The Traiteur's Ring (20 page)

Ben woke from the dreams with a memory of only fragmented images – pictures of Jewel and the old man, of the village as it should be, and how it had been. Just jumbled pictures but no concrete memory, and to him that felt like progress. A picture flashed in his head of Gammy seated at their old table of thick wood. She ate from a bowl, the sides spattered with blood and her fingers pink with dirty nails. Then, the image disappeared with the rest.

He reached for Christy and panicked a little when she wasn’t there. Then, he remembered she was with her mom at the Marriott down at the ocean front. She had wanted to spend the night with her mom before the wedding and that seemed fine – more so now, since his dreams tended to wake her up, as well. The twelve days had flown by. He had helped set up the wedding at the gazebo on base, had met with the preacher (a Navy Chaplain assigned to group two, the east coast admin command for the teams) together with Christy to outline the ceremony, had answered questions about food and music and even flowers, and still had time to fill some admin squares at work. In between, he worked out, shot hundreds of rounds at the range, and looked after Reed’s wounds which looked great. Reed had tap danced around asking him if everything was okay more than once, but had seemed satisfied with his “I’m getting married” dodge.

Overall, he really felt great. The dreams, like tonight, had been fragmented and left only a slight after taste of fear. He had never been more sure and excited about anything than his wedding (in ten hours he noted with a glance at the clock) – except maybe his decision to become a SEAL.

He ignored his brains “hey, look at this” attempt to make him think about the dreams and instead hopped out of bed and padded barefoot to the bathroom to relieve himself. That mission completed, he checked (for the hundredth time) that his dress uniform looked squared away in its plastic cover and then slipped back under the cool sheets of their bed.

He pretended not to feel the pulse-like sensation in his right middle finger and forced his mind over the big day ahead instead. For a moment, he considered a quick call to Christy, but decided that she needed her sleep and tossed his cell phone back onto the night stand unopened. His eyes felt heavy anyway, so he guessed he would get back to sleep easily, and the four and a half more hours until his alarm went off would help him a ton.

Sleep wrapped around him and he floated down into it – a warm pool of comfortable darkness. He drifted, dreamless, away from home and his troubling thoughts.

“Wakin’ up, now boy. We get only dis here minute be talkin’ ‘bout dat meetin’ we get to be havin’, know it.”

Ben blinked his eyes open and stared up at the half moon, low and bright through the branches above him. It felt like he had fallen asleep only seconds ago, and he closed his eyes again for a moment, thinking he could drift away to a better dream maybe, but he felt a sharp, jarring pain in his side. He sat up and looked to his left.

The man grinned a nearly toothless grin, and the eyes that looked him over seemed strangely young and bright set as they were in a face of a thousand wrinkles. The man was probably the age of the Village Elder, but looked a hundred years older. He set the cane, not much more than a thick, gnarled stick actually, into the ground in front of him and leaned forward on it to support his hunched and twisted frame as he spoke. The accent was thick with home, and Ben doubted anyone who had not spent at least a few years in the bayou would understand a word of it.

“’Ey lookin’ bit younger dan ‘spected and yo sho’ do grow up bigger den me tink, sho ‘neff dat.” Ben could smell the stale cigarettes and moonshine, and the smell got stronger as the man leaned in so far that Ben feared he might tip over. “Yo’ Gammy be right ‘bout all dat grow stuff, fo’ sho’ neff true. Big, Goddammit!” he hacked out a laugh-cough and then spit a big glob of snot into the dirt beside Ben’s hammock. The old man recovered from the coughing fit and then went to poke at Ben again with his cane, but Ben grabbed it and held the tip away from his aching side. The old man snatched it away, but laughed a wracking laugh again. “Best be gittin’ a move on, Bennie. We got not so much of da’ time tin’ and we get places for.”

The old man turned with surprising balance and headed off down the familiar path in the woods beside the ramble shack house Ben doubted still stood in real life. He swung his legs out of the hammock and dropped his bare feet onto the soft moss of the forest floor.

That the old man moved so quickly came as no surprise – dreams always had their own confusing tempo. Christy had told him once she believed dreams were the mind’s way of cleaning house, and he hoped that was true. He had always felt them to be more of a haunting, but maybe some were meant to clear the ghosts out of the attic in his mind, and this kind of felt like that.

