Running on Empty

by Don Aker

“Jesus!” snarled Hornsby. “Turn that thing off!”

  Ethan looked at the cell’s screen. The text was from his father: whr r u? call! please! cant find—

  Hornsby tore the phone from his hands. “We don’t got all night!” he said, tossing it into the back seat. Then he pressed the Persuader into Ethan’s hand. “Here, take it,” he said.

  The gun was heavier than it looked. And ice cold, like Hornsby’s eyes. Ethan’s heart slammed against the wall of his chest as though trying to get out. Because that’s what Ethan was doing now, too—looking for a way out. How the hell did he get here? He was about to commit a robbery—a goddamn armed robbery—masterminded by a guy he’d twice been warned to steer clear of. And why? He could blame it on a hundred things, of course, but it all boiled down to one: a twenty-buck bet that he couldn’t get from Seth’s place to Cathedral Estates in ten minutes. Christ! “L-look,” Ethan stammered, laying the gun beside the wire cutters. “I can’t do this.”

  Hornsby stared at him for a moment and then, impossibly, he smiled, the expression reptilian in the glow from the car’s instrument panel. “Nerves, kid. Everybody gets cold feet the first time.”

  The first time. If Ethan could have been convinced even two heartbeats earlier to go through with this thing, it only took hearing those three words—and their implication that this wouldn’t be the only time—to reaffirm he’d been about to make the biggest mistake of his life. “No, it isn’t nerves,” he told Hornsby. “I can’t do this. I won’t.”

  Hornsby glowered at him. “You owe me.”

  “How do I owe you?”

  “You think I won all that money in the casino? The money I gave you in the Park ‘n’ Pay?”

  “I saw you win it.”

  “You saw me play. I won a few hands, sure, but you were standin’ too far away to see what I cashed in. Why d’you think I had to split fifty-fifty instead of sixty-forty? I topped up your winnings with my own dough.”

  “Why?”

  Hornsby snickered. “You really that stupid, kid?”

  No, Ethan wasn’t that stupid. Not anymore. He’d just connected the last pair of dots, the ones that explained why a small-time thief like Hornsby drove a rusted Toyota Echo with a gouge down the driver’s side. It wasn’t because of any Waste not, want not lifestyle choice. It was because there was no such thing as beating the odds. When it came to gambling, the only winners were the ones who owned the house. The rest were just suckers. And Ethan had been the biggest sucker of them all, exactly what a low-life like Link Hornsby had been looking for. He’d even been warned. Them that lie down with dogs get up with fleas. Well, fleas or not, Ethan Palmer was getting up right now. He reached for the handle and opened the door.

  “You ain’t walkin’ out on me,” Hornsby seethed.

  Ethan tossed the toque aside and climbed out. He heard the driver’s door swing open, its rusty hinges complaining before it slammed shut. Footsteps. And then Hornsby was in his face.

  “You owe me,” the man repeated. “You’re mine, asshole.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” said Ethan, stepping away.

  Hornsby’s laugh was harsh, guttural. “Yeah, like you’re gonna pay back your old man? And your sister? And who knows how many others? I don’t take IOUs, you little pissant.”

  “You’ll have to,” Ethan said, turning and heading in the direction of the bus stop a block away. He wanted to see Allie. Needed to see her. Nothing was going to stop him.

  “Look, you miserable piece of shit,” hissed Hornsby, who’d come up behind him so quickly that Ethan jumped. “You’re doin’ this whether you want to or not.”

  Ethan felt something hard press into the small of his back as a hand grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. He felt his legs turn to water, and his heart, which had slammed into his chest wall only moments earlier, seemed to stutter. He had to force out his next words: “D-don’t shoot.”

  In the shadows between the street lights, a gun jammed into his back, Ethan heard Hornsby rasp in his ear, “That’s up to you, dickhead. We had a plan and we’re stickin’ to it. Now suck it up and let’s get this over with.”

  Ethan’s mouth had become the Mojave. “I can’t,” he croaked. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

  He felt the barrel of the gun prod deeper into his flesh, felt the hair on the back of his neck leap to attention, felt his heart abandon its stutter and pummel his rib cage as the voice in his ear growled, “You chose the wrong time to grow a pair, asshole. Nobody backs out on Link Hornsby, you got that? Nobody.”

