Wounded

FOURTEEN

WE DROVE EVERY BACK ROAD we could find while there was light and Gus finally asked me, “What do you plan to do with what Elvis told you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to tell the sheriff?”

“I don’t know. I do know that it’s a little dark to be messing around up in that canyon now,” I said.

“I’m going up there with you,” Gus said. “I know you. That’s why you didn’t head straight there.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m going with you.”

We headed west toward home. All we had gotten for our efforts was tired and I was more than a little discouraged. In fact, I was terrified, but too much in shock to actually feel it. As we rolled down the hill to the house I saw an unfamiliar car and only then remembered that Howard and Sylvia would be there. I set the brake and looked over at Gus.

“Here we go,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“Not so well,” I said.

We climbed out of the truck. Morgan came out onto the porch. Howard and Sylvia hung back inside the doorway. Morgan gave me a sympathetic touch on the shoulder and I stepped inside.

“Sylvia, Howard,” I said. “I wish I could say I’m glad to see you.”

“Any news?” Sylvia asked.

“No.” I looked to Morgan. “Any calls?”

She shook her head.

“Well, let’s sit down and I’ll tell you what I know. I’m sure Morgan’s told you everything, but you’ll hear it again.”

I sat with Sylvia and Howard in the kitchen and told them the story. Morgan and Gus went about the business of feeding the horses and checking the water. Sylvia was in shock. I could tell she would have cried if any of this made sense. Not the how of it, but the why. Howard was uncharacteristically quiet, until I glanced at him following a prolonged silence.

“You want to blame me for this,” he said.

I didn’t understand.

Sylvia was confused as well, looking from Howard to me, but she spoke up. “What are you talking about?”

“Tell her, John,” Howard said.

I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

Howard looked at Sylvia. “I came here for New Year’s to see David and we got into a fight. He ran out and got lost in the snow. John had to find him.”

“He was fine,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s why he needed a doctor.” Howard was yelling at himself, looking to hurt himself.

“A doctor?” Sylvia tried to catch up.

“I came here with Pamela, the woman I’m planning to marry.” Saying it embarrassed him.

This was news to Sylvia and it made her cough up an involuntary laugh, then her face went blank. “What about David? A doctor?”

“We had a fight, an argument, like I said, and he ran out in the snow and nearly froze to death. He was drunk and I was drunk and, yes, it was my fucking fault.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked away.

“That has nothing to do with this,” I said.

“What if he’s just disappeared to get some attention? Maybe he’s okay, just out there waiting for the fuss.”

“Shut up, Howard,” Sylvia said.

“Tell me it’s not a possibility,” Howard said. “Look me in the face and tell me it’s not a possibility, Sylvia.”

“It’s not a possibility,” I said. But I was lying. As much as it was unlikely and I didn’t believe it, it was, in fact, a possibility and probably one considered by the state policeman, McCormack.

“What do we do?” Sylvia said.

“You wait,” I said.

Howard huffed, a sound suggesting that he had stumbled on a way to understand it all and a way to blame someone other than himself, namely his son. I didn’t like him right then any more than I had during our last meeting, but I did understand. I understood how fear was making his mind work.

“Shut up,” Sylvia said to him again.

Morgan and Gus came into the mud room and kicked off their boots. Gus used a towel to wipe the dogs’ feet and let them go.

Howard reached down to pet Emily. His yelp went right through me. The coyote had ripped his hand open with her teeth. It bloodied quickly. He held it to his chest and rocked back and forth.

“That son of a bitch bit me,” he said.

“Let me see that,” Morgan said. She peeled his good hand away and looked at the wound. “It’s not bad.”

“Has it had its shots?” Howard asked.

“Yes, she has,” Gus said, showing no sympathy and certainly no concern. He called Emily and she followed him into the next room.

I relaxed back into my chair. I didn’t have the energy for any kind of fuss. The dog had bitten Howard and that was that. There was nothing to do about it. There was no training that was going to happen that night. I didn’t know what had frightened the dog to make her bite, whether it was the way he had reached down to her or his smell, his voice. The truth was I felt like biting him, too, and I recognized that as my way of dealing with the fear.

