by T. F. Walsh
Chapter Thirteen
Snow fell in short, gusty bursts as Izzy and Curtis picked their way over the frozen trail of rocky terrain broken with upgrown, gnarled roots thick as her arm. These weren’t icy flakes that clung to hair and lashes, but rounded pellets that peppered their heads and shoulders and bounced off the ground. The dogs snapped at them when they popped up or tried to catch them in their jaws before they hit the ground. Curtis and Izzy didn’t speak. She’d retreated into herself soon after the forest enveloped them and his chatter had quieted when her answers dwindled from single words to soft grunts.
Memories overwhelmed Izzy, the wintry scene before her superimposed by the shimmering mirage of the May afternoon that so drastically altered her life. Tragedy had no place on what, to her mind, had been an idyllic day. Washed in dreary grays and dirt speckled whites, this bleak setting better suited bloodshed and tears. Wind blew mournfully through the pine and tossed her hair about her face and sliced at her cheeks.
The trail had changed over the years, trees grown, brush cut back or left to intrude onto the well traveled ground. Now and then a certain bend in the path or interlacing of branches overhead triggered a time flash and, instead of Curtis in front of Izzy, Alan looked over his shoulder and laughed, egged her on while they raced to the falls.
Like Billy Pilgrim, Izzy came unstuck in time. Immediately A.A., she’d become almost used to the disorienting flights her mind took when she smelled something that smelled very Alan. A certain spicy soap, expensive hair product, the sweat and mildew tinged odor of stale athletic gear, all of them plunged her down through time malleable as warm lake water. Yesterday became today and today ten years past, and down that one turn on the trail her brother waited and this Izzy — armed with foreknowledge if bereft a limb — would pass the ghost of her ignorant and too curious self and lead Alan away from his doom. That old Izzy was just a shade. Substandard. So what if she died?
“Izzy?” At Curtis’s word, time fixed. Today was today. The fugue passed, but another and another came over her as they trudged on. An insistent word or two from Curtis jolted her to reality until they came to the last place Izzy had seen her brother.
She knew the place instinctively and her legs rooted to the ground like slender saplings. No amount of encouragement from Curtis or butting nudges from Nook moved her. Nylon padded the warm fingers that curled around her arm and touched her face.
“You still with me?” Curtis asked.
“Here. It happened right here, didn’t it?”
Curtis sighed and squeezed her upper arms. “About. That’s what I remember. I’m surprised you do.”
“I do and I don’t.” Izzy let him bring her to his chest and she rested her forehead on his shoulder. Nook planted on his haunches at her side, but Petey, the kinetic fuzz-ball, circled the pair, winding his leash around them. “I remember us racing. I remember stopping because I thought I saw something out the corner of my eye. We were always one-upping each other spotting wildlife. The shadow I saw was big, and I thought if I saw a deer or fox I could throw it in his face if he beat me to the falls.”
The forest and trails were bare of all but the heartiest foliage in winter. Summer, as it had been at Keene Lodge B.A., choked the woods with green and Izzy had to part a tangle of thicket and vine to unveil the creature she sought.
“I don’t know what I thought I’d see,” Izzy said. “Animals run from people thundering around their territory. Alan called for me. Maybe he’d noticed I’d fallen behind.
“Those eyes are so clear in my mind. They were bright yellow. Surrounded by tree shade and black fur, they were terrifying. Demonic.”
“Izzy — ”
“I had the strangest thought when I saw it. I thought: Are wolves really that big? This wolf’s too big. And I couldn’t move, so I called to Alan and said ‘Alan, there’s a wolf.’ I said it like it was nothing. Like I told him the coffee was done.
“I backed out of the brush. I don’t think I did it fast, but it leapt at me and the only thing I could think to do was put my arm up and close my eyes.”
Petey whined.
“It crushed me. I thought everything inside me had broken or burst and I couldn’t breathe.” Izzy’s throat and lungs constricted in sympathetic response to the memory and she struggled to continue, words coming between shallow, panicky breaths. “I couldn’t get air to scream. It was so quiet before Alan came. The wolf didn’t snarl or bark. Not until Alan tried to save me.
