Gerald's Game(102)

I saw his mouth forming the words "Jessie, are you all right?" I wanted to open the door, but all at once I didn't quite dare. This crazy idea came into my head. That the thing I'd been calling the space cowboy had been in Jimmy's house, too, only Jimmy hadn't been as lucky as I had been. it had killed him, and cut off his face, and then put it on like a Halloween mask. I knew it was a crazy idea, but knowing that didn't help much, because I couldn't stop thinking it. I couldn't make myself open the f**king car door, either,

I don't know how bad I looked that morning and don't want to know, but it must have been bad, because pretty soon Jimmy Eggart didn't look surprised anymore. He looked scared enough to run and sick enough to puke. He didn't do either one, God bless him. What he did was open the car door and ask me what had happened, had it been an accident or had someone hurt me.

I only had to take one look down to get an idea what had put a buzz under him. At some point the wound in my wrist must have opened up again, because the sanitary pad I'd taped around it was entirely soaked. The front of my skirt was soaked, too, as if I'd had the world's worst period. I was sitting in blood, there was blood on the steering wheel, blood on the console, blood on the shift-lever... there were even splatters on the windshield. Most of it had dried to that awful maroon color blood gets-to me it looks like chocolate milk-but some of it was still red and wet. Until you see something like that, Ruth, you just don't have any idea how much blood there really is in a person. It's no wonder Jimmy freaked.

I tried to get out-I think I wanted to show him I could do it under my own power, and that would reassure him-but I bumped my right hand on the steering wheel and everything went white and gray. I didn't pass out completely, but it was as if the last bunch of wires between my head and my body had been cut. I felt myself failing forward and I remember thinking I was going to finish my adventures by knocking most of my teeth out on the asphalt... and after spending a fortune to get the top ones capped just last year. Then Jimmy caught me... right by the boobs, as a matter of fact, I heard him yelling at the store-'Hey! Hey! I need a little help out here!'-in a high shrieky old man's voice that made me feel like laughing... only I was too tired to laugh. I laid the side of my head against his shirt and panted for breath. I could feel my heart going fast but hardly seeming to beat at all, as if it had nothing to beat on. Some light and color started to come back into the day, though, and I saw half a dozen men coming out to see what was wrong. Lonnie Dakin was one of them. He was eating a muffin and wearing a pink tee-shirt that said there's no town drunk here, we just all take turns. Funny what you remember when you think you're getting ready to die, isn't it?

"Who did this to you, Jessie?" Jimmy asked. I tried to answer him but couldn't get any words out. Which is probably just as well, considering what I was trying to say. I think it was "My father."

Jessie snuffed out her cigarette, then looked down at the top newsprint photograph. The narrow, freakish face of Raymond Andrew Joubert gazed raptly back... just as he had gazed at her from the corner of the bedroom on the first night, and from her recently deceased husband's study on the second. Almost five minutes passed in this silent contemplation. Then, with the air of one who starts awake from a brief doze, Jessie lit a fresh cigarette and turned back to her letter. The copy-minder now announced she was on page seven. She stretched, listened to the minute crackling sounds from her spine, then began to touch the keys again. The cursor resumed its dance.

Twenty minutes later-twenty minutes during which I discovered how sweet and concerned and amusingly daffy men can be (Lonnie Dakin asked me if I'd like some Midol)-I was in a Rescue Services ambulance, headed for Northern Cumberland Hospital with the flashers flashing and the siren wailing. An hour after that I was lying in a crank-up bed, watching blood run down a tube into my arm and listening to some country music ass**le sing about how tough his life had been since his woman left him and his pickup truck broke down.

That pretty well concludes Part One of my story, Ruth-call it Little Nell Across the Ice, or, How I Escaped Handcuffs and Made My Way to Safety. There are two other parts, which I think of as The Aftermath and The Kicker. I'm going to scamp on The Aftermath, partly because it's only really interesting if you're into skin-grafts and pain, but mostly because I want to get to The Kicker before I get too tired and computer-woozy to tell it the way I need to tell it. And the way you deserve to have it told, come to think of it. That idea just occurred to me, and it's nothing but the bald-assed truth, as we used to say. After all, without The Kicker I probably wouldn't be writing you at all.

Before I get to it, though, I have to tell you a little more about Brandon Milheron, who really sums up that Aftermath period for me. It was during the first part of my recovery, the really ugly part, that Brandon came along and more or less adopted me. I'd like to call him a sweet man, because he was there for me during one of the most hellacious times of my life, but sweetness isn't really what he's about-seeing things through is what Brandon is about, and keeping all the sightlines clear, and making sure all the right ducks stay in a row. And that isn't right, either-there's more to him than that and he's better than that but the hour groweth late, and it will have to do. Suff ice it to say that for a man whose job it was to look out for a conservative law-firm's interests in the wake of a potentially nasty situation involving one of the senior partners, Brandon did a lot of hand-holding and encouraging. Also, he never gave me hell for crying on the lapels of his natty three-piece suits. If that was all, I probably wouldn't be going on about him, but there's something else, as well. Something he did for me only yesterday. Have faith, kid-we're getting there.