Wink of an Eye

by Lynn Chandler Willis

  “You’re doing your science project on sinkholes? During your summer vacation?”

  “I wanted to get an early start. And sinkholes are pretty cool.”

  I glanced over at him. “If you say so.”

  I found Averitt McCoy’s street and decided it was going to be a grand day indeed—the little house was the only house on a dead-end, unpaved street. No nosy neighbors wondering why some guy in a van was taking pictures of McCoy’s driveway. There were a couple rotting barns and abandoned outbuildings scattered around the end of the road, but other than that, McCoy had the whole road to himself.

  The truck, an older model Ford, was parked near a small side stoop leading into the house. I parked along the road, grabbed my camera, and hopped out. Tatum and I walked along beside the driveway, not wanting to disturb any tracks. “Do not touch anything, you got it?”

  He nodded and followed my every step.

  Last night’s storm dropped just a spattering of rain, so the tracks were still very visible. I spotted two different sets; I assumed the smaller set was from the department’s cruiser and the larger ones from his truck.

  I took several shots of the tires, the truck, and the tire tracks.

  “Gypsy…” Tatum was at the back of the truck, staring into the bed.

  “What?”

  He slowly raised his arm and pointed to the bed.

  I walked around to where he was standing and saw what he was pointing at.

  A yellow nylon rope was tossed into a heap at the back of the bed. Tatum just stood there, staring at the rope, seeing things in his mind he didn’t need to see again. “Why don’t you go get back in the van?” I said, imagining the thoughts and images flooding his head at that moment.

  He moved slowly back to the van carrying the weight of the world on his scrawny shoulders. I went around to the side of the truck and peered over into the bed. The rope had definitely been cut. One end was frayed, the other still sealed with factory glue.

  I called Rodney on his cell. “I think I found the rope they used to hang him with.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Averitt McCoy’s. There’s a nylon rope in the bed of his truck. One end’s been cut.”

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “Rodney, I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this sort of thing a few years, you know.”

  “I know … but, Jesus, Gypsy. Let me see if I can get a warrant.”

  “You don’t need a warrant—it’s in plain view. Just get over here and tag it yourself. You’re on duty, right?”

  “What if McCoy comes home for lunch?”

  “Then maybe he’ll offer us a sandwich. Just get over here, Rodney. And bring an evidence bag.” I gave him the address, then hung up.

  I checked the time on my cell and it was close to eleven o’clock. I hadn’t considered McCoy coming home for lunch. Of course I hadn’t expected to find a key piece of evidence lying in his truck bed, either. I went back to the van and drove to the end of the road. I then pulled the van around behind one of the old barns.

  “What are we doing?” Tatum asked.

  “I don’t know if Averitt McCoy comes home for lunch and if he does, he’s probably not expecting guests. Stay here.”

  I got out and crouched beside the barn and waited for Rodney, or McCoy, praying they didn’t arrive at the same time. A few minutes later, Rodney’s cruiser turned onto the road. I stepped out and flagged him down, directing him to pull in behind one of the outbuildings. The poor guy was already red-faced and frazzled.

  “You know we’re trespassing,” he whispered after he got out. “You’ve got Tatum with you?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t planning on finding the freakin’ murder weapon. You got the evidence bag?”

  He nodded. “Evidence bag, gloves, and department camera. I wasn’t sure we could use your pictures.”

  I sprinted toward McCoy’s truck, with Rodney in tow. Rodney handed me the bag and gloves, then took a couple pictures from the back of the truck of the pile of rope in the bed. I asked him to get a wide shot of the rope that also showed the decal on the back window of the cartoon kid taking a whiz. With the gloves on, Rodney then reached over the side and gathered the rope, dropping it into the evidence bag.

  “Let’s get outta here, Superman,” I said.

  A satisfied grin spread across his face. We were within a few feet of the barn when I heard a car turn onto the dirt road. I shoved Rodney behind the barn, then dove headfirst out of the way. I knew how to take a dive, drop and roll, all that avoiding-disaster stuff, but every ounce of knowledge left me. “Ouch,” I groaned, spitting out a mouthful of west-Texas sand.