“Then I thought it was me screaming. Men don’t scream like that, so high and shrill. That was my brother.” Izzy said it like she didn’t believe herself. She didn’t want to. She lifted her head and looked at Curtis who seemed very far away. “I don’t remember you at all.”
Curtis stroked her hair. “Why do you do this to yourself, Izzy?”
“Catharsis. I’m supposed to feel a release. I don’t feel anything.”
“In my experience,” Curtis said, untangling them from Petey’s leash, “catharsis can’t be forced. The mind knows when it’s ready. When it’s not — ”
Head snapping westward, Curtis tensed under Izzy’s hands. Squinting, he sniffed twice and pinched his nose.
“When it’s not?” Izzy strained to see what startled Curtis. Nothing roamed the tree line she discerned. Guiding her with a finger against her chin, Curtis pulled her attention back to him. Whatever he’d heard or seen couldn’t have been important.
“When it’s not, the mind shuts parts of itself off to protect the whole.” Hard, strange eyes met Izzy’s. They possessed a strangeness similar to what she’d perceived in Thomas’s expression. Or did they? When she blinked Curtis’s face was his own, tanned and creased with laugh lines. His eyes were Curtis’s eyes, rich as milk chocolate and touched with echoes of mirth. “We get this.” He trailed a padded finger down Izzy’s cheek. “Blank expression, glazed eyes, lackluster attitude.” He glanced at the slate gray sky patterned black with the forest canopy’s lace. “We should head in. Weather’s gonna get bad. We need to drop Petey off at the main house before hitting the store.”
“And Nook?”
“He’ll come with us.”
Curtis had relaxed somewhat, but the dogs hadn’t. Both Nook and Petey’s muzzles pointed west, their nostrils flaring, taking in scents Izzy’s dull senses couldn’t detect. Their sickle tails were erect and still, their ears up, and their postures rigid. Petey’s lips curled back from his teeth. A few tugs on their leads brought them around and they all traipsed out of the woods, the dogs stopping every so often to sniff and perk their ears and Curtis pausing to type away on his phone when he wasn’t scanning their surroundings. The sky didn’t look so angry though the wind buffeted them, but if it had the dogs and Curtis on edge who was she to argue?
Izzy huddled in the back of the Jeep with Nook, heater on full blast. A toasty setting for Izzy, whose deadened fingers and toes pricked and tingled as they thawed. The temperature had Curtis shiny with sweat five minutes into their drive. He shed his gloves and coat and flung them onto the vacant passenger seat. Intermittent flurries thickened to true snowfall when they pulled up at the grocery, a small, corner store about two miles from Keene property. The hand painted sign atop the brick building read “Obander’s.” Through the car window, she spied a copper bell hanging inside the front door. An elderly man loitered behind the counter. He read a paperback he clutched in two hands, its front cover folded over and pressed to the book’s backside. When the bell tinkled, he placed a finger where he stopped and waved at Curtis, who snagged two black plastic baskets from the stack next to the door.
Packing the trunk with a dozen brown bags, Curtis hopped in the driver’s seat and navigated the worsening weather. He hunched over the wheel and squinted at the road obscured by waning light and swirling powder.
Izzy was a ghost at dinner. Nook curled at her feet. A fire crackled in
the grate behind them. She and Curtis shared the tiny card table. Plates of food and Mason jar glasses brim-full of blush colored, cheap wine — it left her mouth tasting metallic — left no room for forearms or elbows. She picked at her food. The rough and watery texture of cooked meat oozing juices nauseated her. Deep in contemplation, she didn’t notice Curtis’s absence from the table until he returned to clear her setting.
“I’ll do it,” Izzy said with a half-hearted lurch from her seat.
“You,” Curtis laid a hand on her shoulder, “need a long hot shower.”
Izzy sniffed herself. “Do I stink?”
“No, but you haven’t come back to Earth yet and I think it’ll do you good.” He deposited her plate and half drunk wine jar on the counter, stood her up, and marched her down the hallway and through a door on the right to his bedroom. She hadn’t explored the cabin as Curtis had her apartment, hadn’t had the energy since their aborted hike. The room was, like many things male, utilitarian. Not a lick of embellishment adorned the tables or walls. In fact, he had but one framed picture in his bedroom and it looked out of place, too small for the space where it hung.
