THUNDER AND LIGHTNING

CHAPTER 4, State of Control (Copyright WRBJr Living Trust)

She knew it was a dream she didn’t want to have. She was walking down a dark flight of steps. Her heels echoed off dank cement walls. One dim bulb cast a weak glow over the door toward which she descended, painted garish blue in contrast to drab unpainted cement. There was a huge white letter painted on the door. For some reason she couldn’t read it.

She paused on the landing. More steps led deeper into the earth. She put her hand on the doorknob. She didn’t want to open the door.

She’d opened hundreds like it over her years in cities and forged confidently into the dark, sure of herself. Keep your head up, move with purpose, that’s the best approach. Timid women were the ones predators picked on, a kind of Darwinian selection weeding out the weak. She wasn’t weak. And she wasn’t timid.

But she couldn’t open the door.

Something formless and terrifying lurked beyond. A light, erratic scratching insinuated into her awareness. Like rats in the coal basement under the house where she grew up. Claws scratching persistently as they scuttled around in the anthracite. She wondered why she couldn’t smell coal when she heard the rats so plainly. Hurry up, the claws seemed to say, hurry up, come on through, we’re waiting…

She jerked awake, rigid with terror.

The scratching continued unabated. She was lying down — well, she had known it was a dream — but residual fear raised goose flesh. Where the hell was she?

Thunder grumbled like an Amish wagon rolling across a covered bridge and drew her attention to the windows. Gnarled tree-branches rubbed against the panes — the scratching sound that invaded her dream. A fat drop of rain hit the glass, another, then a scattered sprinkle. Stark violet light washed against the glass and winked out. She counted under her breath until thunder rolled again. The storm was close now.

“You’re awake.” The woman who’d found her in the rest-room smiled in the doorway.

“How long did I sleep?”

“A good long while. It’s after five o’clock. Closing time. How are you feeling?”

She stretched tentatively under the coverlet, feeling her clothing twisted around her, her pistol a warm lump under her left hip. In her sleep she had turned onto her back. “My headache’s almost gone.”

“Great!” The woman crossed to the refrigerator. “I have iced-tea here. Like some?”

“Please.”

She pushed the coverlet off with her left hand, carefully swung her legs off the couch. The throb in her neck was muted. Rain slashed against the window with a fierce pecking sound. Tree-branches scratched and rubbed.

The click of ice cubes in plastic glasses and gurgle as the other woman poured from a glass pitcher were peaceful, ordinary sounds. She felt a sense of cozy lassitude. She was safe for now. Time enough later to wonder what she was safe from. She padded in stocking-feet to the table.

“Your color is lots better.” The other woman gave her a glass of tea, raised hers in a kind of salute. “I’m Betty Clark.”

Lightning lit the room like a strobe. Thunder crashed close on its heels. She jerked. Cold tea spilled over her hand. The building trembled gently. “Wow!” she said, half-laughing.

“High-plains thunder storm,” Betty said, smiling. “Rolled in fast.”

“I saw it coming while I was on the road.” She tasted the tea. Over-sweet, no lemon. Which told her something about her acquired tastes. But didn’t give her a name to trade with her benefactor. The tea soothed her dry throat wonderfully. She drained the glass. Betty was ready with the pitcher.

“You must have been dehydrated, poor thing.”

She drank the second glass more slowly. Rain was drumming on the roof now, and lightning and thunder came in regular bursts. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” she said. “I was about done in.”

Betty leaned forward, all motherly concern. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here. I usually wait till one of these storms eases up before I start home.” She paused as lightning interrupted the smooth hum of the refrigerator. “That was close. We lose power here all the time when these come by. The phone lines are usually okay. I could call the shelter for you…” she let her voice trail.

“The shelter?”

“The one I volunteer in? Remember?”

“Oh!” She tried a wry smile. “I may be beat up, but I don’t feel battered. At least not like that.”

“Feel like telling me what happened?”

For a wild moment she thought about simply telling this woman the truth: she had no earthly idea what happened. Didn’t even know who she was. She instantly suppressed the idea — ashamed she couldn’t remember. Abjectly fearful Betty’s friendly facade would crumple into some kind of fear, or worse, suspicion, if she tried to explain.

“I — I can’t talk about it yet.” She heard the break in her voice.

So did Betty, who put a reassuring hand on her arm. “Don’t have to tell me a thing. I know how it feels when the world turns upside down. I do. Lord, some of the things I hear at the shelter would make a stone weep.” Her voice strengthened in indignation. “Things men do to women in the name of love!”

This woman seemed determined to fit her into the Betty Clark world-view of battered woman fleeing deranged mate or lover. Forget for the moment her misplaced memories, she decided. (And her deeper self goaded: you did that already!) She wasn’t thinking straight to resist Clark’s mothering, which provided a ready-made cover story.

Cover story?

She gazed at the thrashing tree-limbs beyond the window. Words had too many meanings when the context was lost. Cover-story meant a story in a magazine illustrated by the cover photograph. But the other meaning…

A lie. A series of plausible lies told for some ulterior purpose, like hiding your true identity. She somehow thought she’d used the latter kind of cover-story before, if only she could remember. But a cover-story also could conceal the fact you no longer had a true identity…

Betty patted her hand solicitously. “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to bring bad memories to life for you again.”

She brought her gaze back inside. Betty’s attempts at mind-reading were so off the mark it was an effort to keep from laughing. She would welcome bad memories; even awful memories. Any memories damn it!

“Those trees scratching the window are what woke me up,” she temporized. “I don’t know what kind they are.”

“Oh, those? Juniper, honey. You must be from back east. Heard it in your voice.

“Juniper,” she said. “Genievre.”

“Gin what, honey?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Genievre. French for Juniper. Shortened to gin by the English when they began to flavor distilled liquor in the 1600s.”

“Well now that’s something I didn’t know,” Betty said. “I’ve got it! You’re a school teacher!”

Transient flash of memory. I’m not the one in the family teaches liquor history, she started to say — and stopped. Then who was? She bit her lip in renewed frustration.

“You must be hungry,” Betty decided. “Bet you don’t even remember last time you ate.”

She started laughing. If Betty only knew how right she was! She laughed and laughed, couldn’t stop until the laughter turned into wrenching sobs. Betty moved around the table to cradle her face against a maternal bosom, stroking her hair, making crooning noises.

“They put on a good supper at the shelter,” Betty said when she was finally quiet.