  “You okay, man?” Rodney’s famous words.

  I’d live. I reconsidered when I heard the ominous rattle. It was a Western Diamondback coiled and ready to strike.

  “Holy shit … don’t move,” Rodney whispered.

  Don’t move? Was he fucking crazy? It all happened so fast. I was scrambling to get the hell away when I felt the white-hot pain rip through my ankle. “Motherfucker! I’m bit!” I was on my back, kicking frantically at the sand to put distance between myself and the pissed-off viper.

  Rodney started firing and emptied a clip into the ground before actually taking out the rattler. The snake exploded into blood and guts.

  I don’t know who was more frantic: me, Rodney, or now Tatum. “Where’d he get you?” Rodney asked, on the verge of hyperventilating.

  “Ankle,” I screamed, unashamed of the panic surging through me faster than the deadly venom. The pain was more intense than anything I’d ever felt in my life.

  “It was the mailman,” Tatum said. “The car—it was the mailman. It wasn’t McCoy.”

  I threw my head back and screamed out again in unadulterated agony.

  “Gypsy, you’ve got to stay calm!” Rodney was yelling as loud as I was screaming. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

  “You need to wrap it near the puncture wound,” Tatum said, the only voice of reason. “Like a tourniquet, but not as tight.”

  “We can use the tape on your ribs,” Rodney said, grabbing me underneath my arm to help me sit up. He jerked my shirt up and Tatum ripped the tape from around my chest.

  My entire body was on fire. I felt like there were a million bees trapped underneath my skin, stinging from the inside out, pushing their way to freedom.

  As Tatum wrapped the tape around my calf, Rodney pulled me up. “Come on, come on…,” Rodney said, hurrying Tatum along. “We’ve got to get to the ER.”

  I started to hobble toward the van but Rodney was heading toward his cruiser. “You can’t drive. You’re either going to start throwing up or you’re going to pass out.”

  “I’m not leaving the van! Do you know how much equipment I’ve got in there?”

  “Well, I can’t leave the cruiser.”

  “I’ll drive the van,” Tatum said. The kid was in it before either of us could object.

  Rodney hurried me to the cruiser, mumbling something about getting fired. He loaded me into the backseat, then yelled at Tatum to stay close behind him and not to stop for anything. He hit the lights and siren when he got out to the main road.

  He keyed the department radio. “Dispatch, this is Officer Walker, car 416. Notify Kermit Regional ER I’m on my way in with a rattle bite to the left ankle. Victim is a thirty-eight-year-old male, in good health. No known medical conditions. ETA six minutes.” He clicked off the radio then glanced over his shoulder at me. “You hanging in there? Man, you’re sweating.”

  “I think I’m goin’ be sick.”

  “Ahh, Jesus.”

  My head was spinning. Every nerve in my body had turned into a raging inferno. I tried to remember everything I could about rattlesnake bites but kept coming back to amputated limbs, multiple surgeries, useless muscles, organ damage, and death. I did remember the mortality rate was something like less than 5 percent, which was a good thing I supposed. I wasn’t ready to die. I had lunch pla
ns with Claire. I kept repeating the 5 percent statistic to myself; it kept me from screaming.

  I heard Rodney punch a number into his cell phone. “Hey—I don’t want you to panic, but call your mom and see if she’s on duty. I’m on my way to the ER with Gypsy. A rattler got him on the ankle. Rhonda, calm down. It was a big snake and their venom’s not as powerful as a young snake’s. I’m hurrying, Rhonda. I’m pushing ninety now.”

  I thought of Tatum behind us in my van and thought I really was going to be sick.

  A minute or two later, I was slung from one side of the backseat to the other as Rodney whipped into the hospital parking lot on two wheels. He pulled up outside the emergency department, where a small platoon of trauma personnel were waiting. I was pulled from the backseat and thrown on a gurney in one fluid motion. Rodney ran alongside the stretcher giving the doctor the lowdown on the killer snake as they rushed to a treatment area.

