Chapter 4 Fresh Wounds
Dawn was still a pale glow in the east when Green shivered himself awake.
He had never been so happy to see sunlight.
He pushed the ignition button and curled his whole body around the dash vents, willing the heater to sprint up to temperature.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
The words felt clumsy.
He brought fingers to his mouth, worried what he might find.
His lips felt intact. There was a bloody napkin stuck to his face. He peeled it away with a Velcro tearing sound.
The birds were so loud. Too loud. Movie-pterodactyl loud. Had birds always been so loud at dawn?
He stayed huddled close to the dash for five full minutes. His bladder screamed at him. There was a dull fire burning in his face. His hands and feet ached with cold.
He blew his nose and gagged at the brown and red globs on the napkin.
He coughed and spit and worked to clear his airways, praying he didn’t start the bleeding again.
A hundred things screamed for his attention, but he just wanted to be warm. Warmth meant some control over his environment.
He shivered and rocked and cupped hands over his frozen ears, feeling the air from his broken windshield duking it out with the heater for control of the space.
Dancer’s voice startled a gasp from him.
“Yikes. On. Bikes,” she said.
Green looked up to see the woman, perfectly framed by the hole in his windshield. She was carrying a huge red plaid thermos and staring with unmasked shock.
“Green! You alive in there?”
He couldn’t bring himself to chat through the shattered glass. He nodded. His nose throbbed with the motion. He took a deep breath and steeled himself as he pushed open the door.
“Green? Talk to me, bud.”
His body felt terrible, like a hangover on a cellular level. The bridge of his nose pulsed with electric shocks in time with his heartbeat. A little avalanche of glass rolled off his clothes and tinkled on the gravel as he stood. He needed to pee so badly that standing was a kick in the gut.
He winced.
“Morning, Dancer.”
Any chance you’re more of a morning-type serial killer?
He tried to sound composed, but the words felt insane.
“Good morning, Dancer? Are you funnin’ me? What’s good about your morning? You look like crime scene photos come to life. You’re shivering like a Chihuahua. Your face is honestly disturbing and it looks like you sailed your car into an eighteenth-century naval battle.”
“Yeah,” Green said.
“Yeah? What did this? Don’t tell me a black bear did…this.”
Green shook his head.
A wave of nausea hit him and he slumped against the car until it passed.
She leaned forward and made an exasperated go on gesture.
“I…I’ll tell you…just. I forgot to ask last night…bathrooms?”
Dancer pointed at Green. Then lifted her hands in supplication. Then swatted the air. She turned in a circle. Her face ran through a dozen expressions.
He winced. It was a stupid question.
“Wha? How? You don’t actually…Green. You can’t be this…Stitches. You’re gonna need stitches and…I gotta get somebody to call a squad, don’t I? Hell.”
She pressed a fist against her temple like she was trying to physically still her thoughts. She shut her eyes tight before speaking again.
“It’s the woods. Go relieve yourself over by that big hickory and report back here. Don’t do anything else.”
She looked him over again.
“Good God, you make it hard to know where to begin. Triage. We need triage.”
Green did as he was told and if it had been hard for him to pee near strangers in the past, it wasn’t that morning.
When he returned, Dancer had opened her thermos and had two steaming cups set out on the hood of the Prius.
“Come here. Let me see you.”
She took his head in her hands and turned it left and right.
“Probably a broken nose. Nasty cut on your chin. Superficial, I guess. You got a concussion, Green? Headache? Vision okay?”
Green pulled his head away.
“Ow. No, I don’t think it’s a concussion.”
He had no idea what a concussion felt like.
“Okay, then. Was it a bear? Is there an axe murderer on the loose? Tell me if I need to be checking over my shoulder at least.”
“No. Nothing like that. Not exactly.”
Green looked hard at Dancer. He didn’t know this woman. The acorn in his pocket called for a hand and got it.
“I don’t know what it was. I don’t think I want to know. And…if I try to describe it, I don’t know if you’ll believe me anyway.”
Dancer shook her head.
“Not another one of you.”
“What?”
Dancer waved off the question.
“Forget it. Just…let’s get you rearranged a bit before we do anything else.”
She nodded to the hot drinks on the hood.
“Here, fella. You look like your mortal coil is fixin’ to shuffle off this moment, so let’s bribe it to stick around.”
He met her eyes.
She was one of the weirder people he had ever encountered, but he had a bone-deep instinct that he could trust her.
Whatever else she might be, whatever threats his imagination could summon, he sensed no guile in her.
