Page 3 of Boy Blue
The truck shuddered to a stop, which meant the road was already becoming slick beneath the falling snow. The temperature was dropping, so what was this fool doing out in the storm? I didn’t know.
The figure stumbled and fell, dropping below sight right in front of my truck. Luckily, I’d stopped, or I would have run him over. I had a lot to do to get ready for the coming blizzard, but I couldn’t leave the person in the middle of the road. No way.
Putting my truck in park and leaving the engine running, I stepped out into the onslaught of the blizzard. The snow was wild, coming thick from all directions, and the extreme chill in the air made me cough as I went around to the front of the truck.
The figure was a young man, sprawled in the snow as though he was relaxing on a warm, sun-kissed, sand-laced beach. His coat was blue wool, and his sneakers, grubby blue canvas high-tops, looked like they had blood splattered on the rubber toe and cotton laces.
Where had he come from? No matter. I needed to get him to shelter before he froze. I hunkered down, wondering at the dirt and streaks of grease on his face, his skin pale beneath. In his right hand, he gripped the strap of a tattered green duffel bag. The hood of his sweatshirt was flopped in the snow, giving him no protection at all.
“Hey,” I said. “Sir?” I touched his face to waken him, to jostle him into consciousness. He looked at me with the bluest blue eyes I’d ever seen. Electricity jolted through me. “Are you okay?”I asked. “Can I help you up? There’s a blizzard coming. Let me take you to my cabin, and you can call someone.”
He blinked hard, as if he were attempting to translate what I’d just said into his own language. He nodded, as if he meant to get up and accept my help, but he floundered, as though he’d forgotten the use of his own limbs.
I pulled him to sitting, and then to standing. Watched him wince as he favored his left leg. The left side of his face was scraped. Something had happened to him. I wrapped my arm around his waist. Up close, he smelled of diesel and day-old sweat. Week-old sweat, maybe. But it was the diesel scent that caught me, matching the scent trail the three-engine diesel train had left behind, a ribbon of grease and soot in the cold, cold air.
He’d been one of the figures I’d seen near the parked freight train. Either on top of the boxcar or standing next to it. But there would be time enough to unravel the answers later. The weather was the more pressing issue.
“Let’s get you in the truck.”
He blinked at me, slow, blue eyes serious, dark brows lowering as if I wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting and that quite soon he was going to complain to management. Well, he’d have to look long and hard. I managed myself these days.
Slumping, he could barely stand, so I half carried him to the passenger side and helped him into the truck. No need to buckle him in, as we were going no more than a hundred yards. As I got into the driver’s side, in the warmth of the cab, I looked over at him.
Snow dripped from his hair and down the plane of his cheek as he stared at me as though he’d never seen a human before. As though he were an alien only recently landed. Or an angel alighting to earth on snow-feathered wings.
It was then that I noticed he was curling his left hand against his belly. His wrist was swollen beneath a gathering ofleather wristbands. One wide, one narrow, and a simple braided string, though whether the string was cotton or narrow leather, I couldn’t tell.
What concerned me more was that I’d not noticed before. I might have jostled him in my haste, but he’d not said a word.
Everything on his left side, his face, his wrist, his ankle, seemed to be wounded. If he’d been on the train, he might have fallen off. And all the while, he clutched the green duffel close.
“We’ll get you inside,” I said, pointing the truck toward home. “I’ve got a cabin. I’ve got food. We’ll hunker down until the storm blows over. You can call your people, let ‘em know where you are.”
“I don’t have any people,” the young man said carefully. Slowly. “I see—faces, but I don’t know who they are.”
Taken aback by this admission in bruised words, thick confusion, I focused on driving it the rest of the way to the cabin. Once there, I parked the truck in the open, rather than close to the cabin.
It’d be fine if the truck got covered in snow, hidden by drifts, but I didn’t want icicles from the cabin falling on it, or a tree branch when one of the winter-still cottonwoods decided the weight of the blizzard was too much for it and a branch would crack away from a trunk.
More important than that, or my supplies even, was getting the young man inside. Where it was warm and safe. Where I could take care of his face and wrist and ankle, and whatever else. I’d get a fire going. Then I’d hand him the phone so he could reach out to whoever might be missing him.
I hurried to get him inside the cabin and sat him at the kitchen table. I considered putting him in the leather easy chair by the fire, but that would have been too much, because the weight of his body would have sunk him into the cushions,jostling his wrist and ankle. And, if he’d fallen from the train, he might have hurt his back. No, the chair, though stiff, was better.
He shivered as I stood there, and I realized that however long he’d been walking along Diamond Willow long, he was chilled through. He needed out of his half-frozen clothes and into something warm and dry. He needed hot tea to drink. Tea with brandy and lemon and honey.
I could use some myself; I was that shaken, only realizing it as I stood in that room, still compared to the storm outside. But I’d not shut the door properly, and it swung open in a cloud of snow. I’d get the groceries in a minute.
My mind debated. Get everything inside, or take care of the young man. So I asked him, “I’m putting water on for tea. Will you be okay for a minute while I grab groceries from the truck?”
“Yes,” he said, in that clear voice of his. “I’ll be fine, except—but who are you?”
“I’m Wolfe,” I said. “And who are you?”
He paused, frowning, then said, “Blue.”
“Blue?” I asked.
He pointed to his eyes and his coat, then to his sneakers. All blue.
