  “No, I don’t want to go see him like that, Raych. I want to remember him like he was, not like. . . that,” he said, unable to force his lips to form the word dead. It seemed too final, too real and ugly a word to utter.

  “I understand how you feel, but come anyway, okay? Please? I need you for this; I can’t do it alone,” she told him.

  “Need me for what?” he asked, confused.

  “You’re his brother, and you didn’t know. They might possibly let you in to see him, but not me. I’ve got to have you with me,” she said urgently, pulling him along again.

  “But why? Why do you need to see him so bad?” he demanded, still refusing to move. She looked him in the eyes and sighed.

  “Remember Lazarus, Brian,” she told him, somewhat cryptically. It took him a minute to grasp what on earth she was talking about, and when he did, his jaw dropped.

  “Do you really think. . . “ he started, and then trailed off.

  “I don’t know. We can only try. Now come on,” she told him earnestly, yanking on his arm again. This time he followed her, all the way down to the morgue.

  There seemed to be no one nearby when they got there, and they found the heavy steel door slightly ajar. Rachel knocked, and they heard a muffled voice from inside.

  “Come in,” it said. She pushed the door open and went in, followed quickly by Brian. There was man in green scrubs sitting at a desk filling out paperwork, and he looked up when he saw them come in.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Only hospital staff is allowed down here. You’ll have to leave,” he said, getting up from the desk. No doubt to usher them out.

  “Please, sir. They brought a child down a little bit ago, his brother, and he didn’t make it to the hospital in time to say his goodbyes. Could we see him, for just a minute? Please?” she asked, putting a hand on the man’s arm and looking pleadingly into his eyes.

  He must not have been an unkind man, for his face softened, and he hesitated.

  “I could get in trouble, if anybody knew I let you down here,” he explained, apologetically.

  “I promise we’ll never tell anybody. Please, sir,” Brian said, and the man hesitated again.

  “All right, but just for a few minutes,” he agreed, reaching past them to shut and lock the door so no one would walk in and find them there.

  “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much it means to us,” Rachel told him, and Brian nodded.

  “You’re welcome, and I’m sorry,” he told Brian, patting him on the shoulder. Then he went to one of the drawers, and they followed him.

  “There he is, right in here. If you’ll promise me you won’t touch anything, and you won’t answer the door if anybody knocks unless it’s me, then I’ll take my break and give you just a few minutes with him. If you decide to leave before I get back, just shut the drawer and close the door on your way out,” he told them awkwardly.

  “We promise,” Brian told him, and then the man quietly excused himself.

  As soon as he was gone, Brian braced himself and re
ached up to turn the handle and pull the drawer out, unsure if he could handle the sight. He hadn’t been lying, when he told Rachel he’d much rather remember Brandon the way he used to be.

  But he found the courage somewhere, and pulled open the drawer.

  There indeed he was, pale as milk and cold as the water that flowed from the heart of the world. Tears filled Brian’s eyes then, and though he tried to be strong, he couldn’t help himself. He put his arms around Brandon, and pulled him close, and wept.

  Rachel let him alone for a few minutes, although there were tears in her eyes too, but at last she interrupted him.

  “Brian. . . we don’t have much time,” she urged him quietly. Brian saw the sense of this, of course, and pushed his pain deep inside. He laid Brandon partially back down, enough for Rachel to get close to him as well.

  “I’m not sure how to do this,” she confessed, swallowing hard.

  “Just do the best you can,” he whispered.

  She put both her hands on Brandon’s face, and then he heard her praying, though he couldn’t make out the words. Then she put her head down, and kissed him on the lips, and blew her warm breath into his cold body. Then Brian did the same.

  “The life-giving Life, and the Beauty that makes beautiful,” he whispered to himself, repeating the words from the Fountain.

  For an agonizing few seconds, nothing happened. Then Brandon coughed, and took a deep breath. Then his eyes fluttered, and he started to cry, and to shake from the cold.

  Brian snatched him up and quickly wrapped him in his own shirt and held him tightly against his chest. Then he looked at Rachel, his heart too full for words. She came close, to add her body heat to his, for Brandon’s sake, and then he tried to tell her what he was feeling.

  “There are no words I can ever say to thank you for this,” he whispered.

  “Thank God, not me, Brian. I didn’t do anything but pray,” she told him.

  “I know He’s the one who did the miracle, but it was you that thought to ask for it and believed it could happen. I never would have come down here, without you,” he told her.

  “And I wouldn’t be alive today without you, and I never would have drunk from the Fountain, and I never could have got in here by myself. You had a big part in all this, too,” she reminded him.

