by Lake, E. A.
But the image of her family stayed glued at the front of my mind. They deserved better from me. And even if I died, at least I tried. I’d want someone to do the same for my family. I would do the same for Violet’s.
“Doesn’t have to be this way,” he growled, stepping back into the ditch on the far side of the road. I mirrored his movements.
Finally, I nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
Day 123 - continued - WOP
My father sat me down one day and gave a lesson in life. To this day, I think of it all the time.
“In any negotiation, son, the person that mentions price loses.” He ended it with a hearty nod and by patting my hands. “First guy who flinches is usually the loser. You have to learn to be patient, Robert.”
A few years later, I went to buy my first car. It was a used junker and the man was asking way too much for something in that rough of shape. Still I wanted it; I wanted it bad.
“So, what’ll you give me for it?” the seller asked, trying to sound like he wouldn’t take a penny less than what he posted it for.
I almost answered right away, almost. $1,000 ran through my mind, but that was a lowball, and I knew it. Then I decided to offer $1,500, something more reasonable. But as I opened my mouth, Dad’s advice shot through my mind.
“What do you really want for it?” I asked, trying to sound as uninterested as possible.
Within five minutes he signed the title over to me and I handed him a stack of $100 bills, eight of them.
Dad wasn’t always right, but he was that time.
Watching the man’s gun instead of his eyes, I felt my breathing slow. I didn’t want to kill him. I’d killed once already and that was enough for a lifetime. But I wasn’t backing down. And I knew he’d either give in and leave or raise his weapon. I let Dad’s words echo in my thoughts…Be patient, Robert.
His gun came up quick, almost catching me off-guard. He fired a wild shot that didn’t cause me pain, so I assumed he missed.
I fired quickly, not even aiming the gun. Simply point and pull. I saw snow kick up in the ditch two feet to his right, about knee high.
He scurried for one ditch, firing three times as he did. I did the same on my side of the road, only getting off one shot in response.
Six shots had been fired at close range, less than 10 yards between us. Yet the only thing taking hits was the woods beyond each of us. Off to my right, I watched Violet make a mad dash into the woods, settling behind a windfall maybe 20 yards away.
The man shot twice more and I sensed he was zeroing in on me. I rose to fire again but he was ready. His shot struck me in the left side, knocking me on my back into the ditch.
A flurry of activity took up the next few seconds. Though I wasn’t sure where he’d hit me, I knew it was bad. Beside me, I noticed the snow peppered with red splotches of my blood. Nearer my body was a pool of it, melting the snow as I bled out.
I heard him approach, his gun extended at me. From the center of the road, he fired again. Snow and dirt blew up beside my face, maybe three inches away. Close enough to make me scream.
Feeling my own pistol still clutched in my right hand, I jerked it up as he stepped even closer. Squeezing three shots off in rapid succession, I was greeted by another shot from his gun. This one missed my right hip by a foot. When I went to pull the trigger again, I saw him collapse to the ground. I had no idea which shot hit him, but one had knocked him down.
I went to push off with my left hand when the pain blinded me. Staring down I saw the crimson snow, no longer white anywhere near my wound. I needed to be sure this was over, but my situation was desperate, I was in trouble.
A hand jerked my gun away. When I looked back, I witnessed Violet, gun in hand rushing towards the moaning man. She pointed the weapon at him.
“I said I wasn’t going anywhere with you!” Bang! “I told you to leave me alone!” Bang! “You’re nothing but a stupid creep!” Bang!
After drawing a deep breath, I silently watched Violet spit on the dead body. I didn’t know for sure at that point if he was dead, but she had shot him three more times, at point blank range. So I just assumed…
“Wow, that’s a lot of blood,“ she said, kneeling next to me. “Where you hit?” Her eyes studied my wound, my eyes stayed glued to her.
“In the side somewhere,” I moaned, reaching for the gun with my free hand. Thankfully, she gave it up without a struggle. “Is he…?” No need to ask the obvious, not all the way at least.
She glanced back at the road. “Yeah, I shot him in the middle of the chest,” she admitted, pulling my jacket up as she did. “Three times.” Violet sighed loudly. “Mom says I have anger issues.” I felt her warm hand on my side. “I suppose she could be right.”
Yeah, she did. But we had other issues that needed our immediate attention.
“Where’d he hit me?” I asked. Watching her face go through a range of contortions, I could only assume I was soon to be a dead man.
“Well, there’s a lot of blood, but I don’t see any hole in your side.” Gently she tugged at my glove and that sent a shock wave through my body.
“Crap,” she shouted. “You’re shot in the hand. Quick bury it in the snow, it’s bleeding everywhere.”
I would have thought the instant contact with the cold snow would have eased my immediate pain. Instead, another bolt of hideous pain worked its way up my arm to my head.
“We gotta get you back inside so we can stop the bleeding,” she said, pulling at me to help me sit up. “Then I gotta go get mom. She’s a nurse and she has stuff. She’ll be able to help you.”
On my feet, I almost threw up. Looking down, a string of gooey blood hung from my glove. Where I had been lying a lot more blood covered the snow.
