I Faked My Death, and the Alpha at My Grave Has Lost His Wolf novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four Hundred Miles

Working a hardware counter in Marathon under her grandmother's maiden name, Zora hears the heartbeat in Alpine, calls Babi from the store phone, and drives east to see her own grave.

I went down the bell-tower ladder with the hymnal still in my hand.

By Sunday night I was on a bus that smelled of diesel and popcorn.

By Monday afternoon I was in Marathon, Texas, four hundred miles west of anyone who knew my name.

Marathon is a railroad town on the edge of Big Bend, with one hotel and one cafe.

The sky goes on for sixty miles.

I stood on the platform with my bag and my grandfather's field glasses and counted what I had.

I had four thousand two hundred dollars from a coffee can and my mother's ring.

I had a printed picture of my baby, thirteen weeks of pregnancy and a great deal of nerve.

The hardware and feed store across from the tracks had a hand-lettered sign in the window that said HELP WANTED, MUST LIFT.

The owner was a woman near sixty with a gravel voice.

She looked me up and down and asked if I was running from a man or toward a baby.

"Both," I said.

"Good," she said. "Then you can lift fifty pounds. Start Tuesday."

She rented me the old section house by the tracks for three hundred a month, cash, and never asked my last name.

I told her it was my grandmother's maiden name, which was true.

The section house has two rooms, a woodstove and a window that faces the freight line.

The first night a train went by at three in the morning and I sat up in bed with my hand on my stomach.

I did not feel afraid, though.

I felt at home.

Nobody in Marathon lowers their eyes when somebody else glances at them.

Nobody counts a breath.

Nobody asks me where my husband is.

When someone does, I say he is a man I am not married to anymore.

They nod and ask whether I want the green gloves or the brown.

I like the work.

I like the heavy, plain weight of it, the oats and the baling wire and the fence staples that cost four dollars a pound.

I like that the customers talk to me.

On the Tuesday before Halloween I drove to the clinic in Alpine, thirty miles on a road with nothing on it but antelope.

The nurse put cold jelly on my stomach and moved a small wand around.

For a long moment there was nothing but static.

Then there was a sound, quick and wet and enormously fast.

"There she is," the nurse said. "Or he. That's a good strong heartbeat."

I had known I was pregnant for three weeks, and I had never once cried over it.

I cried then, with the jelly cooling on my skin, and the nurse handed me a tissue without comment.

"Is Dad coming to the next one?" she asked, not unkindly.

"No," I said.

I thought of Anton's hand shaking on the white cloth.

I thought of Frank, buttoning a flap over something that was mine.

Then I dried my face, because that was all of it I was going to think.

I called Babi that afternoon from the phone in the back of the store.

I had told myself I would not.

I told myself I would only listen, and I dialed the kitchen number I have known by heart since I was seven.

She picked up on the second ring.

"Pospisil," she said, which is what she says.

I could not speak.

There was a long quiet on the line, and then my grandmother said, in Czech, very softly, "Zorinka."

I put my fist against my mouth.

"I lit a candle for the wrong girl," Babi said, in English now, brisk.

"I knew at the lid. I knew from the weight. Don't talk. Are you eating?"

"Yes," I said.

"Is it a good place?" she asked.

"It's a good place, Babi."

"Good," she said. "Now listen, I have maybe a minute."

She told me Frank's boys drove past her house twice a day and thought she didn't see.

"So you will not call again," Babi said.

"Is he all right?" I said. I hated that I asked.

"Anton?" Her breath came out thin.

"He sits at your stone every night with a thermos, Zora," she said.

"Frank walks him up there and walks him home. He doesn't eat. He doesn't talk."

My eyes were hot again.

I told myself it was show and I told myself that was a lie.

"Saturday is All Souls," Babi said. "The whole Lodge goes to the cemetery with candles."

"I know."

"They will light one for you," she said. "And for once in your life you cannot be there."

She hung up on me, as she always does.

I stood in the back of the hardware store with the receiver in my hand.

The owner was counting nails in the next aisle and pretending not to hear.

On Friday I paid two thousand eight hundred dollars to her nephew for a white 1998 Ford pickup with a bad muffler.

I put my bag in the cab.

I told myself I wanted to see if anyone would bring bread to my grave.

I wanted to see whether the man who stood at it was in pain or only good at standing.

I pulled onto Highway 90 east at dusk, with the whole sky behind me going red.

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