Chapter Nine

Hank

Now

“Well, I guess we found our raccoon, huh boy?” Hank took in the shivering lump huddled under a worn sleeping bag that looked like it should’ve been tossed a long time ago. Louis shifted on his paws, eager to give the stranger his trademark welcome—a good and thorough face licking. Yeah, the pup had never been much of a watchdog. Good thing Hayley’s Peak wasn’t exactly a crime hot spot.

It was freezing today; the temperature dropping well below twenty overnight, a crisp layer of pristine snow covering everything when Hank woke up this morning. Most people were cooped up inside on this first day of what Mother Nature had decided was winter. It was Saturday and if it weren’t for those damn seedlings, Hank would’ve been nursing his third cup of coffee by now, Louis chewing on a bone under the small kitchen table, Rod’s raspy voice promising ‘the coldest winter in almost 14 years ’ from the record player. God, he loved a good mandolin. It always made his heart beat a little faster as his foot tap-tap-tapped away against the hardwood floor.

A pained whimper drew Hank’s attention back to the curled-up figure squeezed into the back corner of Colton’s shelter, Louis grunting impatiently by his side. Yeah, until you’d actually heard it with your own ears, it was hard to wrap your head around the fact that Labradors could actually grunt like a darn pig. Louis had perfected two versions of this annoying grunt. There was the ‘ you’re-not-paying-me-enough-attention-and-now-I-think-you-don’t-love-me-anymore ’ grunt. It was insistent and whiny and could easily lead to impatient barking if you didn’t throw a good boy in his direction or give him a pat. Then there was the ‘ I-really-wanna-go-sniff/eat/lick-something,’ always followed by that frantic tap dance Louis had perfected over the past year.

“Easy, boy,” Hank spoke, a puff of white air accompanying his words. “We don’t wanna scare them, do we now?” Hank recalled very well what it was like to be awoken by an energetic ball of fur when you were deep in sleep. With Louis weighing close to ninety pounds, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience and the first couple of times, he’d been startled out of his goddamn mind, thinking he’d fallen victim to a home invasion or some shit like that.

Louis tipped his head, trying to decipher Hank’s words. Shit, he shouldn’t have started with the word raccoon. It was his own damn fault.

“You stay here, boy, and I’ll just check out our… visitor ,” he pointed at the entrance to the shelter and Louis immediately lay down. “Good boy,” he patted the pup behind its right ear. Kicking off the excess snow from his boots, he crawled inside the small shelter. It was not big enough for a grown man to stand up, so he had to hunch his shoulders as he moved quietly towards the left corner, his knees complaining all the way. When he reached the huddled-up figure, a new string of pained whimpers slipped from the opening of the sleeping bag. The frail noises resembled a wounded animal caught in a trap, using up all its remaining energy in a struggle to not surrender.

Squatting, Hank reached for the synthetic blue—or what had once been blue but was now a faded, dirty greyish blue—and tugged at the opening. Immediately, a stale odor wafted toward him, and he was grateful that he hadn’t had his breakfast yet. Sick. It was sickness. He recognized the smell for what it was since it’d been the smell invading his own house when he’d brought Eugene home from the hospital. The familiar overwhelming smell had clung to everything during those last weeks of Eugene’s illness. The sour, stale odor of decay had seeped into the curtains and the bedding. Into his own clothes, hell, even his hair. The stench of imminent death had followed Hank around like a shadow until he could no longer recall what Eugene smelled like. The day after Eugene had gone, he’d burned everything out in his backyard, flames eagerly licking and eating away at the soft blue linen curtains that Eugene had bought at a flea market in Hay Springs and at the white pillowcases with delicately embroidered cornflowers.

A low succession of groans pulled Hank back to the claustrophobic shelter. The face of the sleeping stranger was covered in a mixture of sweat and dirt. He could see the outline of handsome features through the mask of grime on top of grime, a small scar tearing through the left eyebrow, and strands of greasy blond curls clinging to the damp forehead. Carefully, he bent down and patted the shoulder area of the sleeping bag, which was nearly soaked through, cold and clammy to the touch.

