Chapter 8: Omission

He startled awake and lunged, biting blindly into his attacker.  

“You can't say I don't learn from experience,” Bianca let go of the log she had poked him with.

Tate released the wood from his grasp, adrenaline still singing through his veins.

“It’s getting late, and I thought you would want to get up,” Bianca retrieved the log, setting it next to the fire.  “Didn't you sleep well?  Your tail’s not hurting, is it?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” he lied.  If he said he had a nightmare, she might ask what it was about.  He couldn't imagine telling her the dream, let alone explaining the peculiarities of wolf man sex.  Just thinking about it made his ears burn with shame.

“You should see a doctor,” Bianca's forehead scrunched with concern, “There are doctors, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay though,” he had forgotten that lies always carried their own set of consequences. There was a saying about that, something about rats and traps.

Bianca was still scrunching her forehead at him.  She stood over him as if she was going to speak, then shook her head and limped out the door.  He stretched and stood up.  Limping or not, she would help him clear a homesite.  If he were to have any hope of winning Amber back, Bianca had to go.  

He waited for Bianca to return.  After a few minutes, he went outside and relieved himself.  Sniffing the air, he followed her scent to the last place she had used as a toilet.  He sniffed again, unable to locate a stronger smell.  Puzzled, he headed over to the creek.  She was not there.  Thinking he must have somehow missed her, he circled back to the cabin.  It stood empty, the fire popping companionably.  Feeling a pang of hunger, he wolfed down last night’s overboiled eggs.  From the position of the sun, he would guess it was nearing midday.  He put on a pot of beans, hoping she would come back while he was preparing them.  When she failed to appear, he picked up a machete and headed up the road until he found a spot that looked suitable for a house.  He began to work at clearing the underbrush, cutting and hauling it out onto the road.  When the pile was so large that the road was impassable, he returned to his cabin to fetch his wagon.  

He grumbled to himself as he filled the cart with brush.  Bianca should be here helping him.  It was already past lunch time and - the beans!  He had completely forgotten the beans!  He ran back to the cabin, removing the pan from the fire with a torn wad of denim he used as a hot pad.  Depositing the smoking pot outside, he ducked back into the cabin, choking on the smoke.  He carried a bowl outside and spooned burnt beans into it.  Frowning, he went back up the road to retrieve his cart.  There was a field down the road a ways, and he had used it before for burning brush.  Seeing how the day had gone so far, he decided to wait on burning the debris, merely placing it in the field for storage.

 

After eating some burnt beans, he headed back towards the homesite.  In spite of all his work, it looked a great deal like the surrounding area, and he almost walked past it.  As he continued chopping away at ferns and blackberry vines, worries filled his head.  He couldn’t possibly imagine where Bianca would have gone.  She was exhausted just from their short trip to the market.  Had someone or something kidnapped her?  Had she fallen unconscious somewhere he had failed to look?

The sun was low in the sky when he caught her scent.  At first he thought he imagined it, but it grew stronger, along with the smell of fresh bread.  He made his way to the road just as she passed in front of him.  She jumped, dropping the cloth sack from her arms.  A pair of apples rolled down the hill.  She sat down heavily in the dirt, “Tate, I thought you were a monster.  You look feral with all those leaves and branches stuck in your fur.”

“Unlike you, I was working on your homesite,” he crossed his arms, his relief fading into resentment.

“I thought you were hurt,” Bianca pulled aloe leaves out of the sack, “These are for your tail.  It’s supposed to take away the pain.”

“You went to the market for that?” guilt scratched at the back of his mind, “How much did you pay for that?”

“Twenty blessings.”

“Twenty!”

“She needed it in a way, and I needed the aloe,” Bianca rose to her feet.

“That wasn’t right of Amber, no matter who you were,” he retrieved the apples, handing them to her.  

“I got some bread for dinner,” she limped towards the cabin, “and look, cheese!”  She pulled out a shallow glass jar filled with farm-style cheese.

Reaching the yard, he scraped the remaining beans out of the pot, then hauled it over to the creek.  After rinsing and scrubbing the inside, he filled it and carried it back to the house.  Bianca was coaxing the fire back to life, a bowl with sliced apples, bread, and cheese waiting for him in his chair.  He tore into it, delighting in the way the tang of the apple complemented the creaminess of the cheese.  Bianca ate lying down, her weariness apparent in her drooping eyes.  

When he finished his meal, he lay next to her, trying to pull some of the leaves out of his fur.  They didn't poke at him the way the burrs had, so his grooming was perfunctory.  Bianca pulled off her sock and examined the blisters on her foot.  “When there is no trap, the cheese is poisoned,” he finally recalled the proverb.

“Your mother used to say that when she thought you were lying about stealing her cigarettes,” Bianca absently picked at her skin.

“Bee,” he ventured, “my mom?  Is she well?”  

“She's alive.”  Bianca hesitated.

“I think about her a lot,” now that he had broached the subject, he was unable to stop.  “Does she know that you cursed me?  Does she know why?  You know, my dad ran off and left her when I was two.  If she thought I just left . . . I know we didn't get along when I was a teenager, but that's normal.  That doesn't mean I didn't love her.  I mean, if I had a kid I’d probably be the same.”

“Tate.”

“Does she still live next door to you?  Did she stop smoking?  She was a nurse, she knew better.  I used to call her a hypocrite.  She got after me about smoking too.  It was crazy, one moment she'd be all, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette and relax,’ and then the next be yelling at me for doing the exact same thing.”

“Tate.”

“We had a fight before I left, but we were always fighting.  She was picking on me, saying I was moping about the house.  Ow, quit it,” he batted Bianca's hand away.  She had grabbed his ear and given him a pinch, right on the outer fold.  

“Then let me say something.  I’m not even sure I can keep track of the questions you've asked so far,” Bianca rubbed her eyes.  “Let’s see.  No, I didn't tell your mother, or mine, that I cursed you.  I didn't tell them anything.  There's some things you just don't want your mom to know.  So, she probably did think you ran off,” she sucked in her bottom lip, then continued, “She still lives next to my parents, still smokes, but she lost her job.  She was looking for you for a long time.”

Tate could feel the lump form in the back of his throat again.  He had been so afraid of her hating him for what he had done, that he thought it best to disappear.  But the pain of not knowing was one he was familiar with, one that was equally hurtful.  

He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in the blankets.  Even if no tears would come out of his eyes, he knew he was grimacing, his face contorting as the pain roiled through his body.  

“Are you okay?” Bianca said the words barely above a whisper, almost as if she were talking to herself.  

He didn't answer.  If she knew he was hurting; if she touched him, he thought his soul would shatter.