his elbows, as if about to speak, and I knelt beside him. Reaching up, he touched my face and ran his fingertips lightly over my cheeks, lips, and eyelids. His hand had become smoother. His color was better, too, sallow rather than rusty, his head not nearly so spherical. His nose and eyes were more normal. Short, barely visible reddish hairs sprouted from his scalp. His ears were normal in size. The room fell away. Fascinated, I touched his cheek and forehead. He was not healing. This was too fast for healing. He was changing. Small sparks of alarm caught my breath. His hand on my jaw stopped, a question on his face.
“Who are you?” I whispered. “Where are you from?”
“From?” He pulled his hand slowly away, and his face went blank and still. I could almost hear him thinking. His gaze left my face and lost its focus. I leaned closer to him, touched his bare shoulder. I wanted his focus back. Fear surrendered to tenderness, a shift deep in my chest. “Are you feeling better?”
“Better.” A statement, not a question. Even his voice, far less coarse than the day before, sounded familiar. Maybe he was a local boy, his war scars making him unrecognizable.
The blanket slid farther off his shoulder. I remembered the clothes. “You should have a bath first, to get the dirt off, but these are for you.” I laid them on the blankets next to him.
He rubbed his hand along the pant leg of the overalls.
“Rest until I get the water and breakfast ready.”
I dressed, stoked up the stove, and fed the animals while he seemed to be sleeping again. I pulled the tub as close to the stove as I dared. After I filled it with warm water, I touched him on the shoulder to wake him. “Does this hurt?” I massaged his shoulder lightly.
“No.”
“You can take a bath now.”
He held my hands and pulled himself up into a sitting position. His grip was strong.
“You okay sitting up?”
“Okay.” He nodded back at me.
He didn’t seem to understand what to do next. Helping him stand was like pulling a very large, drunk child out of a low bed. He kept his eyes on me and I kept my eyes on his face so I wouldn’t have to see his naked body.
As soon as I got him standing, I let go and grabbed a towel. He swayed a little, but caught himself and planted his feet firmly apart while I reached behind him and wrapped the towel around his waist. I pulled his arm over my shoulder. We were the same height. He teetered awkwardly.
“You must have been on a real bender before you got here.” His hapless nakedness made me giddy.
He turned his head, so close now I could smell the clean, sweet odor of his breath, and gave me a blank, patient look.
“Just joking,” I said. The second step, which got him to the edge of the tub, was smoother.
“Get in,” I told him. “It’s warm, it’ll feel good.” But he only turned his head and regarded me with that pale-eyed gaze again. I reached down and lifted one of his legs, easing it slowly into the warm water. He let out a sharp “ahhh” of surprise as soon as his foot touched the water. I startled, afraid it might be too warm. But then he beamed a sweet, wide smile as if I’d just given him a whole tub of blackberry jam.
Once he got both feet in, he just stood there. I had to help him sit. In what I took for modesty, he left the towel on when he went down into the water. He sat in the tub smiling, waving his hands in the water, but not making any effort to bathe himself or take the cloth I held out. So I began to bathe his arms and shoulders very gently. He watched my face and hands, all the while smiling at me. A sweet odor rose from the water. He smelled like a newly mowed summer lawn. He sighed and shut his eyes. I sensed that odd sound again, the soothing resonant chime. I touched his chest. He opened his eyes wide, and the sound changed timbre and pitch. I could feel its vibration through my hand.
I took my hand away from his chest and forced myself to move around behind him to wash his back. The scarring was there, too. My throat clenched. I needed words to counter what