Bright Orange for the Shroud

by John D. MacDonald

  “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 ret
urning 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.”

  “Listen, I won’t do it! You can’t leave. It’s dangerous!”

  “So are home-canned vegetables. Get the hat.”

  I sat on a white stool and waited. Merry McGee, the valiant quipster, with a hole in his head and the horrid conviction it was bleeding in there. My precious, valuable, irreplaceable head. Under the bullet groove would be some little white needles of splintered bone, sticking down into the gray jelly where everything was stored, all those memories unique to me.

  A fat nurse opened the door and said, “Mr. McGee? Come along.”

  “I was told to wait here until they check something out.”

  “Tests can be taken in the ward, sir.”

  “Something about radiology.”

  She frowned. “Seems odd. I better go find out what’s up.”

  She bustled away. When I saw Arthur in the doorway, I heaved myself up and got out of there in my curious hitching gait, putting the baseball cap on as I went down the hall. I did my very best walking as we passed a woman at a desk near the main entrance. I waited in shadow by the curb, leaning against a tree. Arthur brought the car around, something he should have thought to do when he got the hat. I didn’t remark on it. He was managing better than I could have hoped.

  “Clematis Drive,” I said as he got behind the wheel.

  “But how can you …”

  “Arthur, my friend, you will be orderly and agreeable and stop twitching. I want you near me. I want you to stay near me. Because I am highly nervous. And if I stop making sense, or my speech goes bad, or my leg and arm get worse again, you hurry me back there so they can saw a little round hole in my head. Otherwise, just take on trust the strange idea I might know what I’m doing, because I’m too pooped to argue. Just drive. And pray my hunch is wrong. What time is it?”

  “Five something. Chook will be …”

  “She’ll sweat it out.”

  As we turned onto Clematis, I looked over and saw the first paleness in the east. The dark trees and houses had begun to acquire third dimensions as the first candlepower of Wednesday touched them. The Wattses’ house was lighted up again, almost completely. The big white convertible was gone.

  “Turn into the drive … No, keep going, and put it in the driveway of the next house. Hurricane shutters are on. It’s empty for the summer. Turn out the lights before you turn in.”

  As we started back down the sidewalk, I said, “If anything comes, car or bike or pedestrian, either way, help me hustle into the brush and flatten out.”

  “Okay, Trav. Sure.”

  Nothing came. We went around the side of the house. Waxwell had taken off with typical flair, wheels digging deep gouges in the soft lawn.

  I tried the outside screen door of the cage. It was latched on the inside. As I wondered whether it was worth trying to call her I smelled, adrift in the predawn stillness, a faint stench of fecal matter. I turned to Arthur and said, “When we’re in the house, don’t touch a thing unless I tell you. Stay away from the windows in the front of the house. Squat low if you hear a car
.”

  Bracing myself against the frame, I put a knee through the screen, ripping it. I reached through, unlatched it, and, when we were inside, smeared the metal handle where I had touched it, with the palm of my hand. The odor was stronger in the living room. The television set emitted a constant cold light, the random snow pattern after broadcasting is over. The odor was much stronger. Crane Watts had slid down between chair and hassock, half sitting, head canted back on the chair seat. His face was unnaturally fat, his eyes bugging wide, pushed out by pressure behind them. It was a moment or two before I found the point of entry, the charred ear hole. And I knew, I knew exactly what else I would find in the silence of that house. The husband had slept through too much. Too many empty evenings slack in the chair, while the wife’s heart grew more hopeless. But when Boo came in, came at her, she would have cried out to the husband. Many times, perhaps, before she knew it was too late, and he was too far gone and would sleep through every endless lift and stroke, every new and demanding invasion, every cuff and slap, every jolly instruction, every rough boosting and shifting of her into new postures for his pleasure. So, having slept, husband, sleep longer yet. Forever. I wondered if she remembered who had said a nonsense thing about a pistol barrel in the ear. And, accustomed only to the antiseptic violence of television and the movies, I imagined that the sudden ugliness had shocked her. After such a small tug at the trigger. The huge terminal spasm had flounced him off the chair, opened his bowels. And hydrostatic pressure had bloated his face to an unrecognizable idiocy. I even knew what she would instinctively cry at such ghastliness. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” It would end her auto-hypnosis, the trance state of the amateur murderer, and leave her no choice at all but to do what I knew I would find.

  I heard the dry gagging behind me and saw Arthur with his back to the body, hunched over, hands to his mouth. I bumped him away, saying, “Stop it! Not in here, you damn fool!”

  With a struggle he gained control. I sent him to wait out in the screened cage. I hobbled into the kitchen and, with my thumbnail, turned the lights off. It’s what they so often do in the night. Maybe some forlorn fading desire to keep the darkness back. But if they could turn on all the lights in the world, it wouldn’t help them. I knew where I’d most probably find her. She was in the empty tub, and had slid almost flat, head over on her shoulder. She wore a floor-length orange housecoat, with white collar and cuffs, buttoned neatly and completely from throat to hem. It had been a good vibrant color for her swarthy handsomeness. She had fixed her hair, made up her mouth. The dark stain between her breasts, and slightly to the left was teacup size, irregular, with one small area of wet sheen remaining. I bent and put the back of my hand against her calm forehead, but there was no warmth. The weapon, a 22 caliber Colt Woodsman with a long target barrel lay against her belly, the butt under her right wrist. She was barefoot. Though she had fixed herself up for dying, there were marks she could not conceal, swollen lips, blue bruise on the cheek, long scratch on the throat—marks of that long hard use.