Rag-doll

The night was a harsh creature. It scattered sounds in various ways to trick my mind. My eyes could only see the moon casting light across darkened treetops and flutters of wings glinting as they passed overhead. The sounds though, they are what crept into my soul. Breaking twigs could be under the foot of a wood rat gathering pine needles or a creeping coyote that smelled blood on me. It was impossible to tell with my weak human vision. I wasn't where I was supposed to be and didn't know why.

The cold began to pierce my bones as the chilling wind hit my bloody skin. I believed if the coyotes didn't get to me first I would've frozen like an Astro-pop. The cold was nipping at my cheeks and my nose began to run. I rubbed the dirt away from my eyes and began scanning my surroundings. I must've fallen downward because you don't fall upward and get scraped from head to toe. I turned my focus up the hill and waited for my eyes to adjust. It was at least a hundred and fifty foot trail of slide marks leading right to my rotting carcass. I was strung out like a rag-doll on the cold forest floor.

(Crunch!) a breaking branch, not a twig.

My eyes traced down to search for the sound. The trees to the left of me were thin and bare. Above, they were covered in shadow by over-hanging limbs on taller trees breaking the moonlight. To the right, a large oak with a trunk the size of a Volkswagen was surrounded by several small, dainty pines. The sound could have come from any direction. Owls hooted back and forth in the distance like they were honing in on my location, piercing the bitter silence. My leg began to twitch which I assume was caused by my unshakable fear of getting eaten alive. Suddenly, a swift movement came from behind the oak. My lungs seized and my heart beat faster. I tried to stay as still as possible.

(Thump! Thump!) It sounded like a deer treading across soft dirt. It was getting closer. Out of the shadows a dog emerged, panting and whining simultaneously.

“Jake? Is that you?” I pushed out through my stalled breathing.

“Woof Woof!” he replied enthusiastically.

I couldn't believe it. When his golden-yellow fur met the moonlight my heart skipped a beat. My dog Jake was there in that same place. We must have been walking together and he made his way down. I bet we were walking to the pier, I tripped over a rock and tumbled down the hill. My breathing started getting back to normal and I motioned for Jake to come to me.

“Jake, you are such a lifesaver. Now come help me up, boy.”

Jake made his way over to me and helped me sit up on my knees. Rocks began to slide underneath me and I caught myself on a branch that looked like it had been rolled over by a big rock. I grabbed it with both hands and used all my strength to prop myself up in a standing position. Facing the mountain-side, I dug my feet into the soft dirt, one at a time, and started inching my way up the rocky surface. Jake stuck right by my side as I struggled to breathe in deep enough to stay conscious. I could feel the blood running down my legs as I climbed. It reminded me of sunny days in the backyard, running through the sprinklers and getting grass stuck to my skin. I would stick my leg out above the sprinkler to wash it all off past my toes. The smell of fresh-cut lawn, honeysuckle flowers, and mulberries permeated my nostrils. When you're a child, smells are brand new and make a lasting memory. You long to smell it again your entire life.

“It looks like we're almost there boy, keep digging!” I told Jake as if I were his sled master preparing him for the long trek across the frozen Alaskan tundra.

He was right there though, no encouragement needed. He was as loyal as they came. For all the times I'm sure the little ones tortured him by pulling on his ears and grabbing at his paws, he performed thanklessly. Reaching the ledge was coming quick and the profile of a cut-out wall emerged. We appeared to be on the outer edge of a very sharp turn in the road. Bushes lay flat along a 15-foot gap between two massive redwood trees. I couldn't have fallen just a few feet sooner or later, according to karma.

“Woof” Jake moaned as if he understood how this was the opposite of serendipity.

When I attempted to plant both feet on the solid surface, my left ankle gave out beneath me. I didn't feel any pain and was running on adrenaline but I was beginning to lose function in parts of my body. I knew I had to find a place to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. I was on a road so I figured it wouldn't be long before somebody drove past us. Fishermen would drive down these old dirt roads to get to the backside of the lake. Luckily enough for me and ole Jake, there was a stump directly across the road, just on the inside of the turn. It looked like a good place to stop, assess the situation and wait for a passerby.

