Cowboy Ending - Overdrive: Book One (27 page)

As the shake
settled in my stomach it was like a soothing tonic over an open
sore. The grumbling faded away and sent a cooling breeze along my
bloodstream. At least, that’s what it felt like. I ain’t a
doctor.

Getting
ready to hit the weights made me a bit more anxious. Running was
one thing, I already knew that I could do that. But actual planned
lifting was going to be a new one. I found myself rubbing
subconsciously at the scars through my sweat soaked
Thundercats
shirt and taking deep,
calming breaths. Every day the scars felt less ridged and
pronounced. They’d stopped hurting when I moved a few days back,
but I would’ve been foolish not to be concerned.

Turns out I
should’ve been concerned for other reasons.

In every
category of my lifts I was as strong as I’d been before the
shooting. For safeties sake I did the smart thing and started off
at very light weights. But on each exercise it was like my body was
insulted at the lack of effort required. How negligently it reacted
to my feeble attempts to fool it. Since I felt no painful pulling
at my scars or the meat beneath them, I shrugged and continued to
stack weights despite Tamara’s rapidly receding concern.

This wasn’t a
Superman moment or anything supernatural like that. It was still me
doing the lifting, my strength and my body pushing and pulling
away. But again it was like drawing from a deep well for cold
water, I would find myself deep into a set and ready to flag when
suddenly a cool rush would flow from the back of my neck into my
limbs. Providing energy and support to keep going. Like the best
gym partner ever.

The scary part
of all this? It was knowing that I could’ve done more.

Maybe a lot
more.

After a full
hour of shattering my personal best lifts endurance wise on the
weightlifting basics my stomach informed me that it would no longer
be satisfied with protein shake supplementation. It informed me
thusly by growling loud enough for Tamara to hear it and by making
my knees tremble after I completed my last four hundred pound
squat.

I drained a
final protein shake to tide me over until I could shower and
stagger on over to the mall’s food court. Fifteen minutes later I
was parked in a sandwich shop booth with my face buried in a foot
long Italian sandwich complete with chips, cookies and milk.

Tamara sat
across from me in the bright yellow booth, taking an early break
from work. A Diet Coke bottle open but forgotten on the table
before her.

“This doesn’t
make any sense, Joe. Not at all!” Her voice was low but incredulous
as she skimmed over the notes on her clipboard.

My mouth was
too full of cheese, bacon and genoa to argue. My stomach gurgled
happily as my body cooled off. Energy returning to wherever it had
been leached from. A headache that had barely started quickly
receded to nothing. My muscles were full of blood and completely
swollen in that perfect bodybuilding pump that you always hear
about. My knee which was usually on fire after all the running and
the heavy squats was surprisingly good. Tight, but more than
manageable.

“Okay. Not one
of these numbers - by themselves - is actually impossible,” Tamara
muttered, unable to take her eyes off her notes. I eyed her Diet
Coke hungrily as I chewed. “I mean, the seven minute mile has to be
a miscalculation no matter how quickly you finished some of those
laps. But even still, nothing on here is actually beyond what any
person should be able to do.”
I raised an eyebrow at her sarcastically and swallowed. “Gee.
Thanks.”

Tamara clapped
the board down to the table and stared at me. The sound drew a few
eyes in the sandwich shop but mostly out of surprise, not interest.
They all looked away when I gave my small smile to them.

“Joe.” Tamara’s
voice remained low. Insistent now, and concerned. “Two weeks ago I
watched you get shot. I nearly watched you die. I visited you in
the hospital and saw you hooked up to IV’s and tubes, with nurses
checking your vitals every hour.”

For some
reason we’re having trouble monitoring your heartbeat
electronically, Mr. Donovan. So a nurse will pop by every so often
to make certain that everything’s all right until we get the matter
resolved.

“Guess I can
add that to the list,” I muttered.

