Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 42.

The moon was a thin sliver in the sky. There were no headlamps moving in either direction; no house lights lit the fields. Not even Winnemac showed his spotlit head. I was alone in that black part of Minnesota.

Still, I cut the headlamps a half mile before the cottage and coasted to a stop. I wanted to come up to the Taylor house on foot. In case Darlene had returned to finish her beans.

There was just enough moonlight to show me the edge of the road. My feet made no noise as I hurried along the hard clay.

Then there was a light, off the road ahead, to the right.

It was faint and flickering, barely visible in the darkness. I moved forward slowly until suddenly the light disappeared.

I’d gotten to the front of the Taylor cottage. The light was flickering from the back, and was now blocked by the front of the house. It was candlelight I’d seen; the house didn’t have electricity.

The realization tingled at the back of my neck. I didn’t want to wonder what such a hellishly poor place had done to Darlene Taylor, living out her nights in such blackness, so far out of town, and so alone. With only a candle to keep away the dark.

There was no car on the rutted drive. Whoever was in that cottage had been brought there, or had come up as I had, on foot.

I crouched down and moved around the side of the house to the back. I remembered the three windows. The dim, flickering glow was coming from the middle of them. The kitchen window.

The kitchen window I’d rubbed, to see through. Whoever was inside would know someone had been there.

That couldn’t be helped now. I stayed low as I passed beneath the first window. At the one in the middle, I eased up slowly for a look.

The plate of beans was still on the porcelain-topped table, but now the stub of a candle, guttering, had been stuck in the center of it.

Something rustled low, ten, twenty feet away.

In that instant, I understood. A candle stuck in a plate of beans, not for a light but as a beacon, to draw someone who should not be there.

I caught my breath and turned.

A flash lit the darkness, followed by an explosion. My right side went hot. I’d been shot.

I turned, to run. The wound in my side had a thousand tentacles, each one clutching a dagger. Pain in my legs now, pain in my arms; too much pain to run. I fell.

Then he was on me. His boots kicked at my arms and my head. I rolled onto my right side, trying to protect the wound. He kept kicking, again and again. I raised my left arm, to fight off the blows. He kicked it down and danced back, a black shape crouched against the charcoal sky.

I rolled away, somehow got to my feet. He came at me low, breathing heavily. He was tiring. I slapped out with my left hand, hit his head, caught his hair. It was oily, greasy, and long. My right side was on fire, but there’d be more pain, more bullets, if I let go. Death would come.

He thrashed away.

I turned, to run. It was all I could do.

His hands were too fast. He caught me around the waist. The hard metal of the handgun beat at the wound on my right side, once, and again.

Enraged at the pain, at the life that was leaking out of me, I beat at the side of his face with my left fist. Something crunched. Maybe his nose, or his cheek. He screamed. It was the loud wail of an animal. I swung at the sound of him. He moaned. His hands let go. He fell.

He still had the gun.

Hugging my right arm against the blood at my side, I began to run. Each footfall sent an iron rod of fire into my right side. I wanted to scream at the jarring and the pain, but to cry out would draw him right to me in the dark. My only chance was to reach the trees back of the fields before he recovered enough to come after me.

After a minute, after an hour-time was lost; there was only pain-I found a tree, then another. I was in the woods. I clutched at their thin, spindly shapes, one to the next, finding my way deeper into the woods with my good left arm.

The darkness would hide me, if I stayed quiet.

I heard something, stopped and held my breath. He was thrashing nearby, loud. I tugged off my belt and cinched it around my left hand, metal buckle dangling a foot at the end. It was the only weapon I had.

His footfalls faded, and then they were gone. I started up again, careful to feel ahead of me for the next tree. He could have stopped, to strain for the sound of me.

Each step was a new hammer blow to the wet wound in my side. Pain was good, I had to believe. Pain would keep me moving. I would live if I could do the pain.

A tree root seized my foot, and I fell hard to the ground. Panicked, I lurched up. He’d heard me now. I started to run, hit a tree, went down. I bit at my lip until I could taste blood, but I made no noise. I got up, went forward.

A hundred more times I fell, got up, and fell again. Then I had no strength to get up anymore. My whole right side was drenched, wet down to my shoes. Maybe there was no more blood. It was all right. I would lie still, and the darkness would keep me.

Someone came, and took my good left hand. I had no strength; I could only breathe. My arm jerked, there was an explosion-and then the person went away without helping me at all. I wondered if I’d been shot again, and was supposed to bleed to death, in those black woods.

I had the thought that I should laugh.

Surely there was no more blood.