The Reset (2 page)

Ben studied the old man, watching him lost
in a private memory. It suddenly occurred to him that Winston stood on the
banks of a very wide river—a river of age and confusion and lost time. Could be
old age or it could have been the fallout drifting north out of Orlando, but it
didn’t matter how it happened. The fact was, Bert Winston was stumbling toward
senility. How many winters did he have left before that river swallowed him up
and carried him off for good?

Ben left him to his memories and started
to climb the ladder to the loft. He was almost at the top rung when the old man
emerged from his stupor.

“Oh, hey now! What’s the durned idea,
boy? Come on down! Nothin’ up there to see! It’s just an old loft. Let’s head
back up to the house and get that supper…”

Ben offered a benign smile. “Just a quick
look, Bert. I grew up on a farm, and I promise I won’t touch anyth—”

Winston had the pistol out in a hurry. Hand
shaking, he put the gun on Ben. “I said for ye’ to come down, boy. This ain’t a
debate we’re having here.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean any
harm. Take it easy, Bert.” As he descended, his eyes went to the loft. There
was something up there, but he couldn’t quite make it out.

For the second time that day, Winston cocked
the hammer. “I’m not playing with ye’ boy. That loft is none of ye’ durned business.”

Ben exhaled, suddenly exhausted. Despite
appearances, despite the fact that there was fresh food—this place was no
different than any of the others he’d poked his head into.

It was just a prettier trap.

“Please, Bert…I didn’t mean anything by
it.”

“I wish you’d minded ye’ business! God
almighty, son! Lord knows I don’t want to hurt anyone—never
have
wanted
to. It’s not my
way
. But…but…”

Ben watched him. The gun shook and there
were tears in his eyes, and Ben felt a momentary measure of pity for him, but
he knew it was a foolish emotion. The loft was off limits for a reason, and Ben
was pretty sure he understood what that reason might be.

“I’m stepping down off the ladder, Bert.
Just coming down is all.”

“Oh, we’re
all
coming down, boy,”
Winston replied, his voice almost a whisper. His eyes went vacant, and spittle
bridged the space between his lips. “Been down for a long time. Since the very
beginning of all this durned wickedness, back in the garden that
He
set
aside for us, we’ve
all
been down.”

Winston kept the gun pointed at his
chest, tears glistening on his cheeks, his thin lips trembling around nubs of tobacco-stained
teeth. “I didn’t expect anyone else to come,” he hissed. “I thought that road
was done producing.
Finished
! It’d been so long since the last ones came.
Such a durned
long
time.”

“I know. I understand, Bert,” Ben said,
taking a cautious step forward, “but you can be forgiven.
We
can be
forgiven.”

Winston’s face brightened. He studied Ben
with shining, mad, inquisitive eyes. “Forgiveness? Really? You really think
so?”

Ben took another small step. If he
lunged, and if he was lucky... “Forgiveness, Bert. Forgiveness for everything.”

The old man sighed and shook his head.
“No! No…no…NO! It’s just not that easy! None of this,” his eyes darted wildly
around the barn, “can be forgiven so easily! I shouldn’t have let you in, son.
I never should have let you come inside here!”

“Bert,” he said, steeling himself, gathering
himself, “forgiveness isn’t conditional. I think, if there’s still a God in
heaven, that he’ll listen...”

“Oh, there’s a God in heaven,” Winston interrupted,
“but
He
quit listening a long time ago, son. A
damned
long time
ago indeed. We’re on our own down here…”

An expression of purple sorrow twisted
Winston’s face into a mask. His arm straightened, the barrel of the pistol
rising three inches. Time compressed and Ben saw, with exquisite clarity, Winston’s
index finger squeezing the trigger.

Adrenaline spiked and his body was
dipping and turning, instincts taking over, even as he lunged.

The pistol barked, a flash exploding in
the four feet of space separating them. Ben felt the concussion of the blast—gunpowder
and cordite peppering his face—at the same time the bullet slammed into his
shoulder.

