Blind Reader Wanted

I stopped reading and attuned my senses towards Kit. “Are you a misogynist?”

Fourteen

Lara

“What?” he seemed genuinely shocked. “I … uh, no. No, I’m not. I respect women.”

“Hmm …”

“Are you seriously trying to equate me with a fictional character?” His tone was not offended, rather it was curious, probing.

“Not really, but it is interesting that you chose this particular book.”

“Is the subject matter too unpalatable for you?” he countered softly.

I could feel him staring at me intensely. I felt as if there was much riding on that question. That he would have been disappointed if I had said yes. His gaze was like a physical caress on my skin and it made my fingers itch. I was dying to map his face so I could know exactly who I was dealing with.

“The subject matter doesn’t bother me,” I said finally, taking another sip of tea. It had gone cold.

“Would you like fresh tea?” he asked.

“Why, thank you,” I said, surprised that he had noticed.

I heard him stand and go to the kettle. “So what’s the problem?”

While he was opening the container with the tea bags in it, I tapped my fingertips restlessly against the table. “It’s just that you obviously knew what this book was about, and I am willing to bet you’ve already read it at least once. And yet you wanted me to read it aloud. What’s that about?”

He fidgeted with something that was lying on the counter near where the kettle was boiling.

“I just wondered what it would be like to hear someone else read it.”

I knew instinctively that he was not telling the whole truth. “Not someone else,” I guessed slowly. “A woman. A female voice reading a book about a man who celebrates being prejudiced against women.”

There was more shifting. He seemed uncomfortable that he had gotten to a point of such scrutiny. “It’s not like that,” he denied.

“What is it like then?” I pressed.

“I am not prejudiced against women,” he shot back. “One of my best battle buddies was a woman. She served with me in the sandbox and damned if she wasn’t the best of the best. She could take heat from anybody and give it right back. I was impressed with her, always will be.”

“You were in the military with her?” I didn’t know why, but I held my breath. Maybe I would always hold my breath when people talked about the military.

“We were in Mosul together.”

A spear pierced my heart, right where the grief had resided for years. Just waiting to remind me of my terrible loss. I could still feel their faces, the warmth of their skin. I turned away from them angrily. It was useless to dwell on the past. They were gone forever, like a river running away from me. No matter how much I wanted them to come back they never would.

I took a deep breath. My voice when it came out was accusing and unnecessarily combative, and I regretted it even before I finished speaking. “Why would someone who claims a woman was one of his best battle buddies enjoy a story about a man who has no use for women as anything but sex objects?”

For a few seconds he didn’t reply. I knew he was surprised by the venom in my voice. I nearly apologized.

“To see how the other half lives,” he said lightly.

I laughed out loud, relieved that he had deliberately not responded to my rudeness. He didn’t join me in my mirth and something told me that I’d gone and hung my saddle on the wrong horse. He was not a misogynist. There was something far more important than John Self’s degradation of women that was at play here. My laughter died suddenly and I got serious.

“So, really … why this book?”

There was a long moment of shuffling from Kit’s side of the table. “Because it’s about a guy trying to figure out who he is. Trying to make his way through a shitstorm of what’s not real to find what is.”

“But there are many other books out there about someone trying to find themselves,” I pushed. “Why this particular one?”

“Because … I don’t know, okay?”

His defensiveness made me lean back against the chair. “You do know. You just don’t want to tell me.”

He got up from his chair, suddenly, his chair screeching on the floor, making me jump. He walked away, big angry steps, and came back a moment later to pour fresh, hot tea into my cup. He put the teapot down with a slight thud. Whatever he was feeling it was being tightly controlled. “Why do you care?” he asked. There was a flare of pain in his voice.

I was startled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Most people around here think I’m a fucking axe murderer and my wife is buried under the floor of my woodshed.”

“You know about that?” I blurted out.

“Someone should teach the good folk of Durango Falls how to whisper.” There was neither bitterness nor malice in his voice. He didn’t care what they thought.

I grinned. “They do speak loud enough to wake the dead, don’t they?”

“I’m surprised my poor dead wife hasn’t risen up from under the floorboards and gone to haunt them,” he said dryly.

I laughed and imagined him smiling, his lips turned up, the smooth scars on his face stretching. We stopped laughing at about the same time. A strained pause followed. I felt the face of my watch. I had already been there for forty minutes.

“Tell me the truth, Kit. Why is this book so important to you? Please. I’d like to know.”

I heard him shuffling his boots on the floor. When he spoke his voice was halting, distant, as if he was looking back far into the past. “I knew someone once. He was my half-English buddy. His mother was from England. She didn’t want him to enlist. She used to call him all the time and cry like a baby for him and beg him to come back. We all used to leave the room when she called. It was heartbreaking. I don’t know how he could bear it. I think she always knew that he wouldn’t come back to her.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood. That is exactly how I felt when my brother enlisted and left for Afghanistan. I knew he was not coming back. But just his friend, no matter how much I cried and pleaded with him, he was determined to fight for his country. I clenched my fists tightly to stop the tears that prickled at the backs of my eyes.

“At night he would take this book out of his bag and read it. It was his favorite book. He tried to get me to read it, but I gave up after a few pages. It was not my kind of book. A pussy whipped, self-indulgent sap like John Self was not my idea of a hero.”

He made a raw sound in his throat.

“Then Nigel got hit. Friendly fire. Fucking worst two words in the dictionary. You die like a dog on foreign fucking soil for nothing. As he lay white with pain in the truck he bawled for his mother. There was not a single thing any of us could do. We just sat there and watched him bleed out. When they went to tell his mother I heard that she slapped the men who brought the message.”

He paused and took a deep breath of regret or pain.

“After a month the book came to me in the post. He had left it to me in his will. I sat down and read it from cover to cover. And I heard the words in his voice. I realized that we are all John Self. Every fucking one of us. Lost in our vices, drinking too much, eating too much, watching too much porn, indulging ourselves.”

He sighed heavily. “I guess I wanted you to read it to see if it would still sound the same,” he said.

“Does it?”

One of his wolves howled outside. Inside, the air was thick with some strange emotion.

“No,” he whispered finally. “You’re not tainted like the rest of us.”

Before I could say anything further, his voice turned gruff again. “It’s almost time for you to go. Let’s stop here and I’ll drive you home.”

Fifteen

Lara

“Cause if you don’t leave this town,

you might not make it out.”