"GUESSWORK"
- Chapter Fifteen -
"Goin' to Town"
Daylight.
Something unexpected filtered through the trees, extending from heaven in slender glassy rods of light. Needling their way boldly between thick branches and happily spearing the ground, thousands of tiny sunbeams danced among the pine needles, making random splotches of brilliance on the forest floor.
One of them landed on Gregory House's closed eyelid and burned into it like a hot red ember. He yelped and then squirmed instinctively out of the way before it fried his retina right through the delicate skin. Gregg shifted further to the right against the face of the sheltering rock, pawed groggily at the side of his face, and slowly squinted upward.
The sun was shining!
He had not seen the sun for so long that he'd almost forgotten it was still up there. Winter in New Jersey often caused the sun to hide behind layers of thick black clouds, sometimes for weeks on end, denying the bleak landscape any glimpse of its face. Six weeks in rehab while sulking behind windows of opaqued glass encrusted with ice and snow did not help. His constant pain and no Vicodin to alleviate it had been a very poor way to try to view the world in any other capacity than unending darkness.
House did not really want to be conscious right now, but he'd been jolted rudely out of a peaceful slumber that he could hardly believe he'd been experiencing. Maybe he should sleep in a pine forest more often! It had been a long time since the buzz in his leg had allowed him so much uninterrupted sleep. He'd been more exhausted than he'd thought. Instinctively, he reached his hand down there to check the scar; suddenly afraid his leg might have lost sensation … not a good thing.
His fingertips touched the edge of the deep depression gingerly, and that was a mistake. The instant electrical impulse that charged through his thigh let him know that the leg was indeed not senseless, but merely lying in wait. He swore in chagrin when the ache resumed as soon as his searching fingers brushed across the area of the damaged nerves. His faithful companion was demanding breakfast, and his interval of peaceful rest was over.
House unzipped the sleeping bag halfway, hating to move out of its cocooning warmth and face the cold light of even this bright day. He reached to his backpack and the three pill containers, extracting the morning dose one vial at a time and swallowing the tablets dry. And so it went.
Still sitting there waiting for some of the painful buzz to ease a little, he reached to the handlebars of the Repsol to check on the status of the wet clothing he'd removed last night. The socks, fortunately, were dry. His jeans were very nearly so, though still damp at the bottom hems. Better than he'd expected. His cane leaned against the bike's front fork within easy reach, and he grasped it tightly before making an effort to get to his feet.
Leaning on the cane in his left hand, and the face of the rock on the right, he eased the rest of the way out of the sleeping bag and levered his body slowly upright. It was freakin' cold out there!
As usual the leg was stiff and unresponsive, but he had to get it limbered up and moving. He needed to clean up his mess, gather his trash and get the hell out of here. With this break in the weather, he should be able to make it to Raleigh sometime today.
He stood, leaning heavily on the rock, biting at his lip and giving his abused muscles a chance to loosen. He had to get dressed, get into the boots, pack up and get going. A glance at his watch told him it was a little after 6:00 a.m. He was hungry, and he needed the biggest cup of coffee the law would allow. Soon!
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Jim Wilson flipped on his turn signal, pulled over to the side of the road as a courtesy to nonexistent traffic, and checked his map again after he was well past the turnoffs that led over to Danville. The switch to Route 85 wasn't all that far ahead, and if he hurried, it might be possible to catch up to the motorcycle before House made the transition back to the interstate. There was a small town about forty miles straight ahead.
Small? It was a pinpoint on the map.
Looking closer at the tangled road configurations, he ran a finger along some of the possible routes once more and wondered where the hell House might have spent the night along this isolated stretch of no man's land. In the open, for God's sake? Or had he doggedly persisted in continuing along this crappy back road with its twists and turns and potholes and washed-out ruts and …
For God's sake, Wilson, stop this! House is a big boy. He can take care of himself.
