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He smiles. “Ahh, so then you hadn’t heard. I suppose I’ve answered my own question.” He looks satisfied and resumes digging.
I dig for another minute while my head throbs and my body does that shit where it feels like it’s flickering. Then I can’t help myself. “Mark—what did you say?”
He looks up. “What part then? Ms. White Coat being mute?”
“You said mute?”
“Not anymore of course. That’s been a few years past. Before her time in the schoolhouse ended, Doctor arrived, she got helping at the clinic, and she resumed speaking. When she was a younger girl, she didn’t speak. I don’t suppose she told you.”
My throat tightens. “No.” I keep digging, harder now. I wrap my hand around the shovel’s handle till my knuckles ache. “She didn’t speak at all?” I ask him tightly.
“It was the queerest thing. Her parents—they both passed on in sort of tragic fashion. Drowned with her there in the boat when she was just a wee one. Though I suppose your father and you were here visiting when that went on. I remember that. Do you?”
I nod. “I was six, so I remember some of it.”
“When we got her back, she wasn’t right up there.” He points to his head, and my stomach does a slow roll.
“What do you mean?”
He throws some dirt over his shoulder. “Didn’t speak a word for I don’t know how long, suppose near ten years.”
Ten years.
My hands shake so hard I can barely hold the shovel.
“So what, then one day she just…started talking?”
“Something like that. Her grandmother was a lovely woman. Helped her quite a bit. I’ve heard she passes as quite ordinary now, but I’ve never spoken to her. Wondered if she had a voice at all.”
“She has a voice.” His bushy brows lift, and I realize my tone was too sharp. I force a laugh to cover for it. “Trust me on that.”
That gets me a chuckle. “All the woe-men do.”
I feign another laugh and dig as fast and hard as I can. By lunchtime, I’ve run through all the dirt in my path. I pull my jeans off, revealing running shorts, and swap my boots for Nike sneaks.
“Be back,” I tell the group’s de facto leader as I pass him.
He gives me a thumbs up, and I’m gone. We’re at the Patches side of Lower Lane, and this time, I take off out that way. Other days, I’ve run up to the cottage, beyond a small plateau on top of the cliffs that rise up just behind it, past the hardened black lava field—a relic from the 1961 eruption—and toward the ponds. I’ve done that run a few times, and I know I can make it back to the trench spot inside an hour.
Today, though, I don’t want to pass the clinic on the other side of Lower Lane, so I run along the lonely road that points toward the Patches. On my right, the ocean swirls and simmers like a vat of acid. Overhead, the thin clouds shift. Everything is cast in pale green light.
I run until my toes feel numb and the air seems to tremble. My heart hammers like it might explode behind my ribs. On the way back toward the village, I get sick beside some rocks. Small price to pay for a clear mind.
* * *
Using the shovel makes my shoulder hurt, which keeps my detox dick down. But the drive home gets me every fucking time. The car bounces over the rocky road, getting me half hard. The walk from the car to the cottage’s front door drags my boxer briefs over my head and shaft. Then I’m standing in the living room, sweaty and shaking from the long day, feeling weird and empty and not real, my dick ripping a hole in the briefs.
I’ve got a routine going. Kick off boots, get some water, limp back to the bathroom. By then I feel like I’m rolling with some blue diamond on board. Once, I almost blew before I got my pants off. Run the bathtub water, sink into the tub, and finally, I get a chance to squeeze it.
I run the water hot so it’ll burn and I’ll last longer. Never works. I squeeze my head and stroke my shaft. My fingers wander over my big, puffed-out balls, and that’s all I’m good for.
It’s intense. So much so, I don’t think much. There’s no time to work up fantasies. I imagine shoving inside a hot, slick pussy, but it’s just a pussy. Ghost pussy. Belongs to no one.
If I’m lucky, I’ll pass out for a few minutes. Slip into the water…slip into a fifteen minute dream state. When it’s over, I feel rested. That’s where I am now. Fifteen minutes of good shut-eye is a game changer.
I climb out of the tub feeling more alert than I have all day. I dry off with one of the good-smelling towels and lie on her sweet-smelling bed and cover myself with the blankets she tucked around me that afternoon when we first got back. I just have to hold on for an hour, until it’s late enough to not stick out for being at the bar.
I feel worse the longer I’m at the house alone. Fucking pathetic.
