Bright Orange for the Shroud (25 page)

So die right here, McGee. Cheat the bastard out of that much. But maybe, with a light, he can follow you. Torn and flattened grass. Wetness that could mean you leave blood. Maybe it’s as obvious as the sheen a snail leaves on a sidewalk. And Boo would act with the same jolly and intensely personal manner, giving death the same intimacy as assault. Now what’s ol’ Boo found hisself here? My, my, my.

I tried the dead arm and it came up slowly, as remote from me as those coin games where you look through glass and work the claw to pick prizes out of the bin of candy. It steadied, outlined against the double images of the stars. I put the good hand up and took hold of it. No feeling in the skin, like
taking a stranger’s hand. But when I squeezed it a bone ached announcing identity.

So scrabble on, this time getting a partial use of it, a slight helpful leverage of elbow. Then, when next I rested, I heard a clumsy thrashing and stumbling coming toward me. I felt more irritation than alarm. A damn fool way to go busting and blundering through the night. It came on and was going to pass me, ten feet away, and I saw it, the shape and posture of the doubled silhouette familiar.

“Arrar,” I said in a voice I’d never heard before. It stopped him. There was something loose and sloppy and wrong about the right side of my mouth. I firmed it up with effort. “Arthur.”

“Trav?” he said in a nervous whisper. “Is that you?”

“No. It’s just one of us gophers.”

He felt his way to me. “I … I thought you were dead.”

“You … could be right. Gemme
outa
here!”

He couldn’t carry me. It was not the kind of terrain to drag people across. We got me up, with fumbling clumsiness, dead arm across his shoulders, his left arm around my waist, dead leg dangling and thumping along between us like a sack of putty. It was damned high up there. Like standing on the edge of a roof. And he kept coming close to losing me when we’d get off balance. He would brace and heave and I would manage a little hop on the good leg. Several weeks later, we came upon the car. During the final fifty feet I had been able to swing the dead leg forward, sense the ground under it, lock the knee and lurch forward on it. He fumbled me into the passenger side of the front seat. I slumped, resting my head on the seat back. He went around and opened the door and got halfway in and stopped. The courtesy light shone down on me. I rolled my head and looked at him. The double image slowly
merged into one and then separated again. Double or single, he wore a look of horror.

“My God!” he said in a thin high voice. “My God!”

“Get in and close the door. He shot me in the head.” I had to speak slowly to make the right half of my mouth behave. “It isn’t supposed to make it pretty.”

He piled in, anxiety making him breathe hard, fumbling with the ignition, saying, “I got to get you to a doctor … a … doctor …”

“Hold it. Got to think.”

“But …”

“Hold it! How much time’s gone by?”

“Since you.… It’s quarter of two.”

“Took you long enough.”

“Trav, please try to understand. I … I went after you a long time ago, when you didn’t come back. I sneaked over there, like you said. I got into the side yard, behind a tree, looking at the house. I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t know what to do. And all of a sudden he came around the side of the house, in sort of a springy little trot, grunting with effort and he … he had you over his shoulder. He passed the light from a window. Your … arms and head were dangling and bouncing all lose and dead. And … he trotted right to the car and stopped short and gave a heave and you … fell into the car, in back. He didn’t open a door or anything. You made such … such a thud, such a dead thud. He stood there for a little while and I heard him humming to himself. He opened the trunk and got a blanket or something out of there and leaned into the car, apparently covering you up. Then he went back into the house. Lights started going out. I heard a woman sobbing like her heart was breaking. And I … couldn’t make myself
look at you. I crept away. Please understand. I got far enough to run, and ran back to the car, and started up to Palm City to get Chookie like you said. I went very fast, and then I went slower and slower. I pulled off the road. I wanted to come back. I tried. I couldn’t. Then I went all the way to the marina, but I stopped outside the gates. I’d have to tell her what happened. I’d say it was the only thing I could have done. But it wasn’t. She’d know that. I couldn’t face her. I couldn’t come back. I wanted to just run away. I turned around and came back, and it took me a long time to make myself get out of the car and … come looking for you. The only way I could do it was telling myself he was gone, he’d driven away with you. Trav … is he gone?”

