Renewal 6 - Cold by Jf Perkins

 
     
     
    Renewal 6 – Cold
     
    Chapter 6 – 1
    Terry woke to the light brushing of a hand on his shoulder. His neck was stiff from lolling to the side, propped as he was on a hard wooden bench. He blinked heavily and remembered. It was late afternoon. He was sitting in Bill and Aggie Carter’s living room, in what he considered the most public room of the house. He remembered choosing the spot out of courtesy rather than comfort. He had slept in this house before, but he still felt like a stranger, a relative newcomer to the scene.
    He looked up to see Aggie smiling down at him. “Come on, Terry. Let’s get something to eat.”
    Terry nodded blearily, and got to his feet. His first movement demonstrated that it wasn’t just his neck. His entire body was stiff, verging on soreness, and he got his first taste of the letdown that comes from the end of a hard mission. He had been wound up tightly for days, and only now was his mind stepping down from the heightened state of awareness and adrenalin, revealing the fatigue underneath.
    He followed Aggie into the kitchen, where she had already prepared a meal and arranged it on the kitchen table by the broad window overlooking the crop fields of Teeny Town. The table and chairs were a striking contrast to the earthen style of the kitchen. He sat down in the chair Aggie offered, and absently ran his fingers along the bright aluminum trim that bound a tabletop of pink Formica, flecked with green. Privately, Terry thought it was hideous, but he was willing to overlook the table in favor of a bowl of chili sprinkled with diced raw onion and some kind of crumbly white cheese. Aggie sat down across from him and grasped a steaming mug of herbal tea. Terry had no way to identify it over the rich aroma wafting from his bowl.
    “Go ahead, Terry. I’ve already eaten.”
    “Thank you,” he replied, and picked up the heavy spoon.
    Aggie missed nothing, it seemed. “You know, this table came from my childhood home. It belonged to my grandparents first. They gave it to my parents, right after I was born. This was the table where I ate Fruit Loops in a highchair. And yes, it’s ugly.”
    “Well, as long as it’s not here for decoration...”
    Aggie laughed. It was a rich, mellow sound that made Terry smile automatically. He felt proud for having gotten that response. His humor was a protection of sorts, but it felt risky to use it around the wife of the center of his new world, and he was forced to admit, the mother of a certain redhead.
    “Give me some credit for taste, Mr. Shelton,” Aggie said, still chuckling.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he replied between rapid mouthfuls.
    “So, word has it that you were a big part of the success in Nashville.”
    “I see it more like I was a lucky part of the win. I had no idea what I was doing for most of it.”
    “And yet you did it very well...”
    “It was all very fast. I just did whatever flew in my face.”
    “Well, Mr. Modest, you know my main interest. What happened with Bill?”
    Terry set the spoon in his empty bowl. “I was on the river docks in Nashville, and I couldn’t get the boats free. I was trying to cut them loose from the dock when a whole bunch of bad guys came out the door of the building. I saw Bill step out into the open to attack them, and I was just sort of watching it happen. Then the other bad guys came out of the boat on the far side of the barge and started shooting at me. I dove off the end of the dock to get out of their fire, but I remember thinking that Bill needed help. I scrambled up the bank. It felt like I was taking forever, like I couldn’t move. When I got over the edge, I saw Bill get hit and this weird noise went off in my head. Sort of like a gong sound...” Terry paused at that point, giving some thought to the sound in his head.
    “Go on...”
    “Well, it’s hard to explain. Everything slowed down. I remember wondering where my rifle had gone. It seemed like a long time before I remembered