Rogue Touch

by Woodward, Christine

  Touch didn’t understand why I’d pulled him behind that bush. I put my finger to my lips, then turned in the opposite direction. Luckily we were camped close enough to woodlands that I could drag him back into the cover of pine trees before he said anything. The only thing I took a chance on saying, in a real hiss of a whisper, was “Those are the people who’re after me.”

  We crept through the woods awhile, till clearly we were walking up on hard ground, away from the sand—the dunes lay behind us, far enough that we couldn’t see them. The police hadn’t heard us, judging from the lack of footsteps behind us, but it would be nice to get to a point high enough that we could maybe see our campground, and whether they were still there. We walked around toward the eastern side of the mountain, hoping that if the police set off looking for us they wouldn’t think we’d go up.

  Toward evening, we sat down to rest a bit. I pulled a package of turkey jerky out of my backpack and we each had a piece. Here’s what we had with us: one outfit each, which in Touch’s case meant leather pants, a sweater, a hat, and his long leather coat, plus gloves. Touch had his little blue ball and his golden time travel ring. We had one quart bottle of water, three-quarters already drunk. And we had the package of jerky, plus a map of the park.

  Back at the camp we had a fuel-efficient vehicle. We had a tent and two sleeping bags, plus all the warm clothing we’d bought for Touch at REI. We had a cooler full of food, several gallons of water, and our atlas. Most importantly we had the big wad of bills we’d got from the ATM in Napoleon, Ohio.

  “Tell me about the people chasing you,” Touch said.

  I sighed. “They’re called police. They’re in charge of law and order. You got police where you come from?”

  “We used to. Hasn’t been a need for them in more than two hundred years.”

  “Well, there’s plenty need for them here. They round up people who steal cars and set up phony bank accounts, and put them in jail where they can’t hurt anyone.”

  “Jail?”

  “Trust me. It’s a place you want to avoid.”

  Even though Touch already knew about Wendy Lee, at least in a general sense, I didn’t want to tell him that might be why the police were checking out our campsite. Truthfully, they could be looking for the stolen car, or they could just be there because we’d forgotten to pay the campsite fee. But I knew in my heart that even if it were just the campsite fee, the discovery of one thing would lead to another like a row of dominoes, and I would end up hauled in for the assault—or for all I knew murder—of Wendy Lee.

  I asked Touch what he thought about using the golden ring. We could go back a few hours and clear everything out of the campsite. He shook his head.

  “Maybe if they were right on top of us,” he said. “But using the golden ring to escape your police could summon the people who are after me. And that would be like jumping into a snake pit to escape a bumblebee.”

  A shiver went up my spine. Then Touch elbowed me. “Look,” he said.

  By now the sky had grown dark. Through the trees, down toward the dunes, we could see flashlights trundling along, searching. For us, no doubt. None of them seemed to be going close to the right direction. But that didn’t give me a whole lot of relief, since it still meant we’d have to leave everything we’d accumulated—not to mention the carefree days we’d imagined in paradise—behind.

  Going up farther in altitude, where it would just get colder and colder, was not a possibility. As it was, I couldn’t be sure Touch would make it through the night, once the temperature dropped. Luckily I could see in the dark well enough to read the little park map. The mountain where we were hiding was called Crestone Peak. If we stuck to the base, heading west, there were a bunch of little towns where we could possibly wrangle a car and some food. Maybe even find an ATM and get more cash if Touch didn’t think it was too risky.

  We walked for hours and hours. The old me might have been scared of all the nocturnal critters that surrounded us. The sign at the Sand Dunes Welcome Center said that mountain lion footprints were often spotted, and no doubt there were bears around, too, working on bulking up for hibernation. I never had seen a real live bear, and wasn’t keen on the idea in this particular situation. But I didn’t let any rustling in the trees bother me. The rustling that concerned me most was Touch, his teeth clattering as we walked along.

  “Here,” I said. “Take my jacket.”