“What do you think Jake? The stump? Take a breather?” I asked him, really thinking I might get a reply or some kind of sign.

You know how dogs have those big cute eyes with eyebrow muscles that evolved to manipulate human emotion. Maybe he understood what I was asking like Lassie and knew of a better place to post up. Dogs have great instincts like that. But he went straight for the stump. I could feel my mind clouding so I hobbled over and sat down. My ankle wasn't broken. I could tell. It had fluid motion but didn't hurt. My pants looked like they were cut lengthwise with a box cutter. I could see most of my leg skin through the rips but they were dirty and bloody. I didn't know where the blood was coming from, though.

“Hey, are you hurt little man?” I asked Jake.

He came over to me, tail wagging, and stood next to the stump. He nudged his way in as if he was expecting me to pet him. I glanced him over and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. He was his happy self. He licked my forearm and when I looked down at it, I noticed a long scrape going up past my elbow and around my armpit. Then I saw a little drop of blood fall from my forehead. I wiped my forehead with my fingers and a mix of coagulated blood and forest floor came off like sludge. I started bleeding heavily from my scalp and elected to rip a strip off my pants to wear like a headband. I'm sure by this point I looked like Charlie Sheen in Platoon in his retribution scene. A bloodied, muddied-up monster of a man that barely survived a night of horrific trench fighting. I probably smelled too.

I felt a slight queasiness in my belly. The kind that makes your entire body feel limp. It was probably from blood loss. I still didn't know how much blood I was losing. Sitting here on this stump reminded me of when I was seven years old. My little brother Evan and I were playing in the creek near our house. I was sitting on a stump watching him splash around when my friend came down the trail. He told me they found a kitten and didn't know what to do with it. So I rushed up to the blacktop and we ran like lightning to his doorstep where his sister was nursing the kitten with a spoon and milk. We sat and played with it for at least an hour until my mom showed up, frantically yelling. She rushed me across the street by the neck of my shirt. How could I have forgotten? My three year old brother was still down at the creek. We ran down there and found him splashing away as if nothing happened. Thankfully, the creek was only about 6 inches deep during the summer months. I surely paid for that mistake.

Thinking about those days started bringing up more recent memories. They seemed like a dream but I felt like they happened yesterday. I remembered my mother bringing me a glass of clear soda on the back porch. I remembered Jake chasing my little brothers around the front room playing keep-away with a football. Then something that made me pause. I was looking at a small flier for a new television program. It was dark blue with neon lettering and an image of Paula Abdul. Really? Paula Abdul had been off the radar for years. My mind must have been making that up. I held a bag of tacos and passed them out to everyone. Then I felt a chill go up to my spine.

(Sounds of an engine began to faintly emerge) My mind snapped back to reality.

“Jake, is that a truck? Do you hear that?” I asked him with a very concerned look on my face.

I knew that dogs naturally leaned on body language and expressed emotion. If I looked at him a certain way with concern on my face and a hand cupping my ear, he would understand. His expression went solid like he meant business. His body stood firm with his face pointed in the direction of the motor. He started letting out little huffs like a goat which meant he was about to take matters into his own paws. He dashed across the road and over to the start of the turn. He stood still, staring down the dirt road like a wolf watching a bear. He started huffing as the engine got louder. It eventually turned into a full-on bark. There was some kind of motorized vehicle heading our way.

“Jake! Come here boy! Come wait by me!” I yelled.

He looked at me and continued to bark until we could hear the engine come along our ridge. It must have been just a few turns away when he ran back to me. Light soaked the tree-line as the truck bobbed and weaved around the dangerous hairpin turns. It wasn't going very fast though. It sounded like a small diesel, maybe an old Datsun or Dodge mini truck. I figured I should probably stand up and look as non-threatening as possible. A blood and guts monster with a big dog barking at his side could scare the mightiest of men. I stood up and put all my weight on my right leg and kept my left limp. I put my hands in the air, opened up like I was giving a high five, and prepared to wave them down. It was the moment of truth. The headlights crept around the corner.

“Help!” I gasped.

