The Dealer - Chapter 4 #newchapter

 Chapter 4

 

Scott’s frame shook with the sound of an explosion but the pressure that lay like a dead hand across his eyes prevented him from finding the source or generating concern regarding what he should do about it. Truth be told, he had neither the strength nor desire to remove the weight crushing the back of his head into his face. He wanted nothing more than to return to the warmth of sleep that had been disturbed by the commotion. The throbbing ache that permeated every sense convinced him to give in and drift away to whatever dreams might find him.

 

He scowled. A steady cadence disrupted his hopes of escaping into complacency, a dull beat that reminded him of the drummer’s march as the foot soldiers were pulled onto the field of battle. Part of him berated himself with the need to join his men while another wondered if he lay in the battlefield hospital, his life draining from him.

 

The beat skipped and stuttered jarring him into a greater sense of wakefulness. Scott felt as if a saber was thrust into his gut removing any choice regarding the heave into awareness. He was being called to battle—his weary mind only hoped he could recall which war exactly: The war of leading a charge of dutiful men attacking an army of equally committed men in order to snatch a piece of turf to hold for the Union or the war for his sanity in the confines of a Confederate prison. The successful end of either terrible conflict must have been one of imagination rather than reality. His dreams sucker punched him again. His war raged on despite fuzzy impressions that he had returned to his grandfather’s home with the Union intact. The unrelenting drumming in his ear belied that hope forcing him to accept that his torment continued.

 

Blue-gray eyes left the darkness behind his closed lids finding dreary gray surroundings that settled around him as depressing as the drizzling rain. Slowly, the images caught up to his sluggish mind. Outside. I’m outside. An odd sense of relief softened his gaze then suffused down the back of his neck, spreading across his chest as his despair was swept away without the constraints of crushing confinement keeping it contained. Not Libby, thank God. Where, then?

 

Cognizance of the saturation of his clothes, his hair, and the ground around him poked at his consciousness. A slow, owl-like blink allowed more information to be processed. He was outside. In the rain. He was cold. Achingly cold through his torso, along his shoulders and hips but the pain tapered away at his elbows, his knees. Of his hands and feet, fingers and toes, he felt …nothing. Was it the roar of a cannon that had stirred him back into his misery? Had an explosion stolen his limbs? Had the field of battle claimed another casualty? But when had he returned to his unit from the prison?

 

He parted his lips, or thought he did given he couldn’t feel them, yet he was blissfully rewarded with the welcomed moisture provided by the rain within his parched mouth, his raw throat. It burned as if he had been yelling. Shouting orders, no doubt. Fallen on the field of battle then. He wondered if he should allow the victors of this skirmish left to clear the field to think him dead and leave him behind. Bereft of his arms and legs, the remaining course of his life dictated a hidden presence in his grandfather’s mansion, away from the gawking stares of the Boston elite. No, life as a cripple offered little appeal. One simply did not acknowledge such sordid outcomes beyond the cursory nod of sympathy toward the aggrieved family. An elaborate marbled gravestone with tasteful statuary offered a much more acceptable option for polite sensibilities.

 

Scott allowed his eyes to drift shut as he considered his feelings on the matter. His grandfather would likely thank him for accepting the proper course of action. He twisted as the awkwardness of his position inserted itself, further interrupting his thoughts regarding a decision on his noble gesture. He was face-down but not flat. What remained of his legs were laying on a hard surface—not mud. Rock? And his head didn’t rest on the ground, hard or otherwise.

 

A heartbeat. He heard a heartbeat. Not a drum. Not a call to battle but a proclamation that life went on. For some. A faltering heartbeat sounded in his ear that rested on a prone man’s chest, his arm draped loosely across the firm waist. A living man. A man who deserved the attention of whoever served as medical intervention from whichever side held the day in this little slice of hell. Could be a competent doctor. Could be a butcher. Trapping this fallen man beneath him as their lives leeched away was not his decision to make.

 

“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” his eyes rolled upward toward the sky. “I may draw the butcher and give you the dead war hero rather than the crippled embarrassment after all,” Scott muttered aloud and returned fully to the world of relentless rain. He sucked in a deep breath and shouted, “Medic!”

