Caryl Milton
Elizabeth Burns
Nicola Rhead
Shannon Lee
Tracy Gray
Brittany Urbaniak
Author Note
The town of Durango Falls cannot be found on an ordinary American map.
It only exists in Georgia’s mind!
:-)
Quote
“To draw you must close your eyes and sing.”
-Pablo Picasso.
Lara
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a33sB3ck28A
I pushed open the heavy wooden door of Durango Falls’ library and stepped into the still, hushed space. Other than my sculpting studio, this was without a doubt my favorite place. I came here almost every day. I think I loved the smell of old books mixed with pine floor cleaner and the lovely echo inside mostly empty, large stone buildings.
At this time of day there was usually no one around. I heard the water cooler gurgle in the left-hand corner of the room, and the lazy whirling sound the machinery inside the old heaters made. I shook the snow off my cap, peeled my thick gloves off, and stuffed them into my coat pockets. Swiping my white cane in smooth arcs in front of me, I took the twelve steps to the front desk.
Hannah Heinberger was usually on duty on Wednesday afternoons, but from her perfume, sage and roses, I knew that Elaine was manning the desk today. They must have swapped shifts.
“Hey, Elaine,” I greeted as I reached her.
“Ooo … just the person I wanted to see,” she said.
I could tell immediately that she was bursting with some piece of juicy gossip. It was funny how Elaine could always find salacious rumors in a town with a population of less than a thousand. Notorious gossip or not, she had a heart of gold and I could not remember a time when we were not best friends.
I laid my left hand at the edge of the counter. Whatever the news was it had Elaine all fired up. She was almost bubbling over with excitement.
“What is it?” I asked curiously.
She leaned forward, disturbing the air. Her breath, she’s been eating peanut butter cookies, was warm on my cold cheeks. “You’ll never guess who came in here this morning,” she cried triumphantly.
I kept my face straight. “Beyonce?”
“Fine. I just won’t tell you, and you’ll just miss the juiciest piece of information this town has heard in twenty years,” she huffed, irritated that I had spoilt her surprise. I mean, who could she come up with better than Beyonce?
I grinned evilly. “Fine. I’m sure I’ll hear from Emma Jean.”
“I haven’t told her yet,” she said with great satisfaction.
“Elaine Crockett, I might miss the juiciest piece of information this town has heard in twenty years if you don’t tell me, but you’re going to burst if you don’t spill the beans.”
“Kit Carson,” she blurted out instantly.
“Kit Carson,” I echoed, surprised. Well, well, this time she did have a juicy bit between her teeth.
Every small town had a loner, a mysterious, gruff, elusive, anti-social person who refused to be part of the community. Kit Carson was this town’s ghost. He lived on a large track of wooded land that he had converted into some kind of wolf sanctuary. Occasionally, he would drive into town in his pickup truck, but he wouldn’t make eye-contact or speak to anyone other than to grunt.
I heard he was a hulk: six feet seven inches tall and as solid as a brick house, but that he walked with a slight limp and had a scarred face that nobody actually got a good look at.
Funny thing about Kit Carson was he’d turned the tables on our tiny town. We didn’t take kindly to outside folk. You could live within our midst for fifty years and still be considered an outsider. Kit Carson was not born and raised local, and coming on his own like that without knowing a soul in our town, he was just plain asking for trouble.
He came to Durango Falls when I was about seventeen years old, and I would be twenty-two in July. So he’d been around for five years now, and even though our men folk have tried to extend the hand of friendship to him, he outright refused to have anything to do with us except for the commercial kind.
Two years ago Casey Goodnight said she saw dog tags peep out of his shirt while he was paying for steel cables at the hardware store. Yes sir, that sure gave the whole town something to gossip about. Coffee mornings weren’t the same for weeks after.
With falsely sweet voices the good town folk picked apart the man’s “secret”. Obviously, he had been dishonorably discharged from the army, and it was pure shame that made him avoid contact with the rest of humanity and turn his back on God. Yes, that’s right, Kit Carson had never seen the inside of our Church. Naturally, he had no wife because what God fearing woman would want such a heathen?
Although, with time that last piece of gossip morphed to – he murdered her. People said they heard the wolves howling on full moon nights while they were passing at the edge of his land. The stories about him got weirder and weirder. Some of them were downright crazy. Serial killer stuff. I guess we had some very bored folk in our town and they made up their own entertainment.
“Yup,” Elaine said in the same voice she employed to report scandals, “the man strode in here this morning bigger than a tree, stuck up a piece of paper on the Job’s Board, and left. Not a word to anyone.”
“Wow,” I whispered. “What’s he looking for?” I thought she would say foreman, or housekeeper.
She took a deep breath.
“What?” I prompted, inexplicably intrigued by the mystery of it all.
“You ready for this?”
Lara
“Maybe it’s better if I read it to you.” I heard her rustling a bit with a piece of paper. “Right. Here we are.” She paused dramatically. “Blind Reader Wanted. Twice a week. Only females need apply. Kit Carson.” She paused again. “There is a phone number underneath.”
