3. Blue
blue
Iwoke up, blinking against the snow falling in my eyes. My head ached, the pounding battling with an ache deep inside my gut because something had happened. I wasn’t sure what. Only that I needed to keep moving.
Somehow I managed to get to my feet, all of me cold as I stumbled and almost fell back down. My left ankle protested sharply beneath me as I crawled out of a low ditch next to a set of railroad tracks.
My hands were clenched like frozen bands around a green duffel. The duffel was important. I didn’t know why.
I didn’t know anything. Only that it was snowing, slanted, slatted snow. That a train was rumbling away in the distance, a cloud of snow and ice unravelling in its wake. Everything hurt. I still needed to get moving.
The frozen, ice-sharded wind was coming from one direction, so I walked in the other. Which way was I going? I didn’t know, but started walking along a road that was quickly becoming layered with snowfall.
In the near distance, spiky, bare-limbed trees clawed at the sky as though they were alive. Beyond that, I could not see very far. I blinked hard and shook my head, wincing as my head screamed at me to stop. I stopped. My vision grayed out at the edges.
Where was I? Somewhere. Slightly hilly. Windy. Snowy. Someplace cold. But where?
My brain began to fritz out as I focused on this.
Part of me was screaming. The other part of me was very still as it realized I not only didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know who I was.
This seemed very important but unanswerable, and the harder I concentrated on figuring it out, the less I could think.
A truck was coming in my direction, wipers going like crazy to keep the windshield clear.
Snow hit the truck from the side, as though to keep it from continuing in a straight line toward me.
Snow was my friend at that moment because if the truck kept coming and I kept walking, we were going to run into each other.
The truck kept coming. My ankle gave way. I was on the ground again, clutching the green duffel and looking up at the sky, blinking against the falling snow. Flakes of ice littered down from a gray sky that reminded me of those large paper snowflakes I used to make in Sunday school.
When was that? Where was it? Again my mind tossed images at me that were blank, like sheets of paper meant to torment me because they were useless, held no information. I closed my eyes.
Someone came over to me. A man. He touched my face, the only warm spot in the whole wide world. He helped me to my feet, took me in his truck, a warm, solid arm around my waist, and drove me to a small cabin. We left puddles in the doorway as we entered.
He engaged me in conversation in which I tried to participate as he deconstructed our short journey. Coats on hooks. A seat found for me. My left sneaker off. My ankle in cool water. Door firmly closed against the weather. Bags on the table.
I answered his questions as best I could, pretending I had the ability to do this, rather like I might if a cop stopped me and I was drunk. If I focused, I could fake my way through the start-and-stop conversation. Only to find a second later that I could not recall what I’d just said.
Everything in my mind swirled around, sharp points darting as the words I said looked for somewhere to alight. Something about a train, and people I should call. People I’d left behind. Only none of it made sense.
It was easier to focus on the coolness of the water around my ankle that soothed the ache there. The warmth of the fire in the river rock fireplace. The warmth of the mug in my hand. The taste of brandy in tea. The gentleness with which he took care of me.
It was also easier to look at the man who said his name was Wolfe. He looked like one. Messy dark hair. Beardgrowth. Rumpled flannel shirt. Steady movements. Broad shoulders. Sturdy thighs. Sharp blue eyes that lacked judgement but that looked and saw and seemed to know. But know what?
I told him my name was Blue. He didn’t believe me, but still called me by it.
“We need to get you cleaned up,” he said.
He said it more than once, as though it were a crucial point and I’d actually been arguing with him about it.
The truth was, on top of not remembering anything, I could not recall when the last time I had been clean.
If this seemed crucial to him, it was crucial to me as well.
I felt this, though I didn’t know why or how.
“I have to pee,” I said.
I closed my eyes and caught flickers of a scene, perhaps a memory.
Me, standing in the doorway of a room high off the ground.
The room swayed. The ground beneath flew past, dry and dusty red, a scarred red horizon in the distance.
