Chapter Fifteen
Unexpected Warmth
There were no caves within the narrow rift, but there was an overhang and the ground beneath it was dry. It had to be close to 50 degrees within this cleft of the Earth, while I doubted it was much above zero outside of it. The answer to the warmth could be found in the steam rising off the water of several pools throughout the cleft. Geothermal heat rising off some underground body of magma close to the surface. This place was a godsend!
Trent was sitting on a rock by one of the pools, with his feet in the pool of warm water. Deshavi was doing likewise farther away from him. I was too lazy and worn out to crawl over to the water’s edge or I would have been doing the same. I saw Deshavi cup some of the water in her hands.
“I wouldn’t drink it Deshavi. I’m not sure what the chemical makeup of it might be. We’ll melt snow for drinking water later.”
She nodded and let the warm water slip through her hands back into the pool. She looked lonely sitting there all by herself and she looked the part as well. I saw her glance at Trent, when he wasn’t looking. She wanted to be over there with him, but some internal wall kept her where she was. Trent glanced over at her and she quickly looked elsewhere.
As I watched the two I began to plot how it would be best to go about breaking up this divide between them. I was certainly going to need a large portion of Divine intervention to achieve a reunion of the warring factions at play within this setting. I just hoped I’d recognize the opportunity to do so when it appeared. One thing was for sure, we were going to be here for a while, at least for as long as the storm continued to rage outside. My eyelids descended, as restful sleep took over my consciousness.
We didn’t attempt much the second day, but to eat and sleep in the warmth of the hidden vale. Trent and I were exchanging outrageous war stories that had little basis in reality, while Deshavi continued to sleep on her bed role for long periods of time.
Deshavi abruptly began to twist and moan in her sleep and then she screamed. Both I and Trent rushed toward her, but Trent beat me there. As he reached down to awaken her from the nightmare her eyes opened and she screamed again.
It happened too fast for Trent to avoid it. Her hand came up with a rock in it and she smashed it into his temple repeatedly. Trent fell and she still whacked at him with the rock. I grabbed the hand with the rock and knocked it away, before backhanding her across the face splitting her lip in the process.
The slap seemed to snap her into some form of conscious reality and she scooted away on the ground.
“What the devil’s wrong with you?” I roared out at her.
I gave her tear stained face one last look of incomprehension before I turned back to Trent.
I rolled Trent over. The first hit had been the worst. It had left a nasty gauge in his forehead, which was bleeding freely down the side of his face. I couldn’t tell whether the damage was more than just superficial or not, because of all the blood. He was out cold.
Deshavi began to wail at the sight of all the blood and clutched her knees to her chest. I had to slow this bleeding somehow. Trent abruptly stirred and I relaxed inwardly glad that he wasn’t in a coma. His eyes blinked open and he said something that he shouldn’t have, as he clutched at his head with both hands. As his hand came away all bloody he found Deshavi and gave her a look that was not nice at all.
“I’ve had it!” He spit out with all the venom his words could muster.
Awkwardly with my help he got to his feet. He abruptly pulled free of my grasp and stumbled away towards a more secluded part of the cut still clutching at his head.
At the sight of him leaving Deshavi truly began to sob piteously.
Oh God what to do?
I glanced down and caught sight of some old scars on my arm. This could work!
I ran after Trent leaving Deshavi to sob.
“Trent!” I said, as I grasped his arm to stop him. He tried to shrug out of my hold on him, but I held on.
“Go away!” He said unkindly.
“Trent you need to hear a story!”
“I don’t want to hear any of your stupid stories!”
I grasped him, even more firmly and waited for his pain filled eyes to meet mine. In utter sincerity I said, “Please humor an old man and listen to what I have to say!”
He stopped moving to be free and I sensed my opening.
