Fresh Flesh (25 page)

Roberts stopped.

Richard's grip on the knife tightened

"Seth, you idiot. They're not here."

"But—I—thought. . .I. . ."

"Don't start your 'seeing the wind bullshit'
again."

"But Kyle, really, really I can see the
wind."

Jessica couldn't see what happened next. She
wouldn't have wanted to see it.

Hearing it was horrible enough.

Kyle Roberts walked across the ravine toward
Seth. He clenched the knife at his side. Seth didn't back away or
flinch. It was as if he expected the next thing to happen. As if it
was meant to be.

"I can see, I can see," Seth said.

"If you can't find Templin and won't tell me
what Sar found then we're done."

"I don't know what Sar found."

"You are the only one who could understand
Sar. What did he tell you he found?"

"I don't know."

"Tell me."

"I don't know."

Roberts put Everson in a headlock and put the
knife to his eyes. He'd teach the one-eyed crazy motherfucker how
to see. He'd make him blind and then leave him to his own misery.
He had no use any more for someone as far gone as Seth Everson.
Kyle had wrongly believed the man was ever of any use to him.

"I. . .can. . .
see
," Seth said.

Kyle stuck the knife in Seth's remaining eye.
Seth screamed. And screamed.

"Tell me what you can see now, blind man.
Tell me." Kyle pulled the knife out and shoved Seth to the ground.
He said aloud, "Now just you and I, Richie."

Roberts looked up at the sky and saw the sun
in its final stages. It was going down, half-way sunk into the
ocean already. Nightfall soon. He was tired, hungry and
disappointed. How long could Templin evade him?

And what about Sar's secret? Sar had found
something on the island and Kyle believed Seth Everson would die
before telling him. The most important translation on the island
since the day they'd dropped and Seth wouldn't share.

Seth wouldn't share Sar's secret and Templin
wouldn't share the woman.

Templin.

"COWWWWWAARRDDDDD."

Kyle Roberts walked away leaving Seth Everson
writhing on the ground. Leaving the one man he wanted so badly
hiding in the bushes a few feet away.

Three minutes after Roberts left, Seth
decided to remove his blood-covered hands. The pain was not as bad
as he'd imagined. Not as bad as the first eye that Walkins had
taken but more bloody. It was more of a quick sting, with a slow
throbbing ache. It felt as if someone was pressing on his eye with
all their force, pressing it layer by fleshy layer through the back
of his skull.

It was strangely pleasant.

His eyes were gone, and now he worried about
what it meant to be among the blind.

Blackness, all you will see is
blackness.

Seth kept his eyes covered, not quite ready
to unveil the surprise. His heart raced. His pulse beat at his skin
all around his body. Sweat formed and balled down his temples. With
one eye gone he could see the wind, but what would he see without
both eyes?

Blackness, only the blackness of the
blind
.

He peeled his left hand away first. His left
eye had been Walkins' target and moments after it was poked out he
realized the change. The things he could see. The wind, in
particular, became visible. Finger by finger, Seth removed his left
hand. This was the ultimate. Seth had never felt any race of
anticipation such as this, it was better than a build-up to orgasm.
He at last removed his hand completely from the left eye.

He kept his left eye closed. He decided it
would be best to open them both at once. Once when he was ten, he
had come home to a dark house, at first thinking that there was a
blown fuse but then all the lights had come on. The momentary
blindness of white. Then he realized his parents had held a
surprise birthday party for him. He liked that. Turning the lights
on at the same time is what he would do with his eyes; open them at
the same time. Just like his surprise party, his only vivid, fond
childhood memory.

So he began peeling the fingers on his right
hand away from his eye.

What will I see? WHAT WILL I SEE?

Pinky finger. . .ring finger. . .middle
finger. . .

WHAT WILL I SEE?

. . .index finger. . .

Blackness, only blackness Seth, you are
blind.

