Sweet Hush

  “Same to you,” she said.

  And then we both looked horrified, as women are trained to do after they’ve been brutally honest.

  And I left.

  HE WAS SO PALE, so quiet. I sat close beside Jakobek’s bed, watching him sleep in the drugged way of an injured animal, him not even knowing I was there. I cried quiet tears and held his left hand, the damaged one. “An old preacher told me once that the right hand of God commands all that’s good and the left hand smites all that’s wicked,” I whispered. “But I say you’ve used this hand and your life and your heart and your soul to do good and smite what’s wicked.” I placed a small crucifix of apple wood into his palm then wrapped its necklace chain around his wrist so he wouldn’t lose the talisman. “Jakob, if you can hear me, believe me. You’ve earned your blessings.”

  Al came into the room not long after that, and I told him I’d hit Edwina with the apple, and he said she probably deserved it. I never spoke a word about the night before or anything else that had passed between her and me, but he shook my hand and said with a grim gleam in his eyes, “I promise you, this atmosphere of confrontation will not continue. I adore my wife, and I understand her motives, but I do apologize for her behavior.”

  “Don’t apologize. I have to admit something to you. She’s tough, she’s smart, she doesn’t give up. If she ran for President, I’d vote for her.”

  He smiled. “Instead of me?”

  “Maybe you could be her vice president.”

  “That’s a diplomat’s answer.”

  “Oh? Then you got the last drop of my diplomacy for today.” I gave Jakobek a long, painful look. I could feel Al watching me. “You love my nephew very much,” he said.

  I nodded miserably. Al put a consoling hand on my shoulder. “Then why not just tell him?”

  “On top of everything he’s been through, he doesn’t need to wake up and see me meowing over him like a cat who’s waiting outside the door for him to let me in. If I stay here, that’s exactly how I’ll behave. I’ll embarrass myself and maybe him, too. No, if he wakes up and says he needs me, you tell him I’ll come running. If not . . . well.” My throat closed. “Well.”

  Al insisted a Secret Service agent drive me to the airport, but I said no, and so his staff called an ordinary cab for me. Fine. I ought to get back to living my ordinary life and try to remember not only who I had been, but who I should be next. So I sat in the backseat of a smelly city cab, speeding through the countryside, feeling lost and alone. I wanted to turn in the seat and gaze out the cab’s back window as the hospital with Jakobek in it faded from view. But I could only go home, start tilling the torn-up winter earth of my life, and wait for spring.

  The cab driver turned up his radio. “I’m hoping you don’t mind the loudness,” he called over his shoulder in a lilting Caribbean accent. “I always listen to Haywood Kenney. He is The Man.”

  Kenney’s smarmy voice curled out of the radio from its high, smug origins in his radio studio atop a Chicago office building. “So Al Jacob’s killer nephew pulled this idiotic John Wayne act yesterday,” Kenney was saying, “like some kind of dumb-Polock Superman—God, he could have provoked that goofball to blow up a lot of taxpayer property! Too bad the goofball and Mad-Dog Jakobek didn’t end up splattered all over the concrete, if you ask me . . .”

  I pulled out my cell phone and made a call. I hadn’t yet caused myself enough trouble for the day.

  “I’d like to change my plane ticket,” I said. “I want to go to Chicago.”

  IF YOU ASK ME, I was fated to do what I did. Asia Makumbo, in Atlanta, returned my phone call with exactly the information I needed. Media people knew all the trivia about each other. “He lunches at a restaurant called Hallowden’s after his show every day,” Asia reported. “May I ask what you’re planning to do to him?”

  “Give him a dose of his own medicine.”

  I walked into the swank cocktail lounge of a Chicago office building that afternoon, and stopped cold at the sight of a huge stone vase on a table by the entrance. It was filled with bare limbs and twigs. I swear to God, they looked just like branches off an apple tree.

