Walking Through Needles

by Heather Levy

  “If we ever go there,” he said, “I’d protect you.”

  “Like Prometheus? Remember I told you about him tricking Zeus and giving mankind fire? He protects humans.”

  Arrow lightly yanked on her hair and gave a low laugh. “Yeah, I’ll protect you like Prometheus, but I’m not gonna get tied to a rock with some dumb eagle eating my liver.”

  Sam tried but she couldn’t laugh with him.

  ***

  I don’t want you to get hurt.

  Sam tried to forget Arrow’s words as she trudged through her chores the next day, but they kept coming back, tainting the night before until her stomach clenched painfully and she could barely breathe.

  Hades followed her to the barn, his short tail wagging as fast as his stride. Sam ran fresh water for Maddie. Hades loudly barked at Maddie until the goat decided she’d had enough and plopped down in the corner of her stall. Sam smiled, remembering what Arrow had told her about Maddie’s last escape attempt. Maddie had made it all the way to the edge of their property, worked her fat belly through a break in the wood fencing, and then promptly fell asleep before getting to the other side. Isaac had to carry the lazy animal all the way back to the barn, got one of his favorite shirts torn in the process.

  That morning, Arrow had passed Sam on her way to the hideous pink tiled bathroom her mama loved. He grabbed her hand and pulled her into his room, kissing her fast and hard against the wall before whispering, “Meet me in Maddie’s stall after lunch.” He smiled, his nerves releasing a quiver into her that spread between her legs.

  Isaac wouldn’t be back from his Sunday fishing until after supper, so Sam had hurried through her afternoon chores as well as some of Isaac’s before heading to the barn. Every time she started a task, though, she’d lose track of what she was doing when she thought of the previous night.

  She touched her lips, enjoying how sensitive and raw they were from kissing. A weird sensation loosened the joints of her hips, the same sensation she experienced when she visited the Bank of America building in Dallas with her Aunt Shelley last summer. They had taken the elevator as high as they could go, and when Sam looked out to the skyline her legs turned wobbly and her hips felt like they were going to break apart. The feeling frightened her then, but now it only made her aware of the emptiness that had been filled with Arrow.

  “What’s got you so deep in thought, girlie?”

  Sam jumped about a foot and turned in Maddie’s stall to see Isaac standing by the doorframe a few feet from her, his arms crossed over his naked broad chest, his T-shirt hanging from his belt loop and his honey hair darkened to molasses with sweat. He smelled of rich earth and some warm spice she couldn’t quite name, but it made her want to keep inhaling forever.

  “Just how school’s almost out.” She forced a smile. “I’ll be the only one without a car of my own.”

  “Now, I know that’s not true.” Isaac moved inside the stall closer to her. “Your friend—what’s her name—Chrissy? She doesn’t have a car.”

  “She’s getting one for her birthday. She’s not sixteen until October.” Right before her own seventeenth birthday in November, and she thought of Arrow’s birthday in late September.

  Sam shifted closer to Maddie. The goat kicked at the ground, and Sam pet her to calm her.

  “Wow. I really thought she was older.” He rubbed his shoulder, and Sam tried not to stare at his muscles flexing. “Girls develop so early now. Must be all those hormones they put in everything.”

  Sam hugged her arms across her braless chest.

  “You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said.

  She knew how some of the men around town saw her, not as a girl, but like an object they wanted to capture. She couldn’t even get a soda at the drug store without the owner, Mr. Woodcock, leering at her chest.

  She uncrossed her arms, feeling oddly powerful letting Isaac see her curves. “I’m not embarrassed.”

  Isaac grinned like he knew exactly what she was doing, and she no longer felt powerful. She wanted to shrink into the ground.

  “I bet the boys are scared to even look at you. They don’t know what to do with that kind of beauty.”

  Sam looked down at Hades lapping Maddie’s water, the blush rushing to her cheeks. She thought of what he’d said, about pain. He had seen her do something no one knew about, not even Arrow, and it didn’t freak him out.

  “Could I draw you again sometime?” she asked. Maybe he would tell her more about when he was younger, how pain helped him.

  “Why not ask one of your friends?”

  “I have. My friends think it’s boring to sit still for so long.”

  She remembered when she asked her mama about taking a nude drawing class at a local art studio, and her mama flat-out said no. She tried not to look at Isaac’s chest again. The thought of seeing him nude was too bizarre of a thought for her to wrap her mind around. Seeing Arrow naked was overwhelming enough.

  “I’ll probably get to draw people all the time in college,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “My art teacher won’t even let us model for each other.” She grinned. “Everyone’s figure drawings look like a toddler scribbled them.”

  “Except for yours?”

  Sam thought about when she’d sit nude in front of her full-length mirror for hours, studying every curve and shadow, sketchpad on her lap.

  “I try.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You sold me. I’ll model for you.”

  “That’s great. Thanks.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. Arrow should’ve come to the barn by now, but she didn’t want him to get in trouble with Isaac.

  “I better get back to the house and start the beans or Mama will kill me.”

  Isaac slowly nodded. “We wouldn’t want that.”

