Chapter 2

Silva sat at the computer entering data from the forms that had been filled in by hand by emergency workers in the field. She wasn’t exactly a fast typist, but she was productive enough and getting faster. Sitting back after clearing the last of the pile of forms that had been handed to her, she relaxed and took a sip of her lunch through a straw. A grimace crossed her face at the act. She hated drinking all of her meals and couldn’t wait until she could eat normally again.

Later that day, she was supposed to go to the hospital for them to work some more on her jaw. Although she wanted to get over her medical problems, it would be a couple of days before she would return to her job and that bothered her. She actually looked forward to coming to work in the morning. For the first time in her life she felt like she was part of something that was bigger and more important than she was.

Her officemate smiled at her and said, “Today’s the day, isn’t it?”

Silva nodded and looked over at the woman at the desk next to hers. Her name was Carla and, like Silva, she had an ugly brutal past. The woman had been shot in the spine during a drive-by shooting when she was a teenager. Now her body was dead from the waist down and confined to a wheel chair. Silva buzzed, “Yes, today is the day.”

“I’m happy for you,” replied Carla. The young woman sighed in envy as she added, “Maybe you can find a nice man.”

Her words stung Silva like little darts thrown at her soul. Carla had just started dating when she had been injured. The problem was that she had never experienced a sexual relationship, but had great expectations that it would be the most wonderful thing a woman could experience. Once she had become paralyzed and sex had become impossible for her, she had become obsessed about it.

Silva had never enjoyed sex and didn’t ever want to experience it again. To her, it was an ugly business that had become even uglier once she had gotten into ‘the trade.’ In a way, she would have traded places with Carla to let the poor young woman enjoy sex while she was never tempted again. With bitterness in her voice, she answered, “I hope not.”

Carla nodded and turned back to her work with tears welling up in her eyes. She didn’t understand why the other woman was against sex. All she wanted was to experience sex just once, but that was denied her. Sniffling, she looked between her legs at what she considered to be wasted space. She had no feelings below her waist.

Dissatisfied with the exchange, Silva turned back to her desk feeling bad that she had upset her officemate and knowing that there was nothing she could say that the other would understand. At that moment, a riot broke out behind her. She turned in time to see Harry burst through the door while dropping his staff to the floor.

Lowering himself down to one knee, he said, “Tah Dah! Today is the day.”

“Harry!” buzzed Silva happy to see the Druid. In her excitement, she had tried to open her mouth in a shout, which was immediately cut off by a sharp pain. It astounded her that he showed up this day and that he even knew she was going back into the hospital.

Harry looked around the room and spotted Carla sitting at her terminal with eyes reddened by tears. With far more energy than one might expect from a sixty-year-old man, he jumped to his feet, grabbing his staff in the process, and went over to her desk. Looking down at Carla as she sat in her wheelchair, he asked, “And who might you be?”

After grabbing a tissue, Carla dabbed at her nose as she answered, “Carla.”

“So why is Queen Carla so sad?” asked Harry with a concerned smile. His head was cocked to one side, reminding Carla of an Irish Setter looking at something in puzzlement.

The question puzzled Carla and she asked, “Queen Carla?”

“Of course, my lady. You are ensconced in your silver throne. Who else but a Queen could live so?” Harry bowed and acted as though he was a member of a royal court dealing with a member of royalty.

“Ah, it’s not a throne. It’s a wheelchair,” answered Carla trying to decide if this guy was crazy or if he was making fun of her.

“So modest, too. To pass off her royal throne of silver as little more than a wheelchair,” retorted Harry like a Shakespearean actor. Unable to help herself, Silva laughed at his comment.

“Are you okay?” asked Carla concerned about the sanity of the odd man standing in front of her. This was the first time that anyone had ever addressed her wheelchair in such an offhand fashion. Others tried to pretend that it didn’t exist, usually without success. Never had anyone made jokes about it.

