Flesh Wounds, page 22
A bevy of dark veterans pass, their mocking calls so keen as to crack the ice on my face. There’s nothing for them here—save the taunting. Their somber wings dip in spurious salute as they wrestle the wind and soar away. I close my eyes to their freedom, flex strands of harnessed muscle, and dream...
Carey Singer was fleeing the latest in a series of bad relationships. She swore, not for the first time, that this would be the last selfish bastard with whom she’d fall helplessly in love. At thirty-eight, wasn’t it about time she realized Mister Right was a fantasy? The specifics of this breakup aren’t important; suffice to say she was driving entirely too fast on a Kansas back road with which she was completely unfamiliar.
Highway 25 was covered in a thin layer of ice, compliments of the sleet that continued to fall, hissing like sand across the roof of her rusted Plymouth Duster. The Duster’s defroster was doing a poor job on the windshield, and she had to keep switching the air to the floorboard so her feet wouldn’t freeze. What with the swirling sleet and snow, the ice coating her windshield, and the tears in her eyes, visibility was poor. Russell Springs had just slipped past in the night—without it’s single blinking yellow traffic light she would have missed it. The road took a sharp turn to the west here, a dangerous curve that Carey might have seen, and slowed down for, if not for the aforementioned conditions and a pickup truck that had gone off the road... taking out the yellow warning sign.
The rear end of the Duster slid to the left. Carey never had learned which way to cut the wheel—was it into or away from the skid? She turned the wheel to the right and suddenly she was in a spin. She felt the tires leave the road and watched, in more amazement than fear, as a winterized oak swept past the passenger side of the car, missing by less than a foot. A snow drift slapped like a wet sponge against her door, slowing the careening auto, but by no means arresting its flight across the snow-shrouded cornfield. Something that might have been a fence, but offered too little resistance to have been functional, crunched under the front bumper. Then, as the car slewed around tail first, her gaze swept across the rearview mirror and she caught a brief glimpse of a tall man with arms raised in terror.
Carey had time to gasp, one sharp intake of breath, preface to a scream, then the figure went down beneath the Duster with a sickening thump! The car slid another four or five feet and came to a halt.
“Oh God. No. Please. Let him be alright.” She fumbled the door open and sprawled out into the deep snow, the numbers nine-one-one racing round her head like a gerbil in its wheel. She looked around for help, but the only building in sight was a dilapidated farmhouse, one end of which had collapsed in blackened ruin some time ago.
The poor man was literally crushed into the loose snow, his limbs twisted in awkward directions. The first thing she saw was a ragged edge of broken bone standing up from one of those contorted limbs. Her stomach turned and her eyes almost rolled back in her head. She’d never been able to cope with the sight of blood. Simple lacerations left her faint. Shattered bones transcended anything she’d ever had to face before. But she moaned and forced herself forward, fighting her fear as she struggled against the wind and blowing snow.
A derelict, she thought when she was close enough to see the condition of his clothing. A second later she realized there was no blood. Then she saw the straw.
Carey fell in the snow, incapable of choosing between laughter or tears, finally settling on a combination of the two. A scarecrow. She’d run over a scarecrow. What she’d taken for a broken bone was an old broom handle that’d been used to support its arms. And of course it looked like a bum. Who dressed a scarecrow in anything but rags? She took one final look at its head, a carefully painted gourd now broken in two. Someone with real talent had painted the face. It was no wonder she’d mistaken it for a man.
She struggled back to the Duster, wincing on feet that had gone numb. Sliding into the frigid vinyl seat, she discovered the car had stalled during its wild flight across the field. “Please start,” she begged. Her words hung like cotton in the cold air and left a thin fog on the inside of the quickly chilling windshield. The engine turned over easily enough, coughing to life with a burst of white fumes that spun away in ghost-like tatters. She sighed and patted the dash. Ugly and old as it was, the Duster was still reliable. She dropped it into gear and gave it some gas.
The tires whined softly in the snow and the Duster’s rear end slid an inch or two to one side. Carey gave it more gas, but the Duster sat in place, the tires finding no purchase as they hissed in the deep snow.
“No,” Carey groaned, reopening the car door. She got out, leaving the engine running and the transmission in gear. She went around the car and looked with some dismay at the rear tires spinning lethargically, submerged to the wheel-wells in powder. She put her shoulder against the trunk and pushed with all the energy her 115 pounds could muster, but the Duster didn’t budge. She was leaning against the trunk, panting white fumes of frustration, when the engine died again.
Her options were few. She could walk back to Russell Springs. It was only three or four miles, but in this weather that’d be a major hike. Ice was already forming in her hair. Her ears had quit stinging in the cold wind—not a good sign.
She could wait in the car and hope someone driving past would see her. How much traffic did this road get? Who in their right mind would be out driving in this weather? Would they even notice the Duster? Blowing snow was already piling against its windward side—as Fate would have it, the same side that faced the road. A few more minutes and the car would look like every other snow drift. Not to mention it’d be dark soon.