  “It’s not going to fit.”

  I took it off anyway. Then I pulled my sweater over my head, seriously mourning that whole pile of them left back in the tent.

  “But you’ll be cold,” he protested.

  “Not as cold as you. And I don’t think I can carry you all the way…”

  I paused. All the way to where? It would be easier to make a plan if we had some kind of destination other than just west. So far we both knew what we were running from, but lack of knowing where we were running to made all our moves just kind of willy-nilly. Which didn’t seem to be working out very well.

  Touch took off his leather coat and put my sweater on over his—it pulled real tight but for sure would warm him up at least a little—then put his coat back on and buttoned it all the way up to his chin. I gave him my hat, too, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to double up. I cursed the loss of my balaclava, not to mention everything I had in that green duffel bag, including my map of the United States.

  Clearly Touch was still powerfully cold, but he said the extra clothes helped a little bit. Up ahead I could hear a running stream; probably it wasn’t safe to drink the water (Cody’s Boy Scout training, coming in handy again, told me that I needed iodine tablets if I didn’t want to get us sick), but I thought it might be a good idea to follow its direction. Before we got to a stream, we came upon this little pool. I knelt beside it, took off my gloves, and dipped my hands in so I could splash my face with water.

  Fast as possible, I drew the hand out. The water was downright scalding. Right at that moment, I heard Touch stumble behind me, shivering something fierce. Somewhere in my head, one of us—me, Cody, or Wendy Lee—had heard about these natural hot springs in the West. Now I squinted through the dark, watching steam rise off the top of the water.

  “Touch,” I called. He looked to be on the brink of hypothermia. Something would have to be done about this temperature situation.

  I marched on over to him and slipped my arm through his elbow. “Look,” I said, pointing to the pool. It was just big enough so that he’d be able to submerge right up to his neck.

  I don’t think I ever heard a sigh so grateful as when Touch slid into that scalding hot water. The only piece of clothing he kept on was my hat, pulled down over his ears. And then he just lay there in the water, parboiling himself, with this crazy, happy grin on his face, like it was the first time he’d been warm since he left home. I tried not to look too hard at him, the nice, muscular lines of his body.

  By now I’d started in to shiver myself. I gathered up all his discarded clothes and piled them on, folding up his pants to use as my pillow and pulling his long leather jacket over me as a blanket. I could feel his two treasures—the gold ring and the tiny blue ball of light—pulsing against me from his inside pocket. This arrangement sure didn’t make me as comfortable as Touch, but at least it got me through till the morning sunshine.

  Touch slept on blissfully through the first patch of daylight, whereas I woke up at dawn with a little gasp in my throat, super-aware that someone was chasing me. If I’d had a pen and paper, I would have made a list, trying to figure out what we had going against us as well as what we might have in our favor. Certainly one problem was what clothes we had left—all the leather stuff, instead of the normal flannel and fleece back in the tent. It would be damn difficult to slink through a crowd unnoticed anytime in the immediate future. The thing we had to do, I decided, was find a car to steal, and then stick to remote country roads. The other thing we needed was a particular destination.

  Touch’s eyes fluttered
open. He looked groggy, and surprised to find himself submerged in water. Then he closed his eyes again, taking a moment to luxuriate. “This,” he said, “is the first time I’ve been warm in weeks.”

  “Sorry to tell you,” I said, “but we’d better be moving on. Who knows where all they’re looking for us.”

  Luckily the sun got strong real fast; by the time we got to a tiny little town called Alcove, I’d taken off my jacket and sweater, and Touch said he didn’t need them. It seemed like the hot springs had warmed him up from the inside, and I hoped that would last him a good long while.

  The town didn’t have much to it—in fact it reminded me of the outskirts of Caldecott, the part that was county instead of town, with dusty roads and large tracts of land with modest little farmhouses. Touch and I veered off the road and walked through the fields until we came to a log cabin with a couple of junked trucks parked on the lawn. One of them was an old blue Chevy that looked just like Aunt Carrie’s. I patted the hood.

