Page 63 of Cutter's Hope

“Whatever you’re thinkin’, just stop. This whole mess is gonna be here when you open your eyes, Baby. We just gotta take it one day at a time. You get me?”

He jostled me a little, gently, when I didn’t answer right away, I startled and agreed and his words somehow made it bearable again. He was right, there wasn’t anything I could do about any of it right this second. I closed my eyes but sleep was still a long time coming.

When I woke, I felt like shit. My sister looked like shit, Marlin looked like shit and Cutter… well he looked rough around the edges too. We all moved around the room slower than usual and I stood with some serious misgivings while I watched them load my baby into the back of the crash truck. They had some apparatus on there to keep her upright and they ratchet strapped her in place, still, I was pissed I couldn’t ride.

Instead, Cutter helped me into my helmet and I got on the back of his bike. I wasn’t good to drive but I would be damned if I couldn’t ride. Besides, I didn’t want to crowd Faith and driving the crash truck didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. Selfish moment? Yeah. Yeah it was.

Marlin gave me a nod, my sister was in the seat this time which was an improvement over yesterday’s floorboard adventure. She stared at me through the passenger side window and put her hand to the glass. Cutter pulled us up even so I could put my hand over hers. I held up three fingers, the classic sign for ‘I love you’ and she did it back. She looked so haggard, so worn and tired and like everything sparkly and vivacious about her had been strip mined out of her and I felt helpless.

The ride back to Florida was a fucking long one after that. We had the better part of a day ahead of us, we’d only been about an hour out of Louisiana when we’d been forced to pull off for my lame ass the day before… or was it earlier today? Man everything was such a mess. A jumble of time, too much happening in too short a span of time and the days just blurred together. I had no idea what time it was let alone what day it was. I knew the sun was out, but that was about it.

I hugged myself to Cutter’s strong, lean back and let the vibration of the bike, the rushing wind and the blur of pavement beneath the wheels lull me, almost hypnotize me. It didn’t help as much as I would have liked.

I knew when we crossed the Florida state line, not by any signage but by the guys popping off their helmets with joyous whoops. I even brought mine off and the fresh blast of wind in my face, man was it nice. I let my hair whip back in the wind and it was like it blew out the cobwebs some. Reviving, that was the best way to call it.

“I want to check on my sister!” I shouted and Cutter nodded. He held up his hand and shot a series of hand signals and we started dropping back in the pack. I hugged my casted arm around his waist, my wrist through the chinstrap on my helmet. We rode alongside the crash truck’s passenger side and I reached up my left hand. The window rolled down and my sister reached down and we clasped hands for as long as we could.

“I love you, Bubbles!” I shouted over the wind and a ghost of a smile teased my sister’s lips. She laid her head down on her arm and Cutter gunned it just a little bit and the link of our hands was broken. I held onto my lover and he took us back up front to lead his crew. It was still an hour and more to Ft. Royal.

When we hit town, hand signals were thrown and some of the guys started peeling off to go to their respective homes until finally it was just me and Cutter, Trike on Marlin’s Harley, and Marlin and my sister in the truck. We rolled up to the house we’d all left from and the ride from hell was over.

I stood and stretched and Cutter did a few last minute things before shutting off his Indian and getting off of it himself. I was already helping my little sister down from the truck.

“It hurts,” she whimpered and I frowned.

“What hurts?”

“Everything,” she moaned.

“She’s Jonsing for a fixhardright now,” Marlin said coming around.

“I want it but I hate it and I don’t know what todo,Buttercup,” Faith was whining and it broke my fucking heart.

“Come on Sis, let’s get you inside and figure out what to do from there,” I looked at Marlin over my sister’s head and he nodded, the sigh he heaved unmistakable.

“Take her on up to the master bedroom,” Marlin called after us.

I helped my sister and the guys let me do it and as soon as we were in the house my sister hissed at me, “Hope, who are these guys?”

“Easy there,tiger. They’ve gone above and beyond helping me get you out of there. I’ve got questions too, like what the fuck happened?”

My sister whimpered and we took the stairs slowly, one at a time as she moved like an old woman. Like her entire body was arthritic and pained her.

“That bitch, she sold me, Hope… Tonyasold me…”and then she started to cry and I really didn’t feel so fucking bad that the bitch had met her end, in fact, I found myself sort of hoping that it’d been real slow and painful, terrifying even. What kind of bitch did that make me? A vengeful one. That’s what.

I got Faith into the big king sized four poster bed and got up in it with her. I held her hand with my good one and we lay facing each other. She wept, big wracking heaving sobs and I held her, smoothing her tangled, brittle blonde hair back from her face. The fucking drugs they kept pushing on her had ravaged her, I was terrified beyond repair. I fingered the black leather cuff bracelet that her two thin wrist practically swam in and wondered what it meant. I’d never seen it before. It was a wide brace of leather, with an old fashioned key-hole plate riveted to it.

It had been on the closed lid of the toilet when she’d been in the bath and she’d had an epic freak out, panicking and screaming, thrashing when I’d swept it into the plastic grocery sack we were using as a trash bag. Marlin had immediately gone for it with a baleful look in my direction, and had spent the next five minutes convincing Faith that it was okay, that it was there and that no one was going to throw it away. We had to keep it in her sight or she would have a whole new meltdown over it and as soon as we’d gotten her out of the dirty bathwater with drowning head bugs in it, she’d snatched it to her and had held onto it for dear life.

I tried asking her again now what it was, why it meant something but all that did was set her into a fit of crying harder. So I lay still with my sister until she’d cried herself to sleep and sighed. I didn’t know what to do. How to help her. Fuck.

“C’mere, Sweetheart. Marlin and I need to talk to you,” Cutter murmured from the doorway. I slipped out of bed and left Faith sleeping and went down to the kitchen with them.

“I don’t know what to fucking do,” I confessed and rubbed my eyes.

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Marlin said.

“I’m all ears, shit… start talkin’,” I told him.

---