“He’s still there.”

“How did you … get to where I found you?”

“I crawled. Arthur, you came back. Hang onto that. It can be worth something to you. You came back.”

“Why is he still there?”

“… I guess it’s the hospitality. Shut up. I’m trying to think.”

“But maybe … we’re waiting too long,” he said. “I should put you in the hospital and call the police.”

“You have a very conventional approach. But shut up.”

When I had it worked out, I had him drive east on the Trail into the empty night land of cypress, billboards and roadside drainage ditches. With no traffic from either direction, I got the automatic pistol. I had to keep my right hand folded around it with my left hand, and give the trigger finger a little help. I emptied it into the wilderness. On the way back to the hospital, I coached him carefully.

He parked near the emergency entrance. He helped me
walk in. Double vision had become infrequent. The life in the dead arm and leg felt closer to the surface. Now they felt as if I had a thick leather glove on the arm, fitting firmly to the armpit, and a similar stocking on the leg. It was a trim little hospital, and they were doing a big business. The staff was trotting around. Fresh blood dappled white nylon. Doctors and relatives were arriving. Somebody in the treatment room kept screaming until suddenly it stopped, too suddenly. A woman sat weeping in a chair in the corridor next to the check-in desk, a red-eyed man clumsily patting her shoulder. Arthur made ineffectual attempts to attract attention. I got a few absent glances from staff people until finally a harried burly nurse hastened by me, skidded to a stop, came back and stared at me, lips compressed with concern. She got me over to a chair, down to a level where she could look at my head.

“Gunshot,” she said.

“Yes indeed,” I said.

“It’s all we need,” she said. She grabbed an orderly, told him to get me bedded down in Trauma Room C right away. I was there five minutes with Arthur standing by before a young, squat, redheaded doctor came swiftly in, followed by a tall, narrow, pock-marked nurse. He pulled the light down, hunched himself over my head. His fingers felt like busy mice, wearing cleats.

“How long ago?” he asked Arthur.

“Three hours, approximately,” I said. He seemed a little startled to get the answer from me.

“How do you feel right now?” he asked me. “Shot.”

“We’re not in the mood for smartass remarks around here tonight. Seven local young people were in a car that didn’t
make a curve north of here about three-quarters of an hour ago. We lost one on the way in, another here, and we’re trying like hell to keep from losing two more. We’ll appreciate cooperation.”

“Sorry. I feel mentally alert, doctor. I’m not in pain. When I first regained consciousness, I had double vision, and no feeling or control in the whole right side of my body. The symptoms have been diminishing steadily, but my right side feels … leaden, as if every muscle had been strained.”

“Why has it been so long, and how did you get so messed up?”

“I was alone. I had to crawl to where I’d be noticed.”

“Who shot you?”

“I did. It was an accident. A very stupid accident. That gentleman has the gun.”

“Outside the city?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll get a deputy over to make out a report. It’s required.”

He turned the overhead light out, shone a pencil beam into each eye, taking his time. The nurse took pulse and blood pressure, and I gave my name and address. Redhead went out and came back with an older doctor. He looked me over, and they went over into the corner and I heard some of the words they feed Ben Casey. One is practically television cliché. Subdural hematoma.

The older doctor left. Redhead came back and said, “You seem to have your luck with you, Mr. McGee. The slug hit right at the hairline at such an angle it grooved the skull but didn’t penetrate, traveled about a full inch under the scalp, and then, probably tumbling after impact, tore free. A sharp blow on the so-called funnybone can numb the hand. The left hemisphere
of the brain controls the motor nerves and sensory nerves of the right half of the body. We feel that a shock of that severity could well have stunned and deadened the synapses on that side, the nerve functions, the ability to originate and transmit orders to the right side of your body. Sensation and control are returning so rapidly, we feel you should be back to normal feeling and use in a day or so. I see no clinical evidence of concussion, but there could be a rupture of small blood vessels in the impact area, and slow bleeding. So we’ll keep you here a few days for observation. Now the nurse will clean the wound and prep you for a little stitching.” He got a hypo, held it up to the light. “This is just to deaden the area to save you discomfort.”

