by C. W. Crowe
The man who was holding Lucy's feet saw the commotion and tried to turn, but I got to him before he could. I raised the rock and brought it down on his skull. It felt effortless, but I heard a crunching sound and smelled blood. I wanted to roar my victory into the air like that Raptor in the zoo, but I wasn't done yet. There was another man - another one waiting for his own rock.
I reached back into the water and my hands quickly found a stone. It was smaller and lighter, but I didn't care.
The man was still standing and I could see shock in his eyes. His hands trembled as he again raised the gun. The barrel wavered in midair and he was about to fire, but I still didn't care. I moved towards him.
Just before he pulled the trigger, Lucy rose up out of the water. She always carried that knife she had threatened me with when we first met. It was always in the waistband of her jeans and it was sharp.
She plunged the knife into the gut of the man who had been holding her and twisted it a full ninety degrees. The man got a surprised look on his face, lost his gun in the water and then started to cough until blood came up. In a moment, he keeled over and fell into the water, face first.
I heard his noises as they got slower and quieter. Soon they stopped.
Chapter Fifteen: Aftermath
Lucy looked down at the man whose head was under water. I thought for a minute she was going to grab his hair and lift his head, but she didn't.
Instead she looked at me as tears formed and her lips quivered. I was at least three feet away, but she launched herself at me with such force that I could swear she leapt right into my arms.
"Oh Leo, oh God, oh God. They were . . ."
She was squeezing me hard in her embrace, but I think I was holding her even tighter. "I know, Lucy. I know."
Then, a thought occurred to me, a very bad one. "Listen, Lucy. Do you think there are more of them? Did you hear anything?"
She pulled her face back slightly, so she could look me in the eyes. It was like she wanted to be sure I was really there. "I heard a horse whinny. Back over across the creek. Maybe they heard us from the camp and were sneaking up. When they saw me, they . . ."
A fresh pair of tears ran down her cheeks and I pulled her back to me and held her close.
Suddenly, I realized that my hands were on her bare back. I told her to hold on a minute, then I turned to the shoreline and got her towel. Without looking at her, I held it out and she took it.
"Oh God," she whispered in a new tone of voice which made me forget about modesty. She was holding the towel up to her chest, but her jeans had been pulled down slightly so that I could see her panties. Just above them was blood - what looked like a lot of it.
*.*.*
Without thinking, I lifted her in front of me. She put her arms around my neck and I started to move back to our camp as quickly as possible. "It's a cut, Lucy. The light isn't good enough to see how bad. Hold the towel on it; put some pressure on it."
She sounded like she was in shock, "I think . . . I must have done it. I was scrambling, trying to find the knife and when I did, I yanked it real hard. I didn't feel any cut though."
I was coming back to my senses now, but I wondered at how light she was. It was like she didn't weigh anything at all to me.
I walked as quickly as I could as she moved the towel on top of the cut. The trip back seemed to pass in a flash and soon I laid her down on her blanket beside the fire. I started to say something but I forgot what because I realized with a start that I was staring at her bare chest. Somehow, I'd always pictured her as completely flat chested, but that was not the case at all.
As soon as she was on the blanket I rummaged in our bag and got out our second towel. I covered her with it.
"Now, let me see the cut."
She'd been pressing down on her lower stomach, so I lifted her hand and removed the towel. My heart almost stopped again when I saw that it was now a rich red color - dyed by her blood.
Beside the stew there was a metal tea kettle of water that was heating. I dipped an edge of the towel into it and used it to wash the wound. I wiped away blood only to see a new supply start to seep out. The yellow light from the fire made the gash look black inside.
Actually, it didn't look too bad. "Does it hurt a lot?" I asked her.
"Not so much. Maybe just a little." I could tell that wasn't exactly the truth because her noises gave her away.
"I think the bleeding is stopping and it doesn't look too deep. You use the towel and keep pressure on it, okay?"
I started to rise, but she grabbed my hand before I could. "You're not leaving, are you?"
I hated to leave her, but my brain was back to normal and there were things that had to be done. "I'll only be gone a few minutes. I need to go back and get your knife and that gun. We might need them. Plus I want to find that horse if it's still around."
She nodded, but looked sad. "Okay, but Leo . . .” she paused and I waited for her to complete her thought. "Lift up your sweatshirt." I struggled to make sense of what I'd just heard. "He fired at you from really close range. Lift up your shirt so we can see if you've been shot."
I didn't feel shot, but I knew adrenalin could do some strange things - and the guy had been really close. I did as she said and was actually relieved to see only my normal chest and ab muscles.
"Look there!" said Lucy as she pointed to my right side.
It was a hole, a clean hole through the very edge of my sweatshirt.
She smiled in relief and said, "Hurry back," as she reached out with her free hand.
I took it and squeezed, "I won't be long."
*.*.*
As soon as I left her, I slipped into the center of the creek and, once again, followed it downstream. I hadn't noticed before, but the water was cool, even cold. I started to shiver a bit.
It didn't take long for me to arrive at the spot where . . . where it happened. Even in the dim light, two bodies in a shallow creek stand out.
