Sheets soiled by muddy boots and cargo pants from the day before wrapped around his waist as he reached above for the bottle of Four Roses on the nightstand, its contents dwindling as the soundless night exploded into a fiery dawn. Naked and chilled on the floor, he had at some point in the night pulled the blankets and pillows off the bed. He hoisted his achy body to a sitting position and felt the sting of dried blood crusted over split knuckles and when he rushed to the bathroom he found more vomit around the toilette rather than in. When he finished urinating into the putrid bile, angry pain hammered into his brain like a railroad spike cured by a gargle of water and two Scotch backs.
When he returned a line of daylight cut between the curtains and sliced through the dark haze of his bedroom, down the center of his face and chest. He shielded his eyes with his hand and stared into the hostile dawn before leaning back into the mattress. Through the empty liquor bottle on the nightstand Rebecca smiled at him from the photograph. These days her smile looked sad. Travis shut his eyes and waited for the pain to subside, but it never did. It never will.
It is a universal truth widely acknowledged that a man suffering the loss of his departed wife should wish above all else to have her safely returned. The world is different now than it used to be. People were still hit by cars, struck by lightning, dying of cancer and though the life was gone, the soul continues to suffer.
Rebecca was a slender and simple beauty, and genuinely kind with a passion for the wild outdoor as a country girl should. She possessed the skill of a talented abstract painter that he only came to appreciate when it was too late—after he had found the red crayon that had once saved them from the bitter cold of a last winter’s night. It had somehow made its way from her desk onto the cement floor. She had many red crayons but he knew this one in particular for it had been melted to a small numb, the paper burnt to black.
It was neither a bus nor lightning that killed Rebecca Pates, but a black 2000 Chevrolet Suburban driven by a college sophomore girl who had been looking at her phone instead of the road.
Janice Stanford, a self-infatuated twat 23 years of age from Shoreline College near Seattle was trying to get directions to her friend Margo’s place where they planned to spend the week on a group project. Janice repeated to the courtroom that she had ‘only looked at her phone for a second.’ Travis was baffled and offended by the stupid girl’s comprehension that only a second was still only a second too long. Travis wondered how such a likable, pretty and intelligent girl could still be so dumb and irresponsible without any regard to her actions. A mere slap on the wrist and Janice Stanford was sentenced to community service on the weekends to avoid disrupting her class schedule. Travis doubted she ever thought about the suffering and pain she’d caused him or Rebecca’s family. It’s in the past, it’s over and done with, can’t change it so no use worrying about it anymore. Janice Stanford never apologized, and she never took responsibility for what she did. He knew she didn’t really deep down believe it was her fault Rebecca was dead and would complain to her friends that the sentence was unfair. Kids today never accepted responsibility. Never knew when to accept they did something wrong, never knew how to apologize unless it was court-ordered. Travis never received closure. To Janice it was an accident, to Travis, it was negligence. The only woman he ever truly loved, the woman who made him whole, was murdered by a girl who still didn’t think she ever did anything wrong, and her lenient sentence was the salt in the wound. It made him feel as if neither the courts or Janice felt the grave weight of the many lives that were ruined, that her being on the cell phone as she drove over the broken body of his wife was no big deal.
It took days for the soreness in his back and neck to subside once he was released from the hospital, and a couple more weeks for the scrapes and bruises and broken bones to heal. He’d fractured a rib and collar bone which still caused him a fair amount of discomfort two months later, and he could still feel the line where his nose had broken across the bridge, but the worst wounds were the ones in his heart that would never heal. He’d live with that pain until the day he’d die, which he begged would come every day.
Medical bills lay on the counter, none that he could afford, and insurance refused to deliver what they owed.
Insurance companies were only good until you needed them, Travis thought bitterly. He took a mouthful of bourbon straight from the backup stash from the old steamer trunk at the foot of his bed.
Moving to the kitchen with the bottle in hand he noticed in the cupboards, above a counter littered with pizza boxes and a pungent dish collection, was a hole the size of a fist that wasn’t there the night before.
He chased the second gulp of bourbon with a tall glass of cold tap water that tasted strongly of iron reminding him of blood and, by the time he stepped into the shower, the queasiness had subsided—replaced by the slightest morning buzz.
