When Crickets Cry: a Novel of the Heart

Back in the present day, Reese and Charlie, who make extra money by restoring old boats, have been hired by a townsperson named Mike Hammermill to fix up a Greavette. Along with fixing other people’s boats, they have their own pet project: a Hacker-Craft named Podnah. Reese says that the “restoration process is simple, really. That is, the process is simple, not the workmanship. Workmanship is acquired, and Charlie has a good bit more than I do” (105).

Reese and Charlie take the boat out for a test drive. When they dock it for gas, Reese approaches Termite and realizes that Termite is looking at a pornographic magazine. Reese objects and says that the woman Termite is looking at is someone’s daughter. Termite disagrees, accusing Reese of trying to ruin the magazine—and the experience.

Reese flashes back to his and Emma’s senior year of high school, when their activities together were limited by her condition.

We could go to the movies or dinner or shop through one or two stores, but we couldn’t stroll the mall or a park for four or five hours unless we rented a wheelchair, and Emma hated to be seen that way (113).

Her declining health made him even more committed to studying the heart in hopes of saving her. One day, while they sat under a tree, she gave him a necklace with an inscription on it, which will prove essential to his quest to save Annie’s life. 

Back on Lake Burton, Reese picks up Cindy and Annie in Podnah and takes them on a tour of the lake. Although Cindy and Annie live near the lake, their limited financial resources have prevented them from exploring it. To Annie’s excitement, Reese steers the boat anywhere she wants to go. He eventually takes them to his house and introduces them to Charlie. Cindy seems uncomfortable to learn that Charlie is Reese’s brother-in-law until she learns that Reese’s wife has passed on.

Reese contemplates the wonder of the human heart, determining that it must have been designed by God. He calls it an “unselfish organ” because “while it pumps more than a hundred thousand times a day without stopping, funneling hundreds of gallons of fluid around the body, it derives no benefit from the blood it pumps” (124). He thinks about how Emma’s heart had a hole in it and explains that the hole is present in a fetus but typically closes after birth. Emma’s hadn’t; instead, the hole had enlarged. 

Annie has fallen asleep by the time Reese brings her and Cindy home, so he docks the boat and carries Annie inside. He and Cindy have tea, and she cuts her finger while slicing a lemon. He immediately begins treating her cut and puts stitches in it before she realizes what has happened. She questions him about his medical knowledge, but he offers no details about his past.

Before Reese leaves, Cindy asks if he can take them to Atlanta for Annie’s doctor appointment, and he agrees. Once he finds out the doctor’s name—Dr. Royer—he immediately becomes uncomfortable. 

Reese thinks back to his and Emma’s time in college, when her condition stabilized somewhat. He recalls that she didn’t concern herself with graduating, “just took every literature class they offered and painted constantly. Looking back, I think those days were some of her happiest times—times when she breathed in the deepest” (135).

They married during their junior year, and Reese says that “the tenderness and honesty of our wedding night are things I think of often” (135). Reese says that after his undergraduate work, he was accepted into Harvard Medical School. 

Remembering his time at Harvard Medical School, Reese recalls a mentor: the aptly named Dr. Trainer. During this time, Reese decisively chose to fulfill his childhood interest and become a heart surgeon. One time, while assisting Dr. Trainer during a heart bypass, Reese noted that the doctor seemed to have passed out. Reese completed the surgery successfully; later, Dr. Trainer revealed that the act was a trick he’d performed almost 20 times, and Reese was the only student who had finished the surgery alone. 

Reese recalls how Emma used to love to bathe in their “oversized, lion-footed, iron bathtub” (143), which was positioned before a window that overlooked the lake. Sometimes, he joined her in the bathtub, but most times, he watched her while she read. After she died, he kept the bathtub to remind him of those memories.

Reese then takes a bath, recalling “her stepping out of that tub, hair pulled up, water dripping from her earlobes and fingertips and toes” (144). He says he wouldn’t sell that memory for anything in the world.

Reese recalls that medical school taught him just how durable and resilient the human body could be. People could smoke and drink and harm their bodies, but still they went on living. The realization made him hopeful:

“If people can voluntarily cause that much abuse to normal systems, and those same systems still give them 70 or 80 years of life, then I figured people like Emma who involuntarily live with a defective and abnormal system ought to at least get half that amount of time” (145).

Reese remembers how he moved through various stages of school and honed his skills. During his second year in practice, he and Emma bought the lake house next to Charlie. Although Reese hoped that Emma would have a heart transplant soon, he knew that surgery was just the first step in a lifelong process. For the rest of her life, Emma would have to take immunosuppressant drugs to keep her body from rejecting the heart.

During this time, Reese obsessed about ways to make Emma better. Even at night, when she slept in his arms, he stayed awake, fearing that she would pass away. 

On the day of Annie’s appointment in Atlanta, Reese drives Cindy and Annie to the office but stays in the car while they go inside. A security guard asks for his ID. Reese recognizes the guard as Mike Ramirez, who worked as nighttime security guard five years prior. Mike doesn’t recognize Reese, who has a long hair and beard now; Reese has also worn a hat and loose clothing to conceal his identity.

Cindy and Annie return to the car accompanied by Dr. Royer, Reese’s former partner, who looks into the car and sees Reese. Reese drives away and returns Cindy and Annie to their home, but Cindy accidentally leaves Annie’s heart imaging studies in the car. Before dropping off the envelope full of the slides by their door, Reese holds “the scan up to the dome light and [studies] the contours of Annie’s heart” (158).