Nobody (Men of the White Sandy) (Volume 3)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  “I fed the horses,” Jamie said, dropping his eyes to the ground. “Brushed them, too.”

  “Rub Red down good, feed her.” He had to pause after each word as beads of sweat began to roll down his face. “Get Star and Socks. Take her home.” Then, spent, he fell back.

  Jamie just stood there for a minute, still looking torn between doing what he was told and running. Melinda tried to help him out by smiling, but she was pretty sure that just made the situation worse.

  “Now,” came the order from the chaise lounge with more force than she would have thought Nobody could put into it.

  The boy moved. Without looking at Melinda, he patted Red’s neck and then effortlessly slipped up onto her back. Dang. She may have had about a decade’s worth of riding lessons, but there was no way in hell she’d ever be able to just hop up onto a horse.

  She watched Jamie ride the horse out of the clearing. The trees were thick, so she couldn’t see where he went. Where on earth was Nobody keeping another twenty-some-odd horses?

  She turned her attention back to the man on the chair. He still looked like he’d been run over by a steamroller and blood was starting to show on his bandage.

  Okay, make this quick. She dug into the pack and came up with sterile gauze, tape, and antibiotic cream. That would have to do—she didn’t think she could get any pills down his throat.

  “I’m going to take this one off,” she told him, but she got no response. Boy, she really hoped peeling the tape off his side wouldn’t wake him up.

  Then she remembered an old trick her dad used to do when they had to take bandages off knees. She went back into the trailer. Man, what a weird place. If she had to guess, she’d say the trailer was late seventies, early eighties. Back in the day, it’d probably been a very expensive trailer. Maybe thirty feet long, it had wood paneling that was so clean it shone, an olive-green microwave that looked older than she was, and orange macramé-fringed curtains. The front had a dinette table and a couch that probably folded out, along with a swivel chair that looked as if it’d been recovered by a fourth-grade girl in wrapping paper—a hideously bright fabric in yellow and pink. Pink!

  But beyond the clashing vintage stylings, what threw her the most were the books. The dinette table was packed three feet high with them—and underneath as well—leaving only a slim six inches or so of usable space. Those were all by one author—Louis L’Amour. The couch was similarly stacked, with books going up past the windows and only a space big enough for one to sit. A big section of those were Zane Grey.

  She peeked past the kitchen area to the back. There was a bathroom, done in a hilarious baby-blue color scheme that somehow seemed just as inappropriate as the pink chair did. And two twin beds, one on each side. All stacked high and deep with paperbacks. As far as he could tell, they were all Westerns—and all in alphabetical order by author’s last name. She didn’t recognized most of the names.

  It was like walking into a time warp/library combo, because there were paperback books everywhere. Where did he sleep? Or did he not sleep in here at all—just out in the chair?

  She wouldn’t have guessed the books—but then, she wouldn’t have guessed the pregnant silver dollar trailer or the twinkle lights. One thing was for sure—Nobody Bodine was a man of few words and many, many mysteries.

  She looked in the bathroom and under the kitchen sink, but didn’t see any paper towels. Finally, she found a washcloth that she hoped he wouldn’t mind getting bloody and soaked it in the sink until it was sopping wet. Dad had always wet down Band-Aids when they were kids or pulled them off after a bath.

  When she came back out, Jamie was standing next to Nobody’s hopefully-not-lifeless form. He didn’t say anything—what a shocker there—but he looked up at her, the question obvious in his eyes.

  “Some guys came by the clinic and there was a fight,” she told him. A pointless, stupid fight that didn’t need to happen and had left at least two men in really bad shape. Again, frustration with him bubbled up. Why had he felt the need to risk getting himself killed?

  But the bigger question was, what would he have done if she hadn’t been there? “Nobody, I’m going to put a wet cloth over your bandage, okay? Don’t freak out, okay? No needles, I promise.”

  He grunted, a noise so quiet she wasn’t entirely sure she’d actually heard it.

