Evening Street Read online

  Bell had nodded. She tried to recall the songs she’d sung to Carla, her own daughter, all those years ago when Carla was a little girl. The frog song—did she remember enough of the lyrics to sing it to Sunny? Well, the words didn’t really matter. She’d hum the tune and make up words to cover the places where her memory was sketchy.

  Now Lily had come up alongside Bell. “I’m serious,” the nurse said. “I want you to go over there for a while, okay? You’ve been doing too much tonight. You usually don’t stay this long, Bell. You know the drill—you have to pace yourself.”

  Bell patted the hand that Lily had placed on her shoulder. It was the same speech she’d often given to her assistant prosecutors, Hickey Leonard and Rhonda Lovejoy. You had to take care of yourself first, or you’d be of no use to the people you were trying to help.

  “Can you join me?” Bell asked.

  “Sure. Let me tell Angie she’s on her own for a couple of minutes. Meet you over at the rocking chairs.”

  Bell watched Lily move across the room. She was a tall, lean woman in her early fifties who’d let her short hair go gray without a fight. She had the largest hands that Bell had ever seen on a woman, yet they didn’t look odd or excessively masculine; they looked like the efficient instruments they were, as she used them to transfer infants from gurneys to basinets, wrangle mobile X-ray units into place, enter data into an iPad with quick-fingered ease.

  “So,” Lily said, settling into the chair beside Bell. “How’re things over at the courthouse?”

  “About like here. Busy for all the wrong reasons.”

  Lilly smiled. It was a tired, rueful smile, but it was still a smile. “Figures.” She stretched out her arms, and then her legs, holding the stretch before relaxing back against the chair. “Got a call this morning from a TV station over in Charleston. They’re doing another series on the prescription drug problem in Appalachia. They want to send over a reporter to interview me about the clinic and the neonatal addiction issue.” She paused. “Rule still applies, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so.”

  When Bell first began dropping in at the Evening Street clinic, she had sought Lily’s promise that the visits would remain confidential. Not secret—Bell walked through the front door when she came, and if asked, she didn’t lie about where she was going—but well out of the spotlight. She didn’t require compliments for the fact that she sometimes spent her free time rocking drug-addicted babies to sleep. The prosecutor’s post was an elected office, and Bell didn’t want anyone to think she did this as a photo op. The idea was repulsive to her.

  “Frankly, though, I don’t mind the attention,” Lily went on. “After a story like that airs, I’m told, we always get a bunch of new donations. Not that I’m implying,” she said hurriedly, “that you should participate in publicity.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if you were implying it. You’d still get a no. But I’m glad there’s a positive outcome.” Bell changed the subject. “So. Abraham’s mother. Any idea why she named him that?”

  “She did mention it. She’d just given birth here. I pushed her sweaty hair out of her face and she looked down at the child in her arms and she sort of giggled and said, ‘I’ve always wanted a son named Abraham. Dreamed of it, even. It’s so dignified. Makes him sound real important, right from the start.’” Lily shook her head. “I was mighty tempted to say, ‘Really? And just when did you have that particular dream, lady? During the time you were cramming narcotics into your mouth so fast that you almost choked on ’em? Was it then?’ But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything like that. I just said, ‘He’s beautiful.’ Because you know what, Bell? He is. Even with all his problems, he is.”

  Bell let a length of time go by. “Sounds like I need to bring in Child Protective Services to make an evaluation.”

  Lily let a longer length of time go by. “Maybe. I’ll let you know.” The delay in beginning the process that would allow the court to take custody of Abraham from his birth mother and put him into foster care had nothing to do with any optimism that she might suddenly acquire maturity and responsibility, or stop using drugs for good. Instead the hesitation came from the reality—acknowledged out loud by neither Lily nor Bell—that, chances were, it was a moot point. Abraham might not last the night.

  “Okay,” Bell said. She looked around the large room, a room filled with complex, state-of-the-art equipment, but a room that was, at its core, an exceedingly simple place. The sick were tended to. The dying were comforted. “The coffeepot over there looks almost empty,” Bell said. “I’ll start a fresh pot.”

