Rustler's Moon (13 page)

“A girl like me?”

They were at the dorm. The date was over and so was the interrogation.

“I had a nice time,” Reid lied. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

That was it, she realized, not a very eventful first date, but she hadn’t expected more. Luckily, he wasn’t even going to try to kiss her or set another time to go out. She felt as if their date had been nothing more than an obligation he had to fulfill. If her pop asked, she’d say he was a perfect gentleman.

“Thank you for inviting me, Reid,” she said stiffly. “I’ll never forget my first homecoming.” As he waited, she added, “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to anyone about you and Polly.”

He smiled. “There was no me and Polly. Just sex in a dark hallway. When it was over, she said I was number six for the evening. Made me feel real special.” His laughter bore no humor. “Tell you the truth, I don’t even remember what she looked like, it was so dark. Is Polly pretty?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” He straightened. “I won’t be doing that again.”

“Let’s forget you ever told me about it. More than I wanted to know.” Lauren moved toward the door. “See you around, Reid.”

“See you around,” he said, already turning away.

She found Polly curled up on her bed. As Lauren flipped on the light, Polly threw her arm across her eyes to block the sudden light. Lauren saw a long smear of red dripping on the blankets, and what looked like broken glass everywhere.

The big mirror Polly had nailed on the wall over her bed must have fallen and shattered. A million points of light sparkled over the covers and the rug beside her bed like fresh fallen snow. Blood dripped from a long gash that ran from Polly’s wrist to her elbow and crimson bubbled like fat freckles across her face. Polly let out a low cry like an animal in pain, but didn’t open her eyes.

“Polly!” Lauren dropped everything and dialed 911 on her cell, then grabbed her scarf and wrapped it about the open wound as tightly as she could. “Polly, what happened? Polly? Where else are you hurt?”

In the panicked silence, Polly opened one eye and asked sleepily, “How was your date?”

“Fine,” Lauren answered, so angry at her roommate she didn’t want to talk to her. “What happened? Did you do this, Polly? Did the mirror just fall?”

She seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes open. “I don’t know. Maybe I hit the damn mirror. It was looking at me. I thought if I couldn’t see me, I might get lucky and disappear. I thought it was a good idea at the time. Didn’t know it would hurt so much.”

A stampede of footsteps sounded from the other side of their door. Lauren stumbled over the shattered glass in her heels as the first responders rushed in. She stood out of the way as they worked, talking to Polly, checking her vital signs, lifting her onto a gurney.

In less time than she thought possible, they were all gone, and her new wrap lay on the floor covered with blood. They’d gone, leaving all the blood and glass and chaos behind. When they’d asked Polly what happened, she’d simply whispered, “Accident.”

Lauren picked up her phone and dialed Tim.

“How was the date with Reid?” he asked, still sounding angry.

“Tim, listen. When I got home, Polly was all cut up and bleeding. Can you take me to the hospital? I don’t think she knows anyone who’ll sit with her.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Lauren pulled her winter coat from the closet and slipped it around her. The night couldn’t be much below sixty degrees, but she felt cold all the way to her bones.

She waited for Tim by the main door. When their eyes met, he didn’t say a word. He just wrapped his arm around her and held on tightly until they reached his old Jeep.

With all the traffic from the game on campus, they would have made better time walking the few blocks to 19th Street, which bordered the university. From there they could have run across the busy street and down a few blocks to the hospital. By the time they drove in the traffic, found a parking place and located the emergency room, Polly had been moved into one of the examining rooms.

A nurse said they could go in for a few minutes. As she walked them down the hall, she asked, “Were you with her when the accident happened?”

Lauren hesitated, then said, “No. I must have come in just after. She was under her covers.”

“Lucky. That probably prevented further cuts from the falling glass,” the nurse whispered as she pushed the door open. “If she’d lost much more blood, she might have died.”

The nurse pointed to an open door, then disappeared on down the hallway.

Polly looked so young, so small. Lauren could see a bit of the little girl she must have been, before college, before dark hallways and frat boys, before having no one, not even a roommate who cared.

Lauren tried to erase what Polly had said from her thoughts.
I thought if I couldn’t see me, I might get lucky and disappear.

