Critical Injuries (7 page)

It doesn't seem to Isla that she could get much more stable than she already is. Immobile must be just about as stable as stability gets, short of death. She frowns, or thinks she frowns, intends to frown, at him.

Still, once again he said “we.” Here he sits, with his face full of grief, his heart surely likewise.

Still again, he can say “we” all he wants, but he's not the one, is he, with part of a bullet in his spine, vertebrae damaged with paralyzing results.

“Paralyzed?” she inquires.

He does not meet her eyes. “For the time being. But like I said, try to be patient. Get yourself strong. Then we can find out a whole lot more than we know now. Have some answers.”

Be very careful with questions, she remembers again. Because the answers may not be the desired ones, or even bearable. That true thing she learned with James, and which she learned well, right into her bones, and which may now constitute something like a motto, or a creed.

“It's a good sign,” Lyle goes on, “that you can speak. It means something to do with lungs being more or less okay. And that your face muscles work a bit, that's good, too. I mean, you can do things like blink. You could even,” and how sweet and hopeful he looks, “probably smile, if you wanted to.”

She can also narrow her eyes, she believes. He's lucky she can't raise herself off this bed. “What the hell do you think I should smile about?” is what she would like to say. “Why?” is all she can manage. Enough to make him look embarrassed.

But he is here. He is trying. She should be grateful for that.

No. Gratitude is pitiful, she cannot reduce herself to that. Neither can he, in the long run.

There can't be a long run. This doesn't happen to her, to people like her.

But it does. All the time people get plucked, randomly as far as anyone can see, out of the relatively untroubled crowd and plopped into true disaster. Why not her?

Because. Because is there not some sort of quota on catastrophe? And has she not already had hers, Lyle, too? Because she was just getting started on joy again, has only had a few tempered years of it, really, with him. So who's keeping score here, some sadist who doesn't count or assess very well? She would shake her head in disbelief, except of course that's one of the many, many things she can't do.

Well then, what can she do? She can rage. She can remember. Some rare and special shocks stay resolutely in the present — something else she learned from James. The electric knowledge about him still has enough voltage to surprise her over and over again. People speak of earth-shattering moments and may mean anything huge or atrocious. Massacre, they may mean, or murder, hurricane, birth, revelation. Revelation in some almost-biblical, certainly apocalyptic sense. Judgement day. Like a bullet.

Now the moment just inside the door of Goldie's Dairy Bar. Apocalypse for sure.

Softer, more elusive events get recalled for no particularly obvious reason: a conversation, a movement, a colour, a shape; others because an internal directive says,
Do not forget. Remember exactly how this moment is.

She has to believe this is temporary. She has to bend herself in that direction.

So when she's back up on her feet, she will have to remember this: that even merely treading through an ordinary, predictable, regular day is a blessing. She will have to keep in mind —
be mindful of
, as Alix has taken to saying — what she had that she earned and deserves and desires, and has for this moment lost.

She will set herself to remembering to remember all this. It's a small project, but in this circumstance it's almost a miracle to have any kind of project at all. This is one she can get her teeth into; if she could feel her teeth, if she could sink them into anything. For the time being she can bare them, smiling, at Lyle, like the wolf in Red Riding Hood's grandmother's bed but looking, she really does hope, somewhat kinder.

A Simple Plan

They keep asking what happened. “Tell us what you did, son,” says the bigger, older one. He's the same one who, out in the field, as Roddy stared up at impassive dogs and into the stars, happy as hell, suddenly appeared at the edge of his field of vision, arms outstretched and rigid, in his hands a gun aimed right at Roddy.

“Don't move, son,” he said. “Just stay perfectly still. You understand what I'm saying? Tell me you're not going to move a muscle. Right now. Tell me.”

“Okay,” Roddy said.

“Hold,” said another voice, and the two dogs shifted away, out of view. They didn't go far. He could still hear them breathing.

The other guy, younger, knelt carefully beside Roddy, eyed him warily. He passed his hands carefully, remotely, all over Roddy's body. He nodded at the bigger guy, who said, “Okay now, stand up, real slow.”

It was like he was old. It was almost painful, rolling slightly and getting his hands and feet in position to push himself up. It didn't help that while he was still sitting, the younger guy took his hands and pulled them behind him and fastened his wrists together. There was no click. The binding felt like plastic, not metal. Roddy guessed things were different than they were on TV. The cop took one arm and lifted it upwards. Roddy almost bounced when he hit his feet finally.

The other cop, the one who called him
son
, stepped back. He was still aiming his gun: a black hole. Roddy wanted to say nobody needed a gun, but he thought maybe he shouldn't say anything. He couldn't tell what they might do. He wasn't scared, exactly, because this couldn't be happening, it wasn't real enough for fear. Just, it was so strange, out here in the field in the night, the young cop holding a flashlight on him like this was a stage, a spotlight, a play.

