Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  The woman sat very still, upper body erect, hips barely moving with the rhythm of the horse, and maybe because of the intervening mist, seemed the more graceful part of the team, although the horse was beautiful. The way she carried herself, her body so trim, an intense concentration that was visible, at least to Roy, and so alive: he found that he’d somehow gotten off the platform, crossed the marble floor, almost unaware of the art around him, and had his face pressed to the window. And Roy knew: from the way she held her head, how the curving shadow of the hat brim fell across her face, and a thousand other little things, seen in all those dreams. He knew.

  Roy looked around, frantic to get out there, caught his first good view of this space—a huge U-shaped gallery, all stone and glass, sculptures along both sides—and at the end, just past the tarp-covered platform, high double doors. Enormous doors made of marble, but they opened easily. Roy ran outside, really ran—no one around but it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing could have stopped him: momentum had shifted and he felt its push like the first wave of a slow-moving but powerful explosion, a wave he rode through the garden, mist cooling him—and he needed cooling, all at once realizing how hot he’d been—to the corral. He ducked under the railing, kept going. The rider came out of a turn, saw him and said, “Whoa, Angus,” leaning back on the reins. The horse halted and leaned back, too. Horse and rider gazed down at Roy, ten feet away.

  Not Delia. For one thing, this was not a woman of his own age, not a woman at all, but a teenage girl. For another thing—but there was no other thing. Roy moved forward, no longer running, now moving very slowly, taking in every detail of her face. His heart took off again. This was going to be a lucky day.

  The rider looked uneasy, but only for a moment. Then she sat taller—a reaction to stress so familiar—and said, “Are you the new vet?”

  And the voice: a slight Texas accent, but otherwise identical.

  “No,” Roy said, going closer. “I’m—”

  She frowned, pushed back her hat. He could see her hair now, that same curly brown hair, flecked with gold. The light shone on her face, in her eyes: yes, those golden glints.

  “Then—?” she said.

  Roy caught himself gazing up at her, rapt, as though transfixed by a vision. “My name’s Roy,” he said. “Roy Valois.”

  She shrugged, a teenager’s kind of shrug. He’d missed so much. “The name mean anything to you?” Roy said.

  “No.”

  “I’m—” Roy took a breath, not deep; it made a funny rattling sound, maybe because of how keyed up he was. He sensed a tremendous victory, very soon, very near. Yes, a lucky day: he’d hardly dared to dream of a double triumph like this. “I’m looking for your mother,” he said.

  “My mother?” said the girl. “This must be some kind of mistake.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have a mother.”

  Roy opened his mouth, tried to speak. Nothing came out. He tried again. “No mother?”

  Angus shied, backed away. “Easy,” said the girl. The horse went still. “He doesn’t like loud voices,” she said.

  “Sorry,” said Roy. “No mother?”

  “That’s what I said.” The girl reached into the vertical slit pocket of her Western shirt, offered Roy a sugar cube. “You could give him this.”

  Roy took the sugar cube. Their hands touched. A charge went up Roy’s arm, down his spine. She had his hands, a softer, female version, but his: his own flesh and blood. There was no doubt. Roy held out the sugar cube. Angus took it between his rubbery lips.

  “I have a stepgrandmother, sort of,” the girl said. “Are you looking for her?”

  “No,” Roy said. “Your mother.”

  The girl shook her head. “She died.”

  “No.”

  “I told you—he doesn’t like loud voices,” the girl said, steadying Angus. “And what do you mean—no? Who’d know better than me? She died a long time ago.”

  “When?” Roy said, so low the word was barely audible. Angus’s tail twitched.

  “Like the exact date? I don’t know—not long after I was born.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “About what?”

  “That she’s dead.”

  The girl’s chin went up; Roy remembered that, too. And the sharpening of her tone. “What kind of a question is that? It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to me.” She gave Angus a kick and he started to turn. Roy grabbed the reins.

  “Please,” Roy said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “But you are,” she said. “What do you want? Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to me, too,” Roy said.

  She paused, wrists cocked to pull the reins away from him. “My mother dying?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “I can explain,” Roy said. “But first, are you telling me you never knew her?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Are you fifteen?” Roy said.

  Another pause; then she nodded.

  “And your birthday’s in September.”

  “The twenty-first,” she said. “How did you know that? Who are you, anyway?”

  Roy met her gaze. “She was my wife.”

  “My mother was your wife?”

  Roy took out his wallet. He had a photograph of Delia in a Velcro’d-off side pocket, a picture he’d never shown to anyone, just carried around, not quite forgotten: the two of them, actually, Roy and Delia standing on a beach, arms around each other, expressions on their faces quite solemn. He held the photograph up so the girl could see.

  She saw. Then she slipped down off Angus, gave him a light whack, and he trotted away. She took the picture.

  “This is my mother?”

  No reply necessary: the resemblance did all the talking.

  The girl studied the photo, her eyes unwavering. In a low voice, she said, “I’ve never seen a picture of her.”