I returned to talk of David, telling Sylvia and Howard about the Jeep and where it was found, while Morgan dressed the wound. “I’m going back out tomorrow to look some more.”

“Can I go with you?” Sylvia asked.

I shook my head. “You’ll slow me down and I’ll be worrying about you,” I said. “I’m sorry to be so blunt.”

“I understand,” she said.

I was telling the truth, but not how she understood it. I would have been so occupied with her concern that I would not have been focused. More importantly, I expected trouble. I expected things the next day to be ugly.

“We’ll wait here,” Morgan said.

“It’s better if you wait around here in case someone calls,” I said. I looked at Morgan as she finished the bandage. I imagined her sitting around the house all day with the two of them, awkward silences and hard words, fear and nervousness.

Gus looked at me and said, “I’m going to bed. You go to bed, too. You can’t be good at searching if you can’t see.”

I nodded.

Gus left the room.

“Gus is right. I am going to bed,” I said to Sylvia and Howard.

“I’ve put Sylvia in the back room and Howard in the study,” Morgan said. She gave me a nod of support.

“Make yourselves at home,” I told them.

“I’ll be right up,” Morgan said.

That night Morgan and I lay in bed and we could hear the arguing whispers of Sylvia and Howard. I wondered what that car ride from Denver had been like for them. I knew how scared and upset I was, but I could not imagine their fear and confusion. Morgan stroked my forehead.

I didn’t believe I could sleep, but I did. I awoke before sunrise and found Morgan still awake, still touching my brow.

“Didn’t you sleep?” I asked.

“No. I wanted to be sure you slept.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I know, sweetie.”

But she couldn’t know all that I was scared of. I was afraid of what I might have to do. I sat up and looked out the window.

“I’ll make some coffee.”

“Thanks.”

We dressed and walked down the stairs to find Gus in the kitchen with Sylvia. Coffee was already made and waiting.

“Did you get any rest?” Morgan asked Sylvia.

Sylvia shook her head. “I didn’t try.”

I looked at Sylvia’s face. I had always liked her and really could never see her married to Howard. “I’m going to find him,” I said. “I promise.” The promise felt fat and thick in my throat and I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but I was more promising myself than her. I was convincing myself that I would find David, but I still blamed myself for his being missing.

As we rolled away from the house in the truck, light just finding the sky, Gus commented on how bad he felt for Sylvia and Howard. Then he apologized for the coyote biting Howard.

“I probably have been a little lax on the training.”

I waved him off. “Emily’s fine,” I said. “She did what she’s programmed to do when she’s scared. Howard was scared, so she got scared.”

In town, the deputy Hanks was just getting out of his rig as we drove by the station house. I rolled down my window and called to him.

“Any news?” I asked.

He looked cold, maybe nervous. “Bucky was planning to call you this morning,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“McCormack is cutting off the search,” he said, flatly, then looked as if he shouldn’t have spoken.

“Why is that?” I felt hollow.

“I guess he doesn’t think we can find him. Mr. Hunt, we covered damn near the whole desert. We didn’t even find a track.”

I didn’t say anything. Gus was looking away out his window.

“What’s the sheriff say?” I asked. “I mean, does he agree with McCormack?”

“I guess. Listen, he’ll tell you himself. He told McCormack about that guy getting lost in the woods and McCormack listened. Just talk to Bucky.”

I nodded and watched the lanky deputy walk away.

“Mouse Canyon?” Gus asked.

“Mouse Canyon.”

Mouse Canyon was on the northern edge of the reservation. A narrow, rugged canyon, it was dry enough that no one cared to go there. Part of it had burned ten years ago and no one had gone to put out the fire. The new growth was thick and low. There was a small creek that managed to flow year round, but supported few fish, probably because of ranching, but no one remembered there ever being fish there. The road was deeply rutted, but not terrible, perhaps because of the lack of traffic and perhaps because the county didn’t attempt to maintain it. I had seen the line shack that Elvis described long ago and knew that it was well up near the end of the road. I wondered how anyone could get a BMW up there. A quarter-mile up the road that question was answered.

“Why are you stopping?” Gus asked.

I pointed.

“What?”

Look harder. I got out of the truck and Gus followed me. The BMW was dressed in a green car tarp and covered with branches, fairly well hidden. I looked at the road. “Look here. Dually tracks.”