  “Is he gonna be okay?”

  She touched the wet cloth to Nobody’s side. He didn’t even flinch. “Madeline said he’d be fine,” she replied, hoping it was true. “I’ve got to change his bandage and then he needs to rest.”

  Water tinged with blood dripped down Nobody’s side and plopped on the cushion. God, she hoped the stitches had held. She could change a bandage, but she couldn’t sew a man back together.

  They sat for a few minutes until Melinda thought it’d soaked enough. Even then, the medical tape pulled at Nobody’s skin.

  She forced herself to look at the wound, which made her tummy do some highly acrobatic flips. But, as far as she could tell, the stitches were all in one piece. There wasn’t even that much bruising. She used a corner of the washcloth to wipe the area clean and breathed a huge sigh of relief when more blood did not well up in the cut.

  She looked at Jamie, who had turned an unusual color of green. “Can you go find me a dry towel or something?” she asked, hopeful that a job would distract him. “Please?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. And since the boy probably knew his way around that trailer better than she did, she only had a few moments alone with Nobody. She leaned down close to his ear. “Nobody, you and I are going to have a little chat about that boy just as soon as I’m sure you’re not going to die on me. Understand?”

  “Don’t … scare … him.” Each word seemed to be a thousand-pound weight on his chest that he struggled to push through.

  “Isn’t that the funniest damn thing I’ve ever heard, coming from you,” she muttered as Jamie came flying back out of the trailer with a handful of paper towels.

  Melinda smiled at him even as she mentally smacked herself upside the head. “Thanks. Can you rinse this one out for me and hang it somewhere to dry?” Jamie nodded and was off again.

  She dried the stitches as gently as she could and dug into the backpack for the bandages. Just as she saw the antibiotic cream, she noticed the small square at the bottom. Where there condoms in here? Oh, for heaven’s sake. Her sister was insane to think that Melinda would sleep with a wounded man.

  She slathered on a healthy layer of the antibiotic cream. “I’m going to leave the antibiotics. I’d consider it a personal favor if you took them.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought he made a noise that could have been, “Ha.”

  “Laugh all you want, but I’m serious. Otherwise, I’ll … I’ll come back here and make you talk some more.”

  One eyelid fluttered about half open. Was he trying to give her a look? He needed more practice.

  “Oh, I will,” she told him, hoping that what passed as his sense of humor was a good sign. “I almost know where I am. You have a hell of a lot to explain—all those books, what that child is doing here, where you’re hiding twenty-seven horses? A hell of a lot.”

  One corner of his mouth curved up into what was almost a smile. As she looked down at him, she was struck by the wonder of it all. His face relaxed into sleep, the color coming back to normal. He looked … at peace. It took everything hard about him and made it softer. God, he was a handsome man.

  And a wounded one. She placed the gauze over the wound, instantly feeling better now that the stitches were covered by white cloth, and taped the whole thing on with what seemed to her to be three times the amount of tape Madeline had used. But hey—it was a darn secure bandage.

  Jamie came back out, looking a little better. Yeah, having a concrete task helped her, too. “He’s going to rest for a while. Can you get the horses, please?” This time, the boy didn’t bolt off to his chore. Instead, he gave Nobody a plaintive look.
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br />   “I’ll get lost if I try to go home myself,” she reminded him, which was God’s honest truth. “And you have to bring the horses right back here.”

  In other words, she wouldn’t make him go back to his parent’s house and she wouldn’t keep him from coming back to Nobody.

  Honestly, she didn’t want to. If he came back here, then there’d be someone keeping an eye on the man who was currently unconscious in a chaise lounge. That was a reassuring thought. If something went really wrong, Jamie might be able to get to Madeline in time.

  The boy thought this over for a bit and then nodded before he headed down the same path he’d taken Red earlier.