  Ethan heard a sound in the darkness, and some part of him realized his mouth had made it. A pleading sound. The sound your brain manufactures when it realizes it’s probably the last sound your mouth will ever make.

  Then there was another sound and Hornsby grunted thickly, staggering backward.

  “You leave my brother alone!”

  Despite the shadows, and despite how quickly the next events unfolded, they would be forever etched into Ethan’s memory. He turned to see Raye holding a tree branch that she’d just slammed into the back of Hornsby’s head. Or tried to. Because of her height, the unwieldiness of the branch, and—probably most of all—her poor eyesight, she’d missed and glanced his shoulder.

  Hornsby whirled to face his attacker. “What the—”

  This time the branch hit him squarely in the temple and Hornsby roared, nearly dropping to his knees as Raye struck him yet again.

  “Raye!” Ethan shouted. “Get out of here!”

  “Not without you!” She raised the branch one more time, shouting at the stranger in front of her. “You leave my brother alone or—”

  Afterwards, Ethan would think about the sound the gun made when it fired. It was nothing like he’d heard in all those movies. Not the crack you might expect. Loud, sure, but without the hard edge. Like a mirror breaking inside a mattress.

  He would also think about the look on Raye’s face when it happened. Astonishment? Maybe, but more than that. Something like outrage.

  And then she fell.

  At some point, Hornsby must have run to his car and squealed off. All Ethan could see was Raye crumpled on the sidewalk. Oddly, his mind replayed the video of that deer leaping into the coffee shop, and some part of him now understood what the creature had felt, the sheer terror of slamming into something you didn’t see coming and feeling everything crash down around you. He screamed his sister’s name, gathered her into his arms, and staggered to his feet. Stumbling under his burden, he almost went down, and he sobbed as he struggled not to drop her. He felt like someone had scooped his guts out, but he forced the hollow shell of his body forward, praying that Anwar’s claim—We have everything you need—was really true.

  The clerk, a young man with a goatee and a safety pin through one eyebrow, was standing wide-eyed in the entrance as Ethan approached. He held the door open so Ethan could carry Raye inside.

  “Call 911!” Ethan yelled, laying her gently on the tile floor. “She’s been shot!” A red flower bloomed through her coat in the centre of her abdomen.

  The young man picked up the phone, then looked helplessly at Ethan. “There’s no dial tone. It’s dead.”

  Ethan remembered the wire cutters and moaned. “Use your cell!”

  The young man winced. “I don’t have one.”

  “Here! Take mine!” One arm still around Raye, Ethan reached into his jacket. And then cursed as he remembered Hornsby flinging it into the back seat. “I don’t have it! You have to get to a phone!”

  The young man looked at the cash register behind him. Beside it on the counter lay an open magazine and half a candy bar.

  “For Christ’s sake, go get help!” Each utterance an exclamation. For an odd, brief moment, Ethan wondered if he’d ever be able to speak again without screaming. He hugged Raye to him, put his hand on her belly to keep her life from pouring out, and wept.

  Chapter 31

  His father and Jillian got to the emergency room ten minutes aft
er the ambulance did. Ethan looked up as they burst in, seeing them without seeing them. Shock, he would later learn, had a way of doing that, protecting the brain and the body from things they weren’t ready for.

  “I’m Jack Palmer,” he heard—but didn’t hear—his father say when he reached the admitting desk. “My daughter was just brought in. She’s been shot?”

  The woman at the desk nodded. “She’s in surgery.”

  Ethan saw—but didn’t see—Jillian put a hand to her perfect red mouth. Had she actually stopped to apply lipstick, worried about showing up at an emergency room without makeup?

  “How soon will we know something?” Jack demanded.

  “They’ve only just started. It could be some time, Mr. Palmer. I’ll let you know the moment I hear anything. In the meantime, you and your family should make yourselves comfortable.” She waved toward the waiting area like a realtor selling floor space.