The clearing where Gammy usually stood naked, ankle deep in blood, and stark white in the moonlight now held only a wide and irregular patch that seemed strangely devoid of the moss and weeds that made up the rest of the forest floor. The old man looked back at him over a bony shoulder, his eyes a yellow glow, and gestured at the patch of ground with the twisted cane that had left a bone-bruise soreness in Ben’s rib cage.

“Strange night, dat, hey?” he said. “Yo’ Gammy sho neff’ done beat down dem demons dat day, boy.” He released a high-pitched squeal of a laugh that again brought on a convulsion of coughing that stopped him and bent him over, one hand on his cane and the other on a bent knee. Ben caught up and put his hand on the old man’s back. Through the thin fabric he felt thick sinewy muscle wrapped over brittle bone. He could feel the vibration of the coughing deep inside the man’s chest.

“You okay?” he asked and pulled his hand away from the cold body.

The man stopped coughing and turned his head up towards him, the glowing eyes and wide, maniacal smile out of place.

“Been long time far away from okay, sho ‘neff dat.” He spit a thick wad of blood-streaked snot onto the ground between them. “Guessin’ I seein yo’ Gammy soon nuff quick. Dat crab been eatin’ way dem lungs fas’r’n we hope, guessin’ me. Meet yo soon, den next day maybe be movin’ dat home place.” The man coughed again, this time with more control, then straightened up and leaned again on the cane. “Few mo’ tins to be showin’ you here, den maybe home, sho ‘neff.” This time the smile seemed less chilling.

In a blink (because of the nature of dreams?) the old man moved again with animal-like speed through the brush and trees. The cane beat rapidly on the forest floor beside him as he seemed to almost glide through the woods. Ben felt his breathing quicken and a glow of sweat spread across his face and neck. How in the shit did the old man move so fast?

Dreams. Anything can work in a dream, man. Just roll with it, and let it clean the attic.

“Pay da way to here, Bennie Boy,” the old man said without turning around. “Yo gots ta findin’ dis path you own self, sho ‘neff true.”

The man had stopped and gestured now with his cane, pointing at a break in the trees like he gave a lecture and it was his pointer. Ben hustled to catch up and stopped beside the small, hunched figure who could not possibly have moved as he did through the woods. The break in the brush was little more than a dark hole, and Ben felt his heart quicken, though he had no idea why.

Because dreams scare you for reasons you need a fuckin’ shrink to figure out, and they probably just make their explanations up. Because a dream about a furry bunny can wake you in a sweat with your pulse pounding and a dream about getting hacked to death can leave you feeling nothing. That’s just dreams. Roll with it, Bennie boy.

He leaned past the old man’s hunched figure and strained to see into the dark, tunnel-like path. He now saw the floor of the path was actually more of a little stream. Thick, black water trickled along in a thin line between thick mangrove trunks that clutched the muddy ground like skeleton claws, digging in hard to suck out every drop of moisture. The mangroves bent inward along the path, forming a twisted ceiling that closed the tunnel completely. Ben felt a cold breeze that sighed out of the path and brought to him a scent – bad and familiar. His brain refused to remind him where he had smelled it before. He knew one Goddamn thing – he had no intention whatsoever of hunching over and goating his ass down this path that seemed to dive downward a few yards in, dropping like a black rabbit hole.

“Yo get to here, and den go alone. Mos’ true important, dat, Bennie boy. Alone, fo sho’ neff, yeah? Jess you, boy.”

Ben peered again into the dark hole in the forest. He had no intention of ever climbing down this wet, woody asshole in the woods.

“I don’t think so,” he said with a nervous chuckle and pulled back from the clearing in disgust.

“Not now time, dick-hole,” the old man said with voice full of annoyance, like he talked to an insolent child who was slow and thick. “You be knowin’ when time to go be. Dat udder one tell you, mos’ probly like. Dat one like dem old time people but far away.”

