The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (6 page)

These wounds festered and ruptured in my dreams. There would be no more sleep for me that night. I turned on the bedside lamp and reached for a book.

And then I saw the doll.

Someone had taken it from my coat pocket and set it on the foot of my bed, legs splayed wide. Propped against the footboard, Barbie stared at me with blank, lash-fringed eyes. Her red, red lips formed a pout. For a terrifying second I thought she would rise and stand on her own. She would walk toward me on legs with no knee joints, pointed chin and breasts aimed at my heart.

A terrified yell caught in my throat and I kicked the covers, sending Barbie flying across the room. I threw back the quilt and ran to pick her up off the floor. In an instant she was in the fireplace. Her hair caught first, and then her features began to melt. An awful stench came from the burning, blackened mass of fabric and molded vinyl.

Her long, tapered legs were the last to burn.

7

“Aine, darling, are you ill?” Dorothea came from behind the desk and pressed a cool hand to my forehead. “You’ve caught a fever, I think.”

I’d awakened in full light to discover the cabin stinking with the smell of burned plastic. I remembered throwing the Barbie on the fire, but I couldn’t remember why. Something to do with whales and harpoons. All I knew was that the images were borne in a fever. My throat felt like I’d swallowed glass, and something resembling a cement block had lodged in my sinuses.

“You don’t have a doctor here, but I can recommend Dr. Frederika Wells. Excellent general practitioner. She’ll fix you right up.”

“I don’t go to doctors.” It was true. Dr. O’Gorman didn’t count. He was a friend. Nine years had passed since my last appointment with a regular doctor. My health was excellent and I had no need of intrusive medical practices. Besides, I didn’t trust the modern medicine men—or women. The profession had lost touch with the combination of mind, body, spirit that I believed kept things in balance. My only concession was an occasional visit to Dr. O’Gorman for my tension-related migraines. I’d started seeing him after the Cappett incident.

“You’ve got a temperature of at least a hundred and one. Maybe higher. You’re congested, coughing, and only going to get worse. Best take a positive step and seek medical help before you get pneumonia. Think about it this way. Spend an afternoon waiting on the doctor now or three weeks recovering from a lung infection.”

Dorothea had a way of putting things. “Can you call her?”

“I can.” She beamed, having won the argument. “I’ll call a cab to take you. I’d do it myself but I can’t leave the desk. It’s a good thing the sky is clear. A bit of sunshine, some antibiotics, a steroid shot, and you’ll be right again in two days.”

With that cheerful prediction, I climbed in the cab and rode to the doctor’s office, which was, thankfully, only a few miles away.

Petite and animated, Dr. Wells seemed more suited to a perpetual cheerleader than a doctor. Ten minutes into her exam, I realized she was nobody’s fool. She had read and memorized my chart.

After a steroid shot, prescriptions, and an admonition to get in bed and stay there, she freed me. Her intense scrutiny left me feeling vulnerable. Back in Kentucky, the doctor was called only hours before the undertaker. I suppose a healthy fear of medical practitioners was a good thing for a population that couldn’t afford to pay for treatment.

I returned to my cabin and piled up in bed with my cough medicine, orange juice, and books. Iron bands locked my chest, restricting breathing. The cement block in my sinuses refused to budge, and a rattling cough made me fear I’d suffocate. Another dose of cough medicine eased me into sleep.

I found myself on Walden Pond, wandering the woods on a lush spring morning. It could have been 1850 or 2050, I couldn’t tell by the soft hush of the forest and the beauty of the pond. Whatever the time period, the area was untouched by man, and the magnificence of nature was mine alone.

My hands traced the peeling bark of a plane tree, the smooth skin unlike any other. Energy hummed, emanating from the core of the tree. Behind me, someone coughed. I turned to find a bearded man dressed in trousers, braces, and a long-sleeved shirt.

“You should be in bed,” he said. “A cough can be dangerous.”

He proved his point with a wet hack that left blood on the palm of his hand when he tried to stifle it. He examined the lung hemorrhage with curiosity, then wiped his hand on his dark pants.

“Let me take you to the cabin.” He caught my arm, and I realized for the first time that I wore tight-fitting sleeves that went with a long black dress. My feet were bare, a fact he disapproved of.

“You must care for yourself,” he instructed. “I fear for you, Bonnie. You can’t let them lure you out here. Impulsiveness can be the same as carelessness.”

