Being - Chapter Two, part 2
For a second, as Scout starts to pull out the warm clothes from the dryer, she pauses, pressing the fabric to her nose, and inhales long and deep. Fabric softener and the remnants of the Fresh Tide cling and trigger a set of memories, handfuls of summers and late springs when the dryer broke down at her parents’ house, when sheets and towels and jeans had to be hung out on the line, getting caught in the breeze. The image of Ingrid standing with clothes pins in her hands, her blond hair billowing like a flame. Rhett had sketched this image a thousand times the summer he broke his right leg and had to stay sequestered to the first floor, sleeping in the guest room and hobbling from kitchen, to dining room to back yard.
The towel quickly cooled in the air of the Laundromat and Scout stuffed it, along with the rest of the things into the back. A rush of air hits her as she opens the door. A bit cool, but muggy, worse than when she had arrived. She tosses the bag into the bed and searches for the keys in her pocket.
The wind blows and brings with it a feeling. Someone watching her, the sound of swift paws tap-dancing their way across the pavement. Her spine does stiff a moment, her fingers becoming numb. A low growl behind her and a snort. Carefully, she unlocks the car. There’s only one thing that resembles a weapon; the tire iron wedged behind the passenger side seat.
The sound of blood rushes over in her ears, she hears the pace of her heart. She leans in, dropping the bag and wrapping her fingers along with cool shaft. Count to three, clear your head, Rhett and Tony always said to her. Can’t take anything back. She jerks around, the tire iron braced for an attack, but she finds the street empty. No wolf, no man, not even a damn Yorkie.
“Fuck,” she mutters, pressing her hand to her forehead. Her palm presses* against her scar, cool and matted. She glances around, just to be sure, but the parking lot is empty except for her truck and the street lamps shine a bright and gauzy orange.
On the way back to the hotel, she doesn’t bother to bucket her seatbelt. She drives lazy-slow, an arm hanging out the window, music playing soft on the radio. The moon is obscured by a thick layer of purple clouds; _____, forming when the rains were about to start.
She contemplates driving past the hotel, driving out of town and for miles ahead of her. She wouldn’t turn or take an exit, just keep going and going, finding out where Kempner Street turned into route 50 and when route 50 became a tiny dirt road in a little town by the coast.
But the thought of actually leaving, and being alone racked her and she put the truck in park. From where she sat, she saw the dim light of their room, the blue gleam of the TV still being on. Her stomach growled; she hadn’t really eaten since this morning, and even then it was just some toast and a glass of juice that she forced herself to finish. She wasn’t that tired, though the initial hum of the hunt had faded from her skin, evaporated like the warmth of the towel on her face. The pain in her shoulder started to return, a low dull that would go stiff by the morning.
A bead from the dreamcatcher caught a tiny glimmer bouncing off the street light as it dangled in a slow circle. She reached up and brushed along the feather, up to the strings stretched taut across the circle, hopefully brushing and breaking the invisible nightmares and bad thoughts.
~
Infomercials. Campy sci-fi movies. Porn. Cam’s select choice of viewing material at four in the morning. He picked the infomercials and sank into the bed, his head in the softness of the pillow, sheets and blanket pulled up to his shoulders; she kept it frigged almost every where they went.
He lay there listening as Scout fiddled with the door. The key stuck in three times, before finally accepting, the buzzing sound of the lock and cylinder moving. She entered and dropped the bag at the door, toed off her sneakers and hung the jacket over a chair. As she walked by the bed, her shin grazed the mattress and sheets; she shut off the TV and went to the bathroom, shutting the door before turning on the light.
She doesn’t make a sound that is out of turn; toilet flushes, he hears crinkling of plastic, then the sink runs for a while. She brushes her teeth but for once doesn’t complain about the state he left the toothpaste in. The light flicks off and the door opens with a painful creaking. She seems to walk on her toes as she goes around the room lying down salt. Across the balcony door, the window and the front door. A circle around the bed. They sleep with silver and devil’s shoestring under their pillows, holy water by the bed. That’s when the demons come. When you think you’re safe in your own bed, in your own dreams.
She stands a second near the window, holding the container of table salt. She scratches the back of her bare leg with her toe, lets out a wistful sigh before setting down the salt and moving to the bed. The locket and Star of David that hang from the silver chain around her neck clink together as she moves. He rolls to face her and she takes in a tiny gasp.
“I thought you were asleep,” she says, swallowing.
He shrugs. “Still kinda buzzin’.”
“You’ll be useless to me in the morning, then.” She cracks a grin and touches his chest, tracing her nail along the edge of a burn scar on his shoulder. The scar encompasses most of his right arm, from the shoulder almost just past the elbow. A rough road map of knotted tissue. He doesn’t feel much as she presses her whole hand to it, nails scraping a bit, but he he still shudders.
“Wanna go out for breakfast?”
