For my first go-round in
Sample Sunday (#samplesunday on Twitter), here is the prologue for my women's fiction/contemporary novel
The Day After Yesterday. Enjoy!
Highway
101 was a dark strand along the California coast, all but invisible in the
night and the rain. On this strand like a bright pearl was the Shoreline Diner.
Zack Fuller stood by the window. Even when he shaded his eyes against the
diner’s light and peered outside, he could see nothing. There were few lights
on this stretch of the 101 and the storm shut out moon and stars. Nothing but
midnight-in-a-mine-shaft darkness and no sound save for the rain, coming down
hard, and the wind’s occasional lonely wail.
Zack
placed one palm against the window to feel the chill. He rather liked these
coastal winter storms. He much preferred them to the downpours of his native
Louisiana; those warm rains smelled like wet plant life and reminded him too
much of ‘Nam. By contrast, California storms were soothing, even inspiring at
times. Some nights like these made him think he ought to try writing a book, or
maybe a short story. He’d thought of an opening line — It was a dark and stormy night — but now had the uneasy feeling it
might have been done before.
He
turned away from the window. Two hours until closing but only five customers in
the place — not surprising. No one was going out in this weather if they could
help it. Four of the five he knew by sight and experience. Local teens who left
their tables a mess, used foul language when ladies and kids were nearby, and
never tipped. They’d long since eaten and paid, and were just killing time
while waiting for the storm to die down. Zack ignored them and made his way to
counter, where the fifth customer sat. A redhead, she sat with an empty plate
in front of her — she’d had the Evening Breakfast Special. She had a book open
but Zack had never seen her turn a page; she seemed more interested in the
sketchpad she doodled on. The redhead gave Zack a quick up-and-down glance as
he approached. Impossible to tell if she was pretty, for her face was
half-hidden by her hair.
“Care
for a refill?” Zack held up the iced tea pitcher.
“Yes,
please. Is it still raining?”
“Cats
and dogs.”
She
glanced at the windows. Zack took the opportunity to sneak a peek at her
doodlings, and was surprised by their quality — no stick figures or meaningless
scribbles but detailed sketches of a saguaro cactus, a cat, the Golden Gate
bridge. There were words on the sketchpad too, but he had to look away before
he could read them, so she wouldn’t see he’d been peeking.
The
redhead turned back to her sketchpad, biting her lower lip nervously. Zack
could tell she didn’t want to venture out into the storm in search of a hotel,
and he didn’t blame her. Pitching his voice low so the local quartet wouldn’t
hear, he said, “Stay as long as you like. It’s not safe to be driving in this
weather.”
“But
you’ll be closed. I don’t want to keep you from home.”
Zack
shrugged. “I’ve got insomnia.” A souvenir from ‘Nam. “And I don’t want to go
out in this either.”
He
thought of offering her a place to sleep. He had one — a tiny antechamber in
the back among the canned goods and industrial-size boxes of flour and salt. An
army cot with wool blankets, a space heater, and even a privacy curtain he’d
sewn. He lay there on insomniac nights or when he and the old lady were going
through a bad patch. But as he was about to offer he saw the way she regarded
him — warily. Zack wondered how much of that was due to his admittedly scruffy
appearance — bald head, tattoos, and long, white, braided beard. And how much
of her wariness came from experience, from the telltale bump of her nose that
told him it had been broken at least once.
She
offered him a small smile. “Thank you. You’re very kind. I’m from Arizona, I’m
not used to driving in this kind of rain.”
“Stay
as long as you like.”
Zack
occupied himself with cleaning the grill, brewing fresh coffee and decaf, and
reading a New Orleans-set mystery titled The
Jambalaya Alibi. The local quartet had run out of inane chatter. The
redhead was writing something in her sketchpad. The storm had long since become
white noise ignored by them all, so when the diner’s door opened with a thud,
Zack started and looked up.
The
man stood just inside the doorway, blinking dazedly as if astounded by the
diner’s light and warmth. He was white-faced and soaked through — he might have
emerged from the sea, which of course was impossible given the storm-tossed
tide. He must have been walking in the rain for hours. Water dripped steadily
from his clothes, his hair, the backpack he wore.