“She’s so pale. How’d it happen?” Tim whispered.

I don’t know if it was an accident
, Lauren wanted to say, but she couldn’t. Like it or not, Polly needed someone to be on her side tonight. Reid had commented that Polly wasn’t like her. Did he mean that Polly was of no value? No one cared about her? Polly had told her that her parents had found the farthest college from home to send her to.

Tears silently rolled down her face and dropped onto her winter coat.

To Lauren’s surprise, Tim moved closer to the bed and took Polly’s hand. “Hey, Polly Anna, you should have called if you weren’t doing anything. We could have gone back for more chicken fried steak ears.”

Polly’s eyes opened just a bit. “That stuff was terrible.” Her voice sounded weak, sleepy.

“Yeah, but think of all those earless cows walking around so they could serve it every weekend.” Tim patted her bandaged arm.

Polly gave a tiny laugh and looked down at her arm. “It doesn’t hurt. I didn’t even feel the stitches.” She closed her eyes for a few minutes, then whispered more to herself than them, “I had a fight with a mirror and I think the mirror won.”

“No, you won.” Tim squeezed her hand.

“I did?” she said without opening her eyes.

“I’m glad you did, Polly Anna, but you look like you could use some rest. You won because you’re still here.”

Tim didn’t turn loose of her hand. “Promise me you’ll call the next time you have a free night. We could go eat, then come back and shoot some pool.”

“Are you any good?” she whispered.

“Are you?” he asked.

Polly shook her head.

Tim smiled. “Then I’m great.”

Lauren watched Tim talking to this girl he barely knew, trying his best to make her feel better. When the nurse finally dropped by to tell them that it was time to leave, Tim stepped into the hallway to answer his phone and Lauren took his place at Polly’s side.

“Take care of yourself,” she said as Polly seemed to drift in and out of sleep. “Who do you want me to call? Family? Friends? They’ll want to come help.”

Polly shook her head. “No one.” After a long pause, she added, “Thanks for coming. How was your date?”

Lauren grinned. For the first time, Polly asked a question. “To tell the truth, it was a disaster. Not fun at all.”

Polly nodded. “I’ve had a few of those lately, too.”

“Promise you’ll get better, Polly. I don’t want to have to break in another roommate. I’m used to you.”

Polly had drifted to sleep and didn’t answer.

As Lauren and Tim left the hospital, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I love you, you know. You were magic with Polly.”

“I know.” Tim laughed. “Redheads are always irresistible.”

“Who told you that?”

“Another redhead.”

As they walked to his old Jeep, she thought about what he’d done for Polly, a girl who hadn’t even bothered to talk to him the night she’d gone to eat with them.

“Swear to something, Tim?”

“Anything, L,” he said casually.

“Promise we’ll always be friends.”

“Only if you’ll take my advice about not going out with Reid.”

“I’ve already decided that. The dinner was nice, the game fine. I even liked his friends, and he played his part, didn’t even try to kiss me good-night. But, you know, the whole time I realized I wasn’t where I wanted to be.”

“So he was a perfect gentleman?”

She nodded, and he checked his phone.

One text blinked bright in the darkness. One text from Reid Collins.

Got lucky tonight.

Lauren couldn’t breathe. “My pop is going to kill him.”

Tim swore. “He’ll have to get in line.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Carter

C
ARTER
M
AYES
LEANED
against the red jagged canyon wall and tried to ease his aching back. He had run out of aspirin two days ago, but he refused to stop. His quest was too important and the fact that he was tired, aching and in his seventies didn’t matter.

“Come on, Watson, we got to keep going. If we make another half mile today, we’ll sleep good tonight.” Carter tested the ground with his walking stick and took one step.

The dog didn’t answer, as usual. Watson was far more interested in the occasional rabbit or squirrel than his owner’s great quest.

Since he retired over ten years ago, Carter never had a problem talking to himself. “We’ll give it until dark tonight, and maybe most of the day tomorrow. We should be near the lake at Crossroads by then.” He didn’t like the idea of quitting, but even his cleanest clothes were too dirty to wear, and Watson needed real dog food. “We’ll pull the trailer into one of the rental spots on the lake, hook it up and relax for a few days. Maybe do some fishing. How does that sound, boy?”

