Savage

by Jade C. Jamison

  My back was to him, but I felt the tiny hairs stand up all over my body. I was never aware of those little remnants of prehistoric life until they made themselves known…as they did right then. I wasn’t sure why. There was something gravelly about his voice and yet he seemed to caress my name.

  How stupid. He was asking for a washcloth, not a blowjob…and yet my mind thought there was more to it.

  I swallowed, forcing myself to be rational. There was nothing behind his request—it was all me. I’d been in an emotional tornado for the last couple of days, and I must have been trying to find something to grab hold of. I needed to make sure it wasn’t something stupid like that.

  Coming back down to the planet, I turned in the chair so I could face him. I’d found some clean washcloths the day before—one for each of us—so I had to ask. “Why can’t you use the one I already gave you?”

  Yeah, nothing ulterior there. “It’s for Larry. He said he needs a clean, dry washcloth.”

  “What for?”

  Kevin shrugged, as though I should know the answer. “No idea.” I got up and walked to the stairway in the living room. “They’re upstairs?”

  “Yeah.” There was a linen closet next to the bathroom there. I’d never understood why, but Aunt Lou had a half bath downstairs—toilet and sink—and then a full bathroom upstairs. As she aged, I wondered why she didn’t choose to convert the bathroom downstairs or have one added to her master bedroom. It would have made sense. She continued to go upstairs regularly, though—as evidenced by her empty shell in the sewing room. Why hadn’t I ever suggested that before?

  Why hadn’t I ever asked her if she wanted to move in with me?

  And why couldn’t I find a way to stop hammering myself with guilt? As I wrestled with that thought at the top of the stairs, I made my way to the linen closet. I grabbed a few washcloths, just in case Larry needed more. If I’d known the purpose, I would have known how many, but he’d chosen to not reveal it.

  Men.

  I shook my head and closed the door, walking back down the hall. “You okay up there?”

  What? Now I was a helpless woman who couldn’t even fetch a washcloth? “Yeah. I’m coming.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but I was sure some of it snuck through. I sensed the sewing room behind me as I took the first step down, and then I realized maybe that was why Kevin was asking—he might have somehow known that being up there would affect me emotionally. He probably also remembered from just a little earlier how pissed off I’d gotten when he’d tried to do something for me that I hadn’t asked for help with…and that was, I guessed, why he was asking but keeping his distance.

  Either that, or I really just needed to get out of there. My emotions and thoughts were amplified without all the typical daily distractions. I didn’t know how to function on such a raw, immediate playing field.

  As I walked down the stairs, I saw Kevin at the bottom looking up. The scruff he’d had on his unshaven face appeared a little darker today, and his eyes seemed a little brighter. Oh, God, standing there, he looked just like the boy I’d fallen head over heels for all those years ago.

  My breath was gone, but I knew one thing. I had to try like hell to not let any of that show. I froze my face and forced breath into my lungs as I took one step after another to get to the bottom.

  What was he thinking, though? I forced myself to swallow past the lump in my throat, because his eyes seemed to reflect the weird emotions reeling inside me. I sucked in another deep breath and handed him the washcloth. I tried to act lighthearted and said, “I can’t wait to see what he’s gonna do with this.”

  Kevin blinked as though he too were pulled from a trance and I saw a slight smile touch his eyes. “Let’s go watch.”

  I knew I could come back to the note at the desk later…and, somehow, Kevin seemed more important at the moment. I nodded, smiling, and followed him on his way back to the garage.

  When we walked back inside the cool, semi-dark space, we walked around to the driver’s side where Larry had been, but when we got there, we saw him sprawled on the floor, the hose hanging from the car with gasoline pouring out onto the concrete. The fumes were almost overpowering, and my first instinct was to cover my nose. “What happened?”

  Kevin was already kneeling beside Larry. “Fuck. I hope he didn’t drink any or breathe it in.” He got his face close to Larry’s. I barely heard him say, “Exactly what I was afraid of.”

  By the time I thought to lift the hose to save what little gas was left, it was only dribbling out. I shoved the hose into the red gas can that was next to the rear tire and then looked over to see if maybe I could do something to help.

  Vera walked in then. Her voice was high pitched, like she was ready to snap. “What happened?” It was a question, but it sounded more like a desperate demand coming from her lips.

  Kevin was busy tending to Larry, leaving me to answer her question. “We’re not sure, Vera. We were in the kitchen and, when we came in here, he was like this.”

  Her voice grew more strained. “You let him siphon the gas?”

  Vera and Larry had been married for decades, and she actually thought Kevin and I had some kind of sway over him. “Let? No, we didn’t let him. It was his idea.”

  “So what happened? Did he—”

  Larry gasped loudly, forcing Vera to pause. Kevin backed off a little to give Larry more room. He fluttered his eyes, acting a little disoriented at first. Then he looked around, taking everything in but not speaking.

  Vera finally asked, “Are you okay?”

  Larry blinked again and swallowed. “Yeah, I think so.” Kevin held out a hand and Larry took it, sitting up.

  “What happened?” she demanded, shooting a nasty look at me. I had no idea where that came from, but I wasn’t going to pick a fight right here and now.