  Whew. She went back into the trailer and found a light blanket. She threw it over Nobody’s shirtless form and then refilled the water glass and put it on the chair next to him. Then she opened the little fridge in the trailer. There wasn’t much there but carrots, so she dug out a few, rinsed them off, and found a baggie to put them in. There. It wasn’t a gourmet meal, but if he woke up, he’d have something to eat and drink. Then she grabbed the backpack and took out anything she thought he might need—the rest of the bandages, the antibiotics, the granola bar. Just in case.

  “I’m leaving,” she told his sleeping form as she slung the pack over her shoulders. “Don’t you dare die while I’m gone, okay?”

  She didn’t get a response, but then, she didn’t expect one. She could only hope that, somewhere in his dreams, he’d heard her.

  She leaned down. “I’ll send Jamie back, okay? And I’ll see you later,” she told him as she heard the clip-clop of hooves. “I promise.”

  Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she kissed his forehead and said, “Thank you for protecting me, Mr. Bodine.”

  He sighed in his sleep.

  Now why did that make her feel so good?

  Chapter Nine

  “Let me guess,” Melinda said, looking at the mare who appeared to be considerably older than Red had been. Had that man put her on a geriatric mare? Oh, when he wasn’t having a medical emergency, she was going to tear him a new one.

  This horse had a big burst of white right between her eyes. “This one’s Star, right?”

  Jamie gave her a short nod.

  Melinda looked around, but she didn’t see a convenient stump or stepping stool or anything that she could use, beyond the café chairs. “I need help,” she told the boy.

  He gave her a look that, in another two or three years, would probably be the full-on teenage eye-roll. But then he slipped back off the other horse’s back and came over to her.

  Without a word, he laced his fingers and let her step into his cupped hands. Then, with more force than she would have given the kid credit for, he gave her a big boost onto Star’s bare back.

  Would she even be able to walk tomorrow? It’d be a bowlegged experience, that was for sure.

  Jamie slipped back onto his horse, Socks—who had four perfectly matched socks on her legs—and led the way out of the clearing. Melinda looked over her shoulder at Nobody’s sleeping form as they rode away.

  Be okay, she thought at him. Don’t die because of me. She couldn’t bear the thought.

  She and Jamie rode in silence until they broke through the tree line at the bottom of the hill. Then she goosed Star forward so that she was riding parallel with the boy.

  “So,” she began, watching him cringe at the sound of the voice. It was clear that he’d be perfectly fine not talking the whole way home, but that was too damn bad. She had him completely alone—no one would see them talking or hear what they said. This was her best chance to learn everything she could.

  “Your name is Jamie Kills Deer?”

  He nodded. Oy.

  “How long have you been helping Nobody out?”

  “I don’t help him. He helps me,” came the short reply. But hey, it was a reply! Progress!

  “How does he do that?”

  There was a longish pause. She looked at his face. The bruises were faded, the swelling gone. “Keeps me safe.”

  “From who?” Nothing. So she added, “from your dad?”

  He nodded.

  “Your dad hurts you?”

  He gave her that look again, the nascent teenage-eye-roll that said Duh loud and clear.

  So she changed directions. “How long has Nobody been protecting you?”

  She didn’t get an answer. Oh, this kid thought he could just clam up? Hell, no. They had about forty minutes of riding left. He was going to talk whether he liked it or not. If Nobody was the reason she couldn’t have this child removed by social services, she needed to know exactly what he did for the boy.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone. Not even Rebel,” she said. “And you know Nobody wouldn’t have shown me where he lived if he didn’t trust me.”

  At least, she hoped that was true.

  “So why don’t you tell me how it is that you’re grooming his horses and he’s protecting you.” Then she added a Nobody-esque, “Now,” just for good measure.

  Jamie’s look was a little less smartass this time. “My dad—he drinks. Mom, too.”

  The image of Nobody’s scarred back and arms popped into her mind again. “They’re mean when they drink?”

  He nodded. “I guess I was about seven. My dad hit my mom—knocked her out—and I was …”

  She waited. At least he was talking.