I didn’t need to answer. He didn’t expect me to speak.

“You can’t risk your health.” He led me through the trees to a clearing with a small wooden cabin. He assisted me inside and ushered me to a chair beside a stove. The weight of my belly was exhausting. Large and tight as the skin of a drum. Running my hand over it, I felt the thrum of new life.

Outdoors in the sun, I’d been warm enough. Now I was cold. He noticed and wrapped a blanket around me. His hands lingered on my shoulders, the warmth of his palms comforting and yet disquieting.

“I can’t do this alone,” I told him.

“We need nothing but each other.” He kissed my cheek and pulled the blanket tighter around me. “Two against the world.”

His words were both comforting and disquieting.

Knuckles rapping the door of the cabin pulled me up from the depths of sleep. I came to the surface of the dream sobbing. Obeying my first impulse, I clutched my flat stomach, greatly relieved that it wasn’t swollen with child. The intensity of the nightmare was such that I had felt the pull of the unborn child’s weight, the oceanic turning of the fetus in the womb so similar to the sensation of my other dream, that of a whale calf somersaulting in the Atlantic.

“Aine!” Patrick’s voice called sharply. He must have been battering the door for some time.

“Coming.” I pulled the sheet around me and went to the door. Patrick balanced a tray on one hand, the other aloft to knock again.

“Dorothea sent you hot soup, but it’s likely cold now, since I’ve been pounding on your door for fifteen minutes.” His tone was annoyed, but his gaze roved over my bare shoulders and down to my hand clutching the sheet. “Busy?” He looked past me into the room, no doubt expecting to find my lover.

“Put it on the table.” I stepped back to allow him to enter and closed the door against the icy blast of wind. A spasm of coughing took hold of me and I doubled over.

“Hey!” Patrick had relieved himself of the tray and caught my shoulders in both hands, reigniting the memory of the dream. “Get yourself back in that bed!” He half-pushed, half-carried me. He pulled the covers high on my chest. “Woman, you don’t have a tot of sense.”

The coughing fit had passed, and I found myself amused at Patrick’s concern. Whether feigned or real, he made me believe he was worried. “Thank you. I’ll wear the cough out soon enough.”

“Not if you stand half-naked in open doorways.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.” I realized how flirtatious the words were as soon as I spoke, but there was no getting them back. Such behavior was wildly inappropriate, and shame heightened the heat in my face. “Thank you for bringing the soup.”

“I’ll get more wood.” He struck a ridiculous pose and flexed a muscle. “I have the brawn to tend to the needs of a beautiful sick woman.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The foolish exuberance of youth and good health amused me. His unrelenting attempts to seduce me were a delicious serving of flattery, but he knew, as I did, that it would come to nothing. “I’m not really sick. It’s just a bad cold.”

“It gives me pleasure to help you, so pretend to be a damsel in distress.”

There was wisdom in his flippant sentence, and a truth I’d never faced head-on. “Stoke the fire.” I waved a feeble hand. “And maybe you could feed me, too. I’m so weak I may expire.” I slumped into a classic swoon.

“That’s more like it.” He brought the tray to the bed and lifted a spoonful of broth to my lips.

The intimacy silenced my tongue, but my heart pounded. I’d laid the challenge and he’d called my bluff. As the adult, I had to set the boundaries. He was a young man and Dorothea’s surrogate son. She wouldn’t be amused. It was up to me to control the situation. I was older, not to mention contagious.

I took the bowl and spoon. “Thank you, Patrick. You’re a considerate young man.”

“I’m not just a boy.” He pushed my hair from my face. “You’re beautiful, Aine.”

I caught his hand. “Hardly. I’m a doctoral student worn to a frazzle. And I’m sick. I shouldn’t flirt with you. It’s wrong.”

He made no attempt to touch me again, but he didn’t leave the bedside. “Why are you so scared of feeling? Who hurt you?”

“I never took you for a sensitive young man.”

He laughed at my honesty. “Just because I like girls and they like me back doesn’t mean I’m thick as a brick wall. I’ve watched you. The way you’re always alone, even around other people.”

I put the soup on the bedside table. “You are observant. Right now, I’m focused on my work. That’s the way it has to be. You’re a handsome young man. I see the girls who come here to be near you. You can have your pick of all of them.”

“I’m interested in you.”

