"Gone? What do you mean?"
"I don't know!" the girl moaned.
"God damn," Tom said. "God damn, God damn, God damn. I don't … what the hell do we do now?"
"Mister Masters, please don't let him die!"
Tom scooped the boy up under his neck and lower back and yanked him out of the cart. The mother moaned and tried to reach for her son, but Tom said, "Martha! Hold that woman back so we can help this child."
The sound of her name seemed enough to snap her out of it and Martha held up her hands to block the woman from interfering. Tom slapped the child on the cheeks, trying to keep him conscious. "Bart, bring them pads and get the cellar doors."
Bart carried the stack over to the doors and lifted one open as Tom ducked under it. He navigated the narrow steps down, careful not to drop the boy or lose his footing on his blood-slicked boots. "Lock that up behind us," Tom said. "You know this boy?"
"He just started coming to school a few weeks ago. They just moved here, I think. He's a few grades below me though. I don't think his sister even goes to school."
"That's not surprising," Tom said. "Where's their daddy?"
Bart shrugged, "Beats me."
By that point, Abe was moaning and trembling enough to bother the animals. Tom had to hold him with one arm and clear a space on the counter, then pin him to it to keep him from writhing off the damn thing. "Take my knife out of its sheath and hold the blade in the fire till it gets red. And don't touch it!"
Bart drew his father's long knife from the pouch on his hip and walked over to where the beans his mother had been cooking now hissed and bubbled over the side. He put the knife right into the fire like he'd seen the blacksmiths do and watched the steel start to blacken and smoke.
Tom looked down at the child, seeing his narrow ribcage and bird-like chest. Abe was five years younger than Bart, as innocent as animal crackers. Blond-haired and green-eyed with his mouth open to show a few missing teeth where the baby ones fell out and the new ones weren't grown in yet. "Come on, Bart! Hurry up," Tom said.
"It's ready," Bart replied.
"Okay. First I need you to grab one of the bottles off the shelf near the food. Not the colored wine. Something clear."
"You mean this water?" Bart said.
"That ain't water, but you got it. Bring it here, and mind that knife. You'll brand yourself like cattle if you touch it."
Bart came around to Tom's side with the bottle in one hand and the knife in the other. "I'm ready, Pa. What now?"
"Pour that liquor on the knife now."
Bart did as he was told and the blade smoked and hissed and stunk like burnt moonshine. "Now what?"
"Now I'm gonna roll him over on his side and you pour some of it into his injury."
Bart hesitated, "You sure about this?"
"Hell no I ain't sure, but I saw it done a few times in the war and it's either that or we let this boy die. Now pour it in there, Bart."
Someone was banging on the cellar doors above them, screaming, "Let me have my boy! You're killing him! Help! Help me, someone, please!"
Bart's face was bone white as he looked up at his father, "I'm scared so bad, Pa."
"Knock it off and pour, you goddamn sissy!"
Bart's eyes teared up and his hands were shaking as he reached past Abe's twitching face with the bottle and tipped it over. "Keep going," Tom said. "That's good. Good job."
Bart capped the bottle and set it aside again, glad to be rid of it. Tom ran his fingers along the sides of Abe's ribcage and said, "Okay, now here comes the tricky part. I need you to hold this boy's arms down so I can dig that bullet out of him."
"I can't do this, Pa," Bart groaned.
Tom bit his lip so hard it swelled. "Listen," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to yell at you and you ain't no goddamn sissy. I wouldn't have asked you to come down here if I didn't know you could do it."
Bart took Abe's squirming arms and held them fast, complaining about how slippery they were with all the blood on them. "I know," Tom said. "Just do your best." He reached for the bottle and poured some on his own hands. As he rubbed the alcohol in, he said, "My old man used to yell at me when he got upset. I learned to ignore it 'cause I reckoned he didn't mean it. Doesn't mean it's nice to do or that I'm proud of it. You understand what I'm saying?"
When Bart nodded, Tom bent over and paused before sticking the tip of his finger into Abe's open wound. Hell of a thing to do, but Tom knew if he couldn't find where the bullet was, the child would die. If it's anywhere but in the ribs, he's a goner anyway, Tom figured. I sure as hell ain't gonna open him up and go looking for it.