  “I was screaming,” he finally said, as if a seven year old being terrified of watching his mom get beaten was something to be ashamed of. “And my dad was coming toward me. He was gonna hit me, too.”

  “He do that a lot?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, not looking at her. But then his tone changed. “And then … this shadow just kind of pulled off the wall. I mean, I know I was just a little kid, but it was like something in a dream.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “I mean, it was scary. One minute, my dad was about to punch me and then this shadow walks into a man and hits him so hard … I thought he was dead, but then this shadow-man kicked him and he groaned and I knew he wasn’t dead and that made me so mad. So mad.”

  “Because he wasn’t dead?”

  “Yeah.” The more the kid talked, the more animated he was becoming.

  Melinda almost smiled at him. He may be learning how to be all closed off from Nobody Bodine, but that wasn’t his nature.

  “Then this shadow-man came at me and I was so scared he was going to hurt me, too. But he didn’t.” Jamie said this last part as if he still couldn’t believe there were men in this world who wouldn’t smack a little boy around. “He just crouched down before me and asked me if I was okay. Said if I stopped crying, he’d take me some place for a few days where no one would hurt me and I could ride horses.”

  She cringed. It sounded like something a pedophile would say to a vulnerable kid to lure them into a trap. Stranger-danger, never take the candy. Never. But to a kid in a crappy situation … “Yeah?”

  Jamie nodded. “Put me on the back of a horse and we rode to his place.”

  “What did you do there?” She kept her voice light and easy. Now that he’d gotten going, the boy seemed more willing to share than his mentor had been.

  “He made me some dinner, cleared a spot off one of the beds and let me sleep there and then, the next morning, showed me his horses. Said I could ride one if I could brush it, then he showed me how to do it. Didn’t hurt me,” he added defensively. “He doesn’t hurt me. He keeps me safe.”

  She looked at him. He met her gaze without flinching or looking away. He was telling the truth, thank God for that. “How does he do that?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Sometimes, he comes and gets me and I stay out a few days. That’s the best. He got me a fishing pole—there’s a creek down on the other side of the hill—and I can read any book I want as long as I put it back where it came from.” He was quiet for a moment. “I hafta eat a lot of carrots, though.”

  Melinda gri
nned. That man took his literature seriously. But that just lead to more questions. Like, had he stolen the fishing pole? Where did he get that many books? And, beyond that, why did he have so many books? Had he graduated from high school? She could see how it would be hard if he didn’t have a home or a family to make sure he got to class every day, but most kids who dropped out didn’t have several hundred paperbacks in a trailer somewhere.

  “What do your folks say when you’re gone that long?”

  Dang, that was the wrong question. Jamie shut down on her, barely muttering, “My folks never notice when I’m gone.”

  She scrambled to come up with a re-direct. “I’m glad you started coming to the center. You’ve been a big help getting it painted.”

  “He made me come.”

  She’d lost him. He was back to not looking at her, sitting rigidly on his horse’s back. Crap. She shouldn’t have pushed him to talk about his family.

  “You know where Rebel and my sister live, right?”

  He shrugged.

  Okay, that was going to be a problem. She looked out over the sea of grass, trying to get her bearings. The hills that hid Nobody were some distance behind them now, but she couldn’t see anything in front of them that looked the least bit familiar. Great Plains, indeed, she snorted to herself.

  She slung the bag off her back and dug out the walkie-talkie. “What are you doing?” Jamie asked, alarmed.

  “If you can’t get me to Rebel’s house, he has to come get me. I don’t have a clue where I am.” Then she shot him a side look. “And I got the feeling we were done talking, so …”

  She clicked the walkie-talkie on. “Hello, Rebel? Maddie? Hello?”

  Then she realized that Jamie had stopped and was ten feet behind her. She spun in the saddle. Was he trying to pull a Nobody-style disappearance? “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pointing her finger at him. “You have to know where they live so that you can come back and get us if Nobody gets worse.”

  Jamie’s face twisted in confusion. “But …”