  Sam moved to leave the stall, but Isaac darted in front of the exit, blocking her. He smirked like it was a fun game to him. Flustered, she quickly skirted past him and tripped over her own tennis shoes. He caught her at her waist, and she fell against his naked chest for a moment, his spicy scent invading her senses.

  He was quite a few inches taller, and she felt like a child. He held her chin and forced her face up to look him in the eyes, eyes the color of coffee with a splash of cream, same as Arrow’s.

  “Don’t be afraid of being different, Sam. You’re talented. More talented than most people around here. Nothing wrong with it.”

  Her throat pushed out, “Okay.”

  His fingers pressed hard into her chin, and she felt ill as familiar excitement filled her.

  “Do you like that?”

  She did but she didn’t want to say it.

  “You’re not scared to look at me. Isn’t that right?”

  Right then, Sam wanted to take back every time she had watched Isaac working with his shirt off when she thought he wasn’t looking. She wondered if he had caught her staring at his chest now. She felt a tremor travel up her body.

  “It’s okay to look.” His voice rolled out as a low rumble. “There’s no law against looking. I like it when you look at me.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She was sure she was going to choke on her heart beating in her throat.

  There was a loud clang outside of the barn followed by cussing.

  “You will not believe what that goddamn rooster just did to me.”

  Arrow stopped short of Maddie’s stall and his face fell when he saw Sam, her lips inches away from his father’s. She saw a fear in Arrow’s eyes she’d never seen, a fear that made her want to run, run, run from the farm until her legs gave out.

  Isaac released her and walked past his son without so much as a nod that he existed. Arrow stood there frozen in front of Sam, his mouth parted but silent, one hand holding the other she now saw was deeply scratched and bleeding from the rooster. His mouth opening and closing without a word made Sam want to rush up to him and punch him as
hard as she could in his dying fish face. He knew something bad, something he was keeping from her. The town rumors flashed in her head as Arrow continued to stand there saying nothing. She roughly shoved him on her way out of the barn.

  She ran to the two-story house, the whitewash worn to nothing, climbed the narrow stairs to her small bedroom, and slammed her door before collapsing onto her bed. She couldn’t prevent the tears from soaking her pillow, and she couldn’t erase the words scratching at her gut.

  I don’t want you to get hurt.

  Arrow wasn’t her Prometheus. He wasn’t her protector at all.

  Chapter 8: Sam, 2009

  Sam had never been to Sapulpa, the small town nestled outside of Tulsa, and she never would’ve guessed her first visit would be driving with Eric to track down Isaac Walker. She didn’t know what she’d do, how she’d react if she saw him again. She wondered if he would look the same, and how she would look to him, now older.

  Her mom had been quiet for a long time when Sam called her about the detective’s visit. She imagined her mama was thinking about what happened fifteen years ago, of rushing Eric to the hospital in Grandma Haylin’s car, no time or money for an ambulance. She could never talk to her mom about that day or the months leading up to it, although she knew her mom knew most of what had happened.

  “Let the police find Isaac, Sammy. Why would you want to find him anyway?”

  Sam could’ve tracked him down anytime in the last fifteen years and asked him why her, what did she do, but she didn’t because she told herself she had moved on. Now, with him missing, the feeling of being unsafe nagged at her.

  “I don’t know, Mama. It’s just weird that they found his truck so close to the old farm.” She tried not to think about Eric contacting her around the same time, of how he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding his father.

  “With what Isaac did.” Her mom sharply inhaled as if she was trying to calm herself. “If he had any ounce of remorse, he would’ve driven himself into that pond.”

  Sam knew he wouldn’t have done that.

  “Where would he have gone, Mama? When he ran off?”

  Her mom paused. “I’m not sure. He didn’t have any family, but he had an army friend he talked to quite a bit. Les Compton—I think that’s his name. Lived in Sapulpa.”

  Sam watched Eric shift gears, increasing speed as he reentered the highway from their pit stop. He had insisted they take his truck for the hour and half drive after she told him she couldn’t handle a standard as well as she used to. The last time she saw him he was a sixteen-year-old boy, barely old enough to drive. Not old enough for many things he did then. Now, here he was, a grown man talking about how he started his own contracting business several years ago. He told her about buying a big foreclosed house in Gatewood to fix up and flip for big profits, and she thought about all her bank customers who had lost their homes within the last year from the recession, how some of them would likely never recover.

  He was talking about the families he lived with after her mom placed him in foster care and about one nice family who wanted to adopt him before he turned eighteen when he turned quiet.

  “Did you do it?” she asked. “Did you let them adopt you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked over at Sam. “I told them I already had a family.”

  She sensed the expectation in his voice, but she had never looked at him as family. He was more than family, but she didn’t know what category to place him.

  She could tell he was nervous with how much he was talking. She was nervous being around him too, but she was much better at hiding it.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to talk your ear off.”