He ran his finger along the inside of the child's ribcage, searching for the hard kernel of metal and let out an audible sigh of relief when he found it. He tried to dig it out with the tip of his finger, but it was wedged in too tightly. Tom picked up the knife and aimed it in the direction of the bullet. "There's a lot of things I hated about my old man, Bart. It was him that pushed me into being a deputy. I'm gonna tell you something right now and don't you never forget it. I don't tease you about all them books you read 'cause I'm disappointed. I do it 'cause I'm embarrassed you got more smarts than me. Okay?"
"Okay," Bart said.
"All right. Hold him tight now 'cause this part's gonna be tricky." Tom screwed the knife into Abe's ribcage, trying to get the tip of it under the bullet enough to pop it out. The pain was enough to break through the boy's fog of shock and he threw his head back and wailed loud enough that Tom winced and buried his ear against his shoulder.
Finally, the bullet came free and Tom plucked it out from the dark, seeping hole and dropped it on the counter. "Hand me one of them napkins," Tom said. Bart handed him one and Tom mopped enough sweat from his face to leave the thing sopping wet. "All right, hand me another." He pressed it against the boy's side and held it tight. "I think we're gonna be okay for now. Go tell your mother to get her sewing kit and bring it down here."
Tom sat on the cellar door, keeping an eye on the boy's mother as she rocked back and forth mumbling to herself. "He's gonna be fine," Tom said. "Martha's an expert with that needle. She sewed me up a time or two."
Winnie came over to where he was sitting and said, "She ain't ignoring you. She can't hear you too well."
"She deaf?"
"No. She came running out of the bedroom when Abe got shot and hit something with her head. When I came out, I saw them both laid out on the ground. Thought she took a bullet too."
Tom suddenly feared the worst, "How do we know she didn't?"
"She said she didn't," the girl whispered.
"Well did you see any bleeding?"
"There was some on the back of her head, but I thought it was Abe's."
"Shit." Tom got to his feet and walked over to the cart, "Hey. Ma'am, can you hear me?"
The woman looked up at him with reddened eyes and said nothing.
"It's about your boy, Abe. You understand, Abe?"
The woman nodded slowly.
"I think he's gonna be okay now, but he wants me to check on you first. Will you let me do that?"
The woman didn't move. Tom showed her his hands, trying to keep her calm. "I'm gonna touch your head for a second, so don't panic. Just stay still, okay?"
He inched toward her and ever-so-gently moved to lift her ponytail. He could feel it was wet but in the darkness it looked like black oil covering his hand. "Bart, can you get me some light over here?"
Bart carried a lantern over and held it up behind the woman's head. Tom lifted her hair again and swallowed hard. The skin on the back of her skull was split open and he could see pale white bone underneath. Whatever she'd run into had sheared her head like a sheep.
When Martha finally came out of the basement to look, she said, "That can't be sewed, Tom."
Tom screwed up his face and said, "Shit."
"And there's something else. Abe lost too much blood. He's stitched up good, so he ain't leaking anymore, but if he don't get so
me real help soon, he ain't gonna make it."
Tom looked at his wife, then at the little girl standing by the carriage. He looked at the open cellar doors where the dying child was waiting at the bottom of the steps, and then at the injured woman in the back of the cart. All of them stared back at him. Tom screwed up his face again and said, "Shit!" He stomped across the yard around the side of the house and vanished out of sight.
"Where's he going?" Winnie said.
"I don't know, sweetie," Martha whispered.
"Is he leaving us?" the girl whined.
"Of course he isn't," Bart snapped. "Just calm down. He's going to get the Sheriff, probably."
"Listen, the two of you help me wrap up her head. We're gonna stick a few of these napkins on there and bandage her up nice and tight. That should keep her just fine for a while."
By the time Tom came back, they'd wrapped Winnie's mama's head up like a mummy and only Martha looked up at him as he walked toward them, leading Buttercup by her reins. "The Sheriff's got two little kids to look after and a whole town that's gonna need rebuilding. If he heard about this, he'd do somethin' stupid like escort 'em all the way out to the hospital in Seneca 5."
