Chapter 1 of Change of Heart (unedited pre-release copy)

Chapter 1: Field Day
Looking back—as he often would—on that last Friday in May, Stephen Christopher Wyatt would say there was nothing ominous about the way it began, certainly no sign that tragedy would strike on the Crumpton Elementary playground before the afternoon bell sounded. If anything, it was a perfect Spring morning—65 degrees with a cool breeze tousling the leaves of the red oaks and sugar maples down by the lake. The sky was a big swirl of blue-and-pink cotton candy, the sun a big lemon drop dawning above the tall pines. If Stephen's Dad—the Reverend Nicholas Wyatt—had been there to see it he would have broken into an off-key rendition of It's a Beautiful Morning, one of the corny hits from his golden oldies box set. Corny but true: It was a beautiful morning and, speaking of corny, Stephen wouldn't have blinked twice if a pudgy cherub in blond curls had lighted down out of the blue plucking It's a Beautiful Morning on a golden harp.
Between bites of cornflakes and toast Stephen sang the parts of the song he remembered—mainly oh-oh-oh…ah-ah. He was giddy for two good reasons: It was the last day of school (so long, seventh grade) and the only thing that could top that was not even having to step foot on the Crumpton Middle School campus! It was Field Day at his alma mater, Crumpton Elementary. Being a highly-decorated Tenderfoot 1st Class Boy Scout (with a dozen iron-on patches to prove it), he had been called into duty as a field marshal. He was suited up in his Class A Boy Scout uniform—crisp green slacks he had starched and pressed the previous night along with his short-sleeve khaki shirt decorated with two dozen emblems of distinction, and a red-and-yellow neckerchief cinched with a silver woggle. Stephen Wyatt was certainly not one to brag, but he was, as they say at church, justly proud—not such a hideous sin—of the fact that he and his best friend Reggie Duckett, a fellow scout and safety patrol, were the only two from the whole scout pack called up for Field Day service. They had survival skills. They could build a fire, make a shelter, read the sun. They had aced the basic and intermediate first aid courses and knew how to splint a bone, apply a tourniquet, and (as Reggie put it) "raise the dead"…using CPR. Stephen didn't expect that Field Day would bring any medical crisis that a Band-Aid couldn't fix. What was the worst thing that could happen at Field Day—a skinned knee from the three-legged race? Maybe a nasty case of ring-toss elbow? A boo-boo here and belly-ache there.
Stephen and Reggie were agreed that getting to marshal Field Day was the most exciting thing to happen in a pretty long time…at least since old Rastus Booker staggered into Reggie's church during the invitation brandishing a camo-colored Max-D Super Soaker machine gun (and a back-up squirt pistol in an ankle holster) and started shooting the place up until there wasn't a dry eye (or hairdo) in the house. That was pretty exciting, and pretty terrifying, until the congregation realized the giant gun sprayed cold water not buckshot and Lettie Bagwell, who was out front on her weekly mid-service cigarette and cell phone break, called the law to report a shooting.
Field Day would have to go a long way to top that!
Stephen was on the last spoonful of cereal when his mother appeared at the door and whistled. "Why just lookie here at you, handsome," she said. She stepped out onto the deck and rolled her head around to size him up. "Dressed to the nines."
Moms.
"Morning, Mom," he said.
A moment later, Sister Sarah poked her head out the door and squinted against the light of day and grunted, as if she was some kind of turban-topped vampire or zombie (she was) whose mortal enemy was the sun. She rolled her eyes at Stephen. "What's with the get-upty-do, Junior?"
Sisters.
"Field Day," he told her.
"Puh," she said. "Aren't you a little old for that? What are you in—the fifth grade now?"
"Eighth after today," he told her. "Isn't it past your bedtime, Scarah?"
"Who could sleep with all your singing out here, Junior? Your voice could wake the dead."
"You're the living proof," he told her.
She stuck out her tongue.
"Enough," their mother said. "Let's make nice. Good morning to you, too, Sarah." Then she approached Stephen. "Chin up." She straightened his neckerchief and cinched it up with the brass woggle. She turned to Sarah: "Nice to see you up so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning."
"Anything for you, Mother dear," Sarah said. Then she stuck out her tongue and winked at Stephen. "You're a regular lady killer, Junior. What woman can resist a boy in uniform?"
