Five Letter Word
By Crystal Lynn Kamm
A man is
sitting in a diner. A fish taco stand on Front Street near the beach. His head
is bowed low over a crossword on the back of the newspaper. It’s an old paper,
crunchy from getting wet on the tables and grimy from being handled by an
entire day’s worth of patrons. The man wields his pen over the blank squares
and is surprised that no one has done the puzzle yet. Golden light halos the
paper, shining through the lens of his water glass. Sunset. He looks up.
A mirror.
Usually he knows where all the mirrors are and carefully avoids them, but this
one takes him by surprise. It’s only a few inches wide, wedged in the little
space between two windows. One could look at it and fail to see it at any other
time of day, but when the windows are glowing with sunset, the gray streak of
mirror in the middle is impossible to miss. The man catches his reflection in
it, spotlighted by the probing fingers of sunlight that seem to enter with the
sole intent of exposing him. It’s the face that has cleared the place,
relegating the only remaining customers to a corner booth far behind him. He
looks away quickly, wanting to avoid his face as much as they.
37 Down.
Seven letter word for Freak.
“Alex
Trebek,” the man whispers. “Who is Charlie?”
He writes
the word in the seven blank squares. Carefully. One letter at a time.
“Who is
Charlie?” he asks again, this time an actual, existential question.
He raises
his face again to catch his reflection in the strip of mirror. Hold. Don’t look
away.
13 Across.
Five letter word for Without Another.
He throws
down the pen. It rolls to the middle of the newspaper, rocking in the crease
between the pages. He picks up the remainder of a fish taco in his right hand,
but his fingers tremble and he drops it back on the plate. The thing falls open
and the lettuce flops wetly across the table and onto the floor.
“You’ll
never use your left hand again,” the doctor had told him. “Fortunately, your
right hand will be relatively functional with some physical therapy. You are
right-handed?”
“No,”
Charlie said, keeping his voice low. As if not saying it out loud would make it
less true.
“Well,” the
doctor said, leaving it at that.
That was
when people were still shooting him sympathetic smiles. Bandages still covered
his face. The extent of the damage wasn’t obvious at a glance. There was still
hope.
“Are you
ready for your check, sir?”
The waitress
stands at his elbow, just outside his field of vision. He turns and looks her
right in the eye, just to see her quail.
“More
coffee, please,” he says, even though he doesn’t want any more. I’m cruel, he thinks. She practically
runs to the hot plate, but she’s taking her time coming back. When she does
return, she drops the check facedown beside his cup.
The
shell-pink over the Gulf is fading to gray beyond Sunset Key when he steps
outside. He has the rolled up back page of the newspaper in his right hand.
Maybe he’ll finish the crossword. Or maybe he’ll fold it into a paper boat and
drop it off the pier.
Of course he
won’t do that. You can’t fold a paper boat with one hand.
He stuffs it
into his back pocket. The long, pale roll sticks straight up and catches in his
shirt. He walks slowly even though he doesn’t have to. It’s a miracle, the
doctor said, that your legs weren’t affected.
Miracle.
People throw that word around. It’s a miracle you’re alive, Charlie. That you
get to live the next fifty years as a shell of your former self. 13 Across.
ALONE.
When he
reaches the path that meanders toward the pier along the highest dune of the
beach, the sun has dropped to the edge of the horizon, floating behind an orangey
film, dulling its light, the Gulf swallowing its reflection. There are still
plenty of people on the sand—tangled legs on beach blankets, sandy hair, and
string bikinis. Key West, the land of lovers. As they’re heading back from the
beach, swarming like ants over the grassy dunes, he’s going against the
traffic, cleaving a path through them on his way to the pier. Its sea-bleached
rails rise ghostlike over the waving grasses. He’s almost there.
He pushes
off the sand with each step. Push a little harder, and maybe you’ll take off.
The earth will release you and you’ll be gone.