Oh-Ho! … yeah, right …he's proved that fact so damn often, hasn't he? He's a very "big" six-year-old …eminently capable of breaking his fool neck out here somewhere …
In spite of himself, James Wilson's imagination was once again inducing self-torturing visions involving fire trucks and police cars and ambulances with red lights revolving, cordoning off the scene of a fatal accident involving some idiot on a motorcycle out here in the middle of nowhere …
He shook himself mentally. Thought something angrily to himself in Hebrew.
Even when alone and half exasperated with himself, Wilson had an insane tendency to roll his eyes in accordance with a very old habit. He did so now, and ended up staring hard at his half-reflection in the rear view mirror. The worried eyes that stared back gave him enough of a reprieve that he could take a deep breath and gather himself to shake off the nonsense. When he looked back again, he discovered that he'd lifted his right hand to the tense muscles at the back of his neck. House's antics caused him to do that a lot too, even without thinking. Consciously he returned his hand to the steering wheel.
God! What were the lengths to which he would go for this guy? He hadn't discovered his limits yet. Were there limits where House was concerned?
He pulled the Escalade's gearshift out of "park", turned on the left turn signal, all very proper, and pulled back onto the muddy road. Up ahead he could see the fringes of a stand of what looked like old growth spruce trees and maybe some hemlocks and Virginia pines. Some of them were very tall, and it seemed almost as though the road had been cut right through the middle of them.
The immediate change in the consistency of the roadbed was astounding. Mud turned to dry road in a heartbeat, as though there had been no snow, no bitter cold, no wind … no winter there at all. Wilson felt as though he had entered the gateway to another world. He took his foot off the gas and rubbernecked upward through the SUV's spattered windshield, marveling at the tight canopy of interwoven branches and the mottled pinpoints of bright sunlight that filtered through them. He could see dust motes reflecting the sun's rays like hundreds of tiny Tinkerbelles dancing through Never Never Land and hovering like will o'the wisps in the electrified air.
He drove on, slowly, marveling at nature's power. Twice he noticed downed trees, one on each side of the road, blown over or fallen over; their broken backs graceful, even in death. He pictured them in his mind as gallant sentries bowing beside a gateway, inviting weary travelers into the sanctuary of their depths …
Wilson's breath hitched.
His heart beat a little faster as he braked with a lurch … hard … at the right side of the road where the second fallen tree lay over with part of its splintered trunk still pointing skyward. Scarcely breathing, he leaned far across the front seat of the SUV and lowered the window on the passenger side.
There it was.
Very faintly, almost unnoticeable unless closely observed, two disturbances in the dead pine needles beneath the tree's broken back, seized his immediate attention. The color contrast between layers of ground cover and the tiny ruts they produced, announced the passage of … something … in and out of the thicket.
James Wilson closed his eyes momentarily and took a deep breath. Perhaps in grateful supplication …
Divine intervention? Again? Wow! As long as You're offering … I'm taking.
After another half mile of tented pines, the Escalade emerged from nature's cathedral into bright sunlight.
Wilson didn't notice. There was a small town a short distance ahead, and he was a little choked up … and grinning like the cat that got the canary!
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Gregg House's weakness was becoming a danger. He was very aware of it, both to himself and to anyone who happened to be sharing the road with him at any given moment. He was grateful for the sunlight and the higher temperatures, although it did nothing to provide comfort or warmth for his damaged leg. There was nothing that could help that as long as he was on the road.
His vision wandered in and out of focus, and his hands were cramped and painful. The right riding boot was filled to capacity with his swollen foot, and threatening to overflow. He needed this journey to be over. Soon.
He came upon the little town all of a sudden. It wasn't there. Then … Bingo! It was.
"Chase City", said the sign, and he bit back a rueful grunt of irony. He guessed it was allowed to call itself a town because it had an intersection with stop signs on two corners. There were houses along both sides of the street. Old ones. Windows with four panes each … and wooden sashes with rippled glass in which he could see his own image bobbing like a cork in the water as he rode past. Maybe twenty buildings in all. And a gas station. And a feed store. And a drug store! Sweet Jesus … he wanted to rob it blind of all its Vicodin!
