Red-Blooded Heart

by V. J. Chambers

  And there wouldn’t be so much joy in existing. What is the point of joy, after all? What is the reason that a sunset fills up my soul or the cool autumn breeze buoys me up? What is fun and laughter and bursting pleasure? That’s not necessary for survival, and it doesn’t fit into his grim assessment of everything. Sure, okay, there’s deep darkness out there, and there’s brutality and hopelessness.

  But that’s not all there is.

  CHAPTER TEN

  -deke-

  I screwed up at dinner.

  I think at the beginning, I had her, even though I can’t be sure how she feels about me. I think she wants me. There’s something in the way she looks at me and the way she breathes when our gazes meet. But then I can’t be sure of it, because she seems dead set on challenging me. I don’t know if it’s some sort of test, hoops she wants me to jump through or what? Maybe I’m testing her too.

  Anyway, after I say all that dumb shit about how none of us matter at all, I change the subject and we talk about raising chickens until we’re done eating. And I didn’t make any dessert, because I’m not good at baking, and I don’t have an oven anyway, and then she’s making excuses and leaving, and I feel like a fucking idiot.

  I like her even more now.

  Maybe it’s because of the way she keeps throwing things at me. Having a conversation with her is like trying to catch hurled cannonballs. She’s smart, and she’s a little angry, too, and I don’t know why she’s so mad, but I like it.

  I didn’t have plans for what would happen after dinner. Maybe I fantasized about kissing her, but I didn’t plan for that to happen. Anyway, I feel disappointed when she’s gone, and I find myself walking through the woods that separates our houses and letting myself into the crawlspace that I made.

  I put on the heat and the light and I settle in to watch her.

  She is pacing in the middle of the floor, and she’s changed out of what she was wearing for dinner. I’m sad that I missed watching her remove her clothes, but I console myself with the fact that she’s now wearing a thin t-shirt and no bra, and her nipples are hard, and I’m hard too.

  I unzip myself, and I ease my hand into my pants.

  And then the phone rings.

  She crosses to the kitchen and picks up her phone from the counter. “Hello?”

  Now I can only see her back, not her hard nipples. Also, I’m curious. Who is she talking to?”

  “Hey, Mom,” she says.

  Man. It’s not easy to stay hard when she’s having a conversation with her mother. I zip back up. Maybe later.

  “Well, the cell service out here is spotty.” She sits down on her couch. “But I do have a land line. I told you that the phone lines run up the mountain. That’s how come I have internet. You can always email me if you want.”

  I shift in the crawlspace, preparing to tune out this boring conversation with her mother. I do find it kind of interesting that she opted for tying into the phone line. I thought she was a purist. But judging from her social media footprint, I’m guessing she can’t live without the internet.

  “Yes, there’s a pharmacy in town,” she’s saying, “but I went off those meds a long time ago, and you know that.” A long silence. She picks at the sweatpants she’s wearing. “Come on, don’t be like that. That’s not what this is. This is my dream to be out here. It’s a good thing. You know, someone—just today—said that I was determined.”

  Huh. She’s talking about me.

  She gets up. “Yes, the guy who built the house. He lives nearby.” She cocks her head to one side. “Well, determined is a nicer word than obsessed.” Another pause. “You have used that word, you do say that.” She’s frustrated. “Look, if this is what you called me to talk about, I’m just going to hang up.”

  Obsessed. Meds. None of those things surprise me exactly. I think that certain kinds of people go crazy out there in the regular world with all its paved roads and concrete walls. Some people need the open sky. Take me for instance. One I got out here, everything got better.

  And then I think about shooting Darius.

  I grimace.

  Well, Darius was a symptom of the outside world. If he hadn’t intruded, none of that would have happened.

  “No,” she’s sighing, “I’m not worried about the spotty cell service. There’s nothing out there that can hurt me.” She pauses. “What? Deke?… Yes, that’s his name. And I’m not worried about him.” She stops, thinking about what she’s said, and she looks troubled for a minute. “I’m fine out here. It’s so much safer out here than it would be in the city. You have to realize that.”

  * * *

  I leave the crawlspace without jacking off, because the mood is shattered by whatever it is that she seems to think about me. Did I really freak her out that much?

  I have to fix this.

  I’m walking around the house, but then she’s there, coming out of the house.

  Damn it. I can’t let her see me.

  She’s heading towards the back yard, which is where my path through the woods back to my house is. I could run for it, but I wouldn’t make it. The entrance to the crawlspace is back here too, but I won’t make that without her seeing me either. I dart all the way around the house.

  She is in the back.

  I am in the front.

  I don’t know what she’s doing out there. Maybe she’s simply looking at the stars. It’s cold as fuck out here, but maybe it calms her, like it does me.

  I can’t stay in the front of the house, because when she comes back, she’ll see me, but I can’t go around either of the sides, or she’ll see me there.

  What am I going to do?

  Damn it.

  Impulsively, I go to her front door and bang on it loudly.

