I stopped walking. “The front steps?”
“I think I can get Pete and Jack to help me build a ramp. We’ll need to make some changes in the bathroom, too, maybe get one of those handheld shower goodies, and a seat. Dr. Riley can probably give us a list of things that we wouldn’t even think about on our own.”
“Frank—” I swallowed hard. “You’ve had to live with my twenty-five-year-old cousin . . .”
“Like most guys his age, Travis has had better things to do than hang around the house. You know I haven’t minded having him stay with us. I like him.”
“But Ben — he’s going to have problems, Frank. In fact, he had problems before all of this happened. This is not a great time in Ben Sheridan’s life.”
“Do you dislike him?”
“Last week, the answer would have been ‘yes.’ ”
“Now?”
“I guess I see things differently. The situation forced me to spend some time with him when he should have been at his worst. Instead it seemed to bring out the best in him.”
We turned around and headed back. Frank said, “I found you up there before Parrish did because Ben — even though he was obviously half out of his mind with pain — came up with the idea of sending Bingle with me to look for you.”
“You would have found me anyway.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But who knows? With Parrish on the loose, it’s not a chance I would have wanted to take. The other thing is — you know the old bit about saving someone’s life?”
“And then becoming responsible for it? You aren’t going to convince me that you’re suggesting Ben should stay with us because of that.”
“No, but there’s some link between the two of you now, just because you survived this together.”
“A link? Frank, maybe I should make something clear—”
“No need to,” he said firmly. “I don’t suspect that at all.”
“Why not?” I asked, and he laughed.
“Don’t worry — I have no doubt that you’re attractive to other men.”
“So you think Ben is gay?”
“No, I think Miss Ellen Raice would have blurted that out to us right off the bat.”
“True.”
He smiled. “And you didn’t just invent Camille Graham to be cruel to Stinger, did you?”
“No. So what is it?”
“I trust you,” he said. Then with a mischievous look, he added, “Besides, there are certain advantages to marrying girls like you, who never quite get over being Catholic — I would have seen the guilt from a mile away.”
I opened my mouth to protest, shut it, then muttered, “You’re right,” which made him laugh again.
So we decided that it would be good for Ben to stay with us. It was not so easy to convince Ben.
Frank proceeded to make the changes to the house anyway, saying that it would make it easier for Ben to visit. We both kept hoping that Ben would change his mind.
The sister in Iowa called Ben once, said she was sorry to hear about his trouble, but there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t afford a trip out to California, and since she was seeing a man who might pop the question at any moment, strategically, this was not a good time for her to leave Iowa. He told me the phone call was more than he had expected from her.
He was moved to another section of the hospital, and began grueling physical therapy sessions. During those two weeks, he got many calls from friends across the country, but he always told them not to bother coming out to see him.
Those were busy weeks for me, just as I had hoped they’d be. Other members of the news staff, sick of hearing from John about my productivity, started hinting to me that I could slow down anytime.
No, I couldn’t.
I was on the run, after all — as surely as I had been in the mountains. Parrish seemed to be everywhere. Seated at other tables in restaurants, walking past me on a crowded sidewalk, going down the stadium stairs at a ball game. He came out of a bookstore as I walked in, stood in the shadows at a bar when I had a drink after work with friends, stood on the pier, staring at me, when I ran on the beach. He was at the back of the bus when I rode it, he drove past me when I walked. I once saw him get into an elevator ahead of me — I took the stairs, four flights up.
I don’t do well with elevators anyway.
Although each time was as terrifying as the first, I learned not to screech or run or point — and eventually, not to tell anyone what had made me suddenly turn pale, not to tell anyone anything about it at all. This, even though I knew that Frank wouldn’t belittle me if I told him of every incident. What did that matter? I was too ashamed not to belittle myself.
When I wasn’t working, I was visiting Ben or making preparations for his release from the hospital. I went back to David’s house without Bingle, cleaning it up just in case we lost our argument with Ben. I asked Ben if he wanted me to do anything with David’s belongings; he said no. “Except — could you bring some of those training tapes in? I think Sister Theresa is going to get a VCR in here for me.”
“Bribing nuns?”
“You should talk, dog smuggler.”
“What training tapes?”
“The ones of Bingle and the SAR group. The group videotapes some of the training exercises so that they can study the way the dogs work, the way the handlers work with them. David used to watch the tapes all the time. They’ll be on the bookcase.”
“So you’re going to take up SAR and cadaver dog work?”
He glanced down at his left leg, then with a determined look, said, “Yes. If Bingle decides he doesn’t want to work with me, fine. But David put a lot of time into training him, and the least I can do for David and Bingle is to give it a try. And no one can better teach me how to work with Bingle than David.”
At first, watching the tapes upset Ben, as they did me. This was David at his best, his happiest, and the tapes served as a reminder of who it was we had lost. Seeing Bingle work with him, it was clear that they communicated superbly, that he made the best of the dog’s intelligence and abilities.
Since David’s death, I thought, Bingle must have believed himself to be in the company of dullards.
At one point, Ben paused the tape. I heard him choke back a sob.
“Do you want to wait and watch these when you’re feeling better?” I asked.
He shook his head. “There’s no feeling better about David’s death; only getting used to it.”
He hit the play button again. He was watching a tape made in the summer. At the end of it, there was some footage of a hilarious swimming party that had included the dogs. I was laughing with Ben at Bingle’s antics in the pool when I saw something that made me draw in a sharp breath.
Ben heard it and paused the tape again. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry — I didn’t know.”
He looked at the screen, and saw what had startled me. “His back, you mean? The scars?”
“Yes.”
“The worst were from a radiator.”
“An accident?” I asked hopefully, knowing it wasn’t so.
“No. David was abused.”
I couldn’t speak.
“He must have been very comfortable with the people in this group,” Ben went on. “He didn’t usually take his shirt off around others, and unless he came across someone else who was abused, he certainly didn’t speak of his childhood.” He paused. “Please don’t mention this to anyone else.”
I promised I wouldn’t. “I begin to understand why he didn’t think Parrish’s childhood excused him.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “We used to argue about that. David was an obvious example of the fact that not all abused children go on to become twisted souls, that many overcome the horrors of their childhood. But I used to tell him that not everyone was made up of the same stuff he was, not everyone was as strong. Not everyone could overcome what he did.”
I thought of Nicholas Parrish. “Perhaps there are a few who don’t want to overcome it.”