“Let's move.”

Returning through the fields to the road, two flashlights now directing their steps, wasn't easy. Especially with his arms behind him, it was hard to keep his balance, not stumble. In this small way the fields, their slight humps and hollows, their hidden pitfalls and stoninesses, became strange to him; unfriendly.

The two cops grunted now and then, one on each side of him and slightly behind. He could hear the hard breathing of the bigger, older one, and the dogs padding along. Nobody spoke. Nobody spoke when they got to the car, either. The younger cop put his hand on top of Roddy's head as he eased him into the back seat, braceleted and alone.

The roads looked like new country, like nothing he'd ever travelled before. The outskirts of town, the rows of houses, the street lights, everything might as well have been in some other country, in Europe maybe, where he'd never been. Passing the corner of the street that led to the street where he lived right up till a few hours ago, he thought, “Grandma's there, a block away, right this second, and my dad,” but it felt like where they really were was in a parallel universe.

Anyway, where they really were was at the police station: his fat, distressed, red-eyed grandmother, his pale burly father. They rose off their chairs the same way the same second, like they were tied together, like they were puppets. Except then his dad stood still, while his grandmother took a step towards Roddy. But the cops said, “No,” and guided Roddy right by, each of them holding one of his arms. He didn't even try to look back. What was the point? They were here, but they must think he was nobody they knew.

Now he's in a room with the two cops and some other guy his dad called in to be his lawyer. The guy told him, “You don't have to say anything, I suggest you don't say a word.” Roddy just shook his head.

When the cop says, “Tell us what you did, son, tell us what happened,” Roddy isn't silent because he's refusing to speak. He's silent because he has no idea what to say. It was so clear before, when it was only a plan.

The woman. Her face. Mike's voice, finally. Too late, the way everything was too late, like time got out of synch and for a few seconds things were happening backwards, or inside out.

Now he's back in time, but it's a whole different time.

“Where'd you get the shotgun?”

That'd be easy. It's his dad's. His dad takes a week every year and goes hunting with a bunch of guys from his work. He never shoots anything, though. He probably tries, but he never hits anything.

Not like Roddy. Suddenly he's very cold again, and shivers.

“You got something to put around him?” his lawyer says. “A blanket? I don't think he's well.”

“No shit,” says the younger cop. “And no, we don't.”

The lawyer shrugs. “If he's sick, if he gets sick, it's on your watch, you know. On your shoulders. In fact I'm not sure we shouldn't be calling a doctor. He could be shocky. That could be dangerous.”

“Get him a blanket, Tom,” says the older cop.

Roddy's attention swings from one man to another. It's like watching a play. Mr. Siviletti, Roddy's English teacher, just about the only teacher Roddy likes, says every word in a play is supposed to do something. Move things ahead somehow. It doesn't seem to Roddy as if this talking among the cops, the lawyer, is getting anyone anywhere. On the other hand, he has nothing, himself, to add. It's not like those moments out in the field, though. It's not like he's happy and wants everything to stop right now so he can keep on being happy. The lights are too bright, the chair too hard, the faces, even his lawyer's, too harsh.

He thinks all this started, in another, innocent lifetime, with Mike and him, at the start of summer, sitting around the pool at the park. They were making their plans, or dreaming their dreams, whatever. They were at the pool but not in the water. It was a cool day, so they were wearing sweatshirts and jeans, just hanging out, more than anything.

Mysteries and longings build up. Which means other things need to end. Mike said, “If we wanted to leave in September, how could we get enough money by then?” Roddy's almost sure it was Mike who said that, although it could have been him. They talked about leaving a lot, back and forth.

They would have an apartment in the city where Roddy came from in the first place. They had a high-rise in mind, someplace that looked out over miles of bright lights. Roddy liked the idea of a high-rise. It seemed clean and glamorous to ride an elevator to get home, to go out. They would get jobs of some kind. The lights alone would keep them dazzled. There would be alleys and streets, bars and concerts, new people. Girls. That was one of the main things: the great sinuous, mysterious, welcoming variety of girls there would be.

But Roddy didn't know how they would get there, either, two or three months down the road. He must have supposed something like magic. He had odd-job commitments for things like mowing lawns, weeding gardens, and imagined that could add up. Mike was working his second summer of shifts at Goldie's. His mother was a friend of the woman who owned it. “The money's shit, though. Even minimum wage practically kills her, like, when she hands over my money, it's like I've been stealing it off her. Pisses me off. It's not like I just stand around. If there's no customers we're supposed to clean the floors and the storeroom, even dust the shelves, and man, if you don't get it all done, she'll really light into you.”

“Yeah, well, at least you've got a job. You know what you're making, anyway.”

“But you're working for yourself. And, you know, if you're getting paid by the hour, all you have to do is mow real slow, right?”

