The Weirdo (5 page)

Spotting the wader, picking it up, he asked, "This yours?"

Sam nodded.

"I'll get you down."

"Thank you."

However weird he looked, he didn't seem threatening, and the dogs, docile at the sight of their master, were now acting as if they hadn't attacked in the first place. He disappeared around the side of the house and came back a moment later carrying a ladder.

Sam swung her feet out. Her socks had turned a reddish black from the dried blood, almost the color of old fireplace brick.

"What happened to your feet?" He was now at roof level. The gruffness had gone out of his voice at the sight of her bloody socks.

"I walked five miles through the swamp yesterday afternoon and this morning."

"You had the wrong boots."

"I had the wrong everything."

She stood up and let out a cry, almost losing her balance. The needled pain was so intense it brought tears. She grabbed at the top of the ladder to keep from falling.

The boy said, "Don't try to come down. I'll carry
you." He moved up another two rungs. "Put your arms around my neck and hold on."

It couldn't hurt any worse if he dropped her. She nodded and, closing her eyes, locked her arms around his neck.

"Just hang on."

She did as instructed, feeling herself being lowered to the ground; then he cradled her and began limping around toward the front of the house. Whatever was wrong with him, there was no lack of strength.

"Why were you in the swamp?" he asked.

"A dog that I was taking care of chased a bear. I chased after the dog."

"I guess you didn't catch it."

"I guess I didn't."

As they went through the door, she said, "I'd like to make a phone call. My parents don't know where I am."

He put her down on a chair by the kitchen table and brought the phone over.

***

"OH LORD, Sam, we've been so worried. You're all right?"

"I'm okay, Mama. I swear I am."

"Where are you?"

"At the spillwayman's house."

"Hang on a minute. I've got to tell your papa. He's with a search party moving south. There's another going in from the east...."

Then Sam heard her mother on a walkie-talkie: Samantha had called and was okay at John Clewt's house. She heard her father say a relieved, tinny, "Well, thank God! Thank God!"

Delilah came back on the phone. "I jus' knew you were in the swamp when Buck showed up looking like he'd been in a threshing machine."

"He's okay?"

"I doubt he'll ever go into the Powhatan again."

"I'm glad," Sam said. "For both our sakes."

"You sure you're all right?" said a still-worried Dell.

"My feet feel like they were in that threshing machine with Buck. Otherwise, I'm fine."

"You spent the night in the swamp?"

Sam laughed. "It sure wasn't at a Holiday Inn. I was in a hollowed-out stump."

Dell said, "As soon as your papa gets back, he'll come up there and get you. Don't try to walk out, Samantha."

"I can't walk across the room."

The boy had listened and now said, "Tell your mother I'll bring you out to Dunnegan's."

"You don't need to do that," Sam said.

"I don't mind."

Sam shrugged and nodded. "Mr. Clewt's son will bring me out. I'll call you just before we leave." The ride down the three-and-a-half-mile Feeder Ditch would take thirty minutes.

Dell said again, "I'm so relieved, Samantha."

Beginning to feel like herself once more, despite being weary and hungry, Sam said, "Likewise. I'll call you."

***

AS SHE placed the phone down, Clewt's son said, "I'm Charles. People call me Chip."
They also call you something eke,
Sam thought. She wondered if he knew.

"I'm Samantha Sanders. People call me Sam. I prefer that."

"Sorry about the dogs. They're here to guard, and they do it well."

"I'm a living example."

"You said you spent the night in the swamp. You must be hungry."

"I'm about starved. Last bite I had was yesterday afternoon."

"We're vegetarians. Watercress sandwich okay? I'll make you two."

So they didn't eat the birds. "Even plain bread would
be great." She'd never had a watercress sandwich. She'd never even known a vegetarian.

"Diet drink?"

"Fine."

He limped across the room to the refrigerator and opened it.

"Your father not around?"

"He's in New York for a few days for an art exhibit."

John Clewt, the Powhatan spillwayman, in New York City for an art exhibit? Sounded pretty farfetched, but Sam decided to let it pass.

"I heard you lived back here with him."

He was busy at the countertop. "I've been here a year and a half. I lived in Ohio the last eight years."

