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MATTHEW
At every Khyla’s step, the stretcher slides on the fresh snow making it squirting everywhere. So, instead of just feel the weight of the flakes laying on my face, I can feel it going everywhere leaving me completely wet. Luckily my trousers are waterproof, otherwise I would really risk to get my legs frozen.
I close my eyes not to see. I want to forget to be here, seriously damaged, saved by the promptness of my companion. This situation makes me feel too much pain. No, it’s not the physical pain to anguish me. What I can’t bear is my fault. I had promised to myself to use my qualities to the best, to send away from me the shadow in being a son of Compton. Instead I ended up as the majority of my friends: in jail to serve an endless sentence. But in my case, it was a crime just condemnable in California. Can it be considered a blame that of giving to another person your own love? Damned fucking law! Because of it, first the policemen and then my cell companions, called me in the most ignominious ways: pedophile, bastard, incestuous, pervert. I had to suffer their offences, their uncalled-for attacks. I had to go more than one time to the infirmary, to heal the wounds that they did to me during the night beatings. In the end they fed up in using me as their personal punch bag, perhaps because I didn’t gave them the satisfaction of begging pity. Yet the soul’s wounds are still there and give me more pain than this bloody leg, that stopped to bleed but it’s quickly losing sensibility.
So there is another sense of guilt that pierce my chest. I’m alive because Khyla wants it. Had it not been for her, at this time I would be choked by the snow... She’s been the only one to trust me, apart from Tracy. And I threatened her, played her down, I did put her in the background in all the possible and imaginable ways. She would have a million reasons to leave me in the snow. Instead she drags me with her only forces along these hard pathways, without sighs or groans.
KHYLA
As I drag Matthew and myself in the middle of this snowstorm, I’m trying to be highly concentrated and to keep under control the flow of time. This isn’t easy without a watch. If at least there was the sun... Instead, with all this snow, you can’t see anything, it looks like a white desert. So I walk while mentally counting the steps, hoping, ones we get to a dry place, to find a match between the route and the time taken. I was pretty good in physics. So, if time is measurable as space over speed, it means that every step is... how many seconds? No, it isn’t right. This way I won’t come to anything. It’s better to continue going on, straining to see to pierce the snow curtain and finally find the right place where to take care of Matthew. He never speaks, not one groan or a word, so I often turn to see if he is ok.
After I got away from the center of the snow slide, I entered a forest, where I have to make a slalom between the vegetation, with my burden of eighty kilos to be dragged. My wrists and shoulders are aching a lot, but I have no intention to stop now. Even if the pathway I’m walking now it’s an uphill climb and I have short breath, no one and nothing is going to prevent me from saving the man that I love.
At a certain point, exhausted, I stop for a moment to wipe my sweat. Matthew calls me and I go to him, bending to listen to his words.
«Khyla, leave me here and save yourself. I was wrong getting you involved in all this. I should have...»
«Do you want to stop telling all these bullshit? I’m a mature and conscious woman. If I didn’t believe your plan right, I would never had followed you.»
Yes, more or less. How can be mature a woman that helps a prisoner to escape? The truth is that the choice to follow Matthew in this risky plan has been dictated exclusively by my feeling. Because of love, I simply excluded reason from my life.
I get up and go back to drive the stretcher. More and more tired, I go through a forest of larch and sequoia. I’m about to think seriously to throw in the towel, when in front of us I spot a house. A house! I can’t believe my eyes. Is it a winter mirage? It could be. Perhaps those who walk for hours in the snow and suddenly see a cozy hut, get the same hallucination of those that see an oasis after walking in the desert then find themselves eating sand, instead of drinking water. Yet, the more I get closer, the more I can see it clearly. I notice the stone roof, the stone and masonry façade, on one side there is a small porch with a table sheltered by a plastic towel. And this detail convinces me even more, that I’m not having hallucinations due to cold and fatigue. How could I imagine a worn green plastic towel wrapping a table in a porch?
I turn again toward Matthew and I notice that his eyes are closed and that he’s breathing faintly. I have to move on. I advance as fast as I can and we finally get there. I knock but nobody answers. It must be an holyday summer hut. What can I do now? I’m not a thief, so I can’t force a lock, plus I’m already pretty in troubles with the justice, without needing to add damage to other’s property. I’m annoyed by the idea of breaking a window.
Then I see it... an umbrella rack on the right. Could it be the house that José meant? Too good to be true, yet to be sure, I have to try. I put my hand into the umbrella-stand carefully plumbing the bottom of it and, as I’m about to give up, I find the key. I open the door and the first sight is not so good. A coldness like the outside one invests me but, watching better, I feel reassured. There is a welcoming sitting room with a fireplace, a queen-size bed with a quilt and a small kitchen with all the necessary to cook something eatable. Just thinking about food, my stomach start somersaulting, but this is not the priority.
I run to Matthew and shake him to wake him up. He opens his wonderful grey eyes on me and immediately it seems to me that the intense cold I suffered in these hours is just a distant memory.
«Matthew, cling to my arm. I don’t know how, but we got at the house meant by José.»
He looks surprised, but can’t speak a word. Perhaps his tongue is frozen. Thanks to my help, he gets up. I lead him to the bed and cover him with the quilt and another wool plaid that I found on a rock-chair. Then I run to the kitchen and open all the drawers to look for a box of matches. When I find them I nearly cry with happiness. On one side of the fireplace, there are dry woods. I carefully put them in it and light a paper with one match, putting it under the wood pile. I gently blow on the fire and, with great joy, see the wood burning. A few minutes are enough to spread in the little house a pleasant warmth.
«Khyla! I’m thirsty...»Matthew whispers. Of course he’s thirsty. He lost a lot of blood and he needs to replace the fluids.
«Wait a minute» I say.
I take a bottle of frozen water from the cupboard and put it near the fire to melt it. Just a few minutes and I give it to Matthew.
«Drink it slowly, it’s still too cold.»
He obeys although the great thirst. Now I should think about the vortex I’ve got in my stomach, but I already know that I have to wait for that. There’s one more important thing to do. I have to save Matthew’s leg and I need someone to help me. We need someone who knows about surgery, capable to extract the bullet and to suture the wound. My scout experience has come to my rescue until now, but that is over my knowing. So I put some more wood in the fire, I fill the glass with water and leave it near him on a small table, then kiss him on the forehead and tell him that I’m going out again.
He takes my hand and looks at me with imploring eyes. «Don’t go, Khyla. I can’t stay here alone. There’s no doubt that this time I’m going to die. I want to spend my last moments with you.»
I caress and reassure him.
«No, you are not going to die. I’ll fight the death with tooth and nails, in your name, I grant you. But to save you I have to go out and find someone able to help you»
He turns his head to the wall resigned and I can feel a piece of my heart going in thousand pieces. If I won’t find anyone, I’ll have to him going without any possibility of saving him.
I sigh, put the quilted jacket on and go out in the snowstorm again. The more I advance in the cold, the more I feel fear possessing me. I’m alone, in a forest maybe infested by wolves, without a map or a Landmark. If there’s no one in this cold hell, apart from wild animals, we are both going to die without the comfort of each other. I should go back and try to extract the bullet by myself, but I don’t know if I had the courage to do it.
That’s why I’m still trying to finish my mission. I go on without stopping, even though all I want to do is to through myself in the snow to sleep. Then I see a light and some smoke and my heart fills with joy.
