"So what happened in the war, Bean? I know your college roommate's name, but I didn't hear about 'Nam. A big gap there."
"You don't want to know."
"I can see it was bad."
"Listen, Thorn." Bean leaned forward, a sudden sneer twisting his lips. "Just because you've lost the use of your legs, that doesn't make us equals. We're not going to sit around the campfire, swap war stories."
"All right. Fine."
Bean bowed his head, rubbed his face as if trying to rouse himself from sleep. When he tipped his head back up, his mouth was set in a rigid smile.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I keep flying off, don't I?"
"Yes, you do. You're wired pretty tight."
"You want to hear about the war, okay, I'll tell you about the war, but you'll have to get me drunk enough first."
"I suppose I should just shut up and be grateful," Thorn said. "I'm paralyzed, but at least there's no pain."
"Oh, there will be in time," Bean said. "Count on it, my friend."
Thorn held his eye.
"What does that mean?"
Bean shrugged, and broke away from Thorn's stare.
"There's no pretty way to put it," he said. "Long-term, if your condition doesn't improve, there's a high probability of serious and permanent nerve damage. Some very intense discomfort."
"That's the first I've heard of that."
"Dad was coddling you. He couldn't bear to let you know what's in store."
Thorn tried a chuckle but it sounded more like a strangled snort.
"Hell, I should've stayed in bed that night."
Bean brushed some invisible crumbs off his lap.
"But brave Thorn had to defend his castle and his fair maiden."
"The dog was growling. I did what anybody would do."
"And? Have you figured it out? Who was out there, what they wanted? Who did this to you?"
He was peering into Thorn's eyes, intense and prying, as if searching for the boy in the photograph, the kid he'd wrestled down those dunes.
"At the moment," Thorn said, "I don't give two shits who did this or why. I just want to do whatever I can to get my legs working."
Bean sighed and clapped his dry palms together, then pushed himself to his feet.
"Yes, well, then, I suppose we should get started, shouldn't we?
Thorn nodded. His gaze wandered again to the photographs. To those two blond kids at play in a world that no longer existed, two kids with the asinine confidence of youth, boys who thought their summer sun would never set.
CHAPTER 17
As they were leaving his apartment, the phone rang. Bean apologized and took the call in the kitchen, his voice going quiet, listening mostly, and when he returned to the room his mouth flickered between a scowl and a smile, as if he was having trouble selecting which mood to counterfeit.
"Well, let's get you going, Thorn. Can't have those fine muscular legs of yours atrophy any more than they have already." Bean Wilson followed Thorn down to the first floor, rolled him out to the sunporch, introduced him to the other mangled residents, then left him there. Something had come up, a situation he needed to take care of.
None of the other cripples was particularly curious about Thorn. Nobody asked him any questions. Just a couple of nods. Ginny, a paraplegic with shortish blond hair; Hardy Jones, who was missing both legs; Pepper Tremaine, the head nurse. A couple of others whose names he didn't catch.
On three sides of the sunporch there were jalousie windows that looked out on an untidy side yard. A couple of small oaks were choked with vines and beyond them was a ragged hedge. The grass had not been mowed for months and there were several mattresses and broken pieces of furniture piled up next to a small ramshackle building that looked like a one-seat outhouse. If medical centers could be condemned for bad landscaping, the Eaton Street clinic should've been out of business long ago.
But inside the rehab room, all the equipment was new and well maintained, and the room was full of the expensive whirs and nicely meshing hums that only the latest Japanese machinery seemed to produce. Several Nautilus machines, four sets of waist-high parallel bars, what looked like a double-wide massage table, and several other pieces of highly polished equipment Thorn couldn't identify. The room had the feel of a high-tech torture chamber and there was a sour bite in the air that tasted like the sweat of frightened animals.
Pepper wore a blue smock and white pants and silver running shoes. She was tall and had the sunken cheeks and rawboned limbs of a coal miner's wife. A woman brawny enough to sling a bushel of potatoes over one shoulder and Thorn over the other and tote them both a few miles up the highway if the whim took her.
