3

The next week, I stayed away from the bus. It was as if the cologne incident was a trial run meant to get me familiar with the idea of taking messages from the 17. But it had been too easy to dismiss the business with Doomie and Stella as a not unhappy coincidence.

The gun, chambers full, had been all too real.

Whatever game the cosmos was playing here, I wanted no part of it. It was capricious and vague. One shouldn’t risk the life and death of an old lady by putting her salvation in the hands of a random and reluctant guy named James Carter and his ability to read puzzles planted in the graffiti on the back of a bus seat—James Carter, a man with flat feet, a loose crown on a lower left molar, a developing front porch, a hankering for maraschino cherries, very different politics from the other Jimmy Carter, and two holes in his heart.

I’d never run for office, been to the Grand Canyon, or watched the Indy 500 start to finish. I apparently had little effect on the chief indicators of consumer confidence. I could go for two weeks without purchasing so much as a pack of gum, and the Associated Press would report that consumer confidence was at an all-time high. Or I could go on a buying binge of beer, pepperoni sticks, a jar of the aforementioned cherries, two tins of smoked oysters, a small ham, and a large box of powdered donuts and not move the confidence meter a single tick. Next time, I’d splurge on the Copper River salmon. If nothing moved except my taste buds, my government conspiracy theory would be validated.

The holes in my heart were a little more complicated. The first was a small hole in the old pumper the diameter of a pencil. I was told it’s a congenital defect in which there’s an opening between the right and left sides of the heart. Atrial septal defect. That means a portion of my blood is not pumped to the lungs. My defect was small enough that no surgery was required and the hole mostly closed on its own over time. I still get tired sometimes and a little short of breath. One game of bowling instead of two. No mountain climbing. Watch the blood pressure. I never gave it much thought.

God put me here; God will remove me.

The larger hole was more serious. Ruth Anne Hampton was the cutest girl at Tumwater High. She worked part-time after school as a library page. She was a whiz at finding books for people and helping them research this insect or that Alaska congressman. Whenever I went into the library, she dropped everything and made me the center of her world. At least it felt that way. The sparkle in her gray-green eyes, the way she tilted her shapely body in my direction, the merry wind chimes of her laughter, soft, light, never disturbing other patrons. I never heard her laugh that way with anyone else.

I proposed on the bridge over Tumwater Falls. For the longest minute of my life, she “thought it over” before most of her “yes” was delivered in a cascade of kisses that the song says were “sweeter than wine.” I’ve tasted wine, and I have to tell you the sugar content of Ruthie’s kisses was way higher.

We were closing in on our thirtieth wedding anniversary when Ruth Anne got sick. Long story short, it was a rare blood disease, unpreventable, nobody’s fault, here’s your copy of the death certificate, our condolences. “Mercifully, she did not linger, Mr. Carter.”

Mercy had nothing to do with her death, but everything to do with her life. Though we could have none of our own, Ruthie loved children and spent hours at Children’s Hospital holding them, tickling them, and helping me apply clown makeup so that I could wring a chuckle or two out of the misery they were in.

At Elliott Bay Presbyterian Church, Ruthie worked the “toddler pod” with all the finesse and warmth of a singer working the room at MGM Grand. She was the mother orca, the kids loved her, and she doted on them, taking them little treat bags filled with fruit snacks and colorful stickers. Their safest sanctuary was the lap of Mrs. Ruth.

Mine too. Whenever things got too exhausting or political down at Blakely Marine where I warehoused on the swing shift, I’d put my head in Ruthie’s lap and let her stroke my hair and tell me some funny kid story. “One of the little guys in the cancer ward was nauseous and irritable from the cancer meds and got in trouble for cussing in front of the charge nurse. He came to me in tears, breathing in stuttering sobs, and said, ‘I’ll b-behave, M-M-Mrs. Ruthie, I’ll be really h-have!’”

For months after the memorial service, I could hardly look at a book. It was too painful to remember the past, how when we were out of sight of the circulation desk, the beautiful, sweet-smelling little librarian would take me by the hand and lead me right to The National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our World or Sasquatch of the Northwest.

If she was feeling especially bold, and the head librarian was in the restroom, Ruth Anne would reward me with a book and a kiss. The more she got to know me, the longer the kisses would go on and the taller the stack of books I checked out.

I go on record as a one-woman man. God gave me the prize peach at the fair. What remains of that exceptional gift are sun-ripe memories—the lift of her smile, her amused acceptance of my latest foolishness, arms filled with the warm contours of her affections, the wisdom of her counsel, and the inexpressible power of being in love with my best friend.

