Chapter 4: Swamp. Continuation 4
I still think I'm missing something, but their concern for each other makes me feel sadder than the thought of never seeing my mother.
I want someone to take care of me like that. Don't I deserve it?
After lunch, we start to gather. Mary walks around with red eyes and tries to shove supplies in our car a month in advance. Sam swores quietly when it turns out that he can only fit in the backseat sitting his ass on a jar of jam, and starts slowly, until she sees it, to pull some food back. He unloads it at the back door into the house and tells Joseph about it. He gurgle with a good-natured laugh and nods. I was right about the hobbit after all. His robe, snorkel, and cunning squint were all but furry legs missing for a perfect resemblance.
Dean puts a card on the hood of the car and looks at something for a long time: he drives a finger with a short cut nail on it and eats the lower lip automatically. I can't make myself stop staring at him. He's lost weight in days of fever, his jeans are hanging, but even that doesn't change the fact that when he leans more over the map, it's like I'm staring at his ass. Still, in the absence of regular customers there are disadvantages - killed by routine work libido begins to wake up and take over my mind. It's not all for good. The willful decision I make myself turn around and go to the backyard to say goodbye to my demons.
The swamp meets me with silence and the smell of rotting mud. The feeling that someone is looking at me from the bottom through the layers of viscous mud that so frightened me once, no longer appeared, and I am glad that those visions of mine are so easy to blame for the symptoms of the disease. The monster with Scott's face pulling his hand to me still stands before my eyes. I wish this picture had stayed here, where it appeared...
We should get going.
Dean says goodbye to Mary for a long time, holds her hand and speaks softly in her ear. Sam gets tired or sighs and turns away by inertia. Joseph waddles behind us to the car, smoking a pipe on the way. He shakes Sam's palm, then mine, and then comes up to Dean, but instead of reaching out to the old man to say goodbye, he gives the old man a folded sheet.
Joseph squinting one eye and looking at it with great interest.
- How did you guess? - he asks.
Dean shrugs his shoulders and cannot hide his complacency.
- These creatures don't choke chickens just for fun. And the trunk of the car does not open by itself.
The old man chews lips and looks away.
- I had no choice, - he says. - I'm too old to hunt, and no one else in the village believes in children's tales. I had to protect my daughter.
Dean nodded understandably.
- Is it that obvious? - Suddenly he asks. - What are we... well... - Senior Winchester looks at me with doubt. - What can we do to help? - he finishes the question.
Joseph hums back.
- I see mine a mile away. Sorry about the trunk, I had to make sure. I had my doubts. This one, - he pokes his finger at me, - is not one of you.
I frown. What are they talking about? And then I look at Sam for the first time since the beginning of this strange conversation. I hope to see amazement, misunderstanding on his face, but he only nods soothingly in response to my opinion. He knows.
- He is, - Dean says, - with his hands. - Well, we should hurry up if we don't want to meet this night in the woods.
We loaded into the car in silence, and then moved on. I look in the rearview mirror at the gray old man waving at us and the cheeky Mary Mathilde wiping tears running down her cheeks.
On the panel lies my notebook. Open. Did Dean rip the sheet out of it to write down the number? Asshole. I'm taking the notebook and I'm sniffing at it. He pretended he didn't notice anything. Well, okay.
I take a pen and put it over a sheet of paper that has been rubbed in the corners. Where do I start my story, because I haven't written in my diary in a week? I've been tormented by this question for at least an hour, until the smoothly thinning forest runs out of steam, we go back out into the open again. Then I understand that I don't want to write anything. This week is like a separate life. And I don't want to share my memories of it with anyone.
Even with paper.
Chapter 5: Dallas
October 29th, 12:45 p.m.
All I remembered was that Kennedy was murdered here.
I had no idea what Dallas looked like. It was a good city. Big. Beautiful.
Maybe my mother would really like it here.
Yes, I could never have written a guide to any metropolis. Big or small, beautiful or not, that's all I can say. But to write a guide to the people who live here is to spit. With my specialty I know very well people. I need to know who can add more than the agreed amount, and who will just hit you in the air and leave with the words "Pushy fa...ot!