Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [106]
“I’m going to call you several times,” David said, “and each time you must answer, ‘I’m coming.’ Now, take a deep breath. … Let it out. … Another breath. … Keep breathing.”
Lewis lay there breathing for a long time, maybe ten minutes. The room was hot and still. He heard David moving quietly, the birds outside, and distant pops—people setting off fireworks. Then the room brightened and the air smelled sharp and crisp, as if the smoke of a medicinal campfire were blowing through.
The floor creaked. Something touched Lewis very lightly. A shadow descended. At first, he thought David was touching him with his fingers; then he understood from the whispery, scritching sound that David was pulling a small broom over the length of his body. He was speaking Spanish in a low, soft voice, a prayer or chant. Lewis recognized only Dios and Cristo.
“Come, Lewis,” David said firmly. “Don’t stay there.”
“I’m coming.” Lewis’s voice sounded strange to him, sudden, as it did when he blurted something out loud to himself. The broom moved across his chest, grazing his crossed hands holding the egg and the stick. David prayed continuously in Spanish, his tone gentle and straightforward, as if prayer were the most reasonable discourse. “Don’t stay there, Lewis,” he said. “Come here.”
“I’m coming,” Lewis said, and meant it.
David, praying, swept around Lewis in a circle. The broom’s work was hypnotic, soothing; the adjective that came to Lewis was “loving.” Suddenly he was keenly thirsty, and drops of water instantly fell on him; it was alarming how loud they sounded landing on the cloth.
“Lewis, are you here with me?”
“I’m coming.”
“Are you here?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Lewis said, flooded with relief. His eyes welled up. He heard David sweeping all around him, chanting softly; it was like being a child in the room of a mother so quiet and gentle, all you could feel was her devotion. David swept in a wider and wider circle, then came close and knelt down. “You are here, now.” He touched Lewis’s forehead, his belly, each of his shoulders. He lifted the sheet off his face and smiled, as if in recognition, then slowly removed the sheet, folding it up length by length and setting it to one side.
David took the egg from Lewis’s hand, made the sign of the cross over him, and set the egg on the sheet. Taking the stick from Lewis’s other hand, he again made the sign of the cross and set the stick next to the egg. He wrapped both the stick and the egg in the sheet and stood up with the bundle. “Rest a minute,” he said. “Sit up when you’re ready, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
David went into his bedroom and Lewis heard him put the water on. When the water started to hiss in the pan, Lewis sat up.
The tea David handed him was astringent, strong, head-clearing. Eucalyptus, pepper, and lemon, and God knows what else.
They sat quietly in the hot room for a few more minutes—until the men decorating the float came knocking on the door. Their work was finished, they said, and beautiful. They wanted David to see it, and Lewis could come too.
LEWIS set out covered trays of bacon and sausages and assorted pastries over Sterno flames. He slung bags of bread onto the buffet table with butter, jams, honey, halved grapefruits, wedges of cantaloupes. There were urns of regular and decaf coffee, pitchers of half-and-half, whole and skimmed milk. Now he was free until lunch prep on Tuesday and would slip down to Los Angeles, catch the Nightcrawlers’ Sunday meeting, see some friends. But first, he stuck a thermos of decaf and yesterday’s leftover brownies in his knapsack and tossed it into the front seat of his car.
He missed the spur on the first pass and had to turn back. Up the narrow dirt road, he parked next to Libby’s Mercedes. The sun was