Chapter Two
Jason-Present
Something in the Orange-Zach Bryan
She’s barely dressed for a calm winter day let alone the fucking storm blowing down on us, right now.
Jeans, a thermal shirt and a Sherpa coat over the top.
Thankfully, she is wearing some heavy snow boots so at least her feet are warm.
But based on how cold she was when I pulled her out of the car, she must have been out here for a little while before I found her.
Which brings me back to the main question: why the hell is she out here in this storm?
Everyone knows this time of year the snow gets too heavy for traveling up the mountain.
And everyone especially knows to be careful on the bridge crossing the river on the way up.
Too many cars have slipped off the road and plummeted to their death if they don’t know how to drive in this kind of weather.
Mara has lived here most of her life, she should know all of this.
I curl her up beside me so her head rests on my shoulder as I drive back to the cabin.
Knowing today would be the first major snowfall that would lock us onto our land for the next few months, I wouldn’t have been able to get home if I’d lingered much longer at the hunting spot.
There’s no way Mara’s car would have made it up the mountain, either. Where the hell was she going?
And more importantly, what the hell am I going to do with her?
If I take her back to town now I’ll be stuck down there leaving Dylan stranded and alone.
So I’m taking her back to the cabin but there’s no way I’ll be able to get back down the mountain for a few months, not until the snow melts a bit.
If previous years are any indication, we’ll be stuck at the cabin until March.
It takes about twenty minutes, but I finally make it back to the cabin as the snowfall picks up, even the wind is howling now. I cradle Mara into my arms and head inside, stomping up the steps to alert Dylan that I’m home before barging in with an unconscious, bloodied woman in my arms.
The warmth of the kitchen is a stark relief to the bitter cold outside.
Bitter, that’s what the name Mara means in Hebrew.
I like knowing things. I like the hidden meaning behind names.
I don’t remember when I looked it up, but I found the meaning of her name once.
Kind of fitting, really. The rest of the world saw bubbly, outgoing preppy Mara.
I saw the bitter, cold, hateful side of her.
Dylan stands at the stove getting something ready for dinner, smells like the savory spice of chili if I had to guess.
When he hears the door open, he starts talking without looking around.
“Bout time you got back, the storm is getting crazy. I thought you’d freeze your ass off out—.
” His sentence trails off when he looks over his shoulder to find me standing in the kitchen, covered in crusted snow, holding an unconscious body in my arms.
“What the actual fuck,” he says in disbelief, taking the chili off the stove and setting it on a hot pad, ignoring the meal to focus his attention on the problem at hand. “Who the hell…? Is that Mara Meyers? What the hell is going on?”
Without answering, I stride into the living room and use my hip to push the sofa closer to the roaring fire in the stone fireplace that takes up a third of the wall.
I lay Mara out on it to warm her up before locating the first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom.
She may hate me for it when she wakes up—if she wakes up—but I decide to undress her down to her undergarments to check for other injuries.
It looks like her face and arms took the brunt of the force as if she was shielding herself on impact.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t sustain other injuries.
Without asking him to, Dylan brings me a damp rag so I can start wiping away the blood on her skin. With the dried brown-red blood gone, I can see where she has actual injuries versus blood that seeped down her skin.
“What the fuck happened, Jason?“ my brother asks me. His voice is harsh but worried, not accusatory. I pause to quickly sign car crash with my hands before resuming my work. I don’t sign often, I don’t communicate at all, really, but I’m sure he’s going crazy not knowing.
I did some intense first aid research when we decided to live at the cabin full time after graduating.
No cell service, no internet, and no way up or down the mountain this time of year.
So I knew one of us had to figure this shit out in case of an emergency like this.
The only thing is, I didn’t expect to use those skills on someone else.
My mind jumps directly into fixer mode, combing through everything I’ve learned at break-neck speed as I work.
I don’t like taking classes or having someone stand in front of me with a PowerPoint.
So I learned through reading, YouTube, and online articles.
I could probably perform surgery if I had the right resources to teach me.
It appears that most of the injuries are on Mara’s face and arms, as I suspected, a few cuts and bruises but nothing that will need stitches.
There’s a dark bruise on her pelvis where the seatbelt kept her from flying through the windshield.
That’s going to hurt in the morning and take the longest to heal.
But as I feel her hip bones, it doesn’t feel like anything is broken, same with her arms. I wrap her right arm in gauze which has the most bleeding, and put a bandage over the cut on her cheek.
I hope it doesn’t scar. Or maybe I do, she was always so vane in high school, maybe this will be a good lesson in humility.
But it’s then that I notice her hair isn’t the bright blonde it was in high school, her nails are natural, no paint or any of that fake stuff.
She’s a little curvier, too, she was always stick-straight in high school.
I think I prefer her like this, a little meat on her bones suits her feisty personality better than the scrawny girl I once knew.
I don’t even think she’s wearing makeup. I don’t think I saw her step out in public without makeup the entire time I knew her in school. But, then again, I haven’t seen her in two years. A lot can change in that time.
I’m a perfect example.
After the treatment she and her friends gave me in high school, I decided I needed to be able to defend myself if I was going to continue my bout of silence.
I have no intention of talking any time soon.
So I started lifting weights, training my body, and even taught myself kickboxing.
Occasionally, Dylan will spar with me so I can get some practice with something besides a punching bag.
One thing is for sure, no one is going to push me around and humiliate me ever again. The days of being the weak mute kid are gone.
“She’s freezing, man,” Dylan points out.
The problem is, her clothes are still freezing too.
I lay them out on the ground by the fire to warm them up before wrapping Mara in a blanket that was hanging off the back of the couch.