"So what are you gonna do?" Martha said.
Tom smiled at her and said, "Nobody ever accused me of being smart, honey."
Martha put her arm around Bart and said, "We'll be waiting for you when you get home."
Bart pushed her arm off of him and said, "I'm going with him."
"Over my dead body," Martha said.
Bart climbed up next to the girl in the carriage and said, "I'm going. I can help. Pa might need me."
Tom waved his wife over to hold his destrier and said, "Bart, take a walk with me real quick."
He led Bart away from the women with his hand around his son's shoulder and said, "I'd love to take you with me. You'd do a fine job out there, I am sure."
"But?"
"But I'd be worthless, 'cause I'd be worried about who's looking after your Mama. So you see, Bart, I'd consider it a personal favor if you'd stay here and look after her. You understand what a big responsibility that is?"
"I guess I do," Bart said.
"Good," Tom said with a soft smile. "Now listen, there's one more thing. And it ain't gonna come about no how, so don't waste a second thinking about it, but if it does, you remember what I said."
"Okay."
"If anything happens to me, you and Mama are to go with Mr. Clayton. It's a deal me and him made to look after one another's kin if anything should happen. Not that you'll need to remind him, 'cause he'll be here quicker than lightning. I'm telling you to convince your Mama that if anything happens to me, you make sure that the two of you go there. Understand?"
"But you said nothing's gonna happen."
"It won't. I'm saying just in case."
Bart threw his arms around his father and hugged him. Tom bent down and kissed the boy on top of the head.
Winnie Graves cleared her throat as she came up behind them and said, "Deputy Masters? Your wife says we got to go now because it's getting worse."
"All right," Tom said.
Abe was sitting with his mother in the back of the cart, and Winnie climbed into the driver's seat. "Are you riding with us?"
"I'm gonna take Buttercup," Tom said with a pat on the destrier's muscular neck. "Otherwise she'd just sit around here and mope."
They rode till daylight when Tom stopped and said, "All right, we gotta water the animals."
Winnie watched as Tom uncorked one of the canteens and sprinkled water on Buttercup's neck and forehead, letting it run down her long snout. She swabbed up the droplets with her flat pink and black tongue and turned to let Tom know she wanted more. He poured some in the cup of his hand and let her lap it up, but warned Winnie, "Don't ever give 'em too much. Not a full-sized destrier or a runty little mule like those things. They're hard-use desert creatures meant to get by on just a little."
Winnie copied Tom's actions but frowned as her one mule tried to bite the canteen in her hands. "He's still thirsty though," she said.
"No he ain't. He's just greedy. Give him too much and he won't be able to run for squat. We got a whole lotta miles to cover in just a little time, so do as I say."
Winnie looked at her brother and mother, both lying motionless in the back of the cart with their eyes closed. She went around the side and stood up on the wheel well to press her fingers against both of their necks. When she let herself down, she nodded at Tom and gave him a thumbs-up.
"Go ahead and cover them up with the blankets."
"They'll suffocate in the heat," Winnie said.
"No they won't. They'll be warm as hell, for sure, but if you leave them in the back like that, they'll bake up and die of exposure. Put the blankets on 'em and when it starts to get hot we'll water them just like we do the animals."
Winnie threw blankets over them both and climbed back into the driver's seat. She snapped the reins and they started to ride again. "Deputy Masters, can I ask you a question without offending you?"
Tom chuckled, "It depends on the question. But since we ain't got much else to do but talk, you go ahead and ask."
"How you know so much about sick people and injured people and stuff if you're just a deputy Sheriff? Were you ever a doctor or something else?"
"Nope," Tom said. "I fought in the Seneca 3 Conflict. A bunch of miners rebelled and the PNDA hired all the young men they could find to put it down. I was one of the dumb ones that signed up. Anyway, that's how I learned about all this stuff."
"Don't you like miners?"
"Sure, I do," Tom said. "Let's just say I had a reason to want to leave."