“You’re wasting your time, Patrick. You only think you’re interested because you know it’s impossible.”

“We’ll see about that.” He picked up the tray and left without a backward glance.

8

The fever passed and I met Joe at Walden Pond. The sky was blue and the sun was out. The snow had melted, but there was no doubt that winter had set in for good. Barrenness pervaded the scenery. Not unpleasant, but different from the dancing golden foliage I’d encountered when I’d first ventured around Walden.

Standing at the edge of the pond where I’d found the doll, I saw no sign of humanity except for the man beside me. We could have been dropped into a wilderness at any point in time. A songbird, which should have long been south for the winter, trilled a buzzy
sree
and a sharp whistle. Civilization might be a mile away, or a hundred.

Joe’s thoughts must have run somewhat parallel to mine, because he said “Makes you wonder how Thoreau stood it, all by himself. He had to walk to town for human company and the weather often kept him barricaded in his cabin. I guess back then folks spent more time alone with their thoughts.”

I held my peace. While my general dissertation topic was not privileged information, my groundbreaking revelation was. I had learned that for the area population, Thoreau was sacrosanct. Messing with his reputation could be like stirring a hornet’s nest with a short stick. “You must be alone a good bit as a state ranger.”

His deep laugh was confident. “Lots of time to read. I’ve always loved books. The more popular types. Writers with a story to tell.”

“Most of our greatest writers were popular. Dickens, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Collins, Poe. They were storytellers first and foremost.”

“Why are you studying Thoreau if you speak so fondly of the plotters? Thoreau wasn’t much for story. Philosophy and thought.”

Strangely enough, I wanted to share with him. “I have a family connection to Thoreau.”

“Cryptic.”

I couldn’t help it, the laughter bubbled out. He’d hammered me with one word. “Okay, a family member knew Thoreau. I have some journals that give a unique perspective on him and his work.”

“Care to give a few more details?” he asked.

“Absolutely not.”

He considered that and wisely changed topics. “Are you over your cold?”

“I am, thank you.” Our coats brushed against each other, sounding a little
zing
. I pointed. “This is the place.” Focusing on the chore at hand seemed like the smartest action. My awareness of Joe was acute, so I turned my profile to him.

“What are you thinking, Aine?” he asked.

“Nothing of importance.” I pulled my lips into a smile. Women who didn’t smile weren’t trustworthy, I’d learned.

“Oh, I doubt you have unimportant thoughts,” he teased.

“I miss the snow.” It was the first thing that popped into my head. I briskly rubbed my arms, though I wasn’t cold. His scrutiny made me want to move, to run, to suck in big lungfuls of the cold crisp air and yell with the joy of being alive and able to feel. It was as if I’d stepped off solid ground into magic.

“You say there were no footprints where you found the doll?” Joe continued, unaware of my emotional turmoil.

“Are you implying that I’m a liar?” My response was out of left field. I had to get a grip on myself. “I’m sorry, I just don’t like to be called a liar.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” His tone was patient. “It’s a time issue. The Barbie was on top of the snow, you said. Yet the footprints had been covered by snow. It’s a way to judge what time the doll was left. Speaking of which, did you bring it?”

“I burned it.”

Disbelief pinched his face. “Why?”

How to explain that the doll had moved by itself onto my bed? If Joe thought the lack of footprints was hard to believe, the doll escaping my coat pocket and climbing onto the bed would prove I was nuts. “It unnerved me. Barbies objectify women. I offered her to you at the coffee shop. You should have taken her then if you wanted her.” He’d been uninterested at the coffee shop, so why now?

What seemed to be relief swept across his features. “No, I didn’t want the doll. I should have examined it, though. My fault, not yours.”

“I overreacted. I’m sorry.” I could help with a few details. “She wore the blue, white, and silver ball gown and shoes of the snow queen from
Swan Lake
. I don’t think that’s an official Barbie outfit, but it was exquisitely made.”

“Official outfit?”

“Only one company makes official Barbies and her various outfits. When I was a kid, there was Shopping Barbie and Tango Barbie and Nurse Barbie. As far as I know, there wasn’t a Snow Queen model. Not made by Mattel.” I wasn’t a Barbie expert. Dolls had never been my thing. I was more of a tomboy, but I’d done some research. “I think someone made the ball gown. Hand-stitched. Someone with a lot of skill.”