I tuck her in like a burrito before stripping off my wet outer layers and nestle in behind her on the couch, encompassing her in my warmth.
She needs to retain body heat. Honestly, putting her in a hot shower would probably be quicker, but that risks waking her up with the jolt of water.
As funny as it might be to watch her flail about in any other scenario, I don’t think she can take much more tonight.
I still don’t know how she ended up on the mountain to begin with.
I face Mara so our chests meet and bury her face in my neck, the more contact I give her, the quicker I can bring her body temperature up. It’s a strangely intimate position, but, whatever works, I guess.
She’s so small in my hold, I’ve been with petite women before but they’re usually conscious, I never let anyone sleepover and I don’t sleep over either.
Asleep and broken, Mara feels like a fragile doll.
Too bad that fragile doll has the heart of a demon and the mouth of a witch.
Ya know, I kind of like her like this, unable to speak.
It’s only now that she’s unconscious and unaware I’m holding her that I realize she’s not as big and bad as she makes herself out to be.
I wonder when she got back to town. Dylan does most of the shopping cause I try to stay as far away from civilization as possible. She could’ve been back for months for all I know. And I wouldn’t put it past Dylan not to tell me since he knows I hate her guts.
Yet here I am, trying to save her from hypothermia. If there is a God, he has a sick sense of humor to land her at my doorstep.
“Are you staying down here tonight?” Dylan leans over the back of the sofa to ask me. I nod. “Okay. Come get me if you need anything. And let me know when she wakes up. I’m sure she’ll have some questions. Mainly why she’s not wearing any clothes.”
I get a sick sense of delight thinking about the fit she’s going to throw when she wakes up in her underwear. Appearance first, safety later. That seems like her style.
“Night, brother.” With that, Dylan heads up the stairs to his bedroom and turns off the lights in the process.
Under the glow of the roaring fire, I tighten my hold on Mara and close my eyes. This isn’t Mara Meyers I’m holding, it’s a girl in need. It’s not my high school tormentor, it’s a woman I found on the road in the snow. And she needs me.
“I have a fucking faggot and a mute for sons, Lois,” my father screams at Mom in the kitchen while Dylan and I sit on the porch listing to the bullshit our father is spewing.
“What the hell do you want me to say? That I’m happy with our life?
That I’m okay with this shit? Neither one of them are right.
Maybe I should send them to the cabin this winter to become men. No help from anyone except themselves.”
The look Dylan and I exchange says it all. That actually doesn’t sound too bad. At least we’d be away from him.
Mom uses her passive, tender voice that she always uses to pacify our father. “They have school, Phil. They need their education.”
“Fine.” I hear his thunderous steps get louder as they head our way. “Then maybe I’ll toughen them up myself.”
“Phil,” Mom shouts. I hear her little footsteps follow our father toward us and jump to my feet to stand between the son of a bitch and my brother.
He’s plenty tough from wrestling, but they kicked him off the team this year when they found out he is gay.
Not that he was interested in anyone on the team.
But they don’t give a shit. He doesn’t think the same as them so he’s a threat, a danger.
Our father tried to get me to wrestle too, or play football, or baseball.
Hell, he even tried to get me to play golf with him, but I don’t want to do anything that requires me to be around people.
I started using the weights and bench press he keeps in the garage, but even that isn’t enough for him.
The door flies open so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t come off the hinges.
As soon as our father locks eyes on me, smoke comes out of his nostrils.
He drops the cigarette he was smoking inside and smashes it under his boot.
He’s preparing for a face-off. He’s been waiting for a reason to hit me again and I just gave him one.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Our father grits out in a strained voice. All the years of smoking make him sound like rocks in a blender now.
When I don’t answer—like he knew I wouldn’t—he takes a step closer. “You trying to stand up to me, huh? Trying to be the man, now? Protect your fucked up brother?”
He’s not fucked up. Everything about him is completely normal except his taste in partners. Which, to be honest, isn’t that weird in this day and age. But our town is a decade behind the rest of the world and they don’t appreciate him leapfrogging into modern relationships.
“So what are you doing, boy? Answer me when I ask you a fucking question.” His voice raises a notch in volume with each word until he’s yelling at me. But that’s never scared me before and it sure as hell doesn’t scare me now.
“You fucking retard.” My father swings his fist at my head and I stumble, but I remember a few things from my brief time in sports and tackle him with my shoulder to his abdomen, arms around the waist, trying to take him down.
Even though I’ve gotten a bit bigger since picking up weightlifting, he’s still bigger than me.
Offensive lineman in high school. Probably could have gone to college on scholarship for it if he hadn’t knocked up our mom.
He’s caught off guard by my attack which causes him to stumble, but it doesn’t take long for the bastard to shove me to the ground and stomp on my chest.
Mom starts hollering, crying for our dad to stop.
But when he’s like this, there’s no stopping the rampage.
The sad thing is he’s not even drunk. I’ve heard about dads who get violent when they drink.
But at least there’s an excuse there, a way to stop it.
Our dad was just born mean, bitter, violent.
He shoves me down the front steps with his steel-toed boot and I turn into the fetal position and hold my bruised rib cage hoping that seeing me wounded like a dog on the ground is enough to satisfy his taste for blood and misery.
“You thought you could hide behind your brother?” Our father turns on Dylan, clearly not satiated yet.
“No, I—.” Dylan loses the power of speech when our father charges for him next.
Panic sets in. I see the pure terror in Dylan’s eyes, hear Mom plead for our father to stop, crying in between sucking in lungfuls of air she can’t hold onto. And my chest caves with the weight of it all. I can’t see them hurting. He can hurt me all he wants, but not them.
So I do the only thing I can think of.