Chapter 19 19

In the mild milky light of dawn, Jesse awoke.Her mind was still full of ominous memories of the woman, her gray hair pulled back tightly into a country girl's bun, and she was puzzled by the woman kneeling on the blackberry bushes. In the middle, the petticoat is spread beside her.The woman looked down through the splintered boards, smelling that awful faint smell.Jesse hadn't thought of that woman for years.Now, having just had a dream in 1963 (it wasn't a dream, just a memory), she seemed to be endowed with some sort of supernatural vision of what happened that day.This vision may be produced by stress and then disappear for the same reason.

But that didn't matter—not that, not what happened outside on the terrace with Dad, not when she turned around and saw him standing in the bedroom doorway afterwards.All this happened a long time ago.As for what's happening right now— I'm in trouble.I think, I'm in very serious trouble. Lying there against her pillow, looking up at her dangling arms, she felt as helpless as a poisoned insect caught in a cobweb.All she wanted was to fall asleep again--no sleep this time, if it was even possible--and her dead arms and parched throat belonged to another world. No such luck. A slow, drowsy hum came from somewhere nearby.Her first thought was the alarm clock, her second thought was the smoke alarm.The thought brought a momentary, unfounded hope that brought her a little closer to true sobriety.She realized that what she was hearing wasn't very much like a smoke alarm, it sounded like

It's a fly, baby, isn't it?Now, that no-nonsense voice sounded tired and languid.You've heard of Boys of Summer, haven't you?Well, these are autumn flies.They're currently holding their World Pro Hold finals on famed lawyer and handcuff player Jerrod Burlingame. "God, I have to get up," she said in a low, husky voice that she could barely recognize as her own. What the hell does that mean?It was the answer to that question—thankfully, not the damn thing—that did the work of bringing her wide awake, she thought.She didn't want to wake up, but she figured she'd better accept that she was awake and do as much as she could while she could.

Maybe you'd better start getting feeling in the hand and arm first.That is, if they can wake up. She looked at her right arm, then turned the head on her dulled neck (the neck was only half asleep) to look at her left arm.Jessie realized with sudden dismay that she was looking at them in a whole new way--like looking at a piece of furniture in a display window.They don't seem to have anything to do with Jesse Burlingame.She thought, there is nothing strange about this, really not strange.They are literally insensible, only a little bit under the armpits start to feel. She tried to pull herself up, and she was dismayed to find that the arm was not working at all, far more than she expected.Not only did they refuse to move her, they refused to move themselves.They ignored the commands from her brain.She looked up at them again, and they didn't look like furniture anymore.Now they looked like bloodless chunks of meat hanging from a butcher's hook.She let out a cry of fear and anger at the top of her voice.

But it doesn't matter.The arm is not an event, at least temporarily.Going crazy, scared, or both doesn't help.What happened to the fingers?If she could bend her fingers around the bedposts, maybe... maybe not.Her fingers seemed as useless as her arms.After about a minute of effort, Jesse was rewarded with a numb movement of his right thumb. "My God!" she said angrily.There was no anger in her voice now, only fear. Of course, someone died in an accident.In her life, she thought, she had seen hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of "death briefs" on the television news.Body bags hauled from wrecked cars or winched out of the jungle, corpses' feet protruding from under hastily covered blankets, with burning buildings in the background.Witnesses with pale faces and shaky voices pointed to puddles of dark, gooey stuff in alleyways or on bar floors.She had seen John Belushi, wrapped in a white shroud, being moved out of his villa at the Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles.She had seen aerialist Carl Wallenda lose his balance and fall heavily on the cable he was trying to cross (which she seemed to recall was strung between two hotels in a tourist resort).He caught hold of the cable briefly, then fell to his death.News programs broadcast the incident over and over again, as if obsessed with it.Therefore, she knew that someone had died in an accident.Of course she does.And yet, somehow, until now, she had never realized that she would be included among those people, had no idea that they would never eat another cheeseburger, never see another One round of "Last Jeopardy" (be sure to write the answers as a game form of the question).No more calling and telling your best friend that a Thursday night poker game or a Saturday afternoon shopping event might seem like a great idea.No more beer, no more kisses.Your fantasies of having sex in a hammock in a rainstorm simply won't come true.Because you are too busy dying.Any morning you roll out of bed could be your last.

