“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe I can even talk the rest of them into joining me. I just can’t leave here with Patty being like she is. You understand that, right?”
Julie nodded her head. The next morning she loaded up her things into a Chevy pickup whose owners were either long dead or captured. After a passionate kiss, Julie shifted the truck into drive, and she never looked back.
The following days matched Jimmy’s emotions, endlessly gray and unseasonably cool. Wherever he turned, there was something or someone that reminded him of Julie. He purposely stayed out of the porch where she had slept on one of the single beds. He found himself avoiding Rita, simply because she would ask him how he was. Board games had become out of bounds as each one held another memory of Julie. Jimmy would spend his days hiding from Julie’s ghost, and he was rarely successful for more than a few minutes at a time.
Jimmy’s depression deepened with each passing day. He began sleeping in his clothes, and he gave up shaving. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror. The stranger who stared back at him with dark circles under red-rimmed eyes also reminded him of Julie. There were times when he thought he was on the verge of losing his mind, but he found that oddly comforting. A big part of him envied Patty. She seemed to start a new life every morning.
There were jobs to do, and he forced himself to rise to the tasks at hand. There was still trash to take care of and wood to chop. Storm windows needed to be exchanged for the screens, but they needed to be cleaned first. The boats were landed, scrubbed, covered, and parked under the pines. The men hauled in the dock, one heavy section at a time. They stacked it neatly, and Ken secured a large blue tarp over it. Red appeared in the trees and brown in the grass. Winter was coming.
Chapter 12
Horror found them when they least expected it. The experience would slap the depression from Jimmy and force him to make decisions. Just before lunch as Jimmy sat on his bed and watched September rain smear against the storm window, he heard the sound of running feet. His door was thrown open, and Rita stood there with eyes wild with fear. “Have you seen Patty?” she nearly shrieked at him.
Jimmy shook his head and he sprang from the bed. A full-scale search of the house was on. and everyone seemed to be shouting Patty’s name at the same time. A minute later, as Jimmy was coming out of the tuck-under garage, Ken tossed Jimmy one of the musty hooded raincoats that had hung on the basement wall. “She’s not in here,” was all Ken had needed to say. They each buckled into one of the rubber raincoats, and he and Jimmy charged up the stairs and out of the house.
The cold wind and driving rain worked together to strip the leaves from the trees. They split up, and Jimmy searched the back of the property, starting with the shed. “Patty!” he called every fifteen seconds or so. “Where are you?”
Ken was suddenly behind him and spun Jimmy around like a rag doll. “The gate is open!” he screamed. “The damn gate is wide open!”
“Shit!” cried Jimmy. “When was the last time anyone saw her?”
Ken’s rain-spattered face said it all. He shook his head and shrugged. “Let’s go!” he cried. “I’ll take the road and you search the cabins. She couldn’t have gone far!” They ran to the gate and wordlessly split up.
Jimmy searched the deserted lodge first. “Patty?” he called. The smell of decaying garbage assaulted his senses, and squirrels and chipmunks seemed to be crawling everywhere. “Patty?” The front door hung open, and pooled water shimmered in the breeze. The old place was going to hell in a handbag, and Jimmy found that he could care less.
He may have been searching for an hour without any sign of her before Jimmy stopped in one of the cabins and lit up a cigarette. The raincoat may have been old, but he was as dry as a bone. He tried to think where Patty would have gone. His fingers shook with cold and fading adrenaline. He cursed Julie for not being there to help them. Another pair of eyes might mean the difference between life and death. There were four more cabins to search on this side of the lake. They were strung along the water on a narrow peninsula of land that was known as The Point. The last cabin was nearly a mile from Ken’s, and Jimmy couldn’t imagine that she’d have ventured out that far.
He left the cabin, tossed his cigarette, and marched directly into the wind. Fat raindrops slapped against his clenched face as his raincoat flapped like a wet flag behind him. He bypassed the next set of dark cabins. Ken’s lake boiled like an angry sea while crows desperately clung to the pine branches above him. Jimmy passed another cabin, but he set his sights on the last one. The old log cabin had been painted dark brown for as long as Jimmy could remember, and it stood like a sentinel at the edge of the water. The cabin now looked dark and forbidding. Suddenly a terrible thought crept into his brain: Suicide. Jimmy tried to push it away, but like the crows, it clung to the limbs of his mind with sharp talons and refused to move.
At the end of the peninsula the shaggy grass had been sunburned to a crispy brown. There was something about it that reminded Jimmy of death. The thought ran back to suicide, and Jimmy violently shook his head. “Patty!”
The old door was still in perfect working condition and Jimmy opened it, slowly. “Patty?” he called, quietly. “Are you in here?”
The small living area was covered in dust and cobwebs, and once he closed the cabin door, all sound ceased to exist. The poor light offered by the rain-covered windows caused all the colors inside the cabin to turn to a shade of gray. “Patty?” Jimmy asked in his normal voice. There were two interior doors inside the cabin; the first led into the small bathroom. Jimmy quickly closed the door and moved to the other one. Jimmy could suddenly smell Patty’s lilac perfume. He steeled himself for what was on the other side of the door. He knocked. “Patty? It’s Jimmy.”