And …
Thank you, Higher Power!
A diner!
It was the very first "trolley" diner he had seen in twenty-five years. Maybe longer. He pulled into the empty gravel parking lot, and stared. His "ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong" mind was immediately distracted, and he sat still on the idling Repsol, intrigued by the amazing display of 1950's pop culture, come hauntingly alive before his eyes.
The little restaurant had once been an actual trolley car, vintage 1920's to '40's. When trolleys went the way of the buffalo, someone had bought it, placed it on a foundation, built a kitchen area at the back, built cement steps adorned with "period" wrought iron railings, and opened her up for business.
House smiled a real smile as he continued to look the place over. He was willing to bet that the inside had tall chrome stools anchored to the floor in front of a chrome bar with a white Formica top. He also bet there was a tall clear plastic pie case at one end of that bar, loaded with goodies for a sweet tooth. There would be one of the biggest coffee makers in North America behind that bar, complete with two glass pots, and his nose wrinkled with aroma remembrance.
There would be booths along the window wall, covered in red and white Naugahyde, and every other booth would have a chrome coat rack bolted in place on the black and white linoleum floor. Each table would have a plastic see-thru console where popular songs could be chosen by pressing red plastic keys aligned along the bottom, and patrons could listen to oldies music while they ate their meals.
Strong, horseshoe-floating brimstone-melting coffee would be served in wrist-crippling white Syracuse China mugs. Dinner, of course, would arrive piping hot, in traditional, chipped, many-times-washed, Blue Willow dinnerware that House had long maintained came over on Noah's Ark. (You didn't have to be religious to have a "thing" for Noah's Ark!)
He shut off the bike's engine. It was running a little hot, and could use a rest as much as he could. He would have to stop for gas before heading south again. He pulled the black helmet off and placed it, as usual, on the right handlebar, then withdrew the leather riding gloves, mucked now with mud and road debris, and laid them across the gas tank. It was soon time to take the tape off the insides of the gauntlets and remove the cash he'd squirreled there. So much to remember; so much drain on his frizzled brain! He was surprised he remembered his own name.
Gregg reached down to liberate his cane from its perch on the bike's frame, and made to dismount. His leg was unresponsive and throbbing, and his foot had swollen to the point that it felt like a chunk of rock. He paused, sore, deliberating. Now what? He balanced precariously for a moment and jabbed at the kickstand with his left boot. The bike leaned into the left swing of the front fork for the instant it took to settle into the difference in its center of gravity. Balance maintained, it shuddered for a moment, then settled.
House snaked his achy right hand beneath the bend of the knee and lifted from the shoulder. His fingers slipped. His foot fell off the peg and hit the ground, and he moaned.
Fuck!
This was so … not right!
He needed the break. Needed the downtime to relax awhile and get his bearings. He was not that far out of Raleigh now, and it would not take him long to get there … if indeed he could get his stubborn, painful body to help with some of the freaking work!
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Across the street a muddy, dirty, slush-spattered white Cadillac Escalade rolled slowly through town. Suddenly it pulled to the side of the street and braked to a stop. Behind the wheel a dark-eyed man ogled the shaggy biker in the diner's parking lot as he pulled himself erect with difficulty.
The dismount from the filthy motorcycle had been heart wrenching to witness, and the man in the SUV cringed in sympathetic pain as the bike rider began to maneuver his reluctant body away from the machine and turn with a small, inadequate cane for support, to stand almost helplessly in front of five cement steps, looking upward as though trying to figure out how the hell to get up there …
Finally, James Wilson leaned his weary head forward into the middle of the car's big steering wheel and crunched down hard on the inside of his lower lip until he tasted the warm, unmistakable salty flavor of his own flesh …
Oh God, House!
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