Time Wounds All Heels

She gestured to Kincade.

"Mr. Kincade was nice enough to give me a lift."

He gave Kincade a hard look.

Bob approached the bedside.

"We'll take over now, Jessie. There's no need for you – to be here for this. You've - you don't need to watch this. I imagine just being here has been hard enough for you. Why don't you leave now. We'll – take care of her from here on."

The men watched her as she turned back on the bed and bent over to gently kiss the old woman's cheek.

"Goodbye, Martha. God speed."

The young man stepped up to her and held his hands out.

"Why don't you let me help you out, Miss Jessie. I'd be honored."

She looked past him to Kincade.

"That's sweet of you, Billy, but Mr. Kincade brought me in - he can take me out. Besides, Bob and Roy need you for Ms. Smith. I'd appreciate you taking good care of her - for me. Would you do that?"

Again, Billy glared at Kincade and Kincade thought every man in the room could read his mind as if his thoughts were printed on his forehead. The young man blushed bright red.

"Yes, ma'am."

As she held her hands out to him, Kincade stepped around Billy and reached down to grab her and somehow pulled her up without grunting with the effort.

As he watched her swing into the driver's seat of her van, he looked back at the house and said,

"He an old – or young – boyfriend? Did I step on some toes?"

She gave him an annoyed look.

"He's twenty five - a baby. He's got a crush on me. God knows why, I'm almost old enough to be his mother, and I look it."

"No you don't."

"Anyway, if we ever did anything, he'd be following me around like a puppy dog for the next six months, thinking he was in love with me. I don't need that."

She was poised to close the door when she said, "I keep saying this, but things keep happening. I know you wanted a face to face interview, but the day's gone and I'm tired. Why don't you just call me tomorrow or - Sunday's a bad day, I'm usually involved with the church. Could you call me Monday?"

"When was the last time you had any food today?"

"I nibbled - had a bit of bread. Cake in the afternoon and an egg biscuit from Hardy's this morning."

"It's 6:50 on a Saturday night. There are restaurants open in Palatka this late. I know you're tired but you'll feel better with food inside you - my treat. You've been a very good subject for my story. We're going to sell a bunch of papers around here with your picture on the section front. Let me buy you dinner."

"You don't...why am I not pissed off at you? You're a pit bull. You don't give up."

"Maybe like attracts like. You're kind of a pit bull yourself."

"Anyway, I smell - make that stink! It's hot and I've been sweating all day, a long day. I couldn't go out like this. My clothes are stuck to me."

"They do have showers in Palatka, last I heard."

She gave him a knowing grin.

"And you probably would be willing to help me with the shower, strictly in the interest of your story - right?"

"I try not to mix business with pleasure. This is business. If I decide I want to ask you out as Robert Kincade, civilian, I'll ask you, but I'm not asking you right now."

She gave him another look, a searching one. Something seemed to reassure her.

"Okay, but if I fall asleep in the middle of the interview, it's your own fault."

"I wouldn't mind putting you to bed."

"I bet you wouldn't!"

She paused, studying him for a moment.

"OK, follow me. I live about five miles from here. I won't lose you."

Her house was in the center of a cul-de-sac, all of them stucco one story homes. Hers was a pale blue with a one-car garage. She hit the garage door opener and swung inside. He parked his car in the driveway behind her just outside. The garage was wide enough for her to park and still swing the chair around and up on a ramp leading to a door. A tap on an electronic key chain swung the door open.

"Come in through the garage. I'm going to shut it down and you can come through here."

He watched as she sped up the ramp and into the house. He was standing inside the garage when the garage door closed. He followed her up the ramp into the house. As he stepped inside, the door swung closed behind him smoothly and noiselessly. He heard a faint click and assumed the door was locking itself.

"No one is coming in here behind, on top of me, some night when I'm tired and careless. I hit the alarm to let you come behind me. This is a nice neighborhood, and Palatka isn't a bloodbath like Jacksonville, but we have predators here too."

He walked behind, noting as she preceded him that the rooms lit automatically and doors that had been closed and locked - unlocked and opened before her.

"Electric eyes?"

"That - and motion and sound sensors. They're not that expensive when you live alone and don't do too much partying or entertaining."