  Larry closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose before looking at her and speaking. “I don’t remember everything. I just remember we were getting ready to siphon gas out of the car. I asked Savage here if he could get me a washcloth or a bandanna or something because the fumes were bad.”

  Kevin somehow managed to keep any hint of sarcasm out of his voice. “Worse now.”

  Larry nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, I can’t remember exactly what happened after that. I remember sucking on the hose and knowing the gas was getting ready to start flowing. I reached for the gas can to stick the hose in but… Well, that’s where I don’t remember anything.”

  What I was going to offer was something everyone already likely thought. “You probably passed out from the fumes. If they were bothering you already…”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “We should probably get you out of here then,” Kevin said, standing up and, once more, offering his assistance to Larry with his hand.

  The gasoline had soaked Larry’s shirt, so I found an old flannel one my Uncle Felix had once worn, and we decided to leave Larry’s old shirt in the garage where the fumes wouldn’t bother us.

  Aside from Vera’s continued accusations—all through her eyes, because she didn’t say another word—the rest of us seemed to realize this was just a setback. We now had two vehicles with no gas, no phone, no electricity…but a burning desire to get home. We had to find a way to do it.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Past

  “Round and Round” – Ratt

  COLLEGE PROVED TO be the best thing for me. It was easy to drown out memories and desires (or at least pretend to)—besides carrying a ridiculously difficult load for a freshman, I also discovered alcohol and experimented with drugs. I took up smoking.

  And I lost my virginity.

  Sex didn’t matter much, especially after the initial painful first few times. Even then, the first time, I imagined I was with Kevin, pretended he was the one I gave my innocence to. The boys never knew. I doubted most of them would have cared had they known.

  I discovered something interesting—removed from my small town, I
was just another girl…and I was as desirable as the next. I grew more confident about myself and, the more boys I dated, the less I thought about the guy I thought I wanted.

  Until I came home for Spring Break. Winchester had an annual affair called Spring Fest, and I met up with some of my old high school buddies to hang that first Sunday afternoon. There were food booths and arts and crafts, but that night featured an air guitar contest with high school “bands” competing.

  Yes, one of them had Kevin Savage as a band member. Seeing him on that concrete pavilion in the middle of the park pretending to rock out and play that guitar reignited a spark I thought had almost burned out. Instead, I was captivated by him. He had a stage charisma I never would have suspected, and I was mesmerized. Their repertoire? Tunes from Ratt’s Out of the Cellar album. It didn’t hurt that it was one of my favorite albums at the time.

  I considered cornering him and talking to him later…but I felt spurned. Unloved. Unwanted. I was the rejected one, and throwing myself at him would only be pathetic. So, former friends or not, I kept my distance. And, later that night, there was a big dance led by a DJ, and lots of us town teens stood around the dance area watching the few people who liked swaying to the likes of Wham!, Don Henley, and Madonna. I did catch myself tapping a foot to a Power Station song, but my peripheral vision—the entire time—was focused on Kevin Savage. My high school buddies didn’t know it; the other folks at the dance didn’t know it; and Kevin himself didn’t. It was my little secret, because deep down, a huge part of me kept hoping and praying he’d walk over and start talking to me.

  He didn’t.

  So, when I went back to college the following weekend, I engaged in what I might have called risky behavior when advising my own kids years later on safe practices. Lots of sex without a condom and lots of drinking.

  Over the course of a couple years, it almost pushed Savage out of my head.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Present

  “Walk with Me in Hell” – Lamb of God

  LARRY LAY ON the couch for a couple of hours recovering from whatever had happened to him earlier. By the time he felt up for moving around, it was late afternoon and, even though the sun hadn’t yet set, it had dipped over the mountains. It would be dark soon.

  Not that it mattered. We had no way out of there now, so we had to formulate another plan. I decided I wasn’t going to talk to Vera about it if I could help it. She’d thus far not been much help in strategizing anyway, and now she was acting illogical, as though Kevin and I had plotted to harm her husband. The isolation and fear and not knowing seemed to be causing her to crack.

  Losing one’s shit wasn’t productive, though.

  So I figured Kevin, Larry, and I needed to try to figure out another solution. There still seemed to be no promise of power being restored anytime soon, and I hadn’t heard any manmade noises outside, had heard nothing other than the forest—no planes overhead, no vehicles coming to visit my aunt. Not a thing. I had no idea how we would get out of this mess other than by hiking.

  And that would surely be death this time of year.

  I needed to do something useful; otherwise, I was going to fall back into the fucking abyss I’d been in over the past year. Things might have gone to shit with the virus and even more now that we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, removed from civilization, but one thing was for certain: I hadn’t felt this alive in a long time. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I was so distraught, worrying about the safety of my kids, and I was devastated over the loss of my aunt…but I had a purpose, a reason. What that was, I had no idea, but something was pushing me like I hadn’t been driven in a long time.

  No, I wasn’t happy…but I was alive.