“Hey there, it’s time to wake up.” Another pained groan spilled from chapped lips, dried saliva at one corner of the guy’s mouth. “Hey, wake up.” He shook a little more insistently, throwing a glance back at Louis, who was watching him intently. Pulling the sleeping bag off the stranger’s shoulders, the pungent smell of infected skin nearly made Hank tumble over. Shit . Pulling the fabric all the way to the man’s waist and further down mid-thigh, he handled him carefully, trying to inspect him more closely.

The stranger was dressed in a worn green fleece, the soft threadbare fabric ripped around the neckline and the sleeves. The equally distressed jeans were dirty, held up by a string of yarn pulled through the belt hoops, the zipper broken. One hand rested between the man’s thighs, the other was hidden under the fleece, tucked against his chest. Maneuvering the stranger onto his back, Hank carefully attempted to pull his left hand from underneath the drenched fleece, eliciting a string of small sobs from the man.

“No. No, no, no,” he whimpered, curling in on himself on instinct. Hank had seen it lots of times with animals. The self-preservation of every living being was astonishing. Awe-inspiring, almost.

“Shhh,” Hank coaxed. “I just gotta check your hand. I promise I’ll be careful.” As he leaned in over the guy’s upper body, the smell of infected skin grew heavier, and he breathed through his mouth instead of his nose. Slowly pulling the hand from underneath the fleece, he tried to ignore the pained whimpers spilling from the man’s lips. “Nearly there,” he reassured the stranger until his hand was entirely freed and he could hold it towards the dim light entering the shelter.

“Shit,” Hank cursed. The slender hand was remarkably clean, covered by a piece of gauze. A greenish yellow seeped through the white gauze, as it covered what must be a large wound on the back of his hand. It was clearly infected, the gauze soaked with puss and blood.

“Goddamnit,” Hank rubbed at his forehead beneath his knitted hat. Just his luck, the only medical professional being up in the mountains somewhere, probably on one knee, proposing to his nephew this very minute. Carefully placing the hand back against the man’s chest, he drew the damp sleeping bag back over his shoulders and scooted backward out of the shelter.

Louis raised his head expectantly, his ears alert as he waited for instructions from Hank. Patting the pup on the head, Hank sighed, breathing in the fresh air outside, cleaning out his lungs.

“What the hell are we gonna do now, huh boy?” He shrugged. “If your daddy was here, he’d know exactly what to do, wouldn’t he?” The pup started dancing frantically around at the familiar and beloved noun daddy, looking towards the driveway. “No, no, sorry boy. My mistake.” Pulling out his cell phone from his front pocket, he silently prayed for a signal. With the weather and the remote location of the cabin, it wasn’t always a sure thing that there would be one. Pressing a random button, the small screen lit up, showing a full battery and two bars. Thank God.

Quickly pulling up Henry’s number, the phone rang a few times, before a breathless Henry answered it.

“Hank. What’s up? Is it Louis?” Henry’s familiar voice, now panting heavily, rang through the phone.

“You better not be picking up if you’re being manhandled—or worse—by my nephew,” Hank groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. A youthful chuckle spilled through the phone.

“Of course not.” Hank could hear the smile in the young man’s voice and could just imagine his bright, beaming eyes in front of him. “He’s long done manhandling me. We’re out hiking.” He heard Colton mumble something in the background, his deep bass sounding miles away. “You wanna say hi to him? He has some good news to share with ya,” Henry murmured softly.

“In a minute, kid. I need to just run somethin’ by ya first.”

“Oh, okay…? Go ahead, Hank.”

“How would you treat a badly infected hand wound?” Hank rushed out, not eager to explain the circumstances but not wanting to worry Henry either.

“What happened?” Alarm was evident in the young man’s voice. Always the goddamn caretaker. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Nah, nothin’ like that. It’s someone else.” Hank tried to keep his voice somewhat neutral.

“Who is it?” Henry asked, Colton again murmuring something in the background, sounding like a fond sweetheart.

“No one you know,” Hank spoke, shifting on his feet, the cold biting at his cheeks.

“Now, that’s a load of horseshit,” Henry laughed. “I know everyone, and you damn well know that. So, who is it?”

“I don’t know. I found him sleeping in Colton’s shelter. I think he has a fever, and the wound smells really foul and looks pretty infected, too.”

