Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [137]
“WHOSE PARK? OUR PARK.”
It was a voice meant to hypnotize. Trust me, you’re getting sleepy.
It worked. Jude stood still in the middle of the street, under the spell of Johnny’s voice. He was suddenly very tired of moving.
Eliza’s hand slipped from his. Without looking back, she darted ahead, the space between them stretching wide, and wider, uncrossable. He watched the black broom of her head bob through the crowd. He lost sight of her, then found her, then lost her again. The dust storm lashed around him.
Slowly, Johnny’s voice came to a stop. Eliza dropped to his side. Across the crowded street, Jude watched their mouths moving. What were they saying? The things that people said. Fuck you, I hate you, it’s over. Whatever they were talking about, they weren’t talking about Teddy.
Jude floated through the crowd. Watch it, watch out. Eliza was handling her necklace. She was handing something to Johnny. It glinted dully under the streetlamp. It was her ring. Jude moved toward its light until he reached them.
“Johnny, get up.”
Johnny looked up at him. His face was in shadow, but Jude could see on it an older brother’s irritation. He was tired of Jude playing at his feet.
Beside him, Rooster put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “This is a fuckin’ sit-in, kid,” Rooster said.
“I’m not talking to you, Rooster.”
“Jude, go home,” Johnny said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
They were all looking at him. They were all wrong. Nothing had concerned him more.
He was thinking of Hippie and Tory as he kicked Johnny in the gut, Hippie crumpling against the fence, Tory’s screams rocking the van, and now Johnny slumping over into Rooster’s lap as Rooster pulled Jude’s other leg from under him, toppling him to the ground. Jude lifted Johnny by the back of the neck and landed two punches dead in the center of his face before they all fell on top of him—Rooster, Delph, Kram. There must have been more, but he couldn’t see. He felt the tread of rubber on his body, knuckles. The sirens howled. The M-80s popped. The fists rained down on him, cleansing him. He didn’t fight back. And yet they were the ones crying out. The pummeling slowed. The mass lifted. The cops were clubbing them off of him.
Then, through the megaphone, Johnny’s voice. “She’s pregnant!”
The helicopter swept its spotlight over them. It found a shield, a helmet, a club; Jude, struggling to sit up; Rooster on his hands and knees; and Johnny flying to Eliza, who lay on her side, her hand to her head, spilling blood on the street. Her eyes were open, and she was looking at Jude. Then the light swept away.
Twenty-One
When Eliza opened her eyes, she saw their faces from left to right. Even in her state of disorientation, her brain processed the people sitting at her bedside in its trained latitudinal sequence. Jude, with a black eye, in a hospital gown. Beside him, with a suntan, Les. On the other side of the bed, holding a paper cup of tea stained with her fuchsia lipstick, her mother.
“Is the baby okay?”
Les tossed his crossword onto Eliza’s blanketed legs. “The patient speaks.”
Eliza’s voice was groggy, her limbs heavy. An IV was taped to the back of her hand, a plastic clip attached to her finger. And there was something strapped to her belly, a belt. She let her eyelids flutter closed. She remembered all the commotion in the park, a fight, screaming for the boys to get off of Jude. She didn’t remember anything after that. When she opened her eyes, Jude averted his. She remembered kissing him in her bed.
“Right as rain, darling.” Di picked up Eliza’s hand and stamped her knuckles with her lipstick. “The heart rate was up for a while, but now it’s stable. They gave you something to sleep.”
Yes, she had slept. She’d slept better than she had in months.
“In fact, you’ve been asleep for seven years,” Les said. “This is actually your fourth child.”
“Les, what are you doing here?”
“You were hit in the head last night, darling,” said her mother. “By a police officer. You have a concussion.