The situation this morning was much more than possible.Now, I think, it's quite possible.The house - our lovely, quiet lake house - will likely be in the news on Friday or Saturday.It will be Du Roy speaking into the mic in that white trench coat that I hate so much and calling this event "Deaths in House of Distinguished Portland Attorney Jerrod Burlingame and Wife Jesse" .Then he'll send it back to the studio, and Bill Green will do live editing.This is not to bore you, Jesse.It was not Mrs. Burlingame who was moaning, nor Ruth who was shouting.this is-- But Jesse knew.This is true.It was just a silly little accident.It's the kind of thing you shake your head over breakfast and read the newspaper coverage.You say, "Listen to this, honey," and read the news to your husband, while he's eating grape jelly.It was just a small accident, but this time it happened to them.She stubbornly believed that this was an understandable mistake that was not her responsibility.There was no appeals department, where she could explain that the handcuffs were Gerald's idea, so a fair deal would be to get her off.She has to be the one who corrects mistakes if they are to be corrected.

Jessie cleared his throat and said to the ceiling with his eyes closed, "God? Listen to me for a minute, okay? I need help here, I really do. I'm in a mess and I'm scared to death. Help me out, please?" I... um... pray in the name of Jesus Christ." She tried to accentuate her prayer, but could only make the sound Nora Calligan had taught her.That prayer now seems to be on the lips of every self-serving peddler and foolish expert in the world. "God gives me peace of mind to face reality, give me courage to change the status quo, and give me wisdom to understand the difference of things. Amen."

Nothing changed.She had no peace, no courage, and most certainly no wisdom.She's still just a woman, with a dead arm and a dead husband, shackled to this bed like a vicious dog chained to a ring bolt, left to die in a dusty backyard with no one to care for, No one lamented.And its drunk owner served thirty days in a cell for driving without a license and under the influence of alcohol. "Oh, please don't hurt me," she whispered tremblingly. "If I'm going to die, God, please don't hurt me. I'm afraid of pain like a child." Maybe it's a really bad idea to think about dying at this moment, baby.There was a pause in Ruth's voice, and then she went on: Think again, think about the possibilities.

Well, there is no need to argue.Thinking that death is a bad thought, what is there left to think about? survive.Ruth and Mrs. Burlingame spoke simultaneously. OK, live on.This brought her full attention back to the arm. They fell asleep because I left them hanging all night.I still hang them.The first step is to remove the weight. She tried to pull herself back and up again.At first, the arm still refused to move, then a sudden panic hit her, her vision went dark, and she passed out for a moment.Then, she woke up.She stretched her legs up and down quickly, and pushed the bed cover, bed sheet, and mattress to the foot of the bed.She panted like a cyclist in a marathon after reaching the last steep hill.Her insensible buttocks woke up, humming like pinpricks, alive.

Fear brought her wide awake.With the panic, she now needs some aerobic exercise to get her heart into working order.She was finally beginning to feel the tingle—piercing, foreboding like distant thunder—in her arm. If nothing else works baby, focus on those last two or three sips and keep reminding yourself that unless your hands and arms move like normal, you're not going to get that cup at all, let alone get it out of it. drink water. Jess continued kicking her legs as the morning lightened.Sweat clings to her hair and sticks to her temples, beads of sweat trickle down her cheeks.She was aware—vaguely—that every moment she insisted on this strenuous movement was deepening her thirst for water, but she could see no choice.

Because there's no choice, baby—not at all. Baby this baby that, please don't make a sound, you talkative wretch! Her butt finally moved towards the head of the bed.Every time it moved, Jesse tensed her abdominal muscles and did a little sit-up.The angle formed by the upper and lower parts of her body slowly approached ninety degrees.Her elbows began to bend.The tingling that pierced the muscles intensified as the pull of her weight began to leave her arms and shoulders.She eventually sat up, kicking her legs, trying to keep her heart pumping. A drop of sweat trickled into her left eye, and she shook it off impatiently, continuing to kick her legs.The stabbing pain continued to intensify, throbbing up and down at the elbow.Five minutes into the current bending position (she looks like a shy teenage girl with her arms outstretched on a movie theater seat), the first muscle cramp hits, and it feels like using a meat cleaver His blunt back was chopping. Jessie threw her head back, a fine mist of sweat flung her hair and hair, and she screamed.As she gasped and screamed, another convulsion came, this time much worse.It felt as if someone had wrapped a noose wrapped in glass shards around her left shoulder and stretched it tight.Howling, she clenched her hands into fists so hard that two nails split from the living flesh and blood flowed.Her face was swollen, her eyes were deeply sunken, and although they were closed tightly, tears rolled down her cheeks and joined streams of sweat from her hairline. Keep kicking hard, baby—don't stop now. "Don't call me baby!" Jessie yelled. Just before daylight, the wild dog stalked back to the porch.Hearing her voice, it jerked its head up.It seemed to have an expression of comic surprise on its face. "Don't call me that, you wretch! You nasty wretch—" Another convulsion, this time like lightning and thunder, extremely sharp and sudden.The pain runs from the left triceps all the way to the armpit.Her mumbling to herself suddenly turned into a heart-piercing long scream.Yet she kept on kicking. For some reason, she continued to kick her legs.