Come Again Another Day

It had been a long time since I had heard her cry.
Cottony mist still clung to the Appalachian paths in those early hours, pressing like a damp mask over my mouth and nose. The unholy sound echoed from some distance behind me, screeching once so briefly that it could have been nothing more than the catcall of a morning bird to someone else’s ear. But not mine.
The burs protruding from the mat of tangled vines raked stinging red lines across my arms as I sprinted off in the direction I had come from. Spongy brown mud sucked at the soles of my Nikes, seeping in through the flapping holes. I’m sure a thousand different things were going on around me, but all I could hear pounding in my ears was the constant, relentless drum of my own heart. I hadn’t strayed too far that morning. That realization made my palpitating heart flutter when I drew even with the makeshift camp, which in truth was two blankets on the ground, where I had left her. She wasn’t there.
Cross country had never been my forte and adding hurdles of browning bracken and unpredictable tree limbs was enough to make me grimace at the thought of what my P.E. coach would say. But the moment passed and I sent myself careening in a shambling, elephant-like bound over the last obstacle of plant life on the edge of a clearing. A branch of pine needles groped downward and whipped my cheek. They stung my already raw, cold-abused cheeks until I was sure that I resembled Santa Claus with cat scratch marks across my face, minus the beard. I wasn’t quite old enough for a full one yet.
“Carrie!”
I gasped her name, loud enough to bounce around the gnarled tree trunks ringing the open space, scaring a flock of birds into the sky. She was there, perched on the edge of a large block of concrete with her head down and knees drawn in close to her chest. My stomach lurched at the crimson trickling down from her right knee.
“Carrie!” I repeated, skidding to a stop in the sodden pads of fall-colored leaves at the base of the block. She looked so helpless folded up like that, like a doll abandoned after a fall from its shelf.
A doll. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was an adequate description for my little sister. Rosy cheeks, baby blue eyes that sparkled like prisms in the light, hair the color of Rumpelstiltskin’s straw as he spun it to gold. She had even had one of those glass cases that all the collectors stuffed them in, but being the older brother that I am, I had done a fine job smashing it.
She raised her head when I touched her, easing the fevered anxiety fueling all my nerves. It left me feeling more than a little exhausted; my knees bent just enough to knock against the concrete wall before I managed to catch my balance again.
“God, Carrie, don’t do that to me,” I said, brushing the mussed strands of hair out of her eyes. “Why didn’t you just stay put? What if something really bad had happened to you and I couldn’t find you?” I swallowed a lump at the thought. “You gotta think about stuff like that!”
“I’m sorry.”
The words were so soft that I almost didn’t catch them as her head wilted back to her knees. The flashing Jerk sign went off over my head, blinking like the broken applause light at the coffee house I snuck out to on some nights to play my guitar. I had overreacted. That was all. Since physically beating myself up was out of the question, I was left to chew on my tongue and shrink away from her in my self-disgust. I had sworn to myself that I would never yell at her. But I have sworn a lot of things before now, like I wouldn’t lose my temper or I’d never cry in the rain, and if I had kept half of them, we wouldn’t be lost in the woods in the first place. I shook my head to clear my eyes of the curling bangs, placing my hands on the flat top of the block.
Where she was sitting was almost too high for me to reach, even with the tips of my toes crushed in the narrow toe of my shoes. There were some stairs harboring tiny puddles of water that led up to the top of the block a couple paces to my right, but who ever wants to do things the easy way? Instead, like the brainless idiot I have the habit of being, I hauled myself straight up, grunting with the effort of lifting my hundred and sixty pounds of useless muscle and fat behind me. The concrete had seen better years, riddled with tiny porous holes over the splotchy weather-stained surface. I flopped over on top of the block like a dead fish, flipping myself into a slumped sitting position facing her. She had watched me the whole time I had been flailing up to her with big round eyes that I liked to think of as specks of stardust blinking at me. They were the only features of her taciturn expression that suggested that she was interested in what I was doing. I couldn’t help it. I scuttled over to her on my knees and wrapped her in a hug that pressed her head to my chest. She didn’t respond by returning the gesture—actually, she didn’t do anything at all—she simply permitted me to shower her with affection.