"You don't go to school?"

"I finished high school two years ago."

"You don't look old enough to be out of high school two years ago."

"I'm seventeen. I studied year-round."

A brain,
she thought.
A huge brain. A bulging brain. Out of school at fifteen!
As her mother often said, "Don't be so nosy, Samantha."

"Where'd you live in Ohio?"

"Columbus, with my grandparents. It's okay," Chip said. He added, "If you like big cities."

Oh, oh,
Sam thought.
Another one of those.
"Well,
I think I'd like to live in a big city," she said with purpose. "New York, Chicago..."

"Where do you live?"

"Five and a half miles due north, if a rotten buzzard flew a straight route. On Chapanoke Road. We live on a farm. But my papa's not a farmer. Not until he retires. He's in the Coast Guard."

Chip limped back across the kitchen with the watercress sandwiches and a 7-Up. She noticed he'd taken the cotton glove off his left hand. It was the light leather color of the left side of his face and just as shiny. It was also partially withered. What had happened to this boy? He looked as though he'd been horribly burned.

She thanked him for the food and drink, then asked, "What were you doing on the south side of the lake?" That wasn't being too nosy.

"Checking on the bears."

"Checking on the bears?"

He nodded.

"One of them got me into all this trouble." She told him what had happened with Buck.

"That was probably Henry, Bear 56-89. He comes over on this side quite a lot. We've captured him twice. His original number was 1-88."

"You have names and numbers for them?"

All she knew about bears was what her father and grandfather had told her. Bear grease was good for
cooking doughnuts and softening boot leather. The fur wasn't worth saving. They had a sweet tooth and ruined trees. Keep away from them. Far away.

"Human names?" That was ridiculous.

"I name them for the fun of it. I've been helping a graduate student, Tom Telford, from NC State, keep track of them. He's gone back to Raleigh. Did that bear have a radio-collar?"

"I haven't the faintest. It was too far away." She'd heard about that graduate student and his bear study.

"If he had a collar it was probably Henry. I know him well."

"You track bears every day?" Was he putting her on?

"Seven days a week."

Didn't sound like much fun. "And your father's an artist?"

Chip nodded.

Sometimes Albemarle gossip was correct.

"The real reason he's back here is to paint the birds," Chip said. "The spillway job is extra, so he can live in this house."

More than two hundred species lived in the Powhatan. "He kills birds, then paints them?"

Chip shook his head. "The birds die naturally or from disease, then he does taxidermy on them. Sometimes they're shot and fly on until they drop. He's never killed even one."

"How about the ones in the cages?"

"That's my hospital. Chip Clewt General. Those are injured or sick, and I try to nurse them back to health, then let them fly off."

Keeps his eye on bears, tends sick birds, a vegetarian? Not your ordinary seventeen year old. At least, not like the ones she knew. The ones she knew ate cheeseburgers and blew birds out of the sky and would like nothing better than to line up a sight on a big Powhatan black.

"What I do is no big deal. Passes the time." Then, looking down at her feet, he said, "Let's take care of what ails you."

"I'll do it when I get home."

But he'd already moved toward the sink and was reaching under it. "Maybe they're infected." He drew out a tin basin and turned on the water tap, then left the room.

Though kept by a pair of hermit males, the kitchen wasn't in too much disorder. Dishes were stacked. A faint onionish smell lingered. Eating slowly, she wondered how often the senior Clewt went away.

Chip returned with a bottle in his hand and dumped the contents into the basin as it filled with warm water, saying over his shoulder, "Epsom salts. We don't have much of a medicine cabinet."

"You don't need to do this," Sam said, feeling uneasy. What he was doing felt personal. Too personal.

"Soak your feet for a few minutes, and then we'll get the socks off," he replied, ignoring the half-protest.

The warm water immediately eased the pain and she murmured an "Umh."

"See," he said.

"You seem to know what you're doing."

"I've spent some time in hospitals."

He left the room again. She'd tried not to look at his scarred face, the drooping eye, the withered hand, wanting to save them both embarrassment, but she found it impossible. Was she supposed to stare out the window or up at the ceiling when talking to him? Okay, he did look weird.

