Excerpt from:

 

The Mend

 

Chapter 1

Cleveland: Early Afternoon:

Pillows of snow muffled the sounds of traffic and a small group of neighborhood kids squabbling over what to put on their snowman’s face. Eric’s careful feet made no sound at all as he trod the downy white mounds. He noticed the quiet but he didn’t mind noise, it broke up the hours he spent alone and made him feel more connected to his neighborhood. In fact his house over-looking Lake Erie was purchased specifically to be near the populated area of the lake front and for the never-ending sound of waves crashing against the rocks and seagulls fighting over trash.

Factories lining the southern view of his neighborhood jutted from the ground like long dead stumps of alien flora, polluting the view in brown contrast to the falling snow and cranking out a muffled resonance of their own, but the sound of the lake prevailed even in the quiet.

Today he barely noticed the buildings or the children as he walked along the lake shore concentrating instead on stepping in established footsteps and staying upright in the slippery frozen mess. He thought about the fact that he was leaving no footsteps of his own and pondered philosophically whether or not it was a good thing, as he stepped over a single, small set of footprints leading in a perpendicular direction to his own. A red coin caught his eye and he habitually bent to pick it up.

His fingers went right through it as he discovered that it was not a coin at all, but a drop of thick liquid that had been spilt recently enough to not have frozen. He looked at the perpendicular path and saw several more large drops and then an uneven red line leading to an underpass where his ears picked up the faint muted whimpering of a wounded dog.

“Damned irresponsible drivers!” He said aloud. He had happened upon another wounded dog a few years earlier, too late to save it. He had listened to its howls of pain and talked soothingly while he rushed it to the veterinarian only to be told that the animal would have to be put down. He never found the owner but buried the dog and kept its collar, in case he saw a missing poster and could console the worried family. Coincidentally, he had thrown away the collar just that morning.

 

He didn’t run, knowing that a wounded dog would attack if it felt threatened but walked briskly and with purpose toward the sound, taking off his tweed jacket in case he needed it to protect himself or use it to transport the injured beast. Then he noticed there were no paw prints in the snow.

He followed the blood and whimpers and gave in to the urge to run as he neared the bridge and discovered that the whimpers were muffled cries of human pain.

“Please help me!” the voice pleaded.

Under the stone bridge overpass he witnessed a very thin young woman, wedged precariously against a corner of rough stones, naked from the waist down holding her bloody pants in shaking hands. She looked exhausted and pale and despite the cold she was dripping with sweat. Tears and streaks of black mascara covered her face. She quieted her weak calls and looked at him with relief.

“Oh my God let me help you” He assumed she had been raped and he steeled himself to fight the thugs that had done it should they return, but they were alone.

He moved to put the jacket around the exposed teenager, but she held out her quivering arms, blocking his attempt to cover her and exposing a very tiny, still, blue baby wrapped in her soaked jeans. Misery coated his mind and he fought back a wave of nausea as he scooped the dead infant out of the dark coagulated liquid that saturated the jeans and wrapped it in the dry silk lining of his jacket.  Just as he felt its weight fully transfer to his hands the young woman dropped limp and lifeless to the ground.  He instinctively tried to catch her with one arm, nearly dropping the baby with the other. Clumsily he clutched it hard against him and as he did he heard a popping sound in its tiny throat. Immediately the motionless infant wiggled to life, as its mother lay very still on the cold sidewalk. The tiny puffs of breath that now escaped the baby’s lungs were not evident in its mother.  Eric folded his jacket over the babies head to protect it from the cold.

 

Absent the dampening effect of the snow the stone of the bridge above them amplified the strong sound of the baby’s cries and conducted the sound of the vehicles passing overhead, the echo of the squabbling children’s voices bounced around the man made cave as Eric checked in vain for a pulse from the young girl. Finding none, his quiet sob joined the commotion.

Howard-Hirsch Publishing

Content for a contented life.