He then waited for a full ten count.
He opened the door and found Patty lying flat on her back with her arms spread wide. Her eyes were closed, and Jimmy gasped at the sight. Tears shot down his cheeks like spit seeds of melon. “Oh, my God,” he cried. “Patty!” He quickly unbuckled his raincoat and rubbed his wet hands on his dry shirt. “Patty?”
One arm suddenly flopped to her bosom, and Patty seemed to rise from the dead. Jimmy choked on his tears and the snot that hung from his nose. “Whiskers?” Patty called out, looking as confused as ever.
A shape crawled out from under the bed and suddenly leapt next to Patty. Jimmy groaned as he recognized the animal. He rushed to the side of the bed, wiping the tears from his eyes. “That can’t be,” he said. “That can’t be Whiskers.”
Patty sat up and pulled the affectionate feline close. “Well, Jimmy,” she said, the sleep still thick in her voice. “It most certainly is.”
“Do you remember me?” Jimmy asked, sitting down and giving Patty a quick hug. “Oh, God, we’ve been so worried about you. How do you feel? How did you find Whiskers? Why are you out here?”
Patty reached over to the bedside table and picked up her thick glasses. She calmly put them on and smiled. “I didn’t find Whiskers; she came to find me.”
“But,” Jimmy gasped. “That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible if you have faith,” Patty said. “I prayed for her to find me.”
“Patty!” cried Ken, from over Jimmy’s shoulder.
“Hi, honey,” Patty said with such peace in her voice that Jimmy got up and backed away.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ken stammered, moving past Jimmy and onto the bed. He reached out and took the metal tag from the mystery cat’s collar. “Oh, my,” he gasped. “Sweet Mother of Jesus!”
Jimmy tossed his raincoat onto the corner of the bed and bolted from the room, out the open door and into the rain. He then ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
Doc spent nearly an hour with Patty and much longer than that digesting his own diagnosis. He confessed this to Jimmy and Burt on the following afternoon as they sat at the picnic table eating their lunch under what had become a blue sky. Patty Dahlgren was
not only out of the woods, she seemed to have somehow increased her mental capacities since Jimmy had discovered her sleeping in the cabin at the end of The Point. “She now has what’s called a photographic memory,” Doc had said, seemingly flabbergasted. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s some crazy shit,” said Burt. “Last week she didn’t even know her own name.”
“Whiskers did it to her,” Jimmy said. “How else can you explain it?”
Both Doc and Burt gave him looks that made Jimmy stare down into his plate of beef stew. He knew it sounded crazy, but there was no denying the fact that she had recovered the minute she was reunited with her beloved pet. “I’m glad you brought that up,” said Doc, standing his spoon up in his stew. “I want to address that issue. Some animals possess an incredible instinct for being able to find their way home. Obviously Whiskers has that gift. I believe that Patty’s shock at seeing her long-lost friend was enough to jump-start her sputtering brain. I’m fairly certain now that she was suffering from post-traumatic shock syndrome. I also believe that her shock was so great that it opened up hidden chambers in Patty’s own mind.”
“What are you saying?” Burt asked, pushing his half-eaten stew to the middle of the table.
“Patty Dahlgren now has total recall.”
“Poor Ken,” said Burt, rubbing his chin.
“So,” Jimmy said, “what you’re telling us is that Whiskers had nothing to do with this?”
“Whiskers was simply the catalyst that sparked this phenomenon. There has been no miracle here. You men have to know that there is no such thing as a miracle. There is no Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, or Easter Bunny, either. Miracles are how simpletons describe complex situations. That’s the lazy man’s blanket explanation. That’s a miracle! Hogwash. Everything can be explained once you eliminate the impossibilities.”
“Miracles are God’s work,” Jimmy corrected. “Everyone knows that.”
“Damn straight,” agreed Burt. “I’ve seen miracles before, and this was definitely one of them. Quit trying to explain everything. You’re cheapening what really happened here. Don’t you believe in God?”
Doc suddenly stood and took the defensive. “What if I don’t? I don’t think either of you can fathom what I’ve been through. Do you think I’ve never prayed? I’ve prayed hundreds of times. I’ve prayed over that many dead bodies and a hundred more! I prayed for God to give them another chance. Do you think I enjoy informing families that they’ve lost a loved one? I prayed, and it never brought a single one of them back to life. There is no God, only science.”
“I feel sorry for you,” said Jimmy.
“Me too,” agreed Burt. “I’m going to pray for you.”
“Don’t patronize me,” spat Doc. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Now it was Burt’s turn to stand. Jimmy was amazed at how much weight the big cop had lost. He thought it was at least fifty pounds. Burt was no longer the three-hundred-pound heart attack in waiting. He was now a two-hundred-fifty pound baldheaded wedge.
“Are you going to hit me, Burt?” Doc asked.
“No, I’m going to ask you to stop,” Burt said in what Jimmy imagined to be his cop voice. “You have every right to your opinion, but you can keep it to yourself.”
“This is still the United States of America, and I can say whatever the hell I please.”