Stephen made a face and rolled his eyes.
Their mother often said that Sarah was "heck-bent on doing her dead-level best to become the poster child for the PK Movement"—PK standing for Preacher's Kid or Problem Kiddo—take your pick. Same difference, Mom said. At her worst, Sarah would quip: Don't you mean APK, Mama? Daddy's just an assistant preacher. Which, in itself, proved their mother's point. If sarcasm were intelligence, Sarah was a bona fide genius.
"A boy in uniform," their mother said. She was fooling with her hanging plants strung from the eaves by braided ropes Stephen had made in a scouting project. "I like that, and I wish your Daddy were here to see you, Stephen. He'd be so proud."
"Sheesh a'mighty, Ma," Sarah said, "you make it sound like he's dead or something."
"I do no such thing," their mother said, whispering to the pink snapdragon and pinching the end of its blossom to make the dragon mouth move.
"You wish he was dead," Stephen mumbled, not really to be heard. But for someone who couldn't hear half a dozen dinner calls, Sarah was the Bionic Woman when it came to things you didn't want her to hear.
"Speak for yourself, Junior," she said. "Such drama in this house."
"Such," their mother said. She was tending to her birdfeeder now. "Children, please. If we can't be nice, let's make nice. That's what Mother always used to say. I am happy to report that your father is not only alive and well, Sarah dear, but he will be home tomorrow afternoon."
"Woo hoo," Sarah said, twisting the towel on her head into a knot with a little apostrophe at the top that made her head look like a cone of soft-serve vanilla ice cream.
"I knew you'd be happy to hear it, Sarah," their mother told her. "You miss your father in a way that...that...the rest of us don't." She was still at the birdfeeder, turning it slowly around to take it in from every angle. "Dad called last night. You were already fast asleep, Stephen; you should have been, Sarah. He said that everything went very well in Dallas. Very well. He is very excited and really, kiddos, we should be, too."
"Woo...Hoo," Sarah said again, this time with feeling—contempt—and just this once Stephen wouldn't have minded seeing his Mom smack the woo hoo clean out of her fresh mouth—if for no other reason than to prove once and for all that Sarah would not turn the other cheek. Sarah said: "I just don't know whatever I shall do, Miss Scarlett, to contain all this excitement that has my heart all aflutter." She patted her chest.
"Speaking of such drama, daughter dear," their mom said, "do tell, was that supposed to be Melanie or Prissy or Mammy? I thought you started on Prissy but the last bit sounded a little more like Mammy doing a bad Melanie."
"Sounded more like Rhett Butler to me," Stephen said.
"I've got your Rhett Butler," Sarah said, "how's this: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a —'"
"Now for that," their mother said, "I will smack your face, young lady. Try me." She drew back her right hand and bit her lower lip in a show of force.
Stephen said, "Finish, Sarah. You were going to say…."
"Oh shut up, you," Sarah said. "You wish."
"Stephen, don't egg it on."
"Got that, Junior?" Sarah said.
"Yes, mommy."
"Children, please."
"Yes, please," Sarah said. "Speaking of such drama, don't you think Daddy should have gone to Hollywood instead of Dallas?" Breathy: "That's where all the movie stars are." She crossed her arms and tossed her right hand back as if it were holding a cigarette, exhaled through her nose.
"That was convincing," Stephen said, thinking Sarah had that whole smoking routine down pat, from muscle memory. He looked at their mother, but she was still assessing the birdfeeder.
"Now, now," their mother said, in that curt tone that marked the end of her long patience. She turned and looked at Sarah, keeping one hand on the door of the bird feeder, "Need I remind you of the Fifth Commandment, Sarah?"
"No need. Exodus twenty, verse twelve, Mother. It's my favorite verse. See, it's the one that says if I honor you and Daddy my days will be long upon this land? Puh-lease."
Stephen thought, ooh here it comes. He stopped mid-chew, a drop of sugary milk poised in the cleft of his chin. He pictured in his mind the look on Sarah's face with Mom's red handprint on it so clear you could read her palm, but Mom stayed calm, said: "That's the very one. Though if you think it means you'll have to stay on this land long, dear: this land meaning nineteen sixty-four Live Oak Trace, Crumpton, Georgia, and long beginning, oh say, the day after your eighteenth birthday, I think you've got our Lord's message all wrong. There's another promise that, God knows, your Daddy and I have heard often enough since you turned ten: 'I can't wait till I turn eighteen and get out from under you-all's roof so I can do as I please.' Remember that one, sweetheart? That's a promise you will keep."