  She appears, coming around the side of the house.

  “Oh!” I say, backing up. “You’re out here.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “What are you…?” She looks around. “You don’t have your car.”

  “I was out walking,” I say. “I like to do that sometimes.”

  “In the cold?”

  “You apparently like it too,” I say. “I came through the woods.”

  “But I was just…” She points behind the house. “I didn’t see you.”

  “We missed each other somehow. You must have been walking around while I was coming this way.” I gesture with my hands, not that it makes any sense. God, what am I doing?

  She furrows her brow.

  “I, uh, I didn’t mean to walk here.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “Sort of just ended up here. I feel like I need to apologize for, uh, for how I was at dinner.”

  “Oh, no.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was egging you on.” She wraps her arms around her own shoulders, and she suddenly seems so small and singular there. I get this urge to put my arms around her, but I don’t.

  I look down at my toes. “I’m not usually a total bastard, I swear. And, you know, I took some women’s studies classes in college. The way my professor described it, I’d say I’m a feminist. What you said about equality… I mean, you’d have to be really unreasonable to say that’s a bad idea.”

  She licks her lips. “No, you don’t have to say anything like that.”

  “If I came off as, uh, as condescending towards you, that’s on me. I’m sorry about that. Like I said, my social skills aren’t great these days.”

  She laughs a little. “Listen, Deke, you need to know that I can’t… I’m not… there can’t be anything with you and me.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “No?”

  “No,” she says. “It would be better if we didn’t really interact.”

  “Wow,” I say. “I really did come off like an ass, didn’t I? I swear to God, if you give me a chance, I’ll—”

  “It’s not anything you did,” she says. “You were fine. You were…” She trails off and looks at me, and that look says more than any words could say.

  It’s explosive. I know it now, a
nd it’s certain. This, between us, it’s something. I don’t know how it will play out, but she’s mine. With her eyes, she tells me, and I’m blasted to pieces by it and then made whole again.

  She’s talking again. “I came out here to be alone, you know, and if you’re around, then I’m, you know, not.”

  I nod at her. “Yeah, got it.” I’m grinning.

  She takes an unsteady breath.

  “Listen, you want to be on your own out here, you should know how to handle a gun. You have a gun?”

  She shakes her head.

  “You planning to hunt this winter?”

  “What’s this got to do with anything?”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll come by. I have an old rifle I don’t use. You can have it—”

  “You can’t give me—”

  “You can buy it,” I say. “I’ll show you how to use it.”

  “And then you’ll leave me alone?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I say. Because I can tell that she doesn’t want me to leave her alone. She wants the exact opposite. For some reason, she can’t admit that to herself, though. She’s afraid.

  Women are always afraid of the beast.

  But her desire will be stronger.

  I know it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  -juniper-

  I’m swearing and rubbing my armpit, because the rifle kicks like fuck, and it hurts. I’m going to have a bruise.

  Deke’s laughing at me.

  That’s probably my fault, because I grabbed the thing from him after he painstakingly showed me how to load it and talked to me like I was stupid and so I said that I could figure out the rest, because how hard could it be, right? All you do with a gun is pull the trigger.

  I give him back the rifle. “Look, I don’t even need this thing.”

  He’s still laughing.

  I glare at him.

  He stops.

  “Look,” I say, “maybe I don’t know things about guns, but just because you know more doesn’t mean you can act like… like…” Helpful? Explaining things to me? I don’t know why he makes me so mad. He’s so arrogant and full of himself, I think. I want to punch him.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know why I laughed. It’s the face you made. You were so surprised.”

  “It hurt,” I say.

  “It’s better if you know it’s coming,” he says. “You should try again.” He gestures to the bottles he’s set up for me to use as target practice.

  “I don’t know.” I square my shoulders. Then I lift the rifle again. It’s got a scope, which is really handy. I line up the bottle in the sights and I brace myself for the kick as I pull the trigger.

  The shot is loud, echoing against the trees and sky.

  “No, no, no,” he says softly. “You’re tensing up. That’s going to fuck up your aim.”

  I give him the gun, rubbing my armpit some more. That still really hurt. “Forget it, okay?”

  He looks amused. “What?”

  “Just take your stupid gun and go,” I say. “I’m obviously crap at this.”

  “Well, you’ve shot the gun exactly twice,” he says. “The fact that you’re not an expert by now is shocking.”

  My shoulders slump.

  His voice is soft. “You told me that you’ve spent half your life saving up money and doing without to get this house and move off the grid. You’ve got patience. You’ve got determination. And you want to give up on this after five minutes?”

  I sigh. “When you put it like that, you make me sound insane.”

  “It’s because of me,” he says. “You’re still pissed at me after the way I’ve treated you.”

  “I’m not pissed,” I say, but he’s right. I’d rather not be around him. He’s distracting. But I have to admit that it would be good to know how to use this rifle, and he is selling it to me really cheap. (I looked it up online.) So, maybe I should suck it up and deal and try to make this work. He said he would leave me alone after this, and I intend to hold him to his word.

