The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(30)

I blinked at him. “What?”

He flipped over a menu and ran his finger along a line at the bottom: Seldom is heard a discouraging word.

“Olin’s idea,” he said. “To keep folks civil. And if they aren’t . . .”

“You kick them out?”

He paused, considering me carefully. “For you, a new rule,” he said. “You’ll have to drop a coin in the jukebox over there and play any song I choose.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You might have rotten taste in music.”

“I happen to have swell taste in music. And every record is crackerjack.”

“Are those real vinyls? Forty-fives?”

“Not just forty-fives,” he said. “Some are seventy-eights—all of them requests from customers. Jessie orders them special. Sometimes people would just like to hear a song that means something.”

“What’s your favorite?”

He smiled at me over his burger. “One of these days, I might tell you.”

I pegged him for country-western. A ballad, though, not a rowdy bar song. Nothing about cheating—Simon didn’t seem the type. And not a patriotic anthem, either. Not after what Jessie had told me about his war experience.

Jim had a particular taste for country-western. I’d listened to song after song about whiskey and beer and pickup trucks, true lovers and cheaters. After a while, it all ran together like manic-depressive white noise.

A few years ago, though, Jim took a break from music. All of it. That was after a country band came out with a song about a wife who’d had enough of her abusive husband and decided to get rid of the problem—rat poison in the grits and rolling out the tarp . . .

One day Jim came home from work and caught me listening to it. I hadn’t planned to—it just came over the radio as I was cooking. But as it began, as I listened, it stopped me in my tracks. Jim caught me standing there, so focused, so fascinated. Maybe he thought I was taking notes. Maybe I was.

He yanked the power cord from the wall, then slammed the radio against my head.

It was cheap plastic and splintered easily, so it didn’t do as much damage as you’d think. Jim must have thought so, too, because for good measure he took the pot of stew cooling on the stove, stood over me where I lay stunned on the linoleum and poured it on my back. I was five months’ pregnant with Laurel then.

“Is something wrong?” Simon asked.

I couldn’t look at him.

“If I ask you something,” I said, “will you answer it?”

“I don’t see why not.”

I swallowed hard.

“That day . . . that day you found us. I don’t remember it. Any of it. And I need to know what happened.”

“It’s no mystery, Joanna. I was driving down the road here, heading toward the highway. Once you’re over that hill, it’s all steep curves toward the interstate, and soon enough you hit desert again. I saw buzzards circling half a mile or so from the road. And on the ground right under them, I thought I saw something move.”

His tone was mild. Matter-of-fact. Almost indifferent. When he said the word “buzzards,” I looked up to lock eyes with him.

I didn’t see indifference there, but sympathy. It stung me.

“I was able to off-road the pickup halfway in,” he continued. “By then, I could tell it was someone staggering along, barely able to keep to their feet. I got out and sprinted the rest of the way. You were stumbling, but still standing. You were holding Laurel, and she was passed out—it was all I could do to pry your arms off her. You didn’t want to let her go—in fact, you fought me quite a bit.

“You must have been out there awhile. You were dehydrated, sick from the heat. Your clothes were ripped up, legs swelled from cactus spines. I slung Laurel over my shoulder, propped you up as best I could and half carried you back to my truck. Olin and Jessie were the closest. I knew they’d take good care of you.”

I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, and turned to stare out the window. But this time I wasn’t seeing the green valley, but the awful scene Simon had just described.

“Did you find our car?” I asked finally. “A little Toyota. Silver.”

“No car. I even drove back along the road once you were safe at the house, and back and forth along the interstate looking for one. In case there was an accident and someone else might be hurt.”

“Did I . . . Was there blood . . . on my clothes?”