  She was about to say something else when the door opened and the man in the green scrubs came back in, holding a can of Coke and a half-eaten Butterfinger.

  “What-“ he started, and then froze when he saw Brandon turn his head to look at him. The Coke can clattered to the floor, spilling soda pop everywhere.

  “Oh, my God,” the man said, wide eyed, and he grabbed the edge of a table to keep from fainting.

  Rachel disentangled herself and hurried over to help him, and Brian pulled up a chair so he could sit down.

  “Maybe we should call the doctor back down here, don’t you think?” he told the man.

  This they did, as soon as the morgue keeper had sufficiently recovered himself. The news of Brandon’s incredible “recovery” spread like wildfire through the hospital, so that he and Brian and Rachel soon found themselves minor celebrities.

  It was a role Brian didn’t relish at all, and he found himself forced to describe the entire event over and over again, from arriving at the hospital too late, to the part about he and Rachel breathing into Brandon’s mouth. Most of the doctors seemed to think he’d lapsed into a near-death coma, from which the two of them had woken him just in the nick of time. There were, they told everyone sagely, several examples of such things in the medical literature.

  Brian smiled and nodded, letting them think whatever they wanted to think, if it made them feel better. He knew it was a miracle, whatever they might believe, and told them so. Most of them smiled and nodded right back at him when he said this, but that was all right too.

  They put Brandon back in another patient room, and Brian knew well enough that Mama and Aunt Carolyn would show up soon enough. He wasn’t looking forward to that. But it would be at least an hour before they could possibly get there, and in the meantime the three of them found themselves alone. Brandon was still weak and felt awful, so it wasn’t surprising that he fell asleep almost as soon as he had the chance.

  Brian watched him sleeping for a little while, too happy to care much about anything else.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right, now?” Rachel asked after they were alone, speaking quietly to keep from waking him.

  “Yeah, I think so. I’ll stay here with him just in case, but his breath sounds fine, now. I think the pneumonia is all gone, too,” he told her.

  “Yeah, it sounds like it,” she agreed, and then they were both silent for a few minutes.

  “So what do we do now, Brian?” Rachel asked.

  “About what?” he asked, not sure what she meant.

  “I mean about things like this. We can’t just go around raising people from the dead all the time, can we? I have a feeling life won’t ever be the same again, since we’ve got this power now,” she explained.

  “Well. . . there’s no hurry about anything, is there? I’ll probably just go home, and go to school tomorrow, and see what happens from there. What about you?” he asked.

  “Same thing, I guess. I don’t want to do anything stupid. I’m not even sure what I’ll tell my family yet,” she confessed.

  “Tell them the truth,” he shrugged.

  “You’re crazy, boy. They’ll never believe it,” she told him.

  “If they don’t, then I think your next doctor visit might convince them,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, there’s always that. As far as I know, I’m the only person in the world who ever recovered from Batten’s Disease,” she said soberly.

  “There you go,” he agreed.

  “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I’ll probably be grounded for a while, but after things settle down, I think maybe I’ll go see Miss Sadie and ask her how she managed it all,” she said, thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, I might go with you. I’m sure she could probably give us both some good advice,” he agreed. There was a pause, and it was by no means an uncomfortable one.

  “Didn’t she tell you that the Fountain was just a way of making things beautiful and perfect, like God always meant for them to be?” she asked after a while.

  “Yeah, something like that,” he agreed.

  “Okay, so maybe the reason we’re supposed to do all these things is to touch people’s hearts and pull them closer to Him when they see what might have been. I think that’s what the Fountain is really for, to help people remember that,” she told him.

  “Do you really think so?” he asked. He hadn’t thought of it quite that way before, but it made sense once she explained it for him.

  “Yeah, that’s what I think. But I’m just guessing right now, of course. I didn’t know for sure that we could do anything for Brandon tonight; I just remembered Lazarus, you know. But we did, and maybe we could do that again. There might even be other things we could do, too. Maybe. . . we might even bring peace to a storm that would kill people, like Jesus did on the Sea of Galilee,” she said.

  “Maybe we should move to Oklahoma and become storm chasers,” he agreed, poking fun because the thought of so much responsibility made him nervous.

  “I’m being serious, Brian,” she scolded him.

  “I know you are. I’m sorry. It’s just kind of a scary thing, you know,” he said, apologetically.

  “Yeah, I know. It is for me too,” she agreed.

  “It’s good to know I’m not alone,” he told her.

  “No, never that,” she promised, and kissed his cheek. He smiled, and reddened a bit.

