Dawn (Cutler 1)

Everything in me broke loose. I cried harder than I had ever cried. My body shook and my chest ached. Daddy took Momma's hand into his and held it and simply stared down at her. Her face looked so peaceful. No more coughing, no more struggle. When I looked at her more closely, I thought I saw a slight smile on her lips. Daddy saw it, too, and turned to me.

"She must've heard you singing, Dawn. Just before she passed on, she must've heard."

I looked at Jimmy. He was crying now, but he stood so still, his firmly fixed on Momma. His tears ran down his cheeks freely and dripped off his chin. A part of him was fighting the show of emotion and a part of him was just letting go. The struggle dazed him. Then he wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and turned away. He started for the door.

"Jimmy!" I cried. "Where are you going?" He didn't answer. He just kept walking.

"Let him be," Daddy said. "He's like my side of the family. He's got to be alone when he hurts real bad." He looked back at Momma. "Good-bye, Sally Jean. I'm sorry I wasn't more of a husband for you; sorry the dreams we started with never took shape. Maybe now you'll realize some of them." He leaned down and kissed Momma for the last time. Then he turned, put his hand around my shoulder, and started out. I wasn't sure whether he was leaning on me for support or I was leaning on him.

When we left the hospital, we looked for Jimmy, but he was nowhere in sight.

"He ain't here," Daddy said. "We might as well go home, Dawn."

Poor Jimmy, I thought. Where could he be? It wasn't right for him to be all alone now, I thought. No matter how strong the Longchamps were when it came to hard times, everyone needed comfort and love when he or she was cast so deeply into the pool of tragedy as we were. I was sure he was feeling the same deep pain I was, feeling as if his heart had been ripped out, as if he were made hollow and so weak and light, a gust of wind could wipe him away. He probably didn't care anymore, didn't care what happened to him or where he would go.

Despite his hard shell, Jimmy had always suffered something terrible whenever Momma was unhappy or sick. I knew that many times he ran off just so he wouldn't have to see her unhappy or exhausted. Perhaps he had become real acquainted with loneliness and solitude and had retreated to some dark spot to cry with his shadow. The thing was I needed him as much as I hoped he needed me.

After we had stepped out of the hospital, I noticed that all the stars were gone. Clouds had come rolling in and swept away the brightness and the light. The world was dismal, dark, somber, and unfriendly.

Daddy embraced me and we went on to the car. I rested my head against his shoulder and lay there with my eyes closed all the way home. We didn't say anything to each other until we drove down our street.

"It's Jimmy," he said as we pulled up in front of the apartment building. I sat up quickly. Jimmy was sitting on the stoop. He saw us, but he didn't get up. I got out of the car slowly and approached him.

"How did you get home, Jimmy?" I asked.

"I ran all the way," he said, looking up at me. The small light at the doorway threw enough illumination over him for me to see the redness in his face. His chest was still heaving. I could imagine just what it had been like for him running all those miles, pounding the pavement to drive away the blackbird of sorrow that had made a nest in his heart.

"We made all the arrangements, son," Daddy said. "You might as well come inside now. There ain't nothing else we can do."

"Please come inside, Jimmy," I pleaded. Daddy went to the door. Jimmy looked up at me, and then he stood up and we went into the apartment house.

Thankfully, Fern was fast asleep. Mrs. Jackson was very sympathetic and offered to come in early in the morning to help with Fern, but I told her I could do it all. I needed and wanted to keep myself busy.

After she left, the three of us stood there silently, almost as if none of us knew what to do next. Daddy went to his bedroom door, and then he broke into heavy sobbing. Jimmy looked at me and we both embraced him. We held each other tightly and cried until we were all too exhausted to stand. Never before had the three of us welcomed sleep as much.

Of course, we couldn't afford a fancy funeral. Momma was buried in a cemetery just outside of Richmond.

Some of the people Daddy worked with at the school attended, as well as Mrs. Jackson. Mr. Moore came and told me that the best thing I could do for my mother's memory was continue with my music. Philip brought Louise.

I had no idea what we would do now. The school gave Daddy a week off with pay. Daddy went over his accounts and said with a little tightening here and there we could afford to give Mrs. Jackson something to watch Fern while Jimmy and I were at school, just so we could finish off the year, but Jimmy, more than ever, didn't want to return to Emerson Peabody. We didn't have many more days to go to complete the semester. I begged Jimmy to reconsider and at least finish up, and I think he might have relented and done it, too, if we hadn't woke up one morning a few days later to a loud knocking on our door. There was something in the way the knocking echoed through our apartment that sent chills up and down my spine and made my heart pound.

It was a knocking that would change our lives forever and forever, a knocking at the door that I would hear in a thousand dreams to come, a knocking that would always wake me, no matter how deeply I slept or how comfortable I was.

I was just getting up and had put my robe on to go out to the kitchen and make breakfast. Little Fern was stirring in her crib. Although she was too young to understand the nature of the tragedy that had befallen us, she sensed some of it in our voices, in the way we moved about, and in the expression in our faces. She didn't cry as much or want to play as much, and whenever she looked for Momma and didn't find her, she would turn toward me and look at me with sad, inquisitive eyes. It made my heart sick, but I tried not to cry. She had seen enough tears.

The knocking at the door frightened her, and she pulled herself up in her crib and began to cry. I hoisted her up and into my arms.

"There, there, Fern," I cooed softly. "It's all right." I could hear Momma saying the same words to her time and time again. I squeezed Fern tightly to me and started out, just as Daddy came to his doorway. Jimmy sat up in the pull-out. We all looked at one another and then at the door.

"Who can that be this early?" Daddy muttered and ran his hand through his messed hair. He scrubbed his face with his dry palms to wake himself a bit more and then started across the living room to the doorway. I stood back beside Jimmy and waited. Fern stopped crying and turned toward the door, too.

Daddy opened the door, and we saw three men—two policemen and a man I recognized as the security guard at the hospital.

"Ormand Longchamp?" the taller of the two policemen said.

"Yeah?"

"We have a warrant for your arrest."