I glanced at Violet as she led me home. “How can you stay so calm in all of this?” I asked, trying to keep my swimming vision from overtaking me.
“I’ve seen worse,” she answered. I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but my mind wouldn’t focus on anything but the pain, and the swirling woods my world had become.
“Come on,” she said, encouraging me along. “Just a few more steps…”
That’s the last I remember from that day.
Day 129 WOP
I came into consciousness in fits over the next few days. And never more than a few minutes at a time.
I remember the door slamming as Violet ran to get help. Mostly I remember that because I was sure I was going to die. I recalled her and Marge hovering over me. Great bolts of pain rendered me unconscious again when they removed my glove.
I recalled the stink of burning flesh and screams. I think they were my screams — something they had done to my hand. Water was poured down my throat as I choked on some kind of pills either Marge or Violet coaxed me to swallow.
Then I remember nothing. Not even dreams.
I awoke days later to the strangest sound I’d ever heard. It sounded like rain, which was impossible, unless I’d slept the rest of winter away. Forcing my eyes open, pain found its way back inside my head.
I actually couldn’t decide which hurt worse, my wounded hand or the stabbing at my eyes. I laid my head back down and drifted off. Until I heard singing. At that point I knew I was either delusional or dead.
A thin figure in a pink fuzzy bathrobe stood before me. On its feet were matching fuzzy bunny slippers; its head wrapped in a clean white towel.
“Are you hungry?” a feminine voiced asked. I felt her hand on my forehead. “I think you’re temperature is almost back to normal.”
She leaned closer, her nose almost touching mine. Her breath smelled like wintergreen.
“We need to get you up and moving,” she added softly. “And you smell pretty ripe. You could stand to clean up.”
Even then, I had no idea who my angel was. Her touch was kind and gentle, her voice the same. I saw the towel whip around her head as she whistled back into the kitchen. Several tussles through her hair and as the towel lowered, I
saw the hair.
“What are you doing here, Violet?” I asked, my voice croaking from non-use.
She picked up something from the counter and sipped at it. I could see steam as it drifted away. “Mom left me here to watch after you,“ she answered, raking her boney fingers through her still wet hair. “We knew you weren’t going to die, just needed watching. So she told me to stay, since you rescued me and all.”
Rubbing my eyes with my right hand, I noticed the bandage on my left. While I expected it to be blood-soaked and dripping, I was surprised it was as white as the new snow outside the cabin.
“You lost a finger,” she stated, standing over me again. She pointed at her own left hand, slightly more delicate than my own. “Your pinky, right at the base. I’m sorry.”
She sounded sincere, almost like she really cared.
“How many days…” I asked, hoping I didn’t need to finish the sentence.
She smiled at me. Taking a bite of what looked to be some type of homemade cookie.
“Six,” she answered plainly. “Do you remember anything?”
Shaking my head, I leaned back on the soft pillow that someone must have brought for me to use.
“The gunfight, the red snow, the smell of burning flesh. Maybe someone shoving things down my throat.”
She rose and stared at me. “Those were pills so you didn’t get an infection. Mom took them from the nursing home she worked at before we left Covington. The smell was from when she cauterized your wound…so you wouldn’t bleed to death.”
Violet had a way of making things sound so matter of fact. Probably her youth and her level of boredom watching a man sleep for six days.
“There was a lot of blood in the snow,” she continued. “I almost threw up when I first saw it, then my first aid training kicked in.”
She knelt beside me, feeling my forehead again. “And this is really important, okay?” I nodded. “You can’t tell anyone about me shooting that guy. Mom will have a major episode if she finds out I pulled the trigger too. You gotta promise.”
I shrugged. She’d probably saved my life; a little bending of the truth seemed like a fair trade.
“How many times was he hit?” I asked, watching the pink robe wander back towards the sink. “You shot him three times; how many times did I hit him?”
Holding up a single finger, Violet almost looked disappointed for me…or with me. “But you hit him in the throat. So that was a good shot.”
Yeah, great shot. I was aiming dead center at his chest when I pulled the trigger.
“Where’s your mom?”
Leaning over the fire, she played with her hair a little more. “Taking care of Dad, he has a bug of some sort.”
“That’s why you were in the woods, that’s right.” Some of this was coming back to me.
“Bury your head,” Violet requested. “I need to get dressed and I don’t want you perving on me.”
“How is it possible…it looks like you took a shower?” Wet hair, humidity in the air, and she appeared clean.
Tearing back the shower curtain on the tiny stall in the corner, she pointed up. “Mom and I rigged up a bucket with holes. We did the same at our pit. Warm up some water on the stove, pour it into the bucket and you have three gallons of clean water. You just need to be quick.”
I rolled over, burying my head in the soft feather pillow. “You should use the bedroom,” I said. “That would give you more privacy.”
“Yeah,” she sputtered. “Blood stained mattress, the smell of death. I’ll take my chances out here.”
All fall I’d put off dragging that mattress outside. Since I slept on the couch every night, it didn’t matter, until now.
“And who is that creepy man who keeps showing up?” she asked, the sound of jeans being pulled on filling the air.
