CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Losses
The old woman plunges a needle into the centaur’s wounded leg while Prissi holds his head. As soon as the painkiller begins doing its work, Olewan cuts away the shredded skin and debrades destroyed flesh. She cauterizes what she can to stop the bleeding. She stitches flesh and tendons where she can, but Mortos’ enraged thrashing has done so much damage that much of it is irreparable. As she cuts and sews, the old woman and the centaur mumble words back and forth. Joe is not so far away that he couldn’t have heard enough to get the gist of the conversation, but the presence of the live Prissi and the dead riverman leave little room in his confused mind for anything else. Every time Joe looks at Bob Tom’s broken body, he feels like he weighs a thousand kilos. Yet, a second later, when he turns to watch Prissi, his spirits rebound.
Joe stays beside Bob Tom, looks from one friend to the other, silently communes with what is left of the old man but says nothing to Prissi until she gently places the centaur’s head back on the ground. Even then, after having had the time to think of what he wants to say, Joe’s words to Prissi are halting. His throat is choked with grief. His mind keeps wishing it had its own wings to fly away.
Prissi herself is tongue-tied. The wild screams, the rosaries of blood as the horse-man thrashed, the sudden inexplicable death of the old man remind her of Africa. Dramatic, tragic, incoherent Africa. She pines for it. The surprise of seeing Joe Fflowers, not quite boyfriend, obviously steadfast friend, is replaced by revulsion as she looks at the gore around her. She can’t understand why everyone who tries to help her winds up hurt or killed. Prissi stares at the gray-haired mess in the mud beneath her and wants to bay at the moon, the sun, and all the mad stars that had to align to fate such a thing. But, instead of making the loud confused sounds that might slightly reflect what is going on inside her, Prissi looks at Joe, makes a slight sad smile, and shrugs.
Joe isn’t even aware that the other boy has left until he returns with a wrinkled roll of blue tarp and two rusty shovels. Joe looks at the boy’s tools and then at his friend’s remains. He tries, but can’t imagine Bob Tom’s battered body moldering underneath a plot of weeds. Somewhere in the air, somewhere in water is conceivable. Buried in darkness beneath a thick blanket of mud is not.
When Joe looks back up at the boy, the boy is staring at Prissi.
“What’s his name?”
Prissi raises both her eyebrows and voice in doubt as she says. ”Fair?”
Joe spells out what he thinks she has said, “F. A. I. R?”
“I think so.”
By now the boy’s head is shifting back and forth as Prissi and Joe talk.
Joe catches his eye and asks, “Fair, how far is the ocean?”
The boy shifts from foot to foot before spreading his arms until his hands are about a half-meter apart.
Joe changes tactics, “Do you have a boat?”
Prissi, whose strength is beginning to falter and whose mind has decided to distance itself from what is going on, begins drifting back to the door. Even though Joe is talking to him, Fair follows behind Prissi, like a lamb with its dam.
Joe himself wants to follow, but doesn’t. He stays with Bob Tom because he has to keep the flies from settling on his friend. Even as the teener’s hands begin doing their job, his mind is on a river’s current north of Albany. He is brought back to beyond the Pale when Olewan kicks his foot.
“Who are you?”
“Joe…Joe. Prissi’s friend. We’re at school together.”
“And him?”
“Bob Tom Damall. Another friend.”
“Why are you here?”
“To help Prissi. My…some people killed her father and tried to hurt her. We wanted to help.”
“How?”
That question stymies Joe. In all the days since he and Bob Tom were in Albany and found out that Prissi’s life was threatened, Joe can’t remember asking himself that question. He knows why he wants to help, or thinks he does, but how to help is another matter. He realizes that somehow he and Bob Tom just assumed that if they could find Prissi they could help her. Now, he doesn’t know how his presence helps.
“How?”
Joe stammers, “I don’t really know. Prissi thought…someone in my family was after her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think Prissi knew either. She met my grandfather, got interested in a company….”
Olewan interrupts, “Your grandfather. Who’s that?”
With a feeling that is part pride and part shame, Joe quietly says, “Joshua Fflowers.”
The old woman’s stare doesn’t last two seconds, but it contains more information than Joe can process.
Olewan puts a finger in Joe’s face.
“Leave.”
“Do you have a boat?”
“Leave.”
“I’m not leaving without my friends, and I can’t take Bob Tom without a boat.”
The old woman wags her hand at Joe’s bike which is lying where it landed after smashing into the wall.
“The girl stays. You leave. Use that. Leave.”
The woman’s imperious and obviously insane behavior reminds Joe of Rholealy. As soon as he makes the connection, he wants to hit the woman before him, to rub her face in a plate of food. To keep from doing either, Joe takes two steps back. He stares at the woman, who has caused his friend to be killed, and without disguising his loathing, shouts, “A boat!”
Joe kneels down, takes the tarp that Fair has left and drapes it over Bob Tom. Once he has done the best he can to keep the flies from his friend, Joe stands back up, gives the old woman a challenging glare, and stalks off to the entrance of the building.
“Don’t do that. Leave. You can’t go in there.”
Joe keeps moving. When the door closes behind him the woman’s tirade is cut off.