  “It was about four-and-a-half-feet long, Western Diamondback. I only saw one puncture site. Left ankle.” He was covered in blood. My blood.

  The next thing I heard was my mother burst into the room, her panicked voice more unsettling than the oxygen tube they were cramming up my nose. My mother doesn’t panic. She was over me, her worried face in full view, brushing the sweat-drenched hair from my forehead. “It’s goin’ to be okay, Gypsy. We’re mixing the antivenin now.” The quiver in her voice betrayed the comfort she intended.

  Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

  The pain was beyond excruciating. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The hit I had taken to the nuts was small potatoes.

  “Does he have an advanced directive?” someone in scrubs asked.

  Sweet Jesus … use the fucking paddles! Shove whatever you need to down my throat. I have lunch plans with Claire!

  “Pupils are constricted,” one of the techs said. “BP’s eighty over sixty-four, pulse rate ninety-two.”

  Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

  “Cut his clothes off and start a double line IV. Let’s get an IM injection of Dilaudid in him,” the doctor ordered.

  A minute later I was butt naked with only a cold sheet covering parts my mother hadn’t seen since I learned to pee in a toilet.

  “He’s wearing a St. Christopher. Should we call a priest?”

  Hail Mary, full of grace … blah blah blah … Jesus Christ … why couldn’t I remember that simple prayer? Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

  A tech who needed more practice was butchering my arm with an IV until my mother jerked it away from him. She jabbed it in the vein on the first try. It took her less than a few seconds to get the second line in.

  “Let’s get two more vials of CroFab antivenin up here stat,” the doctor said.

  I lifted my head just enough to get a glimpse of my ankle. It was already swollen to three times the size of the other one. I had blue lines from a ballpoint pen drawn across my lower leg, monitoring the level of swelling and time notated. My toes looked like short, stubby sausages.

  My stomach lurched. I instinctively tried to roll to my side—I’d had my share of booze-induced nausea—but between the IV, the oxygen tube, the blood pressure cuff, and the small army of scrubs working feverishly around my leg, I couldn’t move. I grabbed my mother’s arm and she immediately recognized the warning sign.

  “Roll him. He’s goin’ to vomit.”

  There was a mind-numbing flurry of activity going on, including some projectile vomiting, but I recognized Rhonda’s frenzied scream above the chaos.

  “Get her out of here, Rodney,” Mom shouted. “Now!”

  Hail Mary, full of grace.… Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

  “Could we keep the family hysterics to a minimum, please?” the doctor asked.

  Rhonda took that as her okay to stay and pushed past Rodney. She assumed Mom’s previous position of hovering, gently wiping my face and forehead with a cool rag. She was crying and I wanted to tell her that whatever happened, it would be all right. At this point, at least dying would relieve the pain.

  I wanted to tell Rhonda I loved her. I wanted to tell her I was as proud as any older brother could be. I wanted to tell her to tell Claire I didn’t care if she was married. Tell her I’d never loved anyone as much in my entire life as I loved her.

  Obviously, I wasn’t going to make our lunch date. She wasn’t going to be very happy about being stood up. Maybe dying was a reasonable option.

  Or maybe Rhonda would, just once, show me some pity where Claire was concerned and call her to let her know I’d be a little late. “Call Claire,” I mumbled before the stinging pinch jabbed in my hip put me under.

  CHAPTER 16

  I had graduated Wink High School a month ago and here I was, still shoveling horse shit. I tossed the last shovel onto the trailer and cussed. I cussed the sweat stinging my eyes, I cussed the fucking horses that dumped more crap than biologically possible, I cussed this godforsaken town, and I cussed Carroll Kinley and the K-Bar Ranch for offering the only jobs available.

  It was either shoveling horse shit at the K-Bar, learning how to run a pump jack, or unloading trailers at the Walmart in Odessa. Those were the options. I wasn’t big enough (or good enough) for a football scholarship to Texas A&M; my fastball wasn’t fast enough for a tryout with the Rangers’ farm team; I barely squeaked by academically so an academic scholarship wasn’t even plausible.

