A THORNE REMAINING

By Jo Anzalone

(My tribute to Thane's "Tryst")

PART ONE:

Allison sat quietly, looking out the passenger window of the old green and brown station wagon.  Her older sister, Adelaide, had pulled up to a stop in the perfect position for her to get a clear view of the old house.

"Like arms, just like arms," she murmured to herself.

"What? What is?" asked Adelaide, running a hand tiredly through her short cap of blonde curls.

"The trees," Allison explained. "The way those big eucalypts almost hug either side of the house."

"Mmmupf," Adelaide returned, not in the least interested in Allison's tendency to romanticize nearly everything.  She eyed the house warily, with the eye of one who cared about the practicality of getting her sister's wheelchair up to the porch and through the front door. She'd taken a year's lease on the place with the stipulation that a ramp be built up one side of the four steps that fronted the long porch.  It looked somewhat steeper than she'd prefer, but supposed it would just have to do.  That's what one got by renting out of a catalog and not in person.

As Adelaide got out of the car and opened the rear hatch to remove the wheelchair and open it up for her, Allison sat dreamily contemplating the house. It nestled in a low hollow, surrounded by a small grove of eucalypts on three sides, and backed by a smooth green hill that flowed seamlessly into other hills.  The house itself was white, long and low with that porch that went completely across the front and down the right-hand side of it as well. It was a wide porch, with white railings and simple, square columns, deep in shadow now as the sun sank toward the hilltop behind the house.  Not far from that shorter, right-hand section of it, ran a small creek.  Even from where she sat she could hear the sound of it, singing its little water song as it rippled over the smooth rocks.

The house was called Thorneton, evidently after its owner, who was, she had been told, very seldom in Australia any more. She liked, though, that it had a name as houses with names given to them seemed more a part of someone's life, somehow. It lay in the hills of New South Wales, halfway between Armidale and Coffs Harbour, not far from the eastern edge of Cathedral Rock National Park. She expected, were she able to make it to the top of the hill behind the house, she might even be able to see some of the tall, thin tors that dotted the park.

"You ready?" Adelaide asked, opening the passenger door.

"Completely," Allison smiled, truly eager to get inside Thorneton, to see if its inside were as appealing as its out.

"Oof," Adelaide grunted, pushing the chair up the ramp. "I knew this blasted thing was too steep."

Allison tried to help, pushing on the wheels, but it was a definite effort getting to the porch. Both of them paused before going further. An early evening breeze blew down the length of the porch, gently pushing a wooden swing toward the far end. Nearer them was a cluster of old wicker furniture, a love seat, two chairs and a small table with a clay pot and the dried remains of what once had been a geranium.

Adelaide unlocked the double front door, glad that it was plenty wide for easy passage of Allison's chair. Stepping inside, she flipped on the lights then wheeled her younger sister into the entrance hall. The house was one story, which was the main reason Adelaide had chosen it. All the bedrooms were on that single level so Allison would have access to the whole place.

To the left off the wide hallway with its polished wooden flooring lay the living room. She wheeled Allison there first. Though the house was old, this room had obviously been renovated by someone with more modern tastes. The ceiling had been raised and the white stucco of the room was crossed there by a series of fat beams in some sort of dark wood. A huge stone fireplace filled most of the far wall, its nine-foot long mantel made from matching wood. The furniture was mostly covered in a rich brown leather. Allison let her fingers trail along the arm of an easy chair. Creamy soft, the finest leather available.

They went on to the right, through an archway into the dining room and beyond that, the large kitchen, which seemed to contain every modern convenience one could imagine. A door at the right side of the kitchen led back to the far end of the central hallway of the house. The right half of the house beyond the hall was given to a series of bedrooms. Adelaide took possession of the one at the rear of the house, obviously having been set up for female occupancy some years back. It was done in light pinks and soft beiges and seemed very private, which is what she wanted. Her divorce was a long and messy one and the stresses of it were what had sent her out into the country in the first place. There was a large desk where she could set up her computer and continue writing her book.

Allison continued on through the house alone, peeking into rooms here and there, waiting to decide which room would be hers. The front bedroom was large and looked as though it had been set up to be the master bedroom. She knew the morning sun would shine through its three windows that looked out onto the front porch and was tempted to claim it, but there remained one more door at the far right end of the house. She'd check that out before deciding anything definite.

