The fright faded faster than it appeared, and was replaced by instant and vicious rage. Frank snatched the door open and rushed the one-eyed man at full speed. He intended to kill him and make sure he stayed dead. When he was less than halfway across the yard, he realized that what he thought was the dead man was nothing more than a piece of plastic sheet caught on a tree branch.
Relieved by the sight but embarrassed by his actions, Frank ripped the plastic from the tree and dropped it to the ground. He leaned his head back, looked into the gray night sky, and collapsed to his knees. Hot tears fell from his eyes as he looked at the liquor bottle. A third was missing, sloshed out as he ran. The sight of it caused his anger to flare again. He threw it as far as he could into the thick overgrown brush. The sound it made as it shattered against something hard made him smile. Frank returned to the house and locked the door behind him. There was no sadness at the waste of the liquor. He spread out on a sofa in the next room to rest. It was the best sleep he had in a long time. He did not dream of her.
─•••─
The bright sunshine flooded the room, and she opened her eyes. The yellow flowers were still on the small table in front of the window, but they did not seem as vibrant as the day before. Angela rolled over on her right side and lowered her feet to the floor. She needed to use the bathroom.
When she tried to sit up, the room seemed to spin, and she grabbed the bed for support. She slid from the mattress and landed on the carpeted floor on her knees. The impact was lessened by the thick carpet. It still jolted her body and the enduring injuries responded with sudden and sharp pain.
She pulled herself up from the floor and made her way to the connected bathroom of the bedroom. The pleasing salmon-colored walls and white sink greeted her. She sat on the toilet and closed her eyes. The room had the scent of lilacs. When she finished and stood back up, she looked at her face in the mirror. Her face was familiar but changed in a way that made her sad. The woman who looked back at her was far older than she remembered and the once silky hair was now a tangled mess of dark strands. She searched for a hairbrush and found a thick toothed comb. The hour that followed was one of tears and frustration.
Angela thought she heard a noise and turned to the open door. Frank stood beyond the threshold. His face held a sober expression as his eyes remained locked on the edge of the doorway. She turned to face him and her feeling of indignation returned. The way he appeared to her then softened the anger she felt for him. Angela waited for Frank to speak.
“What do you need?” he said.
Angela looked at him and he refused to meet her eyes. She stepped from the bathroom and into the bedroom, making sure she brushed past him as she walked by. He sighed and turned toward her and held up a small notepad with a pencil tucked inside. Angela took it from him and wrote down two words with the dosage next to each.
“I need both of them,” she said. “It has to be both. Otherwise, it won’t work.”
She handed him the notepad. He nodded his head, placed a small pistol on the bedside table, and walked from the room without saying a word. Frank grabbed a long sleeve shirt he found in a closet and left the house. He locked the front door and felt foolish because he had smashed the glass of the back door to get inside. Angela watched him walk into the street from the bedroom window. He did not look back and did not see her wave to him as he turned to the left and traveled from the house.
─•••─
Frank was gone for the remainder of the day, and Angela became concerned that he had abandoned her again. She stood at the window and watched for him. Her mind played over various scenarios. As the sun faded on the horizon and the shadows grew long, she accepted the fact he had left her to fend for herself.
Angela sat on the bed and thought about all of the misfortunes in her past life. The longer she thought, the angrier she became. After a long while, she decided she would leave the next day and search for the medicines herself. The recent discovery of her unknown courage and will to survive gave her a strange new pride.
I don’t need him to do it for me. I don’t need him at all. I can take care of myself. Just because he is a man does not mean a damn thing. I have proven my worth already. I don’t need anyone ever again.
It was twilight when she heard the noise. Someone had entered the house, and she debated to hide in the bathroom and wait for them to come in or remain on the bed because she did not want to move. Angela heard footsteps on stairs, and she sat up on the bed. The decision was made, and she stayed where she was to wait. She held the pistol gripped and aimed at the doorway as the sound of footsteps came closer to the room. The person carried a flashlight. Its white beam danced on the walls as they approached.
Frank stepped past the doorway. Angela took a deep breath and lowered the pistol. He walked to the side of the bed and placed a blood-covered white paper bag on the bedside table. She saw that he held a blood-soaked rag to his left side.
“What happened?” she said.
Angela started to get up from the bed, and he held out his hand to stop her. She saw a large amount of blood had poured from his side and saturated his shirt and pants.
“I’m fine,” he said. Frank pointed to the bag. “Check and make sure that is what you wanted.”
Angela lifted the bag with trembling hands, opened it, and pulled out the two boxes. She placed her hand over her face and nodded her head. Frank turned from her and lumbered from the room. Angela called out to him, but he did not stop.
