Free Travelers Rest by Ann Tatlock Page A

gearshift’s got no reverse, so you have to just keep moving forward.”
    She turned to Seth and took a deep breath. “You know, Seth,” she said, “everyone on this floor has a spinal cord injury. You’re not the only one.”
    “So?” He avoided her gaze.
    “Do you ever talk to anyone else, just to see how they’re coping? I mean, it might help to talk to other people who are going through the same thing.”
    Seth was quiet a moment before saying, “Sure, I talk to the guys. How can I avoid it? But what you don’t understand is that it’s different for everyone.”
    “But there must be some common ground—”
    “Most of the guys on the floor—their injuries are lower. They might have lost the use of their legs, but at least they still have their arms.” Seth paused again, another long moment. His face sank a shade deeper into pain as he added, “And their hands.”
    Jane nodded. One look around the porch showed many of the men able to wheel their own chairs, talk on cell phones, scratch their own noses. None of which Seth was able to do.
    “If I had my hands,” Seth went on, “I could keep on working. It wouldn’t be impossible for me to at least do some carpentry work.”
    She couldn’t disagree. “I know, Seth.” She laid a hand over one of his. It was large and warm and unresponsive.
    “I can’t feel that, you know,” Seth said.
    Jane nodded. She willed herself not to cry.
    Seth finally turned his face toward her and locked on to her gaze. “Nights are the best, Jane,” he whispered.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The dreams,” he said. He looked up at the ceiling and swallowed hard. “When I’m asleep, I’m whole again. I mean, I know I’ve been shot, just like in Iraq, but it doesn’t matter. In my dreams I can still walk. I can sit down and stand back up. My arms and legs do whatever I want them to do, and . . . I don’t know, I’m me again. I’m who I was before.”
    He glanced at Jane. She nodded for him to go on.
    “In most of my dreams, I’m working again. I’m using the saw or the drill or the wood plane, and it’s all so real, I can feel the texture of the wood, and I can smell the sawdust.”
    Jane remembered briefly how she used to kid him, how she used to say he loved the scent of sawdust more than any perfume she might wear. He laughed and said it wasn’t so, but she threatened to carry wood shavings in her pockets if he didn’t comment on her choice of fragrance once in a while. “So,” she said now, “you can smell the sawdust?”
    “Yeah.” He nodded. “I can actually smell it, and I can tell whether the wood I’m working with is pine or cedar or walnut. But then I wake up . . .”
    His voice trailed off. He blinked several times.
    “You wake up,” Jane said, “and it must seem like real life is a nightmare.”
    He nodded again. A small vein throbbed at his temple. “Sometimes, Jane, I dream I’m hugging you. And the thing that’s the most real is you put your cheek against mine, and I can feel your skin and how soft it is.” He moved his gaze to her again. “Will you put your cheek next to mine? I want to feel you again.”
    Jane pulled her chair closer and leaned toward him. She pressed her cheek against one of his, while cupping his other cheek in the palm of her hand. Their tears met and mingled on the pallet of their warm flesh.
    “I want to live, Jane,” Seth whispered. “I do want to live. But not like this.”

12
    S he went to the gazebo in the hopes that Truman Rockaway might be there. He wasn’t, not at first. But he showed up shortly afterward, as though he knew she needed his company.
    He nodded as he sat down on the bench across from her. For a moment they sat in silence. Truman’s elbows rested on his thighs and his hands were folded, as though in prayer. Then he spoke. “You’ve just come from seeing Seth.”
    “Yes.” She couldn’t look at him. If she did, she would cry.
    Truman drew himself up and put a hand over