by Bess McBride
He reached the bottom of the steps and began to cross the field to head home. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw an unfamiliar dark shape beneath the stairs. Assuming it was a raccoon or some other nighttime roamer, he raised the lantern to look at the creature nestled against the foundation wall. Luke stopped short when his light flickered on a prone figure.
“Hello?” he called out. “You cannot sleep here.” Some of the men from the logging camp came into town after payday and enjoyed themselves at the pool hall. Luke thought one might have sought shelter at the school, but finding it closed, had huddled near the base and passed out.
“Hello?” he called out again, not wishing to startle the unfortunate man. He took a step closer, keeping his lantern aloft. The person lay flat on their back, and from certain aspects of her figure, he realized that it was a woman. He hurried forward, noting the close-fitting black leg coverings that resembling long johns. More oddly still, she appeared to be dressed in a pink undershirt.
Had the poor woman wandered from her bed? Had she been kidnapped and abandoned near the school? He doubted the latter. Such violence did not normally occur in Kaskade.
The woman did not respond, and Luke dropped to his knees, disregarding the moisture in the grass. Holding the lamp above the silent female, he noted that her eyes were closed. Her torso moved as if she breathed. Her hair fanned out behind her head in a lovely mixture of gold and brown shades. Her skin was fair and translucent, as if she spent much of her time indoors.
“Miss?” he whispered. He dared not touch her and wondered if he should leave her and hurry to Dr. Cook’s house to fetch him. Clearly, the young woman was in some distress. Between crawling out of one’s bed in some form of sleeping garment and arriving at the foundation of Kaskade School, something untoward must have transpired.
“Miss? Can you awaken?”
As if she finally heard his voice, she opened her eyes. Dark, glowing in the flame of the lantern, they blinked several times as they stared at him until they widened. She pushed herself up on her elbows, causing Luke to jerk back.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Wait! Are you the tow truck driver? What happened? I bent over and felt lightheaded. I must have fainted. I’m so glad you thought to come up here!”
Luke had opened his mouth to respond to her first question, but she had not stopped to breathe much less allow him to provide any answers. Nor did he really understand what she was asking. She seemed very confused.
The poor thing attempted to push herself to a standing position but fell back down.
“I’m sorry. I’m still a little dizzy, I think. Can you help me up?”
Feeling as bemused as the young woman looked, Luke complied, setting down his lantern and offering both hands. She slid her small hands into his, and warmth spread through his body at the contact. His heart flopped about in his chest, and he drew in a deep breath at his own sense of lightheadedness. Was something in the air, something that made them both faint?
She rose to a standing position, the top of her head coming only to his chest. She withdrew her hands quickly, and Luke let her go. One did not simply cling to a strange woman. To his surprise, she bent to pick up the lantern, and she held it above her head to stare at him. Her eyes traveled from his derby hat to his shoes, and Luke squirmed inwardly at the bold investigation.
“Miss, please,” he said, reaching for the lantern.
She took a step back, and he dropped his hand.
“You’re a tow truck driver? Dressed like that? Were you going out or something?”
“I am sorry. I do not know what you mean. What is a tow truck driver?”
The lantern showed growing consternation on her face, perhaps even fright. He hurried to reassure her.
“My name is Lucius Damon. I am the head schoolteacher here. Where have you come from, and how did you end up here at the school at this time of night? Are you from Kaskade? I have never seen you before.”
The lantern shook, and she lowered her arm, as if she could not support its weight.
“Miss? What has happened to bring you here?”
“Where’s here?” she asked, setting the lantern down on the ground.
Luke picked it up. “You are at the school in Kaskade. Do you live in Kaskade? How did you get here, and what happened to make you faint?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, turning to scan the area. The darkness revealed little. “I touched the foundation.”
“The foundation?”
“The concrete foundation of the school.”
By then, Luke had made a decision.
“Miss, I think I should take you to see Dr. Cook. His house is down the hill near the lake.”
“You know,” she began with a shaky laugh, “I think I probably do need to see a doctor, but I’m not going to wander off into the darkness with a stranger. I’ll just wait in my car for the tow truck driver.”
“But, miss, I am the schoolteacher! I am perfectly safe.”
She tilted her head in a heart-twisting fashion, much like a small pet dog he remembered from his childhood in Vermont.
“You’re safe because you’re a schoolteacher?”
“But of course! The town would not entrust their children to me if I was not trustworthy and above reproach.”
“Above reproach,” she repeated softly. “I have no idea where I am, and I’m a whole bunch confused by this whole thing you’ve got going on.” She waved her hand around, as if to encompass his person.
“Listen, I’m going to go lock myself in my car,” she continued. “You can wait here until I do, or I’ll wait for you to leave, and then I’ll go, but we’re not going off into the darkness together, teacher or not.”
“Miss...” He paused. “Forgive me. I do not know your name.”
She seemed to hesitate. “Emily.”
“Miss Emily...”
“Just Emily. That’s fine.”
“Very well. Emily, I cannot leave you here alone, not in your condition.”
