2: Ask Me-2
1567 Words
WHAT AM I DOING HERE?
The last thing she remembered was being carried naked to the truck, settled in the rear cabin and covered with a blanket made of soft muslin fabric. She fell asleep again and woke up shrouded in the darkness. He was nowhere near when she awoke. She lay perfectly still, willing to hear his voice or sense his movements, but there were none of that.
Disappeared.
Gone.
Walked off to where she didn’t know.
How long have I been alone? Here in this wilderness...?
She had lost track of time and day, couldn’t tell at all. She got up and gathered the muslin fabric around her, to secure herself against this growing fear. She peered in the front seat and found her clothes. She put on her panties, and her plaid shirt then wrapped herself again in the white muslin fabric. Alone, she felt cold in seventy degrees Fahrenheit heat. She attributed this to exhaustion and anxiety, and fear of the great unknown. She’d flown halfway around the world to a distant place, away from all she had ever known, to live with the man entirely unknown to her.
Alien.
Foreign.
Different.
He might as well be in a mask and a cape.
She saw the digital clock on the dashboard and watched the minute hand tick by slowly.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Thirty.
He hadn’t returned. It was foolish, but she frightened herself with thoughts of carnivorous animals or escaped convicts in the woods.
Perhaps he had done something dangerously crazy and stupid and had gotten himself killed. I can’t stay here.
She put her pants on, opened the door then shrieked with fright as his silhouette appeared ghost-like before her.
‘Going somewhere?’
She gaped at him open-mouthed. Panic and relief battled inside her. It was stupid, so stupid because she cried. He raised an eyebrow wondering what went wrong. She tried to explain the tears, stammered an explanation that only came out as a jumble of incoherent words.
He reached up to her, helped her out of the cab and led her by the hand to a campsite. The fire was ablaze. There was something skewered on a stick, cooking over the flame. A tin of liquid was also brewing. She was mesmerised by the light and the glow it cast as shadows danced. It was surreal in her mind’s eye.
She looked at him, his face partly hidden by shadows.
‘Aren’t we going home?’ she asked in a murmur.
She didn’t understand herself. She had been alone and fended for herself for nine long years, yet now she finds herself needing to be looked after.
‘We’re home,’ he said.
‘I mean to the homestead.’
Reading her facial expressions, and seeing a degree of uncertainty, he said, ‘I know, but for now, we stay here. You and me.’
He smiled to reassure her, and his features softened.
There was a fallen tree log, draped in a sleeping bag. She sat on it while he towered over her.
‘You have one chance before this goes any further.’
He stoked the fire then shifted to a lotus position effortlessly. ‘Your chance to ask me anything. Anything you want to know.’
She swallowed and reflected on what he just said. ‘Yeah ah, first ... do you own a shirt?’
His reaction wasn’t what she expected. He tilted his head back as he chortled, then said once he stopped laughing, ‘I was wearing one when I picked you up from the airport.’
‘You should put it on,’ she said. ‘You’re quite distracting.’
His lithe body unfolded from its sitting position; he went away to get a T-shirt. He returned wearing a form-fitting navy shirt that showed the definition of his torso. Certainly, it didn’t help, but she could hardly ask him to take it off now.
She watched him; observed how quickly he broke twigs to make more kindling. It was all quiet except for the rustling of wildlife in the undergrowth and the crackling fire. He broke the silence: ‘Dinner is ready.’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
His eyebrows went up, and she became apologetic. ‘I appreciate that you’re making dinner, but I watch Bear Grylls’ show sometimes and he eats all this disgusting stuff.’
‘If you must know, it’s a rabbit.’
Her eyes widened. ‘A bunny?’
‘It’s a feral rabbit. Wildlife. Not someone’s pet bunny.’
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat a rabbit.’
‘Well, Miss, you’ll have a problem ‘cause we’ll be here for three days. You’ll disappear altogether if we don’t put something in you.’
‘Three days? Why?’
‘It’s your boot camp,’ he said in earnest. ‘I need to know you’re here to stay. My good looks can’t sustain a relationship.’
He turned to face her with a contented smile. ‘Nor amazing sex.’
‘Are you always this crazy?’
‘Define crazy.’
‘Crazy — like you’re probably the only guy in the world who’ll jump in a waterfall to have sex.’
He corrected her. ‘I don’t jump in waterfalls just to have s*x. I jump because I can.’