Zack
walked over to the man, bringing a mug and the coffee pot with him. “God
almighty, look at you,” Zack said. “Sit down and warm up.”
The
man didn’t move save to look back over his shoulder. He seemed to be searching
for someone. “Where did…” he said, but didn’t finish.
“It’s
OK. Sit down.” Zack put a hand on the man’s shoulder — sopping wet and stone
cold. When the man sat down, Zack poured some coffee. “Drink up.”
“Thank
you.” The man hadn’t lost that dazed look. He sat with water pooling around
him, hadn’t even taken off his backpack. He reached for the coffee mug, then
with no warning slumped and toppled to the side, pitching headlong out of the
booth. Zack dropped the coffee pot and caught the man bare inches before he’d
have bashed his head a good one on the linoleum.
Zack
grappled with the unconscious man’s dead weight while his shoes slid in
rainwater and spilled coffee. He yelled over his shoulder at the local kids:
“Hey, little help here!” But they were already out the door. Useless little
twerps.
“Here.”
The redhead helped ease the man to the floor. She checked the man’s pulse, his
breathing, felt his forehead with the inside of her wrist. She did it quickly
and professionally. Zack recognized that from field hospitals and the VA. “When
he spoke, was it clear?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“He
didn’t slur his words?”
“No.
Is it hypothermia?”
“Probably.
I think it’s mild but he should go to a hospital. Where’s the nearest one?”
Miles
from here, he told her, and with the weather who knew how long it would take
for an ambulance to get here.
She
nodded, asked if there was some place they could get him warm.
Zack
flipped the diner’s sign to Closed and
together they carried the man into Zack’s makeshift bedroom. They worked with
the efficiency of the nurse and the soldier and soon had the man’s drenched
clothes off; they laid him down on the cot with the wool blankets over him and
the space heater on.
Only
once did Zack see the woman taken aback — when they took off the man’s shirt
and saw the scars, red lines standing out angrily against the pale skin of his
inner wrists. Not old scars, either. Zack knew wounds and gauged them to be a
month or two old, at most. Nearly four inches long, straight and sure. The work
of a determined man. The redhead paused for a moment, then went on with her
work.
When
they had the man as dry and warm as they could get him, she checked his pulse
and breathing again. “He’s getting some color back,” she said as she held the
man’s right hand. “That’s good. I’m going to stay with him a while.”
“OK.
Let me take care of this.” Zack gathered the wet clothes into a plastic bag,
thinking he’d hang them up somewhere to dry. Lastly he picked up the backpack
and took it with him to the diner’s main room. He sat down in a booth and after
a moment’s consideration, opened the backpack.
He
expected to find the belongings a sodden mess but they were in Ziploc bags and
had stayed dry. The box of Ziplocs, its cardboard wet, was the topmost item. It
seemed a recent purchase; Zack found tucked inside the box a barely legible
receipt from a convenience store some 25 miles north of here. Surely the man
hadn’t walked 25 miles in the rain? No wonder he’d toppled over.
Zack
reproached himself for prying but curiosity was too strong and the bag yielded
up its contents. Two sets of clothes, jeans and shirts, not laundry-fresh but
not stale either. One bag most curious — it held a woman’s gauzy blue scarf,
shimmering cobalt beads embroidered on it, and a green teddy bear, most of its
fuzz long since worn away. Zack shivered. He knew mementoes when he saw them.
The last bag was a treasure trove. House keys. A wallet. A prescription bottle
— Zoloft, half full. Papers: discharge papers from a hospital, referrals to a
doctor, a sheet of notepaper from a motel with several names and addresses
written on it, a letter sealed and addressed but with no stamp or return
address.
Zack
opened the wallet. About $40 or so. Standard-issue credit cards. A driver’s
license for Daniel J. Whitman of Los Cielos. Zack had the notion Los Cielos was
to the south — around San Diego perhaps? Health insurance and library cards.
Musician’s Union membership cards. A “Buy 10 cups, get the 11th
free” card for a coffee house called Java Man — he had three more to go.
Nothing that explained why Whitman was so far from home with little beyond the
clothes on his back, sporting wrist scars, near to collapse with cold and
exhaustion.
