On any other day the woods would have felt perfect to me. The air was cold but not bitter, the sky overcast, everything still and quiet. We made such a lot of racket, though, the six of us. Merwin and Andy especially seemed to crash along through the underbrush, snapping twigs and crunching leaves. It made me glad. Surely the deer would hear us and run far, far away, to safety.
I was starting to recognize familiar terrain, where Emma and I had walked less than two weeks before. That day seemed years ago. Suddenly we came upon the meadow, Reggie's meadow, and I thought my heart would stop from fear. But the meadow was empty, just the tall grasses and low shrubs, motionless in the still air.
Something in the stillness of the air, the utter quiet of that moment, brought me up short. It was as if there had been a voice in my head talking non-stop for the past few weeks that had suddenly, abruptly fallen silent. Sherman Kyle had been walking beside me; now he pulled a few paces ahead, his footfalls sounding like small explosions. In the midst of that great silence, without thinking, I knelt down and put my palm, gently, upon the earth. It was alive.
“Danger.” I heard this word, soft as a whisper, fluttering inside my chest.
My head snapped up. I stood, and looked back across the meadow from where we had come.
“Man-child?”
It was Reggie, thirty yards or so behind us. The entire universe stood still. I mouthed the word “run.”
“Go on, son,” Sherman whispered. He was beside me. “You seen him. You go on.”
No, I thought. No.
“No,” I said aloud. And then I yelled: “No! Run, run!” and I ran toward Reggie, waving my arms in the air like some big, crazy bird. I seemed to be running in slow motion. I could see my father, far to my right, his face turned to me, and closer to me, not twenty feet away, Harmon, startled, almost stumbling, but at the same time raising his rifle to his shoulder. I ran harder, trying to shout, but I only covered a few more feet of ground when all at once there was a pop, and a raging, buzzing sound, and I was flying, burning, tumbling, and crashed through the brush, face down in the dirt.
“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus!” I heard.
“I didn't... oh Jesus!” It was Harmon's voice, in a pitch much higher than normal. “I didn't see him!” Harmon was almost shrieking, from some far distance away. Harmon shot me, I thought. Harmon shot me. It took a while for the thought to sink in.
“Thomas!” I heard. It was my father. I wanted to answer him.
I felt so odd. I felt a great burning in my back, only it was as if it were someone else's back. I was like a balloon deflating. I realized I was cold. I was lying very still and yet I felt like I was running in place, or, no, just that my heart, my body was rushing toward something. I had a mouthful of dirt and leaves, and I couldn't spit it out. The wind was rushing and I was cold. I couldn't taste the dirt.
“Thomas!”
I was looking up at my father. Then there was a great commotion, they were trying to lift me, and half dropped me, and there were sounds, yelling, and they set me down.
“Oh Thomas, why?” I heard. “Why are you here?”
Emma. She was leaning over me, pressing my shoulders to the ground with her hands, looking me at me with great concentration. She looked up and around, shaking her head, her face creased with dismay, the light flying off her hair. I felt I was a tiny spot, miles away from her. I wanted to walk to her, but it was so far; it would take forever. There were some things I needed to tell her. Finally she pulled me up into her arms, holding me, rocking me.
“It's all right,” she said. “My dear Thomas, it's all right.”
She held me and I was almost broken by the pain that burned through me. I grabbed her as tightly as I could. It wasn't just my pain, but hers as well—ours. We seemed in a world apart for just that fraction of time. But then there was another commotion around me, around us; the men were trying to separate us.
I tried to cry out. I felt my head flop backward. I could see my father, poised above us. His hands were on my shoulders, grasping me, ready to pull me from Emma.
“Let me hold him]” I heard her cry. Her voice was raspy, strange.
“We should get him to the truck,” I heard Sherman say. “Now.”
They tried to pull Emma to her feet. She was still holding me. I was clutching her with what strength I had. I tried to say the word “No.” I tried to hold on to her. Emma fell to one knee, cradling me even tighter against her.
