awakening of the sated.
Moments passed, and still sleep beckoned. He was not without pain, nor was he immune to disturbing thoughts. His head hurt. He was bruised. She was not with him. He didn’t know where he was, or with whom, or why he had been taken. He recalled, in fleeting images, a struggle, shots fired.
But in each case — from the aching where the first blow had been struck to the sensation of being lost — no sooner was any discomfort a part of his awareness than a billowing tide of lassitude swept over him, languor robbed him of his ability to react as anything more than a distant observer. Too tired, he thought, closing his eyes — too tired. He smiled to himself. Easier to dream….
Some long-practiced ability to sense trouble urged him awake again, and for a brief moment he opened his eyes. The room caromed wildly above him. He closed them again.
“God, I hate the smell of blood,” a voice was saying.
Other words drifted by.
“Pale.”
“Not yet….”
“…make it?”
“Nothing to worry about,” someone said.
He thought perhaps there were things to worry about, but they slipped the grasp of his mind and swam away from him.
The conversation between the others went on, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to understand what they were saying.
The dreaming began again.
He was standing on the gravel drive, looking at the house.
He remembered coming out this way with his father, back in the late 1950s, in the old blue Buick sedan they had owned then — the one with a metal dash and fierce, toothy grille. From the passenger seat he watched the blur of dark green leaves and smooth, gray trunks of orange and lemon and grapefruit trees go by.
He had been in the area many times since then, of course, but today, standing on the drive, he was remembering a time when his father had needed to bring some papers to Riverside. The girls had had to stay home. “Just boys, this time,” his father had said.
It was a long drive from Bakersfield and a hot one. Frank didn’t care. His dad was a cop, and they didn’t often get this kind of time together.
With the windows down, he could smell the heady fragrance of the groves. They passed dirt driveways that began at the road, marked by tin mailboxes with red flags announcing who had mail, who didn’t. And down at the other end of each drive, there was almost always a modest white wood frame house.
The memory came back to him in the dream more vividly than it had in real life. In real life he had stood watching the house, wondering why he was feeling so spooky all of a sudden. Hell, the house looked haunted. The paint was peeling off the trim in large, curling flakes. The house was surrounded by a porch; the porch railing had supports broken out of it, leaving it gap toothed and sagging. Dead vines formed a thick and thorny gray lace that shielded the front door from view. Screens were torn or missing.
The ramshackle house sat on a large lot. Tall, dry grass grew in straw-colored clumps. A gnarled, leafless orange tree held two barren branches up to the cloudless sky as if in a gesture of despair.
He thought of the place as it might have looked thirty years before, of a bright red bougainvillea adding color to a white house surrounded by fruit trees.
He shook his head. He supposed a generation or two of heirs had carved up the original owner’s citrus grove and sold it off piecemeal. Nothing else could explain the odd mixture of lots and buildings that made up this street. A handful of trees remained here and there, but the groves were gone. The development that followed had been random. Train tracks ran along the far side of the street, parallel to the back fence of the industrial park that stood on the opposite side of the tracks. All that could be seen of the buildings beyond were windowless concrete walls and loading docks. He wondered if the industrial park had replaced a packing house.
As he stood on the gravel drive, a
Moments passed, and still sleep beckoned. He was not without pain, nor was he immune to disturbing thoughts. His head hurt. He was bruised. She was not with him. He didn’t know where he was, or with whom, or why he had been taken. He recalled, in fleeting images, a struggle, shots fired.
But in each case — from the aching where the first blow had been struck to the sensation of being lost — no sooner was any discomfort a part of his awareness than a billowing tide of lassitude swept over him, languor robbed him of his ability to react as anything more than a distant observer. Too tired, he thought, closing his eyes — too tired. He smiled to himself. Easier to dream….
Some long-practiced ability to sense trouble urged him awake again, and for a brief moment he opened his eyes. The room caromed wildly above him. He closed them again.
“God, I hate the smell of blood,” a voice was saying.
Other words drifted by.
“Pale.”
“Not yet….”
“…make it?”
“Nothing to worry about,” someone said.
He thought perhaps there were things to worry about, but they slipped the grasp of his mind and swam away from him.
The conversation between the others went on, but he couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to understand what they were saying.
The dreaming began again.
He was standing on the gravel drive, looking at the house.
He remembered coming out this way with his father, back in the late 1950s, in the old blue Buick sedan they had owned then — the one with a metal dash and fierce, toothy grille. From the passenger seat he watched the blur of dark green leaves and smooth, gray trunks of orange and lemon and grapefruit trees go by.
He had been in the area many times since then, of course, but today, standing on the drive, he was remembering a time when his father had needed to bring some papers to Riverside. The girls had had to stay home. “Just boys, this time,” his father had said.
It was a long drive from Bakersfield and a hot one. Frank didn’t care. His dad was a cop, and they didn’t often get this kind of time together.
With the windows down, he could smell the heady fragrance of the groves. They passed dirt driveways that began at the road, marked by tin mailboxes with red flags announcing who had mail, who didn’t. And down at the other end of each drive, there was almost always a modest white wood frame house.
The memory came back to him in the dream more vividly than it had in real life. In real life he had stood watching the house, wondering why he was feeling so spooky all of a sudden. Hell, the house looked haunted. The paint was peeling off the trim in large, curling flakes. The house was surrounded by a porch; the porch railing had supports broken out of it, leaving it gap toothed and sagging. Dead vines formed a thick and thorny gray lace that shielded the front door from view. Screens were torn or missing.
The ramshackle house sat on a large lot. Tall, dry grass grew in straw-colored clumps. A gnarled, leafless orange tree held two barren branches up to the cloudless sky as if in a gesture of despair.
He thought of the place as it might have looked thirty years before, of a bright red bougainvillea adding color to a white house surrounded by fruit trees.
He shook his head. He supposed a generation or two of heirs had carved up the original owner’s citrus grove and sold it off piecemeal. Nothing else could explain the odd mixture of lots and buildings that made up this street. A handful of trees remained here and there, but the groves were gone. The development that followed had been random. Train tracks ran along the far side of the street, parallel to the back fence of the industrial park that stood on the opposite side of the tracks. All that could be seen of the buildings beyond were windowless concrete walls and loading docks. He wondered if the industrial park had replaced a packing house.
As he stood on the gravel drive, a
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