He returned with a pair of fleece-lined bedroom slippers. "You can't go home barefooted."

"I could."

"That'd be foolish," he said, kneeling down by the basin. "Now, this'll hurt...."

The water had turned brownish red from the blood-encrusted socks.

"There's two ways to do it, slow or quick. Quick is better, I've found."

She yelled as he jerked a sock off, skin coming with it. The pain shot up her leg, but at least the dog bite didn't look as bad as it had felt.

"We'll wait a few seconds, then grit your teeth again."

"You should be a doctor."

"I don't like doctors or hospitals. I've seen too many of both."

The fingers of his right hand grasped the upper part of the other sock, and she yelled again as he pulled it off. A stab couldn't have hurt any worse.

He'd spread a towel down. "Put your feet here while I dump this water and get some more."

Eyes closed, Sam sat back on the hard chair. Only her mother had ever repaired hurts and wounds, the usual childhood scrapes and bumps. Here was this total stranger...

"Okay, put 'em back in for a while. Then I'll bandage them loosely, just wrap some gauze..."

"I should be going."

"They know you're safe."

She looked at him directly. "Thank you for what you've done."

Smiling crookedly, he shrugged. "Who knows, I might end up on your roof one day."

"Just don't come through the lousy swamp."

"I think the swamp's beautiful. It's like the sea. It has a different face every day. I'll bet I can show you things you never knew existed even if you've lived around here for years."

"I don't doubt that a bit. I've stayed out of it as much as I could."

"You don't know what you're missing."

Sam uttered a half-laugh. "I think I do. You want to hear something strange and scary that happened this morning back here in your beautiful swamp?"

"Tell me."

"Yesterday, about dark, I heard two shots ring out. Didn't pay much attention to 'em at the time. Then just before daylight a man came by me carrying something over his shoulder wrapped in a cloth or blanket. I thought I saw a foot sticking out beneath it, but maybe it was only a trick of the light."

"Where did you see him?"

"A couple of miles north of here, near a place we call the Sand Suck."

"I know where it is, just off Trail Six."

Sam nodded.

"You weren't dreaming in that stump?"

"I don't think so." She paused. "I know I wasn't."

"Every once in a while we'll meet an oddball back here. But oddballs are everywhere, not only in swamps. I saw plenty in Columbus. You sure he wasn't carrying a bedroll?"

"And getting rid of it in the Sand Suck? No."

He shrugged.

She studied him. "Mind if I ask you a question?"

"What happened to me?"

"I shouldn't ask. It's none of my business."

"I was in a plane crash ten years ago. I look a lot better now than I looked for a long time. Plastic surgeons. Skin grafts..."

Then he dismissed it, abruptly. Slammed it shut. "I'll get some gauze." There was a sudden turn of annoyance in his voice.

She'd guessed right. He'd been burned. Horribly burned. Sam had been looking into mirrors for a long time wishing she could see another face. Maybe a Julia Roberts with lips that would drive boys crazy. Imagine him looking into the mirror. She wondered whether or not he just turned away.

He was gone five or six minutes. She heard him outside talking to the dogs. She definitely shouldn't have brought it up. Nosy Sam.

***

"WHY'D you put her up on the roof?" he asked them. "You're going to have to learn between friendlies and enemies. She's a friendly, I think."

But Chip was surprised at his own reaction to Sam Sanders. Normally he was shy and avoided contact with strangers, not wanting to see the inevitable looks on their faces, the almost revulsion at the scarring. He'd stayed away from crowds. He'd walked lonely paths. But this unplanned meeting hadn't given him time to
think about reactions. She'd been in obvious trouble and needed rescuing.

"Behave yourselves," he said to the dogs and went up the ladder, hooking her other wader off the roof.

Back on the ground, he stood looking out across the lake, thinking about the girl inside. It was the first time he'd ever had a girl in his arms; first time, that he could recall, he'd touched one in ten years. Conscious of how he looked, he'd never even tried to date. No sooner had he healed from one operation than he was under the knife again—eight long years of it, to try to repair the whole left side of his body—and during that time he hadn't appealed to most girls. Tom Telford had said one day one might come along who...