That left the farmhouse and the abandoned pickup. Surely the pickup’s driver wouldn’t have left it behind if it was serviceable. Still, it was worth the few minutes it would take to be certain.
Decision reached, she wasted no more time with the Duster save to shut off the key, grab her purse, and slam the door. She gave the scarecrow an apologetic shrug, then struggled through the drifts toward the truck.
The pickup had taken a rougher course than she, plowing through the yellow warning sign that might have kept her on the road, careening off a scrub oak, and dropping into a shallow ditch that the Duster had somehow skimmed across. All that remained of the driver was his keys, a notebook on the floorboard, and dried blood where his head had cracked the windshield. There was no clue as to what had become of him.
Carey didn’t bother checking to see if the truck would start. There was no way the front end was going to climb out of that ditch. Shivering, on legs that were trembling with fatigue, she started back across the field to the farmhouse.
The porch steps creaked and groaned and threatened to collapse beneath her. She walked the edge where her weight was over the supports and thus made it to the porch without mishap. The deck seemed stable enough. The same could not be said of the roof overhead. One end hung as if it had been dealt a great blow, clinging to the remainder of the roof by a few rusted nails and sheer tenacity. Snow drifting down through a myriad of blackened holes had left the deck littered with foot-high stalagmites. She felt as if she were walking through a forest of tiny white fir trees.
The deck was scored black with the fire that had devoured the back half and upper story of the building. Looking at the gaping doorway and the shattered glass of the two front windows, she wondered if the farmhouse was any better shelter than her Duster. But there was a cord or better of firewood stacked on the porch and the chimney, though charred like everything else, appeared to be intact. If she could start a fire, she’d be alright till morning.
She stepped across the threshold and into the house to find the shattered remains of a stairway that had once led up to a second floor. To the left was a kitchen that had been virtually untouched by the fire; to the right, a devastated family room populated with the charcoaled remains of furniture. The fire had obviously been arrested as it crossed the family room, for the far corner was untouched. In that corner was the biggest fireplace Carey had ever seen. There was already a neat stack of wood in the fireplace, sheathed in a fine mist of snow that had drifted down from the open damper. Kindling and additional logs were stacked nearby. With a soft squeal of delight, Carey started across the room. A soft moan brought her to an abrupt halt.
There was a man curled against the remains of the sofa.
Startled, she retreated a step, fear accelerating her heart, tightening her throat. He moved, a feeble attempt to raise his head, and she saw blood on his face and sprinkled where he lay. She remembered the truck with its bespattered windshield. Seeing his blood, bright and fresh where it dotted the snow, she felt ill. She thought she could smell it, like death in the frigid air. Though she told her feet to move, they remained fixed, refusing to take her to his side.
“Are you alright?” she asked lamely.
He moaned a single syllable that might have been “help.” It was all she needed to free her traitor feet. Four quick strides carried her across the room and to his side.
His face was the waxy shade of raw fish. His lips were blue. The cut above his brow didn’t seem serious until she wiped at the crust of dried blood with her glove and found that it was a good two inches long. Fresh blood welled up, trickling around his matted eyebrow and down the bridge of his nose. There was a travel pack of tissues in her purse. She pressed them against the wound, holding his head in her lap.
“You’ll be okay,” she promised, thinking that they’d both likely freeze to death if she didn’t get a fire going.
“Who...?”
“Carey Singer,” she answered. “My car went off the road.” She took his hand in hers. His hands were bare and she could feel the chill of him even through her driving gloves. She put his hand against the tissue pad. “I’ve got to start a fire. I’m going to lay your head back down and you’ve got to hold this compress against the wound. Understand?”
“Not sure... I can.”
“You can,” she encouraged. He whimpered when she moved away from him. “I’m right here,” she called from the fireplace. It took a few minutes to get the snow swept away from the wood. She gathered fresh kindling from the pile against the wall and snapped it into small pieces which she packed under and around the cast iron fireplace grating. Because she had no intention of letting the fire go out, she used all the kindling, reasoning that it would start faster that way. Her lighter and half a pack of Virginia Slims were still in her purse. It took the lighter but a second to start the splintered kindling.
The injured man was sitting up against the sofa when she returned to his side. Beneath the angry red tissues, his eyes seemed clearer than they had been several minutes ago.
She pulled his hand away from the wound. “Let me take a look.” As she pulled away the tissues, his eyes locked with hers. In their blue depths, there was only trust: the look a faithful hound has while you pluck cockleburs from its feet. The wound was still gaping—only stitches would take care of that—but the bleeding had stopped. When the fire was going good she was going to have to find some way to melt some snow so she could clean the wound. That would start the bleeding again and she’d need to find something to bandage it with. Maybe he had a t-shirt she could shred.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She cocked her head at him. “You asked that one already.” She held up her hand. “How many fingers do you see?”
He caught her hand in his own, pulled it down and held it tight. “You a nurse or something?”
“No,” she laughed. “Just a piss poor driver like yourself.”
He seemed to concentrate for a second. “Carey. You said your name was Carey.”
“Right. What’s yours?”
