About a mile up the main road, he remembered, there was a roadside snack bar, on the westbound side of the road, across from all the traffic. He would walk up to there and call Claire to come down and pick him up.
Except he didn’t have to. He limped out to the main road, trotted awkwardly across at a break in the traffic, and had walked about a quarter-mile when one of the few westbound vehicles, a farmer’s pickup truck, came to a stop beside him, and a gnarled old man with huge-knuckled hands on the steering wheel called out to him, “You want a lift?”
Parker climbed into the truck, and the farmer started off again, saying, “You don’t want to walk with legs like that.”
“No, I don’t. Thanks.”
“Shrapnel? You get it in the war?”
“No,” Parker said. “I had an accident.”
“I got a bullet in the leg myself,” the old man said. “During World War One, you know. Still bothers me in the spring.”
Claire was putting a log on the fire. Parker walked into the living room and she looked at him and said, “What happened to your legs?”
“I banged them up. They’ll be okay.”
She straightened from the fireplace and stood looking at him, wiping her hands together. “Is it finished?”
“They won’t be back,” he said. There were no lamps lit in the room, only the fire for illumination; it made Parker think of candlelight, and the muscles in his back tensed. He thought of switching on the lights, but he knew she’d done this for the romantic effect, and he didn’t want to spoil it for her. It was easier for him to get over things than for her.
She went over and sat on the sofa and waved to him to join her, saying, “It is a nice house, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” He sat beside her and slowly stretched out his legs, and looked into the fire.
The end.
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