“You scared me, that’s all, Care Bear,” I said, using her baby nickname, as I released her after several long moments of listening to the simple sound of her breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she replied in that dreamy, sweet voice she had. A rainbow of sound, mom liked to call it—the comparison always brought images of iridescent strips of light winking down from the robin’s egg sky after the dismal gray of the rain to mind. It was probably the one thing in this whole earth that could melt the stubborn teenage grimace that nearly seventeen years had plastered on me.
She had that effect on everyone. Teachers, my friends, our mother. . . . None of them ever described her as an angel, but they would all dote on her with dopey, serene looks like they might drop to their knees any second and sing praises in her presence. Well, all right, I admit that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but it was still annoying having to listen to them coo and fawn over her. I guess there’s just something about that pale, big eyed, shy, little girl that made people jabber on to her like she was some kind of darling cherub. Me included, I suppose.
All of the fawning and cooing she gets has never once inspired her to say a word to anybody though. Not even a word of thanks when someone does something for her. In part, it’s my fault because whenever I happen to be around, I never detach her one-armed embrace around my leg even though I know it’s not good for her to be so spoiled.
“Sorry,” she repeated in a mumble.
“Don’t be, goofball,” I said, laughing off the rest of my tension. “You’re alright apart from the. . .” I gestured to the area around her knee, but my head was angled away from the gruesome sight. She giggled at my discomfort, sounding like the tinkling ballerina in her cheap music box back home whenever I lifted the lid for her on rainy days.
“I’m okay.”
But then, she was probably the only nine-year-old I knew that could genuinely smile with flaps of grazed skin wrapped in a glaze of gooey red and garnished with brown grit.
It’s probably one of the biggest secrets that I have, but blood makes me squeamish. So much so that I won’t even play video games with the stuff in it. Old eighties movies do it to me too, and that’s back before technology allowed them to even make it look real. So I deliberately kept my eyes on her tearless face, stretching the corners of my mouth into a reassuring smile, more for my own benefit than hers.
But that didn’t solve my current dilemma—how to clean her wound when I hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring a first aid kit with us. Now that I had the chance to think about it though, I hadn’t had the spark of brilliance to bring anything along. It was just the two of us completely on our own. Brilliant, Andrew, I thought to myself. You finally get the chance to do something important, and you blow it big time. Way to go.
I looked around the clearing while patting myself down in the hopes of finding anything that would be a help. None of the pockets in my khaki cargos had anything more substantial than grayish lint. The only thing I could find at all was a hole close to the second button from the bottom in the what-used-to-be-white button-down shirt I was wearing over my old Aerosmith tee. Having run out of options, I wriggled my forefinger into it and tugged until the meticulously laundered fabric split like a sheet of construction paper.
I think it was the ripping noise of the threads that nearly drove me to tears, more so than the pain it caused my finger anyway. They screamed as I murderously tore them to shreds—so much so that I had to bite down and gnash my teeth until the first wad of cloth was free. I missed though, driving my teeth into my lip as I bit down, breaking the tender skin. That iron taste I hated invaded, seizing control of my taste buds so that bile rose into my throat. It burned with all the fury of stomach acid as it came and went. There wasn’t enough in my stomach to make it a worthwhile heave. Instead, I spent the next several minutes hacking gobs of spit-blood over the side of the block into the pile of rotting leaves.
My shirt collar became the victim when I used it to mop some of the mess, resembling a gruesome Valentine’s card after the bleeding stopped. The drips and smears of electric red soaked all the way through. For there to be that much, I guessed I had broken the fragile scab over the right corner where my lip had been split not too long ago. It didn’t sting in the fresh air of the morning, or if it did, I couldn’t feel it.
