6. Wolfe
wolfe
Ilay awake in my bed, listening to the howl of the wind, feeling the morning grow, sensing the cold with my soul, wondering if darts I’d stitched into an old pair of jeans of mine would make a good fit on Blue’s slender waist.
Then I thought about Diamond Willow Road and how long it would take me to plow clear once I attached the snowplow to the front of the truck.
First, I’d have to dig out the truck, then I’d have to pull the plow from beneath the tarp, then attach it. Why I’d not done that the second I’d gotten home on Thursday could of course be explained by my unexpected guest.
As for Bauer Road, my main link to town, that would be up to Plowy McPlowface, the town of Hysham’s veteran snowplow, so worrying about it wouldn’t help me. I’d do my bit, they’d do theirs, and that would be that.
Then, when the roads and the weather were clear, I could take Blue to Billings and get him some boots.
The blue canvas sneakers he’d been wearing and had asked about were in shreds, the sole of each shoe coming clean away from the tops.
Rotted by cold and wear. I put them in the trash.
There was no way he could get where he was going, when he left, without good footwear.
Maybe I could get Blue some clothes as well while we were in Billings, though I wasn’t flush with cash.
I never was during the winter because summer was my busy season.
At least last summer, my first summer, had been.
I was going to make it through the winter because of Leland Tate’s saddle project, Mabel’s leather collar for Mister Rocket, and the lanyards for the Christmas bazaar.
It was Sunday, a day I typically used to lie in and linger over cups of tea. Do laundry. Light work. First, I needed to check the weather to see how soon I could start to clear my road—
A whoosh of cold air woke me up just as the loud cry did, jolting me right out of bed.
It was Blue, but what had happened? Slipping on my robe, I raced into the living room to see that the front door was wide open.
Snow blew inside the cabin, and a body-shaped outline had been punched through the wall of snow in the doorway.
I watched Blue try to get up, snow flowing over him in waves.
Saw him holding onto that ratty green duffel like it was treasure fit for a king.
He hadn’t been out there long, but he would get very cold very fast, especially since he didn’t have shoes on and barely an ounce of fat anywhere on his body.
Stepping over the main drift, I reached for him, grabbing him up and yanking him inside, bringing a great deal of snow with me, which began to melt in the warmth of the cabin. I shut the door against the storm.
“What are you doing?” I asked, kicking at the snow, burning cold against the warmth of my skin. “Why were you out there in this? In your bare feet?”
His answer was a flurry of words, something about getting the duffel to Nimble. How Nimble would die without the duffel. Nimble was all on his own. Nimble would hate Blue forever if he didn’t get his duffel back.
He was shaking, though he didn’t seem to realize it, his eyes wide, like he was trying to focus but couldn’t. The thermal underwear I’d loaned him was now soaked through. He might not catch pneumonia, but he had to be miserable.
He clutched at me as I shut the door, his jaw tight, gaze intense, holding the duffle high where I could see it, as though he felt I didn’t get how important it was. How much Nimble, whoever that was, needed it.
His body shivered against mine, lean beneath the damp, borrowed thermals. His limbs, his feet, were like ice.
I needed to get him dried off and warm because catching a cold on top of everything else was the last thing he needed. But when I tried to pull his arms from around my neck, he held on all the tighter, like a feral cat terrified of all touches but mine.
Though fearful of attachment to anything, I let him stay where he was. Close to me, slender and damp, clinging to me. Me allowing it, my arms around his waist.
We stayed that way until my heart slowed, and his words stilled, and between us there were only shared breaths. Which made it, perhaps, the first time I’d been close to anyone in a long while.
Handshakes in town didn’t count. Tender-limbed neck hugs from Mabel did not count. And most certainly any contact in prison didn’t. Nothing I’d done there, even if it had been to survive, came even close to this sensation of connection.
My heart aching with tenderness, I bent my head to whisper into his ear as I ran a hand along the dampness of his arm. “Blue? Can you let go? I promise I’m not going anywhere.”
I stood there, rocking back and forth, listening to his breath slow, the hammer of his heart slow, and the sigh within his chest sifting warm air from his mouth across my neck.
It took a good five minutes of him clinging to me before I could pull his arms loose.