The door, brown wood with a series of set-in panels, was closed as she wheeled up to it. She had no idea why, but she paused, her hand on the knob, as a sense of excitement began to fill her. She'd felt it rising ever since they'd left Coffs this morning, growing with each mile they traveled westward. Then, as she'd sat there in the car, looking at the house, she'd had this odd sense of "home", as if, somehow, she were returning where she belonged. But now, her hand almost tingled as she touched the knob of this last room. The heart of the house lay beyond. She knew it without knowing how she knew it. Closing her eyes, she breathed quietly, feeling like a child on Christmas morning, about to open a long-hoped-for present.

"What are you doing?" Adelaide called out down the hall.

"Checking bedrooms," Allison replied, turning her head to look back at her sister.

"Well, I'm going out to the car to bring in the luggage. Hurry up and decide which room you want so I'll know where to put yours."

When Allison heard the smack of the screen door, she turned the knob, letting the door swing slowly inward. With just a slight push on her wheels, she rolled forward inside the room, holding her breath. She looked quickly from side to side, then let the breath out through parted lips with an audible sigh. This was it. If she had thought the eucalypts hugged the house, that was nothing to the way the room wrapped itself about her in greeting.

The room was paneled in light brown wood, the panels cut into deep-set squares that played games with shadows and light. The floor was also polished wood, easy going for her chair, with only a small area rug in a deep, velvety blue beside the bed, matching its solid blue spread. Instead of windows on the wall to the right where one might expect to find them because of the front porch, book cases had been built in floor to ceiling, with one large, central space given over to a framed oil painting, hung low over a huge desk.

It was the wall straight ahead of her, though, directly across from the doorway that took her breath again. A central set of French doors was surrounded by a series of connected windows that started at the ceiling and went down to built-in window seats, padded in that same deep, rich blue, so that from either side of the French doors to the corners of the large room, one could sit and look out.

She wheeled over to the doors, unlatched them, and rolled out onto the side porch. Yes, there was the stream, curving through the eucalypts so closely she could see the sparkle of late afternoon light on its ripples. Closing her eyes, she sat there, just listening to it, letting the breeze ruffle her shoulder-length blonde waves.

Adelaide, unheard, came up behind her, watching her sister for a long moment. Allison was 29, never married, probably due to the wheel chair as well as her tendency to disappear into herself, into her own private world. She was an artist, a very good one at that, and illustrated children's books with her clever watercolors. Perhaps it was just as well she'd never married, Adelaide thought, remembering her own unhappy experience with it. She felt very protective of her younger sister and knew it would have been a rare man who would have been good enough for her anyway.

"You like this one?" she asked.

Allison started slightly. "Very much," she smiled, turning her chair toward her sister.

"I noticed the skylights in the room. Will be good for your painting."

"Skylights?" Allison hadn't seen them, so entranced was she by the wall of glass overlooking the stream. "Great! Yes, this is definitely the room for me."

She didn't mention the enveloping sense of peace, of "arrival" she felt here. She was home. That was simply it. She belonged here and she had come home.


He lay on his side in several inches of mud, trying to support his head with his left arm, to keep his face up enough to breathe. Damn, but he had really fucked up this time. It had been two full days now since he'd lost contact with Dino. Everything had gone wrong. Everything. Somehow the kidnappers knew they were coming. It had been nothing less than total chaos, total disaster from the get-go.

They'd barely hit the ground when the chopper exploded above them. Two of his team had bought it right then from the burning debris that crashed down. He and Dino had managed to scrabble away...just barely. He'd dived into the jungle, landing on a rocky outcropping that took out his communications gear.

Dino was somewhere on the far side of the flaming chopper. Then they were there. Maybe a dozen of them all at once. He was too busy firing to count. Gunfire from beyond the chopper told him Dino was alive, was fighting his own battle. He was being forced back, away from the crash site, away from Dino.

Clenching his teeth, he took down three of the men then turned and dashed through a dense area of undergrowth. Then it had come. Two almost dull thuds into his back and his gun had flown from his fingers as he sprawled forward into bushes that held him for a moment then broke under his weight, sending him tumbling, rolling down a nearly sheer mountainside.