“I had a pet once, a cat. It really wasn’t my pet it was my wife’s. I hated the thing, but I was stuck with it, because my wife adored it. It seemed to know how I felt about it and it deliberately goaded me. It would saturate my favorite chair with its hair, scratch up my favorite pair of boots and other little things just to annoy me. My wife died in childbirth. I was a mess. I couldn’t see my way forward. In the turmoil of that time the cat disappeared. At first I thought good riddance and then I realized that in a way that cat was a part of the life I had shared with my wife. It wasn’t right to just walk out on a responsibility to care for something my wife had loved. I went looking for the cat. I found the caught in a trap. One of its legs was firmly caught in the jaws of the trap and it was going to take both of my hands in order to free it from the trap. The cat was maddened by fear and pain and I knew it would attack me.”
I paused and Trent drawn in by my story asked, “What happened?”
I turned both my arms over to reveal the undersides of them. Against the darker color of my skin the white trace lines of the scars stood out in sharp relief.
“I opened the trap.”
Trent winced, as he looked at the scars and I continued on, “That cat loved me after that and never left my side. I was grateful for that cat, because it helped me manage to get through a very difficult time. At night, when the hours were so long and the bed empty beside me, that cat would hop up on the bed and nuzzle into my hand and I would pet it all night. In no way was it a replacement for my wife, but it was at least something warm and alive that had been special to my wife. That cat helped keep me sane through the long hours of silence that it punctuated by its purring presence.”
Trent sighed and glanced away for a moment. “Caleb, Deshavi isn’t a cat that needs saved from a trap.”
“No she isn’t! She something of much more value than just a mere house cat! She is in a trap, one of her own making, that only she enforces and you are the only one that can unlock her from it!”
Trent glanced back at Deshavi, who was still crying, “You’re asking a lot!”
“I am, because there is a lot to be gained.”
Trent sighed, “Okay you win, but this is going to hurt.”
Trent turned back to the campsite and I followed after him. I’d pulled that one out of the fire so to speak, but it wasn’t over.
I sat off to the side curious to see how the scene would unfold. Deshavi glanced up somewhat concerned at Trent’s reappearance in the campsite. He rummaged through some packs and pulled out the first aid bag. He then approached Deshavi and tossed the bag at her. She caught it reflexively, as he sat down cross legged opposite of her. She started to scoot back, but one big hand fell onto a knee rooting her to the spot.
He pointed with his free hand to the head wound, “You did it, now you’re going to fix it.”
Deshavi shook her head no, completely speechless.
“What? You’re going to just let me bleed and possibly die from infection? I don’t think so!”
Still, she sat still hesitating, as she bit her lip.
“Now!” He said, in a firm voice that wasn’t to be questioned.
She jerked hard and began to clumsily work open the first aid bag. Trent relaxed his hold on her knee, which enabled her to rise up on her knees beside him and start cleaning away the blood. Little mumbled apologies mixed with tears began to bubble up out of Deshavi. Her fingers were clumsy at their task, from a combination of nerves, and the awkwardness of the two broken fingers still taped to each other.
In a small voice she said, “You need stitches.”
“Then get to it.” Trent affirmed.
Deshavi gestured at her shaking hands, “I’ll hurt you!”
“You’ve already hurt me Deshavi, now it’s time to start putting the pieces back together.”
Crying she nodded and reached for the threaded needle.
It wasn’t pretty, but Trent just sat there stoic faced, as Deshavi becoming more and more flustered did more harm than any good to the wound. I couldn’t take it any longer. I moved forward and knelt behind Deshavi and molded my fingers to the backs of hers, steadying her shaking one’s. Together we made a halfway decent job of it, but Trent would always have a significant scar by which to remember today by.
Having finished Deshavi started to move out of reach, but Trent’s arms came out and enfolded her pulling her closer. She resisted at first, but gave in and let Trent hold her, as her own arms tentatively found their way around him. I backed off and busied myself elsewhere in the cut leaving them to be alone. Thank God for my wife’s miserable cat!
