“I don’t know if that’ll do it for me,” Rick said. “I know this is crazy…”

“What does Liz say?”

He laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “She wants to quit school right now. Run away and get married. You have any idea how awful school is for her?”

Jack suddenly felt pretty stupid—of all the things he could focus on, be aware of, it had never occurred to him how terrible it might be for a fifteen-year-old pregnant girl to attend school every day. And since she’d only been in that school a couple of months the spring before, it was practically a new school for her at that. She might as well have a tattoo on her forehead. “Aw, Rick,” he said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“I try to be there for her after every class, get her to the next class. I’m late a lot. I’m getting in trouble a lot. It sucks so much.” He sighed deeply. “Lizzie is so young. She didn’t seem that young before. Before we got into this mess. She was…I couldn’t keep my freaking hands off her, she was so hot. She was that way with me, too. She seemed so…experienced. But she wasn’t, you know? There wasn’t anyone before me and there hasn’t been anyone after. And now she’s just this scared little girl who would give anything not to have these problems.” He took a breath. “She needs me so much.”

“Jeez,” Jack said. “I’m sorry, Rick. My mind has been on so many other things, I never thought—”

“Hey, it’s not your problem, okay? It’s my problem. If I’d listened to you in the first place…”

“Don’t kick yourself. You’re not the first guy to have one occasion of unprotected sex. But guaranteed you’re among a very select number to get a girl pregnant on that first and only shot. We’re a small fraternity, for sure.”

“This happened to you?” Rick said, amazed.

“Yeah. Sure did.”

“How old were you?”

Jack turned and met Rick’s eyes. “Forty.”

“Mel?” he said, astonished.

“Between you and me, right?” Jack said. “I don’t know how Mel feels about me talking about it. But yeah, near as we can figure out—first strike. Difference is, I’m an old man, and not sorry. I wouldn’t have it any other way. In my case, I really did get lucky.”

“Shew. I guess if a midwife can screw up, I shouldn’t be so embarrassed.”

“My screwup, bud. All my adult life, that condom’s been automatic,” Jack said. “Not just because of the pregnancy issue, but because you don’t want to expose a woman to anything. If a woman’s willing to share her body with you, you don’t want to take a chance of giving her some STD you don’t even know you have. And you don’t want to be exposed. I lost my head. I didn’t protect her. If I weren’t so grateful for the baby, I’d feel bad about that. But hell, that stuff happens to people, pal. At least we’re old enough to take it on—and want to take it on. But you? Damn, buddy—you kids sure got hit hard. I can’t imagine how rough this is for you. Both of you.”

“My life is so weird right now,” Rick said. “I’m in high school, and I’m sneaking around to be alone with the girl who’s got my baby in her. And it’s not like it’s a punishment, being alone with her, you know? But I’m not even doing it for me—she’s the one who needs attention. I can’t refuse to touch her when she needs to be touched, not when she’s going through this. Can I?”

“She’d think you didn’t care about her,” Jack said.

Rick’s voice grew quiet. “Sometimes she just cries. We do it…I want it to be nice for her, hold her, keep her safe, and when it’s over, she cries and cries. And I don’t know what more to do.”

I think I might cry, Jack thought. “I think it has to be up to her,” he said. “Not what you want—what she wants.”

“That’s what I think, too. Maybe I should just do it. Talk to my grandma about letting Liz move in with us, into my bedroom. Marry her or something.”

“I think you need somebody’s permission for that.”

He shook his head, laughing. “We’re having a freaking baby! In less than three months!”

“Well…”

“They want her to give him up. No discussion. It’s best for him, everyone is saying. Even if they can convince her, I don’t think they can convince me. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep my mouth shut right now?”

“Oh, man…” Jack was wishing about twenty things at that moment. Top on his list—he wished Rick was his son, so he could step in and help handle things. He understood they were too young to have a baby together, but it was going to happen anyway, and Rick shouldn’t be marrying anyone at seventeen. Still, that baby shouldn’t go away from its mother and father. And how could they do otherwise, at their tender ages? “You’re the father. Aren’t there papers you have to sign to let him go?”

“I don’t know. What the hell do I know?”

“You should talk to Mel,” he said. “Seriously—this discussion is for you and Mel. She does babies, I do other things.”

“Jack,” he said, “there’s a part of me that is so sorry I crossed that line like I did and set this up for us, for me and Liz. What a disaster. But there’s another part that saw that little guy on the ultrasound and just wants to hold him. Show him how to catch a ball…” Then he shook his head. “No matter how much talking people do, there’s no way anyone can get you ready for what happens to your life when you don’t get that condom out of your pocket.”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“Jack, I’m sorry. I let you down.”

“Nah. I don’t feel let down. I feel really bad for you, but not disappointed in you. You’ve done pretty good with this, all things considered. Now we have to figure out a way for you to get your life back, both of you, before it gets even worse.”