The concentration intensified. His eyes reflected pain. Finally, he took a deep breath, let it out with a shudder that reeked of fear. “Good question.”
“You don’t remember?”
He frowned at her and dug in his jacket pockets. They were empty. His pants pockets produced nothing but a small black comb. “Whoever I am,” he commented, “you’d think I’d carry a wallet.”
“There was a notebook in your truck,” she offered.
They could both hear the wind howling outside. The light in the room now came solely from the fire she’d built. Neither said anything about going outside.
“We should move you closer to the fire,” Carey suggested. “Then I’ll scout around and see if there’s anything here we can use.”
Her hands are supple and warm, smelling faintly of glove leather and expensive perfume. She dips water from a pot beside the fire and wipes the blood from my face with a dish towel, both items found in her foray to the kitchen. In another pot, soup is warming. Its aroma permeates the ruins, chasing off the acrid fumes of burnt memories.
I ache to touch her, but fear it’s too soon for such intrepid behavior. For now, I relax, content with the gentle contact of her hands on my face, the smell of her hair as she leans close, the taste of her in the air we share.
I feign fatigue and she feeds me, her eyes as concerned as a mother’s. Having never seen anything so seductive, I’m in awe of her pouting lips. The smell of her envelopes me. I cannot breath without taking some part of her in, each molecule coming to rest at a nexus just behind my heart, building like an adrenaline rush.
I have never wanted anything so much as I want to hold her now.
With towels scavenged from the kitchen, Carey had made him a spartan pillow. Warmed by the fire, he had drifted off to sleep while she was bringing in more firewood. She sat now, studying the rough contours of his face, the fine blond hair that spilled over the strip of towel she’d used to bandage his head, the line of his jaw... Why did he look so damn familiar?
Tentatively, she touched his lips. She told herself she just wanted to verify they were no longer cold, but when he didn’t stir at her touch, she traced their complete circle. Not once, but twice. She brought those same fingertips to her own lips then.
Did she know this man?
She got up and paced the room, casting wavering, elongated Carey-shadows across the walls. Shadows within shadows. Hers blacker than the charred commisures of the room.
“Carey?”
“I’m here,” she whispered and returned to his side.
He smiled at her. “Sorry. I was worried you’d left me.”
“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t just up and leave you here.”
He sat up and his hand came to rest on hers. “I know this sounds absurd, but I think you’ve left me before.”
“You’re right.” She drew back her hand, felt the warm spot where his had briefly lain go cold. “It sounds absurd.”
“I don’t know who I am,” he muttered, turning to look into the flames.
She studied his back, saying nothing.
“But... I know you.”
“I’ve never met you,” she countered, wondering if she lied.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
She didn’t answer. Reincarnation. Deja vu. They were experiences upon which she feared to speculate.
He turned back to face her, reached out and traced her lips with his fingertips. She blushed; he hadn’t been sleeping afterall. She reached up to take his hand away from her face and a knot exploded in the fire, erupting behind him like a solar flare. Startled, he jumped away from the fire, toward her, winding up against her, his chest pressed against hers, his breath warm on her face.
He kissed her then. Her lips parted and his tongue, salty from the soup, passed across her teeth, probed to find her own tongue. His right hand slipped beneath her hair and rested on the back of her neck. His left cupped her breast, impossibly warm through her jacket and sweater.
“Wait,” she cried, pushing away. “We’ve only just met.” It sounded trite. She expected him to laugh, but he pulled away, his eyes downcast and despondent. It was only when his hands left her body that she realized she was trembling. There was a quivering need warming the inside of her thighs, spreading across her belly, and knotting her nipples. Her heart was racing. Her lungs refused to take air except in short pants. She was at a loss to explain her sudden desire for him.
“I’m sorry—” he started, but she interrupted him with a finger on his lips.
“Don’t be,” she whispered.
“It’s just—” He made a fist, grappling some intangible thought. “See, if life is a continuous cycle of trial and error... and each time through we strive to reach some impossible goal... sometimes, while we’re fighting those insurmountable odds, we find love—”
“You’re crazy,” she said, but there was no malice in her voice.
“If we’re very, very lucky, we find that same love again and again.” He touched her, his hand lightly stroking her cheek, brushing her ear, teasing the dark strands of her thick hair. “It’s never perfect. Never is there a time when both of us remember all those other times. Sometimes one of us won’t have anything to do with the other. The rejected one has no choice but to struggle on alone, certain of utter failure—for only together will we ever succeed. And sometimes... sometimes the rejected one suicides.”
Carey’s heart caught in her throat and suddenly she was twenty again, her first attempt through college, facing the only man who’d ever thrown himself at her feet. She had turned him aside for another—someone with a fast car, better looks, more money... it didn’t matter why. What mattered was how he’d taken the rejection. What had his suicide note said?
Next time.
His hand trailed over her shoulder and across her breasts where it found the zipper of her coat. She laid back as the coat fell from her shoulders, felt the weight of him as he settled over her. Her other clothing slipped away as if by magic. His lips were warm on her flesh. His hands knew her curves, her recesses. This was not the first time he had loved her.
