by Rebecca Ore
Doug said, “I know someone who collects these.” He flipped through the Mauser book.
“Mausers. I have one,” John said. “Would you want to fire it?”
Maude thought as hard as she could without being magical, do it, take him out. But Doug must have shaken his head. John half-sighed, half-groaned, and flipped through his catalogues looking for something.
“I don’t like guns, compared to you,” Doug told him.
Terry said, “I didn’t like them before I met John. Go shoot with him.”
“Well, let me try the Mauser, then,” Doug said. The two men went out the back door. Maude knew she could get the gourd if Terry went to the bathroom. She herself needed to urinate.
“Betty needs to get rid of Sue,” Terry said. “Sue informed on us.”
“I guess, but right now I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” Maude said.
“There’s one behind here,” Terry said.
The toilet shared the waterpipes and drains with the kitchen. Maude wished she’d worn a skirt to hide the gourd, but no, she had on skintight jeans. The dishwasher began running. Maude used the toilet, washed her hands, then went out to see Terry mopping the counters. They heard gunshots. Terry said, “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Maude picked up her coat and went into the parlor and opened the glass cabinet, trying not to seem furtive. If Terry came back in the second before she wrapped the gourd in her coat, Maude planned to say she just wanted to see the gourd again.
Another gunshot, and a cry. Maude dropped the gourd. The clay stopper held. The gourd bounced. Doug’s been shot. She put the gourd in the coat anyway. He’s not dead.
Terry turned off the dishwasher and ran out the back door. Doug, supported by John, came limping back. His face was white and sweaty. He said, “I stumbled. The gun went off.”
“It’s just the side of his foot,” John said. “I forgot to tell him not to put his finger on the trigger until he was ready to shoot.”
I’m going to succeed at stealing this, Maude thought. She said, “Call an ambulance.”
John maneuvered Doug into a chair and Terry bent to take off his shoe. Maude said again, “Call an ambulance.” Doug cried out as the shoe slid off his foot.
“We don’t know if he needs an ambulance. He may not have damaged any bones,” Terry said.
Maude picked up the phone and called the rescue squad. “We need an ambulance on Route 666, the old Roare place near the fire road up Wart Mountain.”
The woman who answered the phone asked, “What’s the problem?”
“A friend stumbled with a gun and shot his foot.”
“Oh, a shooting. The ambulance can’t come until the police have checked the scene. And who are you?”
“Maude Fuller. My friend is visiting from California.”
“Okay, we’ll have someone right out. But they can’t come in until a deputy says it’s okay. I’ll call the police, too.”
“Thanks.” Maude hung up and said, “They’ve got to send in police, too, since it’s a gun shot.”
Terry said, “I told you we’d be better off without an ambulance.”
Doug gripped the armchair and looked blankly ahead. Terry seemed to have bent his foot to get the shoe off. The sock was soggy with blood. Terry got a dishpan, lifted Doug’s leg, and set the wounded foot in it.
Maude said, “You stumbled?” Doug didn’t appear to hear her. Terry peeled the sock off.
John said, “He’s lucky he wasn’t holding a full auto.”
Doug said, “Ought to go home.”
“You’ll be fine here,” Terry said.
“How long will it take for the ambulance to arrive?” Maude asked.
“I’ll wash out the wound and bind it,” Terry said.
“But I called for an ambulance. How long will it take someone to get here?”
“Depends on who’s listening. The ambulance crews are all volunteers,” John said. “But the cops are pros.” He looked around the kitchen, then took the guns down to the basement. Cleaning them, Maude thought, or rewarding them or getting them away before the cops arrived. She hoped John was trading Doug’s foot for the black teenager’s soul.
Maude heard a siren. The car that pulled up was an ordinary car with a flasher so Maude hoped that it was a rescue squad medic, but a man in a deputy’s uniform got out. He looked at the house and shifted his gun belt. Maude went to the door and said, “In here.”
“Where’s the victim?”