  So, I take a deep breath, and I tell him that we should start over.

  For the next half hour, we work on shooting the rifle. I listen to what he says, and I do the best that I can to follow his instructions, and by the end of a half hour, I’ve improved. I’m no incredible shot or anything, but I feel as though I can use the rifle. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go out hunting or not, but I’ll be able to use it to scare predators away from the chickens and for other things I might need a gun for. I see his point. It’s an important tool to have out here.

  After I’ve shot all the bottles, we sit down outside my house and I set the gun down in between us.

  “Guns are part of civilization,” I say suddenly.

  “Mmm,” he says. “Lots of things are. You can’t completely turn back the clock. You wouldn’t want to. You’d never make it completely on your own. You need fire. You need clothes. You need…”

  “Right,” I say. “So, it’s like a balance out here. Using some of what you can from the outside world, but not relying on everything to make you soft.”

  He nods. “Our brains are what we really have against the elements, anyway. We evolved big brains and lost our fur and claws.”

  I nod. “Right. So, we learned how to alter our environment instead of living in it the way it was.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re quiet for a while. I look out at the trees and I think about that, and it feels almost depressing, as if there’s no way I can get around being a destructive force, as if it’s stitched into my DNA as a human.

  “You ever think we’re playing a losing game out here?” I say suddenly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like, maybe humans have evolved to live in cities, and out here, we’re just fighting the inevitable?”

  He snorts. “Right, cities are the pinnacle of human evolution. Corporate America, capitalism, obesity, and cancer. Fuck yeah, that’s where it’s at.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If it were so great, it wouldn’t be fraught with so many problems.”

  “Well, nothing’s perfect,” he says.

  I remember his little speech about struggle and being eaten and how none of us matter.

  He seems to remember it too, because he changes the subject. “I’m not offending you, talking about evolution, am I?”

  “What?” I say. “No, is that offensive?”

  He laughs. “You haven’t talked to many of the locals, I guess.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. “I guess a lot of people out here don’t believe in evolution.”

  “Intelligent design,” he says.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in God,” I say. “It’s only that they’ve proved evolution. They can observe it in real time with viruses. It’s a thing. I don’t think it has to mean that God doesn’t exist. Maybe those seven days of creation were metaphorical days, you know? Maybe God guided it all. Maybe that’s why we got our big brains.”

  “Maybe,” he allows.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t want to believe in God,” he says.

  “Why not? Because of the problem of evil?” I say. “How could a loving God allow so much suffering?”

  He laughs softly. “Suffering is life. Suffering is God, if there is one.”

  “Has anyone ever told you how incredibly optimistic you are?” I tease.

  He laughs again. “No, it’s only that if there’s a God, then there’s sin. And I’d rather not think that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Right and wrong. Morality. The ten commandments. I’d rather think that there are actions and then there are consequences.”

  “Hmm,” I say, liking this perspective immediately. “And if you can mitigate the consequences, then is that action really wrong anymore?”

  He looks at me in surprise, as if he didn’t expect me to get it. “Exactly.”

  I smile at him. Oh, damn, damn, damn. What am I go
ing to do about Deke Rochester?

  * * *

  -deke-

  Later, I’m back in the crawlspace, and she’s above me, on that chin-up bar I installed for her. She’s wearing a sports bra, and she’s straining as she pulls herself up again and again, and her muscles are rippling under her skin.

  I’m touching myself, and I’m not sure why I ever thought chicks with muscles weren’t hot. She’s a fucking goddess. I wish I was up there with her, and I wish that I could peel off her clothes and breathe in her sweat and put my nose between her thighs and know that her scent is mine.

  Whatever it is about her, I like it.

  I like her.

  I think I like her work ethic. She’s determined, like I said before. She got herself here, got this house. She’s incredibly focused. She knows what she wants, and she gets it. I like that about her. It’s sexy.

  She’s sexy.

  She lets go of the chin-up bar and gasps, bending over, wiping sweat away from her brow, and I squeeze myself in the crawlspace. My hand moves tighter and faster and tighter and faster and she straightens and her stomach is flat and her waist is small and so much of her skin is uncovered and I bite my lip and I come.

  I know this makes me look bad. Watching her and masturbating is pathetic, and I’m not proud of it. Even in the wake of my orgasm, lying there, I feel like an ass. I shouldn’t be doing this.

  If she knew, she would hate me. She would never look at me the way she did when she told me that we shouldn’t interact. She would be horrified and disgusted.

  But she doesn’t know, and I don’t care.

  I am free now. I can do what I want.

  She crosses the room and goes into her kitchen. She opens up the door to her freezer and peers inside. Then she shuts it. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for some ice cream,” she mutters.

  * * *

  -juniper-

  “You read my mind,” I say, laughing.

  “Really?” Deke looks happily surprised, holding out the tub of ice cream. “I thought it was a weird idea. I mean, it’s November. Who eats ice cream in November?”