  I put one hand to my heart in awe. With the other, I broke off a three-foot swath of hard, whip-thin boughs. “Ma’am!” the hostess shrieked. “That’s an expensive decorator arrangement—”

  “Send the repair bill to Sweet Hush Farm, Chocinaw County, Georgia.” I laid a business card on her hostess podium. “And when the reporters ask you about me, you can tell them my phone number and address, too. If everything about my life is public news, now, then I intend to make that news work for me and the people I love.”

  I nodded to her and strode past into a crowded, darkly paneled bar with leather couches and billiard tables and the sweet hint of fine cigar smoke and old brandy. It was cocktail time and the place had filled with people, mostly well-dressed businessmen. As I angled between the plush chairs I bumped against their shoulders, rattled their scotches, and began to draw attention. “Ma’am? Ma’am!” the hostess called, but I’d already shut out her and all other distractions. I was on a hunting trip.

  I quickly found my prey.

  Haywood Kenney was never handsome, even in his doctored publicity pictures, but in person he looked like he needed embalming—him and his five-thousand-dollar suits and solid-gold collar pins and Italian leather suspenders and his forty-dollar cigars and his trashy radio show, too. He sat among a group of his fat-cat toadies in a step-up alcove that had VIP Table written all over it.

  “Haywood Kenney, you sorry, gutless, lying sonuvabitch,” I said loudly. The whole bar went stark silent. Kenney looked up at me and gaped. By then I was beside him. The element of surprise. I had to move fast. “My name is Hush McGillen Thackery.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said.

  “Don’t pray for help now, you turd-on-the-ass-of-humanity.”

  I whipped him across the side of the head with my apple branches, hard enough to nearly knock him off his chair. “That’s for what you’ve said about my family.” I slapped him again with the branches. “That’s for what you’ve said about the Jacobs’ family, because they’re my family, too.” Slap. “And that’s for telling the other ignorant, wimpy-assed fools out in the great wide world that Nick Jakobek is a killer and a joke.”

  By now, Kenney was up and dodging me, shielding his head with his arms, trying to back into a corner of the alcove. “Somebody help me!” he shrieked. Shrieked. An expert columnist on media relations would write later, in the big newspapers, that that squawk of fear might as well be called the death knell of his radio manhood. You don’t preach ballsy politics on the air but let hide in the corner of a fancy bar when an outraged mother whips your ass with faux apple branches. His toadies scattered like mealy bugs when you lift a rock. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d rolled up in tight little balls on the parquet floor.

  I shoved their empty chairs aside and cornered Kenney. Slap. “This is for smirking at the world from your pissy little ivory tower while men like Jakobek keep that world safe for you.” Slap. “And finally, this is for abusing the meaning of freedom of speech by turning good people’s lives into po’-trash manure for your vicious—” Slap—“petty—” Slap—“mealy-mouthed—” Slap—“lies.” Slap.

  On that last slap he sank down to his haunches with his arms wrapped around his head in silent, cowering submission. I looked down at him the way a cat looks at a mouse that’s stopped moving. “You just bore the hell out of me,” I said. I tossed the apple branches at him, and he flinched.

  I pivoted and stared at the crowd. Everyone was standing. In the back of the room, people had climbed up on tables for a better view. I saw a number of eager faces. There was scattered applause.

  “If you really mean that,” I announced, “then make it count. Turn off his filthy radio show. Tell people the truth beh
ind his lies. And don’t laugh at the misery he brings on others. Today it’s about me and mine. But tomorrow it could be about you and yours.”

  They made a path for me. Rhetoric delivered in a Southern drawl with a certain crazed look in the eye will clear the way, most times. I walked out onto a cold Chicago sidewalk, wondering if I’d get arrested for assaulting a national media celebrity before I made it to the airport. A little dazed, I turned vaguely and bumped into a tall, muscular blonde woman dressed in a jogging suit.

  Lucille.

  “I arrived in Washington about the time you were leaving,” she said. “The President asked me to keep an eye on you. So I’ve been following discreetly since you left the hospital.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but I’m in trouble. I just whipped Haywood Kenney’s ass. In public. With witnesses.”