“Give me time,” she whispered. “A little time.”
My father was trying to pull Emma and me apart, but for the briefest moment he hesitated. The moment became an eternity. For the first time in my life I saw real fear in my father's eyes. I was willing him to make the right decision. I couldn't speak or move but my heart called to him: Let her hold me. I could see anguish on his face. He was staring into my eyes. How could I make him understand? Finally, his eyes left mine and he looked past me into the trees beyond.
“God help me,” he said quietly.
Then, more loudly: “Let her be. Merwin, give Sherman the keys. Run, bring the vehicle through as close as you can.”
“Can you walk with him?” my father asked Emma.
“Not now,” she breathed. “Soon.”
“Run, Sherman,” my father said sharply.
I collapsed with relief ever further into Emma's embrace, and closed my eyes. Then all was darkness, and silence.
Chapter 7
At first, I was simply aware of being aware. No sound or sight or feeling. It seemed to me that a long time ago something important had happened, but I couldn't remember what it might have been. Gradually, I noticed that I was warm. I realized that there was a very small circle of light some distance away from me. For a time, that was all I was aware of; I was warm, instead of cold, and there was this small circle of light.
It's like being at the bottom of a well, looking up, I thought.
I sensed, almost like one picks out a faint aroma on the breeze, that there was a great deal of activity somewhere far away from me. I wasn't aware of pain, or of having a body at all. But then I remembered: Harmon shot me.
“Emma, where am I?” I asked, or thought, or thought aloud.
I wasn't really expecting an answer, but I got one.
“Emma's done all she can for you,” came a deep, old, voice that I had heard only once, but was sure I recognized. It wasn't so much that I heard it now. I felt it, felt the voice within me.
“Mr. Nash?”
“Thomas.” .
There was a long silence.
“Where are we?”
“That depends on you, young man.”
He was angry with me. There was no tenderness in his voice, none of the affection I heard so often in Emma's voice.
“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”
“That's as may be. What are you going to do now?” Another silence.
“Harmon shot me.”
“That he did. What do you think about that?”
“He didn't mean to. He should have been more careful. I should have been more careful.”
“Hmmm.”
“I shouldn't have been there at all.”
“Emma is of the opinion that you needed to be there.”
“Is she all right?”
“It depends. Everything changes. You might bear that in mind, young man. Everything changes.”
“Yes sir. I am sorry.”
All this time there was just this warm darkness, and this small circle of light. It wasn't so much that we were speaking. I couldn't see Mr. Nash; I couldn't see any part of myself for that matter, or hear the sound of my voice. In a strange, unsettling way it was how I might have imagined talking to God would be, although I had never thought of God as being so cross, or having such a deep country accent.
“Mr. Nash, am I dead?”
“Dead,” he repeated, as if considering the word. “No son, you're not dead. Let me ask you again, what are you going to do now?”
“I ... I do
n't know that I can do anything. I want to see Emma, to see if she's all right. I want to tell Harmon that I'm okay. I want to see my dad. I don't know. I want to see you.”
I felt a bolt of pain shoot through me, more fierce than anything I had ever felt in my life, and that tiny sphere of light exploded in a silent fireball that completely engulfed me in an instant. I lurched forward, and then fell back, and realized for the first time that I was lying on a bed, or a stretcher. The white sphere of light was gone. Everything was a faint, faint white, a dark white, if such a thing is possible. I was lying back, the pain ebbing, ebbing, unable to move. And there was Mr. Nash.
“I know it hurts, son,” he said, a gentleness appearing in his voice for the first time. “It's going to hurt for a while.”
He laid his hand on my arm. He was old, in his nineties I would have guessed, but his hand was strong.
His face was long and deeply wrinkled; he was nearly bald; he had very big ears. I liked the look of him. The pain bucked through me again, and faded more quickly. We were alone in what seemed to be a little alcove, a strange, dark-white space suspended all by itself somewhere.