"A little exercise?" Pepper motioned at the large table.
"Sure," he said. "I came all this way."
Using a wood slat that looked like a sawed-off fraternity paddle, she showed Thorn how to lever himself out of his chair and onto the table. It took a half dozen fumbling attempts before he could manage the move with a minimum of help from Pepper, and by then the muscles in his arms were quivering on the verge of failure.
Once Thorn was on the table, Pepper rearranged his useless legs and settled him flat on his back, then began to push his knees up toward his chest, first one then the other, pumping them as though he were riding a bike a few sizes too small. Thorn watched his legs work—a brisk ride around the park—his strong, healthy appendages pushing the speedometer up to twenty miles an hour while Thorn felt nothing except a small rhythmic jarring in his belly.
After fifteen minutes he was light-headed and drenched with sweat. Pepper lay his legs flat and suggested he rest for a while, then maybe he could consider taking a turn on the walking course. It was a blue foam mat twenty feet long with a harness suspended from a pulley system in the ceiling. Pepper helped Thorn resettle in his wheelchair, where he watched Ginny try the course, twisting and cursing as she struggled to muscle the aluminum walker ahead.
"Just happened, huh?"
Hardy Jones drew his wheelchair up next to Thorn's as he watched Ginny inch down the mat. Hardy's chair had flame decals on the side, an old raccoon tail hanging limply from one of the grips. All he needed was an ah-ooo-ga horn.
The man's wiry black hair was liberally flecked with gray and was gathered into a ponytail. He had on white fingerless gloves and a weight belt cinched at his waist. His gray T-shirt had a Marine Corps logo stamped on the breast and the sleeves were torn away to reveal his massive arms. On the smooth ends of both his stumps were crude tattoos that had the look of jailhouse art. A naked Oriental woman on the right stump, a blond and buxom beauty on the left.
"Your legs," Hardy said. "You just got gorked."
"Gorked?"
"Paralyzed."
"Yeah," Thorn said. "Wednesday. Gorked."
"You haven't withered yet, but that'll happen pretty quick. A month, two months, you'll be a bone man before you know it. One of the happy skeletons."
He looked into Hardy's faded green eyes. Thorn was tired. Irritable from the long car ride, from the pain lecture, from sitting in that goddamn chair.
"Let me tell you something, friend, you can get the freaking nurses to manipulate your legs from now till the apocalypse, your muscles are still going to disappear. Only thing that'll do you any good is the upper body shit. Got to build up your lats and triceps so you can haul your broken ass around. Work the bars, man, that's the only way. Lots of dips and chins. That's all you fucking got anymore is your arms. Sooner you get your head wrapped around that, the better off you'll be. All you are is arms."
"I'm focusing on the legs."
"You are, are you?"
"The doctors don't know what's wrong with me. There's a good chance I'll be walking again soon."
The man grinned.
"Sure thing, partner. Whatever you say."
"They looked at the MRIs, all the X-rays, they don't see anything wrong. It may just be a short-term thing. Bruised spinal cord or something."
"That's the bullshit now, is it? Their new motivational tool? A short-term thing."
Thorn stared at the man. Something lurched in Thorn's chest, a heavy weight tipped off its shelf, started to sink into the mush of his gut. He'd been believing completely in his recovery. Not his usual skeptical self. Wanting so badly to buy into Doc Wilson's happy story of his future.
"Hardy Jones," the man said, putting out his hand, "101st Airborne. Out of Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. Screaming Eagles."
"Thorn," he said. "Out of Key Largo." He shook the man's iron paw.
"Don't believe a word of the shit they tell you. Good, bad. Don't believe any of it. Only thing that's true is what's happening to you right now."
"Okay"
"Where were you based in 'Nam?"
"I wasn't," Thorn said.
"Germany?"
Thorn shook his head.
"Then you're one of the lucky fucks did your tour stateside."
"None of the above."
"Well, you're not old enough for Korea." Hardy backed his wheelchair away to get a different angle on Thorn. "What? Desert Storm?"
"I'm a civilian."
"Civilian?"
"That's right.
"What about 'Nam?"