  “I know.” She took me by one arm and gestured toward a dark sedan on the street.

  “I’ve been had,” I said.

  “No, you’ve been protected,” Lucille corrected. “We had a feeling you’d go after Kenney. Actually, Mrs. Jacobs said she’d bet money on it. She has good instincts.”

  “She’s a mother and a lover and a wild woman, like me. She knows what scores have to be settled.”

  Another agent appeared from somewhere and whisked open the car’s passenger door. Lucille pushed me in and climbed in beside me. “Back to the airport,” she told the driver. Then she looked at me. “The President and Mrs. Jacobs say they’ll personally represent you on the assault charges, if need be.”

  “Edwina said that? Before or after she cleaned the apple goo off her designer suit?”

  “After. And Hush—this is only my opinion as your future sister-in-law, but well—” Lucille cleared her throat. “You just joined the ranks of the Lt. Colonel in my hall of heroes.”

  I shook my head.

  Heroes weren’t this lonely.

  Chapter 20

  I WOKE UP FEELING as if something had changed inside me. Not just because there’d been a slice-and-dice job on my lung and torn arteries. Something more fundamental. I was lighter inside. Groggy, I lifted my left hand to see what tickled my palm. I blinked hard and finally focused on the rough little wooden crucifix dangling from my fingers by a gold chain. Only one person carved something holy out of simple wood. “Hush?” I said hoarsely, and tried to sit up in the hospital bed.

  “She went home. She wasn’t sure you needed her or wanted her here.” Al’s voice. He put a hand on my shoulder to hold me still, then sat down in a chair beside me. I laid back weakly. Not need her? I couldn’t put into words how much I needed her. My throat was raw from the anesthesia tube during surgery. I closed my hand around the crucifix, imprinting Hush on my palm.

  Al watched me. “Don’t try to talk. Just listen.” He told me what Hush had done to Haywood Kenney on my behalf. My brain was slow and my nerves were junked up with medication, but goosebumps spread slowly over my skin. Al went on. “You’re her hero. And she’s yours. A corny term, hero—overused, trivialized—but in this case, it’s true.” He paused, his throat working. “You may think that Edwina and I stopped believing in your basic humanity years ago, but you’re wrong. We knew from the day we brought you home from Mexico that you were someone special, someone who understood the world’s extremes with a clarity we could only envy. We’ve disappointed you, but you’ve never disappointed us. You’re our hero, too.”

  “Forget it,” I rasped. “I’ve made my peace with what I am. I take care of my family. Can’t save the world. But—”

  “You’ve done your job, Nick. Now it’s time to save yourself.” He studied me quietly. “If you don’t love Hush Thackery, that’s your business. But if you do, then you need to say so. To her. Not to me, not to Edwina. Not to the walls of this room. Not just to yourself. To her.” He stood. “Now, get some rest. We love you, Nick.” He patted my shoulder and left the room.

  I fumbled the crucifix off my left hand then slowly, methodically, raised the chain around my neck, and fastened the clasp. Please God, make me strong enough to get out of this bed soon and do what I have to do.

  “HELLO, NICKY.” Eddie’s soft whisper echoed in my ear. I opened my eyes in the shadows of the room, and said, “Hey, kid. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “They couldn’t keep me away, but I promised to only stay a minute. Davis is waiting in the hall. And Mother.” She brushed my hair with her fingertips. “When I was little I pictured you in a knight’s silver armor, out in the forest, slaying dragons. Dad was the king of the kingdom you protected, and Mother was the queen, and I was the princess. And I told my friends that there was no reason to be afraid of anything in our realm, because my knight, Sir Nicky, kept all the dragons under control.” She smiled tearfully. “Now I know I wasn’t just pretending.”

  “Princess Eddie. I’m still at your service.”

  “Princess Edwina Margisia Nicola,” she corrected.

  “Poor kid. Saddled with three funky names.”

  “Nicky. Sssh. I’ve come to ask you for favors. All right?”

  “Just name them.”

  “Will you be my baby’s godfather?”

