Bitter Recoil

by Steven F Havill

  “Ruth?” he called softly. “Ruth, it’s all right. You’re safe now.” He knelt at the door of the tent, holding up the sagging nylon and broken support rod. The little girl emerged. It was too dark to see her face. She wrapped her arms around Finn’s neck. He stood up, lifting the girl effortlessly. “That’s my girl,” he said. “So brave.” He ran a hand through her hair. “So brave.”

  She whispered something and Finn said, “I know. I know. But let’s finish here.” He moved away from the tent and bent to let Daisy stand on her own. He took her by the hand and they walked down the swale toward the boulders. He said something else to her that my fuzzed brain didn’t understand and then returned alone.

  I managed to find my right arm…it felt detached and jointless… and pulled it across my stomach for support. I rolled to my left side. Finn stood quietly for a minute, watching me. “Perhaps a little struggle will be good for your soul,” he said, hefting the rifle.

  “You son of a bitch,” I mumbled, but he wasn’t interested in conversation. And maybe when it came to face-to-face bloodletting he couldn’t stomach being as efficient as Arajanian.

  He walked quickly past the tent, his flashlight beam darting far ahead. He headed up the slope and reached the kid’s corpse. I saw his light moving this way and that on the ground. I had the pistol and silencer he was looking for and had to figure a way to pull it out of my belt. My right arm was useless, and I was lying on my left.

  I started to push myself up by levering my forehead against the ground. That didn’t work, and I collapsed back. Finn returned to the tent. He was no longer carrying the rifle. Maybe he was planning to return for it another day.

  In a moment he emerged from the tent with two gallon cans, the kind that contain white gas for camp stoves and lanterns. With a can in each hand, he walked down the swale toward Daisy and the big boulder where Estelle and I had first met Robert Arajanian. I couldn’t see him after that.

  There was only one reason for taking the gasoline. I drove my head hard into the ground, humped my back, and pushed with my left hand. Balanced on my knees and my left knuckles like an old, crippled gorilla, I looked uphill. I shook my head to clear my vision. Estelle Reyes’s dark form still lay at the corner of the collapsed tent.

  I crawled forward, first moving my left hand and then scrunching my knees. I had no flashlight, but the moonlight was peaceful on the side of her face.

  Balancing carefully, I rested my fingers against her throat. “Oh, Christ, Estelle.” There was a pulse and a strong one. I put my hand under her cheek, turning her head slightly so I could see her face. Her eyes were ground shut, closed so tightly her forehead was creased with a thousand wrinkles.

  I hunkered closer. Her hair on the right side was heavy with blood, and it had begun to pool on the ground under her. I swore and groped for my handkerchief. It was in my right hip pocket. I rocked backward and reached behind my back, grabbing my belt.

  Using that as purchase, I walked my left hand around my waist until my fingers found the pocket. I pulled out the handkerchief and made a mess of folding it against my thigh. I changed position again and crunched my knee down on Estelle’s flashlight. I breathed a sigh of relief, dropped the handkerchief, and grabbed the light.

  Her thick hair made it impossible to see her scalp, especially in the uncertain light. But it appeared that the bullet had hit near the crown of her head on the right side, nearly a hand’s spread behind and above the tip of her ear. I had no way of knowing what damage the rifle bullet had done, but she was breathing and had a strong pulse.

  I curled my arm and tucked the light in my armpit. The wadded handkerchief was a lousy bandage, but it might stop some of the bleeding. I gently pressed it against her skull. Estelle groaned faintly.

  “Come on, hardhead,” I whispered. “You can do it.”

  Estelle made a small whimpering noise, and one of her hands started to crab up toward her skull.

  “Can you hold it in place?” I asked as her hand found mine. I hoped my voice was soft enough that it wouldn’t crash around inside her already busted skull.

  “Eh,” she whispered, and I felt her fingers close on the cotton.

  “I’ve got to help Paul,” I said urgently. I eased her head down, leaned back, and, using the flashlight as a short cane, pried myself to my feet. I swayed like a drunk, but my ankle was too numb to care. I turned carefully, playing the light past the tent. Paul Garcia hadn’t moved.