She shakes her head. “Here’s fine.” She moves her hand from the scar to his chest. Surprisingly his front is the part of his body that has taken the least amount of damage. He sucks in air as she presses gently on his bruising ribs. She watches her hand in the dark, her head tilted slightly down. She just runs her fingers back and forth over each rib, and the mole on his side.
“Hey,” he says. “Get some sleep.”
She smirks. “You can’t tell me what to do.” But she kisses him and curls into his chest, like he’s a shell, some sort of armor for her to burrow in. One of her legs slips between his; she fits against him well.
He listens to her breathing until it becomes deep and slow, her jaw softens with sleep.
~
Scout wakes to the sensation of Cam slipping his hand over her hip, clutching her tight against his pelvis, grinding slightly into her. He’s still sleeping, haphazardly rutting against her. She inches forward, removing his hand and out of his grasp. He stops, lulling back into a deeper sleep. She steps out of bed and glances back at him. His head buried in the pillow, an arm tucked underneath him.
A sliver of sunlight pours through the single crack in the curtains and lays across his face, over his slightly parted mouth, highlighting a tiny white scar on his cheek. He stutters out a snore and buries his head further, scrunching his face from the light.
Scout stretches her shoulder, working out the stiffness. There’s popping and she groans, pulling her arm back down and across her stomach. Just then the queasy feeling comes back with a vengeance she has never seen or experienced. In less than ten seconds she’s in the bathroom, kicking shut the door and on her knees in front of the toilet, chucking up the little food left in her system.
When she’s done--and she prays that she’s done--she sits cross-legged on the thin, fluffy carpet, running her palms along the material, digging her nails against the floor. She does her counts, but forgets momentarily what order the numbers go in. All she manages is one, three, twelve and six before giving up. She flushes then leans over the sink, hair falling in curtains around her head.
Sweat drips down her back despite her shaking. She spits in the sink and leans over to lock the door before starting the shower. She still feels dirty, oil and that death smell seeping out of her pores and still stuck in her hair.
The amount of blood between her legs, and smeared across her inner thighs makes her stomach dip, threatening to upheave again. But she opens her mouth into the spray, taking the water in, swallowing as much of it as she can. “Shit, shit,” she says, running her fingers over her skin; no matter how much water runs down her legs, the blood still returns. She stares at her palm, blood and water pooled in it like a chalice, or stigmata.
The sound of the door trying to open and knocking shakes her and she drops her hand, jerking her head to peer through the curtain. “Why’s it locked?” he asks, knocking again. “I gotta piss.”
“Hold on.” She groans. The curtain snaps back as she steps out. She stays on the carpet and reaches for the knob. The lock pops and he pulls open the door. They stand there a moment, just staring. He rubs his eyes, then scratches at his belly. His hair is mussed out of place, the sweat pants hang low on his slim hips.
“Morning,” he greets with a bit of a sardonic tone. She rolls her eyes and steps back into the safety of the shower.
“What do you wanna do about breakfast?” he asks and flushes. She stands right under the force of the water and doesn’t flinch when it flashes over too hot as the toilet replenishes itself.
“I thought we were eating up here.”
“That contential breakfast only lasts until eight-thirty.” He puts down the toilet lid and sits. She hears the creaking of the hard plastic.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re never hungry,” he mumbles. She pictures his hand on his face, the other on his slightly bouncing leg.
“You can go,” she snaps back, fumbling for the shampoo and indiscriminately squirting it into her palm, then ruffling her hair. The rinse is quick and she doesn’t bother to condition, or use soap or body wash. She shuts off the water and rips back the curtain again. He’s still sitting there, face pressed into the cup of his open palms. “What are you doing?”
He lifts his head. “Waitin’ to get in.”
“Well, there you go.” She’s quick to grab for the towels and to kick her discarded underwear under the sink.
~
1997
The sun shone so brightly that Cam had to squint. Penny squirmed in his lap and itched at the white tights at her knees. He dressed her in a light blue dress that made her eyes just as bright as the sky. She didn’t have anything black and he wasn’t going to put her in red. The ground sank a bit under the weight of the fold-out chairs and Cam shifted to keep his legs from falling asleep.
The turnout is considerably small, but Cam wasn’t surprised. Even though they had dipped into suburba, they didn’t make very many close friends. He had weeded through his parents’ journals and address books, called as many family members and ‘friends’ as he could. Pastor Fitch was an old pal of Pat’s, a former hunter. He put the word out in The Almanac-the hunter’s version of the Times-but there were four rows of chairs, mostly empty.
Pastor Fitch conducted the service. He stood at the podium next to the coffins and two open graves. Coffins that were only one step up from being pine wood boxes. Cam had thought about making sure, making really sure that his parents wouldn’t change. Thought of chopping off their heads and burning them. Just because they hadn’t changed yet, didn’t mean that they wouldn’t. But he had stuffed garlic in the coffins, tucked under their bodies. He draped fine silver chains over their wrists and necks, just in case. A vampire would have a helluva time breaking out of that.