“Inside. He shot himself in the foot.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. He’s from California.” Maude realized she was still holding the gourd inside her coat and went to put it in her car. The deputy watched her, then followed her inside the house.
Terry said, “Hi, Lewis,” when the deputy came in.
“It’s not your husband did this, is it?”
“John, no. He’s in the basement cleaning the guns.”
“I tripped,” Doug said.
The deputy asked, “Was John near you? You having any problems with John?”
“No.”
Maude said, “Can’t you ask these questions after you get him to a hospital?”
The deputy squatted by Doug and looked in the dishpan. “Bone’s broken. Not bleeding too bad. Man, you’re lucky. Terry, you got a blanket?”
Terry went down the hall to the bedrooms and came back with a shabby woolen blanket. The deputy said, “The medics gonna need it when they get here. I’d better talk to John, I guess. Where’s the basement?”
John came up then and said, “He was carrying a 9-mm semiautomatic Mauser when he stumbled.”
“Where’s the gun?”
“Downstairs, I’ll get it for you.”
“Let me go with you,” the deputy said. They went downstairs and came back up, the deputy carrying both the Mauser and the Chinese AK clone in his hands. He held his trigger finger outside both trigger guards, alongside the receiver. “John, you need to teach people better.”
The ambulance pulled up, but no one got out. The deputy went outside, talked with the people in the ambulance, walked by Maude’s car and peered in, then got back in his car and drove off.
Two women and a man pulled a stretcher, an oxygen bottle, and what looked like a fishing tackle box out of the ambulance. They came inside and set the stretcher beside Doug’s chair.
Doug announced, “I’ve got insurance.”
“We’ve got a blanket,” Terry said. One of the two women took it from her, looked at it and sniffed it, then folded it in half and began rolling it up tightly. The other woman lifted Doug’s foot out of the dishpan, one hand holding the heel and the other the ball of the foot. Blood dripped into the dishpan.
The man took Doug’s shoulders and nodded to the woman. The other woman finished rolling up the blanket and came over to help them get Doug onto the stretcher. Then she brought the blanket roll over. The man bandaged Doug’s foot, then the woman who’d rolled the blanket used the roll as a soft splint for Doug’s foot. She taped the U of blanket firmly, then nodded. The three of them lifted the stretcher. The first woman asked, “Does anyone want to ride with him?”
Maude thought about the gourd hidden in her coat. She answered, “I’ll follow in my car.”
“It’s not that bad,” Doug said. “It’s just broken.”
Terry told Maude, “We’ll drop by later. Lewis said John could have the guns back after he writes his report.”
Maude nodded and said, “Doug, I need my car keys.”
“They’re in the right pants pocket.” The first woman medic pulled them out and handed them to Maude.
Terry restarted the dishwasher as though dismissing them. The medics carried Doug to the ambulance and Maude walked out behind them, got in her car, and followed the ambulance to the hospital emergency entrance. Maude parked her car out of the way. The deputy who’d been at the house came over and leaned on the car enough to push it down on its shocks. “What you got in
the coat?” Maude trembled.
“Could ya’ll have been smoking dope?”
“No. It’s not dope.”
“They have to report it stolen for it to be stolen, but I can check for dope ’cause you sure are acting furtive and you were at a shooting. Let me see your coat, please.” His hand slid to his gun butt.
Maude pulled the gourd from the folds of the coat. “A gourd that used to belong to the boy John shot in Richmond. His people wanted me to get it back. I know you’re a friend of Terry’s and John’s.”
“I know them,” the deputy said. “I also know even when you can’t prove anything there are no accidents in Bracken County. And he’s put his Chinese gun on full auto, but I suspect it will be back to how it’s legal to be by the time I drive it to ATF people.”
“Maybe John traded Doug’s foot for the gourd.”
“They can do anything they want on their property. We go in, we get lost,” the deputy said. “Well, I got to talk to your friend.”