I noticed my voice was starting to break up. I felt chills like I had been skinny dipping in an alpine lake and got out into the breeze. I felt my toes seize up inside my torn-up shoes and my right knee starting to give out. It was a white Nissan truck with all sorts of gear in its bed. Many different items with a camouflage print protruded from the boxes thrown in hurriedly. He was definitely out hunting. The driver's door slowly opened as the man scoped us out. He looked shaken and stepped out with caution. He stationed behind his door and yelled a question to me.

“Hey, are you okay man?”

I tried to adjust my position and give my right knee a bit of relief. As I turned, it gave out and I went tumbling to the ground. I slid my hands underneath me and got my right arm under my chest to lift my head and get eye contact with him.

“I think so, but I'm not sure. I fell down that hill and barely made it back up to the road. You're the first person I've seen.”

He closed his door and walked over to me. He grabbed beneath my armpits and lifted me back up to my feet. I leaned on the corner of his truck and looked at him closely. He was maybe in his forties, possibly of Latino origin, and wore a camouflage coverall and blue trucker cap. He put out his hand to shake mine so I obliged.

“Angel,” he said. "My name is Angel."

“Tony” I replied. “And that's, Jake. Not sure how we got out here, to be honest.”

I started to feel a piercing pain in my shoulder and grabbed for it. Angel led me to his passenger side door and asked if I was thirsty. My mouth was dry so I whispered a soft “yes” to him. He grabbed an orange Gatorade out of a cooler and handed it to me as I sat down in the truck. He looked me over and stared out toward the gap I fell through. Jake was still standing by the ledge looking down the mountain. Angel stood up and moved to close the door.

“Hey, Angel, do you mind if I turn on the heater? I'm really cold.” I said before he closed the door.

He reached past me and turned it on full blast. The warm air caressed my body that had been so cold for so long. I don't even know how long I was unconscious. It could have been minutes or hours. But now, I felt like I was sitting on a cloud, floating across the warm sky. It was incredible. My eyes began fluttering and my mind began to wander. I saw Angel carrying a rope away from the truck and Jake following him when I drifted off into thoughts about Flintstones push pops. The orange ones. How they made me and my brothers so happy when we were outside playing in the yard.

“I can't believe he's gonna do it! He's crazy! Mom is gonna be so mad!” my little brother screamed.

My older brother Bobby had climbed on the roof with his bicycle and was planning on riding off onto a mattress he had set up in the yard. We all knew that if mom came home we would be dead meat. Even if we were just watching. So we hired our youngest brother to guard the front door. If he heard anything out of the ordinary, he was to run and warn that danger was approaching. In return, he got a Flintstones pop. So we had it all set up. Evan and I sat on ground level, eating our ice cream, waiting for imminent damage to occur. We knew the drill though. If he got hurt, we called the ambulance. But only if we could see bones sticking out or he wasn't responding to our pokes and prodding. If it was serious but not bad enough for an ambulance, we would page our mom's pager with the secret codes she had set up. We had it all under control.

“Do it chicken!” I yelled to my brother as he sat contemplating how to not injure himself.

He looked at us with a certain rage in his eyes like he was going to use this temporary thrill to release some pent-up anger he had about a bully or someone who slighted him in the past. He grabbed his handlebars with a fervor only a man bravely facing death could muster up. His knuckles turned white and he placed his foot on one pedal, digging the tires into the roof tiles. He pulled up, stood on both pedals, and let it roll down toward his doom. His front tire went off the roof first and he forgot to pull up which sent him nose-diving straight down to the ground. His face firmly met the mattress and the handlebars were forced upwards which rammed into his chest. He looked up at us and let out a blood-curdling gasp like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Dude! Are you okay?” Evan yelled as he raced over to him.

Evan noticed his right hand was behind his back as he rolled over away from the bike. He took in a big gulp of air and was able to let out a couple of words.

“Bro, my hand. My hand!”

I grabbed his arm and brought it around the front to discover his fingers dangling like spaghetti hanging from a spoon. All five of his fingers were broken. He started crying as soon as he saw it and we all panicked. I couldn't see bones but we knew it was serious. I ran to the phone and called 9-1-1, who sent an ambulance immediately. We paged our mom with the secret emergency code and hoped she wouldn't blame us. We had no choice but to help him. Soon we heard ambulances barreling down our street and saw the lights flashing through the front window. Then we heard a knock at the door.