  “I can keep this one running,” I told Touch.

  We tiptoed over to the house, trying to get a feel for whether anyone was inside. It looked pretty well deserted—no lights on, no sign of movement, and the spot in the driveway where they probably kept the cars that ran was empty. I had a feeling this was a summer place, and the people who owned it had gone on home for the winter. I told Touch to fill up our water bottles from their outdoor spigot. Then I went back to the truck and opened the door. Touch came around and peered in the passenger-side window. Before I had a chance to lament losing my screwdriver, I saw that they’d left the keys right under the front seat.

  A sadness washed over me. The house was nice enough, in a modest kind of way. And the fact that it was a summer house should’ve been comforting. But still you could tell the people who owned it weren’t rich, and maybe even struggled to hold on to it. And they’d figured this was a place without any crime, where a person could just leave their keys right in the truck.

  Unfortunately now was no time for a conscience. Now was the time to go on living. Not to mention the moment of truth. I turned the key in the ignition. It gave a little sputter, coughed, and died. So I pumped the gas a time or two, then tried again. This time it turned over. Not without complaint, but it did turn over. Touch opened the door and climbed up next to me.

  “Let’s put some distance between us and this place,” he said. “We can get to a bank machine.”

  “Steal from the crooks,” I said. That felt a whole lot better than stealing from normal folks. I steered the truck over the grass and onto the driveway, noting the address on the rusty old mailbox. Maybe we could stuff some cash into an envelope and mail it to them as payment.

  For now we needed to put a whole lot of space between us and a town where people were sure to recognize this car. We took the back roads onto a small, rural highway. Luckily the gas tank was three-quarters full. Touch found a map in the glove box and sat next to me trying to puzzle it out. I watched him from the corner of my eye and got to thinking on what kind of father he might be. I pictured him on his hot planet, teaching his kid to sail and swim and do whatever passed for throwing a ball around in their world.

  “He must be real cute,” I said, because I realized I’d been so busy being jealous the other night I hadn’t even asked about him. “Your son, I mean.”

  Touch looked troubled for a second, then he smiled. “He’s beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world. Sweet and funny, too. And an excellent swimmer.”

  “You must miss him something fierce.”

  He put the map down and turned his gaze out the window, at the passing sandstone and pine trees. If Touch didn’t get so cold we could’ve rolled the windows down. I was starting to fall pretty well in love just with the scent of the West, which was like a lungful of sage, juniper, and pine every time you breathed in.

  “There aren’t words for it,” Touch finally said.

  I reached out and patted his knee, then let my hand rest there a minute. “One thing you never really said,” I told him, “is whether or not you plan on going back.”

  His face got a hard look I hadn’t seen before. “Right at this moment,” Touch said, “my only plans are for you to keep driving.”

  “West?” I said.

  “West,” he agreed, though he still didn’t say why.

  And as for me, I quelled that impulse to ask questions. I just drove. I drove and didn’t stop till the truck was almost on empty. Then we stopped at a little town just on the other side of the Continental Divide and went on into the gas station to look for an ATM.

  Touch and I stood side by side, blocking the screen from anyone who might take a peek at us. He floated the little blue ball in front of the card slot. I looked down, waiting for twenties to start spitting out. This time, I thought, I wouldn’t stop him quite so soon. But just our luck, not even one twenty sputtered out of that ATM. The screen blinked a minute, then kind of sputtered, then flashed the words, “Insufficient Funds.”

  “Dang,” I said.

  So there we were. A tank of gas going on empty. Not a penny—and I do mean not one single penny—in our pockets. Nothing to eat but a couple granola bars and half a package of turkey jerky.

