Read Online The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy by Ryan Winfield - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ryan Winfield
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having been there at all.
I surrender to exhaustion and close my eyes and beg the universe to give the liars what they deserve. I beg it to save my father from his prison, to save my mother wherever she is. And I beg it for my own easy and painless death.
CHAPTER 8
Jimmy
I can’t see them, but I can hear them.
I’m lying on something soft in a dark room, my waking eyes watching shadows play on what appears to be an opaque and glowing canvas wall. Busy shadows moving back and forth, tall and thin, hunched and fat. Shadows belonging, I assume, to the women’s voices. They speak my language, but in a different way—an accent of stunted consonants and drawn out vowels. It’s hard to catch anything more than a word here, or a phrase there, because they’re talking fast, each to more than just one other, and sometimes at the same time.
“Are ya sure?”
“Nah, but did ya look at his skin?”
“Poor fella.”
“Gets what it deserves.”
“Camille!”
“She jus’ bitter.”
“Oh, hush and let ’em rest.”
“Here, hold this while I check on ’em.”
“Pass the stitch there.”
“It ain’t worth the mend.”
A flap opens in the wall and a triangle of light lands on the dirt floor. The opening darkens, clears, and then the flap closes again. I flinch when I feel her hand on my forehead.
“Shh ... relax now,” she says.
A cool cloth replaces her hand on my brow and then I feel her smearing something on my face and neck. My hands sting when she peels the bandages away, but they’re quickly soothed again by a layer of cooling gel. She hovers over me working, her silhouette immense against the backlit canvas wall, and when she begins to hum, I let myself relax and surrender to her care. Her voice is light, as if the air itself were singing. Her hands are coarse but gentle. Her smell is of fern and fire and earth.
She props my head in her strong hand and brings a cup to my mouth—warm liquid that tastes of honey, a bite of bitter. It seeps into my belly and salves the pain. I try to thank her, but she holds her fingers to my lips. She lays my head back, and her humming fades away in the flash of the flap and she’s gone.
Days pass this way ...
With every visit, I know her more and more. Changing my bandages, feeding me broth and tea, emptying my bedpan. She sometimes sits in the dark and hums me to sleep and if I waken in a feverish panic thinking I’m alone, her quiet breathing there comforts me. Now, when the women chatter nightly beyond the canvas wall, I can tell her voice with just a word.
Once, in the feverish thrashings of a terrible dream, I’m in Eden and everything is burning and I run to my mother and cling to her waist and when I wake, she’s holding me, humming in the darkness, her gentle rocking lulling me back to sleep.
Then one day she doesn’t come.
Nobody comes. No food, no humming, no voices beyond the wall. My hands are unwrapped, my skin no longer on fire. My stomach even feels right again. I sit up—careful, easy, not too fast. Finding my jumpsuit folded beside the bed, I pull it on in the dark. Then I crawl toward the flap in the wall.
The flap opens to another room. Larger, sunlight filtering in through holes high in the outer wall. A small charcoal fire pit lined with stones. A crude chimney made of tree bark running up the wall and turning out. Indentations worn in the red-clay floor where the women must have sat and done their work.
I duck beneath the flap and stand full height in the outer room. I see I’m in a cave. I see that my burnt skin has peeled to reveal a light tan. My palms are still red and somewhat scarred, but finely healed with new flesh. I’m thinner than I was, but I feel virile and vibrant and strong. My jumpsuit is clean, even mended with patches over the tears. Then I notice my shoes parked next to the thatched exterior door, the soles replaced with layers of thick leather. Next to the shoes I find a canteen of water made from some sort of
I surrender to exhaustion and close my eyes and beg the universe to give the liars what they deserve. I beg it to save my father from his prison, to save my mother wherever she is. And I beg it for my own easy and painless death.
CHAPTER 8
Jimmy
I can’t see them, but I can hear them.
I’m lying on something soft in a dark room, my waking eyes watching shadows play on what appears to be an opaque and glowing canvas wall. Busy shadows moving back and forth, tall and thin, hunched and fat. Shadows belonging, I assume, to the women’s voices. They speak my language, but in a different way—an accent of stunted consonants and drawn out vowels. It’s hard to catch anything more than a word here, or a phrase there, because they’re talking fast, each to more than just one other, and sometimes at the same time.
“Are ya sure?”
“Nah, but did ya look at his skin?”
“Poor fella.”
“Gets what it deserves.”
“Camille!”
“She jus’ bitter.”
“Oh, hush and let ’em rest.”
“Here, hold this while I check on ’em.”
“Pass the stitch there.”
“It ain’t worth the mend.”
A flap opens in the wall and a triangle of light lands on the dirt floor. The opening darkens, clears, and then the flap closes again. I flinch when I feel her hand on my forehead.
“Shh ... relax now,” she says.
A cool cloth replaces her hand on my brow and then I feel her smearing something on my face and neck. My hands sting when she peels the bandages away, but they’re quickly soothed again by a layer of cooling gel. She hovers over me working, her silhouette immense against the backlit canvas wall, and when she begins to hum, I let myself relax and surrender to her care. Her voice is light, as if the air itself were singing. Her hands are coarse but gentle. Her smell is of fern and fire and earth.
She props my head in her strong hand and brings a cup to my mouth—warm liquid that tastes of honey, a bite of bitter. It seeps into my belly and salves the pain. I try to thank her, but she holds her fingers to my lips. She lays my head back, and her humming fades away in the flash of the flap and she’s gone.
Days pass this way ...
With every visit, I know her more and more. Changing my bandages, feeding me broth and tea, emptying my bedpan. She sometimes sits in the dark and hums me to sleep and if I waken in a feverish panic thinking I’m alone, her quiet breathing there comforts me. Now, when the women chatter nightly beyond the canvas wall, I can tell her voice with just a word.
Once, in the feverish thrashings of a terrible dream, I’m in Eden and everything is burning and I run to my mother and cling to her waist and when I wake, she’s holding me, humming in the darkness, her gentle rocking lulling me back to sleep.
Then one day she doesn’t come.
Nobody comes. No food, no humming, no voices beyond the wall. My hands are unwrapped, my skin no longer on fire. My stomach even feels right again. I sit up—careful, easy, not too fast. Finding my jumpsuit folded beside the bed, I pull it on in the dark. Then I crawl toward the flap in the wall.
The flap opens to another room. Larger, sunlight filtering in through holes high in the outer wall. A small charcoal fire pit lined with stones. A crude chimney made of tree bark running up the wall and turning out. Indentations worn in the red-clay floor where the women must have sat and done their work.
I duck beneath the flap and stand full height in the outer room. I see I’m in a cave. I see that my burnt skin has peeled to reveal a light tan. My palms are still red and somewhat scarred, but finely healed with new flesh. I’m thinner than I was, but I feel virile and vibrant and strong. My jumpsuit is clean, even mended with patches over the tears. Then I notice my shoes parked next to the thatched exterior door, the soles replaced with layers of thick leather. Next to the shoes I find a canteen of water made from some sort of
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