“Quiet, lady. Save your strength.”

Abe says, “I didn’t know it was such hard work. I mean I’d heard, but I’d never seen it.”

“No? Man, you are a rookie. Yeah, it wipes them out. Brains have gotten bigger a lot faster than cunts, and that makes it dangerous. You got two healthy people there and they can still both die on you. In fact, step on it, will you?”

When they get to St. Joe’s, and get the woman and her child onto a gurney at the ER entrance, she gets sentimental and starts to cry. “I really appreciate it—I was really scared. I’m sorry I said all those things about you. You aren’t really a spade.”

“Well,” X says, compressing his lips to keep a straight face.

“What’s your names? Abe? Okay. Xavier? Xavier? How do you spell that? Okay. I’m gonna name him William Xavier Abraham Jeffers, I really am. I really am.…”

She’s wheeled away. They wash up in the ER men’s room, then go back to the waiting room.

A doctor comes out in a few minutes and tells them that the woman is fine, the baby is fine, there are no problems. No problems at all.

Back out in the truck. Abe has kind of an unreal feeling. They’re both grinning like fools. “So,” Abe says. “William Xavier Abraham Jeffers, eh?”

“Got any cigars?” X asks.

And they both start to laugh. They laugh, they shake hands, they pound each other on the arm, they laugh. “Could you believe it when the whole neighborhood came in to watch?” “Or when the kid fell off into the trashbins!” “Hey, aren’t we about done for the night? Let’s go get a drink.”

So they go to celebrate at the Boathouse in lower Santa Ana, on Fourth Street. One of X’s regular hangouts. They drink a lot of beer. Abe relaxes, feeling good to be a part of X’s off-work life, to be accepted in this black bar, if only for a little bit, as a friend of X’s. Xavier tells their story to the guys and the whole place howls, immediately sets to retelling the story with a million elaborations. “Why you ain’t no spade after all! Heeee, heee heeee heeeee…”

Abe and Xavier get drunk. Abe watches X’s laughing face, and feels his own grin. He hasn’t seen X this relaxed in … well, whenever. Abe squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold on to the moment, the smell of smoke and sweat, the rowdy voices of X’s friends, the look on X’s face. Hold, time. Stop.

Chapter 31

31

But time, of course, does not stop. And eventually they take the truck back to headquarters, and Xavier goes home.