Barbara White - The In-Between Hour

Will staggered downstairs and out onto the porch swing. The headache was waiting to roar, waiting to tear him apart. Even the fading daylight burned his retinas. He closed his eyes and let his head droop to his chest. Blood pounded; pain pulsed through his brain in leaden waves.

The smell of sage clung to his nostrils, leached his brain with the slow-moving film playing in his head. It must have been winter, since he was in his footed pj’s, similar to the ones Freddie had owned. Will was supposed to be asleep, locked in his tiny bedroom off the porch. Uncle Darren was outside yelling, waving his bundle of dried sage, demanding to come in and smudge the shack to banish diabolical spirits. The old man refused and there was another blowup about his mom. Had she been laughing outside the bedroom door, or had Will invented that last part?

Pressure on his knees. Soft and gentle. Human touch.

“Will?”

Where had Hannah come from? He didn’t hear her approach. She smelled of hay and lavender. Mild country scents warped into sensory overload by his exploding brain.

He opened his eyes and tried to look at her, but he couldn’t raise his head. She had beautiful hands with long, healthy fingernails—surprising for a vet. No nail polish. One ring on her right index finger—silver, engraved. Native American.

“The headache still bad?” Hannah said.

He moaned.

“Give me your hands.” Her voice was low, soothing, the voice on the phone from the night before. “This won’t hurt.”

He obeyed, ignoring the intuition that murmured, Of course it’s going to hurt. You’re a woman.

“Do you trust me?”

“Why not?” What did he care if she stuck a thousand needles in his hand when ten times that many pierced his heart every minute of every day?

“Give me your right hand. Good, now splay your fingers.” She ripped open a small packet and took out a long, thin nail partially covered in copper coils. “I’m going to slide one needle into the webbing between your thumb and index finger,” she said, “into the LI4.”

“LI4?”

“Large Intestine 4. An acupuncture point for the head and the face.”

“In my hand?”

“In your hand.”

Will closed his eyes. This, he preferred not to watch. He felt a small amount of pressure but no pain.

She stroked his left hand, her fingers lingering.

“How did you get this scar?”

“Which one?”

“Oh,” she said. “You have several. Some nasty accident?”

“Ripped flesh. From rock climbing.”

“Interesting sport.”

“More like a religion.” He swallowed through the pain. “Are you going to do that hand, too?”

“Already done.” She placed both his hands in his lap. “Now sit for an hour, try to relax, then remove the needles. I’m leaving a bag of dried feverfew. Pour boiling water over it and drink it.”

“If I get blood poisoning, I’m suing for medical malpractice.”

Was that a laugh?

Everything went quiet, except for the tree frogs croaking through their nightly social. He didn’t hear Hannah leave, but he couldn’t sense her anymore. A random act of kindness. Wow, that was the stuff of folklore.

Will kept his eyes shut to avoid confronting the fact that his hands had become pincushions. They felt a little odd, a little tight, but there was no pain from the needles. Maybe, just maybe, if a stranger could pierce his skin with foreign objects and he could feel nothing, then a five-year-old could die by lethal impact and feel no pain.

His mind darted through unmoored thoughts, disjointed waking dreams he could remember only the essence of. Freddie died strapped into his five-point harness. Safest car seat according to Consumer Reports, unless, of course, your mother hurtled into a wall at seventy miles per hour. Why did Will’s mind have to sketch every detail, re-create an entire scene he had never witnessed and play it over and over again? Screeching tires, the crunch of metal buckling, screams, the smell of gasoline, the whoosh of flames. The explosion.

A tsunami of grief swamped him, dragged him down to the depths. He would never break through to the surface. He would never come up for air.

Eyes tightly closed, Will started to cry the only way he knew how. Silently.

Nine

Will woke to bright moonlight and the howling of coyotes. And a pair of delicate nails poking out of his skin. So, Hannah hadn’t been some ghostly mirage created by his burned-out mind. He felt—Will concentrated—okay. The headache had retreated into an echo of pain. Staring up at a full moon, he eased out the first needle, then the second.

How long had he been asleep? Jesus.

Will jumped up and tugged open the front door, gagging on the smell. The old man was stretched out on the futon, asleep and drooling. The new bottle of Wild Turkey, a quarter empty, pinned a note to the coffee table. “Dinner in—” indecipherable scribble. Oven? Oven!

Running into the kitchen, Will stopped to glance around for a fire extinguisher. As expected, Hannah was a woman with her shit together, a woman who placed a small fire extinguisher on the wall and a smoke detector on the ceiling. The green, blinking light suggested it was fully operational.

Will made a quick check through the glass door of the oven. Good, no flames. And the knob was turned only to two hundred degrees, probably because the old man couldn’t see without his glasses. Who knew what had happened to those.

What other details had Will missed? On a rock face, he never doubted his ability to protect lives, and yet here he was—spectacularly inept at looking after one octogenarian. Was he supposed to remind his dad to change his underwear, brush his teeth, wipe his ass—Will eased open the oven door—take the plastic wrapping off the lasagna before heating it?

No wonder Hawk’s Ridge charged exorbitant rates. The staff earned every cent.

A large mug of black coffee and an internet search later, Will had compiled a list of local assisted-living facilities and researched another leg of Freddie’s trip. Will laced his hands behind his neck and stretched. Rediscovering the joy of in-depth location research was invigorating. As with every aspect of his writing, he’d grown lazy, choreographing action around backdrops rather than exploring the psychological impact of setting on character. After all, a patch of forest could brand you for life.

The scar on his knee itched; he ignored it.

Freddie and Cassandra were in Vienna. They’d spent the evening before at the Prater, riding the Giant Ferris Wheel, and the morning at the Augarten Park. Fortunately, they’d avoided Hitler’s anti-aircraft flak tower, a concrete monument to evil.

If only Will could figure out how to use that Nazi behemoth in his work, incorporate it into a hate crime Agent Dodds could stumble into while on vacation. Except his hero was still suspended from the helicopter. Besides, Agent Dodds didn’t do vacations. Didn’t do downtime. Sex was rushed, desperate and usually with someone’s wife; A.A. meetings were an excuse for Dodds to check email. The only time Dodds unplugged was when he visited his paranoid schizophrenic mother in the nursing home surrounded by razor wire.

Will pushed back from the kitchen table and wandered into the main room. He should try and get his dad upstairs to bed. Or maybe not. Life was so peaceful when the old man was out cold. It was the relief of watching a sleeping toddler after a crazy-ass day of playground supervision. It was also the writing hour—or would be, if he had a story worth telling. Something other than the Great European Adventure.

He eased the cotton throw off the back of the futon and tucked it around the old man. A walk in the moonlight might unlock a little inspiration. Will refused to think the word muse, which resonated with literary pretension and angst. Of course, he’d always dissed the phrase writer’s block, too. Cosmic payback was one sick bitch.