“I am fine, but it was you that was in tears when I entered the room,” answered Harry moving his hand in a swirl that ended with him pointing a finger at her. Making an expansive gesture with his hands, Harry added, “So I ask my question again. Why is Queen Carla so sad?”

“None of your business,” answered Carla with far more harshness than she had intended. There was no way that she was going to discuss her personal problems with the crazy man standing in front of her.

Having been around Harry, Silva believed that he would know what to say to the paralyzed woman. In a soft voice, she answered, “Carla is upset that she is never going to make love because she is paralyzed from the waist down.”

Harry spun around to look at Silva as the statement staggered him. Turning back to face Carla, he asked, “What have the two things to do with each other?”

His question angered Carla as she decided that he was making fun of her. Livid, she searched around for something to throw at him. All she could find was a tape dispenser, which she tossed in his direction, but she missed him by more than four feet. Frustrated beyond belief, Carla stared at him and, in an angry voice, answered, “I can’t feel anything down there, you idiot!”

“So?” asked Harry in a very disarming voice.

Silva was staring at Harry trying to figure out what he was trying to tell the other woman. She couldn’t believe that he was arguing with Carla about her ability, or rather her inability, to make love. If anyone should understand her limitations, it should be Carla and not Harry.

“How can I make love without feeling anything down there?” asked Carla as her voiced edged above a scream.

“You really think that you have to feel something down there to make love?” asked Harry, his voice expressing his disbelief that anyone should believe such a thing. He shook his head with a very sad expression on his face. Looking up at her stunned face, he said, “I find it so sad that you believe something so wrong.”

That statement hit her like a slap across her face. She turned a bright red in reaction and, in righteous indignation, asked, “What do you know?”

“I know very little,” answered Harry standing in front of her in a posture that gave the impression of total honesty and vulnerability. “I do know that you have a strong life force beating within your body. Where there is life, there is the potential for love. With love comes making love. The body has very little to do with it, it is a spiritual thing.”

Silva looked at Harry and then at Carla, seeing them both frozen in a tableau in which she was the outsider observer. In this little exchange, she was learning as much about love as Carla. More dicks than she could count had been stuffed in every orifice of her body and it astounded her that she knew nothing of love or making love. Her throat tightened preventing her from asking her questions.

In a near whimper, Carla asked, “How can you make love if you can’t feel it?”

Harry stepped forward and knelt in front of Carla while staring into her eyes. With an exaggerated slowness of motion, he reached out with his right hand and felt the side of her face. His fingers brushed against her skin with a gentle teasing touch. His fingers sought out and found every nerve on the left side of her face. Unconscious of her actions, she leaned her head against his hand enjoying the warmth of his touch. Her breathing became jagged as sensations that she had never felt shot through the top half of her body.

Watching the pair, Silva found her eyes getting moist. Never had any man spent so much time touching any part of her body with such tenderness. It was obvious to her that Carla was feeling sensations that neither women had ever felt before that day. Silva had been groped and grabbed by all manners of men, but never touched with a loving hand. She tried to imagine that his hand was touching her face, and felt frustrated that she failed. Suddenly, it was Carla that was the lucky one.

“Oh my God,” moaned Carla as a shudder went through her body. It wasn’t an orgasm, but it was the most intense feeling that she had experienced since becoming paralyzed. If he could do that just by touching half of her face, what could he do with the rest of her body?

Harry pulled his hand back and, still looking her in the eye, said, “I think your body has enough feeling in it for the right man to make glorious love to it.”

Touching the side of her face with her hand as if she had discovered it for the first time, she replied, “I think you’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right. I’m Happy Harry,” replied the old man with a twinkle in his eye as he stood up while holding his hands as if he were tugging on suspenders. His pose and tone of voice conveyed that he didn’t take himself too seriously.

Carla burst out laughing at the comment and the ease with which the tension in the room had been dissipated. She glanced over at Silva and said, “Take her out of here and get her fixed up. I think we have some gossiping to do when she gets back.”