  That’s when his father saw him. “Ethan!” He rushed over. “What the hell happened?”

  Behind him, Jillian echoed, “Yes, Ethan, what happened?”

  Ethan looked up at them, his face slack. He’d stopped sobbing in the ambulance. Not because he didn’t want people to see him cry. He was all cried out. Now all he felt was a kind of numbness.

  “Ethan?” His father’s voice again.

  He let the numbness hold him for a moment, let it work its way through him before he attempted to find the words he needed. “She was protecting me,” he heard himself reply.

  And he was wrong. He wasn’t all cried out after all.

  “We’ve managed to piece together most of what happened, Mr. Palmer,” said the policeman wearing a name tag with Constable Leonard Richards printed on it.

  Ethan remembered talking to him earlier. He wasn’t sure when. Sometime between when his father had arrived and now. But he wasn’t sure when now was. The clock on the wall said 3:47, but that had to be wrong. He hadn’t been here that long. It wasn’t possible. He remembered the clock in the Echo had read 11:23 as he’d gotten out of the car. Or 12:31. Or maybe it was 13:21. Did older cars use twenty-four-hour clocks? He remembered two 1s, anyway. And a 2 and a 3. And Raye lying on the sidewalk.

  The paramedics thought he’d been shot, too, because of the blood. It had been all over him. It was still on him now. Whenever now was.

  “What do you know?” his father asked the constable.

  “You say your daughter left the house right after your son?”

  Jack nodded. “Yes, yes, we’ve been all through this.”

  “Your son wasn’t aware she’d followed him.”

  She couldn’t have, Ethan thought. Not all that way on foot without him seeing her. To the cemetery? He’d sat there for hours. Then all the way downtown to Anwar’s Convenience? Surely she hadn’t followed him, hadn’t watched over him all that time, shivering in the December darkness.

  “Apparently, your son was mixed up with an offender we’ve had our eye on for some time,” Richards said.

  “You know who shot my daughter?”

  “Yes, sir. Your son said his cellphone was in the guy’s car. We traced it and picked him up a few minutes ago. They’re taking his statement now. No sign of a gun yet, but they’ll do a residue test on him. I’m sure it’ll be positive.”

  Jack nodded. He looked across at Ethan as he asked the policeman his next question. “You said my son was involved with this person. This wasn’t a random act then? A mugging gone wrong?”

  “No, sir, we don’t believe it was.”

  In the seat to Ethan’s left, Jillian put a hand to her mouth. Not perfect now, though. She must have fallen asleep in her chair at some point because her lipstick was smudged. There was red on the back of one hand.

  Ethan looked down and saw that both of his own hands were red. Like he’d dipped them in paint. Someone had given him something to wipe them off, but all he’d managed to do was smear it. Even the skin under his fingernails was red.

  “You say you’ve had your eye on this person?” his father asked.

  “Yes, sir. He preys on teenagers. Grooms them, you could say.”

  “How?”

  “Introduces them to gambling, makes it look like a sure thing. Then when they’re in over their heads, when they’re really desperate, he offers them a way out. Uses them to do his dirty work.”

  Jack glared at the constable. “You know all this? Why is he allowed to continue? How does he get away with it?”

  “Intimidation. We haven’t found a kid yet who’s willing to testify against him. And then there’s—” Richards stopped, clearly uncomfortable.

  “Then there’s what?”

  The constable squared his shoulders. “The families, sir. Lately, he’s been targeting kids whose parents are well connected, people who’d rather have the whole thing go away if their kids got caught. People who can afford lawyers who make that sort of thing happen.” His last words hung in the air for a moment, almost visible in the waiting area.

  “I see,” Jack said finally. “Thank you, constable.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.” Richards paused. “If you don’t mind me saying, sir …”

  “Yes?”

  “I see a lot go wrong in my line of work.”

  “So do I.”

  Richards nodded. “Of course. I’m sure you do. It’s just that with young people there’s often so many other things involved, so much below the surface. There’s seldom just black and white, if you know what I mean.”

  Ethan saw that his hands weren’t really red after all. They had been at one time, but they were brown now. The blood had long since dried. Paint’s got the same colour-changing pigments in it that they use in American money. So much blood. He wondered if it would ever come off.

