Novalee nodded.

"Can you tell us anything, Gene?" Forney asked. "Anything at all?"

"I can't, Forney. Just came from the station. They're keeping the lines to Mississippi hot, but nothing yet."

"Well, just thought I'd check."

The clerk, a baby-faced boy wearing a heavy turquoise earring, leaned across the counter and smiled. "Y'all want a cup of coffee?

Fresh pot. And it's on the house."

Novalee shook her head, but Forney said he'd have a cup.

While the boy poured the coffee, Novalee stepped up to the counter. "I was wondering," she said, "if anyone had come in to buy things for a baby. Things like diapers, bottles . . . maybe a pacifier or a teething ring. Stuff like that."

"No one I didn't recognize," the boy said. "I know all the girls here 198 in the neighborhood who's got babies and they're the only ones in tonight for things like that."

"Ma'am," the policeman said. "We been checking since the call came in this evening. Every store in town. Even the clerks who'd already finished their shifts and gone on home. We checked out all the drugstores, too. And the Wal-Mart. But I don't blame you for thinking about it. I'd do the same thing."

Novalee nodded, then headed for the door.

"Forney, how's Mary Elizabeth gettin' along?" the policeman asked.

"She's just about the same, Gene."

"Well, give her my best."

"I will."

"And ma'am? We'll let you know the minute we hear a word."

"Thank you."

When Novalee climbed back in the pickup, she was shivering.

"You want to wait inside while the heater warms up?"

"No. I'm okay."

Forney headed west, and a mile later, when they pa.s.sed Wal-Mart, Novalee craned her neck staring at it.

"What do you see?"

"A car over there."

Forney pulled in and drove across the lot toward the car parked in a dark corner. He slowed as they neared it, a blue Ford, backed up to a retaining wall.

The lights of the Toyota swept across the Ford's windshield as Forney pulled up in front of it and parked.

"Novalee, you stay here. Okay?"

"Okay." Her voice sounded pinched and thin.

199.

Forney got out, approached the car, then began to circle it. He walked to the back, ducked down and disappeared. Novalee opened her door and started to step out. Suddenly, Forney popped back up, went to the far side of the Ford, pressed his face to the window and peered inside.

Moments later, he stepped away, then hurried back to the Toyota and climbed back in.

"Oklahoma tag," he said. "And it's empty. Nothing inside but a couple of boxes."

Novalee made a sound as if all the air had just been sucked out of her.

"It's got a flat, right rear. That's probably why it's out here, someone without a spare."

As Forney pulled away and headed the Toyota back toward the street, Novalee slumped like she'd been hit and let her head fall back against the seat.

Closer to town, they pa.s.sed the Risen Life Church where a life-sized nativity scene was lit by spotlights. Just beyond the church the Kiwanis Club had set up a Christmas tree lot. Novalee couldn't believe that only hours earlier she and Forney had been out looking for a tree. It seemed to her that days, weeks . . . a lifetime had pa.s.sed since then.

Minutes later, Forney turned onto Main Street, absolutely deserted, but bright with Christmas lights. Lamp posts had been transformed into candy canes, and plastic trains trimmed in red garland stretched across the intersections.

"I brought Americus here the other night to see the trains, Forney."

"I'll bet she liked that."

"You won't believe this, but when I said, 'choo choo,' and pointed up there to the engine, she made the sound of a train whistle."

200.

Forney cut his eyes at Novalee and clicked his tongue, a teasing accusation.

"No lie!" she said. "I swear."

"Novalee . . ."

"She did. Like this." Novalee took a deep breath and filled her cheeks with air. But instead of the sound of a whistle, a long mournful wail spilled from her lips.

Forney slammed on the brakes, stopped the Toyota in the middle of the street, then reached for her.

"I'm so afraid," she said, but her voice was torn, ripped by powerful sobs that shook her body.

She slipped her arms around his shoulders, pressed her face into his neck. He cupped her head in one hand, circled her back with the other . . . and they held together and cried.

The vacancy sign was lit at the Wayside Inn, a squat two-story building. They circled the parking lot three times, but the closest they could find to a Ford from Mississippi was a Mazda with Georgia plates.

When they finally parked and went inside, the night clerk, an elderly man asleep on a couch in the lobby, couldn't help them at all.

He hadn't come on until ten, hours after the Mississippi couple had checked out.

"Can't you tell us what they looked like?" Novalee asked.

"I never seen 'em. I been off for over a week, down with the flu.

Tonight's my first night back."

"How about their car? Someone saw it, someone said it was here."

"Well, that was probably Norvell. He's been workin' my shift while I been gone."

"Where is he?"

201.

"Lives over to Sallisaw, I think, but-"

"Is Norvell his last name?"

"Can't rightly say. He hadn't been here but a few weeks."

"But there has to be some way we can-"

"Girl, I sure do wish I could help you, but I just don't know how I can. That's what I told them police. Now they went and found Norvell, so I was told. Maybe he had somethin' to say."