Mr. Nash stood beside me, and gently pressed his hand on my stomach and up across my chest.
“I don't like the feel of your back,” he said. “You'll need to work with that.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, my eyes closed against the pain, my breath coming in sharp little pieces. I could feel his hands working through me; everywhere he worked there was so much pain.
“You can stand a little pain; that's good,” Mr. Nash said, to himself as much as to me it seemed, then more loudly. “The bullet about destroyed one of your vertebra. Emma reshaped it and I've done what I can but there's some damage there. You're going to carry that pain with you.”
“It's all right,” I said.
“It'll have to be,” he said.
His hands worked slowly, deftly. I felt like a lump of dough, a loaf of bread he was gently kneading into just the perfect shape. I watched him, mesmerized, knowing he was doing just what Emma had taught me about. My breathing came easier and fuller.
“How are you doing, there, son?” Mr. Nash asked.
“I'm fine, I'm fine,” I said quickly, not wanting him to stop.
“Yes, well, fine as you'll get right now,” he said, and stepped back from me.
“We've about got you ready to go back to your family,” he said.
“Thank you sir,” I answered, hesitant.
“What is it, then?”
“I want to keep learning the things Emma taught me,” I said. “I want...” I came up short; Mr. Nash was eyeing me with such critical appraisal.
“I want to do what you do,” I said weakly.
“It's best to forget all that,” he said.
“Forget?”
“You're young,” he said. “You have things to do. Go to school, meet girls, find some work for yourself. Maybe someday, down the road, we'll talk again.”
“I know the work I want to do,” I said, and with the greatest of effort I held his gaze, my eyes locked on his. Everything Emma had taught me, everything that I wanted someday to be, welled up inside me and forced me to withstand the fierce, relentless power of Mr. Nash's gaze. To the surprise of us both, perhaps, my determination held. Finally, finally, he smiled, looked down at my chest, and began tapping there—hard, slowly, with his sharp forefinger.
“I'll leave that up to Emma, then,” he said. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Work from your heart, Thomas, if you're going to work. Always from your heart.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Empty yourself of opinions. Empty yourself of pride.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “And, Thomas, the next time someone asks you—”
“Yes sir?”
“Say ‘I . . .’”
TAP
‘“Bring . . .’”
TAP
“‘Strength!’”
And with that he slapped the living hell out of me.
I shot bolt upright in bed and slammed my forehead into the forehead of the unfortunate young emergency room doctor who was leaning over me, listening to my chest through a stethoscope. I fell back on the bed and grabbed my head, the great wooden “thonk!” of our collision still echoing in both our ears, I'm sure. The pain was such that it made me laugh. I looked up and saw so many concerned, surprised, anxious faces that I almost laughed again. And just behind the cluster of doctors and nurses and technicians I saw a balding old man in an old weathered coat, his finger to the side of his nose—our little secret, the gesture said—wink at me and leave the trauma room.
“Wow,” I said to the doctor, rubbing my forehead, smiling. “Sorry about that.”
He smiled back at me, a look of frank astonishment in his eyes. “I'm okay,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“I'm fine,” I said, looking at all the faces peering at me. I tried to move a little in the small stretcher. Mr. Nash wasn't kidding about my back.
“My back hurts,” I said.
“Heh,” the doctor suppressed a laugh, which was more than some of the others did. They seemed a pretty happy bunch, the nurses and all. There were so many people in such a small space, all staring at me. I found myself suddenly wanting to be left alone.
“You're a very lucky fellow,” the doctor told me. “We thought for a minute there . . . well, it doesn't matter what we thought. You're a very lucky fellow,” he said again.
“I want to see Emma,” I said.
“Emma?” the doctor looked around. “Is that the woman who ...”
