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- 10/21/2015
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A to Z - 13. Rescue
Please feel free to discuss questions raised by the characters at the story thread. http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/topic/40860-a-to-z/
June 18
I felt the need to get out of Marshall quickly, but it’s not so easy to get away from people when you’re hungry. You just don’t feel like moving very fast. I stumbled my way out of Marshall as soon as the librarians kicked me out at closing time. It didn’t matter that it was still drizzling, and I didn’t really care which way I went, as long as it was out of town.
I didn’t make it very far before I just felt too depressed and tired and hungry to go further. I remember staying in the dugout of a ball field near the road. It wasn’t too wet there, and with the rain, nobody was out. I was cold and damp, but safe enough for one night’s rotten rest. I’m used to it by now.
I passed the last few days in a hot, humid kind of blur, shambling along the road, looking out for chances to get some water, hoping for some way to get a bite to eat. I stole a handful of lettuce from someone's backyard garden – I would have taken more, but a dog started barking, and I took off. You read survivor stories about people who eat nuts and berries, but that assumes they know what’s good to eat. I didn’t trust myself to eat anything growing near the roads. So my stomach got emptier and emptier. It hurt. I kept walking.
It rained one afternoon. Cars went by in the downpour, and one even slowed down, but didn’t stop. Guess I look too scary. I got wet. I kept walking.
At night, there were fields and hedges to sleep in. I’m good at bedding down in the tall grass unseen from the road, though a lot of fields have been mowed already. If they all get mowed, I’ll have a problem.
One morning, I woke up underneath a big old maple tree at the forest's edge some distance away from the road. I just lay there, staring up at the gnarled bark on the enormous trunk. And then the tree moved and blinked at me. I just about jumped out of my ratty clothes in alarm. Two golden eyes peered down at me from several branches up.
I stared back. Suddenly, some trick of the light or a slight shadow put things in definition. It was an owl. It had to have been. Beautiful, perfectly camouflaged up against the tree, it sat there on its branch watching me. Here in the middle of my hunger and misery, sat an enchantment. We observed each other. Somehow, I felt like a trespasser on its territory. The owl was a tiny thing, no bigger than a beer can. I thought owls were bigger.
When I finally had to scratch an itch, it flew off, deeper into the woods. I spent the rest of that day thinking about that bird.
On day three – or was it four? – out of Marshall, I had a huge piece of luck. Climbing a long hill as the road wound its way over another mountain, I found a fast-food bag tossed out on the side of the road. Miraculously, there was half a hamburger and part of an order of fries left inside. Despite my hunger, I carefully inspected the interior: no bugs, and it seemed clean. So call me overcautious. And I counted – there were eleven fries.
I sat right down there on the shoulder of the road and ate a picnic brunch. Or was it supper? I really don’t remember. Though it was the first food for me in almost a week, my stomach still hurt. Later, I worried if I had eaten spoiled food. What if I got sick? Would it all come up in couple of hours? But I kept it down. I stumbled on.
I kept walking.
Another night, I slept in a scrubby uncut field about fifty feet from the road. It was a twisty and turny kind of byway, not a main road at all, and headed down a steep slope. I'd walked a lot of these. The road had blacktop and paint, but the pavement was cracked and potholed. I'd passed a sign with a warning: "ROUGH ROAD." Hell, why didn't they just fix it?
Anyhow, I figured it would be smarter to get off the pavement at dusk rather than get hit by random traffic on a crappy road, so I stopped right there. Funny how chance finds you, isn’t it?
By now, I’m good at falling asleep no matter where I am, no matter what noise the road makes, no matter what the temperature is. The only thing I have trouble shutting out is the rain. That night, I was having one of my frequent nightmares. Dad was getting ready to beat the shit out of me again in dreamland, when I woke with my heart in my throat to a tremendous bang in the direction of the road. I shook off the confusion in my brain. Something really bad had happened out on the street. I stood up, and I could see an eerie red glow just little ways down the road from where I had slipped into the weeds.
Leaving my pack and jacket behind, I made my way in the dark down to the spot and found an older model car flipped upside down in the ditch. The taillights still glowed, which was what I had seen.
I didn't think, I just moved.
I shimmied down into the ditch and got the driver’s side door open. The ceiling light glowed up at me from ground level, which was weird enough, but I wasn’t prepared for the wreckage of airbags and broken glass inside. There was a really strange smell, something really odd. I couldn’t place it.
And blood. It wasn’t clear if the driver was conscious but she sure was bleeding from somewhere. She didn’t move when I got the door open.
“Hey, are you OK?”