  Lily nodded. She put both hands on the knees of her pale blue scrubs, preparatory to pushing herself up and out of the rocker and returning to work. Before she got that far, however, there was a sudden cloudburst of shouting and then a loud rackety crash. It came from the small front lobby, a place hidden behind the locked security door.

  “What the hell is—?” Lily said, turning to Bell.

  Now an alarm started up. Delbert Ryerson, Bell knew, had a switch rigged to the wall next to his desk.

  “Stay here,” Bell said. She moved quickly toward the door, which was kept unlocked from this side for use as an emergency exit. Part of her knew that she should wait; part of her knew that charging into the lobby without knowing exactly what was happening there was foolish and reckless. But this wasn’t a bank or a courtroom or a high school, where the people at risk might be able to fend for themselves until the authorities arrived on the scene. This was a hospital, and the occupants here were so totally and absolutely vulnerable that she had to rush forward.

  She opened the door. Ryerson, his round face a scary, heart-attack shade of red, was up on his feet. Both pudgy hands were high in the air above his head, exposing the crusty yellow sweat stains under his arms. Ryerson’s posture was almost comical. It resembled a tableau of a robbery in the Old West, just after Jesse James bellows, “Hands up!” and heads for the bank vault. The desk chair, knocked on its back with its little wheels still spinning, looked like an animal begging for its belly to be rubbed.

  In front of the desk stood a heavy-breathing, black-eyed stranger. He had a hard, yellowish, dry face, a thin mouth circled by a gray-white goatee, and a thick trailing mane of frizzy gray hair. He wore a black leather jacket, tight jeans, and dirty black boots. He was as large as Ryerson, but his bulk was muscle, not fat. He appeared to have no weapon, and his stance suggested agitation, not aggression, which made Bell question the security guard’s instant capitulation—as well as the need for the ear-wrecking siren.

  “Shut down that dadburned noise, why doncha,” the stranger said. “I mean you all no harm. Just here to see my boy. Told you that, twice over.”

  “It ain’t visiting hours no more,” Ryerson said. His voice came out in a pinched, panicky squawk. “You can’t go in.” He’d lowered his arms by now. He reached over to the wall and toggled off the alarm, so they wouldn’t have to shout at each other.

  “This’s my only chance,” the man said. “I work over in Swinton Falls. Can’t get away till this time of night.”

  Bell stepped forward. “Your name, sir?”

  “Jess Hinkle.”

  “And you’re unarmed?”

  The stranger carefully spread his long, muscular arms straight out from his sides as if he was ready to perform a jumping jack. “I told your man here that he’s welcome to search me.”

  Bell turned to Ryerson. “And did you?”

  “Well, ma’am, he looked to me like he was here to start a fight, and so I just—”

  “Search him,” Bell said, interrupting. “And if he’s weapon-free, like he says he is, I’ll ask the head nurse if we can make an exception on the visiting hours, in light of his employment schedule.”

  Ryerson did as he was told. Then he stood back and grunted. “He’s okay.”

  “Fine,” Bell said. She looked at the visitor. “I’ll go check with Lily. No promises, though. Do we understand ea
ch other?”

  “Yeah,” Hinkle said. “Oh—and ma’am. Since he set off the alarm, maybe you better call the sheriff. Tell her that there’s nothing going on here. Wouldn’t want her to waste a trip.”

  Before Bell could answer, Ryerson spoke up. “Nobody’s coming. Alarm’s not hooked up to 911 or nothing. It just makes a big ole noise. Supposed to scare folks, is all.”

  Bell winced. That wasn’t the sort of information you wanted visitors to know.

  Her general estimation was now officially confirmed: Ryerson was a fool.

  She addressed Hinkle again. “What’s your child’s name? So I can ask the nurse if he’s up for company.”

  The man blinked and smiled. One of his front teeth was broken off just beyond the gum line. The other was gray. This was a hard man, and the smile didn’t make him look any softer.

  “Abraham,” he said. He said it proudly.