Things were better after that, but Deshavi still kept off to herself somewhat. Two more days passed by and finally it stopped snowing and got warmer on the outside. Hopefully another day of warmth would have the snow down far enough to make our way through it. Again the temptation was to just stay here in this haven, but as nice as it was we had nowhere near the food or supplies needed to make it through a long winter here. We needed to keep moving south before it was impossible to.
I’d smoked all the meat that I could and I was just finishing with wrapping up the last of it, when Trent walked up. I glanced up, he seemed anxious about something. The only thing he was ever anxious about was Deshavi so it must be something to do with her.
“So what’s up with you and Deshavi?”
He gave me a look of ‘how did you know’?
I just smiled knowingly in return.
“I’m concerned about Deshavi. She smells.”
One of my eyebrows rose at that statement and Trent was quick to respond with, “I know we all smell somewhat gamey, but she’s different since yesterday. I’m worried that some of her cuts have become infected. She isn’t about to let me check on them and I was wondering if you would take a look, because she might let you.”
His concern was touching, but he had a few things to learn about women. I knew what he was referring to, as I had smelled it too, but unlike him I had once been married.
“What you’re smelling Trent is a good thing, because it means she’s not pregnant.”
“What?” He exclaimed giving me a dumbfounded look. Something seemed to dawn within his eyes and his face flushed, as he emitted a comprehending, “Oh!”
He started to turn away to retreat from the scene of his humiliation, but I called out to him, “Trent you are right about something. Two things actually.”
He turned back somewhat reluctantly, “What?”
I fished around in one of the packs and brought out a bar of soap, which I tossed up at him. He stared at it in the palm of his hand like he didn’t know what it was for.
“For one thing you’re right about, Deshavi has not been taking care of herself and could use a bath. Secondly her injuries do need to be looked at.”
He stared at me, as if I’d gone crazy, “You’ve got to be kidding right?”
“No actually I’m not. What’s the matter you’ve done it once before?”
“But that was different! She wasn’t awake and she was dying!”
“Well she has the same body, whether it’s awake or not and it needs washed. What bearing her being alive now, as opposed to dying has on the matter in question, I’m not sure?”
“Were not married!” Trent exclaimed, in a further denouncement of what I was suggesting.
“Trent I’m not asking you to make love with her. I’m asking you to do what she seems un-capable of doing right now, which is to adequately take care of herself.”
His lips moved, but no words came out. Finally, he managed in a strangled voice, “Shouldn’t you do this?”
I sat back from my work slightly, “I washed her in a tub up until she turned five years old. She’s your girl now. Your girl, means your responsibility, which means you wash her.”
I stood up and patted him on the back and pushed him up the cut to where I had seen Deshavi disappear off to earlier.
“Relax, it’ll be all right.”
“Yeah right! She’ll likely try to kill me all over again!”
“Actually, I think you might be surprised by how she reacts. Here take these clothes along with you. She hasn’t worn them yet.”
I watched Trent slowly make his way up the cut like a condemned man’s walk to the gallows and couldn’t help but smile. The soap bar was clutched so hard in his hand I half worried that it would be pulverized by the time he reached her.
Perhaps my methods were a bit unorthodox, but my madness of thought was based on sound reasoning. Perhaps Deshavi strongest reasons for acting different were because she simply now felt like a different person, because of what had happened to her. She would soon find out that in Trent’s eyes she was exactly the same person that he had been in lust over during this whole past summer.
Maybe she’d accept that about herself and let all the mental tie-ups taking place within her head fade away like the scars that would fade away with time. That was the positive side of what could begin to happen. The negative side was much more grim. I may have just sent Trent off to get his head bashed in all over again.
Trent made his way down the game trail not at all sure about his mission. Deshavi was sitting beside a deeper pool. It just so happened to be the same pool of heated water that he and Caleb had used to bathe in. Deshavi looked up at his appearance slightly surprised.