“That would most likely be Dizzy.” Crap, that’s what I was forgetting. I was supposed to be going hunting with him.
“Well, he’s coming back tomorrow to check on you. I’m going to run and go get Mom to check up on your wound, make sure it’s healing okay.” I turned over and she stood by the door, pulling on the same coat I had first seen going down the highway. More memories flooded back.
“How come you’re staying with me?” I asked. She owed me nothing that I could think of. What I’d done for her anyone would have.
Drawing a deep breath, she floated me a mischievous grin. “I get time away from the family this way. It’s been rough being cooped up in a small place like we’re at. Here I can read, or draw, or do whatever I want. There, Mom always has some boring chore lined up for me.”
She reached for the knob but stopped mid-turn. “Plus, what you did for me…That was pretty cool. You’re okay. I’ll be back in two hours. Try to eat something by then, okay?”
I watched her disappear around the corner of the yard and down the road. While I’d prefer slightly older company, Violet’s mostly mature attitude was fine for the time being.
I stared at the shower. Maybe that would make me feel better.
Day 172 WOP
Marge decided it was mid-February, though I had thought that passed the month before. Nearly a half of year was gone and I found myself in a similar spot. No Where, the place I had almost died a few months back.
While I was unconscious, Violet found my calendar and marked the time for me. Somewhere in the middle of her one-month stay, she confessed to maybe missing a day or two. Truth be told I knew I had missed a few myself.
It didn’t really matter anymore, time. Or how we formerly perceived time. Days came and went. Months did the same. Once upon a time, at the start of winter, I spent most of my waking hours thinking about home. Now weeks passed before I could recall any of Shelly’s features.
My wife was small and slight, that much I remembered. Just how small and slight, that was not as clear. My only younger female reference for the past half year was Violet, and she was 13. And not a big 13. No, she too was small and slight.
Violet claimed to be 5-2. Okay, that made Shelly 5-5 I thought. But was she only three inches taller than the waif that chased after me every time I bumped the stump on the end of my left hand, trying to stop the bleeding? I couldn’t recall. Shelly had blond hair, sort of. Maybe more sandy blond, the type of color somewhere between golden blond and all out brown.
Shelly’s teeth were straight. Braces had been slapped on at an early age and she still wore a retainer to bed the last night I remembered from home. She had a lotion that she covered herself in before bed that smelled like honeysuckle. I could almost smell it, sitting on the couch, watching the snow fall again.
I remembered waking up to the fresh fragrance found in my wife’s hair. I never knew what shampoo she used; we had separate bathrooms and showers. When we did shower together, I was too busy with other things to do something as mundane as seek out her cleanser.
The bottle left in my crude shower in the cabin had the same fragrance. It drove me insane each time I caught a whiff of it. I wept alone at night, wondering if I would be home again, not here home but truly home.
My injury had a dreaded repercussion on my body — I’d lost a lot of weight. And just from a gunshot to the hand. I wondered how much more I would have wasted away if I had been shot in the thorax.
Once spring came, I had hoped to be on the road, Chicago bound. But the loss of significant weight made that seem like a dream. I’d first have to gain back the weight and strength required for a 400-mile walk. I had resized my belt twice already during this time. The slack on my waist signaled another round was due.
“You’re gonna have to put on twenty pounds at least,” Dizzy warned on one of his afternoon visits. “If you plan on making that trip, that is.”
Sitting next to him on the couch, I heard the concern his tone may or may not have intended to leak.
“I need to try,” I countered, depression filling my soul.
“I get it. I do. But,” he paused, seeming to search for the right phrase,
“you might not make it, you know. People are claiming the roads will be full of vultures this spring. Desperate people, desperate times.”
“I need Shelly,” I stated. But he’d heard this all before, many times. “I need my wife.”
“You could have Marge, now that Warren’s gone,” he replied, trying to give me options.
Warren’s bug turned out to be a serious infection caused by a wood saw he scraped across his leg. By the time Marge discovered the true source of the fever, two weeks had passed. A week later Dizzy dug his shallow grave in the still frozen snowscape.
“They all moved in with Lettie, you know,” he added. “She’s been pressed depressed ever since. You two could hit it off.”
“I’m not interested in a romance with Marge, Dizzy. She’s almost twice my age.”
“What about Violet? She seems pretty sweet on you.”
My mouth dropped open as I glared at my friend. “I’m not interested in a child either. I want Shelly.”
He shifted on the couch, away from me, sensing my irritation with his ideas. “Lettie says there’s trouble all over. Covington’s rotten, Amasa is bad. She even heard word that Green Bay has been overrun by some kind of flu. People dying in droves down there. Everywhere I guess.”
And that left me here, smack dab in the middle of Shit’s Creek. Too weak to run, too strong to die.
“There’s got to be more than just surviving, Dizzy. There has to be.”
He rose and strolled to the window. “Another man came through last week. Had a dozen followers or so. You see them on the road?”
I nodded once. I had seen their group, all dressed in dark clothes, looking like their last bath came days before this all happened. But I didn’t give a damn about whatever kind of crap they might be spreading.