 

Forcing his head to lift and his neck to swivel, he dragged his chin along the man’s breastbone. He blinked at the water that drained into his eyes as he tried to enunciate words faltering on his frozen lips. “Help is on the way, soldier. I will wait with you until they come.”

 

Scott jumped at the rocketing sound that brought a fresh deluge of pounding rain.

 

Thunder. Thunder, not cannons.  

 

Leaning the left side his forehead against the chest of the man beneath him, he squinted his eyes against the onslaught of rain and slowly deciphered the tilted head blocking the face of his companion. His eyes were tugged to the mass of black hair that swayed lazily atop the mud puddle where the unconscious man lay. He struggled to lift himself from his perch on top of the other man, bringing the back of his hand across his eyes.

 

His hand. He stared at his hand.

 

An uncontrollable laugh shook through him. He pushed back onto his bent knees and both hands appeared before his eyes. He threw himself back onto his buttocks as his booted feet pulled into his field of vision. His own two feet wearing boots caked in dark mud. Scott dropped his head back, his arms outstretched at his shoulders, and shared his laugh with the open sky and cleansing rain. His hands, his feet survived. He welcomed life once more.

 

A vague memory of staring at golden eyes over a handful of Jacks tapped him on the shoulder. His laughter continued to bubble up. “Looks like I won that hand, Dealer,” he shouted into the wind. “I’ll take those winnings in these hands and these feet are going to run!”

 

His celebration slowed as exhaustion forced his arms to fall. Taking deep breaths, he cupped both hands around his mouth and blew the heat into his palms, an unnerving hint of blue visible along his fingertips. He took a moment to re-center himself in his surroundings recognizing not a forest, but a rocky outcropping amidst a steadily rising cliff. Spinning like pieces of a kaleidoscope, disjointed pictures danced among the sheets of rain.

 

The call to arms – Shouts to advance – To fall back – Hands raised in surrender –  Liberation from Libby – Claustrophobic trains escaping the south – Hospital wings crowded with despair – Wandering Boston Common, alone – Tedious dinner conversations on Beacon Hill – Another train, not to Boston, but where? – Coffee shop near Harvard – Julie – Board meeting and bored meeting – Cows…large herds of cows? – Losing Julie – A sitting room in front of a fire with Grandfather, not speaking – Dances without music –Drinks without refreshment – Losing himself –  Dark streets – Rushing to make a train connection at New York – Barbara – A jaunty scramble down the balcony – Pinkerton – All expenses paid to California – Stagecoach…a stagecoach? – Looks like we’re picking up a passenger – Sorry I messed up your clothes – Mr. Lancer had two wives. And sons – Murdoch? Your father wants to see you. Your father. Your father…why now?

 

Damn you Johnny!  

 

The words blasted through his head destroying the picture show. His thumbs dug into his temples as the headache slammed from one side to the other. Sons. Your father had two….

 

Johnny?

 

His eyes scuttled along the prone figure. A brother? His brother? Maybe he hadn’t escaped Libby, and he was lost in a fever dream. He certainly felt lost. So many pieces missing. He couldn’t judge hallucination from reality. He was in the woods and now in the mountains. The ocean next?

 

He dragged himself away from the where and tried to study the who, specifically the man he draped himself against in such a familiar fashion. His attention groped unfocused, unable to settle on the mangled mess of the man’s chest. His eyes clamped shut, his head buried in his palms forcing himself to think. To remember. Damn, it was hard to think with the rain striking like needles against him and the loss of feeling climbing up his arms and legs while the rest of him burned with cold that reached to his core. Brother. He had a brother, or wished he did. A wonderful, exasperating, brilliant, vexing brother.

 

He was with his brother, and something went wrong….

 

Damn you, Johnny! You had no right!

 

Scott’s eyes shot open, defying the water draining out of his hair into his face, and settled on the dark-hair man next to him. With heart stopping realization, Scott felt the power of his words punch through him. This brother of his, if brother he was, looked like he was waiting for the damned to claim him. His shirt was rent along his left side where gouges tore the length of his flank. The right shoulder was ripped away completely, revealing jagged puncture wounds which gurgled with dark pools of blood. He found himself kneeling beside the man, staring. Anxiety, fear, concern all shuffled through as his body swayed in confusion.