There was no church service, just right at the burial plot. Cam, Mitch and Penny sat in the front row. Mitch cried, staring at his shoes. Penny just fidgeted. Her braid was coming undone and he kept tucking strands of hair behind her ear.
Behind the Emery children sat Jane’s one and sibling, her sister Lindy, and her husband Moe. Cam kept biting the insides of his cheeks listening to Lindy cry.
Pastor Fitch read passages from Luke and the Psalms, something from Corinthians. Cam left all that stuff up to him. He kept his arm tight around Penny’s little waist. She wiggled and turned back a few times to ask if it was over. “Keep still, Princess,” he whispered into her ear.
After Fitch finished and walked away from the podium, Cam stood, putting Penny down on the chair. Mitch held her hand. As the caskets lowered, people started coming up to Cam, shaking his hand.
“Real sorry about your parents, boy.”
“Pat was a hell of a man, hell of a hunter.”
“Sometimes this happens. Can’t avoid it, not with what we do.”
His head was ready to explode, but he kept a fridgid stance. Nodded and shook hands. He tugged at the tie that was too tight around his neck. He sweated under the suit and Mitch kept scratching at his ankles where the shoes were too tight.
When Penny noticed the caskets being lowered, she leapt to her feet and tried to run to them. Cam stopped her. “Whoa, Penny, what are you doing?”
“It’s time for Mommy and Daddy to wake up,” she said, looking. “They can’t wake up if their under ground.”
His chest broken in two and he started to leak marrow and blood all over the place. When they found her in the pantry covered in Pat and Jane’s blood, he thought she understood. The fact that she had been alone in the house for hours; she must have heard what was going on while she sat in there with her blocks.
“They aren’t waking up, Penny,” he said, bending down to her level. Her face soured, her little lips puckered. She glanced at the coffins, then back to him.
“Why not?”
He bit the insides of his cheeks again. He wished she would have waited until they got to the car or the motel. Or that she asked the night it happened. Any where but here. He licked his lips and put his hands on her shoulders. “Mom and Dad…they’re dead Penny. That means they aren’t coming back. They’re bodies don’t work anymore.”
Her lip trembled. Normally a ploy for attention, but she wasn’t even trying. “Why can’t you fix it?”
He shook his head. “You can’t fix it when you die, Penny. They went to Heaven, and, you don’t come back from that.” He tried to remember the first time he faced death, the first time it was explained to him. Surely he was older than Penny. But who died? A monster maybe? But monsters were supposed to die. Not grown ups, not your parents.
She blinked through her tears. “No, no Cam you have to fix it. You have to tell them to come back.”
“Don’t work like that, Princess.”
She started to cry and he picked her up, held her in his arms and against his chest. She sobbed into the crook of his shoulder and neck, snotting up his suit. “I want Mommy,” she wailed.
He put a hand on the center of her back, making sure she wouldn’t slip. “I know.’ He swayed a bit and turned so she didn’t have to see the coffins. Mitch stayed in his seat, ground the heel of his shoe in the grass and dirt, making a hole.
“Cameron?” a croaked voice called. He maneuvered himself in the other direction to keep Penny from seeing.
Lindy stood in front of him, Moe holding her arm. She dabbed under her eyes. She and Jane hadn’t been close, not since Jane ran off with Pat when she was twenty. “Do you want me to take her?” she offered, putting out her arms.
Cam scrunched his face. “I’ve got her.”
“Oh.” She stiffly smiled and brought in her arms. “Listen, Cameron. I wanted to talk to you…well we did.” She pulled on her husband’s arm. “I know that the family is stretched out, but Moe and I would like to take Penelope.
He stepped back. “Why?”
She almost laughed. “You’re just a baby. She needs to be taken care of.”
“I’m eighteen,” he said. He looked to his younger brother. “What about Mitch?”
“Well we’d like to take him too, you as well if you wanted. But she’s just a little girl.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And we’re all she has.”
Lindy pursed her lips together and dabbed at her eyes. “Cameron.”
“Do you know how they died?” he whispered. There were a few people from the neighborhood that didn’t need to hear. He was taller than his aunt, towered over her a bit, his form just started to fill out of awkward thinness to defined muscle. “Vamps ripped out their throats. You gonna be able to protect her from that?”
She gasped a bit, looked over his shoulder then back into his eyes. “Just think about it, okay?” she went on, the same tight lip talking that Jane did. “We just want what’s best for her.”
Cam hoisted Penny higher, held her tighter. He reached down and pulled Mitch up by the shoulder. “I’m taking care of them.” Mitch nodded and wiped under his nose and moved down the aisle in front of his brother. Cam stroked Penny’s hair as he walked towards the car. She whimpered something about Mommy one more time before she was strapped into her car seat.