He approached her from behind as she stood at another closed door to his right.

"My bedroom and bath are through here."

A closed door to his left swung open. He saw a short hallway and a larger room beyond it.

"The den and the kitchen can be reached through there. You can see the news, cable news anyway, or you can grab a beer in the kitchen. I always keep a few in the fridge."

She had turned to look back at him, as if waiting for him to walk away before opening the door to her private world. Okay, she was skittish - he understood that.

"You've really got your place planned out - I don't imagine it comes that cheap?"

"Why don't you just ask me: where do you get your money from to be self independent and have all the toys like your gleaming chair and all the electric gizmos here?"

"It can wait - just natural curiosity."

"When my husband, Johnny, died in that crash that put me here, he was a rising star at the paper mill. He left me a half-million dollar life insurance policy. Then my father, a year later, died with a heart attack and my mother died two years after that with ovarian cancer. Their estate totaled two million after taxes. They owned businesses and were careful with their money. So am I, although I don't need to be. I gave a lot of it away, but I kept enough that I can live here, like this, for the rest of my life and never earn a paycheck. It gave me freedom to enjoy my wonderful life. Does that answer your questions?"

"Completely - go ahead and do your thing. I'll be out here."

He walked through the door on the left. The kitchen had a new refrigerator. There were a few dishes beside a sink. It wasn't dirty, but it wasn't sparkling. It was old. He tried to get a feel for the person who lived here. He opened the refrigerator door. There was an untouched six pack of Bud Light, a half-eaten Granny's Rice and Chicken Bake microwave box and two unopened Chinese microwave dinners.

It didn't look that different from his own, except he had two six packs of Michelob and more uneaten fried chicken he'd eventually throw out.

This wasn't the kitchen of a person who spent much time here, did much cooking. This was a passing-through kitchen.

The den had a modern flat-screen TV, probably a 39 inch, on one wall. On the opposite wall was an entertainment center. There were plaques: 1995 Salvation Army Volunteer of the Year, 1997 Putnam County Heart Award, 2000 Next Generation's Leaders, and pictures. An older couple with a smiling, standing, Jessie Miller between them. Jessie standing in a wedding dress next to a tall, smiling, blonde man. More pictures with the same cast - no other men.

He went back and picked up a Bud Light. He'd buy her a six pack before they came back. It was a little thing, but it had been drilled into his head so intensely by his first city editor that he didn't let civilians pick up a bar tab or a dinner bill. It just wasn't done. It was probably stupid. None of the younger reporters at the TU would have done it and they'd have laughed at him if they'd seen him, but it was the way he'd been taught.

He walked around. He could have turned on the television but it was past 7 p.m. on a Saturday and the local news would be over. He listened to the sounds outside, what there were of them. This was a quiet residential neighborhood - no teens racing cars, maybe couples out on a date night leaving the babysitter with four numbers to reach them. Older couples would be watching something rented from Blockbuster. Inside there was only the rhythmic tick-tock from a grandfather clock a few inches taller than him in the corner.

He was looking around and noticing things. There wasn't any obvious dust or clutter, a few women's magazines on a coffee table that didn't gleam - had a dull look to it. It hadn't been polished in a long, long time. The couch cushions sat fat and plumped - no one had sat back in them, worn them down with the pressure of their bodies.

The room had been swept and dusted and picked up. Somebody came in weekly, that was obvious, but nobody lived here.

In the silence the sound rang out. He couldn't place it at first. It wasn't really loud, just a thud. The sound of something hitting something else and another one like metal breaking- almost at the far range of audibility he heard a woman's gasp and curse.

He was at the door to her bedroom and tried the lock. It turned. He'd had a momentary fear that she'd locked it but obviously she hadn't. But did he want to barge into her bedroom or bathroom without knowing what was happening?

He rapped on the door. A minute dragged by. He stopped breathing and listened. He realized what he was hearing and hammered harder.

"Ms. Miller, Jessie - can I come in?"

He waited - in the silence the sound was faint but unmistakable - a woman weeping! He opened the door and stepped in. He could see the bathroom door from this hallway. It was closed but the door to the bedroom lay open.

"Miss Jessie, are you alright?"