Since the head banging incident she’d lost the deer in the headlights look around him, which he was profoundly grateful for. She was still standoffish with him though. There was simply no way he could do what Caleb had asked him to.
She glanced suspiciously at the clothes under his arm. He set them down near her and then stepping forward handed her the bar of soap. She took it asking a question with her eyes.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow and Caleb thought it would be a good idea, if you availed yourself of all this lovely warm water, before we left by taking a bath, because we don’t know when such a luxury might present itself again. You have the soap and here are some fresh clothes and if you need anything I’ll be right around the corner.”
Trent quickly turned to go, but then turned back reluctantly. “Oh one more thing. I….ah….I need to look at how well your healing up too.”
He quickly held up a hand forestalling any words from Deshavi. “I’m sure you can look to see how the stitches in the front are coming along so I don’t need to see those unless of course, if something’s wrong, than I need to see. All I need to see is your back, as you can’t see all of that well for yourself. Well that’s it. I’ll be around the corner waiting, but don’t rush on my account! Feel free to take as long as you like.” Trent said, as he quickly backed away.
Deshavi stared after Trent, until he stepped out of view around the corner. She sensed her grandfather’s involvement in this. The warm water had been crying out to her though. She slipped off her boots and stepped out into the warm water. She looked at the white bar of soap in her hand. A tear slipped down her face to splash onto the soap bar. How was she ever supposed to wash herself clean with just soap? It wasn’t possible so why even try?
Trent leaned back against the rocky wall counting one one 1000ths, until he’d reached a hundred of them. He couldn’t take it anymore. Cautiously he peeked around the corner to see, if she’d even taken him up, on washing herself. What he saw broke his heart a little further than it had already been. She was just standing there still clothed staring at the bar soap in her hand.
Action was required and he felt the healing wound at his temple pulse painfully at what that would require of him. He stepped away from the corner and slowly walked toward her.
She watched him take his boots off and then step into the water and come towards her. Again he held up a hand forestalling any words she might say.
“You need to be clean. Your wounds need checked. I swear that’s all I’m going to do. I’m going to wash you and check out how you’re healing. I’ll swear that on the Bible, my mother’s heart, anything you want so please don’t take this badly.” He finished, as he began to unbutton her shirt and then her pants.
He reached for the soap bar, but she held onto it slightly and his eyes met hers.
“Your mother’s heart?” She asked softly.
“You know how much I love my mother and how I would never hurt her?”
She nodded yes.
“Well I feel the same way about you!”
She released the soap bar and he did exactly what he said he would. He washed her gently, but thoroughly and checked all her injuries, which had healed surprisingly well without any signs of infection.
The girl had good genes and Trent couldn’t resist patting himself on the back a little. He’d done the best stitch work of his life on her. Her rib cage area was still discolored purple and yellow. He pressed on her ribs individually, while monitoring her for response. “Any of that hurt?”
She shook her head no.
“Just looks bad then. Okay I’m all done then, thank you for not bashing me with a rock.” Trent said turning away, as he started to slog through the soapy water towards the shore.
Her words stopped him though. “Don’t you think the stitches should come out?”
Drat it! Drat it! Drat, echoed over loudly within Trent’s consciousness. Yes the stitches should come out, but this wasn’t easy! Being next to her, seeing her, touching her was sheer torture and Trent only too well felt his charade of being an unresponsive celibate monk fading fast. How did one act around one’s fantasy, as if one didn’t desire it, but the dice were cast.
“I suppose so.” Trent said gruffly turning so that he came around to Deshavi’s back.
Her back wasn’t the problem, it was the front. He just hadn’t wanted to get that personal with her chest, not in the here and now anyway.
Her back took a while. Before he could move around to work on her chest she turned to him. He kept his eyes down and worked, as gently as he could to remove the stitching, even as the unwanted turbulent desires coursed around inside of him.