A man — he had to be Curtis’s father, they looked so alike — and woman smiled out from the frame. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulder, squeezing her in a half bear hug. The woman, her ash blond hair wispy in her eyes, had one hand flat on the man’s chest. She wore a yellow rain slicker. Was she Curtis’s real mother or was this Aggie? Whoever she was, she had a kind face. The questions went unasked. All Izzy could do for the moment was be led into the bathroom. Repellent, the idea that she needed coddling, that she needed her hand held like some shuffling invalid. The back rooms didn’t have the benefit of a fireplace, so Curtis fired up a space heater wedged in the corner before pulling her into the connected bathroom.
A clear, green shower curtain patterned with daisies hung from metal rings and lined the inside of a well-used claw foot tub. Curtis got the water going while Izzy floated, phantom-like in the doorway. Everything around her seemed distant and trivial. She shook her head. What an awful guest she was.
“I’m sorry about this, Curtis.”
He sat on the lip of the tub, one hand under the spray, testing the temperature. The mirror over the sink fogged. “Nothing you can do about it, Izzy.” Pushing up from the tub, he went to her and worked at the belt threaded through her jeans. Her body swayed as he tugged the leather from her belt loops. She pulled her shirt over her head and her fingers slipped over her harness’s buckles. Steam from the shower had collected on the plastic and the moisture made her left hand clammy. Curtis took over and loosened her prosthetic.
“After Dad died, Aggie used to space out a lot. For days sometimes. I’d leave one morning and she’d be sitting on the couch staring straight ahead. I’d come home and she’d still be there by herself in the dark. At first, I didn’t know what to do, but if I got her up and moving, talked to her, she’d come out of it.”
“I don’t know why she left with you around.”
“Because I reminded her of Dad. The family resemblance is strong. She’d call me Rob by mistake.” He held onto Izzy’s harness and prosthetic. “I’m going to put this in the bedroom. I’ll be in the workshop across the hall. Come get me if you need anything. I’ll have my headphones on.” He tapped his ear and left Izzy to the shower, which did do her good.
Hot water brought Izzy out of the stratosphere and into her body. Curtis’s eucalyptus scented shampoo tingled on her scalp. His cake of green soap smelled like him and steam made the fragrance a heady perfume. When she cut the spray and stepped from the shower, she shivered and wrapped herself in a towel. Patting herself dry, she went to the bedroom and, finding her duffel absent, padded to the front room, leaving Nook snoring at the foot of the bed.
Light from the dying fire illuminated the living area and shifting reds and oranges highlighted the rough shapes of the furniture. The floorboards, worn shiny from years of foot traffic, were smooth and cool under Izzy’s bare feet. She found her duffel on the sofa where Curtis must have moved it so they could dine. Unzipping the bag, she rifled through its contents, searching for her pajamas.
Something thunked and skittered on the porch outside. Izzy never would have heard the noise in the city. The quiet of the woods out here was a tangible thing with its own weight. No disruption went unnoticed. She thought it might be a fox or chipmunk, but when she heard the scampering again, Nook’s nails clicking over the hardwood floor came to mind. Curtis had groused earlier when they had dropped Petey off at the main house, complaining that the Samoyed often jumped his pen in bad weather and wandered to the cabin instead of holing up on the heated porch. If Petey had come to the cabin, she couldn’t leave him out in the cold.
Towel cinched at her breast, Izzy crossed to the window next to the fireplace — heat from the embers warmed her legs — slid her stunted arm between the threadbare drapes, and parted them.
The storm had spent itself and the night was clear, save for a cloud or two scuttling across the starry sky. Fresh snow glittered in the moonlight like a blanket sprinkled with crushed diamonds. Petey wasn’t out on the lawn and Izzy didn’t see him on the left side of the porch.
Lambent, yellow eyes met Izzy’s when she turned to the right. A gray wolf stared up at her so close to the window its snout was barely an inch away from the glass. She shrieked and shot back, stumbling right into the folding chairs and card table. She fell in a heap with the toppled furniture. Chairs clanged against the floor like struck gongs. One of them knocked her shin. The table conked her head and her towel crumpled around her waist. She couldn’t get her breath and choked, breasts shaking with her sobs.