“It would seem they’re at home,” Gus said.

We climbed back into the truck.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked the old man. In fact, I believed he was more up to it than I was.

“Just drive.”

I recalled that the cabin was well up the canyon, so I stopped about a mile in. I turned to Gus and said, “I want you to stay here.”

“Why?”

“If I’m not back in an hour, go get the sheriff.”

I climbed out of the truck and reached in for my rifle. I studied Gus’s face and waited for his argument, but none came. “You okay?”

He nodded.

“Let me have that roll of duct tape from the jockey box.”

He handed me the tape.

“Thanks.”

“An hour,” he said.

“Then you go for help.”

I walked away up the road and didn’t glance back at him. The sky was cloudless and blue. I unzipped my jacket, then felt for shells in my pocket. My heart was racing, but all this seemed correct. Sometimes things were just simple, I thought. The people you expected to do the bad thing did the bad thing. I believed the rednecks had done something to David and I was going to find out. Maybe I should have called the sheriff, but I didn’t know whom I could trust.

Not quite a mile from my truck I heard the thumping of a motor, a generator. I approached through the brush and saw the cabin. It didn’t look as run down as I’d remembered. A black dually pickup was parked in front next to a defunct propane tank. Smoke came from the metal pipe chimney and was carried away from me with the wind. Then I became concerned that being upwind they could smell me. I realized I was thinking too much. I ducked down as I spotted the flash of a head in the window. I asked myself what I was doing there. The scene felt surreal. It wasn’t so much that I was scared, but I didn’t feel like I was standing on anything. I moved to the rear of the house and listened, but all I could hear was the generator. I kept low and made my way around the side to the front corner. I stood erect and was startled by a man. It was the larger of the two men with whom I had fought. He was holding a toothbrush in his hand. He started to back away.

“I wouldn’t run,” I said, leveling the barrel of my rifle at him. “I just wouldn’t run.”

“What—”

“I wouldn’t talk either,” I said. I shook my head. “No sounds. Throw down the toothbrush.” He did. “Now turn around and remember that there’s a rifle aimed at your back.”

I followed him into the cabin.

“That was quick,” a man said to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

I stepped inside.

“What the fuck?” This was another man I had never seen. The shirtless man moved toward a counter near him and I fired a round through the metal roof. He stopped, stood straight. He had red hair and a red beard and a left sleeve of tattoos. His right arm was bare.

“Sit around the table,” I said. “All of you. Now.”

“Nigger, you done fucked up now,” the wiry man whom I had punched said. “You done fucked up bad.”

They sat in the wooden chairs and I walked around the room. On the far wall was large Nazi flag. There was a pistol on the counter, a.357. I flipped open the chamber and let the shells fall onto the floor, then I tossed the gun through the window, breaking the glass. I took the roll of tape from my pocket. I nudged the back of the smallest man’s head with the tip of the barrel. “Okay, weasel, tape up your friends. Start with the redhead.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

I poked him with the tip hard. He cried out and I did it again.

“Hey, fuckwad,” the redhead said. “We could just rush you. You can’t shoot all three of us with that thing.”

“I think I can,” I said. “But if I don’t we’re going to be slipping around fighting in your friend’s blood and brains.” I poked the little guy again. “Take the tape.”

He took it, then stood, rubbing the back of his head. “Tape their hands together behind their backs, wrap some around their arms and strap their feet to the chair legs.”

“I’m going to kill you, you fucking nigger,” he said, as began taping his running buddy instead of the redhead, but I let him continue.

“You’re not much for talking your way out of a mess, are you?” I said.

“What do you want?” the redhead asked.

“I’m looking for a friend,” I said.

“I’ll be your friend,” the little one said. He was finished with the first man and moved to the redhead.

“You know this is going to go on your permanent record,” the redhead said.

I smiled and nodded.

The small man stood up and away from the table. I gestured for him to have a seat.

“Are you going to put your gun down and tie me up now?” he asked.

“I think I’ll just let you sit for a while. So, have you men seen my friend? He’s about twenty, brown hair. A white guy.”

“Haven’t seen him,” red said.