  “How come?” said Roy. He glanced around: no one in sight.

  “All her stuff got burned up in a fire.” The girl looked at him. “Is this a trick picture or something? From the computer?”

  “What would be the point of that?”

  She thought; her face pinching slightly—that same annoyed look Delia had for puzzling through tough questions. “I guess none,” the girl said. “So you were the husband before?”

  “Before what?”

  “My father.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He was a wrangler, just passing through.” She shrugged. “I never knew him either.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I just grew up with it.” She thought for a moment. “My grandfather, I guess.”

  “Your grandfather?”

  She gestured at their surroundings—corral, gardens, private museum, sprawling ranch house, stables, outbuildings, and land, land in all directions.

  “Calvin Truesdale is your grandfather? Where did you get that idea?”

  “Not really my grandfather,” she said. “More like adoptive. I think he felt responsible for my mother’s accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “The one that killed her—falling off this bronco they were training, which she shouldn’t have been on in the first place. She was the cook.”

  Roy smiled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “She couldn’t make toast,” Roy said.

  “Maybe she learned after you got divorced or—”

  “Don’t you see how thin this is, everything they told you?” Roy said, voice rising again but now Angus was safely out of hearing range. “How sketchy? There was no divorce. No cooking. No wrangler.”

  Her eyes went from Roy to the photo, back to Roy.

  “What’s your name?” Roy said.

  “Adele,” said the girl. “I’m named after her.” But that statement ended on a slightly rising note.

  “Her name was Delia,” Roy
said.

  “Delia?” said Adele, eyes again drawn to the photo. “That’s close, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Roy said.

  A moment or two went by. Then Adele shook her head and backed away. “I don’t believe it.”

  Roy reached for her hand, held his next to it, side by side, made her see. “I’m your father,” he said.

  Adele tore her hand loose. “This can’t be happening.”

  “A DNA test will prove it,” Roy said. “But where’s Truesdale? He can clear things up sooner than that.”

  “What do you mean?” Adele said.

  “By filling us in on what happened after the last time I saw her.”

  “When was that?”

  “When she was three months pregnant.”

  “She left you or something?” said Adele.

  “She was taken,” Roy said.

  “Kidnapped?”

  Roy started to say no, then stopped himself. “I’m still figuring it out,” he said.

  “You’ve been figuring it out for fifteen years?”

  “I’ve been in the dark for fifteen years,” Roy said. “I’m figuring it out now.”

  “So you never knew she was here?” Adele said. “Didn’t know about the coma?”

  “Coma?”

  “She never came out of it—that was the worst part,” Adele said. “She was in a coma for months before she had me.”

  “Truesdale told you that?”

  “Another one of those things I always knew,” Adele said. “But not just from hearing it,” she added quickly. “I remember when I was a little kid there was medical stuff in the West End bunkhouse.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This old shack,” Adele said. “All boarded up now.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Can you ride?”

  The demon reacted to that one.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” said Roy, straightening up. “I’m fine.” And, in fact, some inner part, where no disease could reach, felt better than it ever had.

  Thirty-three

  “Aren’t you a bit young to drive?” Roy said.

  Adele climbed behind the wheel of a pickup—same model as Roy’s, but newer and equipped with shotgun rack and shotgun—that was parked behind the stables, keys in the ignition. “This is a ranch,” she said.

  She drove along a dirt track heading west, away from the main compound and toward the hills; a good driver, or at least a driver just like him, every touch of the wheel or the pedals exactly as he would have done. They crossed a grassy plain, with horses standing near a lone tree in the distance, splashed through a shallow, muddy stream and started up a long rise, the landscape turning brown and dry.

  A big open four-wheeler appeared at the top of the rise, coming their way. “Security,” said Adele.

  Oh, not now. Roy went rigid. What had Turk and Freddy said to do if something like this happened? For a moment, Roy couldn’t—

  “Get down,” Adele said.

  Roy got down, squeezed himself onto the floor. He saw Adele’s foot—she wore dusty cowboy boots, decorated with silver stars—move from the gas pedal to the brake, press down. They came to a stop.

  A man said, “Hey, Adele, how’s it going?”

  “Not bad,” said Adele. “You guys?”

  “No complaints,” said the man. “Lookin’ forward to the party tonight?”

  “Too much homework,” Adele said.

  “Hey, c’mon,” the man said.

  “All work and no play,” said another, a little farther away, voice less distinct.

  “Got to get going,” Adele said. “But you could do me a favor—I left Angus in the corral.”

  “We’ll put him back in the barn,” said the first man.

  “No problem,” said the other.

  “Have fun tonight,” said Adele. Then she floored it, jamming the pedal to the floor. Roy heard the tires spin, felt the rear of the pickup start to swing out. She brought it back in line with ease. Behind them one of the men yelled, “Ooo-wee.” The security guys liked Adele.

  “You can get up now,” she said.

  Roy pulled himself up with just a little breathing problem, instantly disguised.

  She gave him a quick sideways glance. “What happened to your arm?” she said.

