I stopped reading and attuned my senses towards Kit. “Are you a misogynist?”
Fourteen
Lara
“What?” he seemed genuinely shocked. “I … uh, no. No, I’m not. I respect women.”
“Hmm …”
“Are you seriously trying to equate me with a fictional character?” His tone was not offended, rather it was curious, probing.
“Not really, but it is interesting that you chose this particular book.”
“Is the subject matter too unpalatable for you?” he countered softly.
I could feel him staring at me intensely. I felt as if there was much riding on that question. That he would have been disappointed if I had said yes. His gaze was like a physical caress on my skin and it made my fingers itch. I was dying to map his face so I could know exactly who I was dealing with.
“The subject matter doesn’t bother me,” I said finally, taking another sip of tea. It had gone cold.
“Would you like fresh tea?” he asked.
“Why, thank you,” I said, surprised that he had noticed.
I heard him stand and go to the kettle. “So what’s the problem?”
While he was opening the container with the tea bags in it, I tapped my fingertips restlessly against the table. “It’s just that you obviously knew what this book was about, and I am willing to bet you’ve already read it at least once. And yet you wanted me to read it aloud. What’s that about?”
He fidgeted with something that was lying on the counter near where the kettle was boiling.
“I just wondered what it would be like to hear someone else read it.”
I knew instinctively that he was not telling the whole truth. “Not someone else,” I guessed slowly. “A woman. A female voice reading a book about a man who celebrates being prejudiced against women.”
There was more shifting. He seemed uncomfortable that he had gotten to a point of such scrutiny. “It’s not like that,” he denied.
“What is it like then?” I pressed.
“I am not prejudiced against women,” he shot back. “One of my best battle buddies was a woman. She served with me in the sandbox and damned if she wasn’t the best of the best. She could take heat from anybody and give it right back. I was impressed with her, always will be.”
“You were in the military with her?” I didn’t know why, but I held my breath. Maybe I would always hold my breath when people talked about the military.
“We were in Mosul together.”
A spear pierced my heart, right where the grief had resided for years. Just waiting to remind me of my terrible loss. I could still feel their faces, the warmth of their skin. I turned away from them angrily. It was useless to dwell on the past. They were gone forever, like a river running away from me. No matter how much I wanted them to come back they never would.
I took a deep breath. My voice when it came out was accusing and unnecessarily combative, and I regretted it even before I finished speaking. “Why would someone who claims a woman was one of his best battle buddies enjoy a story about a man who has no use for women as anything but sex objects?”
For a few seconds he didn’t reply. I knew he was surprised by the venom in my voice. I nearly apologized.
“To see how the other half lives,” he said lightly.
I laughed out loud, relieved that he had deliberately not responded to my rudeness. He didn’t join me in my mirth and something told me that I’d gone and hung my saddle on the wrong horse. He was not a misogynist. There was something far more important than John Self’s degradation of women that was at play here. My laughter died suddenly and I got serious.
“So, really … why this book?”
There was a long moment of shuffling from Kit’s side of the table. “Because it’s about a guy trying to figure out who he is. Trying to make his way through a shitstorm of what’s not real to find what is.”
“But there are many other books out there about someone trying to find themselves,” I pushed. “Why this particular one?”
“Because … I don’t know, okay?”
His defensiveness made me lean back against the chair. “You do know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
He got up from his chair, suddenly, his chair screeching on the floor, making me jump. He walked away, big angry steps, and came back a moment later to pour fresh, hot tea into my cup. He put the teapot down with a slight thud. Whatever he was feeling it was being tightly controlled. “Why do you care?” he asked. There was a flare of pain in his voice.
I was startled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Most people around here think I’m a fucking axe murderer and my wife is buried under the floor of my woodshed.”
“You know about that?” I blurted out.
“Someone should teach the good folk of Durango Falls how to whisper.” There was neither bitterness nor malice in his voice. He didn’t care what they thought.
I grinned. “They do speak loud enough to wake the dead, don’t they?”
“I’m surprised my poor dead wife hasn’t risen up from under the floorboards and gone to haunt them,” he said dryly.
I laughed and imagined him smiling, his lips turned up, the smooth scars on his face stretching. We stopped laughing at about the same time. A strained pause followed. I felt the face of my watch. I had already been there for forty minutes.
“Tell me the truth, Kit. Why is this book so important to you? Please. I’d like to know.”
I heard him shuffling his boots on the floor. When he spoke his voice was halting, distant, as if he was looking back far into the past. “I knew someone once. He was my half-English buddy. His mother was from England. She didn’t want him to enlist. She used to call him all the time and cry like a baby for him and beg him to come back. We all used to leave the room when she called. It was heartbreaking. I don’t know how he could bear it. I think she always knew that he wouldn’t come back to her.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood. That is exactly how I felt when my brother enlisted and left for Afghanistan. I knew he was not coming back. But just his friend, no matter how much I cried and pleaded with him, he was determined to fight for his country. I clenched my fists tightly to stop the tears that prickled at the backs of my eyes.