"Were you in trouble?"
"The worst kind. I was in love with the wrong person."
Winnie's face twisted in confusion, "So you went to fight in a war? That sounds dumb."
"It certainly was," Tom chuckled. "This girl wasn't allowed to marry me on account that I was too poor. The PNDA was offering good money, real good money, to anybody who would come help fight the greedy no-gooders trying to destroy our way of life. Except, of course, that ain't how it really was and their line of bull wore pretty thin, pretty fast."
Winnie nodded, trying to understand what he was saying. "Why was it a line of bull?"
"The miners weren't greedy. They were just asking for a decent wage and safe equipment. People kept getting maimed and killed by the machines they were using, and finally the workers got tired of being ignored, so they made a stand. Not a day goes by I don't regret going there."
"Did you have to kill anybody?"
Tom squinted at her in the harsh sunlight, "It ain't like we were handing out birthday cards to one another."
Winnie took all that in, then said, "I been to Seneca 5 and Tradesville before. My Mama comes from Seneca 4. I ain't never heard of anybody who's been to Seneca 3 though."
"That's 'cause there ain't no Seneca 3 anymore," Tom said.
"How can that be?"
"The miners thought they were holding all the cards, 'cause they were sitting on top of the richest severian deposit on the whole planet. They reckoned all they had to do was hold the land long enough for the PNDA to realize it was costing too much money to fight and give in. Meanwhile, the PNDA had engineers figure out a way to drill it all out from underneath them, and then they didn't need the settlement anymore. They drank their milkshake, but good."
"What's a milkshake?"
"Beats me. It's just an old expression. Anyway, they blockaded the town so nobody could go in or out and all us boys got sent home. You got a bonus in your paycheck depending on how severely you were injured. An extra couple severian grams if you lost a finger or toe. A half-ounce if you lost a leg. Crazy stuff like that. I remember looking at a guy who lost both feet in an explosion and trying to calculate how much money he was gonna make."
"What happened to the miners in that settlement?"
"They all died within a year of the blockade. Some p
eople suspect the PNDA dropped some kind of poison on them from the clouds. Others think it was 'cause they ran out of water. It's a ghost town now. All the buildings are still there, but nobody goes near the place."
"That sounds horrible," Winnie said.
"It surely does. Anyhow, when I come back, the mining unions wouldn't hire me 'cause they knew I fought in the conflict. Luckily, I met Martha and her father was kin to Old Sheriff Lyle. It was him that hired me on as a deputy, and I been stuck in this line of work ever since."
"So what happened to the first girl? The one you ran off to fight the war for?"
"She married someone else," Tom said. He held his hand over his eyes and looked up at the sun's position in the sky, calculating how much time they had before noon when it would get really hot. "It's time to ride hard now. We're gonna cover some distance. You ready?"
"Can this runt keep up with your destrier?"
"It might not be as fast, but it can go longer distances, and it will ride like the wind if you motivate it enough. I'll make sure not to get too far away from you, though."
"Then I'm ready," Winnie said.
Tom snapped Buttercup's reins and said, "Come on, girl. Giddyup!" The animal bolted forward on the hard desert floor, kicking up loose sand and rock under her massive hooves as the mountains and cacti in the distance flew past him in a blur. Tom looked over his shoulder to make sure that Winnie was still behind him and he saw the girl cracking her riding crop on the mules backsides yelling for them to move. "That's it," Tom said to himself.
After a few hours of hard riding, Tom got down from Buttercup's saddle and stretched out his legs and back. He had small rocks down his boots that felt like thumbtacks against his ankles. He looked up at the small cloud of dust approaching through the shimmering haze of heat and saw Winnie holding onto her reins with both hands.
She brought her cart to a stop beside him and was panting to catch her breath. "I had no idea those things could go so fast."
Tom shook out his boots one at a time and wiped off his socks. He heard Buttercup snuffle something on the ground and her head suddenly dropped and she stuck her snout into the dirt.
"What's she doing?" Winnie said.
Guns of Seneca 6 Box Set Collected Saga (Chambers 1-4) Page 43