"Whatever," Sarah said. "Don't worry, Mother. I'm ex-ing the days off my calendar—like a prisoner serving an eighteen-year sentence."
"Maybe we could even arrange an early parole," Mom said. She seemed to be enjoying this even a little more than usual. "There is the Braxton School."
With that, Sarah opened the door a little wider, just so she could slam it a little harder, and went back inside.
Stephen's mother said, as if to herself: "When I was her age, it wasn't—" She did her best southern-fried spoilt teenage girl: "Whut-ay-fur! It was whoop de do. Back in the day a well-timed whoop de do could get you sent to your room. If it wasn't so well-timed, it would keep you there three weeks and get you an appointment with a hickory switch."
She let the birdfeeder be, finally, and turned to look at the lake, its surface stippled by a gentle breeze. "Honest to Pete," she said, exhaling, "I don't know where it's all going to end."
Thinking she was talking about Sarah, Stephen stood up, said, "She's a softy inside, Mama. She doesn't mean any harm."
She looked at him as if he had grown a third eye. "Oh, her," she said. She waved her hand. "Of course she doesn't. Sarah's just a kid."
* * *
A half hour later, Stephen was in the front passenger seat of their Toyota minivan. He reached over and pressed the horn for a full five seconds, growling, "Come on, Sarah."
"That's enough, Stephen," his mother said.
"Not really," he grumbled. "The first three didn't seem to work." He was going to be late—again, thanks to Sarah, who was shambling around in the house like the zombie of the morning she was. He was supposed to report to his Field Day post at 8:00 A.M. sharp to help Reggie and Mr. Greene get the field set up. "Sarah!" It was a four-honk morning. She'd always get in the backseat (the shotgun ride was first come first served) and say, "My hair wouldn't do right," or something like that. And this morning when she did, Stephen thought: The jig is up, Sis. Teach you and your nic-fit to make me late for duty. Now he had never actually seen her smoking a cigarette but he had smelled her smoking many times—the fumes wafting up from the deck through his window screen. He knew her game: She waited for them to get settled in the car out in the driveway before she slipped out onto the deck and burned one.
So when she finally got in the car reeking to high heaven of Double Bubble and whatever stinky cheap perfume Charlie Moss gave her on her birthday he said: "Nice scent, Sarah-eau de Marlboro?"
By then his mother was too busy trying to back the car out of the driveway without running afoul of the English ivy on the right or the split rail fence on the left to pay much attention. Anyway, the important thing was that Sarah heard it. Stephen was no snitch. Sarah heard him say it and was forewarned that if he wanted to he could bust her at any time. She whisper—snarled, "Shut up, you!" and kicked the back of his seat.
He mocked her: "Whut-ay-fur." It wasn't as good as his Mom's but it hit its mark: she kicked the seat again, said: "It's not my fault I had to get dragged up in the middle of the stinkin' night so you could … do your whoop de duty to do your best—"
"Ah, the whoop de do," their mother said. "Music to my ears."
"To do my best to do my duty," he corrected, and their mom, having finally gotten the car out of the driveway and her horn-rim sunglasses on, said: "To God and my country…" finishing the Scout promise. "Or at least for your poor old mother," she added.
"Whatever," Sarah said.
By the time his mom dropped him off in the lower parking lot beside the playground it was 8:15 A.M. Reggie was already there "dressed to the eights," as he put it, in reference to the fact that the green of his scout trousers was a shade or two lighter than Stephen's because he got them, along with the rest of his uniform, not from the Scout Store but from a hand-me-down shop. They looked fine, pressed nice and sharp all the same. Stephen had even tried doubling up on washing his own pants to hasten the fading process so they would match Reggie's. So far, after three months of doing so, it hadn't really worked. Reggie was helping Mr. Greene string the large Welcome to Field Day banner that Ms. Allen's art class had painted across the backstop of the tee-ball field.
Without turning around, Reggie, pretending not to know Stephen was within earshot, raised his voice just enough to make sure Stephen would hear it: "Eight o'clock sho ain't what it used to be, Mist' Greene. Nine o'clock: It's the new eight o'clock, I reckon."
