The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [121]
Sometimes his unhurried style so maddened her that she had to leave the room, but by her high school years no one had more confidence in his dependability than Annie did. When she left for Annapolis, she promised her aunt and uncle that, despite her desire to fly jets for the Navy, she would let nothing harm her. She told them that at her graduation she would point her diploma out toward the field of parents, so that Sam and Clark would know that they shared this triumph. They promised to be there.
But a month before her graduation, Clark drove off to pick up the Chinese takeout for Annie’s visit home and didn’t come back. When by 10 p.m. he still hadn’t honked his horn in the yard, Annie and Sam telephoned 911. It was not until midnight that the police chief came to the door about the collision at a downtown intersection. The two of them rushed to Emerald Hospital, where Clark lay unconscious. Doctors there admitted to Sam they had no hope of their colleague’s survival.
For years afterwards, Clark heard the stories of how Annie had sat by her uncle’s bed through three nights. “You promised me,” she’d told him over and over. “We shook hands.” There was no sign that he could hear her.
On the first Sunday after the accident, at Clark’s church, St. Mark’s Episcopal, Sam suddenly walked in, stood in the aisle, and started talking. Her appearance startled the rector into silence. He’d met her previously only at family funerals. But bygone Peregrines had donated so much money to St. Mark’s over the generations that he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to leave.
Sam pointed at a stained-glass window (it was dedicated to a Peregrine ancestor, although she didn’t notice). “I’m here for Clark Goode,” she told the congregation. “I want you all to pray for him. Clark’s like a rock in that river outside that window. Mostly you can’t rely on men—” There was a restless stirring here by those who feared a feminist lecture of the sort many in Emerald had heard from Sam before. She settled them with raised urgent hands. “As far as counting on men, Clark Goode is Atticus Finch. He’s Virgil Tibbs. He’s the Pride of the Yankees. He’s the man who shot Liberty Valance.”
The congregation was puzzled. They were relieved when she added, “We’ve all heard Clark’s terrible puns. They’re just awful.”
“Awful,” the rector said aloud.
Sam burst into tears. “But you know what? The best pun was God’s, when he named Clark ‘Goode.’ And the world can’t afford to lose a good man. So I’m just here to tell you folks, pray for him. I don’t believe any of this junk. But just in case…” Sam had to stop again, swallowing hard. Reaching blindly for the minister’s hand, she sat down in tears, further confusing the town of Emerald, who’d finally accepted that Sam Peregrine was a Lesbian and now were wondering if they’d been wrong and she and Clark were in love after all.
Clark was still unconscious when Annie had to drive back to Annapolis to take her final exams. She told him again as she left his hospital room, “Keep your promise.”
Clark kept it. He came out of the coma and survived. It wasn’t easy, and during his convalescence he started smoking again.
A month later, Annie was waving her diploma at the Annapolis graduation. Sam pushed Clark forward in his wheelchair so the graduate could see him hold up his “Annie Peregrine Goode, Top Gun!” sign.
The car wreck left Clark with a steel pin and Sam with white hair. Otherwise, Pilgrim’s Rest was pretty much the same whenever Annie returned to it. Teddy still slept in her pagoda. The top of Annie’s oak dresser with its blue-flowered porcelain knobs still was covered with crystals and magic charms. The photograph of the beautiful pilot Amy Johnson