“You okay?” he asked gruffly, and she felt the warm breeze of his breath, scented with coffee and maple syrup.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Back on her feet, she brushed at herself and pushed away from him, moving a few steps and covering her breathlessness with laughter.
“Ground’s a little rough,” he said as he caught her hand and brought it firmly back into the crook of his elbow.
Caitlyn didn’t reply. Her feelings were a jumble-confusing, distressing-and as they walked on she kept her head turned so C.J. wouldn’t see them written on her face.
But she knew safety that depended on someone else was an illusion. She’d learned from experience and example that no one could guarantee another person’s safety, that the only real protection she had against the terrors and monsters of the world was inside herself. Her own inner strength-that was her armor. Without that she would be naked as a hatchling bird.
As she walked she chanted to herself, like a pledge, a credo, a prayer:
“We’re back a good bit from the road,” C.J. said as they walked slowly along, feet swishing through leaf- covered grass, then crunching on gravel-no doubt the same gravel she’d heard the tires of Eve’s car drive over last night. “The house is surrounded by trees-some poplars, hickories and a few maples…but mostly oaks, so the leaves haven’t really started to pile up yet. There’s an old tire swing hanging from one of ’em. I played on that when I was a kid.”
The air did feel cooler now. They must be in the shade, she thought as she asked wistfully, “Have the leaves turned?” She’d always loved the colors of fall.
“A lot of ’em have. They’re not at their peak, though. Farther north, up in the mountains, that’s where they’re pretty, right about now…” He paused for a moment, and when he went on there was an odd little break in his voice…another of those emotional nuances she hadn’t yet learned to read? “There’s lots of goldenrod along the roadsides and fences, with pink and purple morning glories mixed in. All sorts of grasses and other flowers, daisies, I guess, maybe sunflowers, mostly yellow-”
“Yellow-flower season,” Caitlyn murmured, smiling. Her throat ached with longing.
“Yeah…” C.J. gave an uneven laugh. The fingers that covered her hand were stroking back and forth in a consoling sort of way. His voice became a soft sweet murmur, and she remembered that she’d liked the way it sounded a million years ago. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah…there’s fields over there on the other side of the lane-some farmer leases ’em out to plant crops on. Sometimes it’s cotton, sometimes soybeans. This summer he had some kind of grain, but it’s been harvested already, so there’s just stubble out there now. Birds like it, though. You can see them flyin’ in and out, looking for the leftover seed. And the turkeys, of course-they love it. Wild geese stop over sometimes to feed.”
“Canadian geese?” Her heart gave a leap, and in her memory’s eye she saw the undulating arrows against a pale, cold Iowa sky. Homesickness washed over her, prickling her nose and eyes.
“Yeah. I don’t see any out there now, though. Sorry.” His voice was husky. “Maybe another time.”
He paused, while his fingers went on stroking the back of her hand, and out of the blue she found herself wondering what he looked like. Not in general, of course-she remembered him the way he’d looked that night, remembered his warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and the sweetness of that smile-but at this particular moment. Right now she couldn’t hear a trace of that smile in his voice. She didn’t know what she did hear-warmth, compassion, kindness…other things she couldn’t sort out or identify-and she couldn’t picture the face that went with the voice at all. Her face felt stiff and achy with the effort of trying to penetrate the blankness. Frustration was a fine vibration that ran beneath the surface of her skin.
She felt his body turn toward her, become a close and humid warmth, and the vibration inside her became a jumpy current of electricity.
“Okay. Over here-” his voice was a spine-stirring growl near her ear, and she felt foolish as she turned, clumsy under his guidance, as if she’d missed a step in a dance “-on this side is mostly woods, but there’s some cow pastures and hay fields with those big round bales still lying in ’em, and a pond down there, and a creek, too. And beyond that, more woods.”
“No houses?” Her voice cracked.
C.J. gave a little laugh. “Told you we’re out in the middle of nowhere. No, actually, Jimmy Joe-that’s my brother-”
“The one you work for, who owns the trucking company.”
“Right. His place is half a mile or so down the road from here. He used to run the business from there, until it got too big. Now he’s got a regular terminal on the outskirts of Augusta. Then, just about a mile down the road in the other direction is my place. It’s closer than that through the fields, but I like to come by the road so I can keep track of my time.”
“So you did really ‘run’ over here this morning?”
There was a little pause, and this time when he spoke she could hear the grin. “Told you I keep in shape.”
“Yes, but
“I got started running way back in high school,” he was saying, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “The way it happened was, I was playing football and, like all good Georgia boys, dreaming of being a Georgia Bulldog one day. Since I was built on the lean side and had some fairly decent speed, I was a running back. Come the end of the football season, my coach wanted me to go out for track to keep in shape. Work on my time.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had a distant sound, as if he’d gone into a private room and closed the door, leaving her outside. “I guess he thought I had some potential. Anyway, whether I did or not I never found out, but I got to like the running for its own sake, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.”
She walked on beside him, unconsciously in step, listening to what he’d told her and what he hadn’t. Listening to the faint elusive sadness in his voice that reminded her of the way wild geese sounded, far away in an autumn sky. After a moment she asked, “Why didn’t you? Find out about your potential, I mean.” And when he didn’t answer she did for him, softly. “You never got to the University of Georgia?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He stopped walking, and so did she. She heard a dry, scuffing sound. He’d leaned against a tree trunk, letting her hand slide out of its nest in the crook of his arm. Distancing himself from her, she thought, and felt strangely bereft.
Needing to maintain some kind of contact with him but not wanting to admit to that need, she put out her hand and found the tree trunk instead. Splaying her fingers wide, she pressed her palm against the rough, crisp bark and tilted her head to listen as somewhere overhead a squirrel began to scold in outrage at the intrusion into his domain.
C.J. stared up into the bronzy-gold leaves of the hickory tree and located the squirrel, perched on the broken-off stub of a dead branch, tail held up behind him and fluffed out like a brush. He thought about describing it for her, but it suddenly seemed impossible, utterly beyond him. The truth was, no matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t going to make her see.
The hurt that knowledge left inside him was a solid thing, like a fist in his guts. All in all, the vague ache of long-ago disappointments and failures seemed easier to deal with.
He drew a breath. “Preseason practice, start of my senior year. We were having a scrimmage and I got hit from the side-clipping, they call it-there’s a good reason why it’s illegal. Tore up the cartilage in my knee. They told me I’d be out the whole season, so there went my hopes for a scholarship to just about anyplace. I figured, the hell
