Ruined

by Jw Grodt

  Hours later, though how many he wasn’t sure, he awoke from his drug-induced sleep. He was alone, cold, hungry and naked. He was also unfettered. He forced his aching, ripped body to stand up and, with extreme pain and difficulty, walked to the front door. There were no vehicles in sight. A couple of blue jays squawked over his head, fighting over ownership of a nearby nest in a tall pine. The sun was high in the sky and he assumed it was well past noon. It was a long walk to the nearest traveled road. He searched the house for something to wrap up in.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Brad walked along the deserted bayou road. He wore a black plastic trash bag, with holes ripped out for his head and arms: he looked like some sort of apocalyptic cave man. His feet were sore and bleeding, bushes tore at his exposed legs.

  As the sun began to set, he knew he had to find shelter. He didn’t know what kind of predators might be indigenous to the area: gators, cottonmouths, cougars? Chills rushed down his spine. He was no outdoorsman and he had no survivalist skills. As the last rays of sun slipped below the horizon, he grabbed a sturdy, fallen branch and curled up next to a large tree. Sleep overtook him and he knew nothing until his eyes opened the next morning. He had been completely and utterly exhausted. He rolled over on the pine-needle covered ground and began to dig and claw at his skin. He was covered in mosquito bites, but he had survived the night.

  “Thank you Lord!” he whispered.

  His hunger was only matched by his thirst. He shook out the kinks and once again walked toward the rising sun. A smile overtook his face when he saw a farmhouse in the distance. He began to run toward it, calling out for anyone who would hear him. Two men emerged from a barn next to the house. He fell down to his knees on the pavement. His tongue was coated in sandpaper and he could go no farther. He prayed for God to protect him as he passed out.

  * * *

  The old woman’s face hovered over his, her warm brown eyes twinkling.

  “Feeling better young man?”

  “How long have I been here?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  The old woman handed him a glass of water and he gulped it down in one swallow. “More,” he said in barely a whisper. She poured him another glass from a plastic bottle on the bedside table.

  “When the boys got to you, you were unconscious. They carried you in and I gave you a sponge bath, treated and bandaged your wounds and put you to bed. I hope you don’t mind the pajamas. They belonged to my late husband. It was all I could find. I bet you’re starved. What were you doing out there naked and who beat you? I had better call the police.”

  “No! I mean, please don’t, ma’am.”

  The woman reared back and gave him a suspicious look.

  “It’s a family matter and the police would only make things worse. It’s over now and I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes ma’am, absolutely.”

  “Well it’s again my better judgment, but okay. Would you like some supper?”

  “Oh yes ma’am I surely would!”

  She stopped and turned back to him. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Brad. Brad Wesley, ma’am.”

  “I’m Martha Wriggles.” She disappeared into the other room.

  Brad downed the contents of the water bottle and surveyed his surroundings. The room appeared to be used more for storage than sleeping. There were boxes and plastic tubs stacked against the walls. Everything was covered in dust and he thought he smelled cat urine. He considered the time that had lapsed since he had left the house in the woods. Had Jared received Nicole’s letter? Where had she gone off to, and had she taken all of his money in the process?

  He soon savored the aroma of frying meat. She brought his dinner on a tray. Brad ate and slept the remainder of the day and night.

  The next day he was able to get up for a short period without feeling dizzy. After a few more days of recuperation, he borrowed some of Martha’s late husband’s clothes. Her husband was about Brad’s height but larger in the waist; a pair of braces fixed that, temporarily.

  She did not press him further about his history. He had no money and nowhere to go, and he felt obligated to the old woman and her sons. He remained at the farm for a couple of months, on the agreement that he would do some seriously needed house repairs. Brad dedicated himself to the various improvements, saying little, praying a lot. He never went into town with Martha’s sons, as he feared inexplicably that someone might recognize him. And then there was…what had happened to him. He was humiliated. What if those two thugs were local? What if they had gone about bragging how they had ass-raped some idiot from the East Coast? Brad would look in the mirror and wonder if it showed. He felt off-center, stripped of his former self. If he wasn’t working, he was in his room, staring at the television with a blank expression.

