“I’m right,” he said. “I scared you that day. That’s why I went home. I felt awful. I was physically ill from it.”
A tentative smile formed on the corners of my mouth. “That’s why you left?!”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t scare me, Sam. I liked the way you looked at me. No one had ever looked at me like that. I was overwhelmed. Not scared.”
He looked somewhere between dazed and incredulous. Then he squeezed his eyes shut. I inched toward him. He raised his hand to stop me. When he opened his eyes, they met mine.
“All this time,” he signed, “I’ve hated myself for that day.” He shook his head and finally, finally, he smiled. “I’m an idiot.”
I shrugged. “The biggest kind. Honestly, Sam.” I shook my head and exaggerated an eye roll.
He laughed, and even though I couldn’t hear him, I could feel his bed shake, see his face brighten, his eyes glow. His laughter brought me joy. And it was the best feeling in the world. I never wanted this feeling to go away.
“Why have we never talked about this?” he asked.
“I didn’t know there was anything to talk about.”
He stared at me a moment, his face softer than when I’d first arrived. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
His eyes lowered. His fingers began picking at threads on his counterpane. Then he abandoned the picking. “For your letter. But we should talk about the fact I may not walk again. What if—”
I covered his hands with mine and reveled in the feel of them before I had to release them. “Stop. I’m not leaving. Stop trying to push me away. If you walk again, I’ll be here. If you don’t, I’ll be here.”
He went back to picking at the loose threads. I went back to watching his nimble fingers pull and pluck.
“Have you heard from Noah?” I asked, changing topics.
“My father received a letter three days ago. He’s not saying much.”
“No one is saying much,” I said. I stood, turning my back on Sam and the feelings coursing through my veins. Just for a minute. Just long enough to catch my breath. Noah had left like a thief in the night, and I missed him. Sam hadn’t left, but he felt gone all the same. And I missed him too. So much.
My feet led me to the window, and I stared out, unseeing. I couldn’t do anything about Noah. However, I could do something about Sam. Gathering air into my lungs, I let it out slowly and turned to face him.
“They told you where Noah went?”
He nodded.
“They told you he went searching for Fredrick?” He nodded again. “Is that who did this? Did you see him?”
Sam looked away, glancing around as if looking for answers. “I see a face. Distorted, blurry. I don’t know who attacked me.” He swallowed.
“Noah believes it was Fredrick, or he wouldn’t be chasing him,” I said.
Sam’s eyes searched mine. “What do you believe?”
“I believe Fredrick hates you.”
“Enough to kill me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand that kind of hate.”
“Neither do I.”
“I’m beginning to think,” I said, “I could understand it.”
“Explain.”
“If he did this to you,” I signed, walking toward him. “I think I could hate him enough . . . I could hate him enough to want to kill him.”
Sam frowned, his eyes falling to his counterpane. “Don’t say that.”
I had already said it and I couldn’t unsay it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Your heart is too pure to let that kind of hate inside. Don’t let Fredrick or anyone change you that way. Don’t do that.”
“You are!” I shot back. “You’re letting him change you.”
“Not like that!” he argued.
I shrugged, unconvinced.
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“You may not want to kill anyone, yet you’re willing to let yourself die.” I placed my left hand over his heart. “In here.” I shook my head, removed my hand from his chest, fixed my eyes on his, praying I could get through this without falling apart. “By doing that, you’re letting us die. You’re allowing Fredrick or whoever did this to kill what we had. How is that any different?”
Sam pressed his hand against his breastbone, a pained expression on his face. He turned away from me. Not in rebuke . . . in regret, I think.
I allowed him a moment to assemble his thoughts, feelings, whatever it was he needed, and wandered around the room. A book sat on top of a table between ointments and bandages. I picked it up. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was the title. I opened to the first page and began to read, walking the length of the room as I did. I flipped through several pages, then flipped to the page someone had bookmarked. I didn’t understand most of it. Poetry and I had never gotten along well. I thought poets liked to be confounding purposely and I found that rather irritating.
Book still in hand, I brought it back with me to Sam’s bedside. “This yours?” I asked.
Sam glanced at the copy in my hand. “Yes.”
I read over some of the passages again before asking, “You like this?”
“Yes.”
“What does a groan sound like?”
Sam lifted one eyebrow.
I showed Sam the sentence . . . He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan . . . and asked him to describe “groan” to me because I didn’t know what a groan sounded like. I struggled mightily with sound words. A lot of times it made it hard for me to understand what I was reading.
Sam shifted, readjusting his pillow. He smoothed his right hand over his mouth and across his jaw, contemplating. Then he began to sign. “A groan is an inarticulate sound. A sound some people make when they are in pain. Or in mourning. Or dying. Sometimes people groan when they desire something. Imagine a child wanting dessert and being sent to bed without it. But not all groans come from people.” He pointed to the floors. “Whenever your father walks across the room, the wood groans underneath his weight.” He smirked at that.