As odd as she was, Dancer brought a staggering normalcy with her.
He was dizzied by the relief of that normalcy and it made his eyes fill with tears.
Dancer noticed.
“Yeah,” she said in a softer voice. “Let ’em go. We have those waterworks for a reason.”
Green looked away.
She clapped a big hand on his shoulder and squeezed once. Then, to his surprise, she pulled him into a tight hug. There was no resisting.
She released him and slapped him on the back.
“There we go. Morning is here. Your favorite camp owner is here too.”
There was a brown smear on the shoulder of Dancer’s Carhartt coat from his wounded face.
“I got blood on your coat.”
“It’ll wipe off. Or add character. Whichever. Now, drink your tea. You’re safe. You’re on your feet and, heck, have you even been to your site yet?”
Green picked up the metal mug. It was almost too hot to hold, which made it just perfect.
Dancer motioned for him to follow and moved down the narrow path from his parking spot.
It wasn’t a tunnel through endless brush. It was an archway leading to an open hall with living tree pillars.
The rear of Green’s campsite sloped down and away into a river valley.
The view was like something out of a fantasy, a painting of idyllic mountain solitude.
Not the stone and snow of the Rockies. These were the Appalachian Mountains.
The Catskills. Far older than the Rockies. Blunt and thick with trees.
Whereas images of the Rockies made Green think of the barren austerity of lunar landscapes, these were living mountains, a place where the rolling lands were less an obstacle to life and more a showplace for it.
Raked seats in an auditorium. A colossal curio cabinet lovingly displaying treasures of flora and fauna.
He realized what he couldn’t have known the night before. His campsite was stunning. Dancer had given him a gift wrapped in night.
It was the worst morning of his life and, somehow, it made him feel present and alive within himself in an entirely new way. He felt drunk on contradiction. He was living a nightmare and a dream come true.
Green clutched his steaming mug and looked into the distance. Dancer let him. She sipped her own tea and didn’t say a word.
“What kind of tea is this?”
“It’s sassafras. Good for a spiteful tummy. Probably won’t fix a broken face.”
He smiled. It hurt.
“There he is. There’s my new acquaintance starting to feel like himself again, based on the fifteen minutes I’ve known you and wild speculation about your character.”
“Last night—” Green began, but Dancer interrupted.
“Hang on, bud. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs prompts me to ask where’s your GD coat?”
Green looked down at his coat. It was from Macy’s. Windproof. Rain resistant. Stylized pine tree logo. He hooked a thumb at the garment.
“Yeah, no. That’s a jacket at best. I mean a coat.
A real coat. Coat. Noun. An ugly, knobby thing, like a couch you can wear.
A windowless dungeon for body heat. The ancient technology that allowed any of us hairless apes to follow our foolish whims and wander away from the caring bosom of our sweet mother Africa. A REAL COAT.”
“This is what I have.”
Dancer frowned and walked back to the car. He followed. She looked in the windows, then she started opening doors and pawing through Green’s gear.
She commented on each item as she took inventory.
“No. Wrong. Weird. Wrong again. Weird some more. Good for a different season. Good for a different part of the world. Cute, but wrong. Weird again. Don’t know what this is. Survivalist BS. Expensive and wrong.”
She emerged long enough to throw Green the hat she had given him the night before. He had abandoned it on the passenger seat.
“Cover your head.”
Green caught the hat. He’d forgotten about it. He put it on and felt instantly warmer and idiotic. Why hadn’t he thought to sleep in it?
Dancer grumbled and returned to her investigation. She shouted from the back seat.
“Fella, there’s a new sleeping bag back here. Why is it unopened?”
She reemerged and gave Green a level look. She pulled off her own matching hat and ran a hand through short salt-and-pepper hair.
“I figured you were from a city. Was I wrong to assume it was a city on this planet?”
He raised his palms in surrender.
“Green, I don’t want you to leave. I just met you, but you’re making me feel like it would be a literal crime to let you stay here.
One of the real crimes too. Like manslaughter.
Look at you. It’s gotta be illegal just talking to somebody who looks like you.
I’m an accessory to something right now. ”
“I can get the right equipment. I have money. I just need…advice.”
He was floundering.
“Remind me. Did you declare that you were here for camping lessons? Camping 101? No, scratch that, not just camping. Camping in the path of oncoming winter in the Appalachian Mountains. More of a 201 or 301 sorta course, wouldn’t you say?”
Green shook his head.
Dancer frowned.