  One evening when Martha was out, he was in his room, drinking a beer while the news droned on the television. He stared at the screen but nothing registered. His thoughts were elsewhere until…Pocahontas! Someone had, according to the broadcast, donated a classic car to a local fire department, with the strict understanding it would be used in simulations on how to put out car fires. Pictures of Pocahontas flashed intermittently, with various firefighters standing around admiring her. Then…Jared. There he was, saying how happy he was to be able to do a community service.

  “But Mr. Wallace, it is clearly a very valuable piece of automotive history, why not just sell it?” the reporter asked him.

  “I’m not someone who attaches myself to material things. This car is meaningless to me. It was my late father’s, and I’m quite certain he would be more than happy with this decision.” With that, Jared looked directly into the camera, his eyes cold, penetrating, like a serpent’s. The hatred in his eyes froze Brad’s soul.

  Brad watched as Pocahontas went up in flames, the sound of the reporter’s voice now drowned out by his own cursing and screaming. Claustrophobia overtook him and he ran outside to breathe the fresh air, all the while pacing and tearing at his clothes. He cursed and railed at the overcast, moonless sky as tears streamed down his cheeks. Time stopped for him as he spiraled into powerlessness. Sometime later, when his throat became raw and parched, he returned to his room. He downed the rest of the six-pack and passed out.

  A few days later, he mustered the courage to call his old office. When he heard Maggie’s voice, he started to cry. When she realized who it was, she was livid.

  “Your own child! My God, I’m glad Julie is dead and not here to see this!”

  Apparently Jared had told her about the letter.

  Maggie cursed at him, telling him that Jared was desperately searching for “poor Nicole.” He had sold the family home as well, to a “Mr. Nocenti,” she said. Nice to see everyone is profiting from my misery. She ended the call by calling him foul names he never imagined could come from her mouth. Once she hung up on him, he went to his room and cried like a baby.

  A month later, he was ready to leave the safety of Martha’s farm. She showed him an old pick-up in the barn and told him if he could make it run he could have it. The day he pulled out onto the road he had a bag of sandwiches and fifty dollars.

  He became a vagabond of sorts, hitting roadside diners, asking for odd jobs and sleeping in the truck until it finally died just as he reached Katy, Texas. He sold it for scrap, bought a suitcase from a pawnshop for his few possessions and started hitchhiking westward on Interstate 10.

  A couple picked him up one day and took him about fifty miles until they exited the interstate for home. They left Brad in a little jerk-water town. It was late in the day and the only restaurant in sight was closed. He found a tavern whose burly proprietor gave the impression of a retired “one-percenter,” with his braided, gray pony-tail and devil-dog tattoo on his left shoulder. Brad nursed his beer and chatted up the guy, eventually working up the nerve to ask him for a place
to stay in exchange for work and odd jobs. The owner, whose name was Frank, eyed him for a moment before agreeing to his proposition.

  “What time do you close?” Brad asked.

  “After the last customer leaves or midnight,” Frank replied in his gravelly voice.

  Brad looked around, saw about fifteen people, noticed it was a little after ten. Frank sent him to the kitchen.

  “Make yourself a sandwich. There are baked beans on the stove.”

  Brad sat in the back and listened for the bell over the door. In Pavlovian fashion, whenever he heard it, he came out and bussed a table. Around eleven thirty the last two customers left for the evening and Frank locked up, turning off the neon sign and flipping around the “Open” sign. Brad swept up and washed the few remaining dishes. Frank took a seat at the bar with a bottle of bourbon and watched him work. As Brad mopped the hardwoods, worn smooth from years of heavy souls with heavy soles, Frank poured shot after shot, handing Brad one whenever he passed by.

  Brad learned that Frank, a former active duty marine, had lost his wife and daughter. This was too much synchronicity for him, and he gladly received every ounce of “pain medication” Frank offered. Soon, he began to babble—about everything.

  Out of nowhere Frank slugged him hard in the face. Brad was on his back, seeing stars, holding his jaw, his mouth awash with the coppery taste of blood.

  “What the hell?” he slurred. “Why’d you do that?”

  Frank pulled him on his feet and shoved him onto a barstool. He pointed to a picture of a pretty young girl over the bar. A yellow bow, like the kind you would place on a wrapped gift, was stuck to one corner of the frame.

