Storm Front

wasn’t sure: “I remember Bizby. . . . I do remember
something
about your family. Didn’t your father get hurt in an industrial accident, or something?”
    “Not unless he cut himself on a pull-tab,” she said. Ma was disappointed. He was a major character in her life, and she apparently wasn’t even a minor one in his. Oh, well.
    “I feel like I owe you,” she said. “I feel like I’ve always owed you. Now you seem like you need some help.”
    “What? You came up here to bust me out?” He tried to laugh, and wound up coughing. “You think you can take the bed with you?”
    He rattled his good leg, which was chained to the bed at the ankle.
    Ma said, “I brought a bolt cutter, just in case,” and pulled it out of her bag to show him.
    She’d caught his interest. “Maybe you do owe me,” he said. “But even if I could walk, I wouldn’t get far.”
    “If you could get down one flight of stairs, I could pick you up in my truck,” she said.
    “I could do that,” he said, pushing himself up. “I couldn’t run, but I could hobble that far. I think.”
    “I can’t take you home. That state cop, Virgil Flowers, is all over me. On another matter, not about you, but he’s how I found out where you were. Do you have a place where you could go?”
    “Yes. If you can get me there.”
    They heard the nurse coming down the hall, and Jones pointed across the room and whispered, “That door—it goes into the bathroom.”
    She slipped inside just in time. And then thought, getting caught in the bathroom wouldn’t be good. The bathroom was shared: she tried the door on the other side, and it was unlocked. On the other side, she found a sleeping man. A pair of crutches leaned against one corner.
    —
    L ATER , WHEN SHE cut Jones free from the bed, he said, “I’m not sure how I feel about stealing a man’s crutches.”
    “They’re hospital crutches,” she said. “They’ll give him new ones—and you can always send them back when you’re done with them.”
    “My clothes are in the locker.” He pushed himself up, and groaned. “I’m so damaged. . . . Young lady, you are definitely a godsend, but I tell you, I am a very damaged old man.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. She got him his clothes, and looked at her watch. “They’ll be checking you in six or seven minutes, and then not for another half hour. Put your clothes under your pillow, and put them on before you come down. I’m going now. You have to fake being asleep when they check you, but then, as soon as they leave, come down. The door is down to your right, and across the hall.”
    “God bless you,” he said.
    —
    S OMEWHAT TO M A ’ S SURPRISE , it worked out. The reverend, flailing with the crutches, appeared outside the stairway door, and looked both ways. She flashed her lights at him, and he turned toward her as she pulled through the parking lot, bumped over the curb onto the grass, and rolled up to the side of the building. She jumped out, ran around the truck cab, and helped boost him into the passenger seat.
    “I don’t mean to be a complainer,” he said, as she got back behind the wheel. “But I hurt, and I’m going to have to take a pill. They make me a little woozy. I understand what’s going on, but my reactions aren’t so good. Before I do that, I need to tell you where we’re going.”
    So he told her, and as they pulled away into the night, she asked, “Will this involve a burglary?”
    “No, no, I have a key.”
    “Are you bleeding?”
    “I don’t know. I wasn’t hurt that bad, I guess,” he said, rubbing his forearm, where he’d pulled out a catheter. “They weren’t really giving me any treatment in the hospital—after they patched me up, it was just pain medication and observation. But you will have to help me into the house.”
    “I can do that,” Ma said. She watched as he gobbled down a couple of pills, and then asked, “How long before they take effect?”
    “It’s pretty quick,” he said. “Now. Tell me your story. When the pills kick in, I may look a little sleepy, but I do understand what people are saying.”
    “What do you want to hear?” she asked.
    “Your story—the whole story, from the time your mom got the job at Hormel, right up until now.”
    So Ma told the story: and when she thought about it later, it was a pretty good story, with some nice high points, and the usual lows for a single mother with five fatherless boys.
    “We were in trouble,” she