“Are you sure? I ask because I believe this watch on the counter is his.”

“My mother gave me that watch,” the little man said.

“That’s a lie,” I said. “We all know you didn’t have a mother.”

“I think you should put that rifle down and tie me up,” the weasel said.

“Yeah,” said the man I’d met outside.

“Where is my friend?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” from the redhead. “I ain’t telling you shit.”

“Your friend is a fucking pussy,” the weasel said. “He didn’t even fight back. ‘Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me.’ Fucking faggot. At least the other faggot fought.”

I was lost in anger. But I knew now that they had, in fact, taken David. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead and I was sick about it. I didn’t know what to do next, what to say it, how to say it. I’d exhausted my tough-guy act.

Gus entered the cabin.

“Fuck me,” the redhead said. “What is this? Nigger heaven?”

What happened next was and still is a blur. I recall a flash and a loud pop and the red beard expanding and breaking, the chair falling over, the weasel sliding across the floor to the wall and Gus, standing there, a.45 in his hand.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” the remaining tied-up man kept saying.

“Nephew,” Gus said, “tape that piece of shit to a chair.”

I grabbed the weasel by his hair and pulled him to a chair, started wrapping him up. I was slowly coming to my senses, understanding what had just happened. “You killed him,” I said.

“It would seem so,” Gus said.

The little man still hadn’t said anything while his friend kept saying fuck.

“You killed him, Gus,” I said again.

“I’ve got two left,” the old man said.

At first I thought he was talking about bullets, but I then realized he meant the men. Gus’s face was tired, hard.

Gus pointed his pistol at the weasel’s face. “Where is David?” he asked. “You’ll tell me or I’ll shoot you. Then I’ll point the gun at your buddy. Where is David?”

“He’s up the canyon,” the man said.

“Alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where up the canyon?” I asked, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the dead man, his face flattened in his own blood.

“There’s a trail just after the creek that leads to a hole in a big rock. I think somebody blasted out a place to keep supplies or something. He’s in there.”

“He’d better be,” Gus said. “If my nephew comes back here alone, I’m going to shoot you. Do you understand?”

“That’s where he is.”

I looked at Gus. He blew out a breath, then leaned against the wall. He was sick.

“Go,” he said.

“How far away is the trail?”

“A mile maybe. But he’s probably dead. Jesus, man, don’t shoot me.”

“Was he dead when you left him?” I asked.

“No.”

“He’d better not be dead,” Gus said.

“Where are the keys to that truck?” I asked the weasel.

“In the ignition.”

I ran out to the dually, climbed in and drove up the canyon, looking for the creek. I saw it, stopped, and walked back and forth looking for the trail. When I finally saw it, it was clear to see and I wondered if all of this was making me blind. I couldn’t believe that Gus had shot that man. Then I couldn’t believe that I had put myself in a place where I could have shot him. I didn’t know what was going to happen. How were we going to explain the death of a bound man?

I followed the trail across the frozen creek and, about a hundred yards in, saw the depression in the big rock. It opened like a cave, but was obviously the result of blasting. It got dark pretty quickly, but it wasn’t pitch. I didn’t have a light and so I moved slowly, letting my eyes adjust as I went.

My foot hit something. Not a rock. It was a body. I didn’t think, I just grabbed the legs and dragged the body to the opening and the light. It was David and he was beaten badly. His eyes were closed, his mouth pulp, but he was breathing. He was breathing. I untied his hands and feet. I talked to him, but I couldn’t tell if he could hear me. His arm was badly broken, bending off at a bizarre angle once untied and I tried to straighten it over his chest. He was bruised and bloody everywhere and I just knew he was bleeding inside. I started to cry. I didn’t know whether to leave him and get help or try to carry him to the truck. I couldn’t leave him, I decided. I simply couldn’t. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. I dragged him as gently as I could back along the trail and across the ice to the truck. I struggled with his limp body and got him into the bed.

I drove back to the cabin and found Gus nearly asleep as he leaned against the wall. The men were still tied and Gus still held the pistol, but he looked bad.

“Gus, come on, I’ve got David in the truck.”

“You can’t leave us here,” the weasel said.

Neither Gus nor I responded to him or even looked his way. He was still shouting when we were outside.