  There was nothing that I or anyone else could do for the deputy. The rifle bullet had struck Paul Garcia high on the left cheek, just under his eye. Most of the back of his skull was missing.

  I straightened up, sick at heart. The radio. A small part of my brain that was still working remembered the hand-held radio. I staggered back to Estelle and saw that the radio holster on her belt was empty—the hand-held was what Finn had tossed so negligently off into the trees.

  “Run,” I thought aloud, trying to will my words downhill and into Deputy Al Martinez’s mind. “Run the other way.” But he wouldn’t do that. He would have heard the shots. Maybe he would have radioed for backup—radioed to a dispatcher seventy miles away. But he wouldn’t wait. He’d immediately charge up the trail, right into Finn’s gun. I swore, feeling helpless, checkmated.

  I desperately wanted that radio and swung the light this way and that, trying to remember how Finn had been standing when he pulled it out of Estelle’s belt holster. It was impossible. I saw Estelle’s magnum and made my way over to it. By collapsing back down to my knees, I could pick it up. What the hell good it was I didn’t know.

  It would take us a week to crawl down to the parking lot—by the time help arrived from Albuquerque, the vultures would have us. Maybe Al Martinez would play it smart. Like hell he would. I swore again—about all the expertise I could offer.

  And then I sucked in my breath as another sound caught my attention. Behind me the pine forest was alive with a symphony of cracks, snaps, and a background beat that was a pulsing, loud, ominous roar. I turned and saw the light through the trees and at the same time felt the air fleeing uphill, nudging my cheeks. I don’t know why I was surprised. Maybe I’d been hoping H. T. Finn would change his mind. Maybe I’d been hoping he was a human being. But he hadn’t changed his mind. He’d probably even talked little Daisy into lending a hand.

  The Smokey Bear signs along the highway warned about a careless match or cigarette. Smokey hadn’t met H. T. Finn. The bastard had used two gallons of white gasoline to set the mountain on fire.

  Chapter 25

  The fire hugged the ground, bright enough to highlight the smoke clouds. The blaze generated its own breeze, which mixed with the morning updraft in the swale. Neither Estelle nor I could run up the mountain ahead of it.

  Garcia’s shotgun lay beside the back of the tent, and I grabbed it to use as a crutch. Estelle hadn’t changed position, and her face was still frozen in that awful grimace.

  “You have to help me, babe,” I said, resting my left hand on her forehead. One eyelid flickered a little, and she nodded slightly. “Can you understand me?”

  Again she nodded just enough that I felt the motion of her head in my hand.

  “I can’t carry you unless you can sit up some.” This time she opened her left eye just a crack. It was a terrible imitation of one of her favorite expressions of doubt, that wonderful raised eyebrow that I’d earned a thousand times over the years.

  “We have to make it to the pool down by the spring,” I said. “The son of a bitch set the woods on fire.” I put my hand under her, at the base of her neck, trying to support both her head and shoulders with one hand. She pushed against the ground with both hands. Her teeth ground together with the effort. A sigh of pain escaped as she leaned on my shoulder. I paused to regain my breath. She was now sitting, her feet straight out in front of her. I was kneeling beside her, my arm around her shoulders.

  “Do you think you can walk?” I asked.

  “Uh,” she said.
/>   The fire was now so loud that I had to shout. “Can you stand?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Shit,” I said. I looked over my shoulder, hoping to see a couple of ambulance attendants with a gurney. All I saw were bright flames, arching high into the sky, reaching to the very tops of the ponderosa pines. Smoke rolled in rich, thundering billows, obscuring the stars and moon. We didn’t have to worry about light. The fire would give us plenty—until it roasted us.

  I could have easily picked her up if I’d had two good arms. If she weighed more than a hundred pounds, it was only because of the cop junk strapped to her waist and the bullet-proof vest that hadn’t done her head a bit of good.

  “Hold onto my neck,” I said loudly. There was no immediate response. She’d drifted off into some other, less painful world.

