Jane Davitt - Drawing Closer [M-M], mm
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Page 1 sur 121
<![endif]>
<![endif]>
file://I:\Téléchargements\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries...
05/11/2008
Page 2 sur 121
<![endif]>This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the
author or the publisher.
Wild Raspberries
TOP SHELF
An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers
PO Box 2545
Round Rock, TX 78680
Copyright 2008 by Jane Davitt
Cover illustration by Stella Price
Published with permission
ISBN: 978-1-60370-319-2, 1-60370-319-5
www.torquerepress.com
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form
whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press.
Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680.
First Torquere Press Printing: July 2008
Printed in the USA
file://I:\Téléchargements\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries...
05/11/2008
Page 3 sur 121
To Amy, for her unfailing support and encouragement.
file://I:\Téléchargements\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries...
05/11/2008
Page 4 sur 121
Chapter One
T he woods were a wild green maze around him, and Dan was lost, panic long since muted to a dull
despair.
He was hungry, too, hungrier than he’d ever been, including that time he’d gone fishing for the day
with Billy, setting out before dawn without breakfast. Their food had fallen in the first stream they’d
crossed and been ruined. They’d kept going; they’d eat fish for lunch, wouldn’t they? Sure, they
would!
They’d crawled home, endless hours later, their bellies empty and aching, filled with nothing more
than gulps of teeth-numbingly cold water, and Dan’s father had taken one look at him, swept his hand
around in a blow Dan had been too exhausted to dodge, and sent him to bed hungry for coming back
too late to help with the chores. Waking the next day, he’d been dizzy and sick, his hearing fading in
and out, until breakfast had put the heart back into him.
This was worse. He’d eaten the day before -- ham and eggs and toast, with the trucker who’d given
him a ride, smiling benevolently at him as he beckoned the waitress over to refill their coffee cups.
And he lost every bite and swallow an hour later, throwing up on the side of the road, while the dust
from the truck’s wheels scoured his eyes as it drove away. He was glad of it, too; he’d thrown up
more than the food. The rank, bitter taste of the trucker’s come had lingered in his mouth even after
he puked, though that might have been his mind playing tricks on him. The woods had called to him
then, safe and tempting because they were familiar. He marked the way the sun was headed to find
north and left the highway behind him.
These weren’t the woods he knew, though -- small, contained, bordered by farms where a knock on
the door would bring a woman, smiling tiredly, to muss his hair (they all did that since his mom died)
and hand him a chewy, raisin-studded cookie and some cool, fresh milk. No, these woods were vast,
limitless, and empty. They were trees and earth and a soft, sighing wind that made branches creak
oddly and the summer leaves whisper. He found himself staring out across a valley of nothing but
more trees, higher up than he’d realized, with the sun unhelpfully directly overhead, and he came
close to crying.
Too old to cry, though. Shit, only babies did that, and he wasn’t a baby. Babies didn’t get pushed to
their knees, their mouths split open and filled with -- He turned his head and spat, his belly restless
again. God, had that man ever even heard of soap and water?
He walked until it got dark, slept huddled in his thin jacket close to a small stream the summer heat
had shrunk to a trickle, and now it was morning again, and he was walking because it was better than
lying down to die.
His feet hurt. The boots he’d decided to wear when he left had been new and stiff, and his toes and
heels were bumped and rubbed. He’d taken them off the night before and had plunged his feet into the
stream to cool them off. The scream he’d given as raw, blistered skin met water had echoed among
file://I:\Téléchargements\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries...
05/11/2008
Page 5 sur 121
the rocks on the banks like a bowling ball striking the pins. And then the silence settled back around
him, a thick, green blanket of it, warning him to be quiet, so he’d all but tiptoed back to the patch of
ground he’d cleared of stones and twigs.
It had seemed so simple. Head north to Canada, walking or hitching rides. Wasn’t far; he’d estimated
a week would do it, if he could get picked up by someone at least once a day. He’d felt proud of
himself for being realistic and having enough food money to last two weeks, not one.
He still had a few dollars left; he’d lined his boots with some of his savings, as a precaution, and the
trucker hadn’t found that with his large, inquisitive, impersonal hands. The dollar bills, sweat-soaked
and crumpled, were in his pocket now, and much good they were out here under the trees.
He found himself walking easier and frowned, jolted out of his absorption with the hollowness of his
belly and the red agony of each footstep. He’d been walking with stones shifting under his feet and
brambles catching at his ankles; now he was on a narrow path, without being sure how he’d gotten
there. He turned and looked back, but the woods had closed behind him and were pushing him on.
The path was no wider than a man’s shoulders, a meandering series of bends with short stretches
where it ran straight, but it was definitely used; he could see a heel print in what had once been a
patch of mud, the shallow depression baked solid. Maybe he was in a National Park? He didn’t
remember seeing one marked on the map, and there were no trail markers on the tree trunks, but it
could be. They’d have places for the tourists -- washrooms, people,
food
.
He felt a faint stirring of hope, and it let him stumble along just a little farther. He rounded a corner
and the path ended in a clearing. He moaned; he couldn’t help it.
Raspberry bushes, the bright, acid green of the leaves stirred by the breeze to reveal the fruit. He
walked forward and snatched at the nearest dangle of berries, heedless of the sharp prickles guarding
them. That didn’t really work too well; the ripe berries tumbled, lost among the canes, so he forced
himself to pick them, one by one, with a hand that shook as it worked. He picked four or five, filling
his cupped hand with the light, sweet fruit, and then opened his mouth and crammed them in.
The sun-warmed flesh split against his teeth, and juice and seeds spurted out over his tongue. Oh,
God, so good, so good. Ravenous now, swallowing saliva from his watering mouth to make room for
more raspberries, he picked and ate until his fingertips were stained red and full of tiny thorns, hair-
thin and itchy.
He moved deeper into the canes and reached out eagerly for another berry, almost out of reach inside
the clustered brambles. His fingers brushed something -- string -- and he paused, his hunger still acute
enough to have blunted his thought, so that reasoning flowed sluggishly, like a silt-choked river.
String? Why would there be --?
The quiet, chilling sound of a rifle bolt sliding home froze him in place, as terrified as a baby rabbit,
his breath caught in his throat, his heart thudding fast and sick. Shit.
Fuck
. His retreat cut off;
nowhere to run. Oh, this just wasn’t happening to him. He wanted to scream, but that would bring
death, sure as taxes, at best a bullet in his leg to keep him from running, so he stayed still and quiet
and waited.
A raspberry, dislodged by the weight of his body against the snaking brambles, fell to the ground, the
small sounds of its passage through the leaves magnified by the silence. It hit earth and Dan
file://I:\Téléchargements\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries\Jane Davitt - Wild raspberries...
05/11/2008
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]