Watson trailed along as Carter examined every crack in the canyon wall.

A month after he retired, Carter set out on his quest. When the weather allowed and he was feeling good, he walked the tiny offshoots of the Palo Duro Canyon and Sunday Canyon, and now Ransom Canyon, searching for a memory.

He had been about five or six when his father started taking him hiking on weekends. His mostly absentee dad was a tough man and hated people in general, or so Carter’s mother used to say. So, every weekend when he wasn’t drunk, which was a fifty-fifty shot, his dad would pick up his kid and they’d camp out.

The weekends had been hell, until Carter learned to stop complaining and stay out of his father’s way. Even during the bad times, the fresh air beat staying home with his mother’s boyfriend-of-the-month. Carter would load his backpack down with drinking water, an extra jacket and Snickers bars. His kindergarten mind figured if he had something to drink, eat and a way to stay warm, he could survive his old man’s total neglect for two days.

Carter learned how to make camp, skin and cook a rabbit, and keep his mouth closed about what happened on weekends. He also learned to mark the trail into the canyon so he could find the car when his father was too hungover.

By the time Carter was eight, he loved the outdoors and was tall enough to see over the steering wheel. He could drive home when his dad was passed out in the back of his old Ford.

That was about the time they stumbled on a cave way back in an offshoot of a canyon. In his mind, Carter could still see the strange drawings on the cave’s rounded wall. Stick figures drawn too high on the sheer rock to be pictures children had done.

He and his father had spent a rainy night in the cave along a trail rarely traveled. They’d built a small fire at the mouth of the cave, but over sixty years later Carter could still remember the sound of the wind howling through the cave like a low growl or the dying cry of an animal. The slice of an opening was jagged, just tall and wide enough for a man to pass through. The floor of the cave was smooth, slick with a trickle of water running over rocks.

His dad had finished a bottle of whiskey that night. He passed out near the fire, but Carter took his flashlight and went exploring. With his beam of light pointed down, he almost missed the drawings until he tripped and found them when his light danced wildly as he fought to keep his footing.

The markings shone bright in the black cave as the flashlight’s beam moved over them. The stick figures almost seemed to come alive, creeping toward Carter in the unsteady glow. Big round heads and blank circle eyes atop bony bodies.

Carter sat staring at them until dawn, never sleeping. He couldn’t remember even blinking. In his child’s mind he feared if he closed his eyes for even a second, the figures might move a step closer.

He remembered the rain turned into a foggy soup about noon the next day, and the wind stilled, making the cave as still as a temple.

Carter and his dad crawled out of the cave and made their way along slippery rocks and muddy paths to an old trail pounded down by deer. His father swore most of the way, claiming his head hurt. Carter remained silent, but he kept glancing back to make sure one of the ghostly stick figures wasn’t following them.

When they finally made it to the flat land above the cave, he remembered seeing a rock corral about two feet high and twenty feet square. He asked his dad why the rocks were there, and his old man simply told him to get in the car.

Carter drove away from the canyon on a road that was simply two ribbons of crushed grass winding around bunches of short trees heavy with fruit. It was dark by the time they pulled onto a farm-to-market road.

For years afterward, Carter would ask his father where the cave had been, but he either simply liked pestering Carter, or couldn’t remember. The old drunk died never revealing even what canyon they had been in that night.

As he grew, Carter never mentioned the stick characters on the canyon wall to anyone, but they haunted his dreams. He and his mother moved south to Galveston about the time he entered his teen years. Carter went to college, then to Vietnam. The stick men followed him halfway around the world. He married and raised three daughters, but two things he never did—he never forgot what he saw in the cave, and he never took one drink of alcohol.

The year he retired, his wife, Bethie, died. His daughters were in Dallas, all with lives of their own. Carter thought about it for a month, then he sold his house in Galveston and bought a small RV and a good pickup to pull it. One bed, a tiny kitchen and the world’s smallest bathroom. Just enough room for Carter and Watson. In the winter he parked at an RV village in Granbury located smack in the middle of his three girls. He played golf on warm days and poker on cold ones. He did odd jobs his daughters needed done around their homes and waited for spring.