Cactus. Scrub. Me with my penis out, pissing into the warm wind.
Two other young men doing the same, and we were all laughing.
Laughing so hard our guts hurt with it. Our faces ached from grinning.
If that was a life I had lived, if that was my memory, I couldn’t connect with it. Where had I been and who had I been with?
“It’s right there,” he said. He pointed at an open doorway, just beyond the table in the kitchen.
Without the ankle hampering me, I could have made it there in five or so strides. But I could barely stand up, sloshing water from the tub as I attempted to navigate my way out of it.
Without a word, he was at my side, that solid arm slipping around my waist, supporting me on my left side.
I hobbled as best I could. Mostly, he carried me all the way into the small bathroom.
Inside, there was a sink, a toilet, and a heavy tub.
Everything was clean and white, though it all looked old.
As I considered the wall behind the toilet, and the mechanics of leaning against that with my sore wrist, attempting to balance on one foot, and not very well, I paused.
He stepped up behind me, again without a word, and hugged me close to him, steadying me.
“Just take care of business,” he said.
I managed to unbutton and unzip my jeans.
The zipper caught on the cloth of my briefs, and I tugged it hard.
Felt the zipper break. Ignored that and pulled myself out.
Peed. Shuddered as my bladder emptied. Listened to the sounds of water on water.
Felt Wolfe breathe, his chest rising, pressing into my back.
And realized I was breathing to match him.
When I was finished, I flushed, tucked myself away in briefs that seemed ragged and thin. There was no doing up my zipper. I wiped my palm on my thigh.
“Okay?” he asked. As though there was nothing unusual in the intimacy we’d just shared.
A memory. A dark-haired young man, patting his thigh as a place for me to rest my head. Asking, Okay? A simple nap while I was watched over. My bones feeling every inch of the wooden floor in a room that swayed and creaked beneath me. That smelled of oil and dust.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.” I clutched at the waist of my jeans as Wolfe guided me, turning me around.
With his hands on my shoulders, he said, “You might as well strip out of those clothes. They’re falling apart on you. Get in the tub. I’ll run the water and you can get yourself clean. I’ll wash your hair and loan you some clothes.”
I paused.
“Undress,” he said. “Get in.”
He helped me take my clothes off, a soft tug of worn t-shirt drawn over my head.
A no-nonsense, almost casual tug of my briefs and jeans.
A final tug to remove my black-bottomed sock.
A hand to steady me as, naked, I stepped into the tub and sat down.
The tub was blocky and cast iron, cool beneath my ass and feet as I curled my good wrist around my knees.
Wolfe ran the water, adjusting it to warm before turning the faucet on full.
And, as though I’d been hypnotized, I watched the water run and shivered as it surrounded me.
My hair tickled my bare shoulders. A sour smell rose from my skin.
From beneath my arms. From my crotch. I was filthy.
Why hadn’t I done something about it before this?
Wolfe left the bathroom. I could hear him rummaging around, and soon he came back with something that looked like blue and white striped thermal underwear over his forearm.
He tucked the garments into the towel rack and gathered a washcloth and soap and a bottle of shampoo.
I looked at the label and somehow knew this was an inexpensive brand.
The cabin was small. His clothes were worn.
Which meant he was not rich. I somehow knew that, too.
But what did it matter how rich he was? Not when I was being so kindly looked after.
“You have scrapes on the left side of your face and your left hip. Sprained left wrist and ankle. I’d say you fell off that train on your left side.”
“Okay.” There was no arguing with that kind of logic. Besides, I couldn’t remember any of what he was describing. How did someone fall from a train, anyway?
“I’m going to wash your hair,” he said. “I want to see how deep that cut is.”
I was a passenger to his ministrations. He used the plastic pitcher from the corner of the tub to wet my hair. He pumped shampoo onto his palms and washed my hair with circular motions, so gently I sighed. Then winced as his fingers went over a cut just behind my left ear.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t think it’s too deep, but at least it’s clean now.”