Feeling
like a voyeur, Zack turned to the wallet’s photo insert. A Christmas studio
picture of Whitman with a pretty blonde woman and a towheaded young boy, the
sort of picture sent out with holiday greeting cards. Whitman was a
good-looking fellow when he wasn’t impersonating a drowned rat. A picture of
the boy in his preschool years, holding the green teddy bear. Zack felt a
queasy thump and flipped through the remaining photos hurriedly. A group shot
of the blonde woman with what looked like her siblings and parents. The boy
having a toy lightsaber duel with a bespectacled man, who turned up in the next
picture, a wedding portrait with him and a brunette. Are these people looking for you, Whitman? What happened? Why are you
here?
“Pardon
me.”
The
voice was soft but Zack jumped, and guiltily snapped the wallet closed.
“He’s
better now,” said the redhead. “Just sleeping. I’m going to stay up with him if
that’s all right.”
“Sure.
You want something to eat? BLT maybe?”
“Oh,
yes please.”
“I’m making a fresh pot of joe, would you like
some?”
She
cast a longing look at the pot. “I… I’d better not.” She made a vague gesture
toward her midsection, didn’t seem to be aware she was doing it. Zack
understood immediately. He was the oldest of six children and knew a breeding
woman when he saw one.
Zack
made the sandwich and brought it to her, along with a glass of skim milk. She
was leaning over Whitman, examining his head by the light of a flashlight. Zack
peered closely. “He didn’t get that bump when he fell. His head never touched
the floor.”
She
nodded. “He’s got a laceration too. That’s why I wanted to keep an eye on him.
Pupils are dilating fine, so there doesn’t seem to be a concussion.”
Zack
went back to his booth and packed Whitman’s belongings back into their Ziplocs.
He picked up the backpack, intending to hang it up somewhere to dry, and as he
did noticed several long green strands tangled in the backpack’s straps.
Frowning, he looked at them more closely. Sea grass. On the wet clothes was
more sea grass, and there was sand on the jeans, shoes, and socks.
Zack
shuddered. He’d ventured out to look at the sea during these winter storms and
had been amazed how fierce the gentle blue Pacific could turn. More amazed now
that Whitman was here and not feeding the fish. He hung the wet things over
chair backs to dry, then sat and laid his head down on the table. A long day
and a longer night, and it wasn’t yet midnight. Zack didn’t mean to doze off
but jerked awake at the sound.
The
cry was not loud but the quality of it — the oboe tone of fear and desperation
— cut through Zack’s uneasy sleep. He remembered a cry much like it, many years
ago: some poor PFC stepped on a mine and wandered off mostly blind into the
rice paddies where he bled out over half the night and called for his mother
most of that time.
This voice
wasn’t crying out for mother. It called for Sarah.
And there was a phrase, one the unlucky PFC had used: Help me. Still woozy from his abrupt awakening, Zack went into the
back where he found the redhead and the man holding each other. Zack couldn’t make
out most of the man’s words. As for the redhead, she seemed unsure of what to
say; she seemed uncomfortable in the man’s clutch. “Everything’s all right,”
she said.
Whitman
was having none of it. “No. Not ever.”
Nothing
she said soothed him. But then she sang.
Something
strange about her singing. Her voice was untrained, wobbly at times, yet a
quality to it that wasn’t so much comfort as compassion. It said that she
understood why he’d ended up here even if she didn’t know the exact reason.
What she sang: it was slow, and strangely old-fashioned. The sort of music
you’d hear from some woman in medieval clothes, playing a lute. Or so it seemed
to Zack.
She
sang, and held the man’s hand. A different song, one that made Zack think of
long-ago Midnight Masses on Christmas eve; for a moment he even thought he
caught a whiff of incense. The redhead didn’t look up at Zack — all her
attention was on Whitman. He’d quieted down, lay still. Zack couldn’t tell if
he was still awake. After a while Zack asked in a whisper if everything was all
right, and she nodded, not taking her eyes off Whitman.
Zack
went back to his booth. He meant to ask her about the songs. He laid his head
down again, tried to remember the words she’d sung. A verse or two he could
recall: Do way, dear heart, not so.
Let no thought you dismay. Though you now part me from, we shall meet when we
may. When he woke the rain had stopped. The dawn
showed pearl-gray clouds and here and there a hint of blue. Whitman slept on in
the makeshift bedroom. The redhead was gone.