Maude wrapped the gourd back in the coat and followed the deputy into the hospital. She felt the machines wipe out the magic and slumped into a chair. The deputy asked a nurse where the gunshot case was. The nurse pointed at the door of one of the three examining rooms. He went in. Maude wondered if the Reverend Julian Springer had a phone, but suspected he didn’t. She went back out to see if she’d locked the car, then decided to drive down to the Reverend Springer’s house and give him the gourd before John and Terry realized she’d stolen it.
But first she had to call Esther and tell her what had happened. A nurse gave her a hospital phone. Maude dialed. After two rings, she heard Terry’s voice, “Hello?”
“You went to my house?”
“We wondered if you’d remember to call here. I’m taking care of Partridge while John drives Esther home.”
Maude said, “Thanks a million. I’ll be here a bit longer.” She looked up and saw the deputy going toward the exit.
“They’ll probably treat him and release him.”
“Perhaps. I’ll be home as soon as I know.” Maude hung up and asked one of the white uniformed women in the hall, “Do you know what’s happening to Doug, the guy with the shot foot?”
“They’ve taken him to X ray.”
“I need to run an errand. Think he’s going to be released tonight?”
“I seriously doubt it. He’s got to have a couple of crushed metatarsals.”
“Will he be crippled?” Maude felt a spasm in her own right foot.
“We haven’t seen the X rays yet,” the woman said. “Go run your errand.”
Maude went out to her car and checked to see if the deputy might have taken the gourd. The doors were still locked. The gourd was still wrapped in the coat. Maude unwrapped it and put the coat on before driving off. The Reverend Springer’s house was less than two miles away, no stoplights, only one stop sign. Maude looked at the gourd with the plastic clay stopper and got ready to drive.
A thought inserted words into her brain, it’s all for nothing. Maude realized it was too easy, but then decided this could be John’s magic fighting to paralyze her until he could retrieve the gourd. She turned the key and started the motor, then backed out carefully and turned around before entering the street. One right turn and she was on the highway.
And the deputy didn’t ask her to take the stopper out of the gourd, didn’t care what was in it. Maude checked behind her to see if she recognized the deputy’s car. Deputies drove their own cars, not county cars, in Bracken County. At night, deputies were anonymous, almost invisible, until the lights and siren came on.
No lights. No siren. Maude turned down the road that led to Reverend Springer’s. She went beyond the house to see if anyone had followed her. When passing the house, she noticed all the lights were on. Not seeing any other cars, she turned back and parked at his house. The house was very brightly lit.
The Reverend Springer came out on the porch, wearing dark pants and a white shirt. He seemed to be barefooted, but the glare of light coming through the door behind him made him hard to see. “Come in,” he said.
“Doug, the man from California, had a shooting accident. Is this what you’re looking for?” Maude held the gourd out.
He took it and said, “I hope so. Come in.” Maude followed him into a room stinking of paint and garbage, lit with home movie floodlights. Reverend Springer had tacked canvases to his wall and most of them were wet. Maude recognized the local NAACP’s presiding ghost, the 1910 bootlegging woman who’d killed the white customer who’d tried to cheat her. Reverend Springer had painted a series of the live woman in the various stages of the killing, beginning with the knife, then the pistol, then the shotgun, and ending with the pitchfork. Over the woman was her ghost in attitudes of horror.
“I keep the light so high to keep her from criticizing,” Reverend Springer said, nodding at the paintings. He looked at the gourd, pulled out the stopper, then looked back at Maude and said, “They cheated you. Now they know you looking.”
“You’re sure.”
“No little soul or body inside here. Did they catch you looking?”
“Yes. I went back and took it later.” Maude remembered then the strange vision, out of time or a hallucination, of John eating the homunculus. “I had almost like a hallucination of the man who shot the boy eating his soul out of the gourd. Nobody else seemed to be aware of John doing this and the stopper didn’t seem to be really removed.”