He washed my hair one more time and rinsed it.
Oddly, he clasped my face and looked into my eyes.
In the damp, warm air of the bathroom, that touch felt even more intimate than him holding me while I peed.
“Your pupils are even, so I don’t think you have a concussion.
But if you start feeling woozy or see spots, I might be able to take you to the clinic in Hysham before we get totally locked in. ”
Then handed me a washcloth and a bar of white soap.
“Do your best,” he said.
“I will,” I said, somehow bereft as he stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him halfway.
I hoped I didn’t have a concussion because I didn’t want Wolfe to have to race through the storm to take me anywhere.
I did not want to be a burden. More, I did not want to leave the cabin just then.
The water was warm and the soap soft as I washed myself one-handed.
I could smell him cooking something: grease and salt. Could smell tea, too.
In a short while, the water in the tub had turned into tea the color of pale sand. I pulled the chain on the stopper and watched the water swirl down the drain, then realized without the buoyancy of the water, I could barely stand up.
In the other room was a man who could help me. In the leftover fug, struggling to stand up, I cried out and Wolfe was there. At the door. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around me, and then helped me out of the tub.
As I stood there, balancing on one leg on the cold linoleum floor, I shivered, expecting something bad to happen as he took another towel and draped it across my shoulders. Something bad as he rubbed the towel against my skin.
My body expected pain, certainly. In the back of my mind was something about baths.
Ice cold baths. No towels. A shockingly harsh shouting as I stood there, naked in the cellar of—of where?
A house? Some other building? Certainly no place I could recall being, but the memory was there, scraping across me like knives.
“You okay?” Wolfe asked me, those blue eyes close. Concerned. “Can you get dressed?”
He pointed to the thermal underwear and worn white briefs that someone—Wolfe—had worn before me. He was being kind. His intentions were kind. But still I drew back, just about hissing because somewhere in the dark vault of buried memory, there had been other hands. Other intentions, not so kind.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hands away. “Did I hurt you?”
Drawing in a breath, I shook my head. “Everything hurts,” I said. Aches announced themselves all over my body. It was as if my admitting them brought them to life. And it wasn’t his fault that old memories flung themselves at me.
“I’ve got an old pair of jeans,” he said. “You’re so slender, I’ll have to stitch up the waist. I can lend you everything but boots. But I could get you some.”
Draped in half-damp towels, I looked at him.
This was his place. My every need had to be answered by him.
His every whim, I could be subjected to.
But. There was nothing but steady kindness in those eyes of his.
Deep set. Dark blue. The flesh of his temple dappled with sweat.
Hair messy, as though he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly. Concern furrowing his brow.
His every intention was to help me. There was nothing else in his expression but that. I had to trust that instinct. It was either that or start looking for an escape route. Which was impossible. The roar of the storm outside made it quite clear. It was here or nowhere.
“You hungry?” he asked. “Can you eat? It’s just stew and biscuits.”
My stomach gurgled. I nodded. I had to believe that the stew wouldn’t be lukewarm slop. That the biscuits wouldn’t be rock hard. But why was I thinking they might be?
“Yes, thank you,” I said, pulling on a thread of a memory, where at the end were good manners. At least this time around, I thought I could remember what I’d said in response to his steady, measured comments and questions.
“Good,” he said. “Get dressed and come out. And after, you can rest. You’ll have to sleep on the couch. I’ve got two bedrooms, but one is an office. A cluttered office.” He smiled, as though to himself, wry. Quiet.
“Thank you,” I said again.
He stepped out and shut the door, leaving it open a crack. I could see flickers of him, a narrow, inch-wide band of color and warmth and movement. Beyond the door—beyond this door—was something that could fill my empty brain to keep me from floundering.
I let the towels drop to the floor. The staff could pick them up. What staff? I had no idea. The only thing I could do was get dressed, then open that door.