He was somewhat absorbed in his task, when she spoke authoritatively. “You really don’t care how many men have had me or touched what you’re touching do you?”
Trent’s fingers stilled at their task and all buried thoughts of passion dissipated and for the first time in a long time he let his eyes raise to hers and let her see the anger he felt at her statement.
“Like hell I don’t! I’d like to personally escort every piece of living crud that had a hand in what was done to you to hell itself and stay there to watch their torment for a while!”
“You say that, but you still desire me as if nothing happened! What makes you any different than them? ” She shot back at him vehemently.
Trent’s jaw muscles clenched hard in order to hold back harsh words. He didn’t want a shouting match. God all he wanted to do was help her, but she was attacking him with unjustified claims, which exceeded greatly in arousing his temper, because there was anything but the truth in what she said!
An idea popped into his mind and he decided to take a page out of Caleb’s book and run with it. “When I was in high school I was on the football squad. I was something of a celebrity that everyone wanted to be around and be with. The life of the party if you will.”
Trent pointed at Deshavi meaningfully, as in reference to a double parallel between them.
“I broke my leg badly and the party all went away, as did my dreams of being a football star.”
Again he pointed at her suggestively. “But you know what happened? It took a while, but my leg healed and once again I was the same as before physically, but I decided to take a different path in life. A destructive one. One that I nearly didn’t get out of before it destroyed me. I would have died in my fallen lifestyle, if it hadn’t been for my mother banging on heaven’s door in prayer on behalf of me!”
Deshavi’s gaze wobbled slightly away and she started to step back in the water, but Trent held her fast by the shoulders.
“Your scars are almost healed and your bruises are fading away and you look as beautiful as you ever did! Why on Earth do you think I wouldn’t be attracted to you? Now comes a choice that only you can make. You can keep on believing the worst of me and confuse me up with all the men who raped you or you can realize all over again that I love you and to me you’ll always be my girl of summer despite whatever you may look like or what’s been done to you!”
Trent’s hands came off her shoulders and spread wide, as he backed away through the water.
“You can take the rest of the stitches out for yourself or have Caleb do it. Either way I’m not going to lay a hand on you till you ask me to and sincerely want my touch and affection. I’m not the kind of scum that would ever take advantage of a woman like you have been, and I don’t like being grouped together with those who have!”
Deshavi quickly responded in a shaken tone, “I never said you were like them!”
“You inferred it!” Trent shot back in response.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to!”
“Okay then, apology accepted, but I’m still keeping a distance from you, until you show me you still want something more with me and Deshavi I very much want that to happen!”
It had been quite a while since Trent had left. Perhaps my plan had worked too well. No, I trusted Trent too much for that. Just then Trent appeared. I noted the wet pant legs and water spotted shirt. Ahhh a successful mission then.
He didn’t stop in the camp, but kept on stalking past it toward the head of the cut. Poor boy I’d put him through hell with this little chore, but once again he’d shown what a fine man he was.
I was laying on my back resting letting my eyes drift upward to the blue sky overhead, as I contemplated the second act of the drama that I was embroiled in. Not too long after Trent’s disappearance in walked my granddaughter. I watched her gracefully comb some of her wet hair behind one ear. What a positive sign that was.
Uh Oh!
I began to sense I was in trouble, if the measured tone of her stride toward me was any indication. I kept my features serene, as she quietly sat down on a rock close beside me. Her face was hard to read and I hoped mine was too.
“You meddle too much in other people’s affairs grandfather. You put him up to that didn’t you?”
I nodded admitting my guilt.
“You’ve always pushed too hard!” She stated with emphasis.
I nodded again.
She looked away and I couldn’t get a read on what she was thinking.
“Is it working?”
She nodded slowly, “Maybe.” She said softly. Her eyes came back to mine and I saw the raw pain she’d been masking.
Emotion rose in her tone, as she started talking, “I thought I lost everything! But he says it’s all still there! I want to believe him! I want the future we had planned together, but I don’t know if I can.…..” She said her voice trailing off miserable sounding.