"Missed it entirely."
"Missed it? What the fuck does that mean?"
"I wasn't invited."
"The fuck you weren't. Everyone was invited."
Thorn watched Ginny rock her upper body back and forth until she got enough momentum to nudge the walker forward a couple of inches. She gave herself an ironic cheer.
"Hey, Ginny. We got us a fucking draft dodger." Hardy rolled another foot away from Thorn, as if the stench were getting to him. "Burned his goddamn draft card, went off to Woodstock to party with his fellow pussies instead of serving his country. One of those."
With a groan, Ginny sank into the grip of the harness. There were tears in her eyes and she had soaked through her dark T-shirt and bike shorts.
"What're you doing here, draft dodger?" Hardy said. "This place is vets only."
"I'm a friend of the doc's."
"Hear that, Ginny? Our boy Thorn is a draft-dodging pinko peacenik friend of the doc's. That supposed to cut some ice with us, is it?"
"Give it up, Hardy. Fucking war's over."
"No, ma'am. Maybe the one you were in is over. But that other fucking war isn't ever going to be over."
"Don't listen to him, Thorn. He's just a broken-down old asshole. Pisses his bedsheets every night."
Hardy swung his chair around to face her.
"Shut up, Ginny."
"Suck my shorts."
"You goddamn slut. Somebody needs to weld that fucking sarcastic mouth of yours shut once and for all."
"Yeah? Well, come on and try it, needle-dick."
Hardy started for her, and Thorn snapped out a hand and yanked his black ponytail and held on. The man halted, backed up till the pressure was off his hair. Thorn let go and Hardy wheeled himself slowly around.
"Okay, draft dodger," he said. "You want to play, hey, let's do it."
"Just leave the woman alone."
"That's no woman. That's Ginny, queen of the sluts."
"That what they taught you in the 101st, is it? Insult women, knock them around? Skilled warrior like you."
Little strands of muscles winked in Hardy's shoulders as he gripped his armrests.
"You want a bite of my ass, draft dodger? Well, come on."
Hardy cocked his body forward and shot an open-handed slap at the side of Thorn's face. Thorn brushed it off into space.
Hardy grinned.
"Well, well. We got us some martial arts training, do we? Spent a few hours in the gym, paid his money to learn the secrets of the Orient."
"I don't want to fight you, Hardy."
"Course you don't. 'Cause you're a pussy. 'Cause you're a fucking draft-card-burning faggot. 'Cause your country club kung fu isn't worth shit in the real world. Come on, baby, Hardy'll show you a little of what you missed out on. Little basic training exercise.
His next shot was a closed fist, short and hard, aimed at Thorn's chin. He was quick but wild, and Thorn got just enough of his forearm in the way to redirect the punch, taking the glancing shock on the side of his skull.
His eyes went blurry. He backed away a foot. Hardy was breathing fast already. He smiled at Thorn, then torqued himself forward and rammed his footplates into the spokes of Thorn's chair, nearly threw him onto his side. The muscular man wheeled himself backward to make another ram, when Pepper took hold of his chair and put the brakes on.
He swiveled around and cursed her, but Pepper just smiled and held on against his exertion.
"That's enough, boys," Pepper said. "I don't want to have to mop up any blood. End of my shift, time to go home, don't be making any extra work for Pepper now, you hear what I'm saying?"
Hardy glared at Thorn, his arms rippling as he tried to haul himself forward.
"You need to work on that left hand," Thorn said, "if you ever want to hurt anybody."
He wheeled past Hardy, out through the TV room. He rolled onto the front porch, took a few seconds to find his breath, then aimed himself down the wooden ramp and let his chair coast out into the sweltering streets of Key West.
He spent the next hour rolling down Duval and back up Whitehead, reminding himself why he loved and hated this town. The sky was a perfect blend of perfect blues, the temperature in the low eighties, a breeze swept off the water and filtered through the maze of old wood houses and picked up the scents of fried fish and black beans, garlic and rotting meat. The shops were busy, the sidewalks brisk. The windows were full of bright frivolous things only people on vacation would consider buying.
