by Sylvia Ryan
Julia tried to formulate a plan. She couldn’t. Her brain felt scrambled. Her thoughts were a waking dream as she hovered between sleep and consciousness, until sleep won out again.
The next time she woke, the sun was shining through the window, landing with the gentleness of a kiss on her shoulder. The water in the glass next to her was refilled. She glanced over to the chair. Empty. The sound of somebody chopping wood floated through the open window.
She reached for the full glass and drank deeply.
In the light of day, Julia took a better assessment of herself. She pulled away the quilt that covered her, finding herself naked underneath. She was skinnier than she could have imagined, and she was covered in red bumps. She gingerly swung her legs over the edge of the bed. An unexpected groan left her lips as her shoulders slumped and her head fell chin-to-chest as if it weighed as much as a bowling ball.
She poured more water and drank. She was breathing hard, and her whole body trembled from just that little bit of exertion.
There was a chair next to the window. She stood up, took a few slow steps, and fell forward into it. After turning her body around, she could see through the window to the source of the chopping and the landscape beyond.
Julia grinned. Even half-dead, she appreciated the fine specimen of man she peered down on. He was tall, muscled, and lean. His sand-colored hair waved every which way in the breeze. His bare back and chest beaded with sweat over beautifully tanned skin.
Beyond him, there was a barn. She moved her eyes to the surrounding landscape. Corn. Browning stalks of corn as far as the eye could see. She was in a Little House on the Prairie episode. She snickered to herself.
As if sensing her, the man glanced up to her window. He met her eyes, smiled, put his ax down, and walked toward the house.
Julia looked down at her naked body and decided she’d try to get back under the quilt before he could get up there and see her in all her naked splendor. Ha, naked splendor. She was still hilarious. With determination, she braced her hands on the upholstered arms of the chair, lifted herself up, and promptly fell into a bony heap onto the wood floor.
“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath.
“Is this how you always meet new people, or am I just blessed?” he asked with a chuckle as he walked in the door. He picked her up from the floor with one arm under her knees and the other supporting her back.
Okay, naked splendor it is.
The man set her down on the bed gently and covered her with the quilt.
He looked her in the eye as if trying to read her expression.
“How long have I been here?” she asked through her raw and swollen throat.
“This is the morning of day three,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. “It was touch and go for a while. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it when you didn’t wake up at all for the first day and a half. But, as it turned out, you were lucky. All you needed was water and rest. Oh, I’m Arden, by the way,” he said, and stuck out his hand toward her. He had tousled, sandy-brown hair and friendly, smiling brown eyes. He was handsome in a clean cut, all-American, outdoorsman kind of way.
“Julia Costa.” She reached out her hand and shook his.
“Let me get you some food and more water,” he said. “Then we’ll see about getting you dressed.” He stood and started heading for the door.
“Um, Arden?” Julia croaked out.
“Yeah?” He turned back to face her.
“Where’s the bathroom?” He glanced at the half-empty pitcher at the bedside table, and he smiled.
“Well, you must be feeling better.” He paused. “The indoor plumbing isn’t working anymore, so you have a choice. I can bring a bucket up for you or you could use the facilities in the outhouse.”
She cringed at her choices as he waited for an answer with an amused look on his face.
“Are you the only person living here?”
“Yeah.” He looked at her questioningly. Julia looked down at her quilt covered lap for a moment.
“I don’t think I can do either of those choices by myself,” she mumbled.
“Well, don’t worry about that. You got me. I’ll go get the bucket.” He left the room without waiting for a response.
Julia’s mind flashed back to her unit at the prison. The inmates’ bathroom situation was the most shocking aspect of her job when she’d been first hired there. The industrial-size room full of toilets, sinks, and showers was without stalls, and it had one floor-to-ceiling wall of reinforced glass. The transparent wall fell directly behind the unit’s correction officers’ desk. Not only could the CO see every movement of everybody in the room, but so could everyone else, inmate and staff alike. It was very disconcerting seeing men sitting on the toilet and taking showers without a shred of privacy. She smiled at the irony. It looked like she was going to get a little taste of just what that felt like.
She heard him coming up the stairs, but instead of returning to the room, he stopped somewhere else first. When he reappeared, he had a man’s size T-shirt in his hands. “Here, put this on first.” He tossed her the shirt and turned his back to her. It took her forever to put the damn thing on. Just lifting her arms to put the head hole in place was frickin’ ridiculous.
“Okay, done,” she said after completing the task.
He turned back around, walked over to the bed, lifted her, and carried her out of the bedroom door. As he turned the corner, she saw a bathroom at the top of the stairs.
“Can you sit by yourself?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“I put a small bucket in the toilet bowl so that you would have something to sit on. You’ll have the counter next to the toilet to hold onto if you need it. If you think you can, I’ll sit you down and give you some privacy.” He promptly put her bare ass on the pot, and looked at her. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be right outside. Call me when you need me to come back and get you.” He turned and closed the door behind him.