“In Colton’s shelter? But… Why is he in our shelter? And you’re sure you don’t know him?” Hank didn’t have to be standing next to Henry to know that his head was spinning by now, probably entertaining all sorts of ideas about wild animals and strange men visiting their shelter on a regular basis.

“Breathe, kid,” Hank chuckled. “Everythin’s fine. No squatters takin’ over your property.”

“Okay…” Henry sighed. “And he’s… unconscious? Unresponsive?” Hank could just imagine the veterinarian now going into full-blown professional rescue mode.

“He’s making a lot of noises, you know, whimpering and such when I touch him, but I think he’s asleep.”

“Okay. Any other visible injuries? Head wounds or the like?”

“Not as far as I can tell, son,” Hank replied. He hadn’t exactly given the stranger a full physical.

“Good. Okay, first, you gotta get him out of the shelter and somewhere warm, okay?”

“Okay…”

“When you’re back at your place—”

“My place?!” Hank blurted, not too keen on having a stranger in his home. For all he knew, the man could be some meth head or worse.

“Yes, your place,” Henry repeated. “Bring round your truck and get someone to help you. Do not , and I mean it, Hank, do not lift him by yourself. You’ll bust your back again.”

“Yeah, yeah, I won’t,” Hank scowled at the stern edge of Henry’s voice. It wasn’t exactly great being reprimanded by someone almost thirty years his junior, but he knew better than to argue with Henry.

“Are his clothes wet?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty damp. Probably from his fever and the weather.”

“Yeah, makes sense. So, when you get him back to your place, you gotta get him out of those wet clothes and then in bed.” Fuck , this day was not how he’d planned it when he’d gotten up an hour before dawn. A naked stranger in his bed. Jeez. “You listening, Hank?” Henry’s voice drifted through the phone.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. Then what?”

“Go to my clinic. Use the spare key under the mat—” Henry’s voice drowned in Colton’s deep booming, “What the hell, sweetheart! Are you serious? Under the goddamn mat!” And Hank could just see Colton before his eyes, all overprotective and shit. “Babe, relax,” Henry cooed before continuing with his instructions. “Get some antibacterial wipes, some disinfectant ointment, and some antibiotics, too. I’ll send you a text afterward with the name and the dosage, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” So, he was gonna play nurse, now, too, aside from dog-sitter and seedling watcher? Great. Just great. An outdrawn whimper rang out from the shelter and Hank threw a quick glance at the slumped figure. Well, he obviously didn’t have a choice.

“You’re gonna have to rinse out the wound, Hank. Okay? It’s not gonna be pleasant—and it’s gonna hurt like hell—but it needs to be done.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have pain meds at your place?”

“I have some Tylenol, I guess.”

“Yeah, try that first. Or grab some ibuprofen from the clinic. It should do the trick. You wanna get his fever down. Plenty of fluids, okay?”

“Yeah, got it,” Hank murmured. “Thanks, son.”

“No worries. The fever should break within the next 24 hours once the antibiotics kick in, but if you start to worry—and I mean it, Hank—you drive him up to Whitney, okay?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“We’ll be home tomorrow early afternoon and then I’ll check in on you guys.”

“Thanks, kid. Now get back to your… your fiancé? I assume he said yes.” Hank couldn’t help smiling at the image of the simple polished silver band now wrapped around Colton’s finger.

“He did.” Henry’s voice sounded breathy.

“Of course he did. Congratulations to both of ya. I’ll leave you to it now.”

“Sure thing, Hank. Good luck. And remember—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. No liftin’ by myself,” he chuckled.

“And?”

“And if I get worried, I’ll take him to Whitney. Got it.”

“Excellent. See ya tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

“Sure thing, kid. And Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Any time.”

Goddamnit, Hank groaned as soon as he ended the call. Then he pulled up his contacts and shot Tilly a quick text since Vernon hardly ever checked his phone.

Me: Mornin’ Til. I’m up at Colton’s place. We’ve got a situation here. Can you send Vern by with the truck? Sooner rather than later. Thanks.

He didn’t even manage to put the phone back in his pocket before it rang, Tilly’s shrill voice blasting through the speaker when he answered.

“Now, what the heck have you gotten yourself into now, Mr. Dietrich?”

Yeah, what exactly had he gotten himself into?