  I announced to no one in particular that I was going to figure out dinner. It was time to finish off whatever was left in the refrigerator and freezer, because they weren’t going to last, and that was when I remembered that Aunt Lou had a bigger freezer in a corner of the garage…and then that made me think of the food she kept in what she called her “root cellar”—it was simply a cool, dry place where she kept the spoils of her garden that would last several months into the winter, as well as purchased nonperishables and all the fruits of her canning efforts, a task I’d just helped her with a couple of months earlier. I clenched my teeth together as that memory washed over me, one of the two of us canning tomatoes and beets and pickles along with freezing corn and peas. It had been an enjoyable couple of weekends spent with one of my favorite women on the planet.

  I’d never be able to spend time with her again.

  And the fate of spending time with my children was also dubious.

  It would have been so easy to just let those feelings consume me, eat me alive, but something inside me had awakened, that part of me that had been dormant for a while now, that part that had just decided it was done. There was a fighter in there…and she was back.

  * * *

  Because we had no artificial light other than what the fire provided, I found myself easily falling asleep shortly after it had grown pitch black outside. Right before I rested my head, Kevin had made an announcement that he was going to smoke his last cigarette, and he’d bring wood back in with him.

  I fell asleep before he returned.

  The next morning, I was ready to do whatever needed to be done. I stoked and refueled the fire and then I found a box of oatmeal in one of Aunt Lou’s cabinets. After finding her kettle (thrilled that it looked hardy enough to withstand the rigors of the fire), I put the water on to boil and then found a notepad and pen. Everyone else began to stir with the noise I was creating, and that was good. No more messing around. We had work to do if we were going to get out of here.

  And that was the plan. I saw, when preparing the oatmeal, that we were almost out of the water Aunt Lou had stockpiled. Aside from dying for a shower and hating the way we used the toilet, I also ached for my own surroundings. I’d always dreamed of living up here in the mountains, enjoying the kind of life Lou and Felix had had for so many years, but now I doubted I could appreciate something like that. I felt so removed from everything.

  Maybe if all the amenities I was used to hadn’t been stripped away. One might argue that electricity was a luxury, but if you’ve lived with it your whole life, it’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity, and it’s damned difficult trying to figure out how to live without it. Running water and heat on demand are others, even relative ease of transportation. Cinderella’s old song “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” came to mind as I pondered all these things I was trying to live without for the meantime, and while the song might have been about love, it could easily extend to life and all the things that made our existence bearable.

  Everyone began sitting up and stretching. Vera was a little groggy but she seemed more like her usual passive self rather than the stark-raving bitch she’d been yesterday. I tried to let my animosity go, though, because I might have responded the same way if I thought someone had neglected a loved one who fell in harm’s way. I didn’t want the fact that she could have been there helping too (and therefore less likely to point a finger) to cloud my judgment.

  Especially since, after today, we could go back to being neighbors who waved to each other once in a while but never engaged in conversation.

  I had wondered how oatmeal would go over, because I knew not everyone was a fan like I was, but I think they appreciated the fact that it was something hot and we hadn’t enjoyed a hot meal in days. It was also one of those foods that seemed to stick to your ribs, something else we hadn’t had much of since leaving home.

  It was quite satisfying. I didn’t remember loving oatmeal that much before, but it was now a favorite. After I’d gathered up the bowls, I placed them in the sink, debating when I wanted to get some snow from outside to melt and clean them out. I wanted to talk to my companions first, though. Ideas were fresh in my mind and the pilot light to my motivation was lit, ready to fire things up.

  I r
eturned to the living room where Larry started rubbing his belly. “I think I need about twenty more of those to feel full.”

  I smiled as Kevin said, “No kidding. I think the first thing I’m gonna do when I get back to town is go to Chili’s, have some barbecued ribs.”

  Larry’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. I think I could go for one of their burgers with cheese and bacon.” Vera rolled her eyes, but I could see hope in them as well.

  “Or pizza.” Kevin said. “With pepperoni, Italian sausage, and extra cheese.”

  “First, we gotta get there. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you guys about. How do we get home?”

  Kevin grew serious fast. “I was thinking about that. How far is Chipeta Springs? Maybe I could walk, take the gas can with me, get it filled, bring it back.”

  I grimaced. “It’s at least five miles away…and the snow’s deep. Maybe in the spring, but right now? There’s not enough daylight.”

  He clenched his jaw, considering my words. He looked dubious, as though he was ready to argue with me and try it anyway, but then Larry said, “What about neighbors? Maybe someone around here could give us a ride to Chipeta. Would that work?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t see why not.”

  Kevin asked, “How close are the neighbors around here?”

  “Well, obviously not like in the city, and way up here, they’re spread out a lot more than the people closer to town, but I know of a few homes close by. Aunt Lou’s closest neighbors are a family west of here—the Bransons, I think their name is. They aren’t too far away.”

  Larry clapped his hands together, announcing that, as far as he was concerned, it was a done deal. “Sounds like a great plan to me.”

  Kevin gave a nod of his head and Vera…well, she just sat there like she often did. I was grateful that she was back to her usual self, but now I had the added bonus of feeling like I had to walk on eggshells in case she was on the verge of exploding again.