Gus took control of the situation again. “Drive us back to the truck,” he said. “I’ll ride in the back with David.” He whistled as he observed the man. “They did a number on you, son.”

I drove us back to my truck.

Gus said, “Let’s put David in the cab. He can’t ride in the back. It’s just too cold.”

We gingerly moved David from the bed of the dually and over to the seat of my truck.

“Do you want to get in on this side or through the driver’s door?” I asked Gus and realized I was shaking.

Gus gave me a hard look and I felt the differences in our years and experiences. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Take David to the hospital. Tell the cops you found David anywhere but here or near here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just do it. We don’t have time to argue.”

I got into the truck and looked at David, slumped over, his head almost to my thigh. He looked so bad I couldn’t believe it. I started the truck and made my way out of the canyon, holding him as still as possible with my right hand. I pulled the truck out onto the highway and picked up some speed. The blood matted in David’s hair was dark and angry.

At the emergency room, David was taken away from me and I called home and then the sheriff. I sat in a stiff plastic chair and waited. Bucky arrived within minutes, sat beside me.

“How is he?” the sheriff asked, pressing his back into the chair. I was actually impressed that that was his first question. I was expecting him to immediately want to know where I had found him.

“He’s in bad shape, Bucky.”

We sat for a few seconds.

“Want to tell me where you found him?”

I’d been constructing my lie all the way to the hospital. “Believe it or not he was lying in a ditch about ten miles west of town. Between here and my place. I wasn’t even looking yet and there he was.”

The sheriff blew out a breath, then bit at his thumbnail.

“He’s been beaten really badly.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He wasn’t,” I said. “I don’t know about now.”

There was a haze between us, but I sensed that he didn’t believe I was lying or somehow didn’t care. The latter made little sense to me.

We sat and waited.

“How is your uncle?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

“I guess McCormack will be glad to hear David turned up,” Bucky said.

“David’s parents are driving here with Morgan,” I said.

He nodded.

We waded through some more silence.

“I hope he’s okay,” Bucky said.

“Me, too.”

“Alongside the road,” he said.

“In the ditch.”

Morgan, Sylvia, and Howard came through the doors just as the doctor came out to talk to me.

“The young man suffered massive internal injuries,” the doctor said.

“How is he?” Howard asked.

“The beating he took about his head.” The doctor paused. “There was a lot of trauma to the brain.”

I could see how upset the doctor was. She was not used to this sort of thing and I thought as I watched her that no one should be.

“He’s gone,” she said.

Sylvia crumpled and I caught her. Bucky backed away from the scene. I reached out and took Howard’s hand. Morgan was crying and we locked eyes. She whispered that she loved me, then looked away.

“I want to see him,” Sylvia said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the doctor said.

“She’s right,” I said.

“Who could do this?” Sylvia cried.

Sylvia and Howard sat in the plastic chairs and shared their grief.

“Where’s Gus?” Morgan asked.

“He’s around,” I said.

We all drove back to my house in Morgan’s car. Morgan put Sylvia to bed and Howard sat in the kitchen staring at a bottle of wine he refused to open. I kept wanting to leave and go back to find Gus, but I didn’t say anything. Morgan came into my study and closed the door.

“Where’s Gus?” she asked.

“Over by the reservation,” I said. “That’s where we found David. Gus killed a man today. I think he’s up there killing all of them.” I found it odd how easily those words came from my mouth.

“Oh, my god.”

“He told me to lie to the sheriff, but what sense does that make? I’ve got to go back up there. I should have gone from the hospital.”

Morgan was stunned. She didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know how to have it make any more sense for her. It made no sense to me.

A truck slid to a stop outside. Morgan and I got up and stepped out onto the porch. Gus was getting out of Elvis Monday’s pickup. Gus was unsteady and I ran over to support him. I glanced into the truck at Elvis, asking with my eyes just what was going on.

“How is the boy?” Elvis asked.

“He died,” I said.

Elvis looked straight ahead out his windshield. “I am sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, directly.

“Talking is over,” Gus said.

“This is the frontier, cowboy,” Elvis said. “Everyplace is the frontier. Take care of your uncle.”

I nodded and stepped away.