“Avoid disappointing him?” I filled in for her.
She nodded emphatically before saying, “I feel thin. I feel like if I try too much I’ll snap and go crazy!”
I nodded in understanding more deep than she knew.
She grew quiet and I watched the emotions and self-doubts that swirled across her face.
“I was tortured once.”
Her eyes abruptly halted from her thoughts and showed surprised instead, “When?”
“Long before you were born.”
“You’ve never talked about it.” She said softly prompting.
“Well, as I’m sure you can attest to, it’s not something you want to remember let alone talk about with anyone. In a way it’s quite humiliating isn’t it?”
“Yes!” She intoned emphatically, but I went on, as if I hadn’t heard her speak.
“All of your basic concepts of self and life and the way you live it yanked out and exposed. Turned on end and broken. I know the crisis of identity you’re going through honey. Some of your struggle will be with you for the rest of your life, but it doesn’t have to define you or be how you’re known by.”
“Who helped you?” She asked softly.
“Your grandmother. She was an amazing woman. I kept telling her that I wasn’t the same man that I was before. She just kept telling me and treating me like I was and one day I realized that I was.”
I reached out to gently touch her taped together fingers. “Trent’s that person for you.”
She nodded, as tears fell freely down her face.
“He can help you pick up the pieces, but it’s going to take Divine help to glue them all back together.”
She nodded.
“Do you mind if I pray with you?”
“I would like that!”
And that’s what I did.
Having been done praying for a few moments and just basking in the peace that comes, when needed most, I decided it was time to complete this positively upturned day. I made my way up to my feet slowly. Taking her good hand I pulled her up and roundly smacked Deshavi on the bottom.
She backed away from me in surprise rubbing at her rear as she did so, “What was that for?”
“To keep you from getting too complacent. Go on with you now! There’s reconstruction work to be done.”
“Now?” She asked uncertainly.
“Yes now! What are you waiting for, a golden invitation?”
She smiled at me, the first in what seemed like an age. She came to me then and her arms looped around me in a hug, which I gently returned.
She drew back a little, “You’ve always pushed too hard, but you’ve always been there for me to. Thank you grandpa for everything!”
I watched her go then. I shook my head, as I thought to myself how odd it was that the battles and torments of one’s own past could become the object lessons and encouragements needed to help the younger generation through the difficulties they faced in the present. It was sort of like I had been paving the way forward for them with my life. I liked being able to do it for them, but I just wished I hadn’t had to experience what I had just the same. Still, if what happens to one in life is largely unavoidable, then at least some of the bad occurrences I had suffered were turning out with more positive endings to them.
Deshavi’s foot snapped a twig and Trent looked around and showed surprise at seeing her. They were at the opening of the cut and it was colder there. Deshavi, with her arms wrapped around herself, for warmth, surprised Trent even further by stepping up against his chest.
Before he could frame a question of why or ask what was wrong she looked up and sincerely asked, “Could you just please hold me and tell me I’m pretty?”
Trent’s arms closed around her with a gentle firmness. “You were never pretty Deshavi. You’ve always been nothing but beautiful to me!”
I stuttered to awakeness by reason of a persistent nightly urge. Oh it sucked to get old, especially always having to go at night! Grumpily I got up and left the campsite to deal with my pressing need. When I came back to the campsite I stirred up the embers of the dying fire into a small blaze, as I like the extra heat at night.
I got up from the fire and started to head back for my blanket and pallet of dried grass, when I saw something that gave me pause. I stepped closer wanting to see more of what the firelight had revealed. I had noticed that Deshavi and Trent had bedded down closer to each other and now I knew why.
Both of them lay on their sides facing each other with one outstretched arm toward one another. There in the dust that lay between them their fingers were entwined with each other, in a firm clasp that hadn’t let go, even while they slept. Deshavi’s face was so peaceful.