He pricked me twice in the scalp and once in the left temple area and went away. The nurse tested, and when I could not feel her touch, she cleaned and shaved the area. She went and summoned the redhead. I could hear, inside my head, the sound as he pulled the stitches through. When he drew them tight, I could feel the pull in my left cheek and temple. When the cleaning had started, Arthur had gone into the hall. Not until the antiseptic dressing was in place did he come back in, looking queasy.

Then they rolled me down the corridor to what seemed to be a combination treatment room and storage room. Bright lights were on. The deputy got up when I was wheeled in. He was elderly, florid, heavy and asthmatic, and he licked his indelible pencil after every few words he wrote on the form in his clipboard. I swung my legs over the side of the wheeled stretcher and sat up. There was a mild wave of dizziness, a momentary recurrence of double vision, and that was all. He
put the clipboard on the foot of the stretcher and hunched over it.

“Got the name off the records. Let’s see identification, McGee.” He took my driver’s license and copied the number on his form. For local address, I gave him the name and registration number of my houseboat and told him where it was docked.

“Scalp wound, self-inflicted,” he said. “Accidentally self-inflicted, Deputy.”

“Weapon?”

Arthur handed it over. He took it with the familiarity of the expert, pulled the slide back and locked it back, checked chamber and clip, sniffed the muzzle, then pushed the clip ejector. It doesn’t work. I’ve been meaning to have a gunsmith fix it. You have to pry it before it comes loose.

He fiddled with it and said, “Jammed in there.”

“That’s how come I got shot, Deputy.”

“You carry this around on your person?”

“No sir. I’d have to have a permit to do that. I keep it in the car or on the boat. What happened, I had it in the car, and I wanted to get that clip out. I thought it would be safer to empty it first. So I drove off the Trail down a little road, away from any houses, and fired it until it seemed empty. I didn’t count the shots. Then, let me take it a minute, I sat down on the door sill of the car where I could see by the dome light what I was doing. Like a damn fool I held it this way to get the slide back. My hand was sweaty, and I guess there was a misfire on the last one in the chamber. But it fired when it got a second chance. Next thing I knew, I woke up on the ground beside the car. When I felt able, I decided the best thing to do
was try to crawl back to the main highway. It numbed my whole right side. But that’s going away now. You see, Deputy, my friend here was making a long-distance call from a roadside phone booth. He was having trouble getting it through. I got bored. I thought I’d just get off the highway, empty the pistol and get the clip out of it. It had been on my mind. I told him I’d be back in a few minutes. When I didn’t come back, he thought I’d gone down a side road and got stuck in the mud. He looked and looked, after he got through phoning. I guess it was the third road where he found me, almost all the way back out to the highway.”

“Third road,” Arthur said. “So I walked in and got the car and brought him right here. I thought he was dying.”

“He don’t look dead. But them kids out there do.” He bounced the pistol on his broad tough hand, handed it to Arthur and said, “See he gets it fixed, mister.” He left.

I slid off the stretcher. Arthur started toward me to help me and I waved him back. In cautious balance I plodded slowly around the little room. I had to pivot and swing my hip to get that leaden leg forward, but with the knee locked it took my weight.

My lightweight jacket was a ruin, dirt, rips and grass stain, slacks not quite as bad, but bad enough. I balanced and took the jacket off, checked the pockets, tossed it to Arthur and pointed to a porcelain can with a lid worked by a foot pedal. He balled it up and stuffed it in. A blank doorway led, as I hoped, into a little washroom. With the dull clumsy help of the reluctant right hand and arm, I got the mud off my face and hands, the dark scabs of dried blood on the left side and the back of my neck. I used a damp towel to scrub down the right side of my slacks, the side I had dragged. I studied myself
in the mirror. I didn’t look like a disaster case. I looked as if I had been rolled in a waterfront alley. The dressing was too conspicuous.

“They’ll clean you up when they put you to bed.”

“Hat,” I said. “Go right when you go out this door and find another way out of here. I tossed the hat on the shelf behind the backseat of the car. And get back to me with it the same way you get out. And fast.”