Chapter 4

Well, at least he’s stirring.

It’s been most of an hour, and I still have no idea what to do. I tried the phone but it’s dead, and there’s never been a decent cell signal up here, I’m dependent on the damn land-line. Internet’s out too, of course; same phone line.

I meant to be isolated, but I guess not quite this damn isolated. Especially with Mister No-Spikka-da-English here hurt and me pretty much clueless about medical stuff.

Well, not completely clueless. I read somewhere that when somebody has a concussion it’s not a good idea to let them go to sleep, so at first I tried to wake him up. I shook him and I yelled at him and then, because it worked before, I even went out and got some snow and rubbed it on his face.

It all got me a big nothing. He was breathing regularly, but there was no waking him up, he twitched a little when I did the snow thing but that was as good as it got.

By then I was getting pretty worried; I damn well don’t want him dying on me right in the middle of my living room. But there didn’t seem to be much I could do if that was what he had in mind, so I just shoved it out of my head.

And went and made some soup. Chicken soup.

OK, not exactly “made”; I opened up a can, poured it out, added water like the directions said and stuck it in the microwave. I’d lost power along with the phone, of course, but the generator out back was chugging away nicely and would keep on chugging as long as I remembered to add gas every twelve hours or so, and I had plenty of gas.

Why chicken soup? Maybe there’s a little Jewish mother in every woman, and I felt a bit stupid while I was doing it, but it seemed like a good idea to have something for when—I hoped!—he did wake up. He’d got pretty chilled, he was hurt, and chicken soup is supposed to be the panacea for sick people.

Since then I’ve just been sitting here watching him. Waiting. Like waiting for the jury to come back. The way I did—

I realize that this is the first time I’ve thought about that for an hour or more. It’s the ­longest I’ve gone without those thoughts since I got here. But before I can get seriously back to my funk he starts to move, and now maybe we’ll see.

He moves a little and tries to sit up, but whatever it is in his chest catches him again and he sinks back. I go over and hold out my hand to help, and between us we get him into a sitting position. I leave him there and go for the soup, zapping it a few seconds more and pouring it into a mug.

When I turn to take it over to him he’s still sitting and looking around, and his eyes are very wide. He’s still disoriented, I think; he acts like nothing at all he’s seeing is even a little bit familiar.

I hand him the mug of soup. He takes it hesitantly and has a sip, looks a little—well, both surprised and happy—and downs the whole thing.

“More?” I ask, pointing to the empty mug. He nods his head and gives me the mug, and I get him a refill. He drinks that too; then he looks at the bottom of the mug and sets it down on the floor beside him and looks at me and says something I can’t even begin to understand.

I shake my head to show I don’t know what he’s saying, and he speaks again but this time v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Why do we always do that when there’s a language barrier? I mean, Greek is Greek whether you speak it fast or slow or in-between.

But it’s not Greek, it’s not French or German or Russian or any other language I’ve ever heard. I’m no linguist, maybe a bit of Spanish though not much more, but mostly you can recognize at least a little of what somebody’s saying if you listen close, and I don’t get any of this. Chinese? Arabic? Swahili? But he looks fairly standard Nordic, why would he speak only those? And how did he get here in the middle of North America without a damn word of English?

Well, never mind, time to go to basics. I point to myself. “Linda,” I tell him. Might as well start on a first-name basis.

He gets it immediately; I guess I need to re-think the disorientation. “Lin-da,” he repeats. He points to his own chest. “Oo-go,” he says.

“‘Hugo, ‘“ I say after him. “Well, nice to meet you, Hugo. But I think you’re hurt, how about let’s take a look.” He’s been using only his left hand for everything, and I point at the right side of his chest that he’s been favoring.

I help him up into the chair, where I can get at him better. He acts a little funny about it, but we get him there. Then I make a motion that he needs to take off his vest.

He gets that, too, and tries to respond, but then he stops with a grimace; he needs two hands, and moving the right arm hurts him. I see where he was going, though, there are little fasteners in the front of the vest. They’re kind of oblong bone buttons through buttonholes in the fur, I reach over to help him, and work the buttons back through the holes until they’re all undone.

Jesus Christ, what a bruise! He’s got to have some busted ribs in there, no wonder he’s hurting. I look at him and raise my eyebrows. “What happened?” I ask.

He starts to speak, but when he sees I don’t understand he gestures instead, something coming at him. My God, was he hit by a car? But why didn’t I hear the car? And how could a car be driving by in this much snow anyhow? “Car?” I ask anyway; the word’s pretty international. He doesn’t pick it up, though. Then with his left hand he reaches up and makes a motion to his head, and moves his head.

An animal of some sort, I think he means. He’s miming horns. Moose, maybe, or elk, I guess they could do this.

He got clobbered by a moose? What the hell was he doing, trying to mate with it? Moose run away from people, not at them.