  “I—” He almost said I used to play hockey, stopping himself at the last moment. “Hockey,” he said.

  “Cool,” she said.

  How glad he was those words hadn’t got out.

  “Do you have allergies or something?” Adele said.

  “No.”

  “City people come here and get allergies.”

  “I’m not city people,” Roy said. “I live in a little town in Vermont.”

  “With snow?”

  “Lots.”

  The track grew rougher. Adele dodged a deep pothole with a smooth turn of the wheel and said, “What do you do up there?”

  “I’m a sculptor,” Roy said. “Your—Calvin Truesdale just bought one of my pieces.”

  She was silent for a moment or two. “If everything you’re saying—” She began, then stopped herself. “That’s weird,” she said.

  “Isn’t it?” said Roy. Two hundred and fifty grand and yet he’d suspected nothing: who in their right mind, as his own mother had said. Suspecting things was not his strength; that had to be clear by now.

  The hills were much closer, not very high. In a fold at their base stood a small rectangular building, the only straight lines in sight. A big black bird circled high above.

  “I take the art elective,” Adele said.

  Roy didn’t understand.

  “In school,” she said. “There’s something of mine in the glove box.”

  Roy opened it, took out a scrolled sheet of paper. He unrolled it: a watercolor still life—horseshoe, hammer, nails, all lying on a barrelhead in shadowy space. The nails seemed light, horseshoe heavier, hammer heaviest of all; and a nice, dull shine gleamed on the striking surface of the hammer.

  “This is good,” he said.

  “I got a B,” she said.

  “A B?”

  “From the teacher.”

  Roy laughed.

  “What’s funny?” she said; and he realized she had no idea how good it really was.

  The track sloped up, rounded a pile of rocks, ended in front of the bunkhouse—wood siding weathered gray, plywood on the windows, a combination lock on the door. They got out of the truck: total silence and endless sky above, cloudless but not blue, as though a big dust storm had passed nearby. And not quite total silence—Roy heard a low, rhythmic rattle, didn’t make the connection for a moment or two. The sound was his.

  Adele walked to the door, spun the combination lock. It clicked open. She looked back at Roy. “I come out here sometimes.”

  They went in. Light flowed in through the doorway, and in shafts here and there from chinks in the walls. The bunkhouse was bare inside, long and narrow with nothing in it except a broom in one corner and a footstool sitting in the widest shaft of light. Roy had expected dust, cobwebs, spiders, maybe a lizard or two, but there was none of that, the whole place swept clean.

  He walked to the far end. “What kind of medical stuff?” he said.

  “I don’t really remember,” said Adele. “A hospital-type bed, maybe? Bandages? I was little.”

  Roy sat on the footstool, tried to imagine Delia lying here, possibly in a coma. All he knew was that Janet had seen her in the back of a limo, injured but conscious. Operation Pineapple, a fiasco, but she’d survived it: and then come—or been taken—here?

  “What’s that sound?” he said.

  “Buzzard,” said Adele. “Landing on the roof.”

  Roy rose, got that too-tall feeling again, fought it off. He saw initials carved into the rough, knotty-pine-board walls: SJW, BT, KLN; and some names: KING RICO, BUDDY, GATO. No D s, no Delia. Wouldn’t she have done that, left some imprint? Roy thought so.
>
  He moved around the bunkhouse, scanning the walls. Nothing, except…Except, what was this? Roy knelt in the corner, near the broom. On the wall, about three feet above the floor, he saw a crude carved shape, very small, taking up no more space than a business card.

  He ran his fingers over it: an upside-down V, but softened, and halfway up one arm a tiny box sticking out. Upside-down V, square box…like a mysterious glyph left on a cave wall by an unknown artist.

  “Yeah,” said Adele, coming up behind him. “I’ve seen that. Know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a diagram of where we are, right here—the bunkhouse and the hills.”

  That made sense, some bored cowboy, lying in bed, scratching away at the walls.

  “Although whoever it was got it wrong,” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The bunkhouse is at the base of the hill,” she said, “not halfway up.”

  Roy nodded. “You’ve got a good—” And then it hit him. A little box halfway up: the mountain hut. “Oh, God.”

  “What?” said Adele.

  Roy ran his fingertips over the image, again and again, as though through the sense of touch it could tell him something, like a message in Braille. And it was telling him: If we get separated, if you can’t find me. Delia had carved this picture. He could even convince himself that he recognized her handiwork. She had no artistic ability at all.

  He tapped at the wall, heard nothing behind the image that he didn’t hear anywhere else. The hiding place won’t be obvious. Come on, Roy, even you knew that. He tried to pry the plank loose. Nailed in tight: it wouldn’t budge.

  Had she simply been saying: I was here? Roy didn’t know what else to think. He gave the plank one last tap, this one a bit harder, with the side of his hand. No hollow sound resulted this time either, but a knot in the plank below—two or three inches from the picture—fell out and landed at his feet, leaving a fist-size hole in the wall.