“You order is my command, Queen Carla. Come my dark beauty, it is off to the hospital with you,” said Harry as he bowed towards the door in an invitation to leave. He picked up his staff in the midst of the bow.

Silva passed by him disturbed by how he had addressed her as a dark beauty. It wasn’t a racist remark, but one of praise. The problem was that she didn’t feel like a dark beauty. She was still wearing sack dresses like she had been given in the hospital and was wearing her hair up in a scarf. They had hidden her figure and her sexuality, both of which she had become ashamed of since her beating. It was as though hiding her body was hiding that she was a black whore. Instead, she looked like Aunt Jemima, the pancake queen, but Aunt Jemima didn’t make her living in strange cars parked in dark alleys.

Harry led her to the truck that was parked in front of the Fusion Foundation Center. She noticed that the silver sides of the truck had been painted. Someone had painted picture of a Hobo carrying a bindle on a stick with the name, Happy Harry, beside it. She rather liked the picture and wondered who had done it. After holding the door and making sure that she was comfortable in her seat, Harry went around to the driver’s side. Climbing in, he said, “Hold on, cause this thing rocks worse than a dingy in a hurricane!”

It wasn’t long before they were headed out to the hospital. Silva said, “That was a nice thing you did for Carla.”

“‘Twas a little thing. It was as much as I could do under the circumstances,” remarked Harry with a shrug.

Silva was silent for a moment as she thought about what he considered to be a little thing. He had just given a woman her sexuality back to her with a single touch. It reminded her of something that had happened the first time that she had been in the truck.

She said, “That day when you picked me up from the hospital, there was a guy with cancer who told you that he was going to die. Do you remember that?”

“Of course. That was Jim Henderson,” replied Harry as he looked over at her. He was curious find out what she wanted to know since she hadn’t really talked to the man.

“When you asked him what he wanted to do before he died, he said that he wanted to see his kids.” Trying to talk so much was frustrating, but at least he understood her.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What happened to him?”

Harry maneuvered the truck into the left turn lane before answering, “I helped him get into a nice Hospice Care Center in Kansas City. It took a little time, but I tracked down his children. He had two sons and a daughter. One of his sons and his daughter came to see him there. He died a couple of days after their visit. He went real gentle in his sleep.”

“You were there?”

Making the left turn, the truck leaned to the point where it almost tipped over and then rocked back. Once through the turn, he answered, “No. I was in Los Angeles around the time he died. The staff told me all about it when I stopped by Kansas City on the way here.”

The truck was swaying so much that she felt as if she was going to get carsick. She declared, “This thing is dangerous.”

“Nah. I like it. It reminds of the old days when trains were really trains. Those boxcars used to sway from side to side as the train rolled down the tracks. It was comforting for a young boy on the rails,” replied Harry with a melancholy grin.

“Boxcars?” asked Silva wondering what he was talking about.

“Yeah, boxcars. I grew up riding in boxcars with my mommy and daddy. That was back in the forties and the world was a lot different then. There weren’t many Hobos left, even then. When W-W-Two broke out, lots of them joined the army or were able to get jobs in factories. Most of the Hobos were just regular Joe’s that had lost everything in the great depression. Of course, losing everything will make most men bitter. Lots of them did some pretty awful things to get by, but there were a bunch of good folks too.”

Silva asked, “Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Getting on and off the trains was tricky. If you fell while getting on, it was likely that you would end up under the wheels. Not a good place to be and tended to leave red spots on the countryside. Getting off meant jumping from the moving train before it pulled into the station. Land wrong and you’d break an ankle if you were lucky and your neck if you weren’t.”

Harry paused as he pulled into the hospital parking lot. As he drove around looking for a space that was large enough for the lunch truck, he continued, “Of course, the biggest danger was getting caught by the men that worked for the railroad. They would beat a man to an inch of his life when they caught someone. This scar across my forehead was the result of an axe handle.”

She had listened in shock at the stories of the dangers that he had faced during childhood. It was a miracle that he was still alive, much less a happy man that missed those times. She buzzed, “Sounds horrible.”