I didn’t let go but instead held both his hands in mine as I willed him to focus those blue eyes, to look at me.
When he did, it was with utter trust. Wide eyed.
Blue-eyed, looking up at me as protectiveness surged through me.
“Let’s get you out of those wet things.” I pulled him into the kitchen and reached into the bathroom to grab a towel. His hands stayed clamped on my wrists.
As I buffed his hair, my fingers came up against knots in his hair at the base of his skull. Blue hadn’t had access to a comb in years, or, as seemed more likely, I’d failed to get all the blood out, failed to undo the tangles before letting him spend two days sleeping on the couch.
It’d been so long, maybe forever, since I’d been responsible for the care of another.
Yes, one time after Sunday School, my cousin Blake and I had taken a long walk by the river, and he had cut his calf wide open.
I’d used my t-shirt as a makeshift bandage and half carried him back to my aunt’s house.
Then, in prison, my cellmate had gotten his head busted wide open in a fight in the yard, only he didn’t want the guards to know and cancel his upcoming visit from his wife.
I’d spent ramen packets on bandages and super glue, patched him up, rinsed away the blood from his face and the floor and the toilet, and he’d been my friend for life.
Or at least the rest of my sentence. He was still on the inside, still fighting. Still getting his head busted open.
None of that, where I could hand over the responsibility to someone else, resembled this moment.
This time, it was all on me, though I knew the time had come to make a call to the doctor at the clinic in Billings, who’d once sewed up my hand after I’d cut it open on a stray wire in my truck.
I’d only met him once, but he seemed like a guy who could keep his mouth shut. But not quite yet.
As I peeled off Blue’s wet top, I thought about the jeans I’d narrowed the waist on, but realized he needed something soft to wear right now, not hard-edged denim.
While I buffed his arms and his torso, he leaned into me, like I was his last refuge.
I had him step out of the thermal bottoms and buffed his legs, his hips, his waist. He stood there, teeth chattering, shivering, but shivering was good.
I’d build a fire and tuck him into the easy chair, then call the doc.
Blue didn’t seem to mind being in the altogether in front of me.
After a quick glance all up and down him, at the fading bruises, the remains of scrapes and bumps, at his narrow hips, the bones jutting beneath his skin, the dark gold hair between his legs, I looked away as I led him into my bedroom and dug through my tall bureau.
The jeans were on the top, where I’d left them, but I gathered up clothes of mine: boxers, sweatpants, a thick flannel shirt. Thick wool socks. And helped him dress, his hand on my shoulder as he stepped into the boxers and sweatpants, his chin lifted as I buttoned the flannel shirt.
He made a kind of laugh as he sat down, and I put the socks on his feet.
“Better?” I asked, looking up at him.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, the polite air once again firmly in place.
“Look, you’ve got blood matted in your hair,” I said, my hands on his feet. “I need to check that cut to see if it’s still bleeding, and I think I should cut those mats out.”
“No!” His breath caught in his throat, his hands going to his head as though I’d threatened him with the most dire of treatment. “Nobody cuts my hair.”
“I won’t make it shorter,” I said. I stood up slowly, then sat next to him on the bed, oddly intimate, as the bed was a rumpled, exposed mess of sheet and blanket. In prison, you never left your bed open. “Just cut away the tangles. Can you feel them?”
I lifted his hand to the nape of his neck, on the left side. “See? It’s just knots. I’ll cut away the knots. Just that. Will you let me?”
He shuddered as though he’d been crying and was trying desperately to stop.
And looked me up and down. Not as though he was afraid of me, but as though he was trying to push back his fear of what I’d suggested.
I’d seen this in prison: secret hurts and old wounds pushing to the surface because of something a guard had said, even something as innocuous as Get in line.
Before he could change his mind, I sat him in the kitchen chair, grabbed scissors from the drawer, the comb from the bathroom, and draped him in a towel to keep the hair from his neck.
He settled into the chair as though resigned to his fate as I began to comb.
His hair, up close, felt personal, thick, and fine, and flyaway.
I tipped his head to one side and drew the scissors close to his skin, cutting at the crazy-eight shaped knots.
I squinted at the cut, which was healing, but slowly.
Then I combed at the tangles that remained, and drew in a breath because now his hair was lopsided at the edge.