Gradually his massive head fell forward, cushioned by the mat of red beard, and the giant slept.
He awoke at dawn, startled with the sense that something was not as it should be. Instantly he was on his feet. His eyes darted around the gloomy interior of the cabin until he spied the blanket-covered form on one of the cots. Then he remembered. The boy.
While Jones watched, the boy stirred as though he could feel eyes upon him. He came fully awake all at once, like an animal sensing danger. From the boy's expression, Jones thought for a moment he would try to run out the door.
'Hey, easy, son. It's me, Jones, remember? You're safe here.'
For the first time since he had found the boy in the trap
Jones saw the semblance of a smile on the young face. Thin, and not firmly in place, but undeniably a smile.
'I forgot where I was,' the boy said.
'Can't blame you. I wake up the same place damn near every morning, and I still forget sometimes.'
The boy started to sit up. Jones said, 'You better not move around too much with that ankle.'
The boy looked down at the hump where the blanket covered his right foot. 'Ankle?'
'Don't tell me you forget about that too? Maybe it's just as well. At least you got some sleep.'
'Was my ankle hurt?'
'I'm afraid it was. Hurt pretty bad. I'd better have a look at it.'
While the boy watched curiously, Jones peeled back the blanket, exposing the foot, still tightly wrapped in the bandage he had fashioned. Very gently the big man untied the torn strips and unwound the clean white cloth.
'Holy shit!'
'What's the matter?' The boy struggled to sit up while Jones held his right foot up off the cot, examining it.
'I don't believe what I'm seeing.'
He had expected the swollen and discoloured skin, torn by the steel teeth, the shattered bits of bone, snapped tendons, ligaments, blood, and pus. What he saw was fresh unbroken skin on a foot that moved this way and that with no apparent discomfort to the boy. The only sign of his terrible wound was a faint patch of shiny pink scar tissue where the trap had bitten through the flesh.
'I flat don't believe it,' Jones said again.
The boy sat up, bracing himself with his hands and looked curiously from his foot to the face of the big man.
'Doesn't it hurt?' Jones said.
The boy shook his head.
'Not at all?'
'Nope.'
'Can you stand on it?'
Still handling the foot gingerly, Jones put it back on the canvas of the cot. The boy swung his feet out to the wooden floor and stood up. He took several steps away from Jones, then back. He jumped up and down. He did a little impromptu dance step.
'Well, I'll be damned.'
'Feels fine,' the boy said.
Jones sat on the edge of the cot staring down at the boy's feet. 'Either you are the fastest healing sonofagun the world has ever seen, or we've just witnessed a miracle.'
'Maybe it wasn't hurt as bad as you thought.'
Oh, yes, it was hurt all right, Jones thought. Nothing in the world of medicine was going to save that leg much below the knee. He was not likely to make a mistake like that. He opened his mouth to say as much, then saw the strangely pleading look on the boy's face. The boy did not want to hear just now that there was something very strange about him.
'Maybe you're right,' Jones said. 'Anyway, you appear to be in fine shape this morning. You ought to be able to walk into Pinyon with me. Save me a load.'
The boy looked away. 'Do we have to go?'
'Course we do. Somebody's going to be looking for you.'
'I doubt it.'
'Sure they will. You've got folks, haven't you?'
'I–I don't remember.'
'Well, they'll remember. And they'll be damn worried about you.'
'I could stay here with you.'
'No way. That's all I'd need is to have a big ass search party come crashing in here and find me with a runaway boy. So far the local people haven't called me a kidnapper or a pervert, but all they'd need is something to put the thought in their heads. I'm taking you back, boy, and that's final.'
The boy was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'Does it have to be today?'
'Well… ' and immediately Jones cursed himself for weakening. The boy's face lit up with a smile, a real one this time.
'I don't eat much, Jones. And I can help around here. I can cut firewood. I can help with your garden. You've got a leak right over the door. I'll bet I could fix that.'
'I could fix it myself if it bothered me that much,' Jones said grumpily.
The boy looked at him sideways. 'My foot's still a little tender.'
Jones ran his fingers through his wiry red beard. 'Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give it a day's rest.'
The boy's happiness was so obvious that Jones was embarrassed and turned away. What kind of life must this kid have been living to want so much to stay in a broken-down forest cabin with a burnt-out hermit?
'But tomorrow, bright and early, rain or shine, we head for Pinyon, hear?'
'Whatever you say, Jones.' The boy sat on the bed and began happily lacing the blood-caked shoe on to the foot that by all rights should have been a mangled stump.
'Tomorrow,' Jones repeated in his deepest no-nonsense voice. 'Tomorrow we hike.'
It was four days before they started for Pinyon. During that time the boy had not only repaired the stubborn leak over the door that had plagued Jones for a year, he had cleaned out the weeds from what remained of Beverly's flower garden, and helped Jones straighten up his vegetable plot. He had chopped and stacked a month's worth of firewood and brought back pails of wild blackberries and pine-nuts from the nearby woods.
More than all that, he gave Jones somebody to talk to.
The big man had forgotten how good the sound of another human voice was. Even better, another ear to listen, for in fact the boy talked very little, while Jones almost never stopped. Jones talked about how it was living off the land. He talked about his own memories as a boy. He talked about the turbulent time of his young manhood. He talked about Beverly. And he talked about John.
The boy listened. He listened, and whether he fully understood or not, he nodded at the right places, asked the right questions, and agreed when it was important to agree. He still claimed to have no memory of his own past, and Jones did not press him. If it were true, there was nothing Jones could do about it, and if the boy were concealing something, that was none of Jones's business.
On the morning of the fifth day Jones was wearing his heavy boots and buckling up his backpack when the boy awoke. When the boy started to speak the big man held up a massive hand to silence him.
'Before you say a word, forget it. Today's the day.'
'Aw, Jones…'
'No. I set out a pair of boots there that might fit you if you put on three or four pairs of socks. Don't worry, I've got plenty. You wash up and I'll get some breakfast going.'
They ate hot biscuits with butter and blackberry jam, and washed them down with some of Jones's powerful coffee. The boy made no more protests, but as they left the cabin and were halfway across the clearing he stopped to look back.
'It was a good time, Jones.'