At last both hands were pulled from his face.
He was ready to open his eyes and savor the prize. He was ready to
see the world differently. He was ready for the grand moment. He
had just entered the house—

(Must be that fuse-thing again! Mom, stop
blow-drying your hair and using the toaster at the same time. Dad
said that's the reason the breaker keeps tripping. He'll be real
mad this time. . .).

WHAT WILL I SEE?

Seth opened both eyes.

Someone in his house flipped a switch. The
room came to life. He was blinded by bright white.

(Not the fuse-thing! Not the fuse-thing! NOT
THE FUSE-THING!)

Here was his surprise. The white faded and he
saw. . .saw. . .saw. . .

Blackness
. That's what he saw.

Seth Everson, the man who loved his eyes with
infinite depth, started hopelessly screaming. He was blind.

Still hidden in the bushes, Richard and
Jessica watched Seth Everson kicking and clawing at invisible
demons. Richard took her hand and turned her from the pitiful
sight. He pointed in the direction they'd been travelling and they
started away.

She realized five minutes later that Richard
was leading her back to the west side of the island again. It was
dark when they arrived at the southwest beach where she'd waded out
into the water last night and he'd pulled her back from the shore.
The moon had found its way into the sky; a quarter-moon tonight.
The tides crashed in the distance.

"Who is Sar?" Jessica asked.

"Remember that clearing with the tasty
berries? Sar was one of the original cons sent here. A nice
Japanese guy that was the first to find that clearing. We think
maybe he smuggled in some seeds and he grew some vegetables the
first year we were on the island together."

"But they stopped growing?"

"Yeah, something happened in the fall. Sar
harvested the first crop and then no more."

"What happened to Sar?"

"That's something Roberts has been obsessed
with for years. He believes Sar found another special place on the
island. He's been trying to find it for years."

"What happened to Sar? He's not on the island
any more?"

"Well, that's something nobody likes talking
about. Sar came and saw me in the cave a few times that summer. He
brought me some vegetables grown in the clearing. I offered for him
to come and live in the cave with me. It was closer to the clearing
than the east camp but I don't think he understood my offer."

"That was a nice gesture."

"Seth Everson was buddies with Sar and could
translate a little. I tried to get Seth to make my offer to Sar and
he said he did. I don't think he ever did."

"So this place that Kyle thinks Sar told Seth
about, do you think it really exists?"

"Sar sure believed he saw something on the
island that scared him. I don't want to freak you out any more
about this place but something happened to Sar. Something that
maybe only Seth knows about. A group of us spent days searching all
over the island trying to find the other place that scared Sar but
we couldn't find anything."

"Do you think Sar found some other
place?"

"Not sure. Whatever he found, it changed him.
The last time I saw Sar there was a look in his eyes that wasn't
the Sar I knew. He was afraid of something. Real afraid. And then I
never saw him again."

"Was he one of the ones who swam away from
the island?"

"No, he's still here."

"Where is he?"

Richard told Jessica where Sar was and her
eyes widened.

Not too far in the distance, a blind man
cursed the night.

"It's just us and him now, Jessica."

Jessica and Richard had been sitting on the
beach for a half-hour of silence. He fired that sentence about Kyle
Roberts out of nowhere.

"Roberts won't come looking for us tonight by
himself. He'll wait until morning. He's gone back to his side of
the island and I don't think we have anything more to fear
tonight."

"You think he's giving up because he's the
only one left?" she felt strange saying the only one left, because
there was still a blind, deranged Seth Everson out there somewhere.
She still couldn't get his screaming out of her head.

"No. Roberts will not give up."

"He's crazy."

Richard held out his hands.

"Roberts thinks he knows a lot about
you."

"He's got some of me down, I'm afraid." His
eyes looked down at the sand.

"You're not a coward, Richard."

"I didn't say I was."

"You implied it."

"I avoided him all this time, Jessica.
Sometimes I have my dream with the birds carrying me off to the
dark place and the birds all have Kyle Roberts' face."