After an hour working his way to the Southernmost Point and halfway back down Whitehead, the muscles in Thorn's arms were cramping. And he still wasn't used to the perspective, moving along at the height of a three-year-old, belt-buckle level. Several times he'd almost been trampled by groups of giddy tourists, all those legs and torsos churning toward him, parting at the last second, a scowl for the idiot in the chair.
He never imagined that sitting down could be so exhausting. Fighting his way through the steady onslaught, the bombardment of faces and clothes and stray bits of conversation, the bus fumes and blare of revving hot rods, the endless push and nudge of the crowds, the small potholes in the sidewalk that seemed like impossible canyons. Or maybe what was tiring Thorn so badly were all the pitying looks he was getting, the flustered glances, strangers dodging eye contact as though the terrible stroke of luck that put him in that wheelchair might be contagious.
On a couple of intersections along Whitehead the city planners had failed to provide cement ramps for people in his condition, and Thorn had to test the laws of physics, easing himself over the enormity of a three-inch drop from sidewalk to street level, then jacking himself over the same dangerous hump on the other side. If it hadn't been for two passing Samaritans he would have tumbled onto his face both times.
With only the twenty-dollar bill in his pocket, he had no idea how he would sustain himself for any length of time in Key West, but by midafternoon all he could think of was drinking as much beer as the twenty would buy.
He cut back over to Duval and selected the first bar he could find whose floor was near sidewalk level, a dark and smoky joint near the corner of Fleming, and cranked himself over to a vacant table by the front window.
A young man wearing a leather vest over his hairless chest marched across to Thorn's table and Thorn ordered a beer.
"I'm not your waiter, I'm the manager."
There were pimples on his chest and his eyes were yellowed at the edges. He kept standing there staring at Thorn, mouth twitching as if his vocal cords were sending up sounds his lips refused to transmit.
"There a problem?"
"We're not really set up for wheelchairs."
"How's that?"
"The bathroom's downstairs, two steps, no ramp.
"
"You asking me to leave?"
"I got nothing against cripples, you understand. It's just, you know, sitting here, at the front like this . . . You know what I'm saying."
"It's a bummer, huh? Puts a shadow on the festive mood? Well, that's too goddamn bad, 'cause I'm staying."
"Ah, fuck it," the guy said and stalked back to his station to spread his charm to the next lucky customer.
Thorn's waitress showed up in a while and he ordered a three-dollar Budweiser. After he'd downed it, he was about to leave to search out a cheaper spot when a young woman with straight brown hair down to the middle of her back walked into the bar wearing pink shorts and a white halter top and passed by his table, then swung back around, gave him a regulation happy face and asked if she could join him.
"Only if you buy," he said.
"I saw you sitting there. You looked so lonely."
Thorn tried to return her smile, but he could see by her puzzled look that his smiling apparatus was malfunctioning. He let his mouth go slack.
"I would be honored and thrilled if you'd join me," Thorn said.
The girl had blue eyes and large white teeth and was attractive in a standard sort of way, as if she'd dropped off the end of a pretty girl assembly line, one of ten thousand identical units produced during the month of June twenty-three years earlier. After she had a sip of what she told Thorn was her fifth margarita of the afternoon, she said her name was Bonnie and that she'd decided Thorn should be fully informed about each of the courses she had just completed in her first semester of law school at Emory. Five courses, only one in which she'd gotten less than an A.
Under normal circumstances Thorn would've strangled the young woman right then and stuffed her body under the table and marched out of there, but on that day, in his condition, he was immeasurably grateful for the dull static of her presence. The law student seemed to be unaware of his wheelchair hidden beneath the tabletop. She seemed to have no idea his legs were dead. She didn't get sorrowful and sympathetic and adjust her speech accordingly. She was simply and resolutely full of youthful pep and mindless ardor for her scholarly life. She talked to Thorn as if he were whole, as if when they were finished talking they would walk off to resume their happy lives in the healthy normalcy of America. And he cherished her for that. Cherished her for her obliviousness, for the next two hours of vapid babble.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 16