On the twilit
shore, he becomes a shadowy figure. Nameless and faceless, but he likes it that
way. He isn’t a monster anymore, just a silhouette on the beach. A salty breeze
sweeps in off the Gulf and there’s a note in it that catches in his good ear.
An acoustic sound that reminds him of a song he used to like. His eye twitches
involuntarily. The one he can see with. A grain of sand, or perhaps the angle
of the wind.
A mist is
forming on the surface of the water, rolling onto the shore. A single street
lamp sends a white spotlight onto the pier. He aims for it. He’ll cross the
circle of light and plunge again into that dim obscurity: a cloud of mist over
a dark sea where no one will see him. The lure of darkness is stronger now that
he has tasted it. The wood makes a soggy clunk
clunk beneath his feet as he walks, quicker now. The rhythm of his steps
soothes him with its normalcy.
A couple,
kissing under the light, separate when they see him. His hunched posture, his
averted gaze. Their receding footsteps as they head back to the beach. A peal
of female laughter. He passed with them to his right, so they hadn’t seen the
disfigured portion of his face. If they had, they might be frightened rather
than amused.
Her laugh
sounds familiar, if foreign. Her laughter. Emily’s. She was always laughing,
even at the end.
Outside the
circle of light, he leans heavily on the railing, staring down into the
swirling sea. A bit of foam bobs on the surface, pulling apart, riding the
slopping water, and washing up on the sand.
“I know who
you are.” A voice from off to his right.
“It’s a
small town. Everyone knows who I am,” he says without turning. It’s always
startling to him when he speaks out loud and the unfamiliar ring of his voice
meets his good ear. Everyone knows me except
for me.
“Charlie
Throne,” the woman says. “I read about you.”
He leans
farther over the railing. It’s his habit to turn his face away. He isn’t used
to being addressed on purpose and doesn’t know how to respond. She lapses into
silence but he can feel her presence beside him still. He turns quickly and looks
right at her. She’ll see his face. She’ll leave him alone.
She’s
leaning forward, forearms on the railing, chin on her arms. She looks back at
him steadily. He watches her eyes, the corners of her mouth, waiting for a
reaction, but there isn’t one. She looks bored. He breaks eye contact first. He
hasn’t been the first one to break eye contact with anyone in two years. He
keeps track. Lately, there’s no eye contact at all. Even the doctors, though
he’s pretty much done seeing them now.
There may be
something a surgeon can do, a friend had said. His eyes were trained on
Charlie’s chest, his hair, out the window, anywhere but on his face. “For a
cosmetic surgeon I know,” he said, slipping a business card into Charlie’s
hand. The good hand, of course, though he didn’t touch it more than necessary.
“Can he
raise the dead?” Charlie asked. He hasn’t seen that friend in a long time.
It was
strange at first, that awkward looking away, but it’s expected now. It’s the
prolonged eye contact that’s the strange thing. When he looked at himself in a
mirror, he couldn’t understand how anyone looked at him at all.
“It’s not
easy, is it? Living like this.” She had been staring at the disfigured mask of
his face, but she isn’t looking now. Her arms are dangling over the edge as if
she’s reaching for the sea. He glances at her left hand. No ring, but the
indentation where possibly one once sat.
“I don’t
want your pity,” he says coldly. It comes so quickly to his lips it’s like it
had been forming in the back of his throat since the beginning and he finally
let it out. He breathes out. A sound like relief.
“Why not?”
she asks. Her voice is the coo of a dove. “I would.”
He looks at
her sideways. She’s younger than she sounds, maybe his own age, with blonde
hair curling around her shoulders. It shifts in the salt air and veils the side
of her face. She has that sad expression that many women wear in the gray
region between their late-twenties and their mid-thirties. The period where
they haven’t yet reconciled to growing into women and haven’t yet given up
being girls. Emily had that look.
He presses
his chest to the railing to feel the pressure on his lungs.