"I reckon it is," Mr. Greene said, playing along. He winked at Stephen, said, "Morning, Stephen." He cleared his throat as if Reggie hadn't heard Stephen coming.
"Who you calling Stephen?" Reggie said. Then he craned his neck around and looked at Stephen straight on, flinched as though startled, as if he'd been ambushed unaware: "Oh, Stephen my man. I didn't see you creeping up here sly as a black cat on the tail of a fleet-foot mouse. Mm-hm. What brings you out on such a fine blue morning?" When he talked straight—minus all the jive—his voice sounded just like his father's voice: Reverend Duckett had a deep voice that made good preaching. Reggie jumped down from the top of his step stool.
"Cut the crud, Reg'," Stephen said. "I know you saw us pull up." They did their brother-from-another-mother handshake, finishing with a flourish, index fingers pointing at each other's heart.
Mr. Greene said, "Take this here side a minute, Stephen, so I can see if we're straight enough. I don't trust this old fence is plumb."
Stephen took the end of the banner and climbed up on the step ladder and raised it up level with Reggie's end, which was already attached. He turned to Mr. Greene, who was all round and white as biscuit dough and moist, too, where the sweat clotted on the crown of his bald head. "Sorry I'm late."
"Won't your fault," Reggie said. "Never is, couldn't a been. Had to be Sister Sarah's or her friend R.J. Reynoldses' or somebody else's." The way Reggie pronounced her name—say ruh—and ah-jay Rinnold Ziz—was just like his father, too, especially when his father, the Reverend Lucius Duckett, was standing behind the ambo of the Promise Land Christian Church of the Lord Jesus with his silk robe on relaying a message; he didn't preach sermons and he didn't deliver them, he said: he relayed them. And once he told Reggie that if he didn't know the difference between the two he didn't know nothing—nothing a tall about the way of the Lord with His people.
Stephen said, "Maybe so."
"Am I lying?" Reggie said, adjusting the slide on his neckerchief.
"Nah, you had it about right."
"Down just a hair," Mr. Greene instructed Stephen, whose arms were getting heavy holding the two-by-eight-foot banner above his head. "Another half a hair… Quarter hair back up…up. Good. Good. Tie her off there."
Reggie lowered his voice and said, "They don't have you teaching Math to those little chil'en, do they, Mr. Greene?" One eyebrow was lifted in concern.
"We do some basic math, arithmetic, sure," Mr. Greene said to set the record straight.
Stephen pulled the twine through the chain links of the fence and tied it in a slip knot and cinched it tight as if to hang the banner by the neck until it was dead. He just shook his head, thinking: He got you too, Mr. Greene.
Reggie continued: "I mean, instead of inches and centimeters, you teach those little kids how to count in hairs and half-hairs and quarter-hairs—I see now where all your hair went to… What else, fingernails, teeth?"
"Well, no," Mr. Greene said. "It's a figure of speech."
"It's not your speech I'm worried about; it's your figures. I bet you pretty good at Language Arts. Your figures though have got me right concerned with the state of education at my armada." Reggie scratched his head.
"Alma mater," Stephen said.
"Got my boy Stephen here skeered too, sounds like. Some little child being left behind."
Mr. Greene rolled his eyes. "You're in rare form today, Reggie, even for you. Rare form."
The thing about Reggie Duckett was, he was twelve going on about sixteen. And so Stephen had to stay sharp just to keep up with him.
Reggie said, "I just woke up feeling right. Righteously right. You ever wake up just feeling…right?"
"Never," Mr. Greene said.
"Nah," Stephen said. "I always go to bed feeling right and wake up feeling wrong. All wrong. But, this morning was okay. I was even singing this morning."
"Spare us that," Reggie said, cringing. "Anyway, don't mind me, Mr. G. I don't mean anything by it, see. I'm just messing with y'all this morning. Good thing Daddy's not here to hear me carrying on like so or he'd probably snatch me bald-headed." His voice trailed off as his eyes scanned over the crown of Mr. Greene's head, all white and moist as sweating dough, and though Reggie's skin was as brown as dark cocoa, Stephen knew he was blushing, to the very deep burgundy of the twill on their Scout caps.