“If John the Killer ate the boy’s soul, then we got to cut it out of him,” Reverend Springer said. “Or get him to throw it up.”
Maude wondered how crazy they both were in reality.
Even though Maude hadn’t verbalized her thought, the Reverend Springer said, “But this isn’t reality. You best get back to the hospital.”
“I can try again.”
“I felt you was a witch. But you aren’t nowhere near powerful enough.”
“I didn’t use my powers.”
“Against them, you didn’t use your powers?” He made it sound as though she’d been a fool.
When Maude got back to the hospital, she went to the nurse’s desk and asked, “Where’s Doug Sanderheim?”
“Taking him off to Baptist Hospital. He wants to make sure they put his foot together right with an orthopedic surgeon. He wanted a helicopter, but we told him his foot wouldn’t go black before an ambulance could drive him.”
Baptist Hospital was sixty miles away. “Can I see him before he leaves?”
A nurse pointed to the same examining room where Doug had been when the deputy went in to talk to him. Maude pushed through the door and saw Doug lying in a bed. His injured foot was outside the covers, bandaged in a steel splint. Maude said, “I heard they’re taking you to Baptist.”
“I don’t want to be lame. I want a real orthopedic surgeon to work on it.”
“I understand, but be careful the local doctors don’t feel insulted.”
“I told the deputy I felt like I was pushed, but John wasn’t anywhere near me.”
“You were pushed. Do you like magic as much now?”
“I need to master it myself.”
Maude had already told him he couldn’t. He didn’t believe welfare cheats. “I can take care of you while you recover.”
“Esther and Maude’s nursing home.”
“I’ve got to get back. I’ll come down to Winston tomorrow.”
“This is all so stupid.”
I know, Maude thought, and I didn’t save anyone’s body or soul
When Maude got home, Terry left quickly. Maude looked at Partridge and Partridge looked back, nothing spoken, but much said.
14
* * *
NO DIRECTION, NO RETURN
Maude’s dreams tried to work Partridge’s choking coughs into a cougar in the Sierras. But the cougar fell into a swimming pool and was drowning. Maude became confused, aware that something was wrong outside sleep. The coughs finally woke her. Feeling guilty for tryin
g to stay asleep, Maude put her feet on the cold floor and went to check on Partridge. Her grandmother sat up in her bed, back against the headboard, coughing into her fist. “Are you okay?”
“Why do you tamper with things?”
“Should I call the doctor?”
“I don’t know why I wanted you back, anyway. You’re so useless.”
“I’m sorry.” Maude didn’t know how to react, to be pissed at the woman for being so critical, to be sympathetic because she was dying. “Are you okay? I’m supposed to get Esther and take her by to pick up her car.”
“You should tend me yourself.”
“I’d really go crazy.”
“If faking being crazy didn’t drive you insane, I sure doubt working like a responsible woman would do you any damage.”
“Doug’s going to be here, too.”
“You fooling around with that killed boy’s people got Doug shot.” Partridge hawked up something into her fist and stared at it before wiping it away with a tissue.
“I thought I could save the boy’s soul.”
“Yeah, like Esther thinks I can be saved, only she’s not arrogant enough to think she can do me personally.”
“If I’d gotten the boy’s soul back to them, they promised to leave John alone.”
“John’ll just kill more of them.” Partridge coughed again, but not so harshly. “He gets excited by danger.”
“Nobody else seemed to have noticed John eating the boy’s soul. But the plastic plug on the gourd wasn’t touched.”
“Didn’t seem touched. John’s a bit young to get into soul eating.”
“I know you ate Lula.”
“Bit of bitter nothing. She was hellhound anyway. Saved her considerable torment.” Partridge reared up in her bed. “You think I ate her for a few more months. You bitch.”
“I know why Betty thought she’d be good for you. Good to tempt you into witchwork again. If you’re okay, I’ve got to get Esther.”
“Go then.”
“After that, I’m driving down to North Carolina to see Doug.”