Julia peed for about four seconds, and that was all there was. It seemed barely worth the trip. She looked around. Ah, toilet paper, haven’t seen that in a while. She used only a tiny piece because she knew it was a limited luxury.
She pulled the T-shirt down as far as it would go and called, “Okay, Arden.” She heard a few steps coming toward the doorway.
Arden came in, picked her up, and brought her back into the room. “I washed your clothes. They’re in the top drawer of the dresser when you’re ready to start moving around again. Your backpack is over there, too, if you’d like it.”
“I would love to brush my teeth.” He nodded and went over to get her pack.
“I don’t recommend toothpaste right now. Your lips are pretty shredded and the menthol in the toothpaste might hurt.” He paused handing her the pack. “I’m going to go get you some food. Need anything else while I’m gone?” he asked as he poured another glass of water and set it on the bedside table.
“No.” It came out like a croak despite her trying to talk in a normal voice. “Arden?”
He turned around and paused to look at her right before reaching the door.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Julia.” As he spoke, his face darkened, and his eyes locked with hers. Then, he turned and left.
Oh man, he is one fine country boy.
Julia rested, slipping in and out of sleep until Arden returned with two plates of food containing rice, green beans, and some fresh meat.
“I was lucky enough to catch a rabbit today,” he said with a look of satisfaction on his face. “Sorry it took so long, but I had to skin and clean it, and cooking isn’t as easy as it used to be.” He pulled the chair from its place by the window and sat toward the foot of the bed facing her, the two plates arranged in between them. “I thought we’d have a bed picnic.” His eyes flashed to the water glass. “You’ve been drinking. Good. Now all we have to do is get a little food into y
ou, and you should be up and around maybe even by tomorrow.”
Julia nodded.
“I know your throat hurts. How ’bout I do most of the talking tonight?”
Julia nodded again and ate a green bean. “Mmm, good,” she whispered.
“Go slow, you haven’t eaten in days. I don’t want you to get sick.” He smiled at her. “So, okay, where do I start? Um…This is my farm. It was my parents’, but they’re both gone now. My mom died from cancer when I was in high school. My dad, a heart attack last year. I have a younger sister, Laura. She’s at OSU. Well, at least she used to be. I really don’t know now.” He paused, looked down at his plate, and filled his fork with beans. He ate a couple more bites of food before taking a deep breath and continuing. “I agonized about whether I should try to find her, but it’s very possible that by the time I traveled the fifty miles or so to get there, she would be gone. Anyway, I figured Laura would try to make it home, the best I could do was make sure she had a home to come back to.
She has some clothes left in her room. If you like, you can look through them to see if you can use anything. She’s not as tiny as you are, but you might find some things you can use.”
“Thanks,” Julia croaked, then laughed at the sound of her own voice. “I sound like a frog.”
Arden laughed with her. “Or like you’ve been smoking for about a hundred years.”
After the laughter died down, Arden continued.
“The news that has been spreading farm to farm is that this glitch in technology is big. According to my neighbors down the street, it definitely spreads across the Ohio-PA border. They have family that traveled here from PA just after everything quit.”
Julia looked at him with raised eyebrows. “How?”
“Horse and buggy. You’re in Amish country.”
Julia nodded. “Being Amish is definitely an advantage now.”
While she nibbled, Arden told her about the raiders that had crisscrossed the countryside in the weeks after everything quit working.
“People are on the move, searching for food and water. Things have got to be pretty bad out there for them to walk this far off the beaten path. We’re in a pretty remote area out here. Now that the farm next door burnt down, my next closest neighbors are about seven miles away. Still, I’ve had to defend the farm about a dozen times and had to kill a few men that wouldn’t take the sight of my rifle as warning.”
Arden shook his head and sighed. “My neighbors at the next farm over were murdered a few nights ago. I still can’t believe it. I grew up with them. Their son Ben is my best friend.” Arden smiled, more to himself than at her. “Ben and I were inseparable growing up. We worked together all summer, first completing one boy’s chores and then going to the neighboring farm and completing the other’s. Our home was either farm we found ourselves at, and it went without saying that where you found one of us, you would find the other.
“He’s been away for a while and wasn’t home to help his parents defend the farm. I assume they got caught off guard by raiders looking for food or water. Their house was burned to the ground. It’s been like the old West, kill or be killed.”
A mix of emotions flashed over his face. He cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I was actually hunting when I found you. You were lucky, because I don’t leave the farm very often.”
Arden fell silent and finished his meal. He sat back in his chair, watching her try to fit the meal into her pea-sized stomach. She felt like it took forever even though she had very little portions on her plate to start with.
When she finished eating, Arden got up from the bed, collected the dishes, and set them on the dresser next to the door. Then he lit a candle and put it on the night table next to the bed. He went on detailing the preparations he’d been making for winter and the modifications he’d had to make so that the farm was livable, including digging and building the outhouse and fixing the hand pump to the well.
Julia’s eyes got big at the mention of the pumped water. “I need to clean up, wash my hair. Do you think maybe tomorrow you could…I could use that?”
