Mostly, he thought of Ozzie and wondered what happened to the little fellow. He reckoned he wasn’t so little anymore and figured he was probably all right. But you never know...he’d never know.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m glad too. I like it better than Athens. Like this mountain air. And I’m glad you opened that shop of yours, too!”
Angelica took the croissant and smiled. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., she said. Come by anytime!”
Angelica walked to the door and looked back. “Bye, Hal!”
She opened the doors to her natural herb shop and walked to the counter. Her eyes caught an aromatherapy candle that she and Blake had made together two months before. She lit the candle and smiled, recalling the fun-filled Valentine’s Day she had with Blake, making candles, watching movies and playing with Clayton. The candle flame began to burn brightly, but immediately––
“Oh no!” Angelica gasped, as the flame promptly died for no reason, leaving only a putrid trail of black smoke. Fumbling for the lighter on the counter, she placed the lighter over the flame, but even after two full minutes, the wick refused to light. Angelica looked around, feeling a twinge of unease that something was wrong. It reminded her of the feeling she had just before Rose went to the Bahamas. The same feeling she had at breakfast with her parents the morning their plane disappeared. She began to walk back to Hal’s to make sure he was all right, but the bells chimed on the front door as a couple walked in. Angelica checked the clock, 9:13 a.m., and summoned a smile.
***
“You ready to help daddy work in the garden?” Blake asked Clayton. The baby smiled, or so Blake thought, as he tickled his belly. “That’s my boy!”
Blake strapped Clayton into the infant carrier and walked out the front door. With the carrier in his right hand, Blake snaked his left hand through the air and showed his son how to do “the worm” as they walked to the garden shed. “Mama said we need to get the raised beds ready for tomatoes, little man,” Blake said in the childish, baby voice that all adults use with infants. “Now you just wait right here a moment.”
Before walking into the garden shed, Blake sat Clayton down at the entrance. Inside, Blake took a pair of garden gloves from a hook on the right wall and removed three tomato cages nested together from the overhead shelf, and then walked ten steps to place them beside his son. “We won’t be planting tomatoes for a few more weeks but might as well go ahead and set these out, right little man?”
Clayton reached unsuccessfully for the cages.
Blake walked back in and looked at the three plain cardboard boxes stacked on the shelf. He reached his hand for the top one, but it was just beyond his reach. He moved his fingers to the side of the box and tried to slide it so that the top one would tip off. It wouldn’t budge. “Hmmm. Whatever’s in there sure is heavy,” Blake said to himself and to the baby, if he was interested.
Looking around, Blake found a milk crate on the floor, placed it upside down under the boxes and stood on it. He looked over at Clayton, who still concentrated on reaching the cage that seemed impossibly out of his reach a couple of inches away. Blake landed the palm of his hand over the top box and pulled it toward him. It began to move, but stopped as the weight caused the middle box to crumple slightly, preventing the top box from sliding. He put a little more pressure on the side of the box and gave it a tug.
The shelf support to Blake’s left snapped loudly. As it did, the shelf and all the boxes fell hard and fast, hitting him squarely in the nose and knocking him off balance. As he began to fall backwards the milk crate tilted forward, causing Blake to crash through the waist-high bench behind him. The last thing Blake saw before he smacked his head on the concrete floor and fell unconscious was boxes flipping on the way down. They landed hard on his chest and face and slammed his head into the cement slab. Bags of bone meal burst open and covered Blake’s chest, face, and head in a thick cloud of moldy dust. He inhaled long and deep as he lost consciousness. Clayton’s attention was distracted from the cage at the noise and the white cloud that billowed thirty feet from him. He looked at it and reached again for the cage. He kept reaching for the next forty-five minutes until his father finally came to.
Aarrck!
A screeching sound jolted Blake. He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. The white cloud had settled now, but Blake couldn’t recall what had happened. As he reached back he felt a wet spot on the back of his head. He grimaced and closed his eyes, rubbing them and feeling the powder on them. Blake looked at his white finger and tilted his chin to see the thick powder that coated his chin. Alarmed, he inhaled deeply by instinct and began to cough immediately. He rolled over as he realized he was covered in dust and looked down at the torn bags of Black Rock Organic Bone Meal.
What? When did I put this here?
He snapped his head up in agonizing pain as he realized what the powder was, the ground up bones of diseased animals that had spewed death far and wide from the mountain’s poisoned soil. Exhaling, he tried with all his might to blow all the breath out of him. The more he blew, the more he coughed.
Aarrck!
Blake jerked his throbbing head to the sound that came from the garden shed entrance. Clayton had fallen asleep in the carrier. Blake rubbed his eyes at what he thought he was seeing. “What the–” Blake mumbled. A raven was perched on the infant carrier handle above Clayton. Blake dusted himself off and stood up, pushing against the wall to steady himself. “Shoo! Get out of here!”
The raven flew off as Blake picked up Clayton, careful to hold him well away from his own dusty body. He walked toward the house with the carrier in his hand and saw a shadow on the ground of the raven circling overhead.
Inside the house, Blake stumbled and sat the infant carrier on the kitchen floor. Clayton was sleeping peacefully. As Blake’s head pounded and his vision became blurred, he focused all of his concentration on unbuttoning his shirt. With great effort, he undressed and stepped into the shower where he scrubbed the powder off his body and out of his hair. Underneath the showerhead he coughed violently and spewed up blood. He couldn’t stop coughing for over a minute as he bent over and watched the blood swirl counterclockwise down the drain, looking from above like the bloody eye of a deadly hurricane.
He toweled off and pulled a jacket from a shelf high above the washing machine, draping it over a t-shirt and sweatpants. Stumbling, he made his way to the living room as he fought off the coughs, telling himself to not cough the way a spinning drunk tells himself to not throw up, to hold it in. He crashed on the sofa and pulled a blanket around his neck.
His nose and lungs felt thick. Thick with powder, thick with deceit and lies. He felt all the symptoms rising within him at once. Nausea, fever, aches. He couldn’t tell if they were physical or if they were imagined. If he was really feeling flu-like symptoms or if he was so run down from it all. More than anything he wanted Angelica and thought of calling her, but heavy fatigue gripped him. He was tired. So tired. His eyes made their way to the clock, 9:13 a.m. She’d be home in a few hours. He’d rest on the sofa.
Sleep, get some rest, that’s all you need, he told himself.
The blanket slipped to the floor as Blake’s breathing labored. He coughed loudly and his eyelids sank, sending him into a delirious journey to the darkest depths of a haunted forest. Alone he stood as the forest folded up around him. Trees inched closer; pigs squealed and stalked him with menacing tusks as coyotes circled concentrically while snapping their jaws. Jesse, Shane, Nick, Clint, and the sheriff held hands and joined the coyote’s circle as a menacing raven swooped and tormented Blake. His demons taunted, shouted and spun as they all moved closer and closer. Blake turned and turned, watching his flame flicker as the poisoned soil opened its wicked womb and prepared to swallow him. As the raven shrieked and dove straight for his face he crouched and surrendered himself into a fetal position, cradling his head while offering a final prayer for salvation.