“And today,”
Tamara went on, ignoring my muttering. “Today you’re in the gym
lifting weights and sprinting around the track like a Olympian.
Scratch that, an Olympian combined with a World’s Strongest Man
competitor.”

My stomach
growled. I took another bite, nodding to Tamara as I did so.

She looked down
at the clipboard then back up at me. Her eyes were very wide behind
her librarian glasses.
“Joe. What’s going on?”

I put down the
sandwich carefully as I finished chewing, taking a sip from my
chocolate milk as I tried to get my thoughts in order. Debating on
how much of the truth as I understood it I dared to share.

Tamara, likely
sensing what I was about to say cut me off. “And if you go back to
the doctor’s request crap I will walk right out of here and not
look back.”

“Really?”
I asked skeptically, quirking my eyebrow at her mockingly.
She was full of shit and we both knew it. Tamara was about as
likely to walk away from this booth without answers as I was to
suddenly become a
Tragically Hip
fan.

“Yes. Really.”
She lied to me, her jaw set stubbornly.

My fingers
fiddled with the wax paper wrapping of my sandwich noisily as I
stalled. Not sure where to begin. Not sure how to begin.

Tamara’s hand
reached out hesitantly across the table, settling on my fidgeting
fingers. They stayed there. Cool. Comforting. Calm.

“You said you
needed someone you can trust?”

I stared down
at her hands, my throat thickening. I nodded.

“Joe.” I looked
up and met her eyes. They held mine back unblinkingly. “You can
trust me.”

A long slow
breath blew out of my nose in a heavy, pent up sigh. The back of my
neck tingled again, but not in a dangerous way. It prickled and
thrummed lightly, like it did at the TV studio and then at the club
shortly after. Absently I noticed the old school neon sign
advertising that the sandwich shop was OPEN against the window
behind Tamara’s seat. It flickered and popped in time to the
buzzing behind my eyes.

I grimaced.

“I’m scared,
Tamara.” Her fingers squeezed mine quickly, offering comfort. I
hate being at a loss for words. The flickering of the sign was
distracting me, my fingers twitching underneath Tamara’s light
grip. “Weird things are happening and I think it’s because of
me.”

Tamara’s face
softened. “Joe, it’s not your fault that you got shot.”

“You ever
notice streetlights going out when you walk past them?” I broke in,
surprising myself. This isn’t where I’d planned on starting this
conversation.

She blinked in
surprise, leaning her head back and away slightly. “Uhm … Not
really. I mean, sometimes I’ll see one pop on or off I
suppose…”
“I see it all the time.”

In the back of
my head I could remember the first time I ever noticed it
happening. The memory flashed in my head clear as day, despite it
being years since I’d even thought about it.

I used to walk
past the same block on my way home from a friend’s house every day
after school. In the wintertime it got dark early in Winnipeg, so
the streetlights were always on by dinnertime. And on the same
block at the same lamp I would watch the light suddenly die as I
got within twenty feet of it only to see it relight as I got twenty
feet away. I showed it to my friends one day when they wouldn’t
believe me. All of them were convinced that I had rigged it
somehow, pulled a David Copperfield or something.

I was twelve
years old.

“All the time,”
I repeated.

Tamara squeezed
my fingers tighter. “Joe, I don’t understand.”

I shook my
head. “Neither do I. But …”

“But?”
I sighed heavily, my voice shaking just a bit. The buzzing in my
head hummed in sync with the annoying neon sign.

“But I can’t
pretend it isn’t happening anymore,” I growled, my teeth grinding
together as I reached for the buzzing sensation at the back of my
neck.

The OPEN sign
snapped off with an electric hiss. The buzzing in my head suddenly
abated. Tamara’s head snapped around in surprise, staring at the
sign as I sighed in relief.

She turned back
to me after a moment, catching me mid-cookie munching. I wiped
crumbs away from lips with the back of my bruised forearm.

“Joe …. What’s
….”