“At night he would take this book out of his bag and read it. It was his favorite book. He tried to get me to read it, but I gave up after a few pages. It was not my kind of book. A pussy whipped, self-indulgent sap like John Self was not my idea of a hero.”
He made a raw sound in his throat.
“Then Nigel got hit. Friendly fire. Fucking worst two words in the dictionary. You die like a dog on foreign fucking soil for nothing. As he lay white with pain in the truck he bawled for his mother. There was not a single thing any of us could do. We just sat there and watched him bleed out. When they went to tell his mother I heard that she slapped the men who brought the message.”
He paused and took a deep breath of regret or pain.
“After a month the book came to me in the post. He had left it to me in his will. I sat down and read it from cover to cover. And I heard the words in his voice. I realized that we are all John Self. Every fucking one of us. Lost in our vices, drinking too much, eating too much, watching too much porn, indulging ourselves.”
He sighed heavily. “I guess I wanted you to read it to see if it would still sound the same,” he said.
“Does it?”
One of his wolves howled outside. Inside, the air was thick with some strange emotion.
“No,” he whispered finally. “You’re not tainted like the rest of us.”
Before I could say anything further, his voice turned gruff again. “It’s almost time for you to go. Let’s stop here and I’ll drive you home.”
Fifteen
Lara
“Cause if you don’t leave this town,
you might not make it out.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4pi1LxuDHc
I walked out of the post office excited about the new batch of gold paint in my backpack, dreaming of how I would mix it with that warm color called pink. I thought about how I’d splatter it on the mermaid’s sculpture I was working on, almost certainly on the tail, when I came to a sudden stop.
“Hello Sheriff,” I greeted. Sheriff Bradley had never been anything but polite and solicitous to me, but I didn’t like him. Never had. Probably never would. From the time I was a kid, something about him made my skin crawl. And he knew it too.
“I hear you’re working for Carson now,” he said. He was smoking, and I felt the smoke in my face. Because I couldn’t see he thought I wouldn’t know that he had deliberately blown it in my face.
“Yeah, I’m reading for him twice a week,” I said, waving the smoke from my face.
“He’s not doing anything weird or kinky to you, is he?”
I felt so angry I wanted to punch his face. I knew exactly where that smoke hole was too. “No, he’s not,” I said tightly. “He’s actually a gentleman.”
“A gentleman?” he sneered.
I heard him widen his stance into a challenging pose. “So why does he need a blind girl to read to him?”
I shrugged casually. “He just doesn’t want anyone to see his face.”
“Isn’t that weird?”
“No, it’s not, Sheriff Bradley. It’s not. He’s a shy, kind man who has scars.”
“Does he ever … touch you, or do you hear him … er … touching himself?”
I felt my hands clenching with fury. “No. He has never behaved inappropriately with me.”
“Good. You will tell me if he tries anything, won’t ya? I take care of my flock.”
“You’ll be the first person I come to if he tries anything, Sheriff,” I said. Not. I’d rather cut my right arm off than go running to him.
“I’ll be seeing you, then. Good day.”
I nodded and waited until he passed me by.
This was the beginning. Soon the whole town would be warning me, and telling me I was making a big mistake. That my very honor was at stake. I walked over to the library still hopping mad. Thank god Elaine was there. I took my knitted cap off.
“Can you believe Sheriff Bradley asked me if Kit was touching me, or himself during our reading session? The man’s an ass!” I fumed.
“Oh, Lara. You better get used to it. You know the whole town is going to wonder … and they’re going to make up a ton of stuff about you and him. The best way to deal with it is to give them some details so they can’t make stuff up.”
I gasped. “Are you serious?”
“Of course. You tell me exactly what’s going on and I’ll pass it on.”
I shook my head in wonder. “Elaine. Nothing is going on. I’m just reading to him.”
“Lara. You’re going to have to do better than that. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to believe that shit. Come on. At least tell me that he tried it on and you slapped him down.”
“What? No. He didn’t do any such thing.”
“Of course he didn’t. But it does sound good, doesn’t it?”
My jaw dropped. “Elaine Crockett, this time you’ve gone too far. Kit Carson is a good man, and I don’t want you spreading any more lies about him. If I hear anything bad about him, I’ll swear I’ll never speak to you again,” I said, and turning around I began to walk towards the entrance. I was so furious my hands were shaking. Elaine ran after me and grabbed my arm.
“All right. All right. I won’t say anything bad about him,” she coaxed.
I drew a shaking breath. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I’m gonna trust you, Elaine, to keep to your word. That man has suffered enough. He’s a really nice guy, and I don’t want to hurt him any more than he has already been.”
“It’s not like he’s going to know, is it?”
“For your information he already knows all the horrible things the townsfolk have been saying about him.”
“How?” she asked, sounding quite startled.
“How do you think?”
“Well, I can’t be responsible for people who can’t keep their voices down,” she said defensively.
“Please, Elaine, I beg of you. Don’t start any nasty rumors about him and me. Think of me if you can’t think of him.”
She grabbed my shoulders and planted a noisy kiss on my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Lara. You know I love you. I just get carried away sometimes. I’ll never do anything to hurt you.”