 

This was Johnny…that sounded right. But he looks nothing like me. Brother in arms, maybe?

 

Scott tried to pull the image together, but his muddled mind could make no sense of it. Johnny’s knees were bent, his feet pressed against a large sandy-colored rock, darkened by the still falling rain. A rope crossed his hips and lay across his ravaged palm then trailed around the rock, leading beyond his sight.

 

‘Brother, all you need is a rope… Just a God damned rope!’

 

‘A rope? Hell, Boston, no wonder you went to Harvard. I would NEVER have thought of that!’

 

‘Just get the blasted rope, Johnny Lancer!’

 

His thoughts fighting for solid ground, Scott leaned toward the rock that braced Johnny’s legs to find his feet and followed the rope like a breadcrumbs leading to answers, understanding, on the other side of that rock. He felt removed from himself as he tried to put things back in order, tumbling in the vortex of cold and rain and disjointed thinking. He left the injured man alone, blessedly out of sight giving him just a moment to think. He couldn’t feel his feet and held his arms out for balance as the rope seemed to tug him along past a smaller boulder…no, wait, not a boulder. He stumbled a few steps to gaze down at the glassy golden eyes of the mountain lion.

 

Golden eyes studying him as he stared back over a hand of jacks and a king….

 

Scott mistakenly shook his head and his hand reached for the back of his skull where a shot of pain erupted from the pressure. Not in his fingers, though—those had no sense—but the pressure in his head was sharp enough. His numb toe kicked at the large cat for no reason other than it lay there before him, unexplained. He knew the creature was dead. A bullet hole marred part of its skull. Too small a caliber for a rifle. A pistol then. His hand dropped to the gun on his hip, but he knew it wasn’t he who made the kill. The rain had removed any sign of blood except for the creases at its gums and the streaks along its incisors. Scott looked back seeing only the man’s hand sticking out from behind the rock, the rope weaving through his curled fingers and thumb.

 

He turned aside. He would return to that vision later. He followed the rope to a hole in the surface of the rocks, the periphery lined with the remains of jagged wood planks. A sudden sense of falling caused Scott to jerk back and then slowly lean forward.

 

 I would have drowned.

 

The pronouncement in his head was real. Standing in the mud at the base of that hole was real. That the rain had filled the hole deep enough to submerge him while unable to reach the top was real.

 

"You did say rope, didn't ya?"

 

The dark head framed by the edge of the hole staring down at him, crooked smile saying payback was sweet, a mirthful laugh to follow once he left to obtain said rope—images slammed against his head doing nothing to assuage his headache but stirring a need to do…something. He opened his palms and stared at the recently abraded surfaces.

 

"J…johnny, I'm s…sorry I-can't d…do it-the r…rope-too w…wet—t-too c…cold. C…can't h-hold it."

 

"T…tie y…yourself t…to the r…rope."

 

"T…that's it, J…Johnny—j…just a l…little f…further."

 

Images coalesced into memories; memories waterlogged by the ceaseless rain. The exhaustion seeking to drop him to his knees was all the proof he needed to confirm his dire struggle to climb out of the rising water, his fear two-steppin’ with determination augmented by the sure-handed upward pull of the rope giving him the purchase he needed to crawl above ground— only a few minutes or maybe a few hours ago. Just as his upper body had secured salvation on the wet stone, the sudden slack in the rope almost flung him back into the brown waters of his demise. One boot managed to find purchase in the slick wall of the shaft forcing him to finish dragging his weary body from the pit, using what feeble reserves remained until he lay spread-eagle on his back sucking in the chilled air, savoring his freedom.

 

The undefined sensations coursing through him and rambling still, Scott squinted upwards into the gray sky. He couldn’t judge the time of day by the dim light under the thick cloud cover and the unrelenting rain. Whatever time it was, and wherever he stood, Scott snorted a grin knowing he was alive and if not well, at least he was breathing.

 

But what was he missing? His eyes dropped back to the ground, to the rope. The rope that pulled him out. When he couldn’t make it on his own. Because he wasn’t on his own. He wasn’t alone.