“Son, are you awake?” I heard a voice say faintly.

It sounded like it was coming through my mothers' front door, like the medics ready to grab up my brother and take him to the hospital.

“Can you hear me, Tony?” The same voice asked.

I heard a small knock again and woke up. I realized I was still in that small white truck. My eyes opened wide and I could see several men standing around. One man in a yellow suit was right next to my window, looking down at me. I looked at him and he opened the door.

“Are you okay son, can you hear what I'm saying to you?” he said with concern.

“Yes I can hear you, I'm just tired” I replied.

He pulled me out through the door and picked me up in his arms and carried me to the back of an ambulance. I looked to the left where all the other men were standing and noticed they had a chain attached to a tree. They were using a wench system. They sat me down on a stretcher and laid me back on the bed. They slid me into the ambulance and shut the doors behind me. The bed clicked into place and a small, fragile-looking woman climbed in beside me. She started gathering tools and needles and placing them neatly on a small table next to us.

"Do you know if you are allergic to any medications? We want to get you fixed up" she said in a caring voice.

"Nothing I know of" I replied.

She stuck a needle in my arm and began hooking up a drip bag. She injected the dripline with various medications and handed me a warm wet towel to place on my forehead. I started to feel the medications hit my bloodstream. My arms went numb and my eyes started winking shut. It was getting hard to stay awake.

"Be still and tell me if anything hurts okay hun?" she told me.

I've heard that before. Not from a medic or nurse but my dentist. When I was fourteen I had to have a wisdom tooth removed. But I was also fighting an ear infection which caused my immune system to work full force. My immune system kept fighting off the Novocain so my mouth wouldn't go numb. The dentist must have injected me nine or ten times, each time asking if it still hurt when he drilled. He finally gave up and was ready to postpone it and I told him I would be okay with going under to complete the procedure. They hooked me up to the gas mask and told me I'd be asleep in no time. I gripped onto the bed handles and stared up at the ceiling. The dentist bent over me and started counting down. "three.......two..........one"

"Three!.....Two!......One!, heave!" I heard from outside the ambulance. My eyes opened wide like I fell into a bath of ice water.

“We got four coming up, one in the ambulance. I'm guessing forty-five minutes to get out" the same voice said.

I looked at the nurse and the memories started flooding in.

"Do you know what he means by four coming up?" I asked her.

"Unfortunately, you were in a car accident" she replied, solemnly.

My family was visiting friends up on the coast for the week. We left in the morning to head home and stopped at the Sinclair gas station to prepare for the trip. My mom grabbed a bag of tacos and picked up a flier for the new show “American Idol” which was searching for contestants in San Francisco. She handed me the flier and searched my face for interest in trying out. She knew I was a musician at heart. I remember passing out tacos to everyone as Bobby filled up the truck with gas. Then I climbed in the bed and snuggled up under a blanket with Jake and Evan.

We had a beautiful day together, driving through the mountain pass back toward home. We stopped to skip rocks on the river. We took a hike through the redwood forest. We searched for fossils in an old gold mine. As the day was wrapping up, we climbed in and headed for the last stretch of dirt road before re-entering civilization.

I remember talking to Evan about everything. We talked about hunting with slingshots. About the time we lived in Utah. And the last thing I remember was staring up at the sky, looking for stars that were bled out by light from the sun. I remember the moon appearing so vibrant against the yellow-orange backdrop of the setting sky and a circle of trees. Then, out of nowhere, the feeling of weightlessness and I felt like I was floating. The truck disappeared and everything went black.

Dread set in as I remembered I was in the truck with my family and the four people the man was talking about were my mom and brothers. They were the ones down in that ravine. In that nasty old dirty ravine. And I left them all alone. I left them to the coyotes and owls. I was the one in the ambulance. It couldn't be. The medication hit my brain as I grabbed onto the medic. I could see the hurt in her eyes and the tears that had been falling onto her scrubs. She bent over to hug me and I clenched her tightly. My eyes closed and my head fell back into my pillow. I drifted away slowly three....two.....one.