My eyes widened. “Is that true? Papa makes the floors groan?”
“Yes.”
“I never knew that.” I signed, grinning like Sam had given me a secret. “What about . . .” I read over some of the poem again. “Howling? Here, it is referring to a person howling to his god. I thought only dogs howled.”
He smiled. “That’s just a poet being poetic. Dogs and wolves howl. Not people.”
Confused, I asked, “Then what does ‘howling to his gods’ mean?”
“In this, the poet, Lord Byron, means praying, pleading with raised voices.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he use the word howl if people don’t howl?”
His brows pleated thoughtfully. “I’ll describe the sound. It’s long, deep, and haunting. Imagine a wolf missing his mate, standing on the edge of a cliff calling out to her. It’s sadness. Like an animal’s cry. When Byron says ‘howling to his god,’ he’s painting a picture of a man on his knees, eyes up to the Heavens, pleading or praying to be heard.”
I blinked. I could picture that perfectly. I thought Sam was better than any poet I’d ever read, and my heart gave a squeeze. “Thank you,” I said. “That was . . . beautifully explained.”
“Do you want me to explain this poem to you?”
“Yes, I would like that.”
“After you left for Hartford, Mr. Goulrich read parts of it aloud in class one day. I loved it instantly.”
“Why?”
“May I see it?” He pointed to the copy in my lap. I handed it over and watched him flip through the pages, coming back to the page he had bookmarked. He traced the words with his fingertips. He looked at me and signed, “This poem reminds me of you.”
“Me?”
“And me. And Noah. This place,” he said. “It reminds me of our childhood, growing up together, navigating an unknown world. The poem is about a traveler who journeys to other parts of th
e world, disillusioned with life, looking for distractions in other lands. That’s how it begins. It becomes more about the poet as he writes. He talks about saying goodbye, missing a loved one, injustice, the spirit of freedom, the beauty of the sea, hopelessness, fear. He even mentions dancing at a ball.” Sam smiled. “Byron traveled the world, and these are the things he experienced. Yet I have experienced these same things right here with you and I had to venture no further than Bridgeport to find them.”
I shook my head in awe of Sam. “Who needs to read the poem? I’d rather have your summary.”
His cheeks tinged a shade of pink. “The poem is better.”
“Not for me it isn’t.”
Sam closed the book and smoothed his hand over the cover, his countenance darkening.
Touching his hand to gain his attention, he looked up. “What?” I asked.
“I missed you,” he said. “I have missed you my whole life.”
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m right here.”
He nodded, though there was sadness locked in Sam’s expression. “Look at you,” he signed, his eyes roaming over me as though he was trying to recreate the past. “You’re beautiful. You have grown into something amazing. Like a flower that bloomed overnight.” His eyebrows bunched. “That’s terrible. A flower. I’m no good with words.”
I couldn’t fight the smile spreading across my face. “I like flowers.”
He pointed to the letters bundled in twine. “You were always better with words than I ever was.”
“I loved your letters.”
“I’m simple, Lucy. I felt inadequate when writing to you. I never know how to express myself. I’m not a poet like Byron.”
“You’re not simple. And I’m not a flower. But if I were, then you were the water that made me grow. I wouldn’t be here without you.”
Sam’s green eyes appeared to mist. “See? Better with words than me.” He turned his head, denying me the truth I might find if only he allowed me to see him.
But I did see. Sometimes I saw too much. Maybe that was the trade for hearing naught. So be it. I’d rather see it all—the hurt, the sadness, the confliction within his heart—than to lose any part of him.
His eyes flitted to mine, then darted away. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you love me.”
“I do love you.”
Sam’s gaze seared me, searching, for what I didn’t know. I felt naked before him. Vulnerable. However, I was desperate to be heard. He deserved to know he was worth fighting for. So, with a tightness in my chest and a racing heart, I raised my hands to speak.
“I want you. All of you. Broken or whole. I don’t care. At the end of my life, I want to look back and remember our story. Give me a story, Sam. One I can tell our grandchildren.” A tear slipped down my cheek. “An amazing story. One we can laugh about and cry about and get angry about. But most of all, a story we can cherish and share because we weren’t afraid to love each other when things were hard. Give me that. Give us that. All right?”
Sam’s throat bobbed up and down. He was about to say something when his mother came into the room, carrying a tray of food. She set it on his lap and Sam eyed the contents like he’d never seen soup before.
“I’m sorry,” his mother said. “I interrupted something.”
I waited for several heartbeats, hoping Sam would look at me. When he didn’t, I said, “It’s fine. I was leaving.” I got to my feet; my legs felt wooden. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sam’s eyes floated up to mine. But he said nothing. He just watched me go.
Sam
My mind kept drifting back to Lord Byron’s poem. Lucy had wanted me to explain it to her. And I had. Or rather, I had explained what it had meant to me as a boy and why I had loved it then. It meant something different to me now—at least parts of it.
