The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave

by S. A. Softley

  A large shadow loomed in the doorway. It paused there for a long moment; the person it represented remained out of sight.

  “Hello?” I called again, the word cracking in my throat.

  “I hear ya,” the voice rumbled. It sighed deeply again. “I guess they wouldn’t talk, would they,” the man muttered to himself.

  A huge figure emerged from the next room. The man was thick and barrel shaped. Everything about him was larger than life and somehow wild. His worn face looked to be carved of stone. No, not stone. Rock is inanimate, permanent. Chiselled with force. His face was alive but ageless, had grown into it’s shape over the uncounted years like a gnarled old tree. Weathered but tough as bark. He had a beard of twisted steely strands, each a different colour, ranging from pure white, to gunmetal grey, to sable black; here and there copper hairs glinted amongst the rest. His hair was long and unruly and of the same calico colouring.

  His face did not look wrinkled. A face like his would be made of material too hard to wrinkle. Instead, it looked like wind and rain had worn deep shadowed ravines into his skin. He was dark coloured with a reddish undertone that hinted at frequent burns from wind and sun. His eyes were black like charcoal and, like burning wood, had flecks of lighter brown where the fire had not yet reached. They glinted as though flame and ember licked at them still. He wore thick clothes and deerskin boots, impenetrable like armour. There was a stern confidence about him.

  In my gut I felt a strange sense that in this man’s presence I was completely safe, safer than I had been in a long while at least, and yet at the same time I felt that if he chose it, he could be a terrible danger like I’d never known. Somehow I knew that the outcome would depend entirely on his impressions of me over the next few minutes.

  I forced the panic, the claustrophobia at being tied down, back into a tight ball at the center of my chest. I swallowed, trying to moisten my dry mouth. The man stood looming over the bed, looking at me sternly but without malevolence. His eyes smouldered like ash-covered embers, the heat just below the surface, ready to erupt into flame with the right tinder or breeze. I wanted to wait for him to speak but as the seconds dragged on I realized that he waited for me, immovable and rooted.

  “You found me out there,” I said. It was not a question. Now was not the time for hesitation, for timidity. He grunted in a way that suggested an affirmative. “Thank you,” I finished, unflinching, my eyes never leaving his. Something had changed slightly in those dark eyes. As I’d spoken the embers had cooled almost unnoticeably and he seemed marginally less threatening. We waited in silence for long moments, neither of us breaking the unspoken, unblinking struggle of wills.

  “Who are you?” he growled slowly at last, “what were you doing out there?”

  “I was lost. I was on a flight from up north, from the rigs. Had to make an emergency landing. The town was evacuated. I tried to make my way south.”

  “Hmm,” he grunted, clearly unconvinced. His eyes narrowed. The ember within them flickered slightly.

  “Where am I? What’s happening… out there?” I nodded toward the window, indicating the wider world.

  “You’re nowhere. Right in the middle of it. Hours from anywhere you ought to be. I haven’t had word from out there,” he nodded in the direction I had, “for weeks. Not much left to be heard by the sounds of it.” He spoke deliberately and slowly.

  “Ah,” I nodded, feeling myself deflate. Whatever will I’d possessed began to fade and I was left weakened and empty. My strength had waned. The man looked at me with a flicker of what seemed to be pity, but it was quickly covered and subdued by a renewed look of suspicion.

  “You best tell me your story son,” he said gruffly. “All of it and quick as you can.”

  I told him as much as I dared, trying to make the pieces fit together convincingly while leaving out the nature of my injury during the flight; trying to gloss over the fact that unexplained weeks had passed between the flight and my awakening. I hoped, after it was already too late to change my story, that he wouldn’t ask about the many other passengers that had been on the flight and why I’d become separated from them.