 

Lightning brightened the sky with a flash bright as the noon sun. Thunder shook him causing him to take a step back from the hole. His foot landed on the rope further unbalancing him and he fell backwards, his outstretched hand bouncing on the wet fur of the mountain lion, his head exploding against the ungiving stone. Sparks sprayed in all directions carrying a proliferation of vivid iridescence that filled every empty crevasse then expanded into his chest. The grays and browns burst into color that formed a face leaning over him with a teasing grin lighting laughing blue eyes that wrapped him in a blanket of love he had never experienced in his world of wealth and privilege.

 

"You did say rope, didn't ya?"

 

Johnny!

 

He was at Lancer, at long last a part of his father’s ranch. The father who never came for him had finally asked him to join him. Murdoch refused to entertain Scott’s questions about the past but at least he accepted his presence in the here and now. Scott respected the man. He and his brother—his brother!—were sent by their father to hunt for the large cat taking down calves. A duty both were willing to undertake.

 

The ranch was now a part of him in spirit and in deed. A partner. Freely given, proudly accepted. Scott embraced the land. And to ride along side his brother sharing the discoveries of this engaging world was like finding a treasure he never knew was his to find. It was uncovering a secret kept from him like tumbling into Alice’s Wonderland where each new turn brought another adventure with the one person destined to share it with him. All the years of emotional ache and emptiness that hung in the shadows disappeared when Johnny draped his arm over his shoulders and said, “This is my brother, Scott.” As far back as he could remember, Scott had family. He had friends. But until now, he didn’t have Johnny. Scott loved his brother.

 

The rush of memories recalled took his breath away. With a groan, Scott rolled onto his elbows and knees. His hands pressed hard against his skull as he fought the dizziness and nausea wanting to subdue him. With care, he pulled himself up, wobbling while he stared at the rock that suddenly seemed so distant, the hand extended out offering the rope as a guide. His vision blurred by the concussion he suspected as much as by the rain, he took his first tentative step and almost fell. The lack of sensation in his feet forced him to find the rope and watch as he laid each boot beside it. The warmth of the moisture trailing down his neck told Scott it was blood, not rain, wetting his collar. He could deal with that later. He had a brother, a little brother, and it was his responsibility to watch out for him. His heart sang with both joy and dread at that thought.

 

Keeping his eye on the rope, he hurried with a shambling gait, barely keeping himself upright as the loss of feeling in his extremities was taken up in force by the shrieking within his head.  He took a wide turn around the boulder avoiding the outstretched arm that had pulled him away from a watery tomb. Seeing the man again, the grievously injured man, Scott felt tears sting his eyes knowing that he had momentarily forgotten the most important person in his world. But he had no time for guilt. He had no time at all if he was going to save Johnny.

 

He fell to his knees and laid himself awkwardly across his brother’s body avoiding putting pressure on his injuries. A desperate need to protect him dominated his thoughts but other than to somehow cover him against the rain, he had no idea, no strategy, no plan, but this is what he must do. His brother had been missing from his life for a quarter century and he needed more time to be a part of his life. The morbid realization that lying across his brother when he had passed out the first time had given him the small measure of warmth he needed to slow the encroaching hypothermia, and his need to act took on an urgency that Scott could not deny.

 

Scott pressed against Johnny, his cold body supplying at least a hint of heat to stave off nature’s cruel demands. Scott turned his head so that he could see his brother’s face, deathly pale with blue lined lips. His numb fingers gripped a wad of the shredded shirt as Scott heard teasing words escape his own blue lips, “Johnny, only you would get eaten by a mountain lion on your way to retrieve a rope.”

 

Damn you, Johnny. You had no right. You had no right, the words snapped in his head.

 

“Johnny,” he whispered directly into the shell of his ear, “I didn’t mean it. I need you here with me. You need to wake up. We can’t stay here, and I can’t move you alone. You and me, Brother, the way it was always supposed to be. We can do it together.”

 

A movement beneath him caused Scott to jerk up. He sucked in a breath of hope as Johnny’s eyelids fluttered. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. C’mon, Johnny. Let’s get out of here. It’s damn cold and wet.”

 

Johnny rewarded his brother as half-lidded eyes opened and they locked blue to blue, seeing each other. Scott’s smile filled his face but fell at the anguish he saw in his brother’s soul.

 

“S-S-Scott? S-Scott? What’r ya doin’ here?”