Curtis almost tripped over Nook when they both galloped into the living room. Cursing, he shoved the husky aside with his bare foot and knelt next to Izzy. Enormous headphones cupped his ears and their cord dangled down his chest. He yanked them off and tossed them into the hall.
“What happened? Are you hurt?” He lifted the chair off her leg and righted the table and felt her head. “I don’t feel any lumps.”
Izzy spoke between hitching sobs. “I’m not hurt.”
“Then why are you crying?”
A keening howl answered for Izzy. Blood crawled through her veins like a hundred thousand tiny insects. Their thorny legs scritched under her skin. She froze and her muscles coiled for flight. Tears came silently, hot trails gliding down her cheeks. Curtis stroked her back and stood. He peered out the window.
“Is it out there? Do you see it?” Izzy whispered and sniffed. Her voice was nasal and her face felt puffy. She rubbed her bruised leg.
Curtis nodded and crossed to the front door. When he reached for the keys hanging from a hook near the doorframe Izzy shot up. Her legs tangled in her towel as she rushed to him. Leaping, he caught her before her chin hit the floor, taking all her weight as she regained her balance.
“Don’t open the door, Curtis, please.” She clutched his shirt with her whole hand while he steadied her and kicked away the towel.
“Wolves don’t come near people, Izzy.”
“Like they don’t attack people, either?” She awaited his retort with wide, watery eyes. When he didn’t speak, she said, “Please, don’t go out there. I don’t want to lose you, too.” She bawled into his shoulder. Flannel rasped her bare chest and coarse denim brushed her thighs. The cold button above his fly stamped her belly.
“All right, all right.” Curtis’s breath heated her damp head and he put his arms around her.
“Fuck.” Her voice shook. “This is so stupid.”
“What is?”
“Crying.” Acknowledging her tears and his tender response to them somehow exacerbated her fit.
“It’s fine,” Curtis said when she quieted some and petted her arms. “But if you snot on my shirt we’re finished.”
Izzy choked. Crying and laughing didn’t mix. “Stop it.”
“I mean it. I’ll toss you and that fussbudget dog in the car and haul the both of you back to Tavella. Some lines aren’t meant to be crossed.” He kissed her forehead and his hands skated lower to massage the small of her back. “And not that I don’t prefer you naked and in my arms, but aren’t you chilly?”
“Impossible next to you.” Snaking her hands under his shirt, Izzy’s fingers skimmed over his fevered skin. His stomach trembled. On tip toe, she craned her neck and placed a kiss on his neck and at the corner of his mouth.
“Feeling better?” Reaching lower, he cupped and pinched her ass, patted her bottom. “Not afraid anymore?”
“It’s out there and can’t get in, right?” She guided his face to hers and grazed his bottom lip with her teeth.
“Mmm. Mmm hmmm.” Moving his head back and forth, Curtis brushed his nose against Izzy’s. He took her chin between his thumb and index finger. “You’re all wound up. If I laid you on the floor and did what I want to do, would we count that as taking advantage of your fragile emotional state? ’Cause I don’t want to do that.”
“I do.”
Fierce need for him zinged through her like she’d mainlined three double espressos. Joints and extremities fizzed with it and she flung her arms around his neck, taking his mouth with hers. Fear compelled her haste, the wolf at the window a horrific reminder of pleasure’s brevity.
Hurry. Take what you want. Take it now before it’s gone.
Anything could happen to the man she kissed. What sense was there in cowering on the floor when he made her body sing with bliss? His fingers dug into her cheek as she pushed and bustled him to the wall.
“No, you don’t,” Curtis said. He spun Izzy around and forced her back to the wood paneling between the door and fireplace. Grooves between the panels scraped her back. He had her by the shoulders, pressure from his hands forcing her slightly down. Red light from the last of the fire shone in his eyes like glare from a camera’s flash. Closing on her, his tongue darted out and curled over her parted lips. Wet flesh stabbed into her mouth and she opened wider, pushing her tongue into him. His jaw worked against her and his hips thrust forward, the ridge of his erection prominent against her leg.