  I could not bear to speak of Megan or what had happened the night before to prompt my reckless and ill-prepared exodus and so made up a story that I’d been living alone in the sporting goods shop explaining that I’d been overrun during the blizzard and had fled town. The man said nothing aside from the occasional rumble in his chest or throat, neither affirmative nor negative, to indicate only that he was hearing me. It was impossible to discern whether or not he believed or was satisfied with my story. I imagined that I saw suspicion in his eyes, which were the only part of him that did not seem passive and emotionless. His face remained unchanging and wooden without even the slightest twitch to indicate what he might be thinking. I finished with the last thing I knew: seeing the Jeep tumble down the steep snow dune; feeling the cold take me and believing that it was all over at last.

  When I’d finished speaking, my voice hoarse from dryness and disuse, the man sat silently, his thoughts turned inward, his eyes downcast. I stirred a little, uncomfortable. I half wondered if he’d fallen asleep. The straps holding me to the bed seemed to tighten by the minute and my anxiety began to bloom once more.

  “You left out some things,” he rumbled at last, his gaze meeting mine once more. “Important things,” he added, his eyes narrowing. “But what you told was truthful enough I suppose.” He sat for a long while in silence again. I struggled against the urge to clear my throat as the minutes wore on, determined to show no weakness. At last, however, the needs and reflexes of my body won out and what began as a soft hem in my chest turned into a dry hacking cough that refused to cease.

  “Water?” he asked dispassionately when I’d finished.

  “Please,” I gasped, trying to force my voice to sound stronger than it was capable of sounding. The single word reduced me to a coughing fit once more. He picked up a tin mug I hadn’t noticed from a table beside the bed and held it to my lips. I craned my neck to gulp down mouthfuls of cold water. It had the strong iron flavour of well water.

  “Thank you,” I said hoarsely after finishing the entire cup.

  “Rest,” he said gruffly, standing up. “You’ll explain more later.” He moved to the doorway.

  “The ropes?” I called after him.

  “Stay on,” He finished and then he was out of sight. He spoke in a gruff matter-of-fact tone, but did not sound malicious or unkind.

  I balled up my fear again and forced myself to lay still. I was safe for the time being, I knew, but I could not shake the feeling that the ropes were growing steadily tighter; restricting more and more of my breath. I could feel the eyes of the deer heads above boring into me, seeing into my dreams, my memories, my soul. They knew what I’d done. I lay my head back and pretended they were not there.

  Twenty-Four

  It seemedonly a short time later that the man returned, carrying with him a steaming mug of chicken broth. He placed it on the table beside me without saying a word and resumed his seat beside the bed, looking at me with the same silent distrust and contemplation.

  “Thanks,” I nodded, indicating the soup broth, though he never offered it to me and with my hands tied down I could not help myself. He sat for a long time looking at me, his black eyes glinting from beneath his thick overhanging brow. I was determined not to break his gaze, not to speak first, determined to show that my will was as strong as his.

  “Tell me the rest,” he said at last, his face unreadable.

  “The rest?” I asked.

  “Of what happened.”

  There was a thick lump in my throat that I felt certain he could somehow see. Did he somehow know about Megan? Did he know something about the time I’d spent in Lac d’Hiver? I was determined not to swallow, not to show any tell that would give away that he’d caught me in some falsehood.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I replied as calmly as I could. “Look, I don�
��t know who you think I am… I’m not dangerous; I’m just a guy who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m just trying to get south.”

  “Son, we are all of us in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ain’t no right time anymore.” He cleared his throat. “I checked to see if you were ok, but you were hypothermic when I found you. You should have been dead. Half frozen. Literally.” He said the last word pointedly. “I almost burned you right then and there. Like they said to do.” I knew ‘they’ was the government. A public safety message about what to do with the dead.

  “What changed your mind?” A strange sense of dread was slowly building in my chest. Why hadn’t he just burned me? I felt certain now that the man had discovered the bite wound on my arm. With so much about the illness unknown, would he take a chance on me now, even though I hadn’t become one of them? Why had he taken any chance at all? Would he think of me as a ticking bomb, the disease dormant but ready to strike at any time? Was I a ticking bomb? Why had Megan suddenly become infected? Surely that proved I was a carrier; a danger to everyone around me. It dawned on me that this man was right to keep me restrained. No, not right. He was incredibly stupid to keep me restrained. He should have burned me in the wreckage of the Jeep. I wanted to scream at him, tell him about his stupidity; yell that he should kill me now and be done with it.