Reggie said, "It was just a figure of speech, Mr. G. No offense."
"None taken," Mr. Greene told him. "Of all the things that can happen to a fellow in this vale of tears, going bald is not so bad. I kind of think it gives a head character."
Reggie cut his eyes around at Stephen, and his teeth bared and his head bobbed as if to signal here it comes, and Stephen made a Yikes face meant to tell Reggie to just let it be. He knew Reggie so well that his next words couldn't have been anything other than: "Character, all right. Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig. That's all, Folks!"
Mr. Greene laughed and Reggie let it be then, said: "It suits you real good, Mr. G. Real good. Gives your big old head a lot of character."
They got back to work and in another half an hour, at 9:00 A.M., the playground was decorated for Field Day. Stephen and Reggie had blown up balloons by the lungful—dozens of them, all colors, shapes, and sizes—for the balloon shaving event, and filled up another two bags' worth with water for the water balloon toss and set up the dunking booth to within half a hair of Mr. Greene's liking. The cones and ribbons for the fifty-yard dash were set out, and all was bright-colored and very still, like a piñata before the party.
Mr. Greene went inside the school and came back a few minutes later with two canned Cokes and two Moon Pies and said, "Good work, men. A little snack to refresh you. Sorry they didn't have RC Cola."
Then Mr. Greene left to tend to his fourth-grade class, and Stephen sat on the parallel bars, Reggie in a swing, raking his sneakers through the fine grit gravel. The sun was beginning to bear down now and they drank their Cokes.
"Ask me, RC Cola ain't nothing but flat Pepsi; nothing quenches thirst like a Co-cola cold in the can," Reggie said between gulps. "In the can, not a bottle. Mama used to call it Baptist Redneck Ripple. Till such time, that is, as she got cracked up and paranoid and then she would say, 'They call it Co-cola 'cause it's part of a white man conspiracy. Co-cola, Co-caine, Co-casian, see. Coke-asian.' Even Elder Looby backed off a that one, said it sounded more like it might a been a Chinaman's conspiracy, if anything, said he didn't think that was why it was called Co-cola."
Stephen wondered, but didn't ask, whether Reggie expected he'd ever see his mom—whom Reggie called Berry—again. The last time he asked Reggie about his mother, Reggie got really quiet and didn't seem to be himself around Stephen for a couple three days. It was a sore spot, Stephen's mom told him, and you know how it always hurts more when somebody else fools with your splinter than when you do it yourself. Reggie's mom had been gone one year and two months. She left in the wee hours of morning, long before the sun came up, on Reggie's eleventh birthday. Nobody knew for sure where on earth she had gone, but Reggie's dad said he had a pretty good idea: She went back to the life she had left behind, and we had best, he said, leave it at that; leave it at that, and pray the Lord's mercy on her. If anybody needed it, Stephen figured, she did—leaving her son on the morning of his eleventh birthday (Surprise!) and leaving his dad a poor black preacher even poorer with two kids to do for and one of them a girl, Beyleigh, who was five at the time.
Stephen could see the green scout sock on the bottom of Reggie's foot where the sole of his sneaker had come loose from the shoe. He looked away, quick, so Reggie wouldn't catch him eyeing it. Too late.
"I know it," Reggie said. "These shoes ragged out something awful." Then he rolled his eyes. "Why you suspect I kin run so fast? Worst thing you can do when you got rocks in the socks is stop and stand still a while. Got to keep on getting it. The more time you're in the air, the less time you're on the ground. And the ground is where all the sharp things are. Ask me, I think you need to take a Swiss army knife to those shiny white Nike sneaks you wearing and see if it won't give you a lift. I call it the shoe-flap lift, the latest in aerodynamic footwear."
"Ah, you'd still beat the pants off me, Reg', no matter what shoes I'm wearing."
"Keep your pants on," Reggie told him. Then he shook his head. "Nah. These shoes about shot." Reggie flapped the rubber sole, then made it smile like a big black-and-white mouth, wiggled his toes like faded green teeth. "They was a blue-light-special off-brand anyway when they was new. You got Nikes; I got Yikeys. Put 'em on, you'll say Yikes every step you take." Reggie crossed his right foot over his knee and inspected his shoe. "Daddy said last night that for all the rolls of duck tape we've used to bind them up we could have bought three new pairs. He said maybe this weekend we'll see about getting me a new pair of sneaks. Hate to tell him my cleats fell apart, too, after I wore them into Creek Bagwell week before last when you dragged me out fishing."