  “It’s good to hear what you’ve been doing.” She almost added that she was proud of him for surviving foster care and doing something positive with his life, but it would’ve sounded condescending. She knew his damage was there, under the surface. Just like her.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  She told him she owned her house, but she didn’t say she had a decent nest egg saved in case she needed to leave in a hurry. She had a master’s degree in Greek Classics she didn’t use but no student debt thanks to her work’s tuition reimbursement program. She had traveled a bit and got lost telling him about visiting Florence and seeing Michelangelo’s David.

  She didn’t want him to think she was some sort of psychopath, so she lied, said she went out with friends as often as she could. The truth was she had visited Italy on her own and she went home every night to her dog and her two-thousand dollar queen-sized mattress, a splurge she didn’t regret. Getting close to people meant showing them the ugly parts of her too. Relationships didn’t usually last too long after that.

  “So, you don’t draw anymore?” Eric asked.

  “No.”

  She had stopped drawing a long time ago. It made her think of hands grasping flesh, tearing pieces away.

  “You were so good, though. I always thought you’d be an artist.”

  The way he said it, it was like he was suggesting she had settled. Maybe she did, but she was good at being a bank manager. She liked the predictability, the order of it, and it paid well.

  “Maybe I’ll draw you sometime, but I warn you—I’m rusty. You might end up looking like a fucked up potato.”

  Eric smiled a little, one of his deep dimples flashing.

  “I was never a good model for you.”

  “Because you couldn’t stay still.”

  “I had other things on my mind.”

  “Homework?”

  “You.”

  Sam shook her head, blushing.

  The old electric current was still there between them, binding them with memories, with their secrets. He knew more about her than most people ever would, yet she found she couldn’t trust him the same way she had as a teen. Too much had happened in those fifteen years, too many failed relationships and shameful sexual encounters that could’ve killed her, literally. She pushed aside the memory of an alcohol-fueled one-night stand were a guy had slammed her so hard against a wall she got a concussion. She didn’t press charges because she had asked him to do it.

  It took her a long time and a lot of therapy to determine no one could help her untangle her past much less her sexuality. Most therapists she had visited seemed more interested in her masochism, which they saw as a sexual disorder even after she informed them she had no distress from it. It was quite the opposite; it calmed her mind and gave her peace.

  She wondered what Eric would say about her sexuality, whether he would react the same way her last boyfriend did when she finally opened up to him about it. You’re disturbed. You need help, he had told her before moving out. Men were usually okay with spanking, but few were okay with her other, darker requests. The ones who were okay with it usually hadn’t asked her consent first.

  All the talk about their adult lives, she knew, was a distraction for what they couldn’t talk about—the thing that had shaped them. The stupid shit logic of teenagers to lie no matter what.

  Eric looked so serious. She always thought he’d grow out of his pensiveness but, if anything, he’d grown more somber as an adult. She wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe thinking about how detectives had found him, asked him similar questions about Isaac, what happened before and after the attack.

  No matter what Eric was thinking, Sam knew driving to Sapulpa to see Isaac’s old army buddy was probably a waste of her Saturday, but she wanted to believe they’d learn something useful.

  “Maybe my mom was wrong,” she said, and Eric glanced at her. “Maybe this Les guy doesn’t know anything.”

  The man didn’t have a listed phone number, but from what Eric could find he apparently lived in the same Sapulpa trailer park.

  It was almost four, the August afternoon swallowing them in its heat, when they pulled up to the trailer park. It was nice, for w
hat it was, with tiny well-maintained patches of lawn.

  They circled around and Eric parked in front of a powder-blue manufactured home. In the front, there was an inviting rock garden with a small, bubbling water fountain and several ceramic Buddhas peeking out of the greenery.

  For several minutes, they sat in the heat, their eyes on the house. Eric broke the stillness by taking Sam’s hand.

  “You should stay here. I can turn on the air for you.”

  “No. I’m coming with you.”

  It took forever for Les Compton to open the door, and Sam quickly saw why: Les, his long graying hair pulled back into a ponytail, was an amputee. His right leg was missing below his thigh, the metal of his prosthesis glinting in the sun. He dressed in a loose, white cotton tunic, no shoes, and he didn’t appear to have on shorts. She hoped he had on underwear.

  “Arrow? Holy hell, I thought I was staring at your father for a second.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  Les embraced Eric hard, something Sam had never seen Isaac do. Eric didn’t look too comfortable with it. Les gave Eric a final slap on the back and looked over at Sam, smiling.

  “You’ll have to tell me who this pretty lady is. Come on in.”

  The tidiness of Les’s home surprised Sam, and she felt guilty for thinking it. Isaac had been neat too, every sock and shirt organized by color in his drawers. Must have been a military thing.

  Eric introduced Sam, and Les asked if they wanted some hot tea after they found a spot on his gray loveseat. She didn’t want to be rude, so she accepted but she would’ve preferred anything with ice.

  Eric nudged her with his knee and gave her a look reflecting what she was thinking; this man had no idea Isaac was missing.

  After a few minutes in his small, sparse kitchen, Les came back with a tray of green tea and shortbread cookies. Sam smiled and took a cookie.

  “You still live in this backwards state?” Les asked.

  “Yeah. In Oklahoma City now.”

  “So, what brings you two out here? Surely you didn’t drive all that way to amuse an old guy like me.”