At that moment my father burst through the door and plowed through the people around me, my mother close in his wake. He took me in his arms, holding me. I kept telling him that I was okay, but he wouldn't let go. He was crying, my mother was crying. It scared me almost, and, I'm sad to say, I was embarrassed that they were crying over me in front of all those strangers.
It seems awful, or hard-hearted, to recall now, but I felt a bit exasperated by the whole thing. I assured everyone that I was all right, and somehow I expected that to be enough, that we could just leave the hospital and go home. But of course to the doctors and nurses I had more or less miraculously come back from the brink of death. I soon learned that a thirty-caliber bullet had passed through me, clean through, with a big entry wound and a great gaping exit wound in my chest. By all accounts, I should have died on the spot. But they assumed that clearly the bullet had missed hitting any major organs; and, by some process that no one could understand, no one but me, I had only two raw, red, fleshy scars, front and back, rather than the two open wounds logic required I should have. It was like there was a certain audacity to what I had done, surviving in this way; the people at the hospital were delighted with me and baffled by me at the same time. And they simply would not leave me alone.
I wanted to see Emma.
I told them, leaving out rather a lot, who Emma was, and the staff said they would set about trying to reach her family. At first I couldn't get them to tell me what was happening with her, but finally they admitted that she was not doing well. She was upstairs, on the floor above me, in the Intensive Care Unit. I badgered the nurses relentlessly to let me go see her. My father spoke with the doctor. They came together to my bedside.
“I guess I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't visit your friend,” the doctor said, frowning slightly with evident concern.
“I'll be fine,” I said bluntly.
“It's okay, Tom,” my father said. He went and got a wheelchair, and helped me into it. He wheeled me to an elevator, and we went up to the next floor in silence.
When we got to the door of her room I craned my neck around, wincing from the pain in my back, to look up at my father.
“I need to see her alone,” I said.
“Okay,” he said quietly. He didn't release his grip on the wheelchair.
“Tell her ...” he began, but then he shook his head. After a moment he gave me a faint smile, and touched my face with his hand. Then he walked slowly down the hall to the elevator.
I opened the door to her room and slowly, awkwardly wheeled myself in. She was so old. That was the first thing I saw. She seemed to have aged twenty years that afternoon. Her face was pale and oddly puffy. I fought back tears. The door slipped shut behind me, and for a long while I just sat there and looked at her. I was too sad, too ashamed to take her hand, or to speak. I sat hunched in the wheelchair, wishing to heaven that the whole thing had not happened, that I had never gone hunting that day, that Emma was well and strong.
“Thomas?”
Her voice was faint; it startled me to attention. Her face was toward me, a slight smile on her lips.
“Emma? Are you okay?”
“I've been better,” she said slowly.
I think my face, already downcast, fell even further.
“I'm fine, child,” she said. “I'll always be fine. Don't worry.”
“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for what happened.”
I was crying. She lifted her hand, and let it fall. I put my hand on top of hers.
“Everything will be well,” she said. “Leave me for a while, but don't worry. Think healing thoughts.”
I managed to wheel myself out of the room, banging into a side table, the wall, tears flowing down my face.
Downstairs, there was concern and repeated questions over my crying. Everyone seemed intensely aware of everything I did or said, of every expression on my face, as if I might suddenly decide to die after all. They were moving me to a room on the same floor as Emma, to keep me for a day or two of “observation.” I found it intolerable that they wouldn't simply leave me alone.
It took some time to get me into my room. My parents stayed quite a while, not talking much, but clearly not wanting to leave. I wanted to be alone. I told them I was tired, and they left, reluctantly, so that I could sleep. Once they were gone I began, with almost feverish intensity, to try and generate a circle of healing that would encompass and support Emma, cursing myself all the while for not practicing the week before as she had so particularly asked me to do. But I was exhausted, and in spite of my intention to maintain this vigil through the night, I quickly fell into a deep, deep sleep.
The Healer of Harrow Point Page 9
