Michael Bunker - WICK

“Mom?”

Clay saw the woman stand up from the edge of a flowerbed where she’d been kneeling and pruning, and turn around with an attitude that she’d obviously rehearsed before. She was tall and thin, like her son, with an angular face, and hair bundled up in a knot till it spilled down her back in long ropy twists. She was, despite her initial look of perturbation standing there among the still blooming fall flowers, beautiful.

“Mom, I had an accident. This man here, Clay, helped me get home.” The woman’s face softened, and her features dissolved into concern. Only then did she notice Clay standing there behind the boy, sticking out like a thread on a homemade sweater.

“Wha’ happened?” the woman said as she moved toward the boy, not hurriedly, but deliberately, and with tenderness. She smiled at Clay, and he wondered about her accent. It was obvious and surprising, made more so by her son’s lack of the same.

“I got hit by a car. I’m OK!” he quickly added. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

She moved toward him and took him in her arms and held him like she wouldn’t let go. Clay stepped backwards and glanced down before looking up into the woman’s face as she opened her eyes and took him in.

“Mister…”

“Call me Clay.”

“Thank you. I don’t know who you are or why you were in the right place at the right time, but thank you for helping my Stephen.”

“It was no problem ma’am. He needs to get off that foot though. He sprained the ankle pretty badly.”

“Yes, of course,” the woman said and then helped the boy out of the gate and up the stairs of the adjacent house. “Where you going?” she said as Clay turned on his heel, as if to leave. “I’ve got to get on,” he said, noticing the dark in the sky.

“Nonsense, you’ll stay and have dinner.” Clay didn’t know whether it was something she’d seen in his eyes or the fact that he carried the backpack, but she’d summed him up in the space of a glance, and he could tell that arguing would be futile. He was hungry. That settled the matter.

He undid the slips of his harness and dropped his pack to the ground, picking it up by a handle on top, and followed them up the stairs.

The room was clean and bright, warm and warmly designed, with numerous books lining shelves that extended the lengths of the walls. Clay stood and examined them as the woman disappeared in a room down the hall with the boy. The titles were those you don’t normally find on an American bookshelf, with names like The Female Poets of Great Britain . Many of them were old; all of them were worn. In the spaces between the books, there were also odd little eclectic items. Fossil samples, butterflies in cases, the exoskeletons of insects, and the like. Sprinkled through the displays were black and white photos of the woman and her son, neatly-framed, showing them in various poses in mostly unidentifiable locations, each more lovely than the others. The walls were lined with impressionist renderings, some with warm blotches of color seemingly haphazardly arranged to create an effect of chaos, others carefully, meticulously set with parallel lines and grids of intricate color. Clay seemed to recognize something in them that he couldn’t yet make out, and he was trying to decide what it was when the woman came back into the room.

“Oh, that boy is such a naughty one. Lord knows I love him, but he does know how to give me a headache.”

“I know,” Clay said, “I had girls of my own…”

The woman heard his voice trail off and seemed to immediately understand. “I’m sorry,” she said. Clay waved her off, as is if to say, Thank you, but no need to be sorry.

“Who’s the artist?”

“Those are mine. You like them, eh? They are meant to represent the lines you find in nature in the smallest detail. I was a painter before I became a landscaper. My first love, however, is botany. It seems a nice way to combine both.”

“Oh, wow. These are nice.”

“Thank you. I studied at the Cooper Union. It was the reason I came to this country.”

“From?”

“I’m a Trini. And I hope you like Trini food. Stephen tells me that you’re on a journey?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m going back to my farmhouse in Ithaca.”

“Oh? To inspect it for damage from the storm?”

Clay nodded his head no. “To live. I’m going home for good.”

“Ahhh. A fugitive. Or is it a refugee? I’m going with fugitive. Well, Mr. Fugitive, take your pack and go down the hall to the second door on the left. You’ll find a clean towel and you can make yourself at home.”

“Oh, I appreciate it, and I’ll certainly eat your food, but I couldn’t—”

“Nonsense. You can, and you will. You’re not going to make it to Ithaca tonight, and you don’t want to be out in these streets.”

Clay could tell that it would be better to save his breath with this woman. “Well, thank you.”

“No thanks needed. You took care of my boy. It is I who should be thanking you. My name, by the way, is Veronica. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”

Clay walked into the bedroom and lifted his pack onto the bed. Unzipping its large front pocket, he began pulling the items out one at a time. The small water bottles he’d brought were all gone. He still had the matches and three of the energy bars. The rest of the things he pulled out, organizing them on the bed. The last of these items, a small stack of papers he had rolled up like a telescope, was crinkled from the trip. He slid the rubber bands off the ends and straightened the papers with his hand. It was a small, typed manuscript of poems that he’d once written to his love. He’d spent many hours writing poems, both before and after Cheryl and the girls had gone. Not all of them were ‘love poems’ per se, but all were, in some way, sincere declarations of his undying devotion. Some of them were about things he saw, or thoughts that he’d had, but all of them were motivated by his loss and his love for his wife and children. At one point he’d considered having them published, but had never had the courage to submit them. They were really just exercises in adoration—of life, of love, of the home he’d once known with his family. Now as he caressed the pages, standing there in this home where a mother and son were still together, still able to touch each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices, he smiled as he thought about how his daughters might have sassed some boy like the girl in the bodega had. He yearned for Cheryl and the brush of her hand against his cheek, remembering the way she sang when she cooked dinner.

The warm water felt good on his body after the long day of walking, and soothed his tired muscles. Clay stood under the stream and pushed his hands across his face and through his hair. Steam filled the air with fog, and he wondered whether this would be the last shower he’d have for a while. There was simply no telling once he got back on the road, but he liked the uncertainty. That was part of the adventure, walking out into the world without knowing what would happen next. He reached and twisted the knobs, feeling the warm spray slow to a trickle and then a drip and then he stepped out into the softness of the towel.

Coming back to the room after having dressed in a fresh pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt, Clay found that Veronica had gathered his clothes from the floor, and he heard the machine in the hallway filling. Thoughtful . He’d have never asked, and if anyone else had done it, he might have found it intrusive, but something in her way made him feel comfortable with the gesture. He was glad to be in this home at this moment rather than walking in the dark toward God knows what. He came out of the bedroom and passed through the hall and made his way again into the living room.