Forney took Novalee's arm and led her outside. "Why don't we go down to the police station? See what this Norvell had to say."

"Sure, that's a good idea," she said, but without enthusiasm.

As Forney pulled back onto Main, they heard a siren in the distance, growing louder as the flashing lights came up fast behind them. Forney slowed and stayed well into the right lane until the police pa.s.sed. Then, at the intersection of Main and Roosevelt, a second police car raced by.

"Wonder what's going on?" Forney asked. "Might have had a wreck out on the interstate."

When a third police car sped around the Toyota, Forney hit the gas and took off behind it.

"Forney?"

"I don't know, Novalee. I don't know. But we're going to find out."

When they topped the hill just west of the Wal-Mart, they could see flashing lights from all three police cars parked on the lawn and in the driveway of the Risen Life Church.

Forney wheeled in and slammed the Toyota to a sudden stop.

"Novalee, I don't know if this has anything to do with Americus, but-"

"Look! Look, Forney!"

202.

But by then, she was out of the truck and running toward the church, running to the nativity scene where the three policemen were converging as they raced past plastic camels and goats, darted between donkeys and sheep, pushed back angels and shoved aside the wooden Joseph and Mary . . . jostled their way into the heart of the stable to bend over the crib, to kneel by the manger, where, from a bed of straw, one tiny fist was flailing at the air.

Halfway across the lawn, Novalee fell, went down on one knee, pulled herself up, then gasping, ran on . . . pushed her way through the policemen . . . and stared down into the face of her baby, crying in the manger.

"Highway Patrol saw the Mississippi plate. Stopped them over over in Adair County, on the Arkansas line. in Adair County, on the Arkansas line.

Americus, her body shuddering with cold and terror, had cried herself tearless. And though her breath convulsed for air, she sobbed almost without sound.

"Admitted they took her. Said they left her here, right here in this manger. this manger.

Novalee scooped Americus into her arms and pressed her to her chest, one heart pounding against another.

"Said G.o.d told 'em to do it. Told 'em to take her to a church . . . church . . .

Americus, warming, curling into familiar flesh, finding comfort in some old knowing of smell and voice, hiccoughed air and snuffled breath . . . testing safety.

203.

"Said G.o.d told 'em to take her to a church and baptize her. And And that's what they did. They baptized this baby!" that's what they did. They baptized this baby!"

Forney stepped over Mary and around a fallen angel, then made his way into the stable and to Novalee's side. He tried to speak, but could find no sound, so, instead, he bent and kissed Americus, tasting straw and tears and lips . . . as she tested happiness again.

Chapter Twenty-One.

W HEN THE GREYHOUND pulled into the station, w.i.l.l.y Jack was the first one out. He grabbed Finny's suitcase and the Martin, then flagged a taxi. His pocket was full of Claire's money and he'd had enough of buses to last a while. HEN THE GREYHOUND pulled into the station, w.i.l.l.y Jack was the first one out. He grabbed Finny's suitcase and the Martin, then flagged a taxi. His pocket was full of Claire's money and he'd had enough of buses to last a while.

w.i.l.l.y Jack didn't realize it then, but Claire Hudson had finally sent her Finny to Nashville, the place she knew he belonged.

The taxi driver delivered w.i.l.l.y Jack to the Plantation Hotel where he picked up a hooker in blue spandex and steered her to his room.

He spent the next three days and nights forgetting about prison, but it took some Wild Turkey and woolly women to get it done.

On the fourth morning, when w.i.l.l.y Jack slipped out the service entrance of the Plantation, he left behind a sleeping wh.o.r.e and a hotel bill of over three hundred dollars, but he took with him a headache, a pain in his gut and a dose of clap he wouldn't know about for another week.

205.

When he checked into a Budget Inn a few hours later, he decided it was time to get his career off the ground. He uncorked a new fifth of Turkey, tuned up the Martin, then ran through several songs he would play at auditions, concentrating on "The Beat of a Heart," the song he had written in prison.

He had studied the videotapes Claire had supplied, concert performances by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, Grand Ole Opry films with Chet Atkins and Roy Clark, and TV clips of Johnny Cash and George Strait. And after Claire bought the Walkman, w.i.l.l.y Jack kept tapes playing even while he went to sleep.

He had spent hours posing in front of a full-length mirror in Claire's office where he practiced his stance, his moves and his bow. He taught himself how to caress a guitar and fondle a mike and he learned when to tilt his head so that his thick dark curls fell forward and covered his eyes.

At the end of a year in prison, he had the stage presence of a pro.

He had won two talent contests and played at the dedication of the new maximum security annex. Several times he got out to perform because Claire pulled some strings. He sang the national anthem at the state football playoffs in Roswell and at the Socorro rodeo. He sang "Amazing Grace" at the warden's father's funeral in Moriarty and played for the Punta de Ague prom. Once he even played in Santa Fe for a prison reform conference chaired by the governor.