Waiting for Wyatt (Red Dirt #1)

by S. D. Hendrickson

  “Here we go again. You’ve got all those books in your trailer. Maybe you should start paying attention to that big important one I know you read. There’s whole sections inside of it on forgiveness and grace.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s whole sections on retribution too. Eye for an eye, and all that shit. I’m pretty sure there’s a list of commandments devoted to it too. I think I saw it plastered on the wall in your office.”

  She let out a deep breath. “You are a pain in my ass sometimes, Wyatt.”

  “If you feel that way, then send me back.” My lips hardened into a thin line as I challenged her. I wasn’t joking, and Diana knew my request was very real.

  She sized me up for a moment, all four-feet-eleven of her. “I’ve known you for a long time. And when I saw your punk ass sitting in that courtroom, you were still a boy to me—hell-bent on going off like a man to something you didn’t really comprehend. Prison makes some people better, and others, well, it just finishes rotting out their insides. You were at a crossroads that day. And you’re still at one, even out here. Don’t fuck this up. I bet on you. Don’t prove Fred Tucker right.”

  Our eyes held for a moment, my heart beating in my chest until my lips curled up slightly on the edges. “Does anyone else know you curse like a trucker?”

  “I only do it when I need to hit a home run. So, if she comes back—”

  “Stop. It’s time to let this idea go, Diana.” I shook my head. “She’s not coming back. Not after what I said to make her leave.”

  “You stop this self-loathing nonsense. If she comes back, do it right this time. Let her make the decision. And if she chooses to like your sorry ass? Let her.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Let me ask you something. Are you planning to be alone forever?”

  “I don’t really have a plan. I don’t feel like the future is something I should be thinking about, I guess.” But deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. No matter how much I wished for permanent retribution, one day I would be released from my prison.

  “You need to. You’re almost half done. The rest will fly by. And then what? You need to figure out what will make you feel like you deserve to exist out there in the world again.”

  My eyes cast down on the floor. The whole idea of having a future made the pain start in my chest. It made me think about Willa and Marcus—and Trevor. People without futures. How was it fair that I got one? My breath stopped in my lungs as I fought a panic attack.

  “Snap out of it, kid. There’s no reason to take it all in at this very moment. Just start thinking about it.”

  I nodded, seeing the concern in Diana’s eyes. She cared about me and didn’t want this arrangement to fail. And it would—if I lost my damn mind out here. We both knew it.

  “Good,” she muttered, patting me on the arm. “Now, let’s get Ponyboy ready to go.”

  “We will have to drug him to go in the crate. Or his PTSD will flare up.”

  “I’ll get it.” Diana walked toward the office to the medicine cabinet. She returned with a vile and syringe.

  “If you want, I could have someone come out here to talk to you,” she said as I held Pony down, watching her insert the needle into his skin. “A preacher, counselor, or maybe a priest?”

  “I’m fine.” I knew what she was getting at with me. Confession was good for the soul. But confessing of one’s sins meant letting go of one’s guilt. And I wasn’t ready for that in my life. Maybe I never would be.

  “How’s everything else going out here?”

  I looked up, catching the concern still hovering on her face. I ignored her probing glare. “Next week I will need a tank of gas for the Weed eater. It’s running low.”

  “Okay. What else? Any special requests?”

  Diana always asked that same question, and I always gave the same answer. “No.”

  Pony relaxed against the cement as the drugs took hold. I rubbed the side of his head as his brown eyes closed. I hated the idea of knocking him out for the ride into town, but it was better this way.

  “Well, I’ve got it from here if you want to unload the rest of the stuff.”

  Without a word, I went outside to the bags of dog food, weighing down the bed of her truck. She always bought the expensive stuff. I bet those dogs ate better food than me, which is funny. I knew Diana would bring me grocery sacks of steaks if I asked her.

  I carried the fifty-pound bags inside the kennel, stacking them in the storage area next to the office, over and over again until the truck was empty. Afterward, I opened the cab to retrieve the cases of canned food for the dogs like Lola who couldn’t eat the crunchy stuff.

  I wiped my sweaty face off on my shirt before going over to where Diana sat with Pony in the pen.

  “You ready?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.

  “Yeah. Let’s get him loaded.”

  The hundred-pound dog was complete dead weight in my arms. I carried him out to the crate she kept in the back of the truck. Sliding him inside, I latched the door tight. I wiped the sweat from my forehead onto my sleeve. Diana came over to stand in front of me.

  “Told you it was too damn hot out here. You should take it easy the rest of the day. It’s Sunday, you know.”

  When I didn’t answer, she just shook her head, giving me one of her looks. “Well, I guess I’m gonna head out.”

  “Hey, I . . . um . . . I think it’s time we took the hold off of Charlie. You should start looking for someone.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared up at me. “You sure about that?”

  I nodded, feeling like I was betraying Emma. But there was no need for him to stay anymore.

  “Just remember, that one’s on you. I’ll see you next week. Take care, kid.” She climbed inside the cab, slamming the door. I stood in the yard until her truck disappeared down the road.

  Going back inside, I went to the holding pen with Betty. She had her back turned to the gate, staring at the wall. “Okay, girl. This is not going to work.”

  I opened the door, but she never seemed to notice. Picking up her potato-shaped body, I carried Betty down the aisle. I went past Cye’s pen and stopped. He was slunk in the back corner, staring at his wall.

  Either this would be a stroke of genius or end in bloodshed. I opened the metal latch and carried the old bulldog inside, placing her on the cement about four feet from Cye. I swear his single, dark eye narrowed, saying, What the hell?

  I looked from one dog to another. “You two can stare at each other.”

  Leaving the kennel, I went inside the trailer and opened the freezer. I held the door open a good two minutes before taking the grape Popsicles out of the package. I went back out to the porch steps. Purple drops hit the cement as I sat down.

  After I finished the Popsicle, I chewed on the stick as I gazed out in the sky. It would be dark soon, making it one step closer to Monday. The day after Diana’s visits always seemed to be long. Maybe that’s why I’d never bothered to pay attention to the days of the week. They were all the same, except for those weeks when Emma had decided I was worth seeing.

  THE CLOUDS GREW DARK. A deafening roar hurt my hears. I spun in circles, hearing the screams, but I couldn’t find a face to go with the voice. Stumbling around in the freezing rain, a storm of ice pellets scratched my skin.

  I tripped over a mound on the wet pavement. Catching my balance, I looked down and saw Willa with a dark-red line across her throat. She was dying. She needed help. I wanted to scream, but my voice didn’t work.

  Stumbling along, I saw a man lying facedown with his back split open like someone had planted a grenade inside. Marcus. I couldn’t breathe as I stared at the ripped-up remains of my friend.

  Red streaks shot across the clouds. Looking up, I froze in place as Fred Tucker appeared in the middle of the street. He towered over me—the way clowns looked at the circus when they walked on stilts. He screamed and yelled, making the skin around his eyes glow red as flames spewed from his mout
h.

  I tried to back away, but the muscles in my legs remained paralyzed and I couldn’t move.

  The air went from ice cold to scalding hot as drops of fire rained from the swirling clouds. My shoes stuck to the melted pavement. Right beneath my feet, the asphalt turned into a pool of black quicksand. I fell through, landing with a hard thump on the floor.

  It was quiet. Not a sound anywhere, except my heart pounding in my chest. The air was still. Not a color glowed in the gray and white shadows.

  “Don’t leave me here alone, Wyatt.”

  I spun around at the sound of his voice. My stomach clenched like someone had punched me in the gut. I saw Trevor’s lifeless body on the floor with his head propped up on an old pizza box.

  “You know I hate being alone.”

  I heard the words, but his lips were rotted out and unmoving.

  My eyes flew open and I pulled in a deep breath, sucking spit down my windpipe. Rolling over on my side, I succumbed to a fit of coughing. My lungs finally relaxed, and I fell onto my back, staring up at the stained white ceiling of the trailer.

  Some mornings started out worse than others. Some started in the pit of hell. Gripping my hands into fists, I braced for the shakes—the damn involuntary muscles spasms that always followed those kinds of dreams.

  My arms twitched against the mattress. I took in a deep breath, holding it in my lungs before releasing the air slowly through my nose. My legs jerked wildly under the covers. I repeated the breathing exercise, over and over again until my heart rate got a little less sporadic and the panic released itself from my body.

  Uncurling my fingers, I let my neck relax against the pillow. And then I remembered the last flash of my dream. Trevor.

  The cold chill went over my skin as I pictured his face. In this new nightmare, Trevor had been about eleven. I swallowed the knot in my throat, knowing why my subconscious had pulled that particular memory. It was the way Trevor had looked the summer his mom had left him.

  Here one minute, and gone the next. Selfish bitch. Our school had just let out for summer break. About a week later, Trevor had knocked a can of Pepsi off of the counter. As the brown liquid poured out on the clean tile, she’d stared at Trevor and said, I can’t do this anymore.

  Not to his dad. Not to her husband. But to Trevor. Her child. As he tried to clean up the pop, his mom had packed a suitcase—and then she left him. We later discovered her decision to leave wasn’t really out of the blue. She’d met that hippy asshole a few weeks before that afternoon, but none of those facts had mattered to Trevor. Her words had already done their damage.

  Marcus and I had spent that summer camped in a tent we put up in their yard—back when it was full of grass and flowers instead of rotting bags of trash. We’d stayed with Trevor because he hated being alone while his dad worked nights at the Walmart distribution center.

  As I thought about Trevor, his familiar face haunted my thoughts. I wondered who had attended his funeral. With Marcus and I out of the picture, did anyone else care enough to even go? Most of those assholes in Gibbs had only liked Trevor for his parties. Or rather, the freedom his piece-of-shit house had offered them.

  But that wasn’t the case for me. He was my friend and had been since the day our teacher had sat us next to each other in kindergarten. And I missed him. I even missed all of his wisecracking one-liners, and all of his annoying texts he’d sent while I was in Texas.

  I had a vague memory of our last encounter. My eyes closed as the pain in my chest got deeper. Flashes of that night spun through my head. I remembered yelling a bunch of shit before punching Trevor in the jaw. It wasn’t the first time. I just never thought it would be the last thing I ever said to the guy.

  But that’s the thing about lasts. No one ever plans those last moments. Last words. Last actions. I bet Marcus never dreamed his last normal steps would be into my damn car.

  I jumped, feeling a wet nose pressing into my cheek. Gus reached his tongue out for a lick. I stared into his black eyes. The little guy was concerned for me this morning.

  “I’m okay, Gus,” I mumbled. Blinking a few times, I tried to brush off the ghosts that still lingered in my thoughts. Climbing out of bed, I went to the trailer door and let the two dogs outside. The internal darkness followed me to the bathroom as I got dressed to go running.

  I slowly lost my grip on reality as I trotted along the trail of the perimeter. The sun rose in the sky, but I only saw the gray shadows from my dream. I couldn’t shake the feeling it had left inside my chest.

  I wasn’t the person who had crammed a handful of pills down his throat. And there were no charges against me for Trevor. No mayor fighting for him. But I knew the hand I’d played in his death. And it ate away at me, little by little, dream by dream as my subconscious made sure I never forgot him.

  I found myself lying on my back in the grass. Somewhere in my thoughts, my body had shut down, causing me to fall to the ground. As the clouds passed over my head, I struggled to remember the day of the week. Was it bath day or lawn day or Tuesday?

  Sweat beaded up on my forehead as I stared at the sky. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry to cooperate. The sun got hotter and brighter. Maybe the sun would burn so hot, I would catch on fire and disintegrate into a puff of smoke. If I just stayed in this very spot, I wondered how long it would take for someone to find my burned-up body.

  Diana had already come and gone again—this time taking Ricky Bobby. She had found the energetic, three-legged dog a family with three boys. Even those thoughts hurt today. I shouldn’t be sad to see him leave. But something about it made me think of Emma. She wouldn’t like the fact that I’d sent him away without letting her say goodbye.

  I allowed myself to think about Emma. I allowed myself to want her. To hear her voice. Kiss her skin. I wanted to see her sweet face and those lips. I wanted to bury my nose in her hair, and bury myself inside her body as she whispered my name.

  That beautiful girl consumed my last thoughts as I waited for the black birds to come pick me clean. But that was the thing about the darkness. Once you allowed the light inside, the shadows exploded into a million pieces.

  “Ahhhhh!” I screamed up into the sky.

  I had to snap out of it before I lost my damn mind. Even in my insanity, I still had a job to do at the kennel. Dogs to be fed. Pens to be cleaned. I had responsibilities.

  I crawled up from the ground, walking slowly back to the trailer. My shoes moved at the speed of a sleepwalker. Getting in the shower, I let the cold water shock my skin. I shaved. I ate my cereal, doing my best to hold it all together.

  Some days were tougher than others. Some were darker as I clung to the fringes of sanity. But I always snapped out of it. Sometimes it took hours and sometimes those feelings lingered for days. And sometimes I prolonged it by reading Poe.

  I left the trailer, shutting the metal door softly behind me. As I reached the side entrance of the kennel, I paused, hearing the sound of a motor. I turned around just as the cloud of dirt spit out of a little white car.

  Emma.

  The tires got closer, and I struggled to think straight. Was she real or had I imagined Emma on this dark morning? The car skidded to a stop just a few feet from where I stood in the dirt. As the car door opened, my lungs stopped working. I held my breath, seeing my angel of mercy come into view.

  My thoughts were still jumbled. It was hard to transition from the gray nightmares to seeing actual people. To seeing her. I’m sure everything about me screamed crazy as I stared at her.

  But I couldn’t help it. Emma held me captive as she leaned against the hood of the car in her cutoff shorts and pink shirt. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The way she smiled. The way her hair touched her neck.

  As she stared back at me, the darkness seemed to fade away and the ghosts disappeared into the shadows. I saw the light of the sun shining down from the sky.

  And then I moved. My legs moved faster than they had all morning. They to
ok me over to Emma. My heart pulsed in frantic beats in my chest as my nerves took over, strangling the words in my throat.

  Her eyes flashed uncertainty and fear and happiness and worry. “Wyatt, before you say anything—”

  But I didn’t let her speak. I wrapped my arms around her body, holding Emma in a death grip against my chest. I needed to feel her. I needed to know she was real. The thoughts I heard banging around inside my head scared the shit out of me.

  Placing my hands on her cheeks, I stared into her eyes. Emma looked back at me with her usual open heart full of compassion and desire and tenderness. It flowed with every breath as she let me hold on to her body. And then I felt a glimmer of peace. She was the one person who seemed to make this shit inside of my head better.

  “Wyatt, I was so afraid you would think that I wasn’t coming back. I wanted—”

  I kissed her. I needed to feel her again. My mouth pressed hard against her lips. Emma needed to know how much I wanted her. It was rough and hard and slightly possessive as my tongue pressed into her mouth. But I couldn’t stop. I needed to taste her. Crush her. Hold her. My hands moved over her arms and waist, digging into her skin to the point she would have finger-shaped bruises.

  I loosened my grip, not wanting to hurt Emma. I couldn’t bear the thought of causing any type of pain to anyone again. Letting go of her lips, I buried my nose in her hair. She smelled like honeysuckles.

  “I don’t know what scared me more when you left,” I finally whispered. “That you wouldn’t come back. Or that you would.”

  I felt a stab of panic as I admitted my fear, but I couldn’t stop the words. She brought it out of me. Her sweet face and those lips that tasted like cinnamon.

  “I wanted to come back. Like, the moment I left. I wanted to turn back around.”

  Staring down at Emma, something sparked inside my chest. Hope. It came out of nowhere. My mind struggled to comprehend the thought.

  “You did?” I asked, assuming she’d spent the last couple of weeks processing some internal and moral conflict of coming back to see me.

  “Remember?” she whispered. “You can’t get rid of me that easy.”