2. Wolfe
wolfe
Typically, when I drove west toward my cabin, I could see the Rocky Mountains with my bare eyes even though they were over seventy miles away. That was not true today.
Beyond the craggy, gray-black branches of bare-limbed cottonwood trees, the sky was the texture of pale eggshell.
The horizon was being erased by a flurry of fluffy snow as I sped down the frontage road, chasing the three-engine freight train.
Or maybe it was chasing me. Certainly, it fell behind as the ground rose up, but then as it reached the peak of the small hill just south of my cabin, it sped up on the other side, and was soon out of sight in a swirl of snow.
I steered my truck over the crossing with a thump and a bump, glanced down the tracks, just to look at the train, as a train in daylight was such a rare occasion in these parts, and turned onto Diamond Willow Lane.
This was the last leg of my journey home, which was a good thing because the snow was now coming down in a thick curtain of white. Visibility had dropped to maybe fifty feet, so I slowed way down, even though there was never anyone on this dirt road but me.
The air was white all around, then inside of a moment, as if some angelic hand had pulled the curtain aside, the wind blew the snow sideways and I saw a figure walking toward me.
Odd. There was no place for anyone to come from except my small cabin, and that couldn’t be because I was the only one who lived there. I blinked but hadn’t imagined it and put on the brakes.
The truck shuddered to a stop, which meant the road was already becoming slick beneath the falling snow. The temperature was dropping, so what was this fool doing out in the storm? I didn’t know.
The figure stumbled and fell, dropping below sight right in front of my truck. Luckily, I’d stopped, or I would have run him over. I had a lot to do to get ready for the coming blizzard, but I couldn’t leave the person in the middle of the road. No way.
Putting my truck in park and leaving the engine running, I stepped out into the onslaught of the blizzard. The snow was wild, coming thick from all directions, and the extreme chill in the air made me cough as I went around to the front of the truck.
The figure was a young man, sprawled in the snow as though he was relaxing on a warm, sun-kissed, sand-laced beach. His coat was blue wool, and his sneakers, grubby blue canvas high-tops, looked like they had blood splattered on the rubber toe and cotton laces.
Where had he come from? No matter. I needed to get him to shelter before he froze.
I hunkered down, wondering at the dirt and streaks of grease on his face, his skin pale beneath.
In his right hand, he gripped the strap of a tattered green duffel bag.
The hood of his sweatshirt was flopped in the snow, giving him no protection at all.
“Hey,” I said. “Sir?” I touched his face to waken him, to jostle him into consciousness.
He looked at me with the bluest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
Electricity jolted through me. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“Can I help you up? There’s a blizzard coming.
Let me take you to my cabin, and you can call someone. ”
He blinked hard, as if he were attempting to translate what I’d just said into his own language. He nodded, as if he meant to get up and accept my help, but he floundered, as though he’d forgotten the use of his own limbs.
I pulled him to sitting, and then to standing.
Watched him wince as he favored his left leg.
The left side of his face was scraped. Something had happened to him.
I wrapped my arm around his waist. Up close, he smelled of diesel and day-old sweat.
Week-old sweat, maybe. But it was the diesel scent that caught me, matching the scent trail the three-engine diesel train had left behind, a ribbon of grease and soot in the cold, cold air.
He’d been one of the figures I’d seen near the parked freight train. Either on top of the boxcar or standing next to it. But there would be time enough to unravel the answers later. The weather was the more pressing issue.
“Let’s get you in the truck.”
He blinked at me, slow, blue eyes serious, dark brows lowering as if I wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting and that quite soon he was going to complain to management. Well, he’d have to look long and hard. I managed myself these days.
Slumping, he could barely stand, so I half carried him to the passenger side and helped him into the truck. No need to buckle him in, as we were going no more than a hundred yards. As I got into the driver’s side, in the warmth of the cab, I looked over at him.
Snow dripped from his hair and down the plane of his cheek as he stared at me as though he’d never seen a human before. As though he were an alien only recently landed. Or an angel alighting to earth on snow-feathered wings.
It was then that I noticed he was curling his left hand against his belly. His wrist was swollen beneath a gathering of leather wristbands. One wide, one narrow, and a simple braided string, though whether the string was cotton or narrow leather, I couldn’t tell.
