Kathleen Creighton - Shooting Starr

She heard C.J. shout, “Hey, Blondie! Come here-fetch!” then give a little grunt of effort. The tongue retreated with a happy “Wuff!” and a scrabble of claws on gravelly ground.

Abandoned, Caitlyn teetered off balance and would have collapsed in a breathless, laughing heap except for the solid, furry body that moved in close to steady her at just the right moment. Nudged up against her side, Bubba gave her chin an encouraging lick as if to say, “You’re okay, now. I’m here.”

Murmuring, “Good dog…what a sweet ol’ boy you are…” she wrapped her arms around the big Lab’s neck and gave him a fur-ruffling rub. Then strong hands were under her elbows, and instead of the dusty, warm dog smell in her nostrils, there was that familiar, clean C.J. smell again. As he helped her up, just for a moment she felt the brush of his cheek-slightly beard-scratchy-against hers and the feathery tickle of hair. Something jolted under her ribs, and she caught at her next breath as if it were about to be taken from her.

“You okay?” he asked gruffly, and she felt the warm breeze of his breath, scented with coffee and maple syrup.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Back on her feet, she brushed at herself and pushed away from him, moving a few steps and covering her breathlessness with laughter.

“Ground’s a little rough,” he said as he caught her hand and brought it firmly back into the crook of his elbow.

Caitlyn didn’t reply. Her feelings were a jumble-confusing, distressing-and as they walked on she kept her head turned so C.J. wouldn’t see them written on her face. Caty, make up your mind! What is it you want? One minute you’re dreaming of walking out alone, the next minute you’re terrified that he’s not touching you. You were scared when you let go of him. Admit it. You felt safe when he took your hand again. Safe!

But she knew safety that depended on someone else was an illusion. She’d learned from experience and example that no one could guarantee another person’s safety, that the only real protection she had against the terrors and monsters of the world was inside herself. Her own inner strength-that was her armor. Without that she would be naked as a hatchling bird.

As she walked she chanted to herself, like a pledge, a credo, a prayer: I must not lose my strength and my independence, no matter how good his arm feels here beneath my hand. No matter how nice it feels to walk like this beside his strong, warm body, I must not let myself like it too much.

“We’re back a good bit from the road,” C.J. said as they walked slowly along, feet swishing through leaf-covered grass, then crunching on gravel-no doubt the same gravel she’d heard the tires of Eve’s car drive over last night. “The house is surrounded by trees-some poplars, hickories and a few maples…but mostly oaks, so the leaves haven’t really started to pile up yet. There’s an old tire swing hanging from one of ’em. I played on that when I was a kid.”

The air did feel cooler now. They must be in the shade, she thought as she asked wistfully, “Have the leaves turned?” She’d always loved the colors of fall.

“A lot of ’em have. They’re not at their peak, though. Farther north, up in the mountains, that’s where they’re pretty, right about now…” He paused for a moment, and when he went on there was an odd little break in his voice…another of those emotional nuances she hadn’t yet learned to read? “There’s lots of goldenrod along the roadsides and fences, with pink and purple morning glories mixed in. All sorts of grasses and other flowers, daisies, I guess, maybe sunflowers, mostly yellow-”

“Yellow-flower season,” Caitlyn murmured, smiling. Her throat ached with longing.

“Yeah…” C.J. gave an uneven laugh. The fingers that covered her hand were stroking back and forth in a consoling sort of way. His voice became a soft sweet murmur, and she remembered that she’d liked the way it sounded a million years ago. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah…there’s fields over there on the other side of the lane-some farmer leases ’em out to plant crops on. Sometimes it’s cotton, sometimes soybeans. This summer he had some kind of grain, but it’s been harvested already, so there’s just stubble out there now. Birds like it, though. You can see them flyin’ in and out, looking for the leftover seed. And the turkeys, of course-they love it. Wild geese stop over sometimes to feed.”

“Canadian geese?” Her heart gave a leap, and in her memory’s eye she saw the undulating arrows against a pale, cold Iowa sky. Homesickness washed over her, prickling her nose and eyes.

“Yeah. I don’t see any out there now, though. Sorry.” His voice was husky. “Maybe another time.”

He paused, while his fingers went on stroking the back of her hand, and out of the blue she found herself wondering what he looked like. Not in general, of course-she remembered him the way he’d looked that night, remembered his warm brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and the sweetness of that smile-but at this particular moment. Right now she couldn’t hear a trace of that smile in his voice. She didn’t know what she did hear-warmth, compassion, kindness…other things she couldn’t sort out or identify-and she couldn’t picture the face that went with the voice at all. Her face felt stiff and achy with the effort of trying to penetrate the blankness. Frustration was a fine vibration that ran beneath the surface of her skin.

She felt his body turn toward her, become a close and humid warmth, and the vibration inside her became a jumpy current of electricity.

“Okay. Over here-” his voice was a spine-stirring growl near her ear, and she felt foolish as she turned, clumsy under his guidance, as if she’d missed a step in a dance “-on this side is mostly woods, but there’s some cow pastures and hay fields with those big round bales still lying in ’em, and a pond down there, and a creek, too. And beyond that, more woods.”

“No houses?” Her voice cracked.

C.J. gave a little laugh. “Told you we’re out in the middle of nowhere. No, actually, Jimmy Joe-that’s my brother-”

“The one you work for, who owns the trucking company.”