He could hear the wheezing, the gasp of air being drawn in, followed by shuddering exhalations.

"Miss Jessie? Say something - are you alright?"

"Go away."

"I - I can't, you know that. I can't leave you in there not knowing what's going on. Do you have a phone with you? Can you call someone if you don't want me coming in?"

"Can't you just go the fuck away? Leave me alone."

"I – I can't. Please, just call someone so I'll know I'm not leaving you in there alone with whatever's happened."

"Go away, Kincade! Please – please!"

He took a deep breath, opened the bathroom door and stepped in. At first he didn't realize what he was seeing. The bathroom was huge, as it had to be for a wheelchair user, long and wide. She'd probably had walls knocked down to enlarge it. The center of the room was a large, wide tub. It was ceramic, but gleaming silver and rose. It had been filled with some kind of bubble bath because he could still smell it.

Now, pieces of masonry and ceiling bobbed and floated on the bubbly surface, and a jagged metallic structure hung down from the ceiling dipping into the water like the prow of a sunken ship.

The next thing he saw was the woman's body lying on the floor beside the tub in water and bubbles and ceiling stucco. Her head was facing him, but she was face down. The gleaming chair which must have been parked next to the tub had been pushed back several feet as far as it could go in the room.

"Where's your cell?"

Without looking up she raised an arm toward the tub.

"When everything came down, it went in."

She raised her head. Her wet golden hair hung around her shoulders. Her eyes were red. The skin of her back, the soft breasts, her hips and ass were the pale milky white of old time beauties. No sun tan parlors for her.

"You finally see enough, Kincade?"

He stepped into the room and found a small walk-in closet loaded with heavy, fluffy towels. He took down a rose red towel and held it out in front of him.

"Put this around you. I'll kneel down here and if you hold on tight around my neck, we'll get you out of here."

"No, why won't you just go away? I'll give you the number for county rescue and they can get me out."

"Aha, you do want to give Billy his thrills."

She stared at him.

"You can be such an asshole."

"When I try."

"You got your pictures and most of your story so you don't have to be charming any more."

"You don't have anything I haven't seen before and, since you're been married, you don't have anything men haven't seen before. Do you really want the rescue guys to come in here and see you like this?"

She finally took the towel, draped it over her front and put her arms around his neck. He squatted down and tried to lift with his back. He couldn't help grunting. She was dead weight, and she wasn't a slight little girl. At least 150 pounds, maybe more. But he stood. The towel dropped but there was nothing he could do about that.

He carried her to bed and deposited her as gently as he could, trying not to stare at her ass, or the soft vee of blonde pubic hair. For being in a wheel chair so long, she did have a nice ass.

He brought the towel, gave it to her and watched as she spread it to cover her breasts and ass. Her legs stuck out beyond it.

She looked at him for just a moment then turned her face to the bed, hiccupped, coughed and began crying again.

He stood there awkwardly, then noticed blood on her left leg below the knee.

"You cut yourself?'

When she didn't answer he went back into the bathroom, let the water begin draining out of the tub, found her medicine cabinet with iodine and antibiotic creams and a clean cloth.

He cleaned it, found it was a long, fairly shallow cut from just below the knee four inches down. Something metal and sharp had slashed it. He did his best to stop the bleeding, put iodine and then antibiotic on it, and used three bandages to cover it up.

"You didn't even feel it, did you?"

The tears continued to flow along with the gasping for air. Finally she raised her head and stared at him.

"Do you want to do your story on the worst day of my life?"

"I know it's been rough."

"You don't know anything, Kincade."

She rolled in the bed and pointed to a large painting on the opposite wall he hadn't even noticed. He knew what it was as he took in the young woman in the dress lying in an open field alone. There were two houses or a house and farm in the background, but she lay alone. It was Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World." He didn't know how you could be an educated man in the 21st century and not be familiar with it, but it surprised him to see the reproduction on her wall.

"I keep it there to remind myself. Most people who know the story feel so sad for the crippled little girl out in the middle of nowhere, alone. What kind of life could she have had? Yet I tell myself that I have a gleaming chair that will take me anywhere, a van that will go anywhere there are roads and a house that opens doors for me. I also have friends and I serve a purpose."