Dumb question, of course she wasn’t. Was she hurt besides the cut that was dripping blood? Where was that cut?
A sound. Just a small “whuff” somewhere in the front. Suddenly smoke was curling back from the engine. I moved on pure adrenaline now. No time to think about injuries. I reached back in, and tried to brace the woman as I undid the seatbelt. She sagged down onto me as it gave way. As I struggled to drag her out of the car, I heard something worse.
A baby cried.
Leaving the mother a few yards from the wreck, I turned back. I could see the glow of fire between the front wheels. I climbed back in. There, in the back seat, a baby hung, hidden in its child seat. The smoke was getting worse. I clambered through to the back and fought with the seat belt release.
I know I wanted to panic. I fought it, forcing myself to think in steps.
I held my breath, no coughing. Found the release button. Jammed it hard. Caught the kid. Scrambled out again.
Another “whuff,” louder this time.
“Branlee?”
The mother’s voice now. She was awake, lying there, but awake, looking around from side to side.
I carried the baby as I hustle over to her.
“Ma’am, can you get up?”
She tried to focus on me in the strange light.
“Who you? Branlee?”
The voice was thick, full of fear, full of pain.
“Come on,” I said, not wanting to stay near that burning car a second longer. I tried to get her to her feet. She rose with frightful slowness.
I helped her limp across the road to the far side.
“Can you take your daughter?”
“Branlee? Baby?”
She reached out to grab her child and hugged her fiercely to herself. She was crying, murmuring to her baby girl.
I looked at them and my heart just ached. I was happy for them that they made it safe out of the car, but I was jealous, too. I can’t remember love like that.
Suddenly, the fire seemed brighter. My brain shouted “Shit.” Stupid me, all I could think to say was “Ma’am, get down, please,” and I felt like a damn fool saying it as I tried to get her to get close to the ground.
The car exploded a second later in a brilliant searing flash.
“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God…,” the woman wailed over and over as the baby screamed.
When I looked up again, I was speechless. I could see perfectly in the bright light of the burning sedan. The woman was lying face down, trying to cover her child. And I could see the bit of glass in the middle of her scalp that was making everything bleed so bad.
I knew I had to help.
My shirt came off, and I ripped it down the middle into a couple of pieces. It was mostly holes, anyhow, I told myself. I have two more in my pack. In the field. Assuming, I could find it again in the dark.
“Ma’am, it’s OK now…” and it really was. The fire was subsiding, the worst danger past.
“Can you sit up?”
She didn't move. She laid there, whimpering.
Gingerly, I tried to get her to turn over. Surprisingly, she flipped over, and she stared up at me with wide, frightened eyes.
“Here, you’re bleeding. Let me help a little.” Awkwardly, I tried to dab at the blood. The glass fragment fell free, and I pressed my t-shirt against the wound. The blood soaked in alarmingly quickly. When I tied it around her head to keep it on, she didn't protest. She just watched me, as I moved around her. To distract her, I gave her the baby again, and she held it as she laid there on the side of the road.
On the edge of my vision, I saw headlights. A car was coming. People. Someone with a cell phone. Cops. Time for me to vanish. Quietly, while the woman whispered something to her daughter, I slipped away into the dark and vanished across the road into the field.
From the safety of the darkness, I watched as the oncoming car stopped. People leapt out to help.
Later, the cops and fire trucks and medics arrived, so I retreated farther into the field, away from the light. I watched them douse the fire and clean up the road. The woman was taken away, with her baby, too, I think. The cleanup took forever, and I was too keyed up to try to sleep. I decided to wait until morning to find my bag.
I looked up at the hazy stars and wondered, thinking. Would my mom have reached out for me if it had been me rescued from the burning car? I tried to imagine what it might be like – to be loved that fiercely, that much. Why didn’t she ever come back to rescue me from Dad? She must have known what he was like. Was I not worth the trouble of coming back? I guess she thought I deserved being left behind. Like Dad always said, I cause problems and screw things up. Better I got left behind, then.
But, another thought stole up on me as the early dawn brightened the sky. Maybe it was both mom and I who needed a rescuer. And if that was true, what did it mean? And who would that rescuer have been? Oh, well. Too late now, anyways.
With the dawn, I was able to spot my stuff, put on one of my two remaining t-shirts, stuff my jacket and flannel shirt down into the pack, and make my way onto the road and down the mountain.
At the bottom of the mountain, the road ended at an intersection with a larger, better traveled highway. That seemed to be the pattern. I had no idea which way to turn. If I’d had a coin, I would have flipped it. Instead, I just chose to go left – kind of south, I thought – and figured I would make it up by going right sometime later.
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