For how long he stood staring into oblivion as the hot water steamed the air, he did not know, but he kept the bottle in his fist against his bare leg, covering the neck with his thumb to keep the nectar from being diluted, and took a drink whenever he needed, and eventually he placed his arm against the wall, beneath the showerhead, and stared down at his lonely, naked self, and the bottle which slowly drained as the minutes turned to hours.
When the water ran cold, he placed the bottle on the tank of the toilette and wrapped the towel around his waist. At the medicine cabinet, he stood to rub ointment over the cracked skin of his knuckles and then dressed in a clean set of cargo pants, a T-shirt with the acronym C.E.R.T. printed on the left breast and, just below, a name patch that read Travis. With twenty minutes to spare before his shift started, he reached for the radio transmitter in the duffel bag against the wall.
Fortunately for him, he was just on call which today meant he could stay home and listen to dispatch through the scanner while watching the Canucks game on television instead of going directly to headquarters. On previous days where he was on call, he carefully balanced sobriety and drunkenness with a steady buzz. Most of the time.
In the kitchen, he placed the radio transmitter on top of a stack of unopened mail between two plastic cups and a wilting spider plant before tuning the transmitter to the local frequency.
By one o’clock dispatch had reported a fender bender at county line and a half-hour later came the call of a young male hitchhiker, approximately 16 years of age who was spotted wandering down the shoulder of a highway. By two o’clock the sun had been swallowed by ominous gray clouds and a light spring rain began to sprinkle over the trees. Travis stood at the kitchen window with a cup of black coffee and another glass of water, his concerned expression in the window reflected back. A crack of thunder echoed in the distant mountains.
That was the thing about the weather in the Pacific Northwest. It was unpredictable and go from sunny and warm to a thundering downpour in minutes. On a hot July morning a few years back Rebecca had just finished hanging the laundry out back in their yard when the sky grew dark and hazy. The temperature had plummeted from seventy-six degrees to a frigid thirty-four in a matter of minutes. Before she could get the laundry off the wire, snowflakes billowed from the sky. Not just a little flurry either, but great big snowflakes the size of tea plates. Got an inch in twenty minutes. Mid-fucking-July. At the time Travis had been standing at the living room window which faced out to the porch and looked across the yard to Rebecca laughing at the sky with beautiful and wide pale eyes like a winter-blooming orchid. Travis enjoyed her care-free spirit. If it had been him caught in the storm, the laundry ruined, he would’ve cursed up a storm and kicked the side of the house. But not Rebecca. She danced and twirled with her arms stretched wide, an enchanting beauty.
After taking a sip from his coffee mug, he blew a breath of hot air against the window causing it to fog. At the moment she looked his way and spotted him through the window, he used his index finger to draw in the condensation a heart. Rebecca gushed and returned with a kiss. She withdrew the last piece of cloth
ing, placed it into the laundry basket and lightly skipped up the steps. She let the basket fall to her feet at the top, shielded by the overhanging roof. Snowflakes clung to her strawberry blonde hair as it loosened from its tangled bun and her sun dress flared up showing off her silky thighs and the pastel pink panties she wore beneath. She reached for him to join her, guided him off the porch, and then, while she twirled and danced gracefully in the snow, he stood there like a damn fool—like he was back at his first school dance where he was just a shy little boy in front of the sexiest goddam woman he had ever known. Oh God, how he missed her.
A thundering crack jolted him from his colorful memory back into his bleak, dreary world. The thunder came close, followed by another brilliant flash of lightning. That’s when all hell broke loose.
From dispatch came a series of codes followed by a brief description of the situation. Lightning strikes blew out a power transformer, a chimney fire occurred on Gold Creek Loop, multiple car accidents on the main highway at the edge of town, a tree fell across Silke Road, and a toppled fence, blown over from the wind, allowed cows to escape a pasture. But it was the final alert that concerned him the most and he jumped into action. Flooding on Country Homes Drive, a residential district near the Middle School that was prone to flooding from the creek that snaked through campus, beneath the bridge, and into a low-lying residential area inhabited mostly by the elderly. He was certain the others could handle it, but if one of his teammates were swept away by the currents—or God forbid something happened to those children—he would never forgive himself.
The summer with his wife faded from Travis’s mind as he sprinted from the house with his duffel bag and into the storm.
Chapter 3