He turned his head now, looking back up. Didn't look like there was any easy way down and the men had not pursued him further, figuring him for dead. How far down was it anyway? Maybe a hundred yards or more and he'd come down it, bouncing from ledge to ledge, from bush to bush into blackness. How long he'd lain there, he had no idea, but probably well into the next day.

A pouring rain had brought him back to consciousness and he opened his mouth, thirsty beyond belief, gulping in what he could. The ground beneath him had turned to mud immediately and he was left trying to keep his face out of it. Hour after hour.

Both his legs were broken. That was evident. Something was terribly wrong with his right shoulder and arm and his rib cage shrieked at him with every breath. But it was the two bullets, not more than an inch apart, that had plowed into his left kidney that let him know he was on his way out. A whole damn lot of his blood had mingled with the mud.

He made it through a second night, not at all sure how he did. His vision was blurring in and out by now and his hands were going numb and cold. He was thirsty again, tried to strain out far enough to lick some water off a large leaf nearby, but the movement shot him through with so much pain he had to pull back. Well, what did it matter if he got water or not anyway? He'd be dead of his wounds before he could die from thirst. He chuckled slightly, finding that somehow funny.

Finally he could support his head no longer and rolled onto his back, letting the bullet wounds settle into the mud. The brown ooze of it came up the back of his head, over his ears, blocking out the jungle sounds completely. He closed his eyes, waiting, feeling his life ebbing away beneath him.

On the dark, inner curves of his lids, a scene began to form slowly. Thorneton. Home. How many months since he'd been there? He'd lost track of them. Why? Why had he stayed away so long? He couldn't remember. He and Dino had started their own kidnap and rescue company and were busy right off the bat, going from assignment to assignment. That must've been it. Thorneton. His grandfather had named it that back in the 20's when he'd built it himself. His father had been born in the house and he, himself, nearly had when he started to come so quickly they'd almost not made it to the hospital in Coffs.

He'd always wished he had been born in it. At least he'd grown up in it. A clear mental image of his room came to him. It was the one at the end of the house where the porch overlooked the stream. His stream. He knew every rock in it, every inch of its banks, had fallen asleep every night of his boyhood listening to the sound of it through his bedroom window. When he was grown, when his parents had died and the house had become his, he'd had that end wall taken out, replaced entirely with glass doors and huge windows so that he was less separated from the stream. With his ears now filled with mud, it was somehow easy for his inner being to lie there and hear the ripples of his stream. He smiled, his lips cold, tinged with blue.

Dino practically fell into the little clearing. "Oh, God! Oh, fuck!" he moaned, catching sight of Terry. He fell to his knees beside his friend, his hands hovering a moment over Terry's chest. He looked quite dead. Still, he slid his arms under the camo jacket, lifting, pulling hard to get his upper torso out of the mud. Finally he sat back, pulling Terry with him so that he was semi-sprawled across his lap. His own hands muddy, he tried to wipe the clinging mud off the sides of Terry's face.

Terry's lids fluttered, opened. He managed a weak, lopsided grin. "You're late."

"You are damn fucking lucky I found you at all!" Dino spluttered, blinking back tears.
 
Terry looked at him, his eyes quiet, serious. "Not going to make it," he murmured. "You know that."

"I know nothing of the fucking kind," Dino almost shouted. "You're the best damned partner I've ever had. You're not allowed to fuck out on me. You hear that?"

Terry's eyes closed a moment, his breaths steadily becoming more shallow. "Thorneton," he whispered, almost inaudibly.

"What?"

"Home," Terry said, opening his eyes with great effort. "Wish I was there."

Indeed, he was almost consumed with the desire, even the need to be there. He had to be there. He just had to.

He couldn't feel his legs any longer. A cold heaviness was creeping up his body. He had no idea if he'd earned heaven or not, no idea what would happen to him next. Looking one last time up into Dino's eyes, he managed to say, "Australia. Instead. Let me have...Australia."

Dino felt Terry's body go completely limp then heavy with that empty solidness of death. He leaned over him, burying his face on Terry's chest. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he gritted, over and over and over.

 

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