He ducked into a roll, keenly aware that
his right arm was loose—that the best term for it was, in fact,
loose
—and
then he was up again and launching himself at the old man. He took Winston high
in the chest as the old man squeezed off another shot, this one flaring wild
with a tinkling crash.

They collapsed onto the planked floor and
Ben felt the wind and the fight go out of the frail bastard all at once.
Winston lost his grip on the gun and Ben snatched it up with his left hand. He
put it in the man’s face, touching the tip of its smoking barrel to his cheekbone.
The iron singed the man’s thin flesh and he screamed.

“Christ, old man! You didn’t have to do
that!” Ben’s arm dangled at the shoulder, like it had been pinned there with a
thumbtack. He flexed his fingers and was thankful to see them move. It was an
odd sensation, as if everything below the shoulder wasn’t really connected to
him anymore.

Winston hacked and sputtered, struggling
to breathe beneath Ben’s weight. Ben gave him some room and Winston sucked air
in great wheezy gusts.

“Ah, I’m so sorry,” he finally spat.
Despite the guttural tone, there was an underlying sincerity in the apology.
“I’m so
sorry
,” he blubbered, bursting into fresh tears.

Ben set his jaw. It took some effort, but
he was able to stand. A searing, throbbing pain gripped his torso, from
shoulder to ribcage. He was light-headed. “Get up,” he grunted. Blood flowed
down the interior of his right forearm, soaking into his heavy coat. It pooled in
thick black droplets on the dusty floor.

Winston scrambled up. “God, I’m so sorry,
Ben. I’m just so sorry for all of this….”

“Get over there and put your back
against that gate.”

Winston moved to the steel gate of the closest
stall.

“Sit down and put your wrists through
that slot.”

A pair of sturdy horizontal beams
provided just enough space for the old man’s spindly wrists to fit through the
opening. Ben put the pistol on the ground and, working as quickly as he could
with one arm, managed to bind the man’s wrists with a bungee cord he’d found on
a workbench. “I’m tying you up for now, Winston. I got to get inside and see to
my arm.”

Winston just sat there, snuffling, his
respiration wheezy. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ben.”

“Yeah? Well, damnit…I’m sorry too. None
of this had to happen.”

He rummaged in a cabinet until he found
a length of chain; he looped it twice around Winston’s chest before securing it
to the stall fencing with the padlock from the barn door. He slipped the key
from around the man’s neck.

“I’m going back into the house now, Bert,
and I need you to tell me truth. Is there anything I should be aware of? Any
traps? Anybody hiding in there? Be truthful, Bert, or so help me I’ll kill
every last person in there and then come back out here and execute you where
you sit.”

Winston had become a child—a confused
and defeated child. “No,” he whispered. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in that
house. It’s…it’s a safe place, that house. Always has been. I’m sorry. I’m so
sorry…”

He kept muttering, the words becoming a
feverish mantra, and Ben left him there.

“It’s my place,”
Winston
whispered, his wide eyes staring into the abyss of what almost certainly were
the early throes of Alzheimer’s.
“It’s
always
been my place—always
been my place, yes sir and yes indeedy. And I’m sorry, oh GOD how I’m sorry!
IamIamIamIam oh I am
really and truly and honestly
sorry! Lord, forgive
me…”

Aside from a thin band of gray light
sliding off into the western horizon, it was dark. Clouds blocked the stars,
and Ben entered the house, thrilled by its warmth despite the pain that gripped
his midsection. Each step was an exercise in agony.

There was a kerosene lantern on the
kitchen table, and he lit it. He found the bathroom on the first floor and rummaged
through the medicine cabinet. There were a few bottles, most of them empty. The
old man was a packrat, it seemed.

He found a first aid kit beneath the
sink.

It took time and effort, but eventually
he stood before the mirror, stripped to the waist, the wound in his shoulder
about the size of a quarter. He studied himself, repulsed by what the image reflected
by the mirror.