The first thing I did was to drag them onto the bank and out of the water. Unlike Lucy, they felt heavy, but I just grabbed them by an arm and pulled until they were out. I had a vision of their arms coming off, but didn't reduce my pulling at all.
Once they were out, I did a quick search and found a box of bullets in the pocket of the one who'd tried to shoot me. I took them and then covered their bodies with some brush in case anyone wandered by looking for them. Then, I went back into the creek and found both the gun and Lucy's knife. I took care not to cut myself with it.
Next was the horse. The area on the other side of the creek was wooded and dark so I couldn't see very far, but I heard a nicker which led me to where the horse was tied to a tree. However, it turned out to not be one horse, but two. They were saddled and seemed calm, so I untied them and led them back to the creek where they both drank noisily for a couple of minutes. The last thing I did was get Lucy's clothes off a bush where's she left them - her sweatshirt and her bra.
The horses were docile, maybe tired from a long day of travel. Like always with animals, I couldn't hear any noises from them - I'd long ago guessed that I could only hear the things that made humans different from animals.
*.*.*
I decided that were probably no other people around, so half way back to Lucy, I called out to let her know I was nearby and that I had two horses.
As I emerged into the clearing, she was lying beside the fire. Off to the side were her jeans, panties, boots and the clean towel. She'd changed into a pair of pajama tops and bottoms that we'd found in a house just today. They were made of some type of soft flannel or cotton. They looked good on her.
"Has the bleeding stopped?" It was the most important thing.
"It did and then I moved around to change clothes and it started up again. It's not bad. I'll be all right in the morning."
That wasn't true and I sensed she knew it. That cut could have used a couple of stitches, but we hadn't thought to look for needles and thread.
"Well, I d
on't think we're going anywhere tomorrow, but when we do start again, we'll be able to travel in style. Meet our new transportation." Lucy smiled and I felt something stir inside me. "I've never touched a horse before, but I guess I should take off the saddles, right?"
Now she laughed and it was like music. "Yeah, just uncinch them and slide the saddles off and tie them somewhere where they can nibble on grass or brush."
She was the farm girl, so I did exactly as she said. After the horses were taken care of, I returned to find her ladling out the stew onto our two plates. She was sitting up.
"Dammit, Lucy! Please just lie back and relax. I'll bet you're bleeding again. We need to keep pressure on it and you need to be still so it can heal."
She got a pouting look on her face. "I can't eat lying down."
I shook my head and sat down beside her, pulling her so that she was leaning against me. I alternated feeding her and then me until both our plates were empty.
She lay down so that her head was in my lap and I covered her with the blanket. I felt her lose consciousness as her noises became soft and her breathing even.
I used my hand to apply pressure to the towel covering her wound. I kept it up as long as I could, but sometime during the night, as the fire burned down, I fell asleep too.
Chapter Sixteen: Lucy's Confession
Lucy wasn't able to travel the next day or even the day after that. She wanted to, kept saying she was ready, but I was very worried the cut would reopen and that it would get infected, so I told her "no" and she said, "You just want to keep looking at me down there." She had to pull down her pants a bit so I could see the whole wound, but she was careful not to go too far.
I'd frowned at her when she'd said that, but actually I'd had a pretty good look. Her waist was thin and her hip bones wide and pronounced under her skin. I tried to keep my eyes to just the wound, but they sometimes didn't cooperate.
By the third day, her cut had a nice firm scab and there were no signs of redness on her skin. Plus she was tired of being in our little nook and was, I think, getting tired of me nursing her.
It was time to leave.
As we packed up our belongings, I was happy at the prospect of tying them on the horses. We didn't have much stuff, but it was a pain to walk while carrying it around in cloth bags like we'd been doing.
And now we had even more things - mostly food. Both horse’s tack included a saddle bag and in each were supplies. There was a good supply of what I assumed to be beef jerky, though Lucy said it could be pork, or venison or even rat. Neither of us had any idea; all we knew was that it was chewy and edible.
The horses were about the same size, but one was mostly black with white spots and the other was the opposite. I looked at Lucy, "Which one do you want?"
It was a beautiful morning, the air cool and clear with the sky a deep almost-fall shade of blue. After being so worried the last few days, it felt good to again be doing something.
"I'll take the male, he keeps looking at me like he'd finally found a human that isn't ugly. You take the female since that's natural, isn't it?"
I was confused and it was obvious to Lucy. She turned to me and lifted her head, her lips parted just slightly. I didn't need any more of an invitation - I met her half way and got my fifth kiss.
She pulled away before I was ready. "Thank you, Leo, for rescuing me and taking care of me. I know I've been a little moody, but I'm going to try to let you know how I'm feeling. It's not easy for me, but I think I'm starting to trust you. Just a little bit, but it's there."
I was still smiling ear to ear from that kiss as we mounted and rode away.
*.*.*
"We should name the horses." We'd been riding them for about a an hour or so, at first keeping them very slow and then letting them simply go at the walking pace that was natural to them. I wondered if the horses had been raised together, because they seemed comfortable with each other and walked side by side without any intervention from Lucy or me.