“I can help clean that wound,” she said.
She opened the first box and took the small pill. As she swallowed the water to wash it down, she smiled and pressed her hands to her face. It was harder than she imagined, but she was relieved. Before the virus changed things, she would have had a different view of what was right.
That was then. This is now. I was self-righteous and self-important. I thought the world was supposed to cater to my views, my whims, my feelings. Just because I had a bumper sticker and an opinion, I thought I was entitled to pass judgment on others without knowing their circumstances. That was then. This is now. I am a hypocrite.
─•••─
It was early morning when Frank came into the room and stood at the window. Angela woke and saw him. He stared out the window as she went into the bathroom. She saw that he had poured water into the toilet bowl to flush it and left a half-empty bucket of water next to the tub. When she came out, he was gone. She went back to bed and looked at the blood covered white bag. Soon she would take the rest, and it would be done.
When she woke from a short nap, there was a small assortment of food sitting on the table beside the bed. Angela ate her fill and watched the sky grow dark. After the sun set, she heard Frank as he walked up the steps. The soft orange glow of a candle signaled his approach. She shifted on the bed and waited for him to enter the room. He closed the curtains and lit new candles he brought without acknowledging her.
“Are you going to leave me?” she said.
Frank held a candle close to the one on the dresser across from her bed. He did not look at her as he proceeded to light the half gone candle. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to keep herself from making a sound as she started to cry. He left after lighting a few candles, and she thought of what her life had become. Angela considered the fact Frank may not be concerned with her like Mike had been. If that was the case, she thought, he serves no purpose to her. She made her mind up to travel to the Bahamas like Mike had talked about before he died. The memory of his death played out in her head, but she did not resist. It dredged up more memories from deep below.
She looked at the flickering candle flame, and it called to her. Angela reminisced about the day she had Mike kill her husband. Daniel had become weak and fearful. He was unable to help or protect her. She was not sure when she first suspected he might have the sickness, but it did not take long to decide it was best that he died. To leave him the way he was would have been cruel. Convincing Mike he
should do it was problematic. He resisted her logic for several days and eventually agreed after she made him a few white lie promises. The next day Mike buried her husband. She said a few words over the shallow grave, and they started their travel south.
They drove as far as they could. Few roads were clear, most were blocked. Citizens in fear or the authorities hoping to protect them, placed barricades of concrete or stacked cars on the roadways to close off their communities. Mike had a hard time finding his way. He explained that all the county roads seemed the same and he got confused. It did not surprise Angela when they ran out of gas and had to walk.
Four hundred eighty-seven days had passed since they left the front door of her house in Tennesse. In that time she had found herself, her true self. Free of all the expectations placed on her, she no longer had to maintain the facade of a poor helpless woman. Angela did not have to act as though she cared for others because she did not. The reigns of society were cast free, and she was driven by what evolution had programmed into all people. Self-preservation.
─•••─
Frank stood at the foot of the stairs and held his side. The cut was superficial and more annoying than dangerous. After he applied another application of iodine and a clean bandage to the wound, he sat on the sofa and thought about the woman upstairs.
He focused on why he cared to help her, and it came to him. It was the color of her eyes. The way she looked at him reminded him of the past. His wife had hazel eyes. Frank knew he did not love Angela, but there was nothing else left for him in the world. He decided he would rather spend his remaining time with someone else than to be alone.
─•••─
She opened her eyes and saw him standing at the foot of the bed. There was a strange faraway look in his eyes before he blinked and focused on her. He held a jug of orange-flavored breakfast drink and a package of oatmeal cookies.
“Feel like having company today?” he said. “I really don’t want to eat alone.”
She nodded, moved up on the bed, and patted the mattress beside her leg. He placed the jug and cookies on the table and sat down beside her. She reached out her arms, and he leaned closer to her. He held her while she cried and rubbed her back. As they embraced, he pressed his lips to the top of her head and breathed in the scent of her hair. She squeezed his arm and sobbed until she could not any longer.
Angela considered her situation and her place in the world. She thought about Frank and felt she could love him someday, that she could in the future be in love with him. Even if the world was the way it had become, she felt she could love the man that held her close to his chest. Close to the sound of his beating heart. She would try one day to love him and let him love her. It seemed that was all that was left in the world for them anyway.
Frank pulled from her and went to the window. He pressed his hands against the glass and glanced back and forth, searching for something. She observed his strange behavior and frowned with concern. Angela reached under her pillow for the pistol and sqeezed the grip. For several minutes she watched him and wondered if she would need to shot him. He pushed his hands on the window and leaned forward. Frank lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“Did you hear that?” he said. “ Please tell me you heard that.”