“Right. His place is half a mile or so down the road from here. He used to run the business from there, until it got too big. Now he’s got a regular terminal on the outskirts of Augusta. Then, just about a mile down the road in the other direction is my place. It’s closer than that through the fields, but I like to come by the road so I can keep track of my time.”

“So you did really ‘run’ over here this morning?”

There was a little pause, and this time when he spoke she could hear the grin. “Told you I keep in shape.”

“Yes, but running?” It was unexpected; such a town-dwelling, yuppie thing to do, she thought. It didn’t fit the image of C.J. Starr in her mind, sweet Southern good-ol’ boy truck driver who couldn’t bear the thought of living in the city. But, she reminded herself, he’s studying to become a lawyer, don’t forget, and that didn’t fit your image of him, either. Not even then.

You jumped to conclusions about this man once before and look where that got you.

“I got started running way back in high school,” he was saying, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “The way it happened was, I was playing football and, like all good Georgia boys, dreaming of being a Georgia Bulldog one day. Since I was built on the lean side and had some fairly decent speed, I was a running back. Come the end of the football season, my coach wanted me to go out for track to keep in shape. Work on my time.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had a distant sound, as if he’d gone into a private room and closed the door, leaving her outside. “I guess he thought I had some potential. Anyway, whether I did or not I never found out, but I got to like the running for its own sake, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.”

She walked on beside him, unconsciously in step, listening to what he’d told her and what he hadn’t. Listening to the faint elusive sadness in his voice that reminded her of the way wild geese sounded, far away in an autumn sky. After a moment she asked, “Why didn’t you? Find out about your potential, I mean.” And when he didn’t answer she did for him, softly. “You never got to the University of Georgia?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He stopped walking, and so did she. She heard a dry, scuffing sound. He’d leaned against a tree trunk, letting her hand slide out of its nest in the crook of his arm. Distancing himself from her, she thought, and felt strangely bereft.

Needing to maintain some kind of contact with him but not wanting to admit to that need, she put out her hand and found the tree trunk instead. Splaying her fingers wide, she pressed her palm against the rough, crisp bark and tilted her head to listen as somewhere overhead a squirrel began to scold in outrage at the intrusion into his domain.

C.J. stared up into the bronzy-gold leaves of the hickory tree and located the squirrel, perched on the broken-off stub of a dead branch, tail held up behind him and fluffed out like a brush. He thought about describing it for her, but it suddenly seemed impossible, utterly beyond him. The truth was, no matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t going to make her see.

The hurt that knowledge left inside him was a solid thing, like a fist in his guts. All in all, the vague ache of long-ago disappointments and failures seemed easier to deal with.

He drew a breath. “Preseason practice, start of my senior year. We were having a scrimmage and I got hit from the side-clipping, they call it-there’s a good reason why it’s illegal. Tore up the cartilage in my knee. They told me I’d be out the whole season, so there went my hopes for a scholarship to just about anyplace. I figured, the hell with it. I dropped out.”

“Out of school?” He understood her horrified tone; she was a teacher’s child, like he was. In families like theirs, such a thing was almost unthinkable. “Why?”

He laughed softly at the look on her face, intent and fascinated but frustrated, too, as if he were a puzzle she couldn’t solve. Welcome to the club, he wanted to say. I’ve had some trouble figuring me out, too.

Then he thought about it and he realized that wasn’t true; there were quite a few things about himself he’d got figured out, but he just hadn’t ever wanted to share them with anybody before. Why he wanted to now-that was something he couldn’t figure out.

“Why?” He scrubbed a hand over his face. His grin flickered briefly before he remembered she couldn’t see it. “Oh, hell, what can I say? I was a kid. Spoiled. The baby of the family. Things had always come easy for me, and I guess I expected they always would. When I got hurt, from where I was standing it looked like my life was over. My dreams of football fame and glory, my easy-ride college career right down the tubes. I was mad, disappointed…it was easier to say the hell with it than to come up with a whole new set of dreams.”

“‘A new set of dreams…’” She whispered it, staring into nothingness. The bleakness in her face hit him like a body blow.

Turning so he couldn’t see her face, she leaned her back against the same tree trunk that was propping him up and said in a not-quite-steady voice, “That’s ridiculous. You could still have had your dream of going to the University of Georgia if you’d wanted to. If you’d worked at it. Even playing football-you might have gotten there by a different path-”

He shrugged, then sucked in air as their shoulders touched. It shocked him to realize how much he wanted to hold her. More than he wanted his next breath. His voice wasn’t steady, either, as he retorted, “Yeah, well, maybe that was a dream that wasn’t meant to happen. Maybe I wouldn’t have been good enough to play college ball. How do I know? Like I said, things had always been easy for me. I’d never been tested, I guess you could say. And except for football, I didn’t have the first idea what I wanted to do with my life. Without that, who knows, I might have squandered a whole college education and graduated still not knowing. Maybe dropping out of school at that point was the best thing I could have done.”

He heard a soft laugh and leaned over so he could see her face. A smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Providence,” she murmured, angling her head toward him slightly.

“‘Providence’?” The word tugged at his memory and he frowned, trying to place it. But the top of Caitlyn’s head was right there, just below his nose…those waving tufts of golden hair would tickle his lips if he leaned over just a little bit.

She tilted her face upward, and he caught and held his breath. Couldn’t let it go-she’d know how close he was. Her lips quivered with her smile. “Something my dad used to say.”