If you ask Brock about his wheelchair and useless legs he’ll tell you the whole story with a matter of fact quality, like he’s talking about horse racing or lacrosse, one of those things people find interesting but don’t get all busted up about.  That’s just Brock.  He’s a no bullshit kind of guy who couldn’t swallow pity if you tried to choke him with it.

Brock had grown up in these mountains.  When he made me an offer I was glad to follow him out here and take a job at his fledgling adventure tour company.  He’s a good guy, and one of the few people on earth who knows a thing or two about me.

“Cheeseburgers,” Brock announces.  He tosses me a greasy paper bag the second I open the screechy aluminum door of the single-wide trailer that serves as company headquarters.

I catch the bag and sniff at the contents, my belly rumbling expectantly in response.  “You hauled your wheels to town just to buy me lunch?”

Brock grins and shakes his head, closing the silver lid of his Mac.  “Nope.  Ashley stopped by with the goods.  That’s one cute slice of tender blondeness, Oz.  Poor girl looked so crestfallen by the news you weren’t around I thought about inviting her to sit in my lap as consolation.”

“Maybe you should have,” I grumble and slide into a rickety folding chair as I open a paper-wrapped burger.  I’ll have it swallowed in two bites.

“Well then maybe I will,” he says cheerfully, “if you’re sure you’re pulling back from the table.”

I grab Brock’s water bottle and wash the burger down with a hard gulp.

“Have at it.”  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Honestly, I never sat down at that table.  I just paused and grabbed a few mouthfuls of the appetizer on my way out the door.”

Brock laughs.  He knows I don’t lie.

Ashley is a local girl, a waitress at the only twenty-four-hour diner in Jacoby.  She’s cute as hell but lives in the low tide pool of human intelligence.   Even though we had some fun sweating it up at my place a few times, at the end of the day I want more in a woman than a pretty face and a wet pussy.

“Harsh,” Brock says when he’s done laughing.

I shrug.  “Truth.”

So what the hell do I want?  Not much, just mind-blowing sex with a brain attached, a woman who’s my match in words and action.  Anyone can fuck, but I want to feel like I can’t wait to hear what comes out of her mouth almost as much as I can’t wait to be inside her body.

I want something I once had for a short, vanished season and haven’t been able to replace.  I doubt I ever will.

“Oz.”  Brock snaps his fingers loudly.  “Oz man, you’re a million miles away.

It’s stinking hot in the trailer.  I pull off my t-shirt and wipe my face with it.  “I’m here.  I’m just digesting, that’s all.”

Brock is studying me.  He’s used to my casual attitude toward women so this fresh scrutiny has nothing to do with Cheeseburger Ashley.  I meant it when I said he could take a crack at that if he wants to.  Wouldn’t bother me at all.

“Got a call today,” he finally says.

“For me?”

“No.” He pauses.  “California area code.  Guy on the other end had one of those golden money voices that could probably convince a priest to shoot his own mother.  He wasn’t looking for Oz Acevedo.”

My stomach does a sick little flip even though this isn’t unexpected.   In the information age where everyone knows the location of everyone else’s last shit deposit, how long did I think I could hide?

Brock doesn’t need to say it but he does anyway.

“He thought he might be able to find a man named Oscar Savage here.”

I stare down at my knees.  “He won’t.”

Brock’s voice is sympathetic.  “I know.  I told him as much but he knew I was lying like a dog.  He asked me to pass along his contact info just in case Oscar made an appearance.”

I wish there was something stronger than water around.  I don’t even ask. Brock is an old school teetotaler. “Did he say why Oscar should be interested in talking to him?”

“He said it was a family matter.”

My head whips up and I meet Brock’s curious green-eyed gaze.  “He said that?  Family matter?”

My friend nods and then grimaces as he’s hit with one of his frequent back spasms.  “He did.”

When he’s done twisting his body sideways in the wheelchair, Brock hands me a bright yellow post-it with a name and phone number scrawled in black marker.  I shove it into my back pocket and he tries to interest me in a fifty-mile drive to Gatlinburg for a better meal than cheeseburgers.  When I shake my head he doesn’t push the issue.

“There a tour set up tomorrow?”  I ask on my way out the door.

Brock nods. “Yeah, a quartet of old biddies who want to hike to the standing stones to perform some kind of female goddess worship.”  He watches me.  “New guy can take it if you’d rather have the day off.”

I cough.  “Maybe.”

I feel like that damn post-it is burning a hole in my back pocket.

Brock bobs his head.  “Just let me know by 6 a.m., okay Oz?”

“You got it.”

I try to calm myself while driving the five miles back to my apartment but my heart is hammering. I have the urge to peel rubber and be reckless on the winding country roads.  Too many kids ride their bikes around here though.

When I get home, old man Johnson is out on the sagging front porch with a shotgun in his lap.  That’s his usual position so it doesn’t bother me. I throw the truck into park and stalk across the front lawn toward the narrow staircase that leads to the converted living space on the second floor.  I start talking to myself without realizing it until I hear my own words.

“Family matter?  What the fuck?”

Old man Johnson seems startled by my grumbling.  He swivels his egg-shaped body around to stare at me.   He’s a sad, strange fellow who’s lived in this clapboard eyesore his entire life.   He charges a cheap monthly rent and stays out of my face.

“Evening, Hal,” I say as my foot hits the bottom step.

Hal Johnson scowls and swivels back around in his chair to face the menace of the empty street.   That’s fine because I’m not in the mood for a chat anyway.

It’s not until I reach the top of the staircase that I realize I have no desire to be inside, brooding and sweating in that empty apartment until I get tired.  I hop back down the stairs and take off in the truck, leaving Hal Johnson to stare silently after me.

I gun the engine once and take off for the hills I left behind a little while ago.  I don’t have anywhere specific in mind.  I just want to be out there, on the loose.

By the time I reach a place that looks like it leads somewhere suitably wild and nameless, the sky is growing dark.  I grab my pack out of the truck bed before heading into the darkening hills.  Maybe I’ll just hang out in the woods all night.  I’ve done it before.

The surroundings are familiar.  I’ve been this way at least once.  My sole bragging right in life is an uncanny talent for navigation.  You could drop me anywhere on earth without a map and I’ll figure out how to get back to where I started.

After a few minutes of walking my foot knocks into a fallen tree. Abruptly I throw my pack down and sit on the trunk.

“A man named Oscar Savage.”

Quiet reigns all around me.  Every living thing for a quarter mile radius has halted, breathless, awaiting the next action of this intruder, a man who sits on a hollow log in the coming darkness and stares at nothing.

Suddenly a battle for survival erupts somewhere in the brush off to my left and a small creature squeals in pain or fear.  The nature of the conflict is savage, as wild things so often are.

Savage. 

It’s a word that implies brutal ferocity.

It’s also a name.

But it’s not a name that can ever cross my mind without thinking of her.  She’s bound to it as closely as she once was to my heart.