“I…I’ll tell you…just. I forgot to ask last night…bathrooms?”
Dancer pointed at Green. Then lifted her hands in supplication. Then swatted the air. She turned in a circle. Her face ran through a dozen expressions.
He winced. It was a stupid question.
“Wha? How? You don’t actually…Green. You can’t be this…Stitches. You’re gonna need stitches and…I gotta get somebody to call a squad, don’t I? Hell.”
She pressed a fist against her temple like she was trying to physically still her thoughts. She shut her eyes tight before speaking again.
“It’s the woods. Go relieve yourself over by that big hickory and report back here. Don’t doanythingelse.”
She looked him over again.
“Good God, you make it hard to know where to begin. Triage. We need triage.”
Green did as he was told and if it had been hard for him to pee near strangers in the past, it wasn’t that morning.
When he returned, Dancer had opened her thermos and had two steaming cups set out on the hood of the Prius.
“Come here. Let me see you.”
She took his head in her hands and turned it left and right.
“Probably a broken nose. Nasty cut on your chin. Superficial, I guess. You got a concussion, Green? Headache? Vision okay?”
Green pulled his head away.
“Ow. No, I don’t think it’s a concussion.”
He had no idea what a concussion felt like.
“Okay, then. Was it a bear? Is there an axe murderer on the loose? Tell me if I need to be checking over my shoulder at least.”
“No. Nothing like that. Not exactly.”
Green looked hard at Dancer. He didn’t know this woman. The acorn in his pocket called for a hand and got it.
“I don’t know what it was. I don’t think I want to know. And…if I try to describe it, I don’t know if you’ll believe me anyway.”
Dancer shook her head.
“Not another one of you.”
“What?”
Dancer waved off the question.
“Forget it. Just…let’s get you rearranged a bit before we do anything else.”
She nodded to the hot drinks on the hood.
“Here, fella. You look like your mortal coil is fixin’ to shuffle off this moment, so let’s bribe it to stick around.”
He met her eyes.
She was one of the weirder people he had ever encountered, but he had a bone-deep instinct that he could trust her. Whatever else she might be, whatever threats his imagination could summon, he sensed no guile in her. As odd as she was, Dancer brought a staggering normalcy with her. He was dizzied by the relief of that normalcy and it made his eyes fill with tears.
Dancer noticed.