“You can say anything you like to me or Jimmy. You’re just not going to say it to the both of us together.”
Jimmy leaned forward and dropped his spoon.
“What type of rubbish is that?” asked Doc, who now stood toe to toe with Burt.
Burt set his jaw as he stared up at the doctor. “This isn’t rubbish to me. The way I see it is that you’re talking about our Father. I’m not going to let you do that in front of my little brother.”
“Oh, please,” muttered Doc, but he turned away, and it seemed as if Burt had won the round.
Jimmy would replay that conversation over and over in his brain while he lay in his bed that night. He wondered how a doctor, of all people, could not see that they were all walking miracles. He really did feel sorry for Doc, and he prayed that he would find some faith before it was too late. He also wondered about Burt and about what his actions said about his faith. Jimmy had heard many theological arguments over the years, but none that ended with the threat of bodily harm. He found that he greatly admired Burt for making his stand. The next day he would retell the story to Ken. There was a moment of stunned silence before Ken nodded his head and smiled. “I didn’t think he had it in him,” he said of Burt.
The four men spent most of the good-weather days out cutting and splitting firewood. The air was crisp, and flocks of ducks and geese flew overhead. In Jimmy’s opinion, that proved they were much smarter than humans. Jimmy was secretly dreading winter. There was a sense of urgency to their work as September faded into mid-October. Their woodpile had mushroomed until it was nearly the size of a two-car garage. The hard work had paid off in other ways as well, Jimmy noticed. The exercise had been good for all of them, and it brought them closer together.
Patty had completely recovered. She would sometimes sit with Jimmy in the kitchen and talk in great detail about his parents. There he sat and sipped his coffee while Patty spun her stories with Whiskers turning circles around her ankles. He knew Patty enjoyed telling the stories as much as he enjoyed hearing them. He still missed his parents, and he looked forward to their talks.
One night as he and Burt sat out in the cool night air smoking their cigarettes, they heard the wolf pack hunting just outside the gate.
“Those damn things give me the creeps,” said Burt.
Jimmy listened. The howling voices seemed to be singing to each other, not a hundred yards from where they sat. The howling suddenly stopped, and there was a terrified bleating sound followed by ferocious snarls and a scream that nearly sounded human. Burt crossed himself and continued to smoke. That screaming sound would haunt Jimmy for a long time.
Chapter 13
The next morning Jimmy woke up to bright sunshine streaming through the upstairs windows. He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He could smell strong coffee calling him from downstairs, and he quickly dressed. The other beds were empty, and the air upstairs in the big bedroom felt warmer than it had in weeks. Jimmy couldn’t remember the last time he had slept this late and felt a little bit guilty for doing so. Sleeping in had been Bill’s thing, and Jimmy had no desire to earn that type of reputation. He walked down the creaky stairs and opened the door into the kitchen.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Patty said. She had already poured Jimmy a cup of coffee and handed it to him with a warm smile. “Just the way you like it.”
Jimmy took the cup gratefully and sipped. “Thank you,” he said, clearing the sleep out of his voice. “Where is everyone?”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
Jimmy sat down while Patty bustled around the counter. Whiskers was at her feet, affectionately turning circles around her ankles. Jimmy watched the gray cat for a moment and was amazed at how much fur had collected on Patty’s blue jeans. He then looked at the floor and saw small clumps of it.
“Ken and Burt are out foraging. I’ve had second thoughts about what’s right and wrong these days. I think the good Lord will forgive us for borrowing a few things that we really need. Ken promised to leave a note if he so much as takes a stick of wood. That’s the Christian thing to do.”
“Right,” said Jimmy, only half paying attention to her. He had picked up his coffee cup and was dabbing out a short strand of gray hair. Cat hair lay sprinkled on the table, and he subconsciously rubbed the sleeves of his shirt.
“Ken wants another generator. And do you know what, Jimmy? I don’t feel guilty about sending him out to go get one. I just feel so liberated. Do you want to know something else? I put together a shopping list. I told him to look for one of those boom boxes and some more candles. Do you know how many
candles we’ve used since we lost the generator?”
“Uh-huh,” Jimmy muttered, watching Whiskers stop spinning for a second. Jimmy gasped when the cat suddenly tipped over on its side.
Patty looked down and brushed the back of her hand across her forehead. “Oh, my tired baby,” she said, scooping Whiskers into her arms and scratching behind her ears without concern. “This is my little miracle cat. God sent her to me.”
Jimmy took another look at Whiskers, and he could see a small bit of the cat’s tongue hanging out of its mouth. He didn’t like the looks of that. “What about Doc?” Jimmy asked. “Did he go with them?”
“No, Doc is down in the workshop. Here, eat a sandwich. We’ll be eating lunch in an hour. I’m making stew.”
Jimmy stood from the table and accepted the peanut butter sandwich. Stew again, Jimmy thought, remembering the good food at Bailey’s. Jimmy hugged Patty warmly and then picked up his cup. “That’s great news, Patty,” he said. “I’m going down to see Doc. I need to talk to him about something.”
Desperate Times 2 Gun Control Page 10