He pulled the rabbit off the skewer, broke it in two. It smelt delicious and appetising, especially when the juices ran out of it, but her brain rebelled.
It’s a bunny rabbit.
He skewered half of it and made a meal of the other. She watched him enjoy it then closed her eyes. He looked at her with his peripheral vision. He came a little closer, broke off a piece of meat from the bone, then she felt his fingers trying to prise her lips open.
‘Come on, give it a go,’ he said encouragingly.
She opened her mouth to take it and savoured the juicy taste of the freshly roasted meat. She opened her eyes.
He gave her the other half. ‘You need to eat.’
She picked on it; then he offered her tea.
‘Have a billy.’
She graciously accepted and drank from it, although the billycan looked like it needed disinfecting.
‘Tell me something about what you used to do?’
‘What is there to tell? I was a soldier. You know what soldiers do.’
‘But you weren’t an ordinary soldier.’
‘No. I wasn’t. Much has been said of elite soldiering. That we fight for Queen and country but in the heat of the moment, it’s the man on the right and the left that we fight for. We do it for each other. We do it for our mates.’
‘Are you really done with it?’
He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.
‘Yes and no. When this phone rings, and it will ring, it’s a done deal that I will go. I’ll leave everything behind. You can’t ask me where to and for how long. You can’t ask why.’
She held his gaze.
He continued, ‘If you want to take this any further, you need to know, it’s my mistress.’
‘I understand,’ she replied, but in truth, she felt slightly disconcerted. He waited patiently for the next question. He knew she had many.
‘Why do they call you ‘Wolf’?’
‘It’s because of my tattoo. The Army tends to give people nicknames.’
‘When did you join the Army?’
‘I enlisted at seventeen, twenty-two when I passed selection for the SAS.’
‘I was still in high school at seventeen,’ she said. ‘I lived a pretty sheltered life compared to you.’
‘Most people lived a pretty sheltered life compared to me.’
‘Tell me about Rajo.’
Rajo, the irresistible eight-year-old Somali boy Bryce adopted as a baby, and who she had the pleasure of meeting when she first sought refuge in Gulf Savannah while on the run from a homicidal maniac.
‘The cheeky little bugger.’
His face broke into a broad grin.
‘I felt a strong connection to him from the moment I met him. I led a six-man Special Forces team protecting a bush hospital in Somalia. It was run by Doctors without Borders. He was born there; his mother didn’t make it. Volunteers came and went except for Dr Michelle Bouvier. She stayed till the end until we were told to pack it up, extract her and leave. She wouldn’t go without the patients, so we extracted everyone. Rajo was strapped to my back all the way to Kenya.’
He focused on the fire, watching it slowly turn to ember.
‘We hiked three hundred klicks to Dadaab in Kenya. There was no logistical support to lift us to safety.’
He paused to gather his thoughts as he was tried to recall details of some distant memory.
‘Just twenty-five klicks before the border crossing, we encountered enemy combatants. Michelle was killed.’
Now, she understood why he had been aloof at the start. He was afraid.
Afraid to fall in love again.
Afraid of vulnerability.
Finally, she asked, ‘Did you love her?’
‘It was a long time ago ... a lifetime ago. I can’t even picture her now. The memory is fading.’
He blew out some air before answering her question.
‘Yeah, I loved her.’
He put more kindling into the fire then gazed at her.
‘Don’t go down that road. It was a long time ago. I don’t think of her. I haven’t. Not for many years.’
He reached out to touch her hand. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
Suddenly, he got up. ‘I need to go for a swim.’
He doused the fire, kicking soil into the ember, burying it, and cutting off the oxygen that fuelled the flames. Suddenly, they were blanketed in darkness until their eyes adjusted to the absence of light.
‘It’s very late,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful in the moonlight. Come...’
They walked towards the waterfall, illuminated only by the moon. They stood close to the edge; she leant in to see the lunar reflection on the transparent surface. It was out of this world.
He whispered to her, ‘You have two more days to decide if you can take the big plunge.’
He moved her away from the edge, took off his clothes and leapt into the darkness. She heard the water splash, and at the same time, her nerves jangled. Minutes passed.
He’s down there, and I’m up here. There’s something wrong with this picture.
She undressed, went to the edge of the fall, and called out to him. Her voice carried in the stillness of the night: ‘Bryce, I’m coming.’
She saw his physical outline at the far end of the natural pool. She sensed he was smiling, willing her on.
She jumped!
- Writer
