When Crickets Cry Read Online Free PDF

"It'll probably be the last."
    The short, squatty woman standing next to the tall man smacked him with her pocketbook, and he shoved his hands into his pockets.
    Cindy continued. "Her cardiologist is on his way up here now from Atlanta. Should be here in an hour or so. We'll know more once he's finished with her. After that, we've still got to find a doctor who's good enough and who'll take the risk and operate. We've still got the same hurdles: we need a heart, and not only have we got to find someone who will take Annie, but that Annie will take. Her chances, according to the books, even with the best of doctors, are in the single digits, and ..." Cindy looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice again. "They're not getting any better."
    The room got real quiet. If there had been a consensus of hope, it was gone now.
    Cindy looked her age, maybe thirty-five, and I gathered that her matter-of-factness was a product of both personality and life's lessons. Maybe it was how she dealt with it. She'd been through a few battles, and you could hear it in her voice, see it in her face. Sandy-blonde hair to her shoulders, held up in a simple ponytail by a green rubber band fresh off the newspaper.
    No makeup. Strong back, long lines. Rigid and stern, but also graceful. Cold but quietly beautiful. Complicated and busy, but also in need. More like an onion than a banana. Her eyes looked like the green that sits just beneath the peel of an avocado, and her lips like the red part of the peach that sits up next to the seed. Her plaid shirt, tattered jeans, ponytail, and crossed arms said she was function over form, but I had a feeling that, like any woman in her position, she hid much of her form because her time was consumed with function. She reminded me of Meryl Streep working the rows of coffee plants in Out of Africa.

    Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
    She stepped down off the chair, saying, "Any news, and I'll post it on the store window." She looked at an older gentleman who stood off to one side, listening closely. "That okay with you, Mr. Dillahunt?"
    He nodded and said, "You just call Mabel, and she'll print anything you want."
    As the crowd thinned, Cindy made her way to the Coke machine and started fumbling for coins. She was all thumbs, spilling pennies around her feet and not getting any closer to finding the correct change.
    The voices inside my head were at all-out war with one another. While they fought it out inside me, I dug four quarters from my pocket and held out my palm.
    She turned to face me and looked like she was trying to hold off a cold shiver. She pushed a few strands of hair out of her face (they immediately fell back where they'd been), took the quarters, and punched the button for a Diet Coke. The circles beneath her eyes told me she was tired, so I unscrewed the cap on the plastic bottle and handed it to her. She sipped, looked across the top of the Coke bottle at me, and said, "Thank you, again." She looked at the floor, dug the toe of her shoe into a worn spot in the terrazzo, and then looked at me. "Doc Cohen tells me I owe you an apology."
    I shook my head. "Doctors aren't always right."
    "Sal usually is," she said.
    We stood in silence a minute, not knowing what to say.

    "Annie's got this real good doctor in Atlanta. I just hung up the phone with him, and he said he's anxious to read the information off that strap-looking thing you placed over her heart. He said not many people are walking around with those things."
    "They can come in handy."
    She crossed her arms, held her chin high, and looked out the window. "Sal told me I could've killed her."
    "Reese," I said, offering my hand. "We kind of skipped this step back there in the street."
    "I'm sorry." She wiped her hand on her jeans and extended it toward me. "At one time I actually did have a few manners. Cindy McReedy." She pointed through the double doors.