The cool air
reminds him of that night. He and Emily had met for dinner downtown, right near
the taco place where he was tonight. They both worked in the Historic Seaport
area of town, but this one time they had driven separate cars because Emily had
been running late in the morning. Funny how a little impatience and a decision
like that—Charlie deciding he couldn’t wait for her that morning—becomes a
turning point. When he thought back to that day he barely remembered how
important he had thought that meeting with his newest client was for his
career, he only relived the way he grabbed his laptop and tossed her keys on
the counter. “Sorry, babe, I’ve got to go without you. I’ll meet you after
work.” They planned to come to the pier for a moonlight walk after dinner but
at the last minute Emily changed her mind, said she wanted to get home. No
reason given, and he never knew what it was. He followed her, listening to an
acoustic album he loved. Bon Iver. A sad album all about heartbreak he felt
drawn to, but couldn’t fully grasp. Not then.
He never
could remember exactly why he hadn’t seen it happen. He must have zoned out,
let his mind drift into the wordless obscurity of the music, dropping farther
and farther behind her. When her car streaked suddenly across the two lanes of
the Overseas Highway, it took him a second to register that it was her. He
swore his heart stopped as he watched helplessly: her car rolling down the
embankment and righting itself as it landed, rocking in the crease between the
road and the narrow strip of land. The water’s edge only a few feet away. It
happened like a dream. Slow motion. Silent. Its cause unclear.
The woman on
the pier reaches over and rests her hand on his. He stares at it. The soft,
white skin of her hand on the mottled flesh of his own. She wraps her fingers
around his. Two years, he thinks.
He slammed
on the brakes and skidded onto the shoulder of the highway. Ran down the
embankment, tripping and sliding on the sand and gravel. Wasted how many
seconds rushing to the driver’s side to find it crushed shut. He wrenched open
the passenger door and she was there, her limp body leaning over the console.
Her eyes filled with terror like a trapped animal. Stuck in her seatbelt.
She reached
for his hand. It was the last time someone held his hand for the sake of
holding his hand.
“It’s going
to be okay,” the woman next to him says. Pulling him out of his memory.
“It’s not
going to be okay,” he says, wrenching his hand back. He’s instantly sorry.
“You’re trying to make it seem like it isn’t that bad,” he says.
“No. I’m
not,” she says. The thrumming of the waves counted out three beats. “It is that bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s
worse,” he says.
“Exactly.”
He waits ten
seconds. Thirty seconds.
Doctors
telling him everything was going to be fine, even though nothing was going to
be fine. Family members pretending to pat him on the back but not touching him,
telling him he should move on with his life. Emily would’ve wanted that. But
Charlie wonders whether Emily would’ve wanted him if she was still around. Who
would? He wouldn’t have blamed her.
He isn’t
used to someone giving him the truth. Treating him like a fellow human being.
Then again, she’s standing to his right, the side that hadn’t taken the brunt
of the fire. From there she could see a perfectly normal ear, the smooth skin
of his neck, and if she focused on that, she would barely even notice the
melted flesh on his cheek and the reconstruction of his nose, nostrils reformed
so he can breathe. Whatever pleasure he feels in the moment, he doesn’t feel
like delaying the inevitable. So he turns, facing her head on.
“Look at
me,” he says. “Really look. I dare you.”
Her arms are
lying again on the top rail of the pier, and her body hunched over. She looks
up. Raises an eyebrow. “What’s wrong?” she asks. No grimace, no turning away.
“Look at
me.”
“I am.”
“Doesn’t it
make you sick to look at me?”
She stands
up straight, looking him right in the eye.
“Does it
make you sick looking at me?” she asks.
“Of course
not,” he says.
“Well,” she
says. Leaving it at that.
“What?”
A tear is
running down her cheek now.
“May I hug
you?” She says it softly like she’s afraid to ask for such a great favor.
They are
staring into each other’s faces and he swallows. His mouth is dry. It’s a side
effect, and this time something else.
“I . . . ”
he says, but something catches in his throat and he can’t finish. She doesn’t
wait for an answer. Wraps her arms around his waist and rests her cheek on his
chest. Something swells there in his breast. Something he hasn’t felt for a
long time. It all comes flooding back. The feelings. The memories.
