THEY LET ME sit beside my mother’s hospital bed, my wounded leg bound thick with gauze. She hadn’t returned to consciousness. The doctors weren’t sure she ever would. Dollie was there with me, keeping vigil. The hospital wards were crowded, but because Aunt Julia had money and some influence, we were in a private room.
The Black Witch was well and truly dead, her head smashed like an egg against the patio stone. A fortunate circumstance had saved my mother from the same fate. She’d landed atop Thelma Brickman. In her departure from this world, the Black Witch had done something almost redeeming. She’d cushioned the impact of my mother’s fall. The doctor had called it a small miracle.
I’d been at her bedside for hours when Albert entered the room. Mose and Emmy and Sister Eve were with him. When I saw them, I broke into tears.
“How . . . ?” I tried to ask.
Albert knelt and put a comforting arm around my shoulder. “We finally got John Kelly to spill the beans and came downriver on the Hellor as fast as Tru could make her go.”
From the doorway, I heard, “Lucky the river was high and clear.” Truman Waters poked his head in, and I saw that Cal was with him.
I looked at Sister Eve with some bewilderment. “You found them?”
“They found me. The same way you did. All those posters Sid insists we put up everywhere we go.”
“She took us to Aunt Julia’s house,” Albert explained. “The women there directed us here.” He looked at Aunt Julia, who lay so still it was as if she were already dead. “I was afraid we might be too late.”
“I have so much to tell you,” I said.
A nurse pushed through the gathering and demanded that everyone leave.
Emmy put her hand on mine and said, “But he’s our brother.”
In the end, the nurse shooed Cal and Tru away but allowed the rest to stay.
I shared everything with them. When I told them the truth about my lineage, I watched Albert’s face closely and didn’t see at all the surprise I’d imagined. “You knew we weren’t really brothers?”
“I’ve thought about it from time to time. You just showed up one day. I was only four years old, so what did I know? But now I understand why you drive me crazy sometimes.”
I didn’t laugh.
“Listen, Odie, you’re the biggest part of every memory I have. You are my brother. The hell with everything else. I love you so much it’s nearly killed me sometimes. Until the day I die you will be my brother.”
Mose stepped in and signed, And mine.
Emmy smiled and said, “And mine. We will always be the four Vagabonds.”
THE OTHERS TOOK turns sitting with me while I kept vigil at Mother’s bedside. Once, when it was just Albert and me, I shared with him what Sister Eve and I had discussed about Emmy and her fits.
He looked at me as if I were insane. “You’re saying she kept your bullet from killing Jack? And the snakebite from killing me?”
“Think about it. It required such a small shift of circumstances. A fraction of an inch for the bullet to miss Jack’s heart. A little extra time for you so the antivenom could arrive.”
He mulled that over. “She had one of her fits on the Hellor on the way here. When she came out of it, she said, ‘She’s not dead now.’ I asked her who wasn’t dead, but she just gave me that blank stare, you know the one, like she’s not really there. Then she slept. I had no idea what she meant.”
“A slight twist of Thelma Brickman’s body as she fell, Albert. That’s all it took.” I put my hand on my mother’s hand. Although the current was weak, I still felt the electricity of life coming through. “It gave her a chance at least. And here’s something else. The Black Witch knew about Emmy and her fits. She told me Emmy had one while she was with the Brickmans.”
“Did she tell you what Emmy saw?”
“Not exactly, but I figure it was me and DiMarco at the quarry. When I went over the edge, I landed on that little tongue of rock just below. It wasn’t much but enough to keep me from falling all the way.”
“So, you’re saying Emmy put that rock tongue there?”
“Or just put me in the place that when I fell, it was directly below me. If I’d been to the right or to the left even a little, I would have missed it.”
He thought this over a moment, then said, “If she saw the future, she would have seen the tornado coming. Why didn’t she do something to save her mother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she tried but couldn’t. Maybe the tornado was just too big for her.”
He shook his head. “You know how crazy all this sounds?” I could see his engineer’s brain trying to accept a possibility that no mathematical calculation could ever prove. And, in truth, he never admitted to me that he believed the things I told him about Emmy. But he must have seen desperation on my face that night, because he said, “Whatever happens, Odie, we’ll still have each other. We’ll always be brothers.”
SISTER EVE SAT with me. It had been nearly two days since she’d first come to the hospital. My mother’s condition hadn’t changed.
“I pray,” I told her. “I pray with all my heart. It doesn’t seem to help. Do you think there’s any chance Emmy could have another one of her fits?”
Sister Eve smiled. “She doesn’t really understand this gift she’s been given, Odie. Not yet. She will someday. I would love to help her in that, but it’s up to her.”
“Maybe you could just hit me on the head and I’ll get a gift of some kind, too. One that’ll help my mother.”
She smiled again, gently. “I don’t think it works that way. And you’ve already been given a gift.”
“What gift?”
“You’re a storyteller. You can create the world in any way your heart imagines.”
“That won’t make it true.”
“Maybe the universe is one grand story, and who says that it can’t be changed in the telling?”
I wanted to believe her, and so I imagined this:
My mother finally woke. Her eyes slowly opened, and she turned her head on the pillow. When she saw me, her face lit with a brilliant radiance and she whispered, “Odysseus, Odysseus. My son, my son.”