I frowned. “What about him?”
She sighed dramatically. “Yes, I won’t do anything to hurt him either.”
I grasped her hands in mine. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Want some oatmeal cookies?” she offered, completely changing the subject.
I hesitated. “Who made them?”
“Ma.”
“You just promised not to do anything to hurt me.”
She laughed. “Just kidding. Grandma baked them.”
“Lead me to them, and be quick about it, will ya?” I said with a grin.
Sixteen
Kit
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
-Bob Marley
I sat in my pickup and stared at her as she crossed the snowy carpark. It was like watching an angel, all blonde and glorious, come towards me. I got out, went around to the passenger side, and held the door open.
“Hello, Mr. Carson,” she greeted as she got nearer.
“Miss Young,” I said formally, but there was that lilt in my voice that only came when she was around.
Today she had brought a faint but extremely delicious scent with her. I sniffed the air as she climbed into the truck. It was coming from her backpack.
With a song in my heart I went around to my side. Inside the truck the smell intensified. It hit me in the gut the moment I got in, and damn near knocked me flat. My reaction was the equivalent to what you’d see when my wolves catch the scent of warm rabbit. I started salivating. I felt the empty, hungry hole right through my middle. My stomach growled so loudly she had to have heard it.
Her voice was chipper and full of laughter. “I’m glad you’re hungry, because I brought cupcakes for us.”
No kidding, can I have some, how many are there, can I have more than one, come in, come in! It was a long, long time since vanilla icing melted away in my mouth.
“It sure smells good,” was what I actually said. “Thank you.”
I lived with the scent of those luscious things all the way back, which I admit made me drive a whole lot faster than I usually would on dangerous roads. I parked as close to the house as I could. Fortunately, there had been a break in the cold spell and getting into the house wasn’t as treacherous. Except for Chepi who came for a quick, wary rub. The other wolves hung around at a safe distance. I didn’t hold Lara, or anything like that, but I watched her like a hawk as she made it up the path to the house.
As soon as I opened the front door she walked in and made straight for the kitchen. She put her backpack on the kitchen table and pulled out a box of cupcakes from it. I was impressed by how quickly she had learned her way around the house. When she turned back to look at me she pegged where I was right away, as though she could actually see me. Her sense of direction was uncanny.
“Nothing like sweet cupcakes to go along with a bitter book,” she said.
I had to grin at that. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“Will you have some tea with me?” she asked.
I didn’t have it in me to say no and that was how I wound up sitting across the table from an angel in disguise, taking small sips of something that tasted like hot dishwater from a chipped cup (I gave her the good one) while she opened up the box of cupcakes.
It was damn near surreal, that cozy scene right there in my kitchen.
I looked at the cupcakes, at how perfectly iced and decorated they were, and paused. “Did you buy these?”
“No, I made them. I am
a fantastic baker,” she said, without any false modesty. Reaching into the box she brought out a cupcake for me, then one for herself. “I can’t cook worth a damn, but I can bake like nobody’s business.”
“But that’s really … intensive work, right? Lots of tiny measurements?”
She shrugged. “I like that part of it. I know it seems like it would be hard for me, but it’s not. I like a world that can be measured and planned out. I do it to relax. Especially when people annoy me.”
I stopped peeling the sparkly paper off the cake. Was that a hint? “Has someone been annoying you?”
“Don’t worry it’s not you,” she said with the biggest grin I had ever seen. I loved her grin. It was so open, trusting and vulnerable. There was nothing behind it. You could trust it.
I watched as she broke her cupcake in half, then turned the top of it upside down. With a naughty smile she pushed the two halves together, squishing the icing in between the two layers. It oozed out one side onto her slim fingers. I watched as she licked it from her skin.
My body suddenly didn’t want to behave. I shifted in my seat and I stared at her hungrily. I wanted to fucking eat her, not the cake.
Holding her cupcake like a cheeseburger she leaned forward and, opening her mouth wide, took a generous bite out of the sweet sandwich. When she pulled back, her whole mouth was covered with icing and her eyes were closed with pleasure.
“I am such a fucking good baker!” she growled.
The laugh came out of nowhere, bubbling out of me faster than I could control it. Ah, hell, why not? I let it roll out, booming out my chest like thunder far too close. It felt so good that I did it again.
Then Lara took another bite, and with her mouth stuck out her tongue like a child, and damned if it wasn’t funny, if I didn’t absolutely lose it. I laughed so hard it hurt – my ribs, my chest, my throat, my lips, all of it actually ached. Lara laughing hard seemed to keep me going, too–it was contagious.
In the midst of that surprise pleasure, a strange thought came to me:
How long had it been?
How long had it been since I laughed with another human being? Really, truly laughed? My mind went back through the long years I had spent in that house, and I finally came up with an answer. Never! The last time I had laughed was when I saw the littlest wolf, Benjamin, go after a snowshoe hare, and go tip over top through the snow. He came up with a look of such complete surprise that I had to laugh at the little booger.
Blind Reader Wanted Page 5