"I told you to take them off before you got in, Reg', but you said your feet were too tender."
"Your'n would be, too, if you went about with holey shoes like this."
"No doubt." Stephen washed the last bite of his Moon Pie down with a swig of Coke and performed the ritual can-stomping. He looked at Reggie, said. "Hey, man, you sick or something?"
"Sick and tired? Boy, you know it."
"No, I mean, sick-sick." Stephen nodded toward the unopened Moon Pie balanced on Reggie's thigh. "I can't say when was the last time I saw you pass up a Moon Pie or any junk food for that matter."
"Ah, I'm watching my intake."
"Your intake?" Stephen said. "What?"
"Intake of sugar," Reggie told him. "Sugar's a poison, you know. Sure as strychnine laced with cyanide."
"Poison? Sugar? You must have found that out sometime after lunch yesterday when you traded me a milk for a creamsicle and washed it down with your fudgesicle and a carton of chocolate milk."
Reggie said, "Sugar diabetes runs in the family, see. Both sides. You've seen Berry's mama, Grammy Joycelyn; she's stacked up four-by-heavy, so there's bound to be the sugar in there somewhere. And then Berry's papa, Grampy Josephus, he died of the sugar straight-up a good many years after size forty-eight shorts started fittin' him right snug. You ever seen that thing in the Star Wars called Jabba the Hutt? Well, then, you got a pretty good picture of Grampy Joe near the end. Daddy's mama and daddy had the sugar diabetes. Granny's come down with dementia and old Pop Duckett couldn't see two feet in front of his old face. Know'm sayin?"
"First I've heard of all that."
"Might be the last of it, too," Reggie said. "But I think I'll just hold on to this here Moon Pie a while, give it to Beyleigh. She loves them more than I do anyway."
Stephen started to say, "What about her getting the sugar diabetes that runs in the family?" But he knew that diabetes had nothing to do with Reggie and the Moon Pie. It was all about his little sister, Beyleigh. Treats had been rare since their mother up and took off.
"If I'd known that," Stephen said, "I'd have split mine with you."
"I'm good," Reggie said. "All that was true about Granny and Pop, though, and Daddy's keeping a eye on his own sugar. He only took one slice a Miz Mozell's custard pie the other night when they had us out to the house for dinner."
"Funny," Stephen said, "how something so good could be so bad for you."
"Most things is," Reggie said, "if'n you get carried away."
* * *
After spending all morning on his knees tying the left leg of one kid to the right leg of another inside a scratchy burlap sack, Stephen was burnt out with the three-legged race. So at lunch he bribed Reggie with a creamsicle into swapping events. After Reggie had driven as hard a bargain as he could, saying he might need a chocolate milk and a pack of Juicy Fruit, too, to make it worth his while to miss all the excitement of the fifty-yard dash, he admitted that he was so tired of watching kids do the fifty-yard rash that he would have swapped events for nothing—and might have even given Stephen his chocolate milk in the bargain. They ended up splitting the creamsicle—each would only get half the sugar poison.
Before they went to their new posts, Reggie said, "I don't expect you'll have to, but the only thing you got to do is see to it that Beyleigh Duckett wins her heat, even if you have to trip somebody or rough somebody up to get it done."
Stephen rolled his eyes. "Puh! I don't think she'll need any of my help. I wouldn't take the Road Runner and against that girl if you spotted me a five-second headstart."
They did their elaborate handshake, a ritual based in part on paper-scissors-rock, then parted, Stephen to the fifty-yard dash at the far end of the playground, Reggie to the three-legged race by the monkey bars. They dash was held on the stretch of grass at the far end of the playground by the fence, in the shade of a thick stand of longleaf pines that mark the border of the national forest that bounded Crumpton on the north end. It was cool down there by the woods, the pine shadows just long enough to span the two-lane track, and the smell of pine tar was sharp and spicy as black licorice. Stephen decided right quick that the swap was worth the half a creamsicle and the chocolate milk it cost him—compared to the itchy-scratchy burlap sacks and ticklish sweaty legs and the knots and craters on his knees from kneeling on the gravel all morning.