  I rolled Estelle onto her stomach. With the shotgun crutch jammed under my ruined right arm, I bent down just enough to grab the center of her Sam Browne belt.

  If nothing else, my arms had gained some strength over the years with the constant exercise of pushing my own bulk up and out of chairs. I hauled Estelle up at the waist, the way an angry father might grab the belt of a three-year-old who’d been dashing for cover. She felt like a sack of grain, folded in the middle.

  There wasn’t time to worry about prenatal care. If her pregnancy survived this night, the kid would be one tough hombre.

  The effort brought her back to consciousness. She tried to balance, then fell backward against me. I knelt on my right knee, her weight resting on my left leg. I released her belt and flung my arm around her before she had a chance to fall on her face, then hugged her close.

  “Now we’re both going to stand up,” I said after I caught my breath. Her left hand came up and held the top of her head. She turned slightly so that she could curl the other arm around my neck. My handkerchief was still glued to her skull. We both stood up, shaky and gasping. Any other time we would have collapsed with laughter.

  Like two drunks tied together in a three-legged race, we lurched down the swale toward the fire. The wind was picking up as the fire generated its own vortices.

  We passed the boulder that had been the gateway to the campsite. The first spring, high in the rocks to the right, dribbled a trickle of sweet sulfur water down into a puddle the size of a kitchen sink.

  Farther on through thick, rank grasses, ferns, and mosses, the water collected. Fed by other springs, it spread and mingled with the pebbly granite and limestone. In one spot campers had dug out around several boulders, enlarging the natural pool.

  On the downhill side of the pool, one of the rocks had seen duty as a wash slab. The remains of a bar of soap were glued to the rock near the waterline. I headed for that pool. I couldn’t have heard Estelle if she’d been screaming in my ear. The fire was seeking out heavy fuel, roaring up the hillsides on either side of the campsite and heading toward the massive stands of pine and fir up the slope.

  We sank into the water. Compared to the blast of heat from the fire, the water was almost cool. The pool was eighteen inches deep where we snuggled next to the rock. The swale formed a natural chimney, and it would take the smoke and the fire quickly past us and up the hill. That’s what I hoped.

  Finn had miscalculated. He’d started the fire too close to the campsite. If he’d been a better arsonist, he’d have waited until he was near the highway, so the blaze would have had time to reach fire-storm proportions by the time it got to us.

  As it was, there wasn’t much fuel in the campsite other than grass and limb wood. The fire raced upward, seeking the timber. I pulled my right arm up across my chest, wincing as the water touched the wound in my shoulder. I breathed through the soaked cloth of my shirt sleeve. My left arm was around Estelle, and I made sure my wet uniform sleeve covered her nose and mouth.

  Like two forlorn trolls, we rested in the small pool. I had never felt so goddamned helpless. The smoke swirled around us and I coughed, pressing my head down into the wet cloth and squirming back against the rock. Estelle was quiet. She’d passed out again. That was all right. She’d miss the show.

  A juniper tree exploded a hundred feet away, and I flinched. I cracked open one eye. The surface of the pool was turning light gray. I splashed water on us and pulled Estelle close, trying to find a pocket of half-clean air under the slight overhang of the rock. I focused my mind on H. T. Finn.

  ***

  “Just breathe in,” the voice said. The bedroom light was a uniform gray. The face in front of me a blur. He was trying to jam something over my nose and mouth. “Easy now, sir.”

  The rich smell of woodsmoke brought a moment of panic. At first I imagined I’d been pulled from my burning house.

  Someone else shouted something, much too loud. I tried to suck my head in, like a hurt turtle. Nothing worked. Nothing was in order.

  “We need to bring her out first,” the voice said, and another mumbled something unintelligible. I closed my eyes and somewhere deep inside my skull a switch clicked. I jarred to consciousness and coughed violently. “Easy now. Just hold still.”

  I felt the mask repositioned on my face and opened my eyes. Like a long lens on a television camera, they focused first far away, on the smoking hillside.

  The blaze had moved up the mountain, and its steady roar was like a freight train in the distance. I struggled to distinguish the face in front of me. There were several now and eager hands reaching down into our little pool of gray water.