  “Thank you, constable,” Jack said again. He watched Richards leave, then got up and crossed the space that separated him and his son. Kneeling down, he put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “There’ll be time later to sort all this out,” he said.

  Ethan looked at his father’s hand. It was warm, even through the thick jacket he still wore. A nurse had asked him earlier if he’d wanted to take his jacket off, but Ethan had shaken his head, hugged his arms about him. It had soaked up so much blood he was afraid to remove it. They’d probably put it in one of those medical waste bags and throw it away. This was Raye’s blood. He was taking care of it for her. Just like she’d been taking care of him.

  He began to sob again.

  “You must have more information now,” said Jack standing at the nurse’s desk. His voice had changed. Ethan had never heard him plead before.

  The woman at the desk had just returned. She kept her voice low, and Ethan wondered why. It was 4:51 and they were the only people in the waiting area. Earlier, a reporter had arrived, but a man in a security uniform asked him to leave. The reporter had been angry, had complained loudly about his rights, but the security guard hadn’t budged. Shortly after that, paramedics had wheeled in an elderly woman suffering from chest pains and took her straight to a room, leaving Ethan, his father, and Jillian alone again.

  Ethan had wondered what that woman’s room might look like. Those thoughts had helped keep him from thinking of the room that Raye was in now, a sterile operating theatre gleaming with stainless steel, the only colour the white of the sheets and the walls. Like their Brilliant Cream living room. He couldn’t stand to think of her there, small and frail on that table in the middle of something like January.

  He was kidding himself, of course. There was another colour besides white in that room. Lots of it.

  The woman at the desk had earlier reported that the doctors were having trouble stabilizing Raye. She’d lost far too much blood. And the bullet had ricocheted inside her belly, scrambling her guts. That’s not how she’d put it, of course, but the outcome was the same. Hearing that, Ethan had wondered if he’d helped tear Raye’s insides even more when he’d run with her in his arms instead of trying to stop the bleeding on the sidewalk like
his Red Cross course had taught him to. That was something else he didn’t want to think about. Couldn’t think about.

  His father returned to the waiting area now, sat heavily in his chair. “It’s not good,” he said. “They’ve been working on her this whole time.” He put his hands on his knees, stared at them hard. “They fix one thing and then find there’s something else.”

  Ethan saw his father was gripping his knees with his hands, his knuckles white against his slacks like he was holding on. Or trying to. “I guess there’s always something else,” Jack added, and then his voice broke and he was crying.

  It was as though someone had thrown cold water on Ethan, every fibre of his body and his brain clamouring for his father to stop. Jillian put one hand on the back of Jack’s neck, the other on his shoulder, rubbing it in small circular motions.

  Filthy had gently caressed Shawna’s belly in a similar way. Such a simple act, but it had reminded Ethan of something then. Now he knew what it was. It was perhaps his earliest memory, an afternoon when he was not yet four. He’d been on the swing in the yard of their Herring Cove home, his father pushing him while he’d giggled “Higher! Higher!” His mother had come to the back door, and he’d waved to her as she stood watching them for a moment then called for them to come eat. She’d been away somewhere that afternoon and had returned with fried chicken, Ethan’s favourite, and he’d hurried inside and climbed into his chair at the table. As he watched his father cut up some of the savoury white meat for him, his mother had told them about her day. Ethan wasn’t listening—his mouth was watering and he had eyes only for the chicken—but after passing Ethan the plate, his father got up and stood beside her, placed his big hand on her belly, stroked it in small, slow circles. His own hands already covered in chicken grease, Ethan had turned to them, wondering why they weren’t eating. But he’d seen his father’s hand on his mother’s belly and somehow knew that something special was going to happen. And nearly eight months later, it did.

  Seeing that moment in his mind now, Ethan wondered what others he’d forgotten. And then they swam into memory. His father’s strong hands gripping Ethan’s as he wobbled on skates. His father running beside him as he pedalled without training wheels for the first time. His father showing him how to swing the bat, add double-digit numbers, hold the kite string, swim.