  Thunder reverberated off the barn’s metal roof and vibrated the ground underneath my feet. The boots pinching the shit out of my toes was enough discomfort. I walked to the edge of the barn and watched the storm roll in. The sky was the color of fresh charcoal; the wind kicked up small cyclones of sand and dust. I twitched my nose, trying to pick up the scent of rain, but all I smelled was hay and horse shit. My ol’ man could smell rain coming from miles away. The sonofabitch. Sometimes I wondered what he was doing, where he was. Why he left. And sometimes, in the very far reaches of my brain, I envied him.

  In the distance, I saw Claire’s truck jerk along the dirt road, heading toward the barn. The closer she got, the more I could hear the gears grinding. I couldn’t help but laugh. Her father gave her the old farm truck to get around the ranch, unconcerned that she didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. I taught her the best I could but after the fifth lesson ended with us screaming at each other, I gave up. She’d learn it sooner or later. I did take a step inside the barn just in case she got the clutch mixed up with the brake again.

  She jerked to a stop, then got out, her face lit up with the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. She was wearing a pale yellow skirt that fell just inches below the tops of her thighs, and a sleeveless white top. She’d complained earlier about having to have lunch with her mother at the country club. She didn’t like the country club women and liked their daughters even less. “Thought you might need some water,” she said, carrying a large thermos.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me, kissing the inside of her neck. She smelled like honeysuckle. “I’ve got all I need right here.”

  “Mmm,” she moaned, then dropped the thermos, wrapped her arms around my neck, and drove her tongue deep into my waiting mouth. She hiked her leg up and wrapped it around my thigh, pressing herself against me.

  I pulled back slightly and smiled. “Careful … I don’t want to get you dirty.” I was sweaty, dirty, and reeked of manure.

  “Mmm … down and dirty … I like the sound of that.” She kissed me again playfully, then pulled away and took my hand. She led me over to a stack of hay bales, then lifted herself up and sat on the top bale. She pulled me to her. “Guess what,” she said, grinning ear to ear.

  “What?”

  “I talked to Daddy last night and he’s going to tell Sam to start letting you go to the auctions with him.”

  Well, I supposed the good news was she didn’t tell me she was pregn
ant. Going to the auctions with the ranch foreman was just slightly below hearing I was going to be a daddy in the list of things I didn’t want to hear.

  I swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.

  “Aren’t you happy? It’ll get you out of the barn a few days a month.”

  “Claire … I don’t know anything about … I mean, they’re horses and cows.” I could tell the difference between a stallion and a gelding, a steer and a bull, but other than that … all I knew was they were big, could kill you with a kick, and crapped a lot. And the fact was, I didn’t care to know more.

  She chuckled, but it had an uneasiness to it. “You’ll learn. By next summer, you could be the K-Bar’s junior foreman and chief buyer.”

  She said it like it was really something to look forward to. We’d had this conversation since we were in junior high and she still just didn’t get it. I slowly pulled away and walked to the edge of the barn. It was starting to rain. Big, fat drops splattered against the brown dirt, creating miniature mud puddles. Thunder rolled in over the mountains to the west like angry ocean waves. Bolts of lightning zigzagged across the sky. I watched the storm for a moment, wondering what one would look like over the Pacific.

  “Gypsy…” She was beside me now. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. “You could be a junior foreman before you’re twenty. That’s pretty rare.”

  I closed my eyes. “Claire … I don’t want to be a junior foreman. I don’t want to be a foreman.” I turned around and looked at her. “You’ve known that since we were thirteen years old.”

  Her chest rose and fell with each deep breath as she calculated her next move. I knew her too well. “Okay … if you’re happy here in the barn, I’ll just tell Daddy—”

  “Claire—I’m not happy here in the barn. I’m not happy in this town. Haven’t you ever wondered about what’s on the other side of that fence?”

  Her eyes widened and she looked at me like, honestly, the thought had never crossed her mind. “But what’s wrong with the life we have here?”

  I sighed heavily. “It’s your life, Claire. It’s not our life.”