  “Be careful,” I tried to say. I pushed the oxygen mask away. “Be careful,” I said again, and this time I think he understood me.

  “Looks like a head injury on this one,” he said. Hands far more expert than mine cradled Estelle Reye’s head—her hair now gray from ash, the strands caked and thick like fresh cement. She was lifted from the pool and placed on the backboard.

  Someone wiped my face and with the curtain of ash removed I recognized faces. Sheriff Pat Tate was kneeling in the goddamned pool of water. A shout from up-canyon pulled him to his feet before I had a chance to say a word.

  “Just take it easy,” Tate said to me, and he charged away. I turned in panic. Estelle Reyes was already gone, her stretcher headed downhill. I flailed wildly, and what seemed like half a dozen hands provided support.

  “I can stand,” I croaked, knowing damn well that I couldn’t. It must have been a hell of a sight as a gray ash-man rose from the pool. The EMTs weren’t much interested in what I had to say about my own rescue. Someone messed with my right shoulder even as other hands arranged my bulk on the backboard.

  I was strapped down like a crazy man trussed in a strait-jacket. I couldn’t do anything but relax and enjoy the trip. That gave me some time to think, to try to put some of the pieces together.

  The helicopter rested at the east end of the parking lot, a stone’s throw from the highway. My nerves tensed. The canyon was narrow and the air currents would be squirrelly.

  “Maybe just a ride to town in an ambulance would be safer,” I muttered, but no one listened to me. My stretcher was secured in the Jet Ranger even as the turbines increased their whine and the rotors flashed.

  Estelle’s stretcher was on the opposite side of the machine, and I wanted the damn mask off so I could ask about her.

  I tensed as the helicopter lifted, ducked its nose, rotated in place, and then sped south, thumping up and out of the canyon. I caught a glimpse of the pall of smoke that hung on the southwest side of Quebrada Mesa and extended up the face of the mountain to the north.

  It banked smoothly away from the valley. We had already gained enough altitude to establish a direct course to Albuquerque, skimming the mesas and foothills.

  I shifted position, trying to see who else was in the helicopter with us. It was impossible to see, impossible to hear or even sit up. I settled back, wondering if Francis Guzman was with Estelle. I was going to have a hell of a time trying to explain this mess to him.

  Chapter 26

  “How are we?” the nu
rse asked. I’d been staring at the ceiling of the ICU recovery room and hadn’t heard her pad in. She smiled at me, a little bit predatory.

  I cleared my throat. “We’re okay,” I said. “What time is it?”

  She glanced at her watch. “A little after eight.”

  There were no tubes stuck in me, no clicking machines. That was a plus. “In the morning?”

  “Yes,” the nurse said. She was maybe forty-five, plain as a post, and looked like she had more important things to do elsewhere.

  I raised a hand and rubbed my face. My skin felt thin and fragile. “I need to know about the injured deputy who came in on the same helicopter as me.” I was about to give her the name, and my mind went blank. “Christ,” I muttered and rubbed my eyes again. “Estelle,” I said suddenly. “Estelle Reyes.” I looked at the nurse. I couldn’t read her name tag. “I need to know. I’d appreciate anything you can do.”

  She nodded. “I’ll see what I can find out.” She left the room, and I twisted in bed just a little. My right shoulder felt heavy and dull, but when I bent the arm at the elbow everything worked. I looked at my fingers. Other than some minor nicks and cuts, every finger was in place and worked on command. Hell, this wasn’t too bad, then.

  I flexed my right leg. I couldn’t see it over my belly, but it felt like all parts were in place. My right ankle twanged a bolt of lightning when I tried to point my toes.

  In a few minutes the nurse returned. “The young lady is still in surgery,” she said without preamble. My spirits sank.

  “Is Dr. Francis Guzman in the building?”

  “He may be in surgery, sir.”

  “I need to see him as soon as he’s free.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She left again. The room was insulated from the normal sounds of the hospital, and I had only my thoughts for company. The door of the recovery room opened, and a uniformed sheriff’s deputy poked his head in.