Ocean silence. Waves pounding the beaches.
Soft winds moving the trees back and forth. Richard reached out and
squeezed her hand.

"Don't worry. I will protect you from him.
You're safe with me."

Jessica took his arms and put them around
her, kissing him once. "Tell me about her."

"Her? Who said anything about. . .? Ok, got
me."

He told Jessica about his relationship with
Sherry Coolridge.

Toward the end, he said, '"The reason I'm
telling you all this is because I want you to understand why I hit
you. It wasn't because I was pissed-off at the unfairness of my
sentencing, and you finding out where we were. Those things
contributed to the anger, I'm sure, but it was Sherry that brought
it all on."

Jessica kept silent. She had forgiven him but
not forgotten. His display of violence was tame by comparison of
the other violence on the island, some of which she had taken part
in. She thought of stabbing Bat Jackson and Bobby being stuck with
a tree branch spear by Richard.

"Sherry was the first woman to hurt me and I
never had the chance—not with the party and everything—to tell her
how I felt. But when I got mad at you, I said some things about
women. Really, I was talking about Sherry, not all women. She was
my first love and when everything went wrong between us I blamed,
in my mind all women, not only Sherry as I should have."

Ocean silence again.

"I want to give you something." He reached
into his pocket and produced an old, faded high school photograph.
"It's the only thing I have left from my past. I want you to have
it."

"Thank you," she took the picture and ran her
finger over his face. At some point she put the photograph in her
blouse pocket.

They kept staring into each other's eyes.
Jessica didn't see the man she once thought of as repulsive any
more, in fact the opposite. He had changed her. She saw a young
man, almost 10 years younger than her staring back at her.

Her pleasant thoughts tried to be invaded by
the image of Kyle Roberts violating her last night. She didn't want
to break Richard's spirit by telling him what happened. It seemed
almost cruel for her to burden the man with further pain.

Their beach moment should have been romantic.
Something that if she had first washed here and never known about
the other convicts on the east side of the island she could have
shared with Richard.

If only for tonight Jessica wanted to live in
the lie Richard had initially told her. The one where only wild
animals lived on the east side of the island.

She leaned closer and put her head on
Richard's shoulder

On the way back to the east camp, Kyle
decided to follow a different path. The light was fading fast and
he lit a torch.

Maybe tonight he'd find Sar's secret place at
last. The place that Kyle had searched hundreds of times over the
years to find. All his supposed great skills in the woods, all
those years collecting and yet he couldn't find a place that a
Japanese convict farmer could find. Sar had grown up on islands so
it's possible he had some advantage but Kyle spent most his adult
years in the woods. Why did this place elude him?

"Maybe tonight you'll reveal yourself to me,"
Kyle called out to the island as he threw brushes out of his way
and continued east. Searching, always searching.

Seth Everson stopped crying. The crying had
followed the screaming. He wept himself dry. All he could see now
was darkness.

Exactly what
they
wanted him to
see.

The world had not condemned Seth Everson, it
had condemned his eyes.

Blackness all around.

He felt around for his knife. He felt tree
branches and leaves and dirt and moss—

(I CAN'T SEE THEM)

—and his knife. His trusty buck knife. He
moved his fingers along the cold blade testing the sharpness. He
touched the base which he knew was brown and—

(I CAN'T SEE THE BROWN)

—gripped it tightly. Seth was disappointed in
himself. He had been through a lot in his life. So much, in fact,
that it didn't seem fair to be planning his next action. But his
eyes had seen the world like none others, he would always be
thankful for that.

His eyes had seen Disneyland and the Grand
Canyon and the White House. His eyes had seen the upstairs at San
Quentin; the death row where Caryl Chessman and many others had
grimly awaited their fates. His eyes had seen the happy and the
sad, the smart and the stupid, even the living and the dead. His
eyes could never have seen it all, but they had seen enough. His
eyes could see where the world had been, where it was now, and
where it was going.