He climbed
into the passenger seat and grabbed the buckle of her seat belt. The smell of
gasoline burned the back of his throat. Pulled on the buckle with his left
hand. It wouldn’t give. The left side of his body faced her. She whispered,
“Charlie,” and he turned partway toward her, her name on his lips. She laughed.
A what-the-hell-have-I-done laugh. And then a flash of blinding light. He tried
to call to her.
That was it.
That was the memory. He awoke from the coma three weeks later and finished
shouting her name through the slit cut into the bandage for his mouth.
A tear tugs
at the corner of his right eye. He can’t cry much, but the tears pinch his
eyelids and threaten to form. Sometimes he wishes they would. The woman is
still holding him, cradling him against her even though his own arms are at his
side. Slowly he raises his right arm and runs his hand over her shoulder. She
begins to sob. Great heaving sobs into his shirt.
“I
understand,” he says. “My face makes me sad too.”
She only
cries harder.
“I’m not
crying because you’re ugly,” she chokes. “I’m crying because you’re beautiful.”
She presses her palm against his chest. “Here. And you’ve forgotten it.”
Charlie
laughs. Then he stops, startled by the sound of it coming from his own mouth.
His voice sounds different, but his laugh the same. It feels the same, the way
it vibrates through his chest and tickles the inside of his mouth. It feels
good to laugh. Like coming home.
“I’m sorry,”
she says, stepping back. “I didn’t mean . . . ”
“It’s okay,”
he says.
He smiles,
but follows it quickly with a frown. He’s seen the effect a smile has on his
face. It’s not a real smile. It’s a gaping wound.
“It’s nice,”
he says, but he doesn’t finish. Being touched, he means. Kindness.
“It’s hard
sometimes,” she whispers. “Being alone. I saw you and I thought you might
understand.”
She isn’t
looking now. She’s staring at a spot between their feet, so he stares at it
too.
“I don’t
think it ever stops hurting,” he says. It’s not the right thing to say maybe,
but it’s what he thinks. It’s the truth.
“That’s
heartbreak, Charlie,” she says. “You walk away scarred. Everyone does. You just
got the worst of it. You wear your heartbreak on the outside too.”
He stands
still. Waiting. This is a turning point. At the restaurant, he didn’t know, but
when he reached the pier he had crossed a threshold into another lifetime. Like
when he jumped from his car on the side of the highway. The last moments of one
life before the start of another one. Another consciousness.
“Wait,” he
says. But she hasn’t moved. She looks up.
“You miss
her,” she whispers, touching her fingertips just under his chin. He flinches at
the unexpected touch, but doesn’t pull away. “But you miss you too,” she adds.
“And that’s okay.”
She reaches
into his back pocket and pulls out the newspaper. Scribbles something on the corner
of the sheet, and in the center of the crossword. She presses it into his hand.
“Will you do
me a favor?” she asks. “Please.”
“Anything,”
he says. He realizes that might be true.
“Remember
this,” she says. “Everyone is sadder than you think they are.”
He searches
her eyes. Searching for the subtext.
“You’re not
alone,” she whispers. Stretching onto her toes. She presses her lips gently to
his cheek. A place where he has enough feeling to recognize the action. “You’re
not alone,” she says again.
“Who are
you?” he whispers.
“Call me,”
she says. “Please.”
She’s
written her phone number on the edge of the newspaper, and her name, Olive, printed
in five squares of the crossword. Meeting Charlie’s name at the “I.” He brushes
his finger over the square. Carefully, he folds the paper and returns it to the
safety of his pocket. He gazes over the darkening beach, watching as her figure
fades into the night.
Bio: Crystal Lynn Kamm is a professional writer and a daydreamer. She writes web pages by day and fiction by night, and somewhere in between she finds time to enjoy enjoy reading and hiking with her husband and red Golden Retriever.