I begrudge no one a second or third helping should they be so blessed. For me, it all came in the first pass.

In the last day or two, I had spent hours in my apartment waiting for something. At Ruthie’s death, the heart went out of me and I retired on Social Security and a decent pension. That gave me time to volunteer in Ruthie’s honor, and the luxury of staring at the ceiling.

At first, the mental image of that gun to Bea’s head would not leave. We’d spent a tearful time reuniting Bea with Gloria and Carl, until Bea got bored with it. To be on the safe side, we called an ambulance to take Bea to the hospital for physical and psychiatric evaluation. While we waited, Gloria kept patting Bea’s gun hand and clucking about “the wasted years,” while for her part, Bea sprawled in an antique armchair and snored like a deckhand at the end of a double shift. We took the McCutcheons to Pill Hill on the bus and waited with them for the assessment. Except for a couple of manly grunts, all of Carl’s few words were supplied by his wife.

The doctor decided to keep Bea for another day of observation and to get her vital signs stabilized. He found her a room in an assisted-living facility nearby and would have her moved there at the end of the hospital stay. Though she remained sedated, I swear her snores quieted down upon receipt of the news of her own room and bingo every Wednesday.

Greta and I said nothing about the message on the bus or the strange circumstances of our close-call intervention.

We left Gloria going on about how we were the answer to her prayers. The hospital aid society would give the McCutcheons a ride home when they at last gave up the vigil at Bea’s bedside.

The sun, having finally shown itself, was on the descent toward the horizon beyond Elliott Bay. The evening came warm and a little muggy.

I walked with Greta to the front doors of her school and thanked her for missing class. She would stay for evening labs. Her boyfriend would pick her up.

Mostly, I expressed appreciation that when the chips were down, she trusted me just enough to save a life.

“Is that what we did, James Carter?” There were tears in her eyes. “I’m not sure we did that woman any favors. What kind of screwed-up world do we live in when senior citizens have nothing to live for and a nice guy like yourself gets messages from…I don’t know where…the beyond? So help me, I’m not totally convinced I shouldn’t have hit you with both barrels and pepper-sprayed the snot out of you when I had the chance.”

“What stopped you?”

From the troubled look on her face, I knew she was wrestling with truth and doubt, same as me. “I don’t know. It’s all jumbled up inside. Let’s just say you don’t pepper-spray a gentleman with whom you have shared an umbrella.”

We left it at that.

“So is this guy going to marry you or what?” I had no business asking, but when you’ve diverted a suicide together, these questions naturally come up. “He should, you know. He should consider it an honor and a privilege to be married to you.”

Greta smirked. “Oh, my boyfriend, he doesn’t use words like that.”

“He should.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

So here I was. Staring at a blank ceiling for answers. Acting as if God couldn’t find me if He wanted to, as if He were Lord only of the Number 17.

Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of Ruthie. Her photo montage of our cruise to Alaska, riding horses across the goldfields, grinning ear-to-ear over our latest purchase of moose-hair trinkets, peering out a window while in a car of the White Pass & Yukon Railroad at the Trail of ’98, etched into the rocky landscape by the feet of twenty thousand gold seekers.

On a lamp table by the front window was the insulated plastic mug in which she preferred to take her tea because I had bought it for her on the coldest day of the year and, despite a snowed-in car, delivered it to her on foot two miles. Two tea bags, one artificial sweetener, a thimbleful of two-percent milk.

On the coffee table rested her Bible and a well-thumbed copy of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and a murder mystery—Mayhem on the Moors, I think. Next to those sat the last bag of Swedish Fish she purchased for the kids at the hospital. She never made the delivery.

How she loved kids and Swedish Fish.

I put Sammy Saggy Pants, my clown persona, in storage. I tried going back to the kids and could not make it past the sliding-glass doors on the ground floor without breaking down.

On the arm of the couch, where we cuddled on cold Northwest nights, draped her best blouse, purple and fuchsia swirls. Four years it had hung where I slept most nights, drifting off to the TV news or listening to old Elvis records. I could almost bear to again hear “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” one of our shared loves.

“Well, Ruthie, what’s your take on this?” Not the first time I’d voiced that question.

By her silence, I believe she was saying what she often said when alive: “James, let it percolate. While you wait, you can always paint the fence.” We had no fence but there was plenty of life that needed our attention.

Come Tuesday, life would demand every bit of mine.