2 May 2012: Scene VIII

VIII

 “That was a short nap.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“About five minutes, if that.” 

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“It seemed much longer.”

Ben looked around the room, inspecting the corners, peering into the adjoining living room for evidence that someone had sat on the sofa since he had been there less than three minutes ago.  It was a habit he fell into whenever he was nervous or anxious or, in that particular moment, not feeling very patient and eager to follow up on a possible insight.  

“Can I get you set up on the computer?”

 “Yes.  Please. “

Ben began walking to the work station that was just off the kitchen, eyeing the wall on the other side of the doorway as he passed through.

“Have you brushed my teeth yet?” Gabe asked, stopping Ben in his tracks.

“No.”

“Let’s do that first.”

“Of course.”

He changed directions and headed to the other side of the house with the careful inspections beginning anew.  In the bathroom, a quick glance confirmed that the only thing in the specially designed shower stall was the spare hand pushed-powered wheelchair. 

“So, did you get Max?”

“No.  I haven’t had a chance.”

“It will be interesting to see how he and Molly interact.”

“Yes,” he said, with the toothbrush in hand and about to apply the toothpaste.

“I had a dream that we had a long conversation about the painting in the sunroom.”

“That wasn’t a dream.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.” 

Ben moved the electric toothbrush up to Gabe’s mouth but he sat quietly, gazing out the window of the bathroom.

“So, you know all about the painting?”

“Yes.”

He continued to sit still and Ben was tempted to lightly tap Gabe’s cheek with his finger but a moment later his mouth opened.

Beneath Gabe’s lips and cheeks, he watched the bulge of the brush doing its task, feeling the pressure difference as he moved from gum to teeth, paying particular attention to stroking downward on the gums to keep them healthy.  Ben moved quicker than usual and pulled out the toothbrush before the unit vibrated that two minutes were up.

“Did the timer go off?”

“No.  But you’re good.”

“I don’t want my teeth to fall out.”

“Neither do I.”

Ben rinsed off the toothbrush and poured mouthwash in a small cup with a plastic straw poking out.

“When are you going to get Max?”

“I’m not sure.  Busy day.”    He held the straw up to Gabe’s lips who sipped up the blue wash, swooshed it about in his mouth and spit it out back through the straw.

“Well, you can’t leave him there too long.”

“I know,” he said, wiping Gabe’s face with a wet wash cloth.

“He’s a good dog.”

“He is.  Ready?”

“Yes.”

Ben walked briskly back to the computer, turned it on and, when Gabe arrived, placed the Bluetooth over his ear so that he could operate the computer by voice command as well as call Ben’s phone if he was out of voice range. 

“Anything else you need?”

“Yes.  A glass of water.”

Ben retrieved that and held the glass with another straw to Gabe’s mouth which he quickly downed.

“You were thirsty.”

“Yes.”

“More?”

“No, I’m good.  Thanks.”

“I’ll be in the den if you need me.”

“Okay.”

Once in the other room, he closed the door to block his conversation but also to keep out Gabe’s audibles from filtering in. He sat down behind the large mahogany wooden desk that had become his work area during the day when he was keeping watch. 

First things first, he looked up the number of the veterinarian, gave them a call and let them know he wouldn’t be picking up Max that day.

“So, tomorrow?” the young assistant asked.

“Pardon?”

“Will you be coming to get him tomorrow?”

Tomorrow? Ben thought.  “Well, we’re really not sure what the plan is at the moment,” he said, which was followed by a very long silence.  “Hello?”

“Yes, I’m here,” the young woman said.

“Is that a problem?”

“Um.  Normally, people let us know how long they plan on leaving their pets.”

Ben was thinking indefinitely.

“How about a week?  Will that work?”

“Yes.  That should be fine.”

“Great.  Thank you.”

He hung up and immediately pulled open the large desk drawer .  Still sitting in the same place Ben left it about seven months ago, was the GPS unit that Gabe used to track his rides.  When Gabe had arrived back from his three months at the spinal clinic, Ben had pulled the unit off the bike and the two of them looked up how fast he was going when he hit the bridge.  The thirty-eight miles an hour seemed fast to Ben but Gabe said that it wasn’t unusual for him to hit the mid to upper forties on a downhill.  Somehow, to Ben, the idea of running across a field with enemy bullets zipping by seemed less frightening than the thought of hurling down a hill on a bike at almost fifty miles an hour. 

But it wasn’t Gabe’s speed that was of interest at the moment.  Ben plugged the unit into the computer on the desk, hoping that it still had a charge.  It came to life with a warning message that there was only seventeen percent of battery life; enough to do the trick, he figured.  

He navigated through the menu, seeking the options related to tracking the route.   A compressed view of Gabe’s path popped up showing little detail.  Ben zoomed in and scrolled to the end of that day’s route, just before the crash.  About a quarter of a mile from the bridge the tracking line showed that Gabe turned around. 

“That would be on the hill,” he said, thinking aloud, picturing their walk yesterday.

The time tag did not show that he stopped until he back-tracked to a spot about two hundred feet uphill. 

“The overlook, where we stopped,” he guessed.

He looked at the next time tag, when Gabe got back on the bike and headed back downhill toward the bridge: three minutes and twenty-seven seconds later.  Not a heck of a long rest stop.

So, what? What did he see, Ben wondered?  Did he see Alexa down in the creek bed and wanted to stop and say hello?  If he was going forty miles an hour, how could he even recognize her if he did happen to see her?  Ben couldn’t imagine looking off to the side when barreling down a hill at that speed.  Maybe she was standing by the side of the road.  And what?   He screeched to a halt, turned around and by the time he had pedaled back up to where she was, she was already running down the hill?  She would have gotten a lot further than that if she ran as soon as she saw him.  Unless, she waited for him to ride back up, they talked while he pulled out his gun, he shot her, dragged her down the hill, dumped her in the brush and hightailed it back to his bike all in three and a half minutes.  Yeah, right, he thought.  And, what the hell was she doing out there in the first place in the middle of nowhere? 