Mike was joking, sort of. Roddy said, “Yeah, right.”

“The thing is, either way, we're neither of us making real money. Not enough, anyhow. We gotta figure out something better, or we'll never get out of here.”

They fell into gloomy silence. They often did. The thought of never getting out of here was unbearable, although there wasn't much that was actually bad they could point to. Just, being so restless was in its way actively, acutely painful. It hurt.

Mike's never had to start over. He's always lived here. His idea of a new life was that it would be totally new, almost like he didn't expect to have memories. To Roddy it seemed that yes, everything about it would be new, but also a variation on how his life should have gone in the first place, if nobody'd had to move, if he'd got to stay where he started.

Everything would be different than it was here. They'd be free, mainly. Roddy thought he might even decide to look different, under those different circumstances. “Maybe I'll grow a moustache,” and although Mike snorted, he also nodded, as if he knew what Roddy was talking about.

It wasn't just that he was not looking ahead in any clear fashion, it also now seems to him he was not looking back very well. Sure it was irritating sometimes, living at home, and lately his grandmother's been getting more impatient than she used to be, and he's been more impatient back. Like, how often did he have to say, “It's nobody's business, just mine”? The
it
being anything from whether his homework was done to where he was going, or where he had been. “Out,” he said. “Nowhere.” And if his father spoke ten words a day to either of them any more, Roddy'd be surprised. Like he'd run totally out of words, and all he had left were those pats on Roddy's shoulder as he passed by, the affectionate skidding of his hand over Roddy's head.

But look: there was his grandmother bandaging his knees when he was a little kid falling down, there she was reading to him when he was home sick from school, there she was in the heat of the kitchen, baking up something sweet, there she was saying, “Feel like a round of cribbage, Roddy, before you go out?”

There were her eyes, looking wounded, and her lips getting tight when he wouldn't talk, or when he snapped at her. Really, she hardly ever snapped back. She mostly made a habit of turning away. What he sees now are her shoulders, her back: bent a bit under his weight.

Feeling bad made him want to be someplace where he didn't have to feel bad.

What a jerk. What a dumb asshole.

It is suddenly clear to him — and he sits up straighter on the chair, startled by this abrupt, certain knowledge — that he and Mike wouldn't have left. They would have gone back to school in the fall, and kept on building their word-pictures of the future, and it would have stayed the future, on and on, until, maybe, the time really did come. He'd have graduated from high school. His grandmother and even his dad would have gone to his graduation. He's never exactly at the top of the class, but he's nowhere near the bottom, either. They would have taken pictures of him. He and Mike would have had double dates for the party afterwards. He would have worn a dark suit. His grandmother would have had tears in her eyes. She's always getting tears in her eyes for one thing and another, even sometimes sentimental TV commercials. She says, “A bit of a weep makes me feel better, is all.”

Now she's been weeping for real. He must have been insane for a couple of months, in a dark, cool, closed sort of way. Like he could only feel his own skin and pictures; like he was hunched in a chilly, rough box all by himself, inside his own head. Like there was nothing outside it.

Now, in the light, he has blood on his hands. He looks down at his unshackled hands. There are actually tracings of blood, although it looks like his own, from the scratchings and stumblings of his wild pell-mell run.

His hands have hardly ever done anything, really. A few times they've touched a girl's breasts, that's about it, a few tense, nervous dates that have gone more or less well, but promised much more, with freedom. His fingers have wrapped themselves around lawnmower handles and rakes, turned pages, done dishes. He has nice fingers, long. They've hardly been used.

One of them curled tight on a trigger, though. He'd cut it off, if he could, if it would unmake what happened.

“I'm a kid,” he would like to tell these men. “It doesn't count. I didn't mean it. Doesn't it matter that it was just stupid and I didn't mean it?” He can see from the spareness of this small room, from the bright light, from their faces, that it counts, all right.

Right about now he was supposed to be in his room, in bed, the money safely tucked away underneath. He was supposed to take it straight home, and after everything calmed down in a couple of days, Mike was supposed to come over and they'd say they were going to watch videos in Roddy's room and then they'd finally pull out the money from under his bed and count it and figure out how long it would last them in their new life. “We won't be able to take off right away,” Mike said wisely. “That'd look suspicious. All we have to do is keep on doing what we usually do for another few weeks and we're free.”

They made solemn promises not to betray each other, and not even to hint their intentions to anyone else. They pledged not to do anything dumb, like get tempted to spend even a dollar, and to split the money right down the middle, although Mike wouldn't have any of it till they left. It would be dangerous, obviously, for him to be anywhere near it.

Those were easy promises. They wouldn't dream of screwing up for some stupid reason like using any of the money for a movie, something like that. Neither of them would be tempted to take more than his share. That was the sort of thing they were sure of, just because neither of them could imagine it any other way. They've done a lot of stuff together, they know a lot of things about each other.