Confident that will be the case, I snap out of my trance-like state before entering the room the size of most people’s walk-in closets to gather up the rope.
Partway across the warped floorboards, my trespass of private property is busted. “That bundle of rope couldn’t hang a deer, so if you want it for what I think you do, you’re wasting your time.” A man I’d guess to be mid-seventies hobbles into a cabin that’s seen better days. When he stabs out the cigarette dangling out of his mouth into an empty ashtray, I slant my head to ensure I can’t miss what he says next. “The vine got ya, didn’t it? It’s finicky shit that’s as useless as tits on a bull.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer him. The red marks on my neck tell him everything he needs to know, not to mention the bobbing of my Adam’s apple about how frank he is when discussing a taboo topic such as suicide.
After blowing out a large plume of smoke he held in for longer than necessary, the damage to his lungs not a concern for a man his age, he yanks up the sleeves of his dirty flannel shirt, exposing deep slash marks grooved into his wrist.
“You might have better luck than me, but since you’d need a sharp knife that digs real deep, and I need every one I have for the deer, I’m not going to give you one.” He nudges his head to the woodlands surrounding his rundown property. “So off you go. If I find you during one of my hunts, I’ll be sure to return you to the earth from where you came or whatever the fuck they say these days.”
“Y-You live out here?” I should be denying his claims I’m trying to kill myself, not feeding my curiosity as to why someone would want to live such a bleak, dismal existence.
He coughs through the smoke still escaping his frail lungs while replying, “You’re in my home, aren’t ya? Trampled all over with your muddy feet.”
“This is a-a shanty.I-Ifthat.”
I curse my inability not to think before speaking before attempting an apology.
Not a syllable fires from my mouth before the stranger reminds me I’m no better than him. “Says the boy attempting to end his life in the middle of nowhere without a suicide note in sight.” After dragging his eyes down my body, he returns them to my face. “You didn’t arrive here alone, so why are you trying to leave that way?”
“N-no one wants me,” I reply before I can stop myself. “I’m n-no g-good to anyone.”
I glance up from my feet when he grunts out, “You’ve got a lot to learn if you think that rope can hold your weight, but there’s always a way if you’re willing to adapt. I could certainly put you to work if you were interested.”
“W-What?” I stammer out, certain I heard him wrong.
He couldn’t possibly be offering me a job, right?
My own father doesn’t want me around, so why would a stranger?
I didn’t mistake the offer in his tone. “You’re too late to harvest, but we got seedlings to plant for the spring and meat to cure. There’s plenty to do, you just have to decide if you want to do it.”
I stare at him dumbfounded.Men with my own blood don’t want my help, so why the hell does he?
When I ask him that, he shrugs before spitting out with a snarl, “I’m getting a little long in the tooth. I need someone to—”
“W-wipe your ass? I’m g-good.” I dump the rope on the floor beneath my feet, confident I’d rather preserve with twisted strands of vine than care for a stranger how my father failed to do for his mother.
“I was going to say, ‘lift the deer,’ dumbass.” As he shuffles past me, the scuttle of his feet only just clearing the rope, he smacks me up the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper. “I’ll take myself out to pasture before I’ll ever let a punk-ass kid wipe my ass.”
With his statement sounding more honest than deceitful, I follow his hobbled walk into the shambles he calls a bathroom, certain a couple of hours of delay to my endgame won’t hurt anyone but me.
“Are you just gonna stand there?” the man asks after yanking out a stool from beneath a wooden bench. “Or are we gonna get you cleaned up and ready for work?” He drops his eyes to my distorted wrist. “I ain’t got nothing to fix broken bones, but I have a needle and thread that will close up those gaps quick smart.”
When he waves his hand across the top of the stool, I hesitantly pace his way.
“I don’t bite, boy,” he promises when my first instinct to him raising his hand to my face is to protect myself from another blow. “But if I did, I doubt I could hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt. Who did this to you?”
“N-No one important.”
“That’s right,” he agrees. “Because toxic people are like clouds. When they float away, it sure is a beautiful day.”
Cecil wasn’t wrong. I had so much murkiness surrounding me back then, I thought the only way to rid myself of it was to end my life.
He taught me otherwise.
Despite him having nothing but a parcel of land and a half-built cabin, he took me in, fed me, clothed me, and instilled more morals into me in a year than my father had done my entire life.
He was my protector both before and after his death—as I will be Jae’s.
