The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

“What do you mean by not happening like this?”

“I don’t know. I’m just talking out of my head.” Tish began to sob. “It’s just…” She nodded towards the woman. “Her.”

“Maybe we should take the conversation in there,” I said, not knowing if the woman was lucid enough to know what we were saying. Maybe she would stop making the noises if we left, I thought. I really wanted her to stop.

“I need to check on Tom, anyway,” she said, wiping the wet traces from her face.

Once we were in the living room, I asked Tish how Tom was doing.

“I stopped the bleeding. I hope, anyway. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought. I was so relieved when I saw that it wasn’t the carotid,” Tish said.

“I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve told you something.”

“What?” she asked.

Tom was on a blood thinner. I knew this because he had the heart attack while we were eating supper back in East Texas. Some of the guys and me were the only people who went to see him at the hospital. We never talked about it, but I knew he had family back in Florida. For whatever reason, none of them cared enough to come or even call during his stay and recovery. He never seemed too sad about it, and like I said, I didn’t ask.

“He’s on blood thinner.”

“That would’ve been nice to know.”

***

We had been at the house for several hours. The adrenaline had long waned, leaving me with ragged nerves and exhausted beyond anything I personally had ever experienced. We needed to sleep, even if it was freezing in the house. Sam told us how his parents used to hang blankets over most of the doorways because the wood stove in the living room was never enough to heat the entire house. Once we did that, the living room became nice and toasty.

The blankets covering the doorway had a secondary benefit. They helped mute the woman’s constant whimpering. That was until she began trying to sound out actual words. She kept repeating the letter t. “Ttttttttt,” followed by more whimpering. Tish spent several moments in the kitchen checking on her. When she had finished, the woman wasn’t making any more sound. We were so relieved she had quit, no one asked what she had done to make her quiet.

We did agree that if she did begin to regain more of her movement, we would do everything in our power to help. I’m not sure if we actually meant it or not. If I’m being honest, we made that pact to make ourselves feel better about trying to ignore another human’s suffering. And look, it was pretty obvious by that point that she was suffering.

We also decided, since Tom’s attacker was still at large, someone would need stay awake and keep lookout while the rest of us slept, not to mention keeping an eye on Tom and the woman in the kitchen. Sam decided that he would go first because he didn't trust anyone else at that point to hold the rifle. We didn’t argue. Tish checked over Tom one more time, tucked him in, and we hunkered down for a few hours nap.

***

I opened my heavy eyes. I had hoped all of this was a nightmare, but my aching back and sore knees were a testament to how real things were. Sam gave me a perplexed look as I came to a sitting position on the floor. “How long did I sleep?”

“Accordin to ‘at damn grandfather clock over yonder, ya was asleep ‘bout three hours. I ain’t sure how you slept past the damn ringin of ‘em chimes.”

He told me that at one point he had nearly fallen asleep when the "damn thang went off and almost caused me to pee my pants.” I told him that I was good. I would take over for him, and surprisingly he took my offer. "Don't shoot any of us in our sleep, ya crazy bastard." He slapped me on my uninjured shoulder and took occupancy of the pallet that I had just gotten up from. “You better not have farted under ‘ese blankets.”

“Way to keep it classy, Sam.”

I sat in the chair by the small window. Enough cold radiated off the window pane to give a chill, but as exhausted as I was, it helped me stay awake. The snow had almost completely stopped by that point, and even though twilight had been replaced with complete darkness, the full moon shined brightly enough that there was enough natural light outside I could clearly see all the way to street in front of the house.

There was a car sitting in the front yard, but the fact that it was missing two wheels and up on blocks, told me it wasn’t quite in working order. Because everything in Barrow was so damn expensive, people rarely threw anything away. That was why junk lay around everywhere. Not surprisingly, that included cars.

I couldn't help myself from wishing the car was running. I would've liked to have jump in and driven as far away as possible. That wouldn’t have been that far. There were no roads out of Barrow. Still, anywhere was better than that shitty little house.

Since I couldn’t escape in the broken down beater in the front yard, I’d settle for a different kind of escape. I had brought snack with me. I took the candy bar out of my pocket and began eating it. The sugar instantly made me feel better. I was finishing the last bite when I heard Tom say something in a raspy but understandable voice. “Did you save me some, you fat bastard?”

“If I’d known you weren’t dead, I would’ve,” I replied with a big grin. Damn, I was glad to hear his voice.

“You think I can get a drink of water?”

“Sure.”

As quietly as I could, I rummaged through our bags looking for a bottle of water. Apparently, we had drunk it all. Damn.

“I’ll be back in second.