“My condition?” she repeated. “What condition is that?”
“Well, you said yourself that you fainted. One does not simply faint unless something is amiss. You seem a bit confused, having stated that you do not know where you are. You are dressed...” He pressed his lips together and looked down at her lower limbs with a raised eyebrow.
She followed his eyes to her long johns. “In yoga pants?”
“Is that what they are called?”
“If you live in the twenty-first century, they are.” She laughed again, though the sound carried no humor.
He focused more on what she said than her sarcasm.
“The twenty-first century?” he echoed. The lantern did seem suddenly very heavy, and he wanted to set it down but felt he must keep it aloft to study her expressions closely. He feared she rambled incoherently.
“I am afraid I do not understand your reference,” he said. “You really appear to be quite unwell, Emily. Do let me escort you to the doctor’s house.”
“No thanks,” she said. “Frankly, I’m wondering if you’re a little unwell. Let me just get my bearings. Which way down to the highway?”
“Highway? We have no such thing here in Kaskade. There are several roads passing through town, including one in front of the school. It is aptly called the Kaskade Road.”
“Okay, a rural route then, whatever you want to call it. Which way to the road in front of the school, this Kaskade Road?”
He pointed toward the front of the school.
She looked over her shoulder into the darkness.
“So this isn’t the front of the school?”
“No, this is the side of the building, facing southeast.”
“Okay, good. So if I just go around to the front, I’ll probably find those steps I saw and I can get back to my car?”
“I simply do not understand what you are asking, Emily,” Luke said with a sad shake of his head.
She stared at him for a moment before swinging
away. Fearing she might dash off into the darkness and hurt herself, he jumped forward and caught her arm.
She turned, a wide-eyed look of shock on her face as she stared at her arm. Luke, astonished at his untoward actions, relaxed his grip, but he did not release her.
“Emily. It is dark. You cannot see. You may hurt yourself.”
She attempted to pull free, but Luke felt certain he could not release the poor confused thing.
Her voice when she spoke, her words seeming to come through gritted teeth. “Let go of my arm. Let go! No man is going to try to control me again. Do you get that? Do you get that?” Her voice rose to a high pitch.
She attempted to pull away again, then clawed at his hand.
“Let go! Let go or I’ll scream!”
Luke suddenly imagined himself without employment, the teacher who’d manhandled a woman. He released her.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed. “I simply sought to keep you from harm.”
Without a word, she turned and fled toward the front of the school. Luke took a step forward as if to run after her, but the image stayed with him, devolving into a vision of him standing on the street begging for coins to pay his rent. No, he had a standard to uphold. He could not be seen tussling with a woman who seemed quite irrational.
He forced himself to walk around the building and descend the broad concrete steps in a composed fashion, though his heart pounded. He did not want her to think he followed her, but in fact he was curious as to where she had vanished. He hoped he had not bruised her arm, and he regretted that he had attempted to hold her by force. She had stammered out some sentences that suggested she had been bullied before, and he wondered about her circumstances.
He kept an eye out for her as he walked, though part of him hoped that she had vanished. Upon reaching Kaskade Road, seeing no sign of her, he turned left to walk toward the boardinghouse.
“I’m so confused,” a voice said in the darkness.
Luke stopped and lifted the lantern to see Emily sitting on a grassy knoll at the edge of the road. She had pulled her legs toward her torso and wrapped her arms around them. Her cheek rested on her knees. Luke blinked at the childish sight. No lady of his acquaintance sat in such a fashion. Still, he had already determined that Emily was an unusual woman.
He stopped near her but kept his distance.
“Yes, I think you are. How can I help you, Emily? I am afraid I bungled my last attempt to assist you.”
“I don’t know. This isn’t the highway. I don’t even know if I’m in the right town.”
“You are in Kaskade, Washington.”
“Well, I was.”
“You still are.”
“Is there a lake nearby?”
“There is, just to the south. Lake Kaskade.”
“I’ve lost my car. I’ve lost my bearings. In fact, I think I’ve lost my mind.”
“May I sit?” he asked.
“Are you going to grab me again? Because if you are, then no.”
“I will not grab you again, Emily. If I failed to apologize, I do so now, most heartily.”
“Yes, you can sit.”
Luke lowered himself to sit on the knoll beside her. He set the lantern down on the dirt road.
“Thank you. I know that you are confused, Emily. That is why I wish you would let me escort you to the doctor’s house. The hour grows late, and I would rather call on him before he has gone to bed.”
“What time is it?” she said almost listlessly. “I wonder where the tow truck driver ended up. Actually, I wonder where my car ended up.”
Luke pulled his pocket watch from his vest and tilted it toward the lantern.
“It is almost nine o’clock.”
“Funny,” she mumbled, though her tone did not sound as if she concurred with the sentiment. “Nine sounds about right. I didn’t seem to lose any time, just my mind.”
If she had been one of his students, he would have sent a note around to her parents to ask them to fetch her from school and have her examined.
“Do you have family nearby to whom I might deliver you?”