  “That’s my daughter, Cecily. She was raped and murdered when she was twenty! Some sick fuck, like you—and he was never caught!

  With that, Frank hit him again, putting Brad flat on his back once more.

  “I couldn’t kill him, but I’ll make you wish you were dead!”

  The beating continued until the local sheriff’s deputy, making his rounds, shined his spotlight in the large plate glass window and kicked open the doors. Brad lay there, semi-conscious, listening to the two men talking. Finally, they lifted him off the floor and put him in the back of the car.

  “Come on, buddy,” the deputy said. “You can sleep it off in jail.”

  The next morning, just as the sun was coming up, the deputy woke him, took away the melted ice packs from his face, and drove him to the city limits. He pulled off the side of the road and put the patrol car in park.

  “Take my advice, mister. Don’t come back here again. If Frank sees you, he’ll likely kill you.”

  Brad nodded, his face and eyes swollen, his nose broken. With some difficulty he got out of the car and started walking. He listened to the sound of the deputy’s car fade away at his back.

  After walking a ways, he sat down on a rocky ledge in the side of the hill that bordered the road. He listened to woodland birds and the occasional sound of a deer crashing through the forest beyond. An older work van approached, with a man driving. The truck slowed as it closed in and the passenger side window eased down. Brad noticed that the truck advertised an HVAC company. The man called out and asked him if he needed help.

  “Can you just give me a ride to wherever you’re going?” Brad asked.

  The man said it looked like he needed a hospital.

  “No, no hospital.”

  Brad got in the truck and the man probed him about his injuries. He brushed him off and made small talk until he felt comfortable. Eventually, Brad told him about his former company and asked if the man could use him. The man offered him slave wages, but Brad was not in a position to haggle. The man put him to work, allowing him to live in the back of his shop: one room with one window that looked out into a junk yard of old air conditioning units, compressors and furnaces. It came furnished with a broken-down twin bed, a small TV, microwave, hotplate and a small, noisy refrigerator. Brad asked him for some white paint to make it seem less depressing.

  He would sit in his room when he wasn’t working and fantasize about his old life. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what parts had been real. He spent hours thinking about the split-second, alcohol-driven decision to walk up onto Nicole’s deck. He thought about Jared. He thought about April. He thought about Nicole’s tits.

  One night, as he guzzled a six-pack and watched TV, he spat beer all over the little flat-screen he had recently purchased at Wal-Mart. There the bitch was, being interviewed about her novel. She had used a pen name. Apparently it had taken the reviewers by storm. “A story of seduction, an outrageous thriller, filled with twists and turns….” What the fuck?

  She sat there in an overstuffed chair, shelves of books behind her, and toyed with her hair, laughing seductively as she answered the reporter’s questions. The young journalist was drinking her in with his eyes. Brad lunged at the television. She not only had all of his money, she was making a fortune off his misery. He wanted to kill her. No, he wanted to fuck her, and then kill her. He couldn’t believe that he still wanted her after all she had done to him. He had to sleep to forget and purposely drank until he passed out in his saggy old bed.

  A year later he walked into a local cinema, drunk out of his mind, and watched his own pathetic story enfold on the screen. He managed to get through the whole thing, cursing out loud and being shushed by other patrons. When the credits rolled, he couldn’t stand it.

  “That was me!” he stood up and shouted to the rafters. “That was my life!” Security guards emerged and ushered him out, telling him never to return.

  “What a crock of shit!” he screamed when she appeared on late-night television again, promoting the film. Then he saw her on one of the major network morning shows, where she was in a panel discussion about rape victims and the psychological trauma they endured.

  A short time later, he saw where she had been gunned down leaving her New York apartment. Apparently the perpetrator was her “estranged husband.” Police had shot Jared on the spot. He winced as he watched footage of two body bags being loaded into ambulances. Then, his body began to shake and his chest constricted. Grief was boiling up like lava from deep within him. In no time, he was on his knees, wailing. “Jared, Jared, my son!”

  Surely she had her revenge now. Brad continued to weep as he looked out the dirty window of his small room. As far as he could see, junk covered the back acre behind the shop: all of it rusting, all of it sinking into the earth, the only sign of life an occasional possum crawling from under an old air conditioner. Nothing in sight seemed salvageable. It was all, undoubtedly, ruined.

  The End