  We walked back to the truck, our shoulders slumped, neither of us knowing what the hell we’d do next. For a moment when we’d stood by the ATM I was terrified that the machine had swallowed the little blue ball, but then it came floating on back to us. Touch put it in the inside pocket of his coat. What we needed was a library or some such place where we could use a computer so he could figure out what the problem was. Maybe he needed to add more money to his fake bank account, or else make a new one.

  For a minute we just sat in the truck, staring at the dashboard. I wanted to suggest using the golden ring again—what was the point of having such a handy device when you couldn’t even use it?—but I knew he would say no.

  All of a sudden something came to me—one of those memories that belonged to somebody else. I had been here, in this town, at this very gas station, before. Back then it had looked different, the gas pumps all old-fashioned, without the credit card swipes and whatnot. And it hadn’t been a Gas n’ Go, but just a little convenience store called Merle’s Groceries. Of course it hadn’t actually been me who came here, but Wendy Lee, when she was eighteen years old. Back when she barely knew how to bake a chocolate chip cookie. All she cared about was her boyfriend; his name was Joe, and he was just as Southern as she was but his daddy’s family owned this ranch in Colorado. She’d heard him talk about it a million times—they’d dated all through high school, and she always hated kissing him good-bye when he headed out here for summer holidays. And now here she was, on vacation with him, about to see the famous ranch for the first time! Little did she know the heartache that lay ahead of her. On this very trip she’d get pregnant. Then the shotgun wedding, and the baby she’d lose, followed by the no-good husband running out on her and becoming an ex.

  But guess what? That ranch was in Ferdinand, Colorado. Not ten miles down the road.

  Touch and I parked about a mile from the Wheeler Place. I felt a little rush of pride for Wendy Lee not keeping his name even though she didn’t stop loving him. It was funny how I’d never felt particularly warm toward her back when I worked for her, but now after nearly killing her I felt almost like she was family. I guess it went back to what I’d learned from my English teacher, Miss Eloise Fitzsimmons: how you never could understand a person till you’d walked around in her shoes. I don’t expect Miss Fitzsimmons could have imagined the extent to which I was now walking in Wendy Lee’s shoes.

  At this point some twenty years had passed since Wendy Lee’s last visit to Colorado, and it didn’t occur to me until Touch and I were walking down the dusty road that the family might not even own the place anymore. So I felt powerful relief when the sign at the end of the driveway, hanging above the rusty old mailbox and swaying in the wind, still read WHEELER in faded red letters.

&nbs
p; “C’mon,” I said to Touch, and grabbed his arms to duck into the pine trees. I figured we could follow the road from the safety of the forest that lined it on either side.

  “I thought you’d never been out west before,” Touch said, as we headed on up toward the house. On the drive over I’d told him a little white lie, about how this kid I knew from home, Joe Wheeler, had a ranch out here. I didn’t like lying to Touch, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was a bloodsucking creature who drained people of all their memories and experiences.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “But Joe talked about it so much I feel I know the place myself.”

  Back when Wendy Lee visited the Wheeler ranch, it had been rustic but with all the modern conveniences, like a TV and a big old PC sitting in a study off the main room. I figured twenty years later it would likely have WiFi and a MAC, too. When we got to the house, it looked pretty well deserted. A tractor and a pickup truck were parked in front of a detached garage, but something told me those vehicles were always there, whether the family was visiting or not. Just like the other house, where we’d stolen the truck from, the place had kind of a deserted look—no lights on, the curtains drawn. There were cows grazing on the hill (“Cattle,” I heard Joe’s know-it-all voice in my head. “You don’t call ’em cows.”) and a big barn a ways down another dirt road, probably full of horses. I guessed someone had to be around to take care of the animals, but for a moment I felt—I hoped—we would have the place to ourselves.

  “Look,” I said to Touch, walking him around to the other side of the shed. On the inside of a slanted eave hung a little nail where an extra house key dangled.

  “Wow,” Touch said. “Your friend Joe went into a lot of detail.”

  “He’s a talker,” I said, ignoring the fact that Touch clearly knew there was something fishy about this whole setup.