"What you're smelling Trent is a good thing, because it means she's not pregnant."
"What?" He exclaimed giving me a dumbfounded look. Something seemed to dawn within his eyes and his face flushed, as he emitted a comprehending, "Oh!"
He started to turn away to retreat from the scene of his humiliation, but I called out to him, "Trent you are right about something. Two things actually."
He turned back somewhat reluctantly, "What?"
I fished around in one of the packs and brought out a bar of soap, which I tossed up at him. He stared at it in the palm of his hand like he didn't know what it was for.
"For one thing you're right about, Deshavi has not been taking care of herself and could use a bath. Secondly her injuries do need to be looked at."
He stared at me, as if I'd gone crazy, "You've got to be kidding right?"
"No actually I'm not. What's the matter you've done it once before?"
"But that was different! She wasn't awake and she was dying!"
"Well she has the same body, whether it's awake or not and it needs washed. What bearing her being alive now, as opposed to dying has on the matter in question, I'm not sure?"
"Were not married!" Trent exclaimed, in a further denouncement of what I was suggesting.
"Trent I'm not asking you to make love with her. I'm asking you to do what she seems un-capable of doing right now, which is to adequately take care of herself."
His lips moved, but no words came out. Finally, he managed in a strangled voice, "Shouldn't you do this?"
I sat back from my work slightly, "I washed her in a tub up until she turned five years old. She's your girl now. Your girl, means your responsibility, which means you wash her."
I stood up and patted him on the back and pushed him up the cut to where I had seen Deshavi disappear off to earlier.
"Relax, it'll be all right."
"Yeah right! She'll likely try to kill me all over again!"
"Actually, I think you might be surprised by how she reacts. Here take these clothes along with you. She hasn't worn them yet."
I watched Trent slowly make his way up the cut like a condemned man's walk to the gallows and couldn't help but smile. The soap bar was clutched so hard in his hand I half worried that it would be pulverized by the time he reached her.
Perhaps my methods were a bit unorthodox, but my madness of thought was based on sound reasoning. Perhaps Deshavi strongest reasons for acting different were because she simply now felt like a different person, because of what had happened to her. She would soon find out that in Trent's eyes she was exactly the same person that he had been in lust over during this whole past summer.