Opening the page bookmarked with a scrap of torn cloth, I read over the passage again.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
“Apostrophe to the Ocean,” this stanza was called. A poet’s tribute to the sea, a respect for the ocean, and an open acknowledgment of how man could not conquer it. However, I could no longer read it in this light. If Byron saw himself in everything, I saw myself in Byron. The thing maker creating a thing made. And I felt as though I had been made into something else—a man without a grave. Uncoffined. Unknown. A man left upon a watery plain. I saw the shadow of man’s ravage ready to sink me into thy depths with a bubbling groan.
Man indeed marks the earth with ruin—his control.
And dashest him again to the earth:—there let him lay, I whispered to myself, finishing the rest of the stanza. I could not read this poem now and see it the way I had when I was younger. I could no longer decide if I still loved it because a part of me hated it, although I could not tear my eyes from it whenever I was alone with it. It still called to me. It still relieved me to know that someone out there understood something I could not put into words, even if I was warping the interpretation. So be it. I was warped. I’d been dashed again to the earth and left to lie. To die. How could I not be warped?
I kept the poem underneath my pillow and had tried to make sense of my need to have it near, although there was no making sense out of the senseless and I gave up trying.
As for Lucy, she kept true to her word, coming the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on. And each day, Lucy would ask me to describe sound words to her. Why this had never come up before, I had no idea. Perhaps because our visits had always been brief, we had chosen to occupy our time with other things, such as dancing, laughing, and spending time with family.
However, since I was confined to this room with nothing else to do, I suppose she sought the opportunity to learn something. And how could I deny her that? Also, if I were being honest, it took my mind off myself and my own troubled thoughts. Perhaps that was her intention all along.
“Is it possible to whisper loudly and shout softly? I’ve read this in stories. It bewilders me. Can you explain this?” she had asked me one day.
I had to admit, I had to put extra thought into this one. Explaining sound words to a person who couldn’t hear wasn’t an easy task, and she was indeed giving me difficult ones. Were there variations to shouting? I hadn’t considered it until she had asked.
“Whispers can be softer or louder than others,” I said. “How much breath I force between my lips would determine how loud or soft it is. Think of it as the difference between a soft breeze against your face versus a gust of wind. One is subtle and one is more forceful. On that note, a shout is loud, like an angry storm beating against the house. Or someone shouts because they’re happy to see someone. But a shout is always loud, I would think. Unless . . . you whisper-shouted . . . that just means you only wish for the person beside you to hear and don’t wish to draw anyone else’s attention. Think of a soldier trying to get his brother’s attention and doesn’t want to alert the enemy. Does that help?”
She smiled. It was like sunshine after the rain. “Yes,” she said. “That helps.”
And on and on it went. Her asking me to describe this sound word and that. I did the best I could, snagging a time or two on a difficult one here or there. However, overall it was an interesting, and dare I say, satisfying process. For both of us, I think. We each came away with having learned something, seen things differently. Her, from my eyes. Me, from hers.
I loved her for that. Even more than I already did.
Two weeks had come and gone, and before I knew it, Doctor Kelly was in my room ready to take off the bandages and remove the splints.
“Remember what I told you,” he said.
I gritted my teeth, clutching the sheets in my hands. “It isn’t likely I could forget, Doc.”
“Sam!” my mother said sharply.
“Just take the bandages off and let’s get this over with,” I snapped. “I’m tired of not knowing.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Doc said. “I’d be feeling the same.”
Slowly, he began to unwrap. It felt like an eternity before the left leg was fully exposed. Like my arm, the muscles in my leg were diminished. However, my leg appeared normal. The doc ran his hands over the bones in my leg. The sensation felt weird.
“It looks good,” the doc said.
“Now the right leg,” I said.
After unwrapping the right one, we stared, all of us. From the knee down, something seemed to be a bit odd. And something about the ankle didn’t look quite right.
The doc cleared his throat. “It seems the bones didn’t heal as nicely as I’d hoped.” He felt around below my knee, down my leg. “Any pain? Discomfort?”
“No.”
“Does it hurt to rotate your ankle?” the doc asked.
Tentatively, I moved my foot a little to the left, then to the right. Up, then down.
“No,” I said.
“Well, let’s see if you can stand.”
My father, who had been quiet beside the head of my bed, came to my side. Doctor Kelly came to my other side. My mother stood in front of me, arms stretched out to offer extra support.
“Easy,” Papa said. “We’re just going to stand. Don’t try to take any steps just yet.”
“Put most of your weight on your left leg first,” the doc said, “before you try that ankle.”
My arms were wrapped around the necks of Doctor Kelly and my father. I didn’t feel like I was putting my full weight on my legs at all, but I did as I was told, and kept my right knee bent slightly.
“How does that feel?” Papa asked.
“It feels fine,” I said.
“No pain?” the doc asked.
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