When I recovered my wits enough to look up, my little sister was not looking at me. My cheeks were hot as I tore off the rest of the bottom of my shirt front. It had been harder to do than I had anticipated and the edges were fraying already and uneven, but it would have to do.
“Here,” I said, extending the strip toward my sister. “Turn a little so that I can reach.” She did as I asked, using only her feet to shuffle around to give me access to her wound. I squinted to keep myself from gagging, pressing the thin fabric over the broken spot.
Deep down, I almost wished that she would scream or cry or say something while I was fumbled with the ends, tying what I hoped was a gentle, yet secure, knot. This time, I wanted things to be different. In my mind, they were. There were supposed to be trumpets, a fanfare, the mayor presenting us with the key to the city and congratulating us on our endurance. But I wasn’t dreaming and all she did was wince when my klutzy fingers jerked and pulled the ends too tight. I winced with her.
“Sorry.” She shook her head as I smoothed the fraying edges, tucking them under the outer wrap.
“Could you sing me a song?”
“I don’t have my guitar.”
“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around the tops of her knees and rested her chin on her crossed wrists, sleeves wrinkling back toward her shoulders to flash the bruised bananas that were her arms.
My friends liked to bring up the subject of her spots. Each time turned into more of a question and answer session, always beginning with a simple statement and ending with me hoping that no one noticed my toe scuffing designs in the dirt.
I was a wellspring of excuses. Even now, sitting not more than six inches from her, I was running through them—she wasn’t watching where she was going and ran into the door; she was dancing in the living room in front of the TV and tripped into the coffee table; she’s a delicate flower that withers at the slightest touch of rain. It was pathetic.
“Carrie.” She turned to me, big eyes shimmering in the pale streams of yellow light breaking over the horizon. “I. . . .” Perhaps it was the peace of the morning, or maybe the chaos from earlier, but I couldn’t say anything. It jumbled itself up in my mind, like a five-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, and I couldn’t even begin sorting it all out. She rotated her gaze away from me when it became apparent that I wasn’t able to say anything that I wanted to.
I wanted a drink. Beer, wine, shots—any of them would do. I wasn’t picky. I was used to drinking whatever was lying around the house. More often than not, it was whatever Mom would smuggle up to the sardine can of a bedroom that my sister and I shared on stormy nights. She would measure out a small amount for me, just enough to ease the knots pinning my shoulders in a coil. I would sip it and she would gather up the laundry with an OCD-like precision every single time. I remember that the two of us would fight every now and then, but the subject matters never seemed to stay with me.
It’s amazing what you can remember when its not there anymore.
I was shivering when I realized where my thoughts were leading me. Back to those gloomy rooms where the thunder and lightning boomed the loudest and I never could seem to sleep through the rain. I clapped my hands together, until my palms stuck with the suctioned pressure, but I couldn’t steady them. A drink and my guitar. That’s what I really needed. But we couldn’t go back.
Unable to stand it any longer, I got to my feet and threw my arms into the air behind my head to stretch. The yawn tugged at the forming scab on my lip, but not enough to break it and I scratched the back of my head out of habit.
“I wonder where we are,” I said, trying to engage my sister again. I looked around and stamped my feet twice on the concrete. “I wonder what this block thing could be.” She didn’t acknowledge that I had said anything. It looked like she had fallen asleep hugging her knees to her chest. It wouldn’t be the first time if she had, but I could tell from the rise and fall of her chest that she was only ignoring me. “Carrie,” I said, unable to keep the pleading from my tone.
Monster, her silence called me, the word rattling around in my head like a pinball trapped in its endless circuit. Or perhaps, that was just my conscience talking.