“What?” Angela said. She studied him, trying to understand the reason for his question. “You mean just then? All I heard was just a crow calling out.”
He turned from the window. She saw tears streaming down his cheeks. His blue eyes met her hazel eyes, and he nodded his head.
“That’s right,” he said. “It’s just a crow calling out.”
47
Charlie walked while holding Amy’s hand. She had long since stopped crying and trudged behind him with her head down. He followed the signs for several miles until they stood on the sun-faded blacktop of the Natchez Trace. He knelt to pull a small purple flower growing from a large crack in the road. His fingers pushed it gently behind Amy’s ear. She did not even notice it, her eyes aimed at her feet to watch her shoes move over the asphalt.
Charlie pulled her by her hand as he walked, and listened to the birds sing in the trees far off. The sun was high overhead when he made her stop. He dug into the bag he found on the way out of the city. His hands pulled out two dirt-covered bottles of water. He made Amy take one, opened it for her, and pushed it to her mouth. She sipped it, but she did not care to drink it.
“Where’s Maggie?” she asked.
Charlie stared at her.
How could she not know? How could she forget what she did?
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. She sat on the edge of the highway and appeared confused as to why she held the bottle of water. He waited for her to stand up, to follow him, but she remained sitting, staring at her feet.
“I think I killed her.”
She looked up at him. He avoided her eyes. Charlie sighed and looked north.
“I know.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“I know.”
He patted her shoulder to make her stand. They walked for another mile, heading south until he made her stop again under the shade of a large pine tree. Charlie told her to stay put as he walked into the woods and came back a few minutes later. He had the rifle slung over his shoulder and put the holster back on his belt. He looked south toward the gates and experienced a sudden wave of resentment wash over him. Amy stood when he waved for her to follow. They walked again, and he headed north.
“Where are we going, Ben?”
“Home,” he said. His face was expressionless. “To Iuka.”
“I’ve never been there before.”
“I know.”
The two of them traveled for a short while. Amy fell behind. Charlie stopped and waited for her to catch up. In a straight section of the highway, he noticed something lying on the road. When he got closer, he saw that it was a dinner plate. He tried to ignore it as he walked nearer, but the sight of it angered him. Charlie took several quick steps toward the centerline and kicked the plate into the air. It broke into three large pieces from the impact. They shattered into dozens when they hit the blacktop. The fork made a light metallic sound as it slid to the edge of the road. Amy watched him with slight interest. Satisfied with the plate destroyed, Charlie stepped back into the middle of the right lane behind Amy. They walked in silence. Charlie leaned his head back and looked up at the clear blue sky. Amy watched her shoes move over the faded blacktop.
When the day grew late, they stopped, and he built a fire at the edge of the road. Orange light glowed off their faces while they sat and listened to the crackling sound of the burning sticks. He made her eat some of the snack crackers he found at an empty grocery store. He watched her as she nibbled at the corners of them. He studied her face while cleaning the rifle.
“Did you eat the food there?” he said.
Amy nodded her head. She said, “Yes, but I didn’t like it.”
Charlie thought if he should continue and decided against it.
Best to leave it all behind.
She cried softly at first while holding her head in her hands. Her sobs grew louder. Grief struck she pulled at her hair. Amy stood and screamed toward the darkness between the trees.
“He made me do it! That man, made me do it!”
“I know.”
He spoke as he stretched out on the cold ground. His head felt a crushing force made of jagged edge glass and needles. Charlie tried to hold on, grasped at the threads that kept him bound, and lost it all to the infinite expanse of half dreams. He ended the way he always did, with a fading vision of flames in the engulfing darkness.
When morning light came, he listened to the birds sing in the trees, and felt the warming breeze on his skin. Amy slept with a peaceful calm, lying on the brown grass at the road’s edge next to the dead fire.
Ben watched her body move as she breathed and he smiled to himself. He was not afraid of the world any longer. He felt he knew the tr
uth of it, the binding constant that held it all together. He traveled two hundred twenty miles to find it.
He would carry that knowledge home with him. He was like her. She was like the rest. They were all lost ships tossed about in rough seas, each inflicted with wounds that would never heal. The mind is the master, and the body is the slave. When the master dies, the slave can live on.
They were all afflicted in their own way. He appreciated that understanding, the clarity it brought to his troubled mind. It gave him a sense of peace he had lost long ago. Charlie helped him to see it. He held a light into the darkness and illuminated the reality of it all. It gave Ben a deep comfort in knowing it, and in the end, he guessed that is what he needed most.
He opened his father’s revolver as he watched her sleep and counted the remaining rounds.
One for her, one for me.
The Wretched Page 32