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Lincoln propelled himself into the street, on top of the boy, in front of the car. A screech not quite like the movies. Then silence.
Was it over? Had he died?
Noise hit him like a wave. The dog barking, car doors slamming. Feet pounding. Voices. Voices. Voices.
“Get up!” A woman's voice high above all the others. “Theo. Theo.” Rage. Intensity. Fear. “Get up!”
Lincoln stayed inert. He could hear the words, but they made no sense. Get up? Impossible. His limbs were rigid. Locked. Curled around ... around a moving thing. A wriggling thing. A crying, wailing thing.
The boy.
The car. The dog. The cat. The car. He wasn't dead. Lincoln moved his limbs one at a time, unfurling. Romper’s nose pushed at him, his paws ... pawed.
The sky was brighter than it had been. The world bigger. The bumper was inches from him. Had hit him. But barely. He could feel it, the spot on his back. But it was his ankle that throbbed, the pain erupting slowly then intensifying, spreading. A groaning, choking sound erupted from him.
The voices morphed into identifiable words. The boy was wrenched from Lincoln.
“Are you okay?”
“Is he okay?”
“He's okay. Look at him. He's okay.”
“The dog ran out. He just ran out—”
“And the man.”
“The boy.”
The woman's voice was lower now. Soft whispers. Murmurs. Desperate. Searching.
Arms held Lincoln, started to lift him as the voices intensified. Another groan.
“Don't move him.”
“Someone call the ambulance.”
“Someone call the police.”
“No. He's okay. Look. He's okay.”
Romper’s bark. Romper nudging him.
Lincoln was almost to his feet now. The weight of him seemed ten-fold. A third groan erupted and he was eased back down. A face materialized before his eyes as all those voices came into focus. A young man. A boy, really. Sixteen? Seventeen? The boy whose thin arms had been flailing in the car.
“You're all right? Hey, man.” His eyes focused on Lincoln's—desperate. His voice cracked, again and again. Was he even sixteen? “Talk to me, okay? You're all right. Right? I mean, I barely bumped you.” He turned his face away, looked up at the other voices and faces and bodies. “You saw that, right? I barely touched him. He touched me, my car, he jumped into the road!”
“To save the boy.” The deep booming voice from the porch stood before them, Lincoln’s laundry draped over her arm.
“Because of the dog,” said the woman who had been in the car. “The dog—”
“Because of the cat!” Piped the little girl.
Lincoln put a hand to his head. It throbbed, but his ankle throbbed more.
“Yeah, the dog.” The driver said, his voice cracking once more. “That's your dog, right? Right?”
Lincoln moaned. “You know you have to have your dog on a leash, right? You know that? It's illegal. Against the law. I was just driving. I was minding my own business and—”
“Stop.” Lincoln put up a hand. “I'm not going to, it's fine, I—”
“Yeah, it's fine. Of course it's fine. You're lucky I'm fine. I should sue you. I should—”
The woman from the porch pushed the driver out of the way and crouched down. “Are you okay?”
A lump rose in Lincoln's throat at the sound of her voice, the concern, the genuine concern ... was he okay? He was alive. So he could be worse. But was he okay? He hadn't been okay in a long time. But that's not what she was asking. He nodded.
“Say it, are you sure? Scan your body. These things can be tricky, you think you're fine and then the adrenaline settles and—”
“I'm okay.”
The woman put a hand on his shoulder. “Should we call an ambulance? Get you checked out?”
Lincoln shook his head and propped himself up—another groan, a flood of pain. “I'm fine.” He looked at his ankle, shifted it, then winced. “My ankle.” Something wasn't right, that was for sure. “But that was the fall, not the—he's right, he hardly touched me.”
Lincoln attempted to stand. The driver reached for him, guided him. Lincoln stood, ninety percent of his weight on his left foot. “It was an accident man,” Lincoln sent the driver a smile, “could have happened to anyone.”
“An accident?” The woman who was tending to the boy rose. She turned. Her. The woman from the bus stop. The library. The Nubian goddess. “That's your dog?” She pointed to Romper, who sat by the curb, ears down, looking shameful.
Lincoln shrugged. “Well—”
“That's your dog. You have a dog that chases cats and you were out here without a leash letting babies play with it?” Her whole body leaned forward. Vibrated. Her eyes focused, as if she could drill into Lincoln's soul if she tried hard enough.
“Well,” the driver stepped away from Lincoln, his arm out, “I guess this conversation doesn't concern me. I guess I better get on my way.”
The woman from the porch pointed her laundry strewn arm at the driver. “I've got your license plate number. You remember that. Any problems with this young man and—”
“It's not his fault.” The female passenger spouted—half indignant, half whine.
“I saw the way you two were carrying on, his eyes not on the road.”
“You've got that number.” The driver smiled a nervous smile, a conciliatory one. He and the passenger opened the car doors and pulled away.
The woman with the boy kept her eyes on Lincoln. “I asked you a question.”
“Get out of the street.” The woman from the porch ordered. “Or there'll be another accident.”
The woman with the boy—who must be his mother, no woman could hold that kind of intensity without being a mother—eased her shoulders the slightest amount and helped the woman from the porch help Lincoln to the sidewalk. They led him to the porch and the owner gestured for him to sit. He shook his head, not wanting to look up at the boy's mother. He had eight inches on her, maybe nine, yet even with him standing, it seemed as if she towered over him.