I shut my open mouth. I couldn’t have heard right. “Did you say blind reader?”
“That’s what it says here.”
“What the hell is a blind reader?”
“A blind person who reads, I reckon.”
I frowned. “What on earth would he want a blind reader for?”
“Here’s what I think,” Elaine whispered. “I think he’s ashamed of his scars. I think he doesn’t want anybody seeing them.” She caught a quick breath. “I think you should apply.”
“What? No. Are you mad? That advert is just weird.”
“Don’t be silly. The man’s not dangerous. He’s just anti-social.”
“Not dangerous! Aren’t you the one who said he killed his wife and buried her in the woods and the wolves are there so no one goes looking for her bones?”
She giggled. “Well, I was bored that afternoon. Don’t you think it’ll be fun?”
“You just want me to apply so you’d have all kinds of new gossip to spread around.”
“What a thing to say. As if I’d do that to you. I’d apply if I were blind.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would,” she insisted.
“Since when?” I demanded.
“If he’d only look at me, I’d do him. The body on the man. He’s so hot I wouldn’t mind melting on him.”
“Jesus, Elaine.”
“Anyway, you should totally apply, Lara. I mean, I’ll drive you there and sit in his living room and wait while you read for the man. So you’ll be totally safe. It’ll be fun. At the very least it’ll be interesting. Please, Lara. Have a heart. I’m dying of boredom here.”
“I knew it. You just want new gossip.”
“Come on. I’d ask someone else, but you’re the only blind person in town.”
“Isn’t Mrs. Murtle blind too?”
“That old biddie,” she dismissed immediately. “She’s about to keel over any moment. I heard her sons have already dug her grave.”
I shook my head in wonder at that untrue piece of gossip.
“Besides, it’l
l do my eyes good. Man candy always does, especially the mysterious brooding kind.”
I laughed. “I didn’t know you were perving on him.”
“I am,” she admitted. “So are you going to do it or not?”
“I don’t know, Elaine. It’s awkward.”
“Look, if you don’t apply, I’m going to poke my eyes out and apply myself,” she growled.
I laughed. “I’ll think about it.”
“Call him now.”
“Oh, hell.”
Fast as lightning she dipped her hand into my purse and extracted my cellphone. Before I could protest I heard her dialing.
“Elaine,” I cried out as a ringing tone sounded.
It echoed in the silence of the library and how weird, but I felt my heart suddenly become still. As if something important was about to happen. Elaine thrust the phone into my hand. I took it in a daze and brought it to my ear. It felt as if I had waited my whole life for that moment, and finally it was there. I exhaled the breath I was holding.
“Mr. Carson?” I croaked.
“Speaking.” His voice was deep and smooth, but wary.
“My name is Lara Young and I’m … um … calling about the … uh … reading job. Can you tell me a bit more about it?”
“Are you blind?”
I blinked with the directness of his question. “Well, I don’t carry a white cane around for fun.”
“Fine. I’ll go through the job spec when I see you. When are you able to come to my home?”
“Er ...”
“Tomorrow at nine o’clock,” Elaine whispered in my other ear.
“Tomorrow at nine in the morning,” I told him.
“Do you know the address?” he asked abruptly.
Elaine tapped on my hand to indicate that she did. “Yes.”
“Nine,” he said and rang off.
I put my cellphone back into my purse, still in a daze.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Elaine asked with a giggle.
Kit
The moon was full and the reflection of its light off the newly-fallen snow lit up the house almost as bright as daylight. I liked these cold, still nights when the moon was high and full. Rather than try to go to sleep and miss the magic, I always hung out on the front porch with my wolves.
I watched them as they moved in the otherworldly light, their eyes glowing a feverish green and their thick coats glistening with health. The strong muscles underneath were clearly defined: a testament to their impressive power. They were restless, as they always were during full moon.
As I was…
I saw Koa, the biggest of the pack lift his nose to the sky and howl, long and deep, a wild cry that still had the ability to give me chills, even after all this time. One by one the others followed. I closed my eyes and let their haunting calls caress my skin and move through me. It awakened ancient memories, old spirits, sleeping shadows. And there were many of those buried in the graveyard of my soul.
When I first wound up at the edge of this mountain I was a fucking mess. Driven nearly mad with the raw brutality and senseless violence I had seen in the Military, I was a disaster waiting to happen. Like one of those tortured men, who got himself a gun, walked into a shopping complex, and blasted everyone, man, woman, and child away, thinking they were doing them a favor, because the world was so fucking irredeemably ugly.
PTSD. Awww … looked like it should be a box with a pretty red ribbon around it. I’ll tell you what it is. It was raw screams that infected every damn thought you had during the day, and chased you into your dreams. You woke up screaming, tearing at your own hair. I began to question everything about humanity. Even my own.
Yeah, I thought about putting the barrel of a gun into my mouth.
Only the image of my mother in her house surrounded by her white picket fence and flag flying proudly in her immaculate yard kept my brains from splattering out behind me.