  “So what will you do with the amulet, now?” she finally asked when he said nothing.

  “I’m not sure. It’s really not much use to me anymore, except maybe as a keepsake. I think I might just put it away somewhere for now, maybe give it to Brando
n for a souvenir one of these days, if I ever decide to tell him the story,” Brian said, glancing at his sleeping brother.

  “I think that sounds like a great idea,” she told him, and Brian laughed.

  “We’ll see,” he said softly.

  At that point the conversation was cut short by the door swinging open, and Mama and Aunt Carolyn came spilling into the room with two nurses behind them.

  No one paid Brian or Rachel any attention, so completely focused on Brandon as they all were.

  “I think it’s time for me to go; I’ll call you later, okay?” Rachel whispered in his ear, and he nodded. No one seemed to notice her leaving, and Brian figured that was just as well.

  But eventually things settled down, and then Mama turned her attention to Brian.

  “You did this,” she said, with a severe look on her face which he found difficult to figure out. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about, and he was afraid to ask. But she must have seen his confusion.

  “You brought him back,” she clarified, in a gentler voice. Then she did the last thing he would ever have expected, and threw her arms around him and held him tight.

  “I thought I’d lost both of you,” she whispered, and he was too stunned to say a word. She didn’t seem to expect any answer right away, though, just wanted to hold him and make sure he was really there.

  “You look different, Brian,” she finally said, stepping back a little bit to examine him curiously.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that a few times today,” he agreed, with a sheepish smile.

  “Where have you been, these last three days?” she asked.

  “Would you believe me if I told you?” he asked. For a second she showed a flash of her old annoyance, but then she checked herself.

  “I think I would, Brian. I’ll try,” she told him. So he told her, and she listened, and then she looked wistful.

  “I believe you,” she told him when he was finished.

  “You do?” he asked, skeptically.

  “I’m inclined to believe almost anything tonight,” she said, and he shrugged, not wanting to meet her eyes. She was being too nice, and he didn’t trust it.

  “Brian, there’s something I want to say. I know I haven’t been a very good mother the past few years. I know that’s why you won’t look at me right now. But all I can do is tell you that I’m sorry,” she told him. He was almost as shocked by this apology as he’d been by the hug.

  “I guess so,” he shrugged, still looking down at the floor.

  “It’s all right if you don’t believe me yet. I guess I can’t blame you for that. But I promise you, I want to try to do better from now on,” she told him.

  “Really?” he asked, glancing up at her. She seemed to be sincere, incredible as that was to him.

  “Yeah. I know I’ve said that before, but I really mean it this time. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try,” she promised. He took a minute to digest this.

  “What changed things?” he finally ventured to ask.

  “Well, sometimes when it seems like you might lose everything, it makes you remember just how valuable those things are,” she said.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I’m not the only one who thinks so, either,” she said, mysteriously.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, unable to guess what she was talking about.

  “Somebody told your dad about Brandon, and he came by to see him yesterday,” she told him. Brian’s jaw dropped at that news. He’d thought he couldn’t possibly be any more shocked than he already was, but that did it.

  “Really?” he asked again, unable to think of any other reply.

  “Yeah, he really did. I almost fell out in the floor at first. But we talked for a long time, and he said he was sorry for some things, and so did I. We both promised that if Brandon lived, we’d try to start talking more and maybe even doing some things together as a family, you know. I don’t know how it’ll all work out, but I thought you’d want to know,” she finished.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Brian said.

  “No, I didn’t think you would, right away. You and him have a lot of things to work out together, just like me and him do,” she agreed.

  “Do you mean. . . “ he started, but she guessed what he was about to say and put a finger on his lips to stop him.

  “No, I don’t mean we’re getting back together, if that’s what you were about to ask. We’re just talking and trying to do better for you and Brandon, that’s all. Don’t think it’s more than what it is,” she warned him.

  Brian nodded. That was more than he’d ever dreamed possible just two weeks ago, and perhaps, in time. . .

  He smiled, faintly.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Brian, and put it right out of your mind,” she told him, a bit of her crossness returning.

  “Okay, Mama,” he told her lightly. Maybe sometimes wishes really did come true.

  It crossed his mind that none of this would have happened if Brandon had never gotten sick. At the time, he’d thought that was the most awful thing that could ever happen, and yet it had turned out to be the key to everything. Who could have guessed it?

  True, not everything had worked out quite the way he hoped it would; not yet, anyway, but he was content now to wait and see how things unfolded for a while.

  He had all the time in the world.