What concerned me more was that I’d not noticed before. I might have jostled him in my haste, but he’d not said a word.
Everything on his left side, his face, his wrist, his ankle, seemed to be wounded. If he’d been on the train, he might have fallen off. And all the while, he clutched the green duffel close.
“We’ll get you inside,” I said, pointing the truck toward home. “I’ve got a cabin. I’ve got food. We’ll hunker down until the storm blows over. You can call your people, let ‘em know where you are.”
“I don’t have any people,” the young man said carefully. Slowly. “I see—faces, but I don’t know who they are.”
Taken aback by this admission in bruised words, thick confusion, I focused on driving it the rest of the way to the cabin. Once there, I parked the truck in the open, rather than close to the cabin.
It’d be fine if the truck got covered in snow, hidden by drifts, but I didn’t want icicles from the cabin falling on it, or a tree branch when one of the winter-still cottonwoods decided the weight of the blizzard was too much for it and a branch would crack away from a trunk.
More important than that, or my supplies even, was getting the young man inside. Where it was warm and safe. Where I could take care of his face and wrist and ankle, and whatever else. I’d get a fire going. Then I’d hand him the phone so he could reach out to whoever might be missing him.
I hurried to get him inside the cabin and sat him at the kitchen table.
I considered putting him in the leather easy chair by the fire, but that would have been too much, because the weight of his body would have sunk him into the cushions, jostling his wrist and ankle.
And, if he’d fallen from the train, he might have hurt his back.
No, the chair, though stiff, was better.
He shivered as I stood there, and I realized that however long he’d been walking along Diamond Willow long, he was chilled through. He needed out of his half-frozen clothes and into something warm and dry. He needed hot tea to drink. Tea with brandy and lemon and honey.
I could use some myself; I was that shaken, only realizing it as I stood in that room, still compared to the storm outside. But I’d not shut the door properly, and it swung open in a cloud of snow. I’d get the groceries in a minute.
My mind debated. Get everything inside, or take care of the young man. So I asked him, “I’m putting water on for tea. Will you be okay for a minute while I grab groceries from the truck?”
“Yes,” he said, in that clear voice of his. “I’ll be fine, except—but who are you?”
“I’m Wolfe,” I said. “And who are you?”
He paused, frowning, then said, “Blue.”
“Blue?” I asked.
He pointed to his eyes and his coat, then to his sneakers. All blue.
“You sit,” I said. “I’ll bring in the groceries, then I’ll help you.”
He nodded. I filled the tea kettle under the faucet at the sink and put it on a burner. Turned the burner on high and raced to bring my groceries in, setting the plastic bags just inside the door, ignoring the puddle that followed in my footsteps on my trips to and from the truck.
When I finally shut the door against the storm, the sky was a whirl of white, and I couldn’t see further than my hand.
The door was good and solid, and the windows were double-paned.
I’d laid down new tarpaper over the roof, and shingles as well, the previous summer.
The cabin was drum-tight, but still, I could feel the wind pushing against the frame.
I put the milk and ice cream and any perishables away; the rest could wait. I turned to the young man, who was clinging to the green duffle bag and the back of the chair with his right arm, while his other lay limply in his lap.
“Is that really your name?” I asked.
“I believe so,” he said as politely as if he were wearing a suit and tie and speaking at a boardroom meeting in some fancy high-rise.
“Well, let me take your bag, and I’ll put it over here. Then I’ll get you fixed up.”
“It’s not mine,” he said. But before I could ask, he added, “I don’t know whose it is, but it’s important.”
“Okay,” I said. His answers were evasive, but first aid mattered more. I shucked my coat and placed it over the back of the other kitchen chair, which I pulled over to him and sat down. I looked him up and down. “Tell me what hurts.”
“Everything,” he said. A shudder ran through him. The tea kettle whistled. I got up and put five tea bags in the teapot, then set it aside. Going back to him, I said, “Tell me what hurts the most.”
“My ankle,” he said after a pause. “My hip. My wrist.” He looked down at his wrist, which had a tangle of damp bracelets around it. “I don’t want to cut these.”
I nodded, as though making a solemn agreement, as I took the bracelets off and set them aside. “I have tools. If I have to cut them, I can remake them for you.”