  “You spoke,” he said. It took me a moment to return from my thoughts and realize that he was answering my question.

  “I spoke?”

  “I was going to light the whole thing up, had a gas can ready and everything, but you spoke. You were unconscious. You were calling a woman. Meg... Megan? Thought you said Maggie at first…”

  “Megan,” I nodded, the stabbing pain and gaping emptiness in my chest returning at the sound of her name. “She was… a woman I loved,” I whispered. The lump in my throat grew at hearing her name spoken aloud. It was difficult to speak around it. The man seemed to be satisfied with this answer. There was just the barest hint of human emotion, of empathy and understanding that flickered through the deep immovable lines on his face. He nodded ever so slightly and carried on.

  “I pulled you out. Brought you back and tried to treat you.” I jolted at the way he emphasized the word ‘tried’. What had happened? I turned my mind to my senses, trying to feel through the covers and discover if I’d lost any limbs or digits. It didn’t seem as though any part of me was missing, but it was hard to know for sure. I’d heard of the phantom limb phenomenon in amputation victims, people feeling nerves that were no longer there.

  “Tried?” I asked, fear showing through at last as my voice cracked slightly. I cleared my throat, trying to chalk it up to the dryness in my mouth. I felt certain that the man was not fooled.

  The man’s eyes narrowed to slits, his brows knitted together in a deep frown as he scrutinized me. “Tried,” he repeated at last. There was a long pause; he seemed to consider how to proceed. “You worked up north, you said?” he asked, apparently deciding to change the subject.

  “Yeah. On the rigs. I worked in the field. Usually running between rigs, checking lines out in the middle of nowhere, supervising inspection teams out in the bush, training for wilderness safety, wildlife control…” I trailed off.

  “So you know how to treat hypothermia, exposure,” the man finished.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. I wondered how much fear was showing in my eyes.

  “Tell me about your injury then,” the man finished, “you know I saw it.”

  I felt partially relieved but also felt growing concern. I’d suspected this was his sticking point. To treat hypothermia and assess my injuries, he would have had to strip me down, get me out of my cold and wet clothes and get heat close to my skin. He would have checked me for other wounds, other causes of shock. He would have seen the old bite wound and naturally this would have been a serious concern. So serious, in fact, that I found myself surprised once more that he hadn’t taken me out and burned me right away. Then again, despite being the logical decision, I figured it would be easier said than done for any human being to cremate another living person, no matter how dangerous or ill they might be. I’d been caught in the lie, caught hiding the truth and that looked bad. I hoped he would understand; hoped he would empathize, hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me.

  “Alright,” I sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I, uh, didn’t want to tell you for obvious reasons. I was bitten on that plane. It happened before anyone knew about this thing. I’d never heard of it… no news reports, no health notices… nothing. It was the first time whatever it is ever infected anyone as far as I know.” I told him the whole story. The flight, the man dying and then attacking me, waking up out of a coma, alive and relatively unaffected, the town abandoned. I still told him nothing of Megan. That memory was my own private heaven, my own hell.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, closing my story. “I don’t know how, but I recovered. I don’t know if I’m immune or if I just fought it off somehow or if they gave me some experimental treatment that they didn’t have time to study, or maybe they didn’t have time to realize it had worked. I don’t know. But I’m here. I’m fine. If it was going to effect me, I’m positive it would have already.”

  The man listened carefully. He never interrupted, never demanded more detail, never contradicted, never made noises or gave looks of disbelief. He listened passively, his eyes boring into mine, driving deep into my mind and soul. I felt as though that deep, drilling gaze was capable of mining the veins of my memories. This man could perceive the truth through my pupils or the flecks in my eyes. When I’d finished, the room once more fell into silence, his wooden face unmoved, eyes still burning like coals.

  “You really don’t know, do you?” he said at last with a resigned sigh, more to himself than to me. The embers in his eyes cooled and he looked tired.