“This your dog?”
An invisible weight pressed into Lincoln's chest. He wanted to disappear, dissolve, sink into the earth or slither away down some storm drain. Escape. “Sort of.”
She stepped toward him, the boy at her heel with one arm wrapped around her leg, looking even more sheepish than Romper had. “He is sort of your dog?”
“He just kind of,” Lincoln looked from the mother to the porch woman to the boy, and back to the mother, “came to me.”
She leaned back. “Explain to me exactly how—”
“He showed up one day.”
Her arms crossed, as if through no thought of her own. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, a little pulsing movement.
Lincoln leaned against the porch railing; his head seemed to tilt and whirl. His ankle throbbed. “And then he came again and again and walked with me when I went places and waited for me when I went inside and was there when I came out.”
Her eyebrows rose. She bent and shifted Romper's bandanna. “No collar?”
“No.”
“Dogs don't just come to people. They have owners. People who own them. People who—”
“Do you actually think any living thing can own another?”
The woman’s brows rose again. “Yes.” She stepped back, the boy still clinging to her leg—the slightest smile on his face. “And if you don't want to think of it like that, think of it as family. This dog has a family. People who love him and miss him and—”
“If he loved them don't you think he'd be waiting outside their door, not mine?”
“Have you ever heard of the Humane Society? Or Rescues?” She shook her head, hurling Lincoln a look of disgust. “Find out. Maybe the people were travelling and the dog got out of the car, or maybe—”
“Are you upset about your son or about the dog not—”
“I'm upset about you being an irresponsible human being who just—”
“Stepped in front of a moving vehicle to save your son.” Lincoln and the mother's head turned to the woman on the porch, who was rapidly folding Lincoln’s laundry and stuffing it back in his bag. “Kali, this young man may have saved your son's life. At the risk of his own. Instead of lecturing the poor soul, don't you think you should say thank you?”
Kali's features shifted. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Her gaze fell to the boy. She was like a painting. A moving, breathing piece of art. “Thank you.” Her chin raised and her gaze met Lincoln's again. “It was your fault to begin with. If you're going to have this dog with you, this stray dog you've acquired, then you should have it on a leash. You should train it and—” the woman on the porch cleared her throat. “But thank you. You didn't have to jump in front of that car.” Kali’s hand lowered to the boy's shoulder. She pulled him tighter against her. “Thank you.”
Lincoln stared, his arms tingled, his head throbbed, his ankle ached, but he felt privileged almost, he'd saved her son.
“Anyone would have—”
“Anyone would not have.” Kali pushed out her lips, the briefest of movements. “And you did. So thank you.”
“That's better.” The woman on the porch grinned. “Now, I have to take this one home,” she gestured to the girl, who was standing nearby, watching it all, “and you,” she gestured to Kali, “help this young man with his ankle. Give him a once-over to make sure nothing worse is wrong.”
“Mrs. Martin.”
“What?”
Kali glanced at Lincoln. “He should go to the hospital.”
“I'm fine. I don't need the—”
“You can't force him. But you can tend to him, and see if he needs the hospital, rather than making him wait seven hours for someone to tell him what you can tell him in ten minutes.”
“Mrs.—”
“I'll see you on Monday.” Mrs. Martin set the laundry on the step. tweaked the boy's chin, and passed between Kali and Lincoln. “Come on now.” She tilted her head to the girl who skipped behind her.
Kali leaned against the opposite railing. “You sure you're okay?”
“I don't need the hospital. My ankle's not great, but I don't think it's broken or anything.”
Kali knelt before Lincoln and wrapped her hands around his ankle. She pushed his pant leg up and explored the area.
“You, uh, you a doctor or something?” Lincoln swallowed.
“I'm a nurse.” Kali stood. “I think you're right, it doesn't seem broken. It's a bad sprain. Hold out your hands.” Lincoln obeyed. “Those are some unpleasant-looking abrasions. You'll be sore.”
Lincoln stared at the base of his hands. “I didn't even feel ...”
“It's the adrenaline. The pain from the ankle.”
Kali glanced at the boy. That profile. God. She was perfect. Sculpted. Not fragile or soft like so many women. Not even what you'd usually think of as feminine. But womanly. Exquisite. Made to be cast in marble.
She turned back. “You should go to the hospital.”
Lincoln choked on his words. “So a nurse, huh? What kind?”
“Emergency.”
“So you're just trying to give your pals more business?”
She sighed, a hand on her hip, annoyance clouding but not diminishing her features. “I don't ... if I took you to my place—”
“I'm a strange man and—”
“Well, it's not just that, but—”
“I live up the road.”
“You live—” She stopped, stared at him. Shock. Shame? Homeless, she'd thought.
Lincoln nodded. “Around the corner. Not three minutes from here.” He looked to his ankle. “Maybe five today. Maybe six.”
“I'd need supplies.”
“I have a first aid kit.” Lincoln pointed down the street. “Fully stocked.”
“Can you walk?”
Lincoln shifted to the hurt foot and winced. Kali's brow furrowed and her lips pressed together. Concern? Annoyance? Both? Lincoln picked up the laundry bag and grinned. “With help.”