The Searcher(100)

For the first time since he arrived, Ireland feels tiny and cramped to him. What he needs is thousands of miles of open highway where he can floor it all day and all night long, watching the sun and the moon pass over nothing but ochre desert and tangled brush. If he tried that around here, he would get about fifty yards before running into an unjustifiable road twist, a flock of sheep, a pothole the size of his bathtub or a tractor going the other way. He goes walking instead, but the fields are so sodden they squelch like bog under his feet, and the road verges are churned to extravagant pits and ridges of mud that stop him from ever finding a rhythm to his stride. Mostly these inconveniences wouldn’t bother him, but right now they feel personally targeted: pebbles in his shoes, small but carefully chosen for their sharp corners.

Cal refuses to let his unsettled feeling faze him too badly. It’s natural enough, after the disturbance Trey brought. If he lets it be and does plenty of hard work, the feeling will pass. This is what he did at times when, for example, his marriage or his job pinched him around the edges, and it worked: sooner or later, things shifted themselves around enough that he felt at ease amid them again. He reckons by the time he has the house ready for winter, he should have worn the restlessness down.

In the event, he doesn’t get the chance. Less than two weeks after he sends Trey packing, he’s sitting in his nice spiffed-up front room, in front of a wood fire. It’s a high-tempered, unruly night, windy enough to make Cal wonder if his roof is as sound as he thought. He’s reading the skinny local paper, and listening for the sound of smashing roof slates, when there’s a knock at the door.

The knock has an odd quality, rough and sloppy, more like an animal’s pawing. If it hadn’t come in the lull between two gusts, Cal might have put it down to the wind hurling a branch up against the door. It’s ten at night, past farmers’ bedtime unless something is badly wrong.

Cal puts his paper down and stands for a moment in the middle of his front room, wondering whether to get his rifle. The knock doesn’t come again. He crosses to the door and cracks it open.

Trey is standing on his doorstep, shaking from head to toe like a whipped dog. One of her eyes is purple and swollen shut. Blood is streaked across her face and pouring down her chin. She’s holding up one hand, curled into a claw.

“Aw, shit,” Cal says. “Aw, shit, kid.”

Her knees are buckling. He wants to pick her up and carry her inside, but he’s terrified to touch her in case he hurts her worse. “Get in here,” he says.

She stumbles inside and stands there, wobbling and panting. She looks like she doesn’t know where she is.

Cal can’t see anyone coming after her, but he locks the door all the same. “Here,” he says. “Come on. Over here.” He guides her to the armchair with his fingertips on her shoulders. When she drops into it she lets out a sharp hiss of pain.

“Wait,” Cal says. “Wait there. Hold on.” He gets his sleeping bag and duvet from his bedroom and tucks them around the kid, as gently as he can. Her good hand fastens on the duvet so hard the knuckles whiten.

“There you go,” Cal says. “It’s gonna be OK.” He finds a clean towel and squats by the armchair to stem the blood dripping off her chin. Trey flinches away, but when he tries again she doesn’t have the focus to stop him. He blots till he can see where the blood is coming from. Her bottom lip is split open.

“Who did this to you?”

The kid’s mouth opens wide, like she’s going to howl like a broken animal. Nothing comes out but more blood.

“It’s OK,” Cal says. He gets the towel to her mouth again and presses. “Never mind. You don’t have to say anything. You just sit still awhile.”

Trey stares past him and shakes. She breathes in shallow huffs, like it hurts. Cal can’t tell if she knows what’s going on, or if she took a blow to the head and wandered here in a daze. He can’t tell how bad that hand is, or if any teeth are gone, or what other damage might be hidden under her hoodie. The blood from her mouth is everywhere.

“Kid,” he says gently. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just need to know what hurts worst. Can you show me?”

For a moment he thinks she can’t hear him. Then she lifts her curled hand and motions at her mouth and at her side.

“OK,” Cal says. She knows what he’s saying, at least. “Good job. We’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

The kid’s good eye flares wide with panic and she starts struggling to get her feet under her. “No,” she says, in a harsh growl blurred by the swollen lip. “No doctor.”

Cal puts up his hands, trying to block her into the armchair. “Kid. You need X-rays. That lip, you could need stitches—”

“No. Get away, get—” She smashes his hands away and manages to stand up, rocking.

“Listen to me. If your hand’s broken—”

“I don’t care. Fuck off, get—”

She’s ready to fight her way to the door and stumble back into the night. “OK,” Cal says, stepping back and raising his hands. “OK. OK. No doctor. Just sit down.”

He has no idea what to do if she won’t, but after a minute, when the words get through, the fight goes out of her and she collapses back into the chair.

“There you go,” Cal says. “That’s better.” He puts the towel back to her mouth. “You feel like you’re gonna throw up?”