The scars of his youth would never
heal—the surgeries, one after another—that had made him the horrible thing that
he was. He traced the hardened ridge of discolored tissue that extended from
the top of his sternum to just above his navel. Things had been set in motion
and they couldn’t be undone, but this
new
destruction—this fresh trauma—well,
there was still time to make it right.

The blood fell in thick rivulets. It
made a sound as it pocked the linoleum.

He took a few squares of cotton and stuffed
them into the wound. Using his teeth to sever the strands, he taped the bandage
in place. He made no effort to clean the wound.

Pain management and security. Those were
the priorities. Everything else would just have to wait.

He pulled a t-shirt over his scrawny
frame, snatched up the pistol and started his investigation. He went from room
to room—poking the barrel of the gun into closets and behind doors. He knelt,
peering under beds.

After a time, he was satisfied that
Winston had not lied to him.

He shifted gears. Ammunition for the
pistol. Booze. Medication. He found some whiskey—something called Wild Irish
Rose—in a cabinet in the kitchen. He took a long drink, flinching a little as
it bit into him.

He searched the kitchen cabinets until
he found the aspirin. There were four plastic bottles of it in the cabinet
above the stove. The open bottle was almost empty. The other three still had
tufts of cotton beneath cellophane-wrapped caps. He counted out six of the
capsules, chased them with whiskey and turned his attention to the stove.

The pot simmered. He could hear it—little
eruptions of steam rattling the lid.

His stomach seized, and he was suddenly
dizzy with hunger. He removed the lid and found a hearty stew there, bubbling
in thick brown gravy. There were potatoes and herbs and—he looked closer, the
rich scent now rendering him faint with desire—chunks of meat!

He dipped a finger and tasted it; the
infusion of flavors—salt and pepper and the tang of protein and the earthy hint
of tuber—made him swoon. He took a deep breath and clamped the lid back down on
the pot. To eat now would be a grave mistake. He had to hold onto his edge.
There was still the old man to see to, and he couldn’t relax until he had that
sorted out.

Ben ladled a portion of stew onto a
plate. He checked the revolver—seven shots left—and tucked it into the back of
his jeans. He took the lantern’s wire handle in his mouth, collected the food
with his left hand and plunged back out into the cold, his threadbare t-shirt flapping
in the wind.

How long until winter arrived in
earnest? The far north—what used to be Canada and New England—was probably
already buried beneath gray snow. Winter would be here soon, flexing its grip
over the land until the world was choked with snow and ice clear down to the
tip of the old Florida peninsula. He smirked. There had been a time when folks
were alarmed about global warming.

Ben carefully set the lantern down. He nudged
the barn open with his elbow. It was dark inside, the skylight revealing a muted
indigo high above.

“Winston?” he called.

“I’m here,” the old man replied from the
shadows. “I’m here, and I’m cold. You left me out here in the durned cold, Ben.”

“I brought your dinner.” He found
Winston where he’d left him. “Here. It’ll warm you up.”

He put the plate at the old man’s feet.

“You’ll have to feed me.”

Ben nodded, digging a fork from his
pocket. “Figured.”

He speared a chunk of potato and brought
it to the old man’s mouth. Winston ate greedily and Ben shoveled the stew into
him. When the plate was empty, he stood.

“You’re outside for the time being.
Least until I figure out where you and I stand.”

Winston cocked his head—confusion and
fear clear in his expression. “Outside? I’ll freeze to death out here, Ben! I
surely will.”

“No, you won’t. You deserve to freeze,
but you won’t, Bert. I’ve been out in this weather for
years
. It’ll take
you some time to adjust, but we’re still a few weeks away from the deadly
temperatures.”

“Can’t I have…can’t I at least have a
blanket or something?”

“You’ve got your jacket. It’s more than
you would have done for me and you know it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to
see to this bullet you put in my shoulder.”