Ben had no friggin’ clue what the old man could possibly be talking about. Was the other one from far away the elder – the giver of the cursed ring that pulsed now with an electric heat on his right hand? He heard a wet rattle, and the ancient, ill man beside him spit again, this time more blood than snot. Then, he laughed that squeaky laugh.

“Yo be knowin’ when da need time come, sho ‘neff dat. Yo Gammy givin’ yo dat shine long, long moons ago, boy.” Ben looked into the eyes that no longer glowed and again looked young and bright. “Jess ‘member how yo’ find dis path here when da need time be get here, ’kay?”

“’kay,” Ben answered, not sure what else to say.

The old man smiled that crazy smile, and the glow returned to his eyes.

“Be seein’ ya few days mo’,” he said and then with lightning speed he thrust forward with his cane and struck Ben painfully in the middle of his breast bone.

Ben stumbled backwards over a mangrove root, lost his footing, and felt himself pitch past the point of no return. Before his ass hit the ground, the world turned dark and he fell for longer than it should have taken to hit the forest floor, and he screamed in terror.

He hit the ground – a hard ground not even remotely touched by soft, ass-saving moss – with a crack and felt a jarring pain run up his right hip and into his back.

“Shit,” he hollered, interrupting his guttural scream, and flayed out his arms in search of a branch before his head hit whatever rock his rear end had found. His fingers clutched around something soft, and he continued on down, his head smacking hard onto the wood floor of their bedroom. The comforter in his grip floated gently down over his head.

Ben lay there for a moment and then rolled over and pushed painfully to his knees, pulling the blanket off his face. He knelt for a moment beside the bed, his forehead against the edge of the mattress. Then, he struggled to his feet. His breast bone throbbed, and he looked down and saw the tip of a cane shaped welt in the middle of his chest.

Didn’t clear out that attic much tonight.

He looked at the clock beside the bed, smiled, and felt the dream anxiety dissipate quickly. The feeling he had from the nightmare was sure as hell nothing new, and he was getting married in only eight and a half more hours to the woman of his dreams. He pumped his leg back and forth and found the painful knot in his hip worked itself out pretty easily – no real damage.

At least I won’t limp my way towards Christy
.

 He flung himself onto the bed, lay on top of the covers, and watched the early, pre-sunrise light paint a peculiar picture on the ceiling. He ignored the memories of the night’s dreams and just let himself relax into the excitement of the day ahead.

Chapter 18

He literally took her breath away.

Christy stared at him in awe as she walked along the wooden walkway that led across the sand to the gazebo where he waited. It wasn’t just how gorgeous he looked in his dress uniform (that brought bad memories, if anything, of the other times he had worn it). She realized what made her body forget to breathe was the absolute perfect look of happiness that lit up her soon-to-be-husband’s face when he saw her. She felt her hands shake a little and clutched her small bouquet of flowers more tightly to her chest.

Not nervous. Just perfectly excited.

Christy looked down at her feet for a moment in the hope that a brief look away would let her grab back control over her legs so she could finish her procession to the gazebo. Ben waited patiently for her (though she still couldn’t quite look at his face her peripheral vision registered his glowing smile), flanked by Reed on one side and her best friend Amy on the other. She knew that for Amy this must feel bitter-sweet – not only had her best friend pined for marriage her entire life, but she had always had as her singular goal to marry a United States Navy SEAL.

Christy had never defined herself by any man in her life and had only reluctantly agreed (how many years ago now?) to the blind date with the friend of a SEAL (one of many) Amy had been dating. She had never been anti-military or anything, just anti-blind date. Quite honestly, had she not been friends with Amy, she would have had no idea what a Navy SEAL was. Amy had always been incredulous that her best friend had actually grown up in the Virginia Beach area, the heart of all the east coast SEAL teams, and didn’t seem to know anything about them. Now she had beaten her friend to the altar and married the SEAL she had met through her. She knew Amy well enough to know that hurt her.

She thought of these things as she walked towards her soon-to-be Navy SEAL husband, and a little part of her felt bad for stealing Amy’s dream. But Amy smiled a big, genuine smile as she approached, and she grinned back, mostly because she worried if she looked again into Ben’s eyes she might lose it and live her worst fear for this day – crying in front of all these people, especially Ben’s teammates and their tough-by-trade Navy wives.