He was still thinking it was a good deal until 6.882 seconds into the final heat of the day, which was when his thumb instinctively mashed the Stop button on his stopwatch. It was a few minutes after 2:00 p.m. The buses had already started pulling up to the front of the school with the pshhhhsssss of exhaust and the whistling of brakes. That final fifty-yard dash had Beyleigh Duckett on the outside lane nearest the woods pitted against Cindy Mullins' little sister Carrie on the inside lane by the water cooler and the table with all the ribbons and first aid gear. The winner took the 1st place blue ribbon.
Mr. Greene had given Stephen and Reggie the Impartial Marshal spiel: It was inappropriate for field marshals to take a rooting interest in the outcome of any event, meaning he said "not rooting aloud," meaning they could hoot, holler, tumble, and cheer to their hearts' content so long as no bystander (meaning Mr. Saunders, the Principal, or his secretary and informant, Mrs. Beasley) caught wind of it. Stephen was going to follow the rules, of course, on his scout's honor; but inside he would be pulling, if not screaming bloody murder, for Beyleigh to beat Carrie Mullins. It wasn't only that Beyleigh was his best friend's little sister—and the coolest girl in the whole universe—but that she was running against his worst enemy's little sister. That's what he told Reggie later, but Cindy Mullins was not really his worst enemy: Was she stuck up? Yes. Did she have reason to be? Yes. Was she mean as the devil? Almost. Had she called him Dudley Dorko in front of their whole sixth grade class? Yes, but only after Reggie got cute and passed her a Valentine's Day card with a bunch of pink-and-red hearts signed—forged—"Your Secret Admirer Stephen W." The erasure marks and strikeouts were a nice touch.
So Stephen would have rooted for Beyleigh Duckett even if he had known then (what he found out later) that Cindy Mullins didn't even like—yea, despised—her kid sister (the poor little girl).
Miss Edwards, the speech teacher, called out the start: "On your mark… Get set… Go!" and their four little feet were thumping on the well-tramped grass. By the time they reached the ten-yard mark, Beyleigh had pulled ahead by three paces; at the twenty-yard mark, her lead was five paces. And she continued to stretch her lead and was a full five yards ahead of Carrie Mullins when, at the forty-five-yard mark, she went down, in a sinking slow motion, first to her knees then folding down, down, face-plant down, and lay still under the wind like a pebble at the bottom of a pond. At first, thinking she had merely lost her footing, and not caring whether Mr. Saunders and Mrs. Beasley heard him or not, Stephen broke his silence, shouted: "Go, Beyleigh!" and that's when his thumb mashed the button on the stopwatch at the 6.882 mark. He expected her to rear up onto her knees and lunge-crawl forward, arms groping out, pawing for the ribbon.
But she just lay there face-down on the ragged broken grass, still as a sunken pebble, not bothering to roll over and hold a turned ankle or grab at a sprained knee or pulled hamstring, and Carrie Mullins stumbled across the finish line backwards, having turned to see what was the matter. Stephen shouted something—maybe Help! or merely Ah!—and sprinted over to where Beyleigh lay and knelt down, hooked his arms under her chest and thighs and gently (but frantically, praying, Please Jesus, please Jesus, pretty please Jesus) turned her over. Then Miss Edwards, the starter, was there, and Mr. Greene, who had been at the table by the water cooler putting away the unused red, blue, and yellow ribbons, rushed over with a blue ribbon in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
"Sit her up," Miss Edwards said, but Stephen, putting his first responder training to use, saw the bluish tinge of her lips and said, "No, bend her knees and put her feet up in your lap." Get the blood flowing to heart and brain. Beyleigh's eyes were half-closed, and unseeing, and Stephen whispered: "You're going to be okay, Beyleigh, just hang in there." Please, please Jesus. Pretty please Jesus.
He went through the first-response ABCs their scout troop learned in first aid back in January. Airway? Her mouth was drawn open, but he parted her teeth to make sure there was no obvious obstruction, a wad of chewing gum or piece of hard candy. Unlikely, but it would explain how she could have been running full-bore one minute and be facedown in the grass the next.
Breathing? Stephen watched her chest for the tell-tale rise and fall of respiration, placed the back of his hand an inch from her mouth and nose, and felt nothing. No breathing.