I looked over at her and smiled. Lucy had her hair in a ponytail that stuck out of the back of a new hat she'd taken from the body of one of the men who'd attacked her. It was a blue baseball hat with a stylized A on it. Today, she looked young and healthy.
"Sure Lucy, maybe I'll call mine Spot. It's not too original though, is it?"
She glanced over at me, "No, that's not a horses' name. She's not a dog, Leo."
"Okay then, Miss Know-it-all, what do you suggest?"
She looked into the distance and, for an instant, I felt her noises change. They went from her normal daytime noises, to something that sounded like one of her dreams. She was remembering.
That went on for several seconds before she returned to normal. "Oh, I do know horse names. I know some of them quite well."
I should have kept my mouth shut and let her continue or not as she pleased, but I was still feeling the effects of that kiss. It had been the best one yet. "How did you come to be Miss Expert-of-the-World on horse names?"
Her eyes locked on mine and I could tell she was making up her mind about something. Finally, she looked away and said, "It's because of Facebook."
Facebook? I remembered it, of course, remembered being on it for hours a day, though now I couldn't really remember why.
Lucy continued, "I put up my Facebook page when I was fourteen. I'll never forget; it was my birthday and that was the day my parents said I could do it. I had to give them the password though, so they could check on me.
"On that birthday, I also got a cheap smartphone that they had bought on sale. I'd begged for one for months, so, to me, it was the greatest gift ever. Finally, I had a phone and a data plan that allowed me to do a little downloading, and I could text."
I realized at that moment, when she was open and relaxed, that she had a very good speaking voice. It had many low tones to it, but it obviously came from the throat of a female. It was smooth and I had a nonsensical thought that she sounded like silk sheets. Just then, the sun hit me and I felt warm.
"Was your family poor, Lucy?" I wanted to know more about her, why she acted like she did sometimes.
"No, Leo, we were farmers, but we weren't poor. It's just that I was an only child and my parents were . . . protective. Every Sunday we went to our little church and learned about the evils of the world. There were a lot of them; some aimed squarely at young girls on their way to being women. So my parents were careful, that's all."
I nodded my understanding and she went on with her story. "I couldn't wait to set up my Facebook page. I took a selfie, a close up of my face looking off into the distance and at an angle. I knew I wasn't pretty, but lots of ugly people had Facebook pages and put up their pictures."
Something icy made an appearance inside my chest. I pushed it aside.
"It was easy. I was careful not to put up any personal information like where I lived or anything, but I did say I loved horses. We had a couple on the farm. They weren't riding horses, though as a kid I did spend time with them, talking and telling them things."
I had a vision of little eight year old Lucy Hargrove sitting on a pile of hay, talking to her friends, the horses.
"I texted all my home school friends to let them know about my page and they all put up 'happy birthday' messages. I posted a cute video of a horse that had a cat on its back and, you know how it works, my friends shared it with others who shared it with even more people.
"I was checking my page constantly. I remember giggling when someone posted another cat video.
"Then it happened. Some smartass took my horse and cat video and took a still frame of it and combined it with my selfie photo. The horse and I were shown side by side and we were looking out into the distance at the same angle. It was quite a good job actually, showing that we both had long noses and thin faces. The caption was 'Name the Horse.' Within a minute, someone commented, 'Which one?' Many more comments followed with suggestions ranging from Secretariat to Trigger, to Mr. Ed.
"I kept the pag
e up less than a day before I shut it down and canceled my account."
I didn't know what to say. Sometimes kids had been cruel to me in school, but I'd be hard pressed to remember any specific incident today. My guess was that this one was easy for Lucy to remember, that it had been there, going along for the ride and being unwilling to fade away, for her whole life.
She pulled on the reins and stopped her horse as I followed her lead. "We should check the saddles, sometimes they loosen up and I wouldn't want you to fall off."
I jumped down to the ground. "You stay up there. No use taking a chance on opening up your cut again. I'll check the saddles."
As I did, I thought about what she'd told me. I could tell it took a lot of courage and that it wasn't a story she shared easily.
When I was done, I walked up to her and reached up with my hand. She took it. "Lucy . . . why . . ."
Another one of her habits was to know what I was going to say and then cut me off before I could say it.
"Why did I tell you this about me? It's because you deserve it, Leo. You've been nothing but kind and a gentleman to me, so you deserve to know why I'm like I am, why I'm so hard to live with. And there's another reason too - remember when I told you I kind of liked you, most of the time? Well, I like you even more now. I want to whisper to you, to tell you things. I want to hold your hand, and I even want to kiss you sometimes."
I liked the sound of that. I smiled from ear to ear.
"And I told you because, when you leave me, it'll hurt bad enough so that I won't take this kind of chance ever again."
She nudged her horse gently and started off, leaving me behind.
*.*.*
I jumped on my horse and followed her. What was I supposed to do now? Ride up and act like nothing had happened, or tell her I understood how she'd been hurt?