  “Don’t know what?” I asked. His face remained expressionless. Those penetrating eyes that had not left my own for a moment while I recited my story now would not meet mine. They were half hidden behind heavy, creased lids. “Don’t know what?” I asked again, my tone more insistent. I’d given him my answers; it was time I received some in return. He seemed to come to some internal decision, shaking his head.

  “Not yet,” he murmured. He looked up, catching the fierce look in my eye. “Soon, son,” he said in a sad, kindly, apologetic voice which seemed so startlingly at odds with his previously stony demeanour that I was stunned into acceptance. “I promise, you’ll learn soon.”

  Twenty-Five

  I watchedin uncertain silence as the man knelt down beside the bed, working on my restraints. The pressure on my chest eased as the strap came free. He pulled it off, coiling what looked to be a nylon towrope with a winching clasp toward one end. I breathed in imagined freedom, allowing oxygen to fill my lungs, though in reality the bonds had never been tight enough to restrict my breathing. The man looked at me curiously, as though wondering why I would be short of breath. He looked sad and regretful.

  “It’s alright,” I reassured him gruffly. “I get it. You did what you had to do. Wasn’t really that tight, it’s just nice to be free.”

  “Hm,” he grunted in response, but the strange expression did not leave his face.

  Once each strap had been removed, he handed me the mug of chicken broth, still steaming, from the bedside table. It was cool enough to sip on, but still pleasantly hot. I muttered my appreciation through mouthfuls.

  “Once you’re finished we’ll talk more,” the man said. “I’ve got some work to do. I’ll be outside,” he nodded toward the frosted windowpane and left. I could hear a heavy wooden door swing open and slam shut. Through the thick log wall I could hear the crunch of snow under heavy feet.

  It was hard to tell what time of day it was from the dim light. I doubt anyone ever really gets used to winter in the north. The days had become noticeably longer and lighter, but the sun was still absent more often than it was present. Whether obscured by cloud or horizon, dim light
and darkness prevailed at this latitude during these long months.

  There was a sharp crack and a clatter from outside. A pause. Another crack like a gunshot followed swiftly by a tumbling clatter. The man was chopping wood. I listened for a while, sipping on soup. It was a hypnotic rhythm. He never missed a stroke, never had to repeat a strike. The wood always broke apart cleanly. His axe was too swift and true to become stuck on a knot in the lumber. Crack, thud, clatter… crack, thud, clatter… I could have set a clock by his motion.

  I sat up, relieved to be free of the bonds. I was wearing a thermal knit shirt that was made with far too many yards of material for my body. I also swam in a pair of grey sweat pants that were held up only superficially by a drawstring pulled as tight as it could go. I felt childish and awkward. The mug of soup sitting in my lap, the clothing, the sounds of wood being chopped outside… all of it made me feel like a boy, home sick from school. I could almost hear my mother puttering in the next room. My father wouldn’t be pleased. He never was when he found out she’d let me stay home.

  He better man up and get over it.

  He’s got the flu dear. He’s been throwing up all morning.

  Well he’d better’ve cleaned up after hisself.

  He’ll be fine, she’d reply, pretending that my father had ever showed concern or caring for anyone. She had a good imagination, my mother. Was good at being purposefully blind. I suppose she got a lot of practice.

  In my teenage years, when I became more openly hostile and rebellious toward my parents, I often wondered what sort of stimulus it would take before my mother recognized my father for the bitter, disconnected man I felt he was. The trouble with my father was that whatever he might say, however cold he might be; he never once acted violently or aggressively toward mother or me, not that I think that would have made much difference to her. His abuse was purely psychological. It was his words and tone that stung. And she was so determined to keep up the façade, had been lying to herself and to me for so long that I don’t think she was even capable of recognizing the truth of the dysfunction that was our family. She lived in a fantasy world and I honestly don’t know if it was built within her mind or if, maybe, like so many others, it was a world she built from chemicals, pills or alcohol. I don’t recall ever having seen her take anything, but then perhaps I was able to inherit more of her gift for blindness and fantasy than I knew.