“Nope. No family. Just someone I don’t want to see or talk to, so that won’t help.”
Luke bit his lower lip. It was rude to pursue the matter, but he thought he must.
“May I ask whom it is that you do not wish to see? You said it is not a family member?”
“My ex-fiancé,” she said. “Ex! That sounds good to say. I didn’t even know I’d made that decision, but I finally, finally have. Ex-fiancé! Yes, I like the sound of that!”
She lifted her head and straightened her back.
“I may not have a car. I may not have my mind, but I have my freedom! I can’t believe it. Just like that! It’s over. The past two years of a nightmare existence. Well, not all of it, but for sure the past year has been awful! I didn’t think I would ever willingly leave. Not even tonight when I took off! I didn’t think I’d stay gone. I’ve done it before, you know. Driven off, but I’ve always gone back. I don’t know where I am now, but I have to believe that I’m in a better place than I was.”
Her teeth shone brightly as she beamed, her earlier sadness seemingly gone in an instant. Rather than feel reassured, Luke worried even more about her emotional state.
“I do not know what to say,” he said.
“I don’t think you have to say anything. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to hear anything a man has to say right now.”
Luke pressed his lips together. She certainly was volatile. He could think of nothing better than turning her over to Dr. Cook and his wife, Leigh. In fact, Emily rather reminded him of Leigh Cook.
“Could I please coax you to accompany me to Dr. Cook’s residence? I am loath to leave you here on the side of the road at night, and I do not know where you could stay. Perhaps Martha Lundrum could find a spare room for you at the boardinghouse where I live, but I truly do think you could benefit from an examination. You may have hit your head when you fainted.”
To his surprise, Emily leaned over and picked up the lantern. She held it high and shone it on his face.
“To be honest, you do look kind of trustworthy. That whole grabbing thing didn’t work for me, but I think I might have stressed you out by running off into the night. Okay, Lucius, I’ll go to the doctor’s house with you, but if I’m uncomfortable, you can’t just leave me there. I don’t do abandonment well.”
Luke nodded with relief. “Very well. I will not leave you there if you are uncomfortable, Emily. Please call me Luke.”
“Luke,” she repeated.
“The road leading down to the lakefront is just to the right. It is a bit of a descent, but the roads are dry. We have had no rain for the past week.”
He did not know whether he should hold out his arm and suspected she would decline assistance, but still, he felt he must at least offer.
“Will you take my arm?”
She looked up at him, then handed him the lantern. “I’m fine, thank you though.”
“Of course.” He took the lantern and led the way.
“How far is it?”
“Not more than fifteen minutes, I should say.”
“By the way, it did rain yesterday, and the ground was kind of moist this evening. It’s not important, but I’m just saying.”
Luke looked down at the petite lady walking by his side. Her shoes seemed serviceable enough, though they resembled ladies gymnasium shoes, albeit without lacing. Her small curvy figure was on full view, and he looked away. It seemed clear to him that she had wandered away from whence she had come in some form of undergarments. A lifelong bachelor at thirty, he was no expert in that department, but her clothing seemed most unusual.
He brought his attention back to her words.
“No, I am afraid I must disagree. It did not rain here in Kaskade. Perhaps you were elsewhere yesterday?”
“I was in Seattle.”
“Seattle! That is not too far at all by train. I should have though
t it would have rained here as well, but you know how mercurial the weather can be.”
“Yes, I guess so,” she said slowly. “I’m confused. A man told me not even an hour ago that Kaskade had disappeared, that the town had died out. What are all these lights?” She stopped and gestured toward the myriad lights twinkling through windows in houses.
Luke paused, feeling as confused as she was.
“Kaskade disappeared? Died out? Whatever can you mean? As you see, it is a thriving town. I think the population is near a thousand people now.”
“In its heyday,” she said, still staring down at the hill at the most populated part of town closer to the lake.
“I should think Kaskade is currently in its heyday and still has plenty of life. I enjoy the town very much and wish for its success. What have you heard? Is something in the wind? Is the timber mill about to close? The logging camp? I have heard no such thing.”
He stared at the lights of Kaskade, a cold shiver running up his back. A second son in search of a living, he had finally found purpose in Kaskade. His older brother, who had inherited the farm in Vermont, wished for him to stay, but Luke had never been interested in farming. Teaching jobs had been scarce in the east, and he had answered an advertisement from a small concern called Kaskade, Washington, the town’s mayor having promised him a long career as head teacher at Kaskade School.
“This is so bizarre,” she said, almost to herself.
Luke pressed a hand to his chest as if to slow his racing heart. Emily, with her semi-lucid rantings and ravings about Kaskade, had frightened him, and he reminded himself that she was not well. All the more reason to press on to Dr. Cook’s house.
“Come, Emily. Let us make our way to the doctor’s house.”
He avoided taking her by the arm, instead stepping out and striding down the road. Small as she was, she kept up remarkably well, taking two strides for his every one. He heard her breathing rapidly, and in fact, he struggled for air himself as he sped on toward assistance from another rational human.