  I was quiet for a long time. “What about Davis—”

  “He’ll ask you, too. But I wanted to go first.”

  “I’d be honored.” I cleared my throat, looked away, looked back. “And the other favor?”

  “I want you to go away.”

  “What?”

  “Go away. Go back where you belong. And don’t say you don’t know what I mean by that, Jakob.” She stood.

  “I intend—”

  “Sssh. Don’t say anything at all. The answer is between you and your heart.” She kissed me on the top of the head, straightened my covers, smiled and left the room, walking carefully, her hands spread on her bulging stomach, making a canopy over the child I would happily protect, just as I’d protected her. I shut my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, Edwina was straightening my covers. “I must really be wrinkled,” I said.

  “Not yet. But if you wait many more years to catch a wife you’ll have a very hard time, because you’ll be as wrinkled as a dried . . . apple.” She grimaced. “Apple analogies. I’m pathologically obsessed with them.” She pulled up the chair and sat down. Her face and attitude softened. “Nicholas,” she said sadly.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. We’ve let you roam the world all these years without saying the things we should have said.”

  “It’s all right to be uncomfortable around me.”

  “Uncomfortable? You mean afraid?” When I nodded, she sighed. “When Al brought you home to live with us, I admit I was afraid of you. But probably no more than you were afraid of me.”

  “All right. Yes. You scared the shit out of me.”

  “But it didn’t take very long for me to see that you had a deep sense of honor and an even deeper capacity for honesty and kindness.”

  “You could tell that from coyote skulls?”

  “Yes. Yes, I could.” Her quick smile faded. “I’m so sorry Al and I preached our rules of morality to you, when all along you held to a code of duty and sacrifice that went far beyond our simple speeches. Unfortunately, when you needed our support the most, we turned out to be hypocrites.”

  “No. You were honest. That’s why I loved you both. Why I still do.”

  She wiped her eyes then reached over and picked up the carved wooden crucifix on my chest. She pursed her mouth tightly. “You’ll be singing baritone in the Chocinaw County Church of the Gospel Harvest, if you’re not careful.”

  I started to say something about my future, but she stood. “No need to answer that. And Nicholas? I realize I’ve turned into a monster over the years. I’m planning to reform. All right? Get some rest.”

  She turned out t
he light over my bed and left the room. I lay alone in the dark, amazed. I finally had something to say, but no one would listen. Well, one person would.

  I just had to get to her.

  We roll back the years, sometimes. With a kind of déjà vu we see a moment in our lives for what it is: A reminder of how far we’ve come. I was sitting on the side of my hospital bed at dawn, sweating with the effort, using most of my concentration to get dressed. I wasn’t supposed to be sitting up, much less packing to leave. I’d managed to put on my old khakis and zip my fly. Next, I fumbled with the buttons on my flannel shirt.

  Bill Sniderman walked in. Same dapper bastard he’d been that day at the hospital in Chicago, twenty-odd years earlier. His crisp white shirt was knotted high on his neck. He wore a creased dark suit and silk tie the way a men’s store mannequin wears a can’t-touch-this attitude. Al’s senior advisor looked down his flared brown nose at me with the same shit-sniffing dislike as always. “Disappearing, again, I hope, Nick?”

  “You’re smart for a man who wears his collars tight enough to cut off the blood supply to his brain.”

  “You don’t look too well. Any chance you’ll collapse and die on your way to the street?”

  “Aw, Bill, don’t be shy. You know you’ll miss me.”

  He arched a graying black brow. “I came by to tell you one thing: I’ve always thought you’d make a good dead hero.”

  “That’s sweet. Where were you when I needed my bed pan changed yesterday?”

  He held out a hand. “Why don’t you go back to your apple farming woman and stay out of the President’s limelight and practice being a good live hero?”

  We traded a long look. “Damn, I’m starting to like you,” I said.

  We shook on the news.

  Davis walked in, dressed for a long drive in old jeans and a heavy coat. “Ready?”

  “I was born ready,” I said.

  A SAMPLE of the day’s national headlines: