Badwater

41

“Holy crap,” Hap said.

I looked up. I’d been tugging on my boot, which was caught under a crosstie. Clumsy. Amazed to be alive.

Hap moved to the storage bin and grasped Roy Jardine’s dangling left wrist. He fingered the pulse. He shook his head.

Relief flooded me as blood poured out of Jardine. He hung over the lip of the bin. His arms draped down as if reaching for the submachine gun he had dropped on the rails. His head was bent, showing the crown. His black ponytail hung down, funneling blood.

“Come help,” Walter yelled.

Walter was kneeling uptunnel over Oliver, who lay with one knee bent. Looked like Oliver, too, caught a boot. I yanked my boot free. Hap turned from the bin and helped me up. As we rushed forward my headlamp caught a dime of blood on Oliver’s khaki shirt front. Oh no, I thought. No no no.

Walter freed Oliver from the sling of his gun and laid the weapon on the ground. I glanced back at Jardine, at the subgun on the rails. Oliver and Jardine had shot each other.

Walter snapped, “Do something, Hap.”

“Don’t have my gear.”

I came alive. “I’ve got first aid.” I unslung my pack.

“Needs more’n first aid.” Hap knelt and put his hands on Oliver’s chest, which rose and fell fitfully. He ripped open the shirt, exposing the hole in Oliver’s gut, just below the rib cage. There was a seep of blood, almost no blood at all compared to the stream draining from Jardine.

I knew that meant little but I held onto it nonetheless.

Walter passed Hap gauze and tape from the first aid kit. Hap’s long fingers danced around the wound, patching it, and then suddenly traveled up to Oliver’s neck to find the carotid.

I went cold.

Hap’s fingers moved again, up to Oliver’s face, and pulled back an eyelid.

I watched, fixated.

Hap sensed me. He looked up, like he was taking my measure in preparation for a sketch. But he does not draw faces. He draws hands. I could not help looking again at Oliver’s face cupped in Hap’s hand. Hap wore a ring on his right pinkie.

I turned to look at the storage bin, shining my headlamp at Jardine’s dangling hands. He wore no rings.

When I turned back to Hap, he had released Oliver. “Nothing more I can do.” Hap’s hands had disappeared into the capacious pockets of his parachute pants.

It didn’t matter. I knew what I’d seen. It was a flat-headed gold ring and the signet bore the engraving of a desert scene. I’d seen Hap sketch that ring in Walter’s room, when he drew Roy’s hands.

“Then here’s what we’re going to do,” Walter said, getting to his feet. “We’re going to make a sling out of our shirts and we’re going to carry Mr. Oliver outside and phone for help.”

“Okay,” Hap said.

I thought, Hap must have taken the ring from Roy, when he checked Roy’s pulse. But why? Some kind of souvenir?

Walter was already unbuttoning his shirt. Hap put his left hand flat on the floor, preparing to get to his feet. His right hand remained in his pocket.

I stood, fingering my top button. I suddenly took note of Hap’s shirt. Last I saw him at the Inn, he’d been wearing Homer Simpson. But now he wore Blinky the three-eyed mutant fish that lives downstream from Homer’s nuke plant, where the water’s contaminated. I suddenly didn’t like it that Hap had changed shirts. Why’d he do that? I always change into a dress before I testify in court. Walter puts on a tie. Hap changes into Blinky. And now he puts on Roy’s ring. Why’s that? Hap caught me studying his shirt. He winked. He smoothed it out and took his right hand from his pocket and scooped up Oliver’s subgun. He leveled the muzzle up at me. “You can keep your shirt on after all, Buttercup.”

I still gripped the top button. I could not get my fingers to move, one way or the other.

Walter froze, half out of his shirt. “What do you think you’re…”

“Think I’m giving y’all a chance to cooperate.” Hap got to his feet and backed against the far wall, where he could cover us both with the flick of a wrist. He ducked into Oliver’s gun sling. “Finish taking off the shirt, Walter.”

“Hap,” Walter said, evenly, “let’s think this through. Whatever your plans, you can let us go. We won’t try to follow you. I give you my word.”

“Don’t rightly know the worth of your word.”

“It’s solid.”

“Take off the shirt.”

Walter, stiff, removed his shirt. His bare chest showed the rails of his ribs.

“Cassie, go get it.” Hap tracked me with the subgun. “Now bring out your pocket knife and cut the sleeves off at the shoulders.”

I glanced at Oliver.

“He won’t be needing it.”

I’d been clutching the hope that we were still making a sling to carry Oliver.

Walter said, “He could die without help.”

“Can’t carry him,” Hap said. “Not where we’re going.”

I asked, faint, “Where are we going?”

Hap pointed the gun downtunnel then recalibrated it on me.

I made clumsy work of the sleeves.

“Now shut the knife, wrap it in one of the sleeves, and toss it to me.” My toss was wide; he had to reach. “Cassie, you want to be more careful.” He pocketed my knife and draped the sleeve over his shoulder like a tailor. “Now use your sleeve to tie Walter’s hands behind his back. Take off your wristwatches, first. Don’t want anything interfering with a nice clean knot.”

We undid our watches. Piece by piece, we were losing our tools.

“Make it a square knot. Don’t want no sneaky taut-line hitch. I know my knots — scout’s honor. You know your knots, Cassie?”

I nodded. I’d earned that badge. I tied Walter’s wrists with a true square knot but I looped it loose.

Hap moved in to check. He slid a finger into the knot. “Aw Buttercup.” He shook his head and laid the gun butt across my back.

The blow knocked me to the floor.

Walter swore.

There was a thud and a grunt and Walter came down beside me.

I lay stunned, as much from the shock as the pain, because against all good sense I’d held onto the idea that a man who’d run saline through my veins had a strain of humanity running through his, that Hap would not penalize us for trying, but I came to my senses and saw there was no scout’s honor here.

Hap climbed onto my back and tied my wrists with a boyishly brutal knot.

Then he moved to Walter.

I kept stupefied watch. This EMT runs terror through the veins and cuts off oxygen to the brain. I feared the effect on Walter. Another mini-stroke. And then Walter, like Oliver, could not be carried.