Mike Mullin - Ashfall

As I approached the barn, I heard a strange noise-a loud grinding, like two rocks rubbing together. I swayed on my feet, almost falling. I caught myself on the back of the barn and leaned against it for a few minutes, trying to catch my breath. The grinding noise continued uninterrupted.

I gathered my strength and slowly skied around the barn. There was a massive set of sliding doors on tracks facing the house. Someone had shoveled the ash away from the doors and thrown them wide, letting light into the barn.

The scene inside the barn was odd. A bicycle without its wheels had been bolted to a huge wooden workbench. A girl stood on the bike, kicking the pedals downward with her feet, sweating with effort. She looked to be my age, more or less. The back wheel of the bike had been replaced with a large gear, which connected to another gear and a belt that turned a cone-shaped chunk of concrete. An older woman was leaning over the concrete cone, pouring something into a hole in the center of it.

Neither of them gave any sign of having noticed me. I pushed my skis forward, down the little slope where the ash had been shoveled away from the barn doors. My skis caught on the barn’s dirt floor, throwing me forward. I was too tired and weak to catch myself. My head thumped against the dirt. And everything went black.

I woke to someone shaking me. I supposed it was a gentle shaking, but I had a headache so gnarly that it felt as if my brains were being beaten to liquid against the inside of my skull.

“Sit up,” a girl’s voice said.

I cracked my eyelids and reached out, trying to find my staff. I grabbed the girl’s thigh instead. She removed my hand. “Take it easy, you’re in bad shape. But I need you to sit up.”

I let my hand drop and looked around, moving my head slowly. I was on a couch in front of a fireplace. A big fire had been set-I could feel it on the side of my face and arm, but I was still freezing, like being outside without enough clothing on a sunny winter day. Someone had spread a heavy wool blanket over my otherwise naked body. I couldn’t remember getting undressed.

The girl stood above me. A strange angel, my addlepated brain thought. Surely angels didn’t wear T-shirts and overalls. And I’d never heard of an angel perspiring, let alone sweating as profusely as this girl was.

I slowly lifted my upper body, trying not to jostle my aching head. She jammed a pillow behind me, propping me partly upright. She held an oversized coffee mug to my lips. I freed one hand from the blanket and took the mug, drinking deeply. Warm water, but I was so thirsty that pure ambrosia wouldn’t have tasted better.

The water brought on a coughing fit. Every rasping cough triggered a bolt of pain between my temples. When I pulled my arm away from my mouth it was spotted with globs of gray sludge and flecks of blood.

The girl took away the mug of water. She returned with a rag that I used to clean my lips and arm. When I finished, she put four dull-red pills in my hand. “What are they?” I asked.

“Just ibuprofen.”

I took the pills and drank another mug of water. The older woman came into the room then, carrying a small bottle of Jim Beam. She poured a shot of it into the mug.

“Mom!” the girl protested. “We need that. As a disinfectant, not a drink.”

“I know, Darla, but he’s got to be hurting. This will take the edge off.” She held the mug to my lips.

“I already gave him four Advil. Do we have to waste all our medical supplies on this kid?”

I took a sip of the bourbon and spluttered it back out. It tasted horrid.

“I’ll hold your nose,” the woman said. “Drink it all at once.”

It burned my throat on the way down, and when she let go of my nose, the fumes burnt my nostrils, too. I had to side with Darla-bourbon made a better disinfectant than beverage-although I wasn’t thrilled to learn that she considered using medical supplies on me a waste.

I started coughing again. The woman held out a rag, and I used it to wipe my mouth and arm. “Thanks. I appreciate-”

“Don’t you mention it,” the woman said. “I’m Gloria Edmunds, by the way.”

“Alex.”

Darla had been doing something by the fire. Now she returned and began stripping the blanket off me. I grabbed it before she could pull it away from my groin, to preserve my modesty.

“Let go. There’s nothing there I haven’t seen. Who do you think undressed you, anyway? And honestly, I’ve seen better equipment on goats.”

“Darla!” Mrs. Edmunds said. “Keep a civil tongue with our guest.”

“Some guest. He’s using our medicine, drinking our water, and will be eating our food soon, no doubt. Why’d he have to find our barn?”

“Because the good Lord led him there, that’s why, young lady. And you’ll treat him exactly as you’d want to be treated if you fell over in someone’s barn, halfway bled out.”

“Yes, Mother,” Darla said. “But I’m not dumb enough to go wandering around in this crap,” she added, muttering.

I let go of the blanket. Darla pulled it off me and set it aside. My equipment definitely wasn’t looking very impressive. I guess bleeding all over northeastern Iowa hadn’t done much for my manhood. The cut at my side had mostly crusted over. A little blood seeped slowly from one edge.

“Roll up on your left side, so I can get at that wound. What happened, anyway?” Darla said.

“Hand-ax,” I replied.

“Christ, that was clumsy.”

I decided not to try to explain it right then. I was too tired. It took all my strength to watch Darla and her mom. They set out a bowl of water, a pile of mostly ash-free rags, a pocketknife, a sewing needle, and some heavy black thread on the end table by my head.

“This is going to hurt,” Darla said. “Try not to move.”

“Uh, do you know what you’re doing?”

She shrugged. “I got a prize in the 4-H junior veterinary program.”

“Isn’t that for animals?”

“Yeah, so? We’re all animals.”

“You’ll be fine, hon,” Mrs. Edmunds said. “Darla has better hands than mine for fine work. Uncle Arthur came to visit me early.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

Darla leaned close and hissed in my ear, “Arthritis, dumbass. Now lie still.”

It was fine while she washed the outside of the wound with water. It hurt, but I could cope. When she started washing it with bourbon, I clenched my teeth and felt tears leak from my eyes. When she pried the flap of flesh open with her pocketknife, I screamed and passed out.

When I awoke, I was desperate for both water and a place to pee. Odd that my body both craved water and needed to void it at the same time.

I lifted my head to look around. A mistake, because it triggered a jackhammer headache that was worse, if possible, than the one I’d had before I passed out. I closed my eyes and rested my head, waiting for the pain to subside.

After the headache had died down some, I reopened my eyes. There was still a small fire going-either I hadn’t been unconscious long or someone had been feeding it. I pushed the blanket off my torso and looked down. I was still naked. The clean area around my wound formed a big oval of pink skin on my otherwise gray, ash-stained body. An Ace bandage was wrapped tightly a few times around my chest, holding a folded white cloth against my side.

Gingerly I slid my fingers under the cloth. I wanted to get a look at the wound. I pulled it up as gently as I could, but it was stuck. It hurt like crazy to pull the cloth free. The Ace bandage stretched just enough for me to take a look underneath.

There was a huge cut on my side, about the same size and shape as a horseshoe. Darla had closed it with a row of neat stitches, at least thirty of them-I didn’t have the strength to count.