Shooting Starr

body, but she knew it was no use trying to sleep again. Every time she closed her eyes she saw those puddles of blood…viscous and unimaginably red.

She got out of bed, taking the bedspread comforter with her, and felt her way to the rocking chair. She pulled it close to the open window and sat curled up in it with her feet under her, wrapped in little yellow butterflies dancing on a field of pink, until she heard the birds begin to chirp in the dawn.

She didn’t want to tell C.J. about the dream. She wouldn’t tell him. Damned if she would. It was a dream, and she wasn’t a child; she didn’t need anyone to soothe her nightmares away.

She didn’t need him.

But the feel of his arms around her, warming her wet, shivering body like a warm fire on a wintery Iowa evening…of his mouth, cold and hard on hers. The memory of those things was like a haunting and annoying phrase of music that had stuck in her brain and kept recurring when she least expected it, no matter how hard she tried to push it away…

It was Sunday. They were returning from their walk, strolling slowly along the grass and gravel lane, side by side but not touching, each occupying one of the low, graveled tracks where the tires ran, separated by the grassy hummock between. It had been scary for her the first time they’d done that, and she’d reached for him across the median, needing the touch of his hand to give her courage. Gradually, though, she’d stopped feeling as though she were about to fall off the edge of the world, and learned to judge her way by the feel of the gravel under her feet and the rise of the ground on either side of the path. She was learning to walk with her head up and the sun on her face and the morning breeze in her hair.

Normally, those things would have made her smile, drink deeply of the winey autumn air and quiver inside with that recurring and always unexpected happiness. This morning, she smiled, but the muscles of her face felt pinched and achy, and the restless emotion that vibrated through her wasn’t joy.

No, she ruthlessly told herself, I won’t tell him about the dream. I don’t need him to comfort me. I don’t need him to hold me. I don’t need- Oh, God…I can’t.

They were approaching the yard. She knew that because there was shade from the oaks and hickories that sheltered the house, and because the dogs had left them and gone off to their favorite nap spots in the flower beds. She veered onto the grass that grew along the sides of the lane, kept neatly mowed by Jess to the place where the ground rose to the pasture fences. There she knew, because C.J. had told her, began the riot of yellow sunflowers and black-eyed daisies and goldenrod and tall grasses headed out with waving plumes, the thickets of scarlet sumac and tangles of pink and purple and white morning glories, all laid out in a glorious harmony no human floral designer could ever hope to match.

“I want to pick some flowers to take back to the house,” she announced, breathless for no reason, holding her hands out in front of her and finding nothing. She’d taken several reckless, unsteady steps toward the fence when she felt C.J.’s body brush against her back. Her breath caught and her heart gave a scary lurch. I can’t let him touch me…I can’t let him hold me again. I can’t.

“Whoa, hold up,” he murmured, his voice a vibration near her ear. She felt his arms extend along the outsides of hers. “Okay, now…turn to your left, about…ten o’clock. Couple more steps…now you’ve got it…feel that?”

She nodded and gave an uneven cackle of laughter as she felt leaves prickle her hands and then the sturdy stalks of goldenrod…the spindlier stems of some sort of flower. A grass plume tickled her face and drifted into her mouth. She spat it out and waved it impatiently aside, focusing with all her concentration on what her hands were feeling. Seeing with my hands…is that what I’m doing? A strange, fierce excitement rushed through her, sanding her skin with goose bumps.

C.J. made a gruff sound, the beginnings of words, and she silenced him with a shake of her head and a sharp “No, don’t tell me. Let me do it…” as her fingers climbed as talk of goldenrod and found the feathery yellow plumes. She let them trail through her fingers. They felt silky soft, delicate as lace. She measured an elbow’s length down and broke one off, then two more. Her insides quivered, emotions as finely balanced as drops of dew on the edge of a leaf.

“I can hold those for you,” C.J. offered, but again she shook her head, forcing his nearness from her mind.

