It was the suffocating darkness that did it. The flashes, the bangs, the light, the sound, and the sickening stench of blood and bowels could weave in and out through my dreams, and somehow, none of that bothered me. At least not on a level I was aware of. But when the action in the dream stopped, that’s when I stopped being able to identify anything as a dream. I could no longer separate myself from what was happening. Because my dreams were like watching the worst possible movies with surround sound and a complete sensory experience.
But the darkness, the small space getting smaller. The pine box being lowered into the ground. The patter-patter-patter of dirt being tossed on top of the box, that was happening to me. I couldn’t move my arms to try to claw my way out. I couldn’t catch my breath to scream.
I woke up with a jolt. Sweat covered my body. I tossed my arms around and sucked in air. My room was too dark. I launched out of bed, hitting the light switch on the far wall. I paced back and forth a few times, trying to get my pulse to settle.
This wasn’t going to work. I grabbed my robe and headed downstairs. I needed a distraction, I needed lungsful of cool air under a wide-open sky.
“Fuck.” The air was colder than I anticipated as I stepped out onto the back stoop. The socks on my feet were not thick enough to keep my toes warm. I didn’t care, I needed to get out from under the ceiling. The sky opened above me, blanketed with stars. I let out a heavy breath. I was not being shipped home in a pine box.
I stood out there, staring into the night sky until I couldn’t handle the cold. I didn’t exactly want to go inside, but I would get frostbite if I stayed out in just my pajamas and robe. I already couldn’t feel my toes.
Turning on every light as I made my way through the house, I blessed my great-grandfather for high ceilings. Calvin’s baseball sat on the table next to my laptop. There were some days it wasn’t out of my sight, and others, I barely remembered its existence. It was going to be with me all day today.
I gripped it firmly in my hand and climbed the stairs. I might as well get dressed. It wasn’t like I’d be able to close my eyes again tonight.
After countless hours of hauling and sorting, I found myself in need of a pair of long-nosed pliers. I headed into the barn. It was full of tools. There was bound to be pliers and any tool I could think of out there. Only it was so packed in with boxes and old furniture, there was no way I would find what I needed this week.
I went back into the house to grab my coat. Without thinking, I put Calvin’s ball in my pocket before grabbing my keys. A short drive later, I parked in front of the hardware store. I had a mental list to pick up a few essential tools—a hammer, a wrench set, screwdrivers, and long-nosed pliers.
As I got out of the truck, I saw Ruby glide toward me, her posture on the board relaxed even with an oversized backpack hanging behind her.
“Your sister let you back on your skateboard?” I called out.
She stepped off the board with a few jogging steps before stepping on the back end of the board, popping its wheels off the ground. She caught it with ease.
She was a better skater than I had realized when I saw her lose control and fall a few days earlier.
“Like she could stop me.”
“You’re really good at that, aren’t you?” I asked. “Are you feeling better?”
“Oh, so you’re being all nice now?” Ruby was as transparent as a window, and she was angry with me.
“What did I do?” I only took her to the ER and stuck around until her sexy sister showed up and then didn’t leave when I probably should have because I wanted to stick around and have Kenzie smile at me again. And I didn’t come back with her skateboard.
“Are you mad at me because I had to leave your skateboard with the nurse?” I asked.
“You said you’d come back, and you didn’t.” Her lower lip protruded in a pout.
I leaned back and crossed my arms. “That first nurse wouldn’t let me back in to see you. She said family only.”
“You could have told her you were my dad.”
I chuckled. I was certainly old enough to be her father. Some days, I didn’t feel that old. The other day, being around Ruby and Kenzie, I certainly hadn’t felt my age. And then there were days like today where I felt every day of my age and then some.
I shook my head. “She already knew we weren’t related.”
“Well, you could have waited for us in the waiting room,” she said.
“You’re right, I could have. But that hadn’t occurred to me. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I like the color you picked,” I said, nodding toward her cast.
She lifted her arm and glanced at it. “It’s all bumpy. I can’t put stickers on it, they just fall off.”
“Stickers? Is that what kids do with their casts these days?”
She twisted up her face. Clearly, I was speaking in ‘old person’ terms.
“I don’t know. It’s what I wanted to do. Tell me something, will ya?”
I nodded.
“How come all the older grown-ups keep asking why no one signed my cast? What’s up with that?”
I let out a laugh. I pitched my voice up an octave or two and made it sound crackly and warbled. In my best little old man imitation, I said, “Back when I was a kid, or before that even, casts used to be plaster and a lot smoother. Kids would draw on them or sign their names. It was a way to signify well wishes, speedy recovery. That kind of thing.”
“So that’s why the lunch lady asked if my friends were mad at me and no one signed my cast.”
I nodded. “Exactly. People get an idea in their heads about how casts are supposed to be, and unless they’ve had one or are a doctor, they really aren’t going to know about advances in medical science when it comes to setting bones and holding them in place.”
“Were you a doctor? I mean, in the Army?”
“Not me. That might have been a better use of my time.” No, I spent my time making sure my soldiers made it through dangerous situations, and when they didn’t… I reached into the pocket of my coat and wrapped my hand around the baseball and squeezed.
Ruby looked at me expectantly. She was a curious kid, but she didn’t need to know about my gruesome past.
“I should apologize to Kenzie for not coming back. Was your sister mad at me too?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said in a singsong, teasing tone.
“I’ll tell her you said that when I see her.” I chuckled.
“As if you could find her,” Ruby retorted.
She had a point. It was a coincidence that I had encountered her in the same basic place around the same time in the afternoon. To find Kenzie, I would have to…
Kenzie had smelled like fries. I would simply have to go into every fast-food joint in a twenty-mile radius. But no, I wouldn’t need to do that much work. I just needed to go to the one where the employees still wore black and gold uniforms instead of the corporate branded T-shirts that seemed to be the trend. She had been wearing a gold-zippered Polo shirt with a floppy chef hat logo over the left breast, and this town had a Burger Jeff. I had thought those had long gone out of business, and maybe they had on a national chain level. But there was still one in Flat Rock.
“I found you. I found you twice, as a matter of fact,” I pointed out with a smirk.
“Well, that’s because you keep driving into town at the same time I’m getting out of school.”
I twisted around trying to orient myself. The school was southeast of the downtown area. She was headed toward the opposite side of town.
“You go to the library after school?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That explains why we meet again,” I answered. I waved my hand around with a flourish.
“Whatever.” She dropped her board back onto the street. It bounced with the pressure of her foot. “I’ve got homework to do before Kenzie gets home or I’ll get in trouble. I have to make up for missing yesterday.” She held up her cast. “It hurt too much, but she made me go to school today. So unless you’re willing to give me a ride to the library, I gotta go.”
I cocked my head toward the front of the truck. “Get in.”
I helped her with the seatbelt. The library was less than ten minutes away. She probably would have made it in less time than it took me to drive.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said as she unfastened her buckle and jumped out of the truck.
“I’ll let Kenzie know you’re being studious when I see her.”
“You aren’t going to con me into telling you where she works.” Ruby leaned back into the truck and raised her eyebrows at me.
“You don’t have to. I already know.” I mimicked her expression.
“What? How?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” I said back with the same inflection she had said it to me with earlier.
She slammed the door with a huff. I watched her stomp into the front of the library before I pulled away from the curb. I liked that kid. She had spunk.