“Hey, Alexa.  What are you doing down there?”

Ben envisioned himself at the top of the hill, looking down at her, standing…in the brush?  No way Gabe would have seen her, he thought, remembering how the hill dropped sharply right before the thicket.  Standing in the creek? 

 “Hey, Alexa.  How’s it going?

Bang, bang. 

Three and a half minutes.  That could feel like an eternity as he thought of being under fire back in Iraq. 

Under fire?  She had a gun and fired at Gabe?  But then why the rush to get out after he shot her?  More than one person?  Someone else with a gun?  A second shooter.  On a knoll. 

He leaned forward and intensely studied the little tracking line that retreated before continuing down the hill as if he would find some answer hidden in the pixels.  A few moments later, he reclined back in the chair, letting out a sigh.

“Maybe,” he said aloud, addressing Molly, looking out the window at his house.  “Maybe, it’s possible, just possible, that not only is that not Alexa, but whoever it is, didn’t even die down there.  She, or he, drowned way upstream and was washed downstream during a flood and became ensnared in all that brush.” He paused, picturing Molly’s reaction.  “And, Gabe’s gun.  Maybe he saw a bear.  He quickly stopped and pedaled back up.  Not being a fool, he grabbed his gun for protection as he wanted to get a closer look.  He would do that.  He would just be crazy enough to do that.  Down the hill he goes.  The bear charges, he fires off five rounds to scare it and while he scrambles to get back up the hill, he drops his gun just mere yards away from where a body happened to end up.”  He paused, with his hands cupped behind his head, elbows protruding out.  “You like that, Molly?”  He pictured her reaction, her neck craning, her head turning askew and letting out a loud screech.  “Yeah, I think it’s full of crap, too.”

Gabe’s voice slipped through the slightly opened door, the result of him repeating a command louder to get a program to respond.   Ben stared at the door and pictured Gabe sitting in the other room in his wheelchair, suddenly being very aware of not knowing him any other way but as a quadriplegic. He rose and headed out of the room.

“Doing okay?” he asked, walking by Gabe.

“Yeah.  A little trouble with some commands.”

“Need anything?”

“No.  I’m good.”

Ben nodded and moved on down the hallway by the kitchen and took the stairs that led to the finished basement and to the bicycle.   

On first glance, the bike looked ready to be rolled out, hopped on and taken for a ride.  Ben stood a few feet away, arms crossed, eyeing it from end to end, studying the red cycle as he did the green pixel line upstairs on the computer just a few moments ago, hoping it could tell him what Gabe could not.

He walked over to it and squeezed the front tire between his thumb and fingers and the rubber collapsed completely, totally flat.  He pressed the rear tire for comparison and it gave only slightly, low on air, as might be expected after sitting idly for ten months. 

He bent down and examined the front wheel, surprised once again at the sight of the spokes that weren’t broken, much less even bent as would certainly be expected after such a jarring halt.  Picking up the handlebars with his left hand, he gave the wheel a quick spin and, just like seven months ago, it moved freely through the brake pads and without a hint of contact.  With the tire still moving, he lightly applied the front brake and the wheel produced a raspy noise.  Resting the bike back against the wall, he ran his finger along the rim but it was smooth and clean.   He turned the bike around so that the non-chain side faced him.  Running his finger along the rim again, his finger was greeted with a very rough surface and he thought of the bridge’s concrete slab grinding away at the metal and forcing a quick stop.  A very quick stop, Ben thought, taking note that only half the circumference of the rim was rough meaning that the bike, which was traveling at almost forty miles an hour came to a stop in, what?  He paused and moved his arms apart in an estimation of the length of the arc stretched out: less than three feet.   

Ben stood back again and sighed; reconstructing the accident gave it a chilling and haunting face, as if he could see it happening right before him and should then be able to reach out and prevent it.  He saw himself stepping from the side of the road and on to the bridge with his arms flailing wildly up and down for Gabe to slow down. 

His eyes ran across the length of this side of the bike and his gaze stopped on a gouge in the rear diagonal stem of the frame.  His first thought was that it was accident related but it looked too clean and smooth as if it were machine made.  Ben squatted down for a closer look and ran a fingertip in the cut which ran horizontally across the stem and was an eighth of an inch deep.  He looked at the frame on the other side, wondering if there was some bike-device related reason for the incision.  The other side was untouched and he couldn’t imagine what instrument would be mounted on that spot of the frame much less one that needed to have the bike permanently marred. 

Standing and staring at the cut, his thoughts went back to Iraq, to a certain posh residence where there was fierce fighting.  A detail that stuck with him from that day was seeing the ornamental wrought iron fence that surrounded the multi-storied house.  The individual posts that made up the fence were “decorated” with smoothly cut gouges formed when bullets grazed the metal and the gouge on the frame was strikingly similar. 

Ben moved to the rear of the bike and eyed the path of the gouge in relation to the bike’s left pedal.  He stepped in to move the pedal to a different position and moved back to the rear.  A chill ran down his spine as he thought of the scar on the inside of Gabe’s lower left leg; a cut everyone assumed happened when he fell but would have lined up very nicely with the gouge on the frame as a bullet whizzed by. 

“Oh, Molly,” he said aloud, thinking that he really needed to talk with Gabe’s lawyer. 

Copyright © 2012 Philip Zweig