Her fingers were busy, following a slender, slightly furry stem to its terminal. Yes! There it was-a daisylike flower. She broke it off with her right hand and added it to the collection in her left. With a little burr of tension humming in her chest she picked daisies-sunflowers?-until she couldn’t find any more, then seined the air with her hands until they snagged the tickly plumes of grass that had teased her face at first.

Oh, but the grass leaves were sharp and left her hands and forearms stinging with tiny cuts, and the stems were tough and resisted her efforts to break them. She straightened, brushing tickling leaves-or bugs? Flies? Bees?-away from her face and gave a small grunt of frustration.

“Let me get that for you.” C.J.’s warm shape brushed her back…her shoulder…her arm. His clean, familiar scent mingled with the dusty smell of weeds and grass in her nostrils. It took all her willpower to hold herself still. Trembling, she listened to the squeaky, popping sounds the grass stems made as he broke them, knowing that if she turned her face toward him, his would be right…there. In her mind a vision rose, indistinct and soft with lavender shadows-crinkly brown eyes, a lock of sandy hair falling over one, a sweetly smiling mouth. Dimples-yes, I remember now…he has dimples.

“Looks nice.” His voice was much too near as he added the stems of grass to her bouquet. “Think you’ve ’bout got enough?”

For some reason she couldn’t answer him. Gathering the sheaf of flowers and foliage close to her chest, bugs, prickles and all, she felt her lips part, then close again.

“Ready to go back to the house?” A hand was firm and warm on her elbow.

She nodded but didn’t move. A shudder rocked her. “I dreamed about Vasily last night.”

Her eyes burned and the shivers were sweeping through her in waves, deep inside where they wouldn’t show. And now she knew why the nightmare had upset her so and why she hadn’t wanted to tell him about it. Why she dreaded needing him so. They were shivers of shame.

She heard a breath taken and released, and C.J.’s arm came across her shoulders. She slipped away from that gentle promise of comfort and stepped carefully from the grass to the gravel…then across the center ridge of grass…more gravel, and then the leaf-strewn grass that began the broad sweep into the yard and under the trees. She felt him moving beside her, but he didn’t speak and didn’t touch her again. She tried to fool him with a soft, breathy laugh.

“It’s the first time, can you believe that? The first time since the shooting.”

“Can’t see how that’s a bad thing,” C.J. said. His hand on her arm as he guided her around a tree trunk had a diffident, tentative feel. “He wouldn’t be pleasant to dream about.”

She felt a solid, but giving, bump against her hip. Her searching hand caught at the rope attached to the old tire as if it were a life preserver rather than a child’s swing. She fingered the rope and leaned into it casually, swaying a little to disguise her relief at finding something to hold on to. Something to give her her bearings. From here it was exactly twenty-two steps to the front porch.

C.J. watched her sway slowly in the dappled light, one arm hooked around the rope of the swing, the other cradling sprays of grasses and sunflowers and goldenrod. But though pollen from the goldenrod spangled her hair and cheeks and the shoulders of her sweatshirt like pixie dust, it wasn’t fairies and fantasies he thought about when he looked at her now. And though the bottom edge of the sweatshirt played peekaboo with her slender and supple flesh when she lifted her arm, he didn’t think about how firm and soft it would feel…not then. There was something weighing her down-a misery, a sadness he could almost see, as if a heavy net had been thrown over her. He wondered, he hoped she’d tell him what it was, if he was patient enough not to rush her.

“I haven’t…” She hesitated, and he held his breath; her voice seemed to come from a great distance, from across a chasm he didn’t know how to cross. “I haven’t even thought about him, about…the shooting. Even when we’ve talked about it, I haven’t really thought about it. Felt it-” she let go of the rope and touched her chest “-in here.”

“That’s understandable.” He found himself moving toward her-toward that chasm-and made himself stop. “I guess you’ve had one or two other things on your mind.”

She tilted her head toward him and gave a brittle laugh. “Yeah? What’s the second one?” He stared at her, not understanding, and she made a disgusted sound and began walking away from him. Pacing, rather; he could hear