I had two options: Dive into therapy and deal with all the things I had seen, or get the hell out of dodge and hide from the stupid idea of confronting the nightmare. Only an idiot could come up with such a shit idea – how did one confront what I had seen? The innocent children blown to bits, your mate’s steaming guts in your bare hands.
Guess which option I took?
They gave me meds and wished me luck. What a fucking laugh! The plan was simple. Withdraw from it all for a while. I got into my pickup and began driving, away from anyone and anything I knew. Crossed two state lines and would have driven right through Durango Falls too. Not in a million years would I have dreamed of staying in it. A town forgotten by time.
Fuck, I could smell the backstabbing, fake, two-faced judgmental breeders. I had lived in a small town like that when I was a kid. I knew all about their small-time gossip, their nasty little secrets, and the incestuous bonds between them all. It was the kind of place I’d rather die than live in.
But thirty minutes out of town and I saw a sign:
For Rent Or Sale
Old Man’s Creek
House and all thirty acres!
Thirty acres! The road was snarled up with weeds so I couldn’t even drive into it. I had to get out of my pickup and walk up the long, rutted road.
It was more of a goat’s trail than a road.
But it was also summer, and it was gloriously beautiful: the land, the creek, the forest behind it, even the old house in its sad state of disrepair called to me. I rubbed the dirt from one of the glass panes and looked in through the window. It was all wood, with a big stone fireplace, sparsely furnished, and perfect for my needs, but most of all it was so remote and isolated I knew that it was the right spot to waste my life for a couple of weeks. Out here I could hunt and fish and recover. Get my head straight before I moved on.
As I walked around the property, clearing overgrown creepers and brambles out of my way, it never even crossed my mind that I’d make a life here, but a couple of weeks turned into a month. I felt a new vigor come into my body. There is nothing like hard, physical labor and living off the land to heal a man’s body.
I flushed the head meds down the toilet.
One month slipped into another, and soon the forest was changing into golds, russets, and browns. No amount of books, Youtube videos, websites, documentaries, or award winning photographs could have prepared me for the beauty of what appeared before my eyes. Even as I immersed myself in the spectacular blaze of color, I knew I was facing down a harsh winter on my own. However hard life was, it would be ten times harder once the snows came.
I had to make a decision: stay or go? I decided to wait just until the show was over, last leaves had fallen away, and the first layer of snow had drifted in. After that I would go.
The real truth was I was waiting for the snow because I wanted to see the tracks of the creatures that I knew were playing a game of hide and seek with me on my hiking expeditions. I sensed that they were close, a hunch, a side effect of war, but they never revealed themselves to me.
I chopped six cords of wood, covered them under a tarp, and waited for the first snow to come. I didn’t have long to wait. Overnight it blanketed the ground in white, hushed the air, and changed the landscape into a Christmas picture card.
I packed a bag and left early.
Kit
The pre-dawn forest was a wonderland of freshly fallen snow. The spruces stood tall and black against the sky, and the complete stillness was disturbed only occasionally by a Raven’s caw, or the sound of a twig breaking with the weight of the snow. My breath formed ice crystals on the fur rimming my hood.
In the pale light, for the first time since I moved into Durango Falls, I saw their tracks. I crouched down to study them. Wolves! Big ones.
In an instant their paw prints changed everything. I was no longer a soldier so sick with what I had witnessed I had to hide at the edge of some godforsaken town. I was suddenly taken back in time, a century back. I was standing in the land of the men who had come in covered wagons, the settlers and
explorers, of the old West.
If their lurid tales of killer predators were to be believed, I was looking at a short, unequal scuffle on the snow before it was all over. My bones would become part of the forest, and no one would know better. They’d just think I’d packed up, and gone back to wherever I had come from.
As I hiked along the tree line I realized I was being watched … stalked. A lone, dark shadow was moving slowly along the frozen ground. Without warning the shadow broke from cover.
A huge midnight-black timber wolf.
His hide gleamed in the pale light. He headed towards me, running with the loping, loose-jointed grace of his kind.
I stopped, slipped off my pack and waited. My breath came in quick, shallow gasps. A hundred yards away he stopped, raised his head, and tried to get my wind. The air was still, so he wove through the trees, then stopped again, and looked at me.
The great beast was close enough for me to see his eyes: bright yellow and penetrating. He stood tense and alert, but made neither movement nor sound. We stood watching each other. It was weird, but I felt as if I knew him. From another lifetime. Or another realm.
I saw him for what he was: a guardian of the land. He had a timeless understanding of the mountain, the forest, the land, and the seasons. It was the kind of intelligence that was rare even for some humans.
Humans thought fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter’s paradise, but without wolves, the unchecked deer population will eat a mountain into barren ground, a lush prairie into a dust bowl.
There was a cracking sound in the woods, and the black beast whirled away, and disappeared soundlessly into the shadows. From that moment on I knew I would be staying for good. I had some money saved so I bought Old Man’s Creek, which of course, turned out to be the best decision I ever made. If I hadn’t stayed, Adam would have died.
His Frozen Heart: A Mountain Man Romance Page 16