“Looking back I
always noticed weird things about lights and stuff.” My mind
whirled as I thought, images flashing. This had been happening to
me a lot since … Well, since I’d nearly died. It was like I had a
sudden clarity of vision. Old memories that had begun to fade were
now easier to focus on and remember details of. Details that
shouldn’t have stuck out but did.

“My Dad was
constantly replacing light bulbs in our house,” I continued, lost
in memory. “Didn’t matter about forty watt, hundred and twenty
watt. Hall lights, bathroom lights, desk lamps. Every other day for
years it seemed we were burning through light bulbs. Dad had three
of his electrician buddies check the house out, searching for
faulty wiring or an overloaded circuit. He even had one of them
switch out the fuze box in the basement in exchange for a weekend
of beer and cards. But the damned bulbs kept burning out.”

Tamara said
nothing. Her hand still gripping mine.

“As I got older
I noticed other things. Video game systems glitching out on me
right when I started getting frustrated. Alarm clocks that would up
and die for no reason.”
“Well, those things happen to everybody.”
“I can’t keep a bank card for longer than three months without the
strip dying on me,” I continued, speaking over her objection as if
she hadn’t said a word. “You laughed about my lack of a cell phone,
but the phone company says I still owe them a few hundred dollars
for a smartphone plan that I haven’t been able to use in over
eighteen months since the fourth phone they gave me suffered a
complete memory wipe.”

Tamara
tried to reason with me. “Joe, people have bad luck with …”
“The sign behind you just burnt out because my head was buzzing and
I wanted it to stop.” I was committed now. “Treadmills at the gym
literally burn out when I use them. I change the battery in my
Windstar every six months. Lights in
Sal’s
erupt when I am frustrated over breakfast.
I am forced to eat every waking hour. Power lines overload burst
and explode into the night when I am jumped by muggers during a
rainstorm.”

Tamara’s next
objection froze on her lips as her eyes went wider than I’d ever
seen before.

My hands were
trembling now. It matched my voice. “I get shot. I nearly die. Two
defibrillators explode trying to revive me. A power grid around the
hospital browns out for an hour.” Tears trickled down my cheeks and
disappeared into my unshaven scruff.

Tamara’s hand
squeezed tighter, her thumb trailing on my knuckle.

“I nearly
killed three guys last night. Fuck, they were kids. Barely twenty
years old.” More tears.
Forgive me, Dad.
Forgive me, Donald. First time I’ve cried since you’ve been
gone
. “They broke into my van and I chased
them.”

“Oh, Joe. Are
you all right?”

Suddenly
self-conscious I roughly scrubbed at my eyes with the back of my
free hand, vaguely aware of the few other people in the shop. I
ignored them but kept my voice down. “I have no idea. You saw me.
What I did. What I can do. You tell me. Am I all right?”

Tamara’s lips
pressed together in a thin line. Her eyes flickering to the
clipboard.

“Am I all
right, Tamara?”

“What does your
doctor say?” she asked hesitantly.

I leaned back
abruptly, pulling my hand away. “Oh come on! Do you really think I
went to my doctor with this?”

My voice was
louder than I’d planned and Tamara made shushing motions to me as
people started looking my way again.

“Calm down,
Joe.”

“ ‘
Hi Doc, it’s Joe. I’ve been experiencing some strange
post-near death systems including electrical explosions. What
should I do?
’ “ The asshole voice comes too easily to
me sometimes.

“Joe, I said
calm down!”

My teeth
clicked shut loudly over my next biting remark. Surprisingly I
didn’t feel the buzzing or tension behind my eyes. Odd that, last
few weeks when I became agitated it seemed all I could do to ignore
that sensation.

Around the
sandwich shop people were still giving me the hairy eyeball. Like I
was a strange derelict who was drunk and about to become violent
and disorderly. And to be fair my ripped denims, shoddy Jets tee
shirt, wildish too long hair and unkempt scruff of beard was not a
pretty image. Especially in contrast to the tiny Tamara sitting
across from me.