He nodded. “I’ve been keeping your skin pretty clean, but there wasn’t much I could do with your hair. Speaking of your skin, let me take a look at your bites. See if I need to put any more ointment on them.”
He came over and sat on the edge of the bed next to her and brought the candle closer. “Roll and face the other way,” he said gently.
Julia followed his direction and lay on her side with her back toward him. He pulled up the T-shirt and gently caressed her long hair away from her skin. Slowly, carefully, he inspected the bites on the back of her arms and back. She could feel him pause at a spot here and there and then felt his finger touch her tender skin, rubbing ointment on the spots he must have thought needed attention.
Instead of asking her to roll back, he walked with the candle to the other side of the bed. “I don’t want you to roll over for a while if you can help it. There are some areas there that could benefit from the Neosporin, and it would be best if it didn’t get rubbed off onto the sheets or the T-shirt.” He brought the candle close to her face and studied a few areas.
She focused on his face as he touched her cheek with some ointment, but his gaze never met hers.
“Looks good,” he said, bringing her arms forward to inspect them. “I’m going to pull up the shirt in front, just stay on your side. I’ll do all the work.” He brought up the front of the shirt and moved the candle closer. His eyes were serious and his inspection meticulous. With the Neosporin tube in hand, he dabbed some to a few spots on her chest and arms. He shifted her arm to the side and closely inspected her breasts and torso.
Her nipples hardened as he lightly touched a few more spots with the ointment. His light, lingering touch traveled down her body, delivering more attention than it had received in a very long time.
“Looks good, but, same as the back, if you can help from rubbing the spots, the antibacterial will have a better chance to work.”
He grabbed an extra pillow and placed it at a comfortable angle to support her head and neck and covered her loosely with the quilt. “You comfortable?” Arden looked into her tired stare.
A whispered “yes” was all Julia could manage. The candlelight, in combination with her full stomach and his tender ministrations, put her on the brink of sleep.
“Call me if you need anything. I’ll be close by.” He made his way toward the door and grabbed the empty plates on the dresser.
“’Kay.” Julia lay there. Her mind drifted. No other man had ever cared for her in the way that Arden had today. Well, John cared just as much, of course. It was because of both John and Arden that she was alive. Arden reminded her a lot of her brother. They were both caring, capable men.
Chapter 2
The following day, Julia was strong enough to get out of bed by herself. With a groan, she lifted herself to standing, steadying herself on the bedpost.
Julia walked down the hallway and into the bathroom. She wanted to see what her face looked like.
When she found herself in the mirror, she gasped. Her hair was a series of hopelessly tangled knots.
Apparently I’ve gone Rasta during my journey, ya mon. She smiled. Still hilarious, Julia. The purple-yellow bruises and swelling on her face indicated where she had face-planted after being thrown from the bike. Everywhere else, her skin looked grayish. The skin on her lips was cracked and peeling off. She met her own eyes in the mirror. They were dull, defeated. When she smiled at herself, her battle-scarred lips and dead eyes made it look like she was grimacing in pain. She turned away from the mirror, no longer wanting to see herself.
Julia walked herself down the stairs carefully using the banister with both hands. At the bottom of the stairs, the country kitchen was to her left. It was large and functional. Oak cabinets lined the walls above well-worn butcher block counters. There was a rectangular oak table in the middle of the room with l
adder-back chairs. A door that looked like it led to a porch and the field beyond was on the far side of the kitchen.
To the right of the stairs was the family room. A large window looked out over a country road. There was a wood-burning stove in the far corner of the room, a love seat with what looked like another handmade quilt folded over the arm, and a rocking chair. Clean, simple and welcoming.
Julia turned left and walked through the kitchen and then through the door leading outside. The wraparound porch looked out over acres of browning cornfields painted against a blue, cloudless sky. She gingerly made her way over to sit on the swing that hung by chains from the overhang that covered the porch. Her bedroom window must be directly above, because the view matched the one from the day before. Arden came around the corner of the house on her right and smiled when he caught sight of her.
“Hey, Pa, when are Mary and Ma coming back from the mercantile?” she asked him in a mocking voice.
He burst out laughing, “Great minds think alike. I’ve been making some Little House references myself in the past few weeks.” He chuckled and walked toward her. “How you doing, half-pint?”
“Much, much better. But I’m really looking forward to that fancy outhouse you were telling me about yesterday.” He waved her to follow him, and then paused.
“You need any help?”
“Nope.” Julia descended the stairs slowly, using the railing for support.
“Well, I’m impressed. Guess I should start giving you some chores to do. It’s about time you started pulling your weight around here,” he said with a broad smile. They walked back around the corner of the house together. He stopped and gestured with an elaborate wave of his hand. “Your facilities, ma’am.” He then changed direction and started walking back toward the rear of the house.
“Thanks,” she called over her shoulder.
* * * *
Julia ate a fresh apple for breakfast. Then, Arden gave her a quick tour of the place, showing her the water and cooking setups he’d developed.