“No matter what you come up with, Jack, I’m never getting that life back. And neither is Liz.”

As Jack came out of the kitchen into the bar, there was a man seated at the end. He wore a western hat, a shady brady, and as Jack entered the bar he lifted his dark eyes. It took Jack less than five seconds to recognize him as a man who’d been in his bar a few months ago and tried to pay for his boiler-maker with a hundred-dollar bill peeled off a thick wad of bills, all of which carried the skunklike odor of green marijuana. Jack wouldn’t take his money.

If that alone wasn’t enough to give Jack a bad feeling about the man, he was also the one who had lain in wait for Mel at her cabin to take her out to some hidden grow back in the hills where a woman was giving birth. For that, Jack felt an urge to go a few rounds with him to be sure he knew better than to ever try that again. Instead, he wiped down the bar in front of him. “Heineken and Beam, isn’t it?”

“Good memory,” the man said.

“I remember important things. I don’t want to get in the habit of comping you drinks.”

The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thin leather wallet and withdrew a twenty, laying it on the bar. “Freshly laundered for my fussy friend,” he said.

Jack set him up his drinks. “How you getting around these days?” he asked. The man’s eyes lifted swiftly to Jack’s face. “I came across your Range Rover,” Jack said. “Off the road, down the side of the hill. Totaled. I told the deputy where.”

The man threw back his shot. “Yeah,” he said. “My bad. I didn’t make that turn. Must have been going too fast. Got a good deal on a used truck.” He lifted his beer, took a long pull. “That everything?” he asked, indicating he’d rather not have a conversation.

“Not quite,” Jack said. “There was a birth back in a trailer somewhere….”

The man put down his beer rather sharply, glaring at Jack. “So much for medical confidentiality.”

“The midwife is my wife. That can’t happen. We straight on that?”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, his hand tightening around his cold beer.

“That’s right, cowboy. She’s my wife. So. Are we clear? I don’t want her taking those kinds of chances.”

He made a lopsided smile. He lifted his beer and took another pull. “I doubt I’ll ever find myself in that spot again.” Jack stared, hard, into the man’s eyes. “She wasn’t at risk, but you’re right. She probably shouldn’t do that.”

After a moment of quiet, Jack said, “Clear River might be a better place for a drink.”

The man pushed the shot glass across the bar. “Quieter, anyway.”

Jack served him up again, then took the twenty to change it, indicating the man was done here. Then Jack went to his own end of the bar and busied himself wiping it down, straightening glassware and bottles. He lifted his head as he heard the stool scrape back. The man stood, turned and walked slowly out of the bar without looking at Jack. A glance showed Jack he hadn’t left any money behind and, in spite of himself, he chuckled under his breath.

Then he went to the window to see what kind of truck it was. So—he’d lowered his standards a little. A dark Ford, jacked up, lights up top, tinted windows. He memorized the license plate, but knew that wouldn’t matter.

It was only a minute before the door opened again and in came Mel. Her jacket stood open and her belly protruded slightly. She wore an odd expression.

“You see that guy, Mel?” Jack asked her. She nodded. “Did he say anything to you?”

She got up on a stool. “Uh-huh. He gave me a long up and down look and said congratulations.”

“You didn’t talk to him, I hope.”

“I asked him how that baby was. And he said, they have everything they need.”

“Aw, Mel…”

“That man never scared me, Jack. There might be lots of scary people out there, in those hidden grows, but something tells me he’s not one of them.”

Eleven

After two weeks in the hospital, two weeks in a rehab facility and two weeks with his mother, Mike Valenzuela was stir-crazy. He was still crippled in one arm and totally out of his mind with cabin fever. Not to mention shook up by how long it had taken for his mind to come back. Nothing scared him quite as much as memory loss and not being able to find the right word, or looking at the right word and thinking it was wrong.

Physically, he was getting by, but there was pain. Most of it was in his shoulder, arm, neck and scapula, and at night it could get so fierce he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t move. At those times, he could barely get out of bed, and the only thing that worked was a big ice pack and a pain-killer. The other pain was still stiffness and weakness in the groin area, and that kept getting better, but he was using a cane for left-sided weakness when he walked.

When he looked in the mirror he saw a thin and wasted body where a toned and muscled one had been. A man stooped slightly because straightening hurt his groin, his abdomen. His right arm was bent at the elbow and held protectively against his midsection, the hand curled inward and too stiff and weak to open all the way. A head of thick black Mexican-American hair that had been shaved on one side of his head to remove a bullet was barely growing back. A man who, at thirty-six years of age, was retired from the police department with a one-hundred-percent disability. A man staying in his mother’s house because he’d given houses to two ex-wives and given up his rented apartment when he was shot.

There was another little matter. Something that didn’t show—it was still hard to pee and he hadn’t seen an erection in a long time. And what came to mind was, I pissed away my life and here I am, hardly able to piss.