Circulation? No pulse in wrist or neck.
Stephen launched into the CPR routine, remembering how they had all joked that it was too late for the dummy victim in the First Aid class all cold, hard, and white. Going through the motions, feeling Beyleigh's little neck clammy and cool beneath the faded-pink collar of her Care Bear shirt embroidered with the cheery phrase "Share a smile" beneath a purple bear and two pink hearts. He titled her head backward, pointed her chin up. The seconds passed like hours, impossibly long, and despite trying to stay true to his training and remain calm, Stephen's voice was shrill and it was all hammer and tongs in his chest: "Call 911 now!"
Mr. Greene raised his index finger to his mouth, nodded, lipped: "OK." He was a step ahead. Stephen heard him say, in a voice dry and cracked as burnt biscuit dough: "No, she's not breathing…. Yes, we're starting CPR. Hurry, please."
Miss Edwards had pulled off Beyleigh's pink-and-white light-up sneakers with little hearts on the outer sole, which Stephen recalled had blinked bright red on each step when they were new at the beginning of the previous school year. He propped her socked feet on a box of blue ribbons. Miss Edwards was opposite Stephen, breathing into Beyleigh's mouth, then letting Stephen do the pumping, while she held Beyleigh's hand, saying, "Hold on, Beyleigh, hold on, baby: breathe, breathe, breathe."
Stephen was starting his fifth cycle of thirty pumps, pressing down harder, feeling he would surely kill her, bearing down with such force, knowing if he didn't get the blood out of her heart and flowing to her brain it was all over. So he pumped and pumped, panting, arms numb, drops of sweat from his face raining down in red circles on Beyleigh's pink shirt, the red tail of his neckerchief swaying above her face like a lifeline she just couldn't lay ahold of: "…seven-eight-nine-ten…."
And then Reggie was there, too, saying, "Lord Jesus, please, don't take my sister away from me." He laid his fingers on Beyleigh's forehead, "Don't take my mama and my sister both away from me, Lord. Lord, stop. Don't do it, Lord Jesus, please. I'll do anything you want. I won't never be bad ever again. Just please, Lord Jesus, no, 'cause then I won't have no Daddy either, since Mama lit out and quit us: it'd kill him dead for sure. Please…."
Crying and crying, who had cried only once before in his twelve years on earth—late on the evening of that day, his birthday, when it was clear his mother was gone for (of all words) good, and he cried and cried long into that birthday night. Long after Stephen had gone home and was in his own room crying and throwing things around, not because he loved Reggie's mother but in equal parts because he loved Reggie and hated his mother, even to the point that he wished she were in hell—not a lonely little hell outside the Principal's office merely separated from God but burning in a lake of fiery brimstone till the very skin melted off her bones and kept right on burning world without end—amen. When he said as much to his mom and dad who were in his room trying to console him that night Reggie's mother left, his mother said, "Stephen, that's not nice," and he said, "Good," and his father said, "You've learned a lesson about the law, son, that will make the lesson you will one day learn about grace all the more amazing." And Stephen sat there thinking: I'd splash the fuel and light the match.
And now it was that same stubborn seed borne of love and loyalty and even righteous indignation that kept him at his task—not letting Beyleigh Duckett die on his watch or anybody else's. Kept him moving his arms, dead numb, as nimbly as if they were weightless.
Then Mrs. Beasley was on the ground beside Reggie, playing the mother, hugging him close, patting his back, saying: "Oh, honey; there now, honey. It's gonna be all right."
Stephen could here sirens crying in the distance, then getting closer, horns honking, engines rumbling, and when Mr. Greene, who was still on the line with the 911 operator, said, "Yes, I think she's breathing," Stephen had to stop pumping and see for himself. The rise of her chest was slight, ever so slight, but if it had been a magnitude five earthquake it wouldn't have gotten a bigger reaction from those circled around Beyleigh Duckett—or shaken up Stephen Wyatt any more than the events of the previous ten minutes. The paramedics were on the scene presently, and when Stephen tried to stand up to make room for them he found he didn't have it in him, so he slumped down, feeling numb all over, and started sobbing as he had never sobbed in his whole twelve years, and he was still at it when his mother picked up him half an hour later in Principal Saunders' office, and he, a real man's boy, didn't care, not one bit, what anybody on earth thought about it just then.