I scuffed the bottoms of my raggedy sneakers against the weathered concrete, shuffling over to the edge of the block overlooking the far half of the clearing. My toes jutted out, suspended over a bed of granite that was sinking into the muddy terrain. Two rails of rusting iron ran parallel to the block, extending away in both directions. I stared at them for a while, eyes drifting back and forth along the rotting crossties. It was a haven now for the multitudes of insects and aggressive weeds that had no room elsewhere to make their homes.
“It was a train station,” I said.
Suddenly, I was surrounded by people, lots of them, each rushing to catch the train that had just pulled in, and none of them more substantial than ghosts of an imagined memory.
“Look, Carrie! There are train tracks.”
The last of my imaginary passengers boarded and, with a shrill whistle, the train chugged away from the platform, rattling on the rails into the distance. The limping stomp of my little hobgoblin approached to press her warm body against my left leg.
“Kinda an odd place for a train station,” I rambled. “I wonder how long it’s been here.”
Her needy claws wrapped around my hand, anchoring herself to my side because she wasn’t compact enough to stand with Temptation and Morality on my shoulders. Like them, she urged me to run for it, find safety, find a place where our wounds could heal, but I couldn’t make my legs move.
“I wonder what kind of people rode on the train that passed through.” I squeezed her hand. “I wonder where they were going and what they were doing. How they lived from day to day. Whether or not it ever rained on them.”
Klak-klak, klak-klak. I could hear the wheels churning as they sped along the old bars toward their destination. I couldn’t help but romanticize it—it was a train whose sole purpose in the world was to outrun the storm. If only we could’ve boarded it. Klak-klak, klak-klak, choo-choo!
But I was dreaming again. There was no train that could outrun a storm. Screech! The grinding of the brakes sent the rails clanging together in my mind, shaking me to the core. There was no way out of that train for me. My final destination had been determined from the very first Click that set the wheels in motion.
It was probably a good thing that my sister was holding my hand. I think I might have tried to cripple it otherwise. The trigger had felt so comfortable when I had held it —
“I wonder where the train was coming from,” my sister said, eyes half closed as she stared out across the clearing.
“How come?”
“Because,” she answered, turning so that she could look up at me as I looked down my arm at her, “that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”
I blinked. Twice, I’ll admit.
I had just been scared by a nine-year-old. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had taken it upon myself to make the storm stop. It had been worth it then. For mom, for my sister, and for myself. I had to prove to my old man that I could, as well as to them. For a short time, I had been the one in control. But what had happened? A fit of rage and fear, two shots of power, and I had bolted. That’s where we were. That’s where I was.
Choo!
The dream train was pulling away from the station, starting on a journey to the land where heroes were rewarded for their deeds rather than sentenced for them.
But I didn’t want to be a hero.
I went down on my knees and pulled my sister into my chest, burying my face in her little shoulder. I didn’t want her to see the drops gathering in my eyes. I’m not sure if she did or not, but, for the first time, she hugged me back. Her arms looped around my back, fingertips unable to touch by a couple of inches.
“I love you, Carrie.”
She rubbed her face into my shirt.
“What do you say to going home?” I asked, using her shoulder to dry my eyes. She let me go when I pulled away, but her eyes stayed locked on mine. “I promise Dad won’t bother us anymore.”
“I know,” she whispered. I spluttered when she took my hand again. “I don’t mind.”
“Your knee okay?” She nodded to me, stamping her foot on the ground a couple of times in demonstration. “What happened, by the way?”
“Oh, I fell,” was the dreamy response. “But I’m really okay.”
“Good,” I said. “Me too.”
I didn’t have to say how scared I was. We both understood. We knew what would be waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain. I still wanted to run as my sister tugged on my hand, leading me to the stairs.
The sun was rising though – the ever elusive sun had finally decided that it was ready to come out and play. It didn’t settle my nerves. It didn’t stop the chance of storms later. But, for now, we could smile as we walked hand in hand through the trees, back to where this all began. Carrie squeezed my hand as we walked. I swallowed, and took the lead on our way back to reality, as I should have done when the song had first broken off.
The rain had stopped.