She looked up at him and fat tears welled and rolled down those beautiful cheekbones.

"And then my best friend, the woman who saved my life and gave me that purpose, dies alone and I didn't know she was dead. I come home to go out to a late dinner with a fairly good looking man for the first time in a long time and, as I'm pulling myself out of the tub, the hoist I have mounted in the ceiling gives way, tears the ceiling out and knocks me onto the floor. It's a miracle it didn't come down and kill me. It knocked my cell off the chair into the water. I always bring it into the bathroom in case of emergencies. So, if it had happened any other night, I'd be in there alone with no way to call for help. Maybe I could have pulled myself into the chair. I'm fairly strong but, in water with slippery bubble bath, maybe not. Then, I'd have had to pull myself, by my fingernails, out of that room and across the tile floor to the house phone by my bed."

She looked back at "Christina's World."

"I'd have been crawling, just like her. It's almost a century after her time. There's been so much advancement, yet I'd still be crawling like an animal, like an infant who's never learned to walk."

She wiped away tears and then a bubble of snot from one side of her pretty face.

"You say you know, Kincade. You're trying to be kind, but you don't. Nobody, unless they're in a chair, knows what it's like. You can't even fake it, because if you get tired of play acting, you can get up and walk."

She took a deep breath.

"I want into that chair 15 years ago and had to learn to live like this. Fifteen years later, nothing has changed. Away from that chair, away from my machinery, I'm still half a person and it will never change. Twenty or thirty years from now, no matter what the science fiction people say, I'll still be crawling."

She bit her lip and looked deep into his eyes.

"Like Martha, I'm going to get old, but without a husband, without children. I'll have friends, people I've helped along the way, but people have their own lives. They won't be cruel, they'll try to stay in touch, but they won't. They'll drift away and, one day, someone will come here when they haven't heard from me and they'll find me in a bed like Martha."

Her gaze was a challenge.

"That's why I'm crying. That's why I'm not going anywhere with you. Make me feel better about my day, and my miserable life, and if you still want to, I might think about that late dinner."

"Well, I can't give you any deep thoughts or counseling. I can just tell you that while what happened in your bathroom was pretty rough on you, I have to say it was the highlight of my day for me. You're the hottest thing I've seen this week, maybe this month - maybe longer!"

She stared at him, then shook her head, but couldn't stop the smile.

"God, men are such pigs. A little tits and ass and you figure the problems of the world will take care of themselves?"

"That's simplistic, but that's pretty much it for most guys."

She wiped away the remaining tears and cleaned her nose with the edge of the towel.

"Why am I even thinking about doing this?"

"Like you said, it's been awhile."

She gave him a glance he recognized instinctively.

"You really think I'm hot? I'm 40 and getting fat."

"Even 40 and fat, you're pretty hot. I didn't have to turn my head away in revulsion, you might have noticed, and you've got great legs."

She stared down at them.

"I do my exercise every day. I don't want to have withered sticks. But the damage is already done. I have good legs, but I had great legs - once."

"They're still not bad. Do you want to go out?"

"Bring my chair in here. You can roll it with the controls, and the clothes I was going to wear are over on that chair. Put them on the bed, bring the chair in, and then get out and let me have a little privacy."

"Are you going to call anybody about that little mishap in your bathroom?"

"What for? Who's going to come out on Saturday night for a ceiling repair that can be done Monday? I can take sponge baths until it's repaired. It wouldn't be the first time."

As they headed down U.S Highway 17 toward the downtown and the Memorial Bridge crossing the St. Johns River to East Palatka, Kincade couldn't get over how much the little city had changed in the past 20 years. New businesses had sprung up along the arteries feeding the main drag, which turned into Reid Street as it entered Palatka.

As they got closer to the bridge, Jessie Miller slowed. She flicked on her turn signal as they approached a railroad dining car sitting like a beached whale in the middle of a block of businesses, bearing a nameplate reading "Angel's Dining Car¨.

Looking down the two blocks to the river, she said, "This is Angel's. The hottest place for high school kids to eat over the last 40 years, and they serve the best hamburgers in the world."

"I've heard about it. Even in Jacksonville, we've heard about Angel's."