  * * *

  Despite the drama of his arrival, Hinkle’s visit was quiet, calm, and short.

  As soon as Lily checked the admission records, and made sure that Abraham’s father was indeed listed as Jess Hinkle, and then placed another phone call to double-check the information, she let him come in.

  “Unfortunately,” Lily explained, “you can’t hold your son right now.” Bell and Hinkle stood at the threshold of the large room, well away from the small congress of basinets. Angie Clark wasn’t present; she was in one of the back rooms, Bell assumed, running an errand for Lily.

  “I can’t?” Hinkle said.

  “We have to be very careful to guard against infection,” Lily said. “We’re often gowned and gloved ourselves when we touch the babies.”

  “Roger that,” he said. “I’ll just be happy to see him. You know? Just to have a look.”

  Lily nodded. “Sure. I’ll hold him up for you.” She pointed. “He’s right over there. Second basinet from the right.” She walked in that direction. She reached into the basinet and lifted the infant as high as she could without jostling the IV line. It wasn’t very high. The child didn’t cry or move. Nor did he open his eyes.

  Bell watched Hinkle as he watched his son. The man’s eyes seemed to mist over. He pulled his hands in and out of his pockets, and in and out again. He licked his lips. His gaze never strayed from the scanty bundle held securely in the nurse’s big hands.

  Hard to believe, Bell thought, that someone as rough-hewn and hard-used as Jess Hinkle could have been involved in the creation of something as fragile and beautiful as this child. Hard to believe that there could be any connection whatsoever between the large, scarred man and an infant of such exquisite delicacy.

  Only after Lily had tucked Abraham back down in his bed and walked away to check on another child did Hinkle address Bell.

  “That’s my kid,” he said. “That’s Abraham.”

  “Yes.”

  She could sense a pent-up emotion in this man, an energy that seethed in him like the revving engine of a car stranded up on cinder blocks: It had nowhere to go. She noticed the insignia on his jacket and realized that he was in a motorcycle gang; that did not guarantee that he’d done bad things in his life, but she found it disappointing nonetheless. Some bikers simply loved the open road, and craved the crazy ride provided by the mountains of West Virginia, but others—too many of them—sold drugs, and instantly lowered the life expectancy of anyone who got in their way.

  Even after Abraham was placed back in the basinet, and his father couldn’t see him anymore, the man still stood there, breathing heavily.

  “He’s so little,” Hinkle said. His voice was gravelly, but it was also faint, which stripped it of any menace.

  “Low birth weight is pretty common for children who have the kinds of problems that Abraham does,” Bell said. “I’m sure that was explained to you.”

  “Yeah. They said—they said it was the drugs, right? The ones Tina takes. Nothing’s gonna get her to stop.”

  Bell made no reply. She knew it wasn’t a question he needed an answer to. He already had the answer. Hinkle was thinking out loud.

  “That shit,” he said. His voice had risen now, and gotten stronger. “Look what it done to my kid. Look.” He plunged his hands back in the frayed pockets of his jeans. “Told her. Told her it weren’t right, specially once she was having a kid. Other folks tried to tell her, too. She wouldn’t listen.”

  Bell waited. She half expected Hinkle to blow up with rage; he seemed that upset. But it didn’t happen. After a minute or so, his body relaxed. The anger drifted away.

  “They’re taking real good care of him here,” Hinkle said. “I can see that. And I’m real grateful.” He crossed his arms. The leather of his jacket made a creaking sound as he did so. “You never know how you’re going to feel. When you have a kid, I mean. People can try to tell you—but it ain’t the same. Hearing about it ain’t the same as feeling it. As knowing. Then it happens and it’s like—it’s like—” He groped for words. “It’s like there’s a whole new idea about the world, living right there inside you now. And it’s a new world, too. Fresh-made.” He gestured toward the basinet. “All on account of that little guy over there. Changes everything, right? He’s all you think about. Night and day.”

  Bell let him bask for a moment in his love for his son. The agitation in him continued to loosen up and spread out, like a rope being gradually uncoiled.

  “So you and the child’s mother didn’t plan on becoming parents,” she said.

  “Plan? Hell, lady, we barely knew each other’s names.” Instantly Hinkle dropped his head. “Sorry. Sorry. No call for that kinda talk. Specially not here. I got to keep control of myself. Not go flying off no more. I got responsibilities now. See, I’m a lot older’n Tina. She’s nineteen. I’m fifty-four.”

  “Quite a gap.”

  “Yeah. And Tina—she’s wild. Always has been. Still is. But me? I’m ready to start acting my age. Ready to be a dad to my boy over there. Got a good job now—pushing steel over at the Macklin factory. I’m getting rid of my trailer and moving into an apartment. It’s got a washer-dryer right there on the premises.”

  Bell felt the beginnings of worry. Did Hinkle understand just how ill his child was? Did he realize that Abraham might not be coming home at all? She was certain that the doctors had explained to him the severity of the infant’s condition. But sometimes, she knew, a river of words could wash right over you, and you never got wet. Because nobody hears what they don’t want to know.

  “So you and Tina won’t be raising him together,” she said.

  He shook his head. “We ain’t a couple no more, if that’s what you’re asking. Ain’t seen her for a while. She called me when Abraham was born, but that’s about it. I’m gonna go see her in the hospital tomorrow. Tell her what I’m thinkin’. I’m gonna raise him up by myself. My mama’s gonna help. No way Tina can raise up a child. No way. She’s pretty much still a child herself, if you know what I mean.”

  “And that job you have. It’s full-time, right? With benefits.” Bell kept her voice casual, but she was asking as a prosecutor, as a protector, as someone who had responsibility for the welfare of a child in her jurisdiction.

  The truth was, any child born at the Evening Street clinic would instantly qualify for the court’s protection. A scarcity of resources, however, meant that Bell didn’t have that luxury. She had to choose. She had to decide which children had the direst needs. If there was even the slightest chance that a parent or parents might be able to give a child a decent upbringing—then Bell had to let that child stay with the family. She had to save the county’s money wherever she could. She thought of it as a grim kind of infant triage: The worst cases, the children who were likely to be future victims of the most egregious examples of parental neglect, got the county’s full attention. With the others, you sent them home and you hoped for the best. That’s all you could do.

  Hinkle rubbed his chin. Bell could smell the tobacco on his hands. They were yellowy and gnarled; old as he was,
he had the hands and face of a much older man. His habits had aged him. “Yeah,” he said, and Bell heard the pride in his voice. “With benefits.” He grinned, showing her the gray tooth and the broken-off tooth again. “I can take care of my boy, if that’s what you’re asking me. And I intend to.” He coughed, using the back of his hand to cover his mouth. The cough went on a long time. “So what’s the plan here? When’ll they let me have Abraham?”

  “There’s usually no set timetable. They’re doing all they can for your son. They’ll keep you posted on his medical condition.” Bell didn’t traffic in false hope. In the long run, it never helped.

  That seemed to satisfy him. “Okay,” Hinkle said. “Okay, good deal.”

  “I know you work long hours. But next time, you’ll have to come during regular visiting hours, okay? Maybe on your day off. Tonight was an exception. A one-time thing.”

  “Roger that.”

  He was ready to go. At that moment, Angie Clark emerged from the storage room in the back. Her arms were filled with supplies: IV bags, boxes of gauze, lengths of tubing. Spotting Hinkle, she slowed her pace a bit.

  Hinkle hesitated, too. Something passed between the two of them, something silent but palpable.

  “Do you know that nurse?” Bell said.

  “No,” Hinkle said. His answer came quick. Too quick. “Thought I did, but I don’t. Never saw her before.”

  It was the first time tonight that Bell sensed he was lying.

  * * *

  There was something about Abraham.

  Bell usually didn’t come to Evening Street two nights in a row. Her schedule was too busy for that. And she also knew she had to pace herself; she couldn’t be here too often, without